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Page 8 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 far