| Letter#11 The Soul of
Judaism
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| My dear Mr. Isaacs: |
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| I regret my
inability to respond to your assertions as tersely as you respond to my
"discourses." One need not read many of my letters to realize that I am not an
elegant or terse writer, due to lack of literary ability and an ardent, sometimes
over-ardent desire to substantiate what I say with perhaps too much data, and with what I
consider to be sound arguments. For these reasons, I must ask to be excused for not adopting your "which nobody can deny" style, that makes you feel cocksure that "the existence of Jews is all that needs to be pointed to in order to prove that Judaism lives on." Your terse declaration that "Jews without souls would not be Jews" may or may not be as sound as it is nice-sounding. It depends upon what you mean by Jews, and whether by souls you refer to the life principle of the persons, or the belief they profess. When you speak of "Jews," you enter the intellectual graveyard of the Judaic world, as there is no agreement in Jewry as to "what is a Jew?" That question has been discussed so often in the Jewish press without coming to a consensus of opinion, that I found it necessary to begin my "Jewish Panorama" with the chapter "What Is a Jew?" When Jewry lists atheists of Jewish parentage and devout Orthodox Hebrews as Jews in its "Who's Who in American Jewry" (1939), it has lost its religious intellectual bearings. I have before me some evidence of this intellectual confusion-confounded that has engulfed Judaism. It is a "Self-Analysis of a Modern Jew," that appeared in the "Jewish Voice" of Los Angeles, California, July, 1936. It was written by William Kadison. He begins by dismissing the racial and nationalist theories, as Jews are not a distinctive race or nationality. He claims not to have attended a synagogue service since his thirteenth birthday, when he was Bar Mitzvah (confirmed). He questions "the deeds and miracles recorded in both the New and the Old Testaments," brazenly declaring, "I'm an atheist." He has no use for what is called "Jewish culture," being "in discord with most hebraic philosophy." When asked regarding "his faith," "my friend straightened up-not in unconscious defiance-and there seemed to be a glow in his eyes when he replied; ‘I'm a Jew.’" Looking at persons calling themselves Jews as a whole, their existence implies the existence of Judaism, whatever its status may be. Yet there is a world of difference between Jews and Judaism. One refers to persons, the other to principles. "Jews without souls would not be Jews," if referred to as persons, for I assume you hold that the soul is the life principle of man. Therefore, when the material soul leaves the body, he no longer trods the earth. If your dogma refers to religion, the spiritual soul (in the sense of belief, as I assume it does, kindly remember that the soul of Judaism is the Mosaic Law, the vital principles that classified Jews doctrinally as a distinctive religious division of society. Judaism proper, that is as it is set forth in the Old Testament, is organic. Some of its requirements, for instance, its dietary regulations, could be modified by priestly or Sanhedrin authority, when the Sanhedrin existed. But abrogation or repudiation of its primary requirements would virtually be repudiation of Law, insofar as it repudiates the Author of those requirements, who is God. The decalogue of those requirements I have found to be as follows: Belief in the Oneness of God; the coming of the Messiah; the Commandments; submission to the spiritual authority of the Aaronic priesthood; sacrifices of a public nature; circumcision; purifications; prayer; dietary regulations; and benevolences. Considering that the God concept of Reform Jews has a tendency to veer towards the spiritual pantheism of Spinoza; that it denies belief in a personal Messiah, a priesthood and sacrifices; its soul, though sentimentally Mosaic, is devoid of the supernatural spirit and heavenly flame that gave the world a Moses, an Isaiah, a Job, a Tobias, a David, a Daniel, and a Mother of the Maccabees. "Jews" with such wishy-washy Judaic souls would still be Jews, but in name rather than in fact, when judged by the above enumerated decalogue of Mosaic requirements. The Orthodox Jews, for whom I have a friendly sympathetic regard, despite their bitter hostility towards converts from the Synagogue to the Church, affirm those things that Reform Jews deny, as you well know. The Orthodox Jews bemoan the non-existence of the priesthood of Aaron, its form of worship, and the destruction of the Temple, and prayerfully look for the coming of the Messiah. Unfortunately, they fail to realize that the holy Jewish and Christian principle of the resurrection of the body, in which they continue to believe, applies not to the Judaism of old, for which they yearn. They fail to appreciate the fact that that holy Judaism has passed from its caterpillar stage to which it will never return, for it was divinely metamorphosed into the butterfly stage nearly twenty centuries ago. The eyes of both Reform and Orthodox Jews seem to be held, for they see not that the soul God implanted in the faith of their, fathers of old is not in the Judaism of our day, because (with apology to Pope)- The
vital spark of Mosaic flame Fortunately, Jews, in growing numbers, are coming to see that the death of Old Testament Judaism was a blessing, and not an affliction. Just as temporal death, of those who die in the Lord, means a new, a higher, an everlasting life, so does the demise of old Mosaic Judaism mean a new, a higher supernatural life here on earth and in the world to come. It portends the shining sun of the Messiah, the "horn of salvation for us in the house of David - , as He promised through the mouth of the holy ones, the prophets of old," of whom Zachary, the father of St. John the Baptist, told us in his "benedictus." Hence, converts from the Synagogue to the Church, quickened by the grace that comes to them through the holy waters of baptism, seeing that "Death (of Judaism, as well as physical death) is swallowed up in victory," exultantly cry out, "O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?" (I Cor. 15:55.) |
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