[This is not only a MUST READ but recommended as a MUST OWN; authored by Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the subtitle is:  Jews, Judaism, and Israel in the Twenty-First Century.  Earlier we had featured excerpts from one chapter, the post is titled Why the Jews?  It is downloadable as ebook/kindle book from amazon.com.  We will feature the Prologue and Epilogue here, though the chapters in between are not to be missed as well.  It gives an understanding not only of the current situation the nation of Israel is in, but also a history of the waves of antisemitism toward the Jewish people.  Reformatting and highlighting ours;also the spelling in British has been changed to American.]

PROLOGUE

‘Yesterday,’ said the fabled politician, ‘we stood at the edge of the abyss, but today we have taken a giant step forward.’  Jewish history can sometimes feel like that: danger, followed by disaster.  It does today.

Sixty years after its birth, the state of Israel is deeply isolated. It faces missiles from Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, two terrorist groups pledged to Israel’s destruction.  It has fought two campaigns, Lebanon in 2006, Gaza in 2008-09, whose outcome has been inconclusive.  In the wings is Iran and the threat of nuclear weapons.  Rarely has its future seemed so fraught with risk.

At the same time it has faced a chorus of international disapproval for its attempt to fight the new, ruthless terror that takes refuge among civilian populations.  If it does nothing, it fails in the first duty of a state, to protect its citizens.  If it does something, the innocent suffer.  It is a conundrum to perplex the most inventive mind and trouble the most thoughtful conscience.

The existence of the state of Israel would, thought Theodor Herzl, put an end to antisemitism.  Instead, Israel has become the focus of a new anti-semitism.  The emergence within living memory of the Holocaust of a new strain of the world’s oldest hate is one of the most shocking developments in my lifetime.

Were these the only problems facing the Jewish people, they would be formidable.  But there are others that weaken from within.  There is a crisis of Jewish continuity. Throughout the Diaspora on average one in two young Jews is, through outmarriage, assimilation or disaffiliation, choosing not to continue the Jewish story; to be the last leaf of a tree that has lasted for four thousand years.

There is the eclipse of religious Zionism in Israel and modern orthodoxy in the Diaspora, the two forms of Judaism that believed it was possible to maintain the classic terms of Jewish life in the modern world.  Jews are either engaging with the world or losing their Jewish identity or preserving their identity at the cost of disengaging from the world.  There are continuing divisions within the Jewish world, to the point that it is difficult to speak of Jews as one people with a shared fate and a collective identity.

This book is about all these issues, but it is also an attempt to get beneath them. For there is something deeper at stake, something fundamental and unresolved about the place of Jews, Judaism and Israel in the world.  ‘A picture held us captive,’ said Wittgenstein, speaking about philosophy.  The same, I believe, is true of Jews.  An image of a people alone in the world, surrounded by enemies, bereft of friends, has dominated Jewish consciousness since the Holocaust.  That is understandable.  It is also dangerous.  It leads to bad decisions and it risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Jews need to recover faith — not simple faith, not naive optimism, but faith that they are not alone in the world.  The former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, imprisoned for his wish to leave and go to Israel, tells the story of how his wife Avital, gave him a Hebrew book of Psalms to sustain him in the hard years ahead.  The Russians confiscated it and he fought for three years to have it returned.  Eventually it was.

Sharansky knew little Hebrew, but he treated the book as a code to be deciphered, which he eventually did.  He recalls the moment one line yielded its meaning, the verse from Psalm 23: ‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for you are with me.” It was an epiphany.  He felt as if someone had written those words directly for him in that place, that time.  He survived, won his freedom, and went to Israel.  He carries the book with him to this day.

Sharansky is a living symbol of the Jewish people through time.  Often enough they too lost their freedom, but as long as they felt ‘I will fear no evil for you are with me’, they had an inner resilience that protected them from fear and despair.  It was not a naive faith, but it was awesome in its power.  Jews kept faith alive.  Faith kept the Jewish people alive.  Fear defeats fear.

Fear, on the other hand, generates a sense of victimhood.  Victims feel themselves to be alone.  Everyone is against them.  No one understands them.  They have two choices:  either to retreat within themselves or to act aggressively to defend themselves.  Victims blame the world, not themselves.  For that reason, it is a self-reinforcing attitude.  Victims want the world to change, forgetting that it may be they who have to change.  The victims’ fears may be real, but victimhood is not the best way to deal with them.

Fear is the wrong response to the situation of the Jews in the contemporary world.  It is easy, surveying the news day by day, to believe that they are the worst of times, but in some ways they are the best.  Never before in four thousand years of history have Jews enjoyed, simultaneously, independence and sovereignty in Israel, and freedom and equality in the Diaspora.

The very existence of Israel is as near to a miracle as we will find in the sober pages of empirical history.  Israel has had to face war and terror, but it has transformed the Jewish situation by the mere fact of its existence as the one place where Jews can defend themselves instead of relying on the all-too-often-unreliable goodwill of others.  At the same time Jewish life in the Diaspora is flourishing, culturally, educationally, even spiritually, in ways that would have been unimaginable a century ago.

In truth, these are not the worst of times, nor the best of times, but the most challenging of times.  Jews today are in a position they have rarely if ever been in before in four thousand years of history. They face the world, in Israel and the Diaspora, on equal terms or, at least, on Jewish terms.  What terms are they?

That is the question I address in this book.  My argument is that we are in danger of forgetting who Jews are and why, why there is such a thing as the Jewish people, and what its place is within the global project of humankind.  In the past Jews lived through catastrophes that would have spelled the end of most nations:  the destruction of Solomon’s temple, the Babylonian exile, the Roman conquest, the Hadrianic persecutions, the massacres of the Crusades, the Spanish expulsion.  They wrote elegies; they mourned; they prayed.  But they did not give way to fear.  They did not define themselves as victims.  They did not see antisemitism written into the fabric of the universe.  They knew they existed for a purpose, and it was not for themselves alone.

Jews, whether in Israel or elsewhere, need to recover a sense of purpose.  Until you know where you want to be, you will not know where to go.  So this book is not just about the problems facing Jews, Judaism and Israel in the 21st century.  It is also about the larger question of who Jews are, and why.

I have been intimately involved in all the problems about which I write:  the fight against antisemitism, the strengthening of Jewish continuity and, within a Diaspora context, the defense of Israel in the media, academia, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and British and European politics.  My role has been a small one, one voice among many, and it has been a privilege to work with people and organizations, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, who have done so much more.

Yet I have felt something missing from these efforts.  That is no one’s fault.  It is the price paid for immediacy and involvement.  What I sensed missing is the larger picture, the historical perspective, the connection of the dots into a portrait that would show us the who and what and why of the Jewish situation against he broad backdrop of the human and historical landscape.  There is a line in the Bible more often quoted by non-Jews than Jews”  ‘Without a vision, the people perish’ (Prov. 29:18). Yet it is Jews who should be listening to that verse.  They were a people of vision whose heroes were visionaries.  That much must never be lost.

In the heat of the moment, people do what they did last time.  They revert to type.  They choose the default mode.  In the present instance, that is the wrong reaction.  Things change. The world in the 21st century is not what it was in the 20th or 19th.  Borders that, a few decades ago, seemed to guarantee Israel’s safety are no defense against long-range missiles.  Secular nationalism of the kind that dominated the Middle East after the Second World War is not the same as religiously motivated terror, and cannot be negotiated the same way.

The old antisemitism a product of 19th-century European romantic nationalism, is not the same as the new, however old the recycled myths.  You cannot fight hate transmitted by the internet in the way you could fight hate that belonged to the public culture.  Tell Britons about the rise in antisemitism and, for the most part, they look at you with blank incomprehension.  They don’t read it in their newspapers; they don’t see it on their television screens.  How are they to know that their next-door neighbor may be inhaling it from a website of whose very existence they are unaware?

Under pressure, people do the predictable.  Moses did so once, and it cost him his entry into the Promised Land.  The people wanted water. God told Moses to take a stick, speak to the rock, and water would appear.  Moses took the stick, hit the rock, and water flowed.  Then God said, in effect, ‘You didn’t do what I told you.  You cannot enter the land.’

The story has perplexed almost everyone who has ever read it.  So large a punishment for so small a sin?  Besides which, what actually was the sin?  What we forget is that an episode almost exactly the same had happened before, shortly after the Israelites crossed the divided Red Sea.  Then God had told Moses to take a stick and hit the rock, which is what he did.  On this 2nd occasion he followed precedent.  He did what he had done before.  We can imagine his thoughts:  ‘God said, “Take a stick.” Last time, that meant, “Hit the rock,” so this time too I will hit the rock.’

There was one salient difference:  a matter of 40 years.  The first time he was leading a people who, a few days previously, had been slaves.  Now he was leading their children, a generation born in freedom.  Slaves understand that with a command comes a stick.  Free men and women don’t respond to sticks but to words.  They need leaders who speak, not strike.  Moses, the man who led a generation for 40 years out of slavery, was not the man to lead the free people across the Jordan.

Responses right in one age may be wrong in the next.  That applies to Jews and Judaism today.  I am troubled by the predictability of Jewish reactions, as if the past were still casting its shadow over the present.  Today Jews are not victims, not powerless, and do not stand alone.  Or, to put it more precisely, thinking in such terms is counterproductive and dysfunctional.  Antisemitism is not inevitable, nor is it even mysterious.  Nor is there a law of nature that says Jews must quarrel with other Jews, frustrate each other’s efforts and criticize each other mercilessly, acting as if they were still in the wilderness wondering why they ever left Egypt.

The world has changed and Jews must change, the way they always changed, going back to first principles and asking about the nature of the Jewish vocation, ‘renewing our days’ — in that lovely Jewish paradox — ‘as of old’.

This is a book I was reluctant to write.  There have been so many written in the past few years: about Israel, the new antisemitism, Jewish continuity and the like.  I have not sought lightly to add to their number.  What I have tried to do is sketch the big picture, the larger vision, and to set it before what i hope will be a new generation, not just of readers but of leaders.  I have tried to ask the great questions —who Jews are and what is being asked of them at this time — and whether my answers are persuasive or not, the questions are real and will not go away.

I believe that time-horizons within the Jewish world — indeed, within the West generally — are too foreshortened.  We think about yesterday, today and tomorrow while the enemies of Jews and freedom are thinking in decades and centuries, as Bernard Lewis has often argued.  In a battle between those who think short and those who think long, the latter win in the long run almost by definition.  Tactics are no substitute for strategy; tomorrow’s headlines are not the verdict of history.  Jews have been around for 2/3 of the history of civilization.  That is long enough to know that Jewish life needs something more prophetic than crisis management.

So I have tried, in the following chapters, to set the present in the wider context of past and future, and immediate problems in terms of ultimate ideals.  My argument will be that we have lost our way and need to recover the classic terms of the Jewish story.  That story is not about antisemitism or about Israel as a nation surrounded by enemies.  It is not about Jews destined to live alone, at best misunderstood, at worst the perennial target of hate.  It is about faith, an unusual faith in which God summoned a people and charged them with becoming his partners in creating lives, and in Israel a society, that would become a home for the divine presence.  That faith inspired not only the Jews but also Christians and Muslims, whose religion grew in Jewish soil, as well as others who respected the Jewish love of family, community, education, tradition, the pursuit of justice, the passion of argument and the Jewish sense of humor that can laugh even in the face of tragedy.

I believe this is not accidental.  Judaism was never meant for Jews alone.  It contains a message for all humanity, and much int he 21st century will depend on whether this message or a different one prevails.  Judaism belongs to the human conversation, and we must take the trouble to share our ideas with others, and let others share theirs with us.  For a long time— most of history— this was not possible.  The world was not interested in what the Jews had to say.  Either they were there to be converted or assimilated, or they were ‘the other’ to be reviled.  That has changed, for two reasons.

• First, liberal democracies allow space for a multiplicity of voices.  We all have a right to speak, and to do so in our own person.That is the glory of liberal democracy.
• Second, because of the existence of the state of Israel, Jews can speak on equal terms.  No longer need they be haunted by the trauma of homelessness.

These are not minor changes.  They mean that Jews must go back to the beginning and to the Hebrew Bible and ask again what it is to be Jewish, part of a singular people in a plural world, conscious at one and the same time of the uniqueness of identity and the universality of the human condition.  What is it to be true to your faith and a blessing to others regardless of their faith?  That is the Jewish question. 

The problems confronting Jews in the 21st century are formidable, but they confront others as well.  Israel faces terror, but so does every free society after 9/11. Jews face hatred and prejudice.  So do Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs in Britain, Christians in Nigeria, Buddhists in Tibet and Chinese in the Philippines [S6K note: This is not true of the Chinese in the Philippines.]  Jews worry about whether their children and grandchildren will carry on their traditions. So does every religious minority in the diverse democracies of the West.  Having written books about Jewish continuity, I have been consulted by British Muslims on Islamic continuity and by Hong Kong Chinese on Confucian and Taoist continuity.

It took a non-Jewish writer, the Catholic historian Paul Johnson, in his magisterial A History of the Jews, [featured in this website; Jewish History by a Christian Historian, Dogmatic Theology – Christianity/Judaism, What about the 3rd world monotheistic religion, Islam?] to state the obvious.  The Jews, he writes, were ‘exemplars and epitomizers of the human condition’.  They seemed to present ‘all the inescapable dilemmas of man in a heightened and clarified form’.  The conclusion he reaches is that ‘It seems to be the role of the Jews to focus and dramatize these common experiences of mankind, and to turn their particular fate into a universal moral.’ Our uniqueness is our universality.

Jews are not alone in the challenges they face.  The world is going through a whirlwind of change, the pace of which it has rarely seen before.  In the months while I was writing this book, from the summer of 2008 to the beginning of 2009, the entire global structure collapsed.  One economy after another went into recession.  There was a tragic terrorist attack in Mumbai.  Israel conducted a controversial campaign in Gaza.  Antisemitic attacks in Britain reached their highest levels since record-keeping began 25 years ago. Never before have events in one place had such rapid repercussions everywhere.  We find ourselves, in Matthew Arnold’s graphic phrase, ‘wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born.’

It is at this historic moment, more perhaps than at any previous juncture of the Jewish past, that God’s words to Abraham, summoning him to a life through which ‘all the families of the earth will be blessed’, resonate most loudly.  Jews are the world’s oldest — until recently, the world’s only — global people.  They are the people who rebuilt their lives after the Holocaust, the greatest crime of human against human. Israel is the nation that, under almost constant attack for 60 years, has sustained a free and democratic society in a part of the world that never knew such things.  The time has come for Jews to let go of their fears and lay hold again of their historic strengths.

These are controversial propositions, but I do not advance them lightly as academic speculations untested by experience.  To the contrary, they are conclusions to which I have been driven as a result of personal involvement in all the issues I address.  I have applied them in the field, and they work.  I have examined them in the light of our sacred texts, and they cohere.

It is my considered view that, in this tense and troubled century, Jews must take a stand, not motivated by fear, not driven by paranoia or a sense of victimhood, but a positive stand on the basis of the values by which our ancestors lived and for which they were prepared to die; justice, equity, compassion, love of the stranger, the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person without regard to color, culture, or creed.  Now is not the time to retreat into a ghetto of the mind.  It is the time to renew the most ancient of biblical institutions, the covenant of human solidarity, made in the days of Noah after the flood.  Without compromising one iota of Jewish faith or identity, Jews must stand alongside their friends, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh or secular humanist, in defense of freedom, in affirmation of life against those who worship death and desecrate life.

We are entering, said Alan Greenspan, an age of turbulence.  The antidote to fear is faith, a faith that knows the dangers but never loses hope.  Faith as I understand it is not certainty but courage to live with uncertainty, the courage Natan Sharansky discovered in his prison cell, the courage that led Jews to rebuild their lives and their ancestral home after the Holocaust, the faith that led generation after generation to hand on their way of life to their children, knowing the risks involved in being Jewish yet never ceasing to cherish the privilege of the challenge.  The Jewish people are ancient but still young; a suffering people still suffused with moral energy; a people who have known the worst fate can throw at them, and can still rejoice.  They remain a living symbol of hope.

[Where Judaism Differed by Abba Hillel Silver was first published in 1956; there was a 1972 edition; unfortunately, there is no ebook version that is downloadable for kindle or nook. There are used paperback copies listed at amazon.com for $3.24 (1972) and $2.65 (1956) and one new copy for $50! Since this book is not easily accessible, and we really wish to share its information, we will feature one significant chapter here because it provides historical information not usually known about Judaism. This is from the Chapter II titled A Pattern in History. Reformatting and highlights ours.]

A strong consciousness of history permeates Judaism.

• The God of Judaism was, of course, the Creator of the world, the God of nature. “In the beginning God crated the heavens and the earth.”
• To Abraham God was El ‘Elyon — “the Lord God Most High, Maker of heaven and earth” (Gen. 14:22).
• At the time of the making of the covenant, God revealed Himself to Abraham as El Shaddai — a term of uncertain etymology, but referring in all probability to some force or phenomenon of nature, the Storm God, perhaps, of the mountains.
• In the later Sinaitic covenant, which was based no longer on promise but on fulfillment, Yahweh, having redeemed Israel from Egypt, revealed Himself to the people predominantly as the God of their history. “I am the Lord your God Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” (Ex. 20:2).
• He is no longer El Shaddai but Yahweh — “I will be what I will be” (Ex. 3:13-15), another difficult term whose meaning cannot be precisely determined, but one which suggests, among other ideas, that of the eternal God progressively revealing Himself in the processes of history.
• It was by that covenant, based on election and promise, that El Shaddai became the God of the Patriarchs.

Gods of nature, deities of creation, birth and fertility, were worshipped everywhere in the ancient world through rituals which were frequently grossly licentious. No ritual is to be found in Judaism which “symbolizes” anything about the nature of God or His “history.” All ritual came to be didactic in purpose, reminding men of their obligations toward God and their fellow men. Judaism, under prophetic guidance, came to subordinate the concept of the Creator God to that of the God of History, of Israel’s history and of mankind’s. In place of the seasonal drama of death and rebirth and its accompanying orgiastic rituals, Judaism projected a drama of history. Pagan religions were not interested in history, except in the mythological history of their gods, and pagan historians, though often acute in their appraisal of personalities and events, found little of permanent significance to mankind in history and saw no moral pattern in it. The prophets of Israel taught their people to think of God as the wise Ruler of their national identity. They wished to turn their people away from nature cults, from chthonic or astral ritualism to higher spiritual and ethical forms of worship.

This shift of emphasis from God’s theophanies in mighty and overwhelming nature phenomena to His revelation as the “voice of a gentle silence,” speaking of duty and mission to the inner spirit, is beautifully dramatized in the account of Elijah’s vision of God at Mount Horeb where the Mosaic revelation had formerly taken place amidst thunder and lightning (I K. 19:11-13).

The mighty drama of human experience, a drama not of sin and redemption, but of building the good society, as well as the millennial struggles and achievements of a unique people, is interpreted by Judaism. Israel was always admonished to recall history, to remember—“consider the days of old”—and on the basis of vital and instructive memories to build its future. Most of the religious festivals of Judaism and even the Sabbath day itself, regardless of their origin, came in time to be principally festivals of remembrance, memorials of the exodus from Egypt—the greatest moment in Jewish history. The seasonal, nature character of these festivals was deliberately subordinated to the historic motif.

Prophets, sages, and mystics alike related their thinking to a definite pattern of history. The Jews were the first to give mankind a philosophy of History — rather than a philosophy of Being.

Judaism sees in human history and in the history of Israel no mere succession of events, but the outline of an unfolding moral process, the articulation in time of an immanent divine plan, glimpsed by man in retrospect and then only dimly, but known to God in its completeness.

There is a pattern in all that transpires, and this pattern is a spiritual one. The good will triumph, for God has willed it so, but the triumph can be hastened by humanity’s efforts. Coming as a climax to Trito-Isaiah’s superb vision of the New Jerusalem and the great Restoration, is the verse, “I, the Lord, will hasten it in its appointed time” (Is. 60:22). There is here an apparent contradiction. If God has set a fixed time for the redemption, what is meant by His hastening it? A Rabbi comments: “If Israel merits it, God will hasten its coming; if not, it will come to pass in its appointed time.” God’s ultimate achievement does not dispense with man’s participation in it. This is a basic concept in Judaism. For Judaism is concerned not alone with the ways of God in history, but also with man’s creative function in it. Basic, too, is Judaism’s view of Israel’s unique role in history.

Judaism is indigenous to the Jewish people and is inconceivable without it.

• The Jewish people did not adopt Judaism as the Romans, for example, adopted Christianity.
  • They created it.
• Jews and Judaism entered history simultaneously.
  • Its life and that of the Jewish people are inseparably intertwined.
• No other people, as such, consciously shared in it or helped to mold it, as was the case, for example, with Islam, which originated with the Arabs but whose golden age was the achievement largely of Moslems of non-Arab descent.
• Judaism exerted its tremendous influence upon the world from its own base in the Jewish people.
  • That base, however, was quite extensive. Israel was perhaps the least parochial of all peoples of antiquity.
  • “A wandering Aramean was my father . . . .”
• From the desert to the sown land the tribes of Israel moved in the dawn of their history.
  • From their fixed habitation in Palestine many of them were carried away into exile and to distant lands again and again.
  • From the dispersion of the Ten Tribes onward there was not a period when the Jewish people as a whole was concentrated there.
  • Jews were in close contact with many nations and many civilizations,
    • and they were influenced by many cultures.
  • Israel thus acquired a first-hand knowledge of the religions,
    • the modes of worship,
    • and the ways of life of many of the peoples of antiquity.
• It gained a world outlook.
  • The writings of the prophets reflect the wide horizons of this “cosmopolitan” people.
  • Their prophecies are directed by name to nearly all the nations of the ancient world,
    • and reveal an acquaintance with their traits and their histories.

The faith and ethical insights of Judaism were, however, not monopolized by the Jewish people. They were offered to humanity.

• Israel’s covenant with God was also a covenant with mankind.
• “I have given you as a covenant to the peoples, as a light to the nations” (Is. 42:6).
• It was not a solitary and unshared light but a beacon light.
• The Sages declared that “the Torah was given in public, openly, in a free place. F
• or had the Torah been given in the land of Israel, the Israelites could have said to the nations of the world: You have no share in it.
  • But now that it was given–
    • in the wilderness
    • publicly and openly
    • in a place that is free for all,
    • everyone willing to accept it
      • could come and accept it.”

The God of Israel was the God of all men, and all men were called to His service.

• The Jews carried on an active missionary propaganda for their universal spiritual ideas and moral values throughout the world whenever conditions did not prevent them, although they never conceived it as their historic mission to conquer the world, to engage in a Holy War on infidels in order to convert the world and bring it into subjection to the God of Israel.
• The Rabbis never accepted the principle of forcible conversion.
  • The only instances of such conversion took place under John Hyrcanus and his son Airstobulus who forcibly Judaized the Edomites and Ituraeans in the 2nd century B.C.E. It was never approved by the teachers of Judaism. John Hyrcanus’ intolerant religious imperialism extended also to the Samaritans, whose Temple on Mount Gerizim he destroyed.
  • These unprecedented and politically motivated acts contributed to the bitter friction which developed between Hyrcanus and Pharisees.
  • In Pharisaic law even slaves could not be forcibly converted.

All men, regardless of race or status, were welcomed into the faith. The Jewish people was never a self-enclosed society with an exclusive separatist religion. “Let not the foreigner who joins himself to the Lord say, ‘The Lord will surely separate me from His people’ . . . . I will bring them to My holy mountain and make them joyful in My house of prayer . . . for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Is. 56:3,7).
Some of Israel’s greatest leaders were descendants of proselytes, including King David, to whom the lineage of the Messiah was traced in later times. A Special prayer for “righteous proselytes” is included in the 18 Benedictions of the Prayer Book. Hillel (1 c.), the foremost spiritual leader of his day, was especially eager to receive proselytes.

Non-Jews who were not prepared to accept the full obligations of the Jewish discipline, national fellowship, and ceremonial laws were welcomed as Yir’e Shamayim (God-fearers). Some of them were ultimately converted and became Jews, accepting full citizenship in the religious household of Israel. Others accepted monotheism and practiced some, though not all, of the customs of Israel, but remained unconverted. Their spiritual status, however, was in no way regarded as inferior to that of a full-fledged Jew.

• Judaism never claimed to be the one and only channel through which “salvation” is conveyed to men.
• It never adopted Cyprian’s position: “Extra ecclesiam nulla salus” (No salvation outside the Church).
• Rather it held to the conviction: “The righteous among the Gentiles will have a portion in the world to come.“

The predominant hope of the people of Israel was not to convert the whole world to Judaism but to convert the whole world to God. It did not set as its goal the establishment of one universal Church to which all the true believers must belong and wherein alone “salvation” could be found. It looked forward to the day “when God would be One and His name would be One.”

R. Johanan (2-3 c), founder of the Academy of Tiberias and one of the chief creators of the Palestinian Talmud, declared: “Anyone who repudiates idolatry is called a Jew.” Elsewhere it is stated: “He who rejects idolatry acknowledges the whole Torah.” R. Johanan also shared the conviction of his colleague R. Eleazer, who succeeded him as head of the Academy, that “the Holy One, blessed be He, did not exile Israel among the nations save in order that proselytes might join them.” He interpreted the tragic exile as an opportunity for the people of Israel to turn mankind to God, even as Deutero-Isaiah in his day had similarly interpreted the Babylonian exile. In time many of the leaders of Judaism came to realize that there were other ways, perhaps more effective ways, of spreading spiritual truth in the world than proselytism and formal conversion;

• there was the way of example,
• and of total dedication to a pattern of life which might inspire others to emulation.

Judaism was, however, fearful of syncretistic tendencies which might do violence to its essential monotheistic faith, and was mindful always of the special covenant and mission which were assigned to Israel. It therefore looked to the people of Israel itself as its enduring sanctuary. The ritual prescriptions which guarded the discipline of its group life did not interfere with its spiritual and ethical universalism.

The spiritual leaders of Judaism of the Second Commonwealth and thereafter, as well as the prophets of the pre-exilic times, conceived of Israel not only as a nation, but also as a kehal Adonai (Dt. 23:4), “a Congregation of God,” coextensive with the nation — a covenanted religious community. The congregation or community, however, was never an entity distinct from the nation for the state, as was the case with the Christian Church, nor did it ever displace the concept of nationhood even in periods when the people did not possess an independent political life and its leaders were not kings but high priests. Like king, priest, or prophet, Israel as such had been, as it were, anointed for a divinely commissioned ministry, and by that token had become possessed of a special grace and power, had become a different kind of people. “Touch not Mine anointed and do my prophets no harm” (Ps. 105:15; also Ps. 84:10; 89:39, 52: 132:10; and Hab. 3:13, the latter also in the form of a Psalm. In each case it is the people that is referred to as having been anointed). Israel, as a people and as a community of believers, knew itself to be different. No term defining other nations, races, or religions could ever quite adequately be applied to it. By virtue of the immortal ideals of which it believed itself possessed, it experienced throughout its history a deathless hope, and believed its life to be indestructible. “When you pass through the waters I will be with you; and through the rivers they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you” (Is. 43:2).

Two world religions kindled their fires at the altars of Judaism. Both Jesus and Mohammed claimed no originality for their message. They did not come, they averred, to found a new religion but to restore the true faith of Abraham. Abraham stands at the headwaters of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Jesus worshipped in the Temple of Jerusalem. Mohammed and his followers at first turned their faces in prayer toward Jerusalem. It was only after he despaired of converting the Jews that he ordained that the faithful should pray toward the Ka’aba at Mecca — the Ka’aba of which Abraham was the reputed founder. Both Christianity and Islam turned to the Bible to authenticate their own scriptures. Much skilled typological dialectic was employed by the Apostles and the Church Fathers to prove that everything in their faith was prefigured in the Old Testament.

As part of this effort to establish that the Christians were the true Israelites and their predestined successors, quite a number of attractive philosophies of history were invented to account for the unique story and baffling persistence of the people of Israel. Judaism was by some assigned the role of a historic foil for Christianity. The argument was popularized that Christianity began where Judaism left off, and that Judaism’s creative life ended with — or even before —the advent of Christianity. There are to this day scholars who assign to Israel only a single flowering period, terminating with the last of the Biblical prophets. The many centuries of Jewish history which followed are regarded as a prolonged withering, waste, and fossilization.

The orthodox Christian interpretation of the role of Israel as the star witness for Christian truth, was crystallized for the Christian world by Augustine in his City of God. When prophecy ceased in Israel, after the return from the Babylonian captivity, the religious role of Israel came to an end. The Jewish people, thereafter, was afflicted with continual adversity to prove that Haggai’s prophecy, “The glory of this latter house shall be greater than that of the former” (Hag. 2:9), applied not to the second Temple which the Jews had built but to the coming of Christ. With his coming, the Jews were “rooted out from their kingdom and were dispersed through the lands . . . and are thus by their own Scriptures, a testimony to us that we have not forged the prophecies about Christ.” The Jews were needed by the Church as a living testimony. Hence they were not utterly destroyed. But they had to be dispersed “because if they had only been in their own land with that testimony of the Scriptures and not everywhere, certainly the Church which is everywhere could not have had them as witnesses among all nations.” Centuries later, at the time of the Second Crusade (1146-1147), Bernard of Clairvaux, whose eloquence helped set the Crusade in motion, in defending the Jews in the Rhineland against the violent mobs who attacked them, employed the same line of reasoning. The Jews should neither be killed nor expelled because they were needed as a living and a witness to the truths of the Christian faith. Seeing their dispersion and their disabilities, Christians will realize ever anew the truth of the crucifixion and the punishment which overtook those whom they held to be responsible for it.

To serve as a corroborating witness for another faith and to be superseded has, however, never received the willing cooperation of the Jews and Judaism. They were not impressed by the premature obsequies which were pronounced over them from time to time by those who regarded themselves as the lawful heirs of a faith and a people which, however, refused to die. They had a strong will to live. The altar of Judaism retained its own fires undimmed, and amidst the turbulence of wars, invasions, exiles, and persecutions, the faith was preserved intact. It survived the fallen thrones of its own kingdoms and the ruins of its own Temples. It wandered with Israel into strange lands and fearful exiles and often, harried and outlawed, it lived on in the hearts of the faithful as in an inviolate sanctuary, and remained in vision and power undiminished.

This has by some been called “narrow,” but the “narrowness” was not of racial pride, or out of lack of love for mankind. It was a question of technique—how best to transmit the message unimpaired to the world. Judaism chose one way; Christianity chose another. As to which was the wiser course, in terms not of quantitative but of qualitative diffusion, opinions will always differ. The influence of Judaism is not to be measured by the number of its adherents. Judaism never had an Asoka, a Constantine, or an Omar to hasten its progress; nor was it permitted through most of the past 2000 years to engage in proselytizing activities. In the realm of ideas one must be alert to withstand both the fear of numbers and their prestige. Even in times of apparent neglect and eclipse, Judaism strangely troubled the established orthodoxies of Christendom in the form of a variety of Judaizing heresies which began almost with the rise of Christianity itself. At other times it upsurged with sharp revolutionary thrusts in movements such as Humanism, the Reformation and Puritanism. The very presence of the unassimilated and stubbornly resisting Jew in medieval Europe, daily symbol of a faith which denied Christianity but in which Christianity sought authentication, troubled and disturbed the spiritual uniformity of the Christian world and from time to time forced it to reexamination and revision. The great social and democratic movements of Europe in the last few centuries, which have been remaking our world, turned for their inspiration principally to the Old Testament, to the prophetic message of Judaism —social justice and human equality, brotherhood and universal peace. The dominant apocalyptic elements of Christianity —“My kingdom is not of this world,” “It is the last hour,” “Resist not evil” –could not well serve as a basis for a program of social reform. The strong emphasis which both Catholic and Protestant Christianity have in the 19th and 20th centuries placed on the social gospel of their religion marks a sharp departure from their traditional positions and a welcome return to the prophetic ethics of Judaism. For while Christian metaphysics was in the main Platonic, and its soteriology an adaptation of a widely diffused Oriental gnosis, its ethical principles, with some notable exceptions, and its cultural-historical background were Jewish. Time and again the social passion of the Hebrew Bible swept in like the reviving sun and rain of a new springtime. How often have socioreligious movements in Christendom, like those of the Puritans and the dissenters, quoted chapter and verse from the Jewish Bible as the all-sufficient justification of their demands for social and economic reform, for free political institutions, and their opposition to the usurpations of tyrants and kings. The violence of the obscurantist attacks in recent years, such as one finds among some Existentialist theologians, upon the humanistic element in Christianity — its Jewish core — is further evidence of the Judaic leaven still powerfully at work. One wonders whether their very violence and dialectic truculence does not betray the throes of a struck and mortally wounded theology. Clearly, there is something unqualified both in the alleged failure of Judaism and in the so-called triumph of Christianity.

The “narrowness” of Judaism had to do not with its God-concept or its world outlook, but with its unique conception of a universalistic faith in the stewardship of a covenanted people. The ideals of universalism and human brotherhood had been part of the essential pattern of Judaism since the days of the prophets. In proclaiming the one and only God, and in denying the very existence of any other god, Judaism created the universal God idea, the universal Fatherhood of God and its logic corollary the universal brotherhood of man. Its “narrowness” was due to its firm determination to retain undiminished its spiritual identity in a world dominated by powerful syncretistic tendencies.

The trend of nearly all the religions of the Greco-Roman world at the beginning of the common era was toward “internationalism.” The Greco-Roman world, generally, was “international” in character. The sense of nationhood, peoplehood, of “patriotism” had largely disappeared in the incessant mixing of populations and cultures and in the vast amalgam of races, peoples, and creeds of the far-flung Roman Empire, which was held together by military force and administrative skill. The process had begun centuries before under Alexander whose dream was of a single world state.

Judaism saw no inconsistency between religious universalism and nationalism. It believed that the independent existence of nations was within the plan of God, and that He assigned each nation, as to each individual, a distinct task and responsibility. National identities were not, however, irreconcilable, and did not preclude international cooperation and universal brotherhood.

The many cults of the Roman Empire could without much difficulty be contained within the framework of a cosmopolitan, fluid, and tolerant religio-philosophic culture. Neoplatonism provided such a framework from the third through the fifth century, as did Gnosticism in the earlier centuries. Judaism could not and did not fit into any such mosaic.

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[The concluding chapter of Abba Hillel Silver’s MUST READ book for this week. Reformatting and highlights ours.]

DIFFERENCES AND UNDERLYING UNITY

We have dwelt on the great new insights of Judaism which are easily recognizable at all stages of its development and which gave it a distinctive stamp and character: that God is One—

Spiritual

Creator

Ruler of the universe,

Indwelling all nature and yet transcending it;

Near to man in all his needs, and yet beyond man’s full comprehension.

That man, while fashioned out of the earth,  is nevertheless made in the spiritual image of God.

That while he is bound by his physical and mental limitations, he is boundless in his moral aspirations and is free to determine his own spiritual progress through his own efforts assisted by the grace of God.

That both body and soul are of God,

That all men are equal in their essential humanity and in the sight of God,   and that whole of man—body, mind, and soul—is sacred.

That there is but one moral law for prince and pauper, ruler and subject, native born and stranger.

That life is good and a gracious gift of God.

That the moral ills which exist in the world can be overcome,  and that in overcoming them lies the true meaning and the adventure of human life.

That an age of universal justice, brotherhood, and peace awaits the human raceThat there is divine retribution in ways and forms not always clear to man and can be hastened by the efforts of the human race.

That man’s concern should be with life this side of the grave.

These are the basic and enduring ideas of Judaism.  Some of the other great religions of mankind possess one or more of them. Some adopted them directly from Judaism. But Judaism wove them all into a single and unique pattern, integrated and correlated them in a religious idealism and an ethical code which have powerfully influenced civilizations in the past and which will continue to mold them in the future.

These great insights are found in the Bible, which has been called the epic of the world, the book of the ages, which is inextricably bound up with the culture, ethics, history, art, and literature of half of the world.  It has nourished the hearts and minds of countless generations of men, and has guided, challenged, and inspired the humble and the great, the idealist, the social reformer, the advocate of peace, the champion of freedom and democracy, the dreamers of mankind’s great dreams.  The truths of the Bible are inexhaustible and deathless, and, in freshness and relevancy, unaging.

But while the crown jewels of Judaism are found int he Bible, its spiritual treasures are not limited to it. Subsequent ages also produced Sages, Seers, and Rabbis, whose wisdom is embodied in later Jewish writings—in the Apocrypha, the Talmud, the Midrash, and the individual works of scholars, poets, and philosophers which have continued to this day.  Their teachings constitute an integral part of the endlessly replenished religious literature of Judaism.

Along with a unique religious literature, Judaism created also a unique type of worship and a unique religious institution which is called the synagogue.  The eminent Christian scholar and historian of religion, Robert Herford, wrote:  “With the synagogue began a new type of worship in the history of humanity, the type of congregational worship.  In all their long history the Jewish people have done scarcely anything more wonderful than to create the synagogue.  No human institution has a longer continuous history and none has done more for the uplifting of the human race.”  And Professor Moore wrote:

The consequences of the establishment of such a rational worship for the whole subsequent history of Judaism was immeasurable.  Its persistent character, and, it is not too much to say, the very preservation of its existence through all the vicissitudes of its fortunes.  It owes more than anything else to the synagogue.  Nor is it for Judaism alone that it had this importance.  It determined the type of Christian worship, which in the Greek and Roman world of the day might otherwise easily have taken the form of a mere mystery; and, in part directly, in part through the church, it furnished the model to Mohammed.  Thus Judaism gave to the world not only the fundamental ideas of these great monotheistic religions but the institutional forms in which they have perpetuated and propagated themselves.

It is not argued in these chapters that in all matters in which Judaism differed from other systems of religious belief it was superior to them.  In many ways, indeed, Judaism was superior, and as pioneer in the field of ethical religion, Israel did merit the Biblical designation of “first-born” (Ex. 4:22).  But qualitative differences are not necessarily competitive assessments.  All rivers run to the sea, but their courses and channels differ widely.  Each system of thought has its own texture and pattern, and each faith its own perspectives.  There are radically divergent views, for example, between Judaism and Buddhism—a faith which in all probability was in no way influenced by Judaism—in regard to basic perspectives of life and human destiny; yet both created noble patterms of life and human destiny; yet both created noble patterns of life for their followers and inspired generations of men.  Both Christianity and Islam, which did inherit much from Judaism, but deviated from it in certain essential regards, molded great civilizations and produced men of noblest character and idealism.  Differences should not obscure the underlying unity of the human race or the common needs of human life which all institutions and beliefs in mankind aim to serve, or the urgency for their close cooperation to achieve their common purposes.

To draw attention to priorities or to certain superior levels of religious, intellectual, artistic, or technological evolution attained by this or that people is simply to indicate stages in the progress of the human race, which never advances in any fixed, regular, or uniform procession for all peoples alike.  No one people has a monopoly on all fields of progress.  Excellence in one field may be counterpoised by deficiencies in others.  The span of creative achievement of any people is neither unlimited or uninterrupted.  Nor are the contributions of any people sufficient for the encompassing life of humanity.  Whatever is finally achieved by any people by way of enduring truth, beauty, or utility becomes in the end the grateful possession of all.

No religious body has warrant for complacency, and none should live abstracted from the realities of the present hour and its unfinished tasks, bemused by thoughts of former triumphs and trophies.  The humbling thought for all religions is the realization that none has fulfilled its promise and its mission in the world.  “We look for justice but there is none; for deliverance but it is far from us” (Isa. 59:11).  Mankind has come a long way to be sure.  It has indeed perceptibly advanced through the long centuries but how slowly!  And how dark and perilous still are our times! How may pay homage only with their lips to the faith they profess, and how often are the fires of these faiths quenched in dank formalism and ecclesiasticism and made the instruments of bigotry and fanaticism.  How often are their cups of blessing turned into cups of staggering, turbid with the dregs of hate!

The one universal God does not require one universal church in which to be worshipped, but one universal devotion.  In the realms of ascertainable facts, uniformity can be looked for.  In the realms of art and philosophy there can be only sincerity of quest and expression—only dedication.  Religion is the supreme art of humanity.

Judaism developed through the ages its own characteristic style, as it were, its own view of life, its code and forms of worship.  It possesses its own traditions based on Torah and covenant.  Its adherents today find inspiration and spiritual contentment in it, as did their fathers before them, and wish to continue its historic identity within the configuration of other religious cultures.  Other religions, too, developed their characteristic ways based on their unique traditions and experiences.  There is much which all religions have in common which differentiates them.  Their common purpose in the world will not be advanced by merger or amalgamation.  Were all arts, philosophies, and religions cast into one mold, mankind would be the poorer for it.  Unwillingness to recognize differences in religions is no evidence of broadmindedness.  To ignore these differences is to overlook the deep cleavages which existed in the past and to assume a similarity of doctrine and outlook which does not exist in the present.  The attempt to gloss over these differences as a gesture of goodwill is a superficial act which serves neither the purposes of scholarship nor the realities of the situation.  It is far better and more practical to look for ways of working together on the basis of a forthright recognition of dissimilarities rather than on a fictitious assumption of identity.  Indifference to one’s own faith is no proof of tolerance.  Loyalty to one’s own is part of a larger loyalty to faith generally.

There are great areas of common interests in which all religions can cooperate in mutual helpfulness and respect, influencing one another and learning from one another.

Judaism, which differed and continues to differ from other religions in significant matters of belief and practice, has sought and seeks opportunities of friendly cooperation with them in all things which may contribute to the building of the good society, firm in its own convictions, reverent of others, hoping for the great day of universal reconciliation of all peoples, when “they shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, and the earth shall be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.”

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[This is the first chapter of  the book by Abba Hillel Silver titled One and the Same. Reformatting and highlights ours.]

When we speak of Judaism, we are dealing with a religion some 35 centuries old, covering nearly 2/3 of the recorded history of mankind.  Judaism experienced many changes and modifications through its long history—changes induced both from within and from without.  Judaism experienced many changes and modifications through its long history—changes induced both from within and from without.  Organic evolution accounted for some of them; contact with alien cultures and civilizations accounted for others.  Jews found themselves time and again in new environments in Palestine and elsewhere, exposed to an almost continuous bombardment of alien ideas and religious cultures, and faced with the necessity of making adjustments to new social, political, and economic conditions.  Judaism is no more the product of any one country than it is the product of any one age.  Nor is it the precisely formulated creed of a sect or denomination.  It is the emergent spiritual way of life of a historic people.

Nevertheless, it possesses organic unity.  While numerous inconsistencies may be found in it which should neither be ignored not exaggerated unduly, there is clearly visible in Judaism a steady and dominant coherence, a self-consistency, which links together all its stages of change and development and gives it structure and unity of tone and character.  It possesses the unity not of a system but of a symphony.  In their total and continuous integration, the key ideas — unity, freedom, and compassion — came to be sufficiently distinctive and impressive as to be unmistakable.

Judaism, in its long history, was not always spirally ascendant, nor did it always abide on high plateaus.  It descended at times into dreary valleys of stagnation.  There have been scholars, like Krochmal, who under Hegelian influence detected in the history of Judaism an ordered succession of life cycles—rise, maturation, and decay.  Such arrangements of history are as uncertain as they are interesting.  The fact of cultural fluctuations, however, even if not of a rhythmic periodicity, is beyond doubt.  Judaism definitely experienced such fluctuations.  At times its spirit wrote its message firm and clear on a parchment white and clean.  At other times it wrote falteringly upon a blurred and worn palimpsest.  There are many grades of vision and insight among the seers and teachers of Judaism.

There were many sects in ancient Israel which differed among themselves sharply and at times irreconcilably on what they regarded Judaism to be, both in doctrine and in practice.  One of the Rabbis declared:  “Israel was not dispersed before it broke up into 24 sects of heretics.” (One is reminded of the 32 heresies which Hippolytus [2 c.] found to exist in the early Christian Church.) Numerous sects flourished during the Second Commonwealth, a period of nearly 600 years, and in the following generations, both in Palestine and in the far-flung diaspora.

It was a turbulent, culturally agitated, and creative age — next to the prophetic, the most important age in Jewish history.  During this period 2 powerful religious cultures, among others, exercised a strong influence upon Jewish life — the Iranian and the Greek.  Many lines of religious cleavage developed among the people, whose resultant conflict contributed to the intense spiritual alertness of that decisive age.  A major cleavage developed on the fundamental attitude toward the Written as opposed to the Oral Law.  There were many other divisions.  Some schools of thought stressed one phase of Judaism and some another.

• Some were strictly literal in their interpretation of the laws of the Bible;
• others were more liberal;
• still others were more mystical.
• Some unconsciously merged Greek, Buddhist, or Zoroastrian ideas with their own.
• Some entertained Gnostic views within a Judaic framework.
• Some emphasized otherworldliness in their religious thought, and austerity in their manner of life.
• Others were confirmed pacifists.
• Still others, though laymen, observed priestly prescriptions of ritual cleanliness and kept themselves free from all contacts which they regarded as contaminating.
• Some lived communally in desert retreats, or in closed covenanted associations in the towns and cities, practicing pious austerities and baptisms, even celibacy, eschewing all private possessions, despising wealth and extolling poverty, and in devout prayer awaited the coming of the messianic age.

The important fact to bear in mind, however, is that numerous and divergent as these sects were, they were at all times minority groups within Jewish life and did not represent the dominant and prevailing views.  It is remarkable that in spite of all this great variety, there persisted a Judaism which retained an unmistakable character of its own.  Notwithstanding the many byways which frequently led off from it, Judaism’s main highway continued clear, steady, and undeflected.  Its reverence for the past and for the written Torah ensured for it an essential unity and a historic continuity.  The written word proved on occasion to be constrictive, but it had the advantage of steadying the faith and checking extremes and relapses.  What was gained was never lost, and the character of the faith was not altered in any of its essentials.  Thus, the religious monotheism of the Rabbis of the Talmud and their code of ethics centering in the three constants—unity, freedom, and compassion—differed in no essential regard fro those of the prophets who lived nearly a thousand years before them, and they differ in no fundamental respect from those of their successors to the present day. Here and there one finds a difference of emphasis, a weightier or a lighter accent; here and there a nuance, significant but not critical.  But there is no transvaluation of values.

One should be especially on guard against the temptations to exploit a stray quotation which may be found in some corner of Jewish literature and to make it carry more than its weight in order to establish some major deviation from normative Judaism.  It should be borne in mind that not every judgment of a Rabbi was law for Israel, and not every personal opinion necessarily reflected the consensus of the Rabbis.  One should rather look for the dominant pattern of the whole when considering the importance of any isolated expression, and inquire how far it falls within the authentic Judaic formula.  The philosopher Maimonides found necessary to caution the men of his day against this practice of employing some fugitive phrase or chance expression in the Haggadah, in some Midrash, or in the writings of some Gaon as evidence against a dominant truth of Judaism.  To understand Judaism one must avoid forced inferences and one must keep clearly in mind what was requisite in doctrine and what was mandatory in practice — in a word, Judaism’s major tenets, its great assumptions, and its accented features.  One must see the whole of it before one can properly understand and appraise any part of it.

This is not to suggest that through the ages there were no modulations in the interpretation of the classic Jewish concepts.  There were.  From time to time, one hears new accents and new intonations, fresh orchestrations on ancient themes.

The prophets sank deep shafts to mine new gold.  they redefined for mankind traditional concepts of—

• God
• people
• temple
• brotherhood
• and peace.

Rabbinic Judaism continued this process.  What was progressive in the contribution of the Rabbis was not the “hedges” or “fences” which they found it necessary to build around the Torah, but the deepening of the essential concepts of Judaism —

• the disciplines of pious study,
• Torah for its own sake (Torah li’shemah),
• the hallowing of the Name of God (kiddush ha-Shem)
• suffering inflicted by divine love (yesurim shel ahabah),
• the noble ways of prayer,
• the higher ranges of charity,
• the spiritual utilization of the Sabbath,
• the wider scope and function of the synagogue
• and how to train oneself for the religious life,
• how to become “skilled in faith” (‘ayum b’yirah).

Medieval Jewish philosophy likewise contributed new insights —

• the interplay of revelation and reason,
• the meaning of freedom in man and in God,
• and how a confident life could be built for man in a world created and governed by the unknowable will of God.

A medieval Jewish philosopher, Halevi, gave a profound and new definition to the concept of Jewish nationality, to the autonomy of the Torah and to Israel’s unique association with it. Jewish mysticism, likewise, revealed new insights —

• how to satisfy the hungry soul through devout contemplation of the mysteries of God and His world,
• how to set pious feet on the road of the eternal quest for the nearness of God,
• and how to unlock the recondite meaning of the Sacred Text.

In a later manifestation, in Hasidism, Jewish mysticism refreshed old concepts and introduced new techniques —

• “Enthusiasm” (hitlahabut),
• “Outpouring of one’s soul” (hishtapchut ha-nefesh),
• the sacredness of joy in the practice of faith,
• and the importance of personality in spiritual leadership.

Modern Judaism contributed new and progressive elements,

• not so much in the abandonment of certain customs and ideas which no longer satisfied the intellectual or aesthetic needs of the new day,
• but in the substitution of scholarship for scholasticism,
• of liberty for inflexible authority,
• and the restatement in modern terms of the basic concept of the mission of Israel.

But in spite of these impressive variations in emphasis which greatly enriched it, the basic theme of Judaism continues throughout, all-dominant and clearly audible.  Judaism’s spiritual message remained one and the same through the ages.