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THE CANADIAN JEWISH RfeVlEW
FEBRUARY 29,
CANADIAN JEWISH REVIEW
An Impartial Medium for the Dissemination of Jewish News ai*4 Views
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FEBRUARY 29. 1952 VOL. XXXIV. No. 22
What Judaism Means To Me
BY THE LATE SIR PHILIP HART00, DISTINGUISHED IRtTISH EDUCATIONALIST
I strpposr- that most of as, when asked to apeak about religion, become keenly conscious of the gap between the ideals at which we aim, and at which we want others to aim, and oar own attainment We do not wish our ideal to be judged by ourselves, and we should prefer to remain silent. Yet there are perhaps times to speak.
The long history of the Jews is, with comparatively brief intervals, a history of crises, internal and external. No other people has suffered from so maoy crises, because no other people has been persecuted so long and survived. Persecution from without has been matched by struggle within, in part but not wholly due to that persecution. Tet Anatole Leroy Beaulieu, an ardent Catholic, the author of Israel ehez 1*8 Nation*, said that so long as the Jews were persecuted they would be a strong people, for they would lose the physically weak by death and the morally weak by desertion-.
I want briefly to explore the truth of that dictum. We all know those "morally weak" both in this country and abroad, especially in Germany, who became baptized or who ceased to be Jews for the sake of material advantages for themselves or their children. A brilliant Jewess in Germany in the eighteenth century said that Judaism was not a religion but a misfortune�that was all it meant to her.
To others of us, as to the indifferent, it also means both for us and for our children the inheritance not of a misfortune but of a burden; yes, but the burden of a flag to be borne aloft, and of a torch to be carried forward, sometimes through the tumult of a world still liable to be overwhelmed by moral darkness, by the hatred and narrow violence from which we once thought that Judaism, and the religions sprung from Judaism, had saved the West.
I have spoken of the religions sprung from Judaism. I know people who ask, comfortably, is the difference between Judaism and Christianity enough for us to preserve, instead of making ourselves the majority? 1 say undoubtedly, Yes. Like others, the recent waves of materialism and pagan hatred have made me feel, more tkaa I did before, the strong booda *f common belief and sym-
pathy which unite Jews both to Christians and to Moslems. But I feel no less strongly that it would be retrogression, and no advance, to abandon that distinguishing simplicity of the faith in the one God, tho God of the universe and the human soul, with whom each loving heart can have communion, immediate and direct, without intercession of prophet, or saint, or eon.
This difference (not the only one) affects each individual; it is great, real, not to be ignored. Judaism teaches that we are all alike children of One Father, none, no, not any, perfect or divine, though divinity speaks within us and may be revealed to each one. I have quoted before the saying of James Darmesteter: the , prophet is the man who reveals to the human heart the tyranny of its own ideal. Nor was that revelation of our great prophets once and for all.
Revelation is constant and progressive. Like poetry, religion may be formulated m a Book, or in Books; but the miracle of its real existence is ever created afresh to those by whom it is experienced, whose actions and way of life it inspires; and each one of us matters, however humble, however far from fulfilling his own ideals.
One word of the relation; of religion to science. At an early period m> my life I thought that science "explained everything." But the more deeply I studied the history and philosophy of science, the more I realised that science is what Kirchhoff and Mach and Karl Pearson have defined as a "simplified description" of nature; true "explanation" and intimate understanding lie outside the scope of science. As Professor Baumgardt pointed out not long since in the Hibbert Journal, mysticism and science have each their parts to play in our life; to introduce mysticism into science is a mistake; to suppose that science excludes mysticism is no less a mistake.
Mysticism is at the root of the primitive belief of the savage, the same kind of mystic feeling is an essential of religion. The great gift of to* Hebrews to the world was, it seems to me, to ally that mysticism to the moral consciousness. Ethics may tell us to do as we would be done by. It deals
with a problem of conduct It is religion that tells us also to love our neighbour; that goes beyond conduct into human motive, and inspires conduct with a tenderness that not merely rational doctrine can impart to it
The whole idea of God, of love of God and love of man, is essentially mystical. To the savage, nature is terrifying, unsparing, ruthless. It is by a mystical revelation that Jews have come to recognise the existence of a righteous and loving God, who, in spite of batttes in which we suffer and fall, make* us willing that we and our children should fight and suffer and fall, and still believe that we are suffering in a great cause�though we may be despised and rejected by the ignorant. With a confidence purged of all pride, we feel ourselves to be units in a great succession of witnesses.
I am conscious that I have said nothing so far of Jewish observance, which sometimes seems to be all that there is of Judaism to very many Jews. I cannot for a moment imagine that the Jews as Jews would have survived if behind these forms there had not been something more Teal and living than many of these observing people could express in their own words. One asks oneself, are these forms worth preserving? To me and those who feel as I do, undoubtedly Yes.
I shall be as frank about the Sabbath, and admit the difficulties. At an early period in my own career, I had to choose between its strict observance and my own work in the world, and I gave up the strict observance, though I have always tried to observe it as much as I could. We need symbols of our beliefs, both mystical and rational, and to me very many of the symbols hallowed by the history of centuries are dear, and I feel that, like the common prayers in the synagogue, they keep me in closer touch with those who share the faith with which they are associated.
The idea of a Jewish race, apart from Jewish religion, leaves me entirely cold, nay antagonistic, except when I see Jews persecuted because of their birth. I see no justification for the survival of the Jews as a separate community apart from their religion. I feel myself much closer to many Christians, "Aryans," English, French, German, than to Jews without Judaism (though many such Jews have not lost as much of their Judaism as they imagine). I regard the worship of the Jewish "race", of Jewish "blood and soil", as itself essentially anti-Jewish, on a par with the worship of a Germanic "blood and soil" � as something unscientific, reto-grade and dangerous. But that does not prevent me from feeling a profound admiration for and sympathy with the building up of a Jewish home in Palestine for the persecuted, a movement which I have seen and admired with my own eyes. I feel myself able to work with many Zionists, more aware of the things which unite us than those which separate.
But to me it is Liberal Judaism
that is the real historic Judaism that has lasted and grown, and lives and will live, a Judaism not static but dynamic, conscious of ma unforgettable and splendid past, but still more conscious that the past is only of value in so far as it is lived afresh by each of us, in a fight for the moral enlargement and betterment of all mankind in the future. That is, briefly and imperfectly expressed, what Judaism means to me.
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(Continued from Page One)
elusions to the Communist party theoretical line.
Experts of Radio Wee Europe, coordinating material from official sources in Czechoslovakia with advices of their own, also expressed the 'belief that the Prague Government was in the final stages of preparing A show trial against Dr. Vladimir dementis, Rudolf Slansky and other deposed leaders.
According to a Prague broadcast, 700 university scientific workers, representatives of research units and military and medical leaders have been invited to the Bruenn congress. Vaclev Kopecky, Minister of Information and Education, will deliver the main address. The program will include the following topics: Ideological purification and the renascence of Czechoslovak science, revision of teaching in- schools, and discussion of techniques for applying syste^ raatically in scientific work the thoughts of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin.
There have been previous Communist denunciations of "cosmop-
olite 8," notably those by Antonin Zapotocky, Czechoslovak Premier, who has inveighed against persons "who have no roots in the native soil," according to Radio Free Europe officials.
The official anti-Semitic wave began, however, at the time of Mr. Slansky's dismissal. Czechoslovak newspapers began to adopt the Russian anti-Semitic technique of printing a Jewish-sounding name in parenthesis after the names of such persons as M. Slansky, says the New York Times. For example, M. Slanaky was called "SaHzman."
The selection of Bruenn as the site of the scheduled purge meeting may be significant. Officials of Radio Free Europe have eyewitness evidence that this city has
been the scene of street
strations, in which windows have ]
been broken and Communists baat- *�
en. These eyewitnesses repettsd *�
that Bruenn had been particularly ",
affected by an economic flrieat > brought on by the rapid transition
of the Czechoslovak economy. , �
SEES GROWTH
(Continued from Page One)
who are the object ef their prejudices and hatreds."
Mr. Polier commended the Yale * University Advisory Committee � on Academic Freedom for its report, which he called a "forthright and much-needed affirmation pf the principles of intellectual freedom."
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