Part 19

We find all the principles of his system in the Introduction to his first book (the _Commentary on the Mishnah_), and again at the end of his last book (_Guide_, III., chap. li.).

Footnote 142:

See Introduction to _Commentary on the Mishnah_.

Footnote 143:

“This is not the place to treat of this matter; but it is my intention, wherever a matter of belief is mentioned, to explain it briefly. For I love to teach nothing so much as one of the principles of religion” (end of _Berachoth_).

Footnote 144:

Especially important in this connection are the Introductions to _Zera’im_, to chapter _Chelek_ (where he brings in all the principles of religion), and to _Aboth_ (_Eight Chapters_).

Footnote 145:

His Preface makes it clear that he regarded his book as a sort of Mishnah in a new form; and it seems (though he does not say it in so many words) that he intended to hint at this idea by the title of the book—_Mishneh Torah_.

Footnote 146:

There were many writers who suspected that Maimonides’ idea was to do away altogether with the study of the Talmud. But this suspicion could arise only from failure to understand clearly the real purpose of the book. Even theories are presented here in dogmatic form; but could it possibly be imagined that Maimonides wanted to do away with the study of philosophy by the long method of argument and proof—that study which he regarded as the purpose of the human race? The truth is that he had in view the social function of religion, and for this reason he set forth both theories and practical commands in brief and in a manner suited to the comprehension of ordinary men. He left it to the chosen few to study the principles of both the theoretical and the practical law, and to obtain from the original sources a knowledge of the reasons for both.

Footnote 147:

_Guide_, Introduction.

Footnote 148:

After the publication of the _Guide_ many people discovered that its opinions were already contained in the innocent-looking dicta of the _Mishneh Torah_, especially in its first part (_The Book of Science_), and from that time onward they regarded that book also as heretical, and waged war on it as well as on the _Guide_.

Footnote 149:

See the letter of R. Jehudah Alfachar to Kimchi: _Collected Responses of Maimonides_ (ed. Leipsic), Part III., p. 1, _et seq._

Footnote 150:

See Dr. Joel’s monograph, _Spinoza’s Theologisch-Politischer Traktat auf seine Quellen geprüft_, Breslau, 1870.

Footnote 151:

See _Kerem Chemed_, III., pp. 67-70.

Footnote 152:

I may remark in passing that Luzzatto (_ibid._) accuses Maimonides of yet another disservice to Judaism. By making opinions the essential element of perfection Maimonides, according to him, abolished the difference between the righteous man and the wicked. “The philosopher,” he says, “may commit theft, murder, and adultery, and yet attain eternal life: salvation does not depend on merit.” This charge was already brought against Maimonides by his medieval opponents, but it is quite mistaken. Maimonides insists, over and over again, that until a man has moral perfection it is impossible for him to reach intellectual perfection to the degree necessary for the attainment of acquired intellect. See, for instance, the passage from the introduction to _Zera’im_ quoted above (p. 174).

Footnote 153:

Though the conception of “nationalism” in its current sense is modern, the national sentiment itself has existed in our people at all times; and its existence and value have been realised in our literature in every period, from the Bible and the Talmud to the literature of Chassidism, though it used to be called by other names (“the love of Israel,” etc.). But the sentiment and its expression do not appear to the same extent or in the same form in all ages and in all individuals, and it is therefore legitimate to ask what was the attitude of any particular age or any particular thinker to the national sentiment. An interesting book might be written on the history of the national sentiment and consciousness in Israel, dealing with their different manifestations in different ages, their growth and decline, and their expression in the life of the nation and the thought of its great men in each period.

Footnote 154:

_Guide_, III., chap. xliii. Similarly in chap. xlviii.

Footnote 155:

End of _Mishneh Torah_.

Footnote 156:

See the _Iggereth Teman_ and the _Treatise of the Sanctification of the Name_.

Footnote 157:

A German Jewish scholar, Dr. D. Rosin, in his monograph on the ethics of Maimonides (_Die Ethik des Maimonides_, Breslau, 1876), finds under the heading of “Nationalism” (p. 148) only two laws in the whole _Mishneh Torah_ which allude to the duties of the Jew to his people. But in fact the two laws which he quotes (_Hilchoth T’shubah_, chap. iii. 11, and _Hilchoth Matnath ’Aniim_, chap. x. 2) emphasise rather the unity of the members of one faith.

Footnote 158:

Introduction to chapter _Chelek_.

Footnote 159:

See Albo, _Ikkarim_, Part I, chap. 1.

Footnote 160:

See his Introduction to the _Sepher Hammitzvoth_.

Footnote 161:

I remarked on this point years ago in “Past and Future.” [See _Selected Essays by Ahad Ha’am_, p. 87.]

Footnote 162:

Cf. _supra_, p. 10.

Footnote 163:

See the _Treatise on Resurrection_.

Footnote 164:

Luzzatto (_ubi supra_) seems to suspect that Maimonides’ whole treatment of resurrection was insincere, and that he was deliberately throwing dust in the reader’s eyes, in order to conceal his heresy. But this suspicion is absurd: Maimonides was a man who was not afraid openly to reject even the immortality of the soul, and to recast all the fundamental beliefs of Judaism. Any unbiassed reader of the treatise must realise that Maimonides defends resurrection with perfect sincerity, but that he is unable to find the real grounds of his own conviction, because he looks for them in his reason and not in his feelings.

Footnote 165:

_Commentary on the Mishnah, Aboth_, chap. i. 17.

Footnote 166:

See his letters to Joseph ben Gabar, to the community of Lunel, and to R. Samuel Ibn Tibbon (_Collected Responses of Maimonides_ (Leipsic), Part II., pp. 16, 27, 44).

JUDAISM AND THE GOSPELS (1910)

English Jewry is at ease. There are no doubt traces here and there of anti-Semitism, nor are there wanting in the inner life of the community indications of what may be called “servitude in freedom.” But when all allowances are made, the Jews enjoy a firmer and a more secure position here than in other countries, and anxiety for the future, with all that it involves, plays a smaller part in their mental life. Hence their internal development is more “normal” than elsewhere; it is less at the mercy of external and accidental influences; it is rather determined by the spiritual and cultural resources of the community itself, and corresponds at any given time to the extent of those resources. To this circumstance is due the comparatively late appearance of the Reform movement in Anglo-Jewry. True, in the heyday of the German Reform movement a few people in England attempted to follow the German example; but their small experiment never grew to considerable dimensions, or showed any capacity for development. The reason is that whereas in Germany there was an external, political impulse towards Reform—the desire to combat anti-Jewish feeling, and thus to facilitate the attainment of civil and political rights—in England this motive was less felt. For though certain political restrictions were still in force, the position of the Jews was much better, and their relations with non-Jews were much more satisfactory, than in Germany.

But in more recent years education and the circumstances of life have brought about a change in the internal, spiritual condition of the Anglo-Jewish community: a new generation has arisen, which is very far removed from the _spirit_ of Judaism. It is this internal change in the Jews which has called into being the Reform movement which we now see developing before our eyes. To the difference in origin corresponds a difference in character. In Germany the Reform movement, practical in its motives, took a practical shape. Geiger and other Reformers endeavoured, on the one side, to alter the religious practices, and to bring them into conformity with what they conceived to be the needs of the time; but on the other side they laid stress on the grandeur of the religious and moral principles on which Judaism peculiarly was based, and tried to emphasise the _difference_ between Judaism and Christianity. But in England the Reform movement springs from a spiritual cause—from a conviction on the part of many Jews that they are spiritually _akin_ to their Christian environment. It is not merely the external observances of traditional Judaism that fail any longer to appeal to them; its innermost spirit, the fundamental ideas by which it is distinguished from Christianity, have lost their hold. Hence the movement here aims right at the heart; it wants to change the _spirit_ of Judaism, and to overthrow its historical foundations, so as to reduce its distinctive features to a small compass, and to bring it as closely as possible into accord with the Christian ideas of the non-Jewish community. Thirteen years ago this movement was begun in England by a body of young men, who thus straightforwardly and clearly expressed their aim:

“... Our triumphant emancipation is now working out its natural result upon us. Constant intercourse with non-Jews and extensive secular education must materially affect our opinions. We, who are young and earnest lovers of our religion, are struggling with new ideas which we hardly dare to formulate, because they are contrary to all accepted traditions. Such are the notions that our separateness seems now merely external and artificial, our racial distinctiveness often scarcely perceptible, and our religious ideas almost identical with those of Theists and true Unitarians.”[167]

But as it was difficult for them, in spite of everything, to abandon Judaism altogether, and to join the “Theists and true Unitarians,” they conceived the idea of attaining their object in the reverse way. They would transform Judaism itself, until it should contain nothing but the fundamental ideas of the “Theists and true Unitarians,” and then—so they fondly imagined—these latter would come and find shelter in Judaism, and so the “external and artificial” distinction would be comfortably and pleasantly removed! This movement did not take definite shape at the time, and after a while it disappeared and was no longer heard of. But the causes which had given it birth did not cease to work silently beneath the surface; and quite recently it has come forth again into the light of day, to play its part in the visible life of Anglo-Jewry. This time it appears in a more concrete form and with a clearer consciousness of the goal for which it is making. Its promoters have come to see, after all, that even if their Judaism is to teach the very doctrine of the “liberal” Christian sects, there will still be an “external and artificial” distinction between themselves and the non-Jew, so long as they do not accept the _source_ of that doctrine—so long as they do not admit, with the “liberal” Christians, that the New Testament is the last word in religious and moral development, and Jesus the most perfect embodiment of the religious and moral ideal. For in matters of religion men value not alone the abstract beliefs in themselves, but also—and perhaps more highly—the historical and psychological roots from which those beliefs have grown up in their hearts. It was well said many years ago by Steinthal that if ever a new religion, a philosophical religion, suited to modern times, should unite Jews and Christians, they would still be divided on the question whether the Old Testament or the Gospels had contributed in greater measure to the birth of the new religion.

Our English Reformers, therefore, have decided to remove even this stumbling-block from the path which leads to unity, and have decreed that the New Testament (or at least the Gospels) must be considered a part—and the most important part—of Judaism, and that Jesus must be regarded as a prophet—and the greatest of the prophets—in Israel. This pronouncement is certainly a step forward along a certain line of development, of which we are not yet at the end. We need not therefore be surprised if these Reformers do not realise the strangeness of their attitude, with its combination of contradictory and mutually destructive postulates. Whereas revolution overthrows the old at a single stroke, and puts the new in its place, evolution destroys and builds in sections, so that, until its work is complete, it is full of contradictions and inconsistencies—the old and the new jostling one another in confusion, and creating by their unnatural juxtaposition the impression of a caricature, which is obvious to the onlooker, but not to those who are engaged in the work. So this Reformed Judaism, which wants to be two opposites—Jewish and Evangelist—at once, has its place as a rung in the middle of the ladder, a step on the road of evolution to its final goal. At this stage of the journey our Reformers still think that it is possible to put the Gospels _beside_ the Old Testament and the Talmud. But when they reach the next stage they will recognise that the two cannot exist side by side, but only one above the other, and that when one stands the other falls. The early Christians went through the same process: they regarded their “message” at first simply as a part of Judaism; but when they had travelled the full length of their development, they saw that the Gospels meant the overthrow of the very foundations of Judaism, and then they left it altogether.

If anybody is doubtful about the true character and tendency of this movement, let him read the commentary on the Synoptic Gospels recently published by the leader of the movement, Mr. C. G. Montefiore. The author makes no secret of the fact that the book has been written for Jewish readers, with the object of convincing them that the New Testament ought to occupy an important position in Judaism at the present time, albeit from a Jewish point of view. The claims of the “Jewish point of view” he thinks to satisfy by his frequent efforts to show that the Law of the Rabbis was not so bad as it is painted by the authors of the New Testament and its commentators, and that in many respects the old Judaism rose to the level of the Gospels, nay, had in certain details actually more of truth.[168] But the general atmosphere of the book is so utterly alien from the essential character of Judaism as to make one fact clear beyond a shadow of doubt to any Jew in whom Judaism is still alive—that the Gospels can be received only into a Judaism which has lost its own true spirit, and remains a mere corpse.

The author is doubtless correct in saying that a Jewish commentary on the New Testament is needed at the present time.[169] Living in a Christian environment, we imbibe a culture in which many Christian ideas and sentiments are inwoven, and it is therefore necessary for us to know their source, so as to be able to distinguish between them and the universal elements of culture. But this Jewish commentary must be far removed from any polemical propagandist intention on one side or the other. Its sole object must be to _understand_ thoroughly the teaching of the Gospels, to define with _scientific_ accuracy its character, the foundations on which it rests, and the differences which distinguish it from Judaism. What is needed is not the “scientific accuracy” of the Christian commentators (that spring from which Mr. Montefiore drinks with such avidity), who set out with the preconceived idea that the teaching of the Gospels is superior to that of Judaism, and use their “science” merely to find details in support of this general belief. When a writer claims to be “scientific,” he must recognise above all that in the field of religion and morality it is impossible to set up a universal scientific criterion, by which to measure the different teachings, and to pronounce one superior to another. In this sphere everything is relative, and the judge brings to his task a subjective standard of his own, determined by his temperament, his education and his environment. We Jews, being everywhere a minority, are always subject to various influences, which counteract and weaken each other; and we, therefore, are possibly better able than others to understand objectively ideas which are not our own. Hence it was indeed right that there should be a Jewish commentary (not a Jewish panegyric) on the New Testament. Such a commentary might perhaps have enabled Jews of our author’s stamp to recognise that it is possible to treat with seriousness and justice a religion which is strange to us, without shutting our eyes to the gulf which separates it from ourselves.

I should like to dwell for a brief space on the nature of this “gulf.” So large a subject needs a whole book for its full treatment; but something, it seems to me, ought to be said just at this moment—and perhaps the need is not confined to England.

If the heathen of the old story, who wished to learn the whole _Torah_ standing on one leg,[170] had come to me, I should have told him: “‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness’—that is the whole _Torah_, and the rest is commentary.” The essential characteristic of Judaism, which distinguishes it from other religions, is its absolute determination to make the religious and moral consciousness independent of any definite human form, and to attach it _immediately_ to an _abstract_ ideal which has “no likeness.” We cannot conceive Christianity without Jesus, or even Islam without Mohammed. Christianity made a god of Jesus, but that is not the important fact. Even if Jesus had remained the “son of man,” had been only a prophet, as Mohammed is to the Mussulmans, that would not have affected the thing that really matters—the attachment of the religious and moral consciousness to the figure of a particular man, who is regarded as the ideal of absolute perfection, and the goal of men’s vision; to believe in whom is an essential part of a religion inconceivable without him. Judaism, and Judaism alone, depends on no such human “likeness.” God is the only idea of absolute perfection, and He only must be kept always before the eye of man’s inner consciousness, in order that many may “cleave to his attributes.” The best of men is not free from shortcomings and sins, and cannot serve as an ideal for the religious sentiment, which strives after union with the source of perfection. Moses died in his sin, like any other man. He was simply God’s messenger, charged with the giving of His Law; his image was not worked into the very fabric of the religion, as an essential part of it. Thus the Jewish teachers of a later period found nothing to shock them in the words of one who said in all simplicity: “Ezra was worthy to be the bearer of the Law to Israel, had not Moses come before him” (_Sanhedrin_, 21_a_). Could it enter a Christian mind, let us say, to conceive the idea that Paul was worthy to be the bearer of the “message,” had not Jesus come before him? And it need scarcely be said that the individual figures of the other Prophets are not an essential part of the fabric of Judaism. Of the greatest of them—Hosea, Amos, Isaiah, and others—we do not even know who or what they were; their personalities have vanished like a shadow, and only their words have been preserved and handed down from generation to generation, because they were not _their_ words, but “the word of the Lord that came unto them.”

This applies equally to the Messiah, who is awaited in the future. His importance lies not in himself, but in his being _the messenger of God_ for the bringing of redemption to Israel and the world. Jewish teachers pay much more attention to “the days of the Messiah” than to the Messiah himself. One of them even disbelieved altogether in a personal Messiah, and looked forward to a redemption effected by God Himself without an intermediary; and he was not therefore regarded as a heretic.

This characteristic of Judaism was perhaps the principal obstacle to its wider acceptance. It is difficult for men in general to find satisfaction in an abstract ideal which offers no hold to the senses; a human figure much more readily inspires enthusiasm. Before the triumph of Christianity the Greeks and the Romans used to accuse the Jews of having no God, because a divinity without “any likeness” had for them no meaning; and when the time came for the God of Israel to become also the God of the nations, they still could not accept His sway without associating with Him a divine ideal in human form, so as to satisfy their need for a more concrete and nearer ideal.

This is not the place to discuss the origin of this distinctive preference on the part of Israel for an _abstract_ religious and moral ideal. Be the reason what it may, the fact remains true, and has been true these thousands of years; and so long as Israel undergoes no fundamental change, and does not become something different, it cannot be influenced on the religious side by a book like the Gospels, which finds the object of religious devotion and moral emulation not in the abstract Godhead alone, but first and foremost in a man born of woman. It matters not whether he be called “Son of God,” “Messiah,” or “Prophet”: Israel cannot accept with religious enthusiasm, as the word of God, the utterances of a man who speaks in his own name—not “thus saith the Lord,” but “_I_ say unto you.” This “I” is in itself sufficient to drive Judaism away from the Gospels for ever. And when our author speaks in glowing terms of the religious and moral exaltation which spring from attachment to Jesus as the ideal of holiness and perfection, meaning, as is evident from his tone, to introduce this attachment into Judaism (pp. cvii, 210, 527), he is simply proving that he and those who think with him are already estranged from the essential nature of Judaism, which does not recognise ideal holiness and perfection in man. “Ye shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy”—that is Judaism. “Ye shall be holy, because the Messiah (or the Prophet) is holy”—that is an ideal better calculated, no doubt, to inspire enthusiasm and exaltation among the peoples; but it will never kindle the religious fire in Israel unless the very last drop of true Judaism be dried up. It was not for nothing that our ancient teachers called God “_the holy one_, blessed be He”: for Judaism absolute holiness exists only in the one God. We have had no doubt, at various periods, our mystic sects, which, influenced consciously or unconsciously by foreign ideas, have here turned aside more or less from the Jewish road. But the sect is only a temporary and partial phenomenon, pointing to some internal disease which affects the national life in a given period. Our history shows that the end of these sects is to die out, or to leave Judaism. Sects come and sects go, but Judaism remains for ever.