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The Southern Israelite
Reform Judaism and Zionism
By MOSES P. JACOBSON
Rabbi of Congregation Beth Ha-Tephillah, Asheville, N. C.
When in the year 1882 Dr. A. Kuenen,
the epoch-making Bible critic of Holland,
issued his volume of Hibbert Lectures,
entitled “National Religious and Univer
sal Religions”, in which he pronounced
Judaism to he distinctively a national re
ligion, the scholarship and spokesmanship
of Israel the world over voiced an utidis-
cordant chorus of passionate protest.
With the representatives of Reform
Judaism it was comparatively easy to
refute, for their constituency at least,
Kuenen’s characterization* The recog
nized rituals of Reform Judaism had eli
minated every prayer expressing so much
as even the suspicion of a hope or a
desire for any form of Jewish national
restoration. The Grand Sanhedrin of
Paris, in 1807, had specifically declared
that Israel existed only as a religion and
no longer looked forward to any national
rehabilitation. All over the world even
Orthodox Jewry, in order to obtain every
where the then debated Jewish civil
equalities, had been for years strenuously
repelling the impeachment that Israel was
a nation within the nations. And Reform
Judaism in its several rabbinical con
ferences finally gave the seal of official
declaration to this maintenance that Israel
was a religious entity and only a religious
entity.
Orthodoxy had a somewhat more diffi
cult task in meeting Kuenen’s contention.
No authoritative body had made for it
any formal pronouncement upon this sub
ject. But its exponents nevertheless were
enabled to build up an imposing argument
even for historic Israel’s universalistic
religious character by conclusive citations
from the Bible, the Talmud, and the
utterances of its most widely accredited
later interpreters. There were, for in
stance, the Mosaic and the Talmudic laws
for the admission of strangers into the
covenant of Israel, the universalistic dedi
catory prayer of King Solomon, Isaiah’s
explicit utterance, “My house shall be
called a house of prayer for all the peo
ples". Micah’s well-known summary of
Israel’s religious requirements as being
simply a God-conscious morality. There
was likewise the instancing from the New
t Testament about the proselyting activity
■ of the Pharisees. There were, further
more, the Talmudic sentences relative to
the conscious assumption by Israel of its
messianic career immediately upon the
fall of its Temple and the ultimate abro
gation of the entire ceremonial law, even
of the great fast and feast days, with the
world’s general acceptance of Israel’s
teachings. Scores of pronouncements by
prominent rabbis, like that of Rabbi
Akiba about the brotherhood of man be
ing the one basic principle of Judaism,
were quoted as a formidable array, it
would seem, of almost irrefutable proof.
In 1898 when in repudiation of the then
two-year-old neo-Zionism of Herzl the
Union of American Hebrew Congrega
tions, in official Council assembled in
the city of Richmond, Va., passed with
only two dissenting votes, its rhetorical
resolution about America being our
Palestine and Washington our Jerusalem
every religious section in American
Judaism applauded the declaration.
Hcrzlianism was taboo in those days, ex
cept for denunciation, in every American
Jewish pulpit, Orthodox, Reform and
Conservative. The few Jews who at that
time in this country identified themselves
with the new movement were either un
affiliated with the synagog or were Zion
ists wholly apart from their synagogal
attachments. A similar condition obtained
almost everywhere else throughout the
Jewish world.
However it would now appear that the
old Latin proverb would be more strik
ingly true if it were changed into “Tem-
pora mutantur ot Judaci mutantur in
illis", “Times change and—not we but—
Jews change with them.” It is true,
Judaism is a progressive religion and
change of a specific character is not only
to its credit but is even necessary to its
wholesome continuance. But to change a
basic contention merely to secure every
temporary advantage, and particularly for
such advantage to revert to an old posi
tion that has been denounced as utterly
vicious, is not symptomatic of progress,
but, on the contrary, is indicative of an
utter deficiency in intrinsic conviction.
Jewish nationalism and Reform Judaism
are wholly incompatible. In fact they
are diametrically opposed. The whole
ancient ceremonialism, whose religious
nonessentiality is almost a cardinal tenet
with Jewish Reform, receives a new
validity under Jewish nationalism. All
this ertwhile separative legislation of
ancient Israel, instead of being, as for
merly declared, merely protective reli
gious regulation, or inspirational discip
line, as to either of which it may com-
mendably be dispensed with in the light
of superior religious resources in the new
day, becomes under Zionism, in its any
form, invested with a nationalistic in
cumbency. The phylacteries, the fringed
garment, the wearing of car-locks and of
beards, the diet, the fast days and the
feast days, etc., are no longer mere reli
gious helps or ceremonies, nor are they
merely folkways, mores, or customs, but
are now national statutes and ordinances
set down in an unrepealable Constitution
Book and in its extending code,—the
Bible and the Talmud. The Jew who
disobeys these ordinances, and surely the
Jew who openly counsels their ignoring
P. Jacobson
and tresspassing, is as bad as a Jew as
at the present time a bootlegger is as an
American. This is the only possible
logical position that any Zionist can take
unless he happens to be that nondescript
somebody who is a Jewish nationalist
simply for the other fellow.
The most humiliating exhibition of op
portunism which up to the present mo
ment religious history has ever had to
record is, alas, that by those of our Re
form Jewish congregations which, while
professedly anti-Zionistic in principle, yet
have either kept or even put in their pul
pits Zionistic ministers because of merely
their oratorical or managerial qualifica
tions. For material advantage these con
gregations have thus sold themselves out
to the enemy and have treasonably weak
ened the whole cause of Reform Judaism.
Their very innocence of the sacred wrong
they were committing is at the very least
a confession of their own spiritual bank
ruptcy.
1 he Zionistic capitulation of Jewish
Orthodoxy is scarcely less lamentable.
Hitherto Jewish Orthodoxy has taken a
Rabbi Moses
special pride in maintaining tha
monial livery was simply the h
its religious priesthood to the
its retention of nationalistic ,. x;
in its liturgy was virtually noth:
than a reminiscent piety, or a
the evidence of a religious confidence
to God’s ultimate manifest interposition
to bring mankind to the recognition of
Judaism’s spiritual truths, and thus en
throne the birth land of their revelation
in the reverential regard of all humanity,
and that these expressions, not only did
not involve, but absolutely precluded any
practical program by Israel itself towards
their realization. Orthodoxy’s espousal
today of Zionism is a total reversal of
this position. Not only by inevitable im
plication, but even by express declaration
as well the leaders of Orthodoxy have
defended their surrender to Zionism on
the allegation that Judaism cannot per
manently maintain itself in the world at
large.
But a religion that requires a separate
country for its survival can have no
universalistic mission. More than this,—
a religion that can live in only a special
locality can have no claim to the allegi
ance of any one who does not desire to
live in that locality. It may command
the interest of his intellectual, senti
mental, or artistic curiosity. He may pay
the price occasionally to see and hear a
Palestine Sir Harry Lauder. But it would
be absurd to say that he has any moral
or spiritual obligation to maintain in this
other land of his birth and his chosen
residence a Palestinian synagog. If
Judaism is a religion of possible preserva
tion only in Palestine, or of possible in
spiration only from Palestine, it is an
exotic, not a necessity, not an indis
pensable value, in America, or Great
Britain, or Germany, or France, etc.
There is not one common-sense excuse
for, nor a single redeeming feature in.
this whole mad Zionistic agitation, which
is all the more deplorable for its having
through its highly epidemic character in
fected some of the most brilliant minds
and generous souls in world-wide Jewry.
The literary, artistic and musical
stimulation which Zionism accredits itself
with having given to our modern Jewish
life, is of the very most pitiable character.
The whole of Zionistic production in
these spheres is nothing more than an
eternal wearisome whine, and the new
Jewish consciousness which Zionism
plumes itself on having awakened is ‘
the same whimpering nature. Zionism
has absolutely demoralized the consci
ness of magnanimous dedication "hie
American Judaism was instilling
world-wide Israel and has made us si
supercilious suppliants to all the sc<
powers that be.
From a philanthropic standpoint /
(Continued on page 36)