Part 5

These, then, in brief, are the negations of Reformed Judaism. On the positive side, it reaffirms those dogmas which are the kernel of Judaism,—“the Unity of God; His just judgment of the world; the free relation of every man to God; the continual progress of humanity; the immortality of the soul; and the Divine election of Israel” (understood to signify that the Jews, under the will of God, possess a specific religious mission not yet entirely fulfilled). As to the observances of Reformed Judaism, the framework of life and habit under which it proposes to exist, “they will remain distinctively Jewish, and must not bear the mere stamp of nineteenth century religious opinion.” The Jewish Reformer thus, like many another Radical, is an aristocrat at heart, and shrinks from descending to the level of a _parvenue_ faith. In my humble judgment, he is entirely right in his decision. So long as he places the interests of truth and honesty above all, he cannot do better than hold fast by everything which reminds himself and the world of his pedigree through a hundred generations of worshippers of Jehovah.

The extent to which such reformation as that now sketched prevails at this hour among Jews is difficult to ascertain. The movement has been going on for some time, and yet counts but a moderate number of adherents, chiefly, as I have said, German and American Jews. Nay, what is most unhopeful, the disease of religious indifference, that moral phylloxera which infests the choicest spiritual vineyards, is working its evil way among the broader-minded Jews, as it works (we know too well) among the broader-minded Christians. To unite depth of conviction with width of sympathy has ever been a rare achievement. “Tout comprendre sera tout pardonner,” may be rendered, in intellectual matters, “To find truth everywhere is to contend for it nowhere.”

There is good room to hope, however, that if some fall out of the ranks, the Reformed party will yet possess enough energy, vigor, and cohesion to make its influence erelong extensively felt.

It is a startling prospect which has been thus opened before us. If anything seemed fixed in the endless flux of nations and religions, it was the half-petrified religion of the Jew. That the stern figure which we have beheld walking alone through the long procession of history should come at last and take a place beside his brothers is hard to picture. We live in a time when,

“Faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.”

Every solid body is threatened with disintegration; and the new powers of cohesion, if such there be, have scarcely come into play. But, of all changes fraught with momentous consequences, none could well be more important than that of a stripping off of its tribal gaberdine by Judaism, and the adoption of “a law fit for law universal.” The old fable is realized. The wind and hail of persecution blew and pelted the Jew for a thousand years, and he only drew his cloak closer around him. The sunshine of prosperity and sympathy has shone upon him, and, lo! his mantle is already dropping from his shoulders.

For the present we can only treat the matter as a grand project, but we may endeavor to estimate the value of a Reformation of Judaism such as Luther accomplished for Christianity. In the first place, it is, I conceive, the sole chance for the permanent continuance of the Jewish religion that it should undergo some such regeneration. If the proposed Reform perish in the bud, Orthodox Judaism will doubtless survive for some generations, but, according to the laws which govern human institutions, its days must be numbered. In former times, when every nation in Europe held aloof from its neighbors in fear and jealousy, it was possible for alien tribes, like the Jews and gypsies, to move among all, holding rigidly to their own tribal alliances and observances; hated and mistrusted, indeed, but scarcely more so than their Christian next-door neighbors. But now that Christian nations are all blending together under the influence of perpetual intercourse, and their differences of belief, governments, costumes, habits, and ideas are effacing themselves year by year, the presence of a non-fusing, non-intermarrying, separatist race—a race brought by commerce into perpetual friction with all the rest—becomes an intolerable anomaly.

For once Mr. Goldwin Smith was in the right in this controversy, when he remarked that “the _least_ sacred of all races would be that which should persistently refuse to come into the allegiance of humanity.”

The Jews have shown themselves the sturdiest of mankind, but the influences brought to bear on them now are wholly different from those which they met with such stubborn courage of old. Political ambition, so long utterly closed to them, but to which Lord Beaconsfield’s career must evermore prove a spur; pleasure and self-indulgence, to which their wealth is an ever ready key; the scepticism and materialism of the time, to which their acute and positive minds seem to render them even more liable than their contemporaries,—these are not the elements out of which martyrs and confessors are made. A reformed, enlightened, world-wide creed, which a cultivated gentleman may frankly avow and defend in the _salons_ of London, Paris, Berlin, or New York, and in the progress of which he may feel some enthusiasm,—a creed which will make him free to adopt from Christianity all that he recognizes in it of spiritually lofty and morally beautiful,—such a creed may have a future before it of which no end need be foreseen. But for unreformed Judaism there can be nothing in store but the gradual dropping away of the ablest, the most cultured, the wealthiest, the men of the world and the men of the study,—the Spinozas, the Heines, the Disraelis—and the persistence only for a few generations of the more ignorant, fanatical, obscure, and poor.

Again, besides giving to Judaism a new lease of life, the Reform projected would undoubtedly do much to extinguish that passion of _Judenhasse_ which is the disgrace of Eastern Christendom, and the source of such manifold woes to both races. The root of that passion is the newly awakened sense (to which I have just referred) of impatience at the existence of a nation within every nation, having separate interests of its own and a solidarity between its members, ramifying into every trade, profession, and concern of civil life. Were this solidarity to be relinquished, and the mutual secret co-operation of Jews[18] reduced to such natural and fitting friendliness as exists between Scotchmen in England, and were it to become common for Jews to marry Christians and discuss freely with Christians their respective views,—were this to happen, mutual respect and sympathy would very quickly supersede mutual prejudice and mistrust. After two generations of such Reformed Judaism, the memory of the difference of race would, I am persuaded, be reduced to that pleasant interest wherewith we trace the ancestry of some of our eminent statesmen to “fine old Quaker families,” or remark that some of our most brilliant men of letters have in their veins the marvellous Huguenot blood.[19]

It is superfluous to add that the Jewish people, thus thoroughly adopted into the comity of European nations, and Judaism recognized as the great and enlightened religion of that powerful and ubiquitous race, the true mission of Judaism, as taught by Bible and Talmud—that of holding up the torch of monotheistic truth to the world—would begin its practical accomplishment. The Latin nations in particular, to whom religion has presented itself hitherto in the guise of ecclesiasticism and hagiolatry, and who are fast verging into blank materialism as the sole alternative they know, would behold at last, with inevitable respect, a simple and noble worship, at once historical and philosophic, without priestly claims, and utterly at war with every form of monasticism and superstition. The impression on these, and even on the Northern nations, of such a spectacle could not be otherwise than elevating, and possibly, in the Divine order of the world, might be the means whereby the tide of faith, so long ebbing out in dismal scepticism, should flow once more up the rejoicing shores.

Even if this be too much to hope, I cannot doubt that many Christian Churches would draw valuable lessons from the presence among them of a truly reformed Judaism. Especially in these days of irreverence, of finikin Ritualism on one side and Salvation Army rowdyism on the other, it would be a measureless advantage to be summoned to revert in thought to the solemn and awe-inspired tone of Hebrew devotion which still breathes in the services of the synagogue. It has been a loss to Christians as well as to Jews that these services have hitherto been conducted in Hebrew.[20] Had the synagogue services in London been conducted in the English language, I believe that many of the popular misapprehensions concerning Judaism would never have existed, while the impression of profound reverence which the prayers convey would have reacted advantageously on Christian worship, too liable to oscillate between formalism and familiarity.[21]

I am bound to add, on the other side, that it appears to me there are some very great advantages on the side of Christianity of which it behooves reforming Jews to take account. These are not matters of dogma, but of sentiment; and not only may they be appropriated by Jews without departing by a hair’s breadth from their own religious platform, but they may every one be sanctioned (if any sanction be needed for them) by citations from the Hebrew Scriptures themselves. The great difference between Judaism and Christianity on their moral and spiritual sides, in my humble judgment, lies in this: that the piety and charity, scattered like grains of gold through the rock of Judaism, were by Christ’s burning spirit fused together, and cast into golden coin to pass from hand to hand. Jews have continually challenged Christians to point to a single precept in the Gospel which has not its counterpart in the Old Testament. They are perhaps in the right, and possibly no such isolated precept can be found differentiating the two creeds; but, both by that which is left aside and by that which it chose out and emphasized, Christianity is, practically, a new system of ethics and religion.

To these three things in Christianity I would direct the attention of Jewish reformers:—

The Christian idea of love to God.

The Christian idea of love to Man.

The Christian sentiment concerning Immortality.

For the first, far be it from me to wrong the martyr race by a doubt that thousands of Jews have nobly obeyed the First Great Commandment of the Law (given in Deuteronomy vi. 4, as well as repeated by Christ) and “loved the Lord their God with all their heart and soul and strength,” even to the willing sacrifice of their lives through fidelity to Him. The feelings of loyalty entertained by a Jew in the old days of persecution to the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” must have been often a master-passion as fervid as it was deep-rooted. But alongside of this hereditary loyalty to the God and King of Israel there might well grow somewhat of that tender personal piety which springs from the Evangelical idea of God as holding personal relations with each devout and forgiven soul.

Of the two theories of religion,—that which starts with the idea of a Tribe or Church, and that which starts with the unit of the individual soul,—Judaism has hitherto held the former. It has been essentially a corporate religion; and to be “cut off from the congregation,” like Spinoza, has been deemed tantamount to spiritual destruction. It is surely time that Reformed Judaism should now adopt the far higher theory of religious individualism, and teach men to seek those sacred private and personal relations with the Lord of Spirits which, when once enjoyed, cause the notions of any mere corporate privileges to appear childish. Had the deep experiences which belong to such personal piety been often felt by modern Jews (as they certainly were by many of the old Psalmists), it could not have happened that modern Jewish literature should have been so barren as it is of devotional works and of spiritual poetry. To a serious reverential spirit (a sentiment far above the level of that of the majority of Christians), Jews too rarely join those more ardent religious affections and aspirations which it is the glory of Christianity to inspire in the hearts of her saints. Had they known these feelings vividly and often, we must have had a Jewish Thomas à Kempis, a Jewish Saint Theresa, a Jewish Tauler, Fénelon, Taylor, Wesley. It will not suffice to say in answer that Jews did not need such treatises of devotion and such hymns of ecstatic piety, having always possessed the noblest of the world in their own Scriptures. Feelings which really rise to the flood do not keep in the river-bed for a thousand years.

Again, the Christian idea of Love to Man possesses an element of tenderness not perceptible in Jewish philanthropy. Jews are splendidly charitable not alone to their own poor, but also to Christians. Their management of their public and private charities has long been recognized as wiser and more liberal than that of Christians at home or abroad. They are faithful and affectionate husbands and wives; peculiarly tender parents; pious children; kindly neighbors. The cruel wrongs of eighteen centuries have neither brutalized nor imbittered them. Well would it be if whole classes of drunken, wife-beating Englishmen would take example in these respects from them! But of certain claims beyond these, claims always recognized by Christian teachers, and not seldom practically fulfilled by Christian men and women,—the claims of the erring to be forgiven, of the fallen to be lifted out of the mire,—Jews have hitherto taken little account. The parable of the Lost Sheep is emphatically Christian; and among Christians only, till quite recently, have there been active agencies at work to seek and save ruined women, drunkards, criminals, the “perishing and dangerous classes.”[22] Mary Magdalene did well to weep over the feet of Jesus Christ. It was Christ who brought into the world compassion for her and for those like her. And for the forgiveness of enemies, also, the Christian spirit, if not absolutely unique, is yet supreme. The very core of the Christian idea fitly found its expression on the Cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” That divinest kind of charity, which renounces all contests for rights, and asks not what it is _bound_ to do, but what it may be _permitted_ to do, to bless and serve a child of God,—that charity may, I think, justly be historically named Christian. Of course, every pure Theism is called on to teach it likewise.

With regard to women, the attitude of Judaism is peculiar. It has always recognized some “Rights of Women,” and has never fallen into the absurdity of cherishing mental or physical weakness in them as honorable or attractive. As Mrs. Cyril Flower (then Miss Constance de Rothschild) showed in an interesting article published some years ago, the “Hebrew Woman,” so magnificently described in the last chapter of Proverbs, has always been the Jewish ideal: “Strength and honor are her clothing. She openeth her mouth with wisdom.” No jealousy, but, on the contrary, joyful recognition, awaited in each age the vigorous actions of Miriam and Deborah, of Judith and Esther, and of the mother of the seven martyrs in the Book of Maccabees. Jewish marriages (till quite recently formed always on the Eastern rather than on the Western system) are proverbially faithful and affectionate; and the resolution of Jews never to permit their wives to undertake labor outside their homes (such as factory work and the like) has undoubtedly vastly contributed to the health and welfare of the nation. Yet, notwithstanding all this, something appears to be lacking in Jewish feeling concerning women. Too much of Oriental materialism still lingers. Too little of Occidental chivalry and romance has yet arisen. In this respect, strange to say, the East is prose, the West poetry. The relations of men and women, above all of husband and wife, cannot be ranked as perfect till some halo of tender reverence be added to sturdy good-will and fidelity.[23]

And, beyond their human brethren and sisters, Christians have found (it is one of those late developments of the fertile Christian idea of which I have spoken) that the humbler races of living creatures have also claims upon us,—moral claims founded on the broad basis of the right of simple sentiency to be spared needless pain; religious claims founded on the touching relation which we, the often forgiven children of God, bear to “the unoffending creatures which he loves.” This tender development of Christianity, and the discovery consequent on it, that “he prayeth well who loveth well both man and bird and beast,” is assuredly worthy of the regard of those Reformers who would make Judaism a universal religion. Semitic literature has hitherto betrayed a hardness and poverty on this side which it is needful should now be remedied, if Judaism is to ride on the full tide of Aryan sympathies.

And, lastly, the Christian sentiment concerning Immortality deserves special attention from Reforming Jews. The adoption of the dogma of a Future Life has scarcely even yet, after some fifty generations, imprinted on the Jewish mind the full consciousness of

“That great world of light which lies Behind all human destinies.”

Jews have, it would appear, essentially the _esprit positif_. They are content to let the impenetrable veil hang between their eyes and the future world,—that veil which the Aryan soul strives impatiently, age after age, to tear away, or on which it throws a thousand phantasms from the magic-lanthorn of fancy. Millions of Christians have lived with their “treasures” truly placed in that world where moth and rust do not corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal. Especially have the bereaved among us dwelt on earth with their hearts already in heaven where their beloved ones await them. To too great an extent, no doubt, has this “other-worldliness” been carried, especially among ascetics; but, on the whole, the firm anchorage of Christian souls beyond the tomb has been the source of infinite comfort and infinite elevation. Of this sort of projection of the spirit into the darkness, this rocket-throwing of ropes of faith over the deeps of destruction, whereby the mourner’s shipwrecked soul is saved and reinstated, the Jewish consciousness seems yet scarcely cognizant. Perhaps these days of pessimism and mental fog are not those wherein any one is likely to find his faith in immortality quickened. As Dr. Johnson complained that he was “injured” by every man who did not believe all that he believed, so each of us finds his hope of another life chilled by the doubts which, like icebergs, float in the sea of thought we are traversing. But, for those Jews who thoroughly accept the dogma of immortality, it would surely be both a happiness and a source of moral elevation to give to such a stupendous fact its place in the perspective of existence. There is infinite difference between the molelike vision which sees nothing beyond the grassroots and the worms of earth, though dimly aware of a world of sunlight above, and the eagle glance which can measure alike things near and afar; between the man who counts his beloved dead as lost to him because he beholds and hears and touches them no more, and the man who can say calmly amid his sorrow,—

“Take them, thou great Eternity! Our little life is but a gust, Which bends the branches of thy tree, And trails its blossoms in the dust.”

Turning now from the results on Judaism itself and on Christianity at large of a great Jewish Reformation, we may indulge in some reflections on the possible bearings of such an event on that not inconsiderable number of persons who, all over Europe, are hanging loosely upon or dropping silently away from the Christian Churches. I am not speaking of those who become Atheists or Agnostics and renounce all interest in religion, but of those who, like Robert Elsmere, pass into phases of belief which may be broadly classed under the head of Theism. These persons believe still in God and in the life to come, and hold tenaciously by the moral and spiritual part of Christianity, perhaps sometimes feeling its beauty and truth more vividly than some orthodox Christians who deem the startling, miraculous, and “apocalyptic” part to constitute the essence of their faith. But this “apocalyptic part,” and all which Dr. Martineau has called the “Messianic mythology,” they have abandoned. Of the number of these persons, it is hard to form an estimate. Some believe that the Churches are all honeycombed by them, and that a panic would follow could a census of England be taken in a Palace of Truth. Not a few in the beginning and middle of this century quitted their old folds, and under the names of “Unitarians,” “Free Christians,” and “Theists” have thenceforth stood confessedly apart.[24] But of late years the disposition to make any external schism has apparently died away. The instinct, once universal, to build a new nest for each brood of faith seems perishing among us. The Church-forming spirit, so vigorous of old in Christianity and in Buddhism, is visibly failing, and making way for new phases of development, of which the Salvation Army may possibly afford us a sample. Among cultivated people subtle discrimination of differences and fastidiousness as regards questions of taste are indefinitely stronger than that desire for a common worship which, in the breasts of our forefathers, who “rolled the psalm to wintry skies,” and dared death merely to pray together, must have mounted to a passion. Englishmen generally still cling to public worship, but it is chiefly where an ancient liturgy supplies by old and holy words a dreamy music of devotion, into which each feels at liberty to weave his own thoughts. Wherever the demand is made for prayers which shall definitely express the faith and aspirations of the modern-minded worshipper, there the subtleties and the fastidiousness come into play, and, instead of being drawn together, men sorrowfully discover that they are made conscious by common worship of a hundred discrepancies of opinion, a thousand disharmonies of taste and feeling. In all things, we men and women of the modern Athens are not “too superstitious,” but too critical; and in religion, which necessarily touches us most vitally, our critical spirit threatens to paralyze us with shyness. The typical English gentleman and lady of to-day are at the opposite pole of sentiment in this respect from the Arab who kneels on his carpet on the crowded deck for his evening orison, or from the Italian _contadina_ who tells her beads before the wayside Madonna. Doubtless, here is one reason among many why such multitudes remain without any definite place in the religions of the land. They hang languidly about the old hive, feebly humming now and then, but feeling no impulse to swarm, and finding no queen-spirit to lead them to another home where they might build their proper cells and make their own honey.