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The Southern Israelite
“If I /Tiere A Jew. . . ”
The Problem of the Young Jew Starting Out Into Life
By DR. JOHN HAYNES HOLMES
In entering upon the discussion of
this rather personal question of what
1 would do if I were a Jew, It may
he well for me to explain at tin* out
set what kind of a Jew I have in mind.
For there are two kinds of Jews in
the modern world. In the first place,
there are Jews who are horn Jews,
who are thus destined to be Jews to
the end of their time upon the earth,
whether they want to be or not. On
the other hand, there are Jews who
have become Jews by process of con
version or assimilation. For Judaism,
like Christianity, is an open faith, and
we may enter the synagogue from without exactly
as we may enter the Woman Catholic church or any
Protestant denomination. A conspicuous example
of such a converted Jew is the distinguished M.
Aime Palliere, of France, who has written an ac
count of his spiritual experience in his famous
book, “The Unknown Sanctuary.”
Now it might be supposed from the fact that
I am a pure-blooded Anglo-Saxon, born and roared
on the extreme left of the Fnglish Protestant tra
dition, that I am thinking of tin* Jew of
the second, or artificial type. Perhaps I
am thinking myself of becoming a Jew,
like M. Palliere, and raising the ques
tion of what I shall do in my re
generated state! As a matter of fact,
however, I am not considering this side
of the (piestion at all. I have never
been much interested in conversions
as little interested in converting
Christians to Judaism as 1 am in con
verting .lews to Christianity. I have
certainly never thought of myself as
stepping into the synagogue, and have
not the slightest interest in the ques
tion of what I would do if 1 should
suddenly become a son of Abraham.
What does concern me is the problem
ot the real Jew—the man who is born
a member of the household of Israel,
who has behind him the noblest
spiritual tradition in the history of
mankind, yet finds himself living in
an unfriendly world and thus forced
to adapt himself to a hostile environ
ment. The problem of the Jew cast
into the life of our western civiliza
tion, with his destiny all entangled
with the unhappy traditions of the
dominant religion of Christianity, pre
sents, to my mind, one of the most
difficult ethical problems of our time.
Some Jews meet it in one way, other
Jews in another. How should it be met
on the highest plane of personal
character and racial integrityf How
would I meet it if I were a Jew
born in the synagogue and reared
in the traditions of my people?
fn answering this question, may I
say, by way of introduction, that 1
have in mind very particularly the
problem of the young Jew—the boy, or
the girl, born of a Jewish family, who
finds himself starting out into life with
what must seem to be at times the
Q^HE Southern Israelite and the Seven Arts Feature
^ Synadicate, by special arrangement, presents Dr.
John Haynes Holmes' sensational sermon, “If I Were
a Jew, ,> to the American Jewish public. Among
Christian religious leaders Dr. Holmes, head of the
New York Community Church, ranks as one of the
outstanding personalities whose liberal and progressive
views are a tremendous factor in the moulding of
young America.—Editor.
thing for which they are
but to the accidental fa.
membership by birth in a
ligion and a persecuted i
shall these young people
would T do, or what woul
do, and pray to the God of
•onsiblc.
>f their
iliar re-
Wht
What
try to
father,
Every young person, of
world a friendly place.
fatal handicap of birth,
course, should find the
Our society will never be just, our civilization never
a genuine civilization,until it opens its freest and
fullest opportunities without favor and certainly
without prejudice, to every son of man that is
born into the world. But that happy time is far
removed into the future. Meanwhile here are Jews,
among many others, who start the race of life
handicapped by disabilities attaching not to any-
r
people, t Ik
Moses and the Tablets of the Lazv—A Study of Murillo;
Engraved by David Roberts.
that I would
were a Jew?
(1) First of all, if I wen
I would be proud to be a Jew. I
would be proud of the tradition of mv
tribe, the longest tradition that ha-
survived into the modem world; 1
would be proud of the history of mv
most heroic, if also the most painful,
history that lies recorded in the annals of mankind;
I would lx 1 proud of the achievements of mv
family which run in an unbroken span from Isaiah,
the greatest prophet of ancient times, to Albert
Einstein, the greatest thinker of modern times.
T hate the word “aristocracy” for what a snobbish
world has made this essentially noble word to mean.
But if we can speak of an aristocracy in the true
sense of the word, then I believe it is not too
much to say—in the light of an Isaiah
yesterday, and of an Einstein today—
that the Jew belongs to the greatest
intellectual and spiritual aristocracy
that the world has ever known.
There are two things that arc dis
tinctive of the Jew. In the first place,
it is the Jew who discovered the ethical
content of religion. It is sometimes
said that the Jew was the discoverer
of religion itself. This is not true,
for religion is a part of the universal
experience of mankind. But the Jew
had a genius for religion, as the Greeks
had a genius for beauty and the hu
mans for law, and this genius displayed
itself in the apprehension, altogether
peculiar to this one people, that the
substance of religion is ethical idealism
as worked out in right relations be
tween men. It is amazing to discover
how primitive religions the world
around had no moral content ot any
kind. It is more amazing to discover
the religions of such highly cultRaU
peoples as the Greeks and the Homan*
knew nothing about righteousne». b .
the Jews had a God who was a 1
eons God, and a law which wa- a 1"
law, and they glorified this God an;
this law which they believed to be i -
will in a tradition of prophecy which
has made the religion ot the J*"
be the greatest single moral force
all the experience of man. In - 1
as Christianity has been a rclig'
ethical regeneration and not men
theological speculation it is a ieli_
the Jews. All that is best m <
tianitv, in other words, is in it' .
Jewish. And if, in the wider tie
the world at large, we have an. ^
things to-day as moral eonsciem * •
vision moral culture and endeav
owe these to the Jew. This n
(Continued on page ^4)
in
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