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It is evident that if the Conference is to serve a useful (Continued on Page 7)

I absolutely deny that it is honest to invite men who are radically opposed to your religious and theological matters. It shows a total colorblindness to religious feelings to complain of intolerance, because you are true to your religious convictions, to complain of intolerance in such a case.

The whole matter of the future of the Anglo-Jewish Minister, the Chief Rabbi said, turning to another point raised by Rev. Simmons, depended on character and conviction. Whatever the machinery, the character of the man and the willingness to serve were the most important. By sheer idealism, the minister must compel the respect of the community. Woe will befall Anglo-Jewry, he said, when the place of the laity is eliminated from the synagogue. They must look forward to training more Bal’batim to take their share. Men will of course fight you, he said, about you, and misconstrue what you say, but idealism and service compels recognition in the end. This self-commiseration of the minister and the condemnation of the community are not healthy. If there is understanding and difficulty it makes the profession all the more glorious.

The Rev. Dr. Abelson, in the course of the discussion, said that he fully agreed with Rev. Simmons in regard to the broadening of the basis of education and culture, as it applied to Jewish students. Instead of teaching more theology at Jews’ College, there should be more intensive instruction in literature, philosophy and economics. It was a fact that Jewish Ministers, particularly in the provinces, were not accorded the leadership which was their due. If the Jewish laity accorded the Jewish Minister a more serious sense of responsibility as regards authority and leadership, there would be more young men prepared to enter the Ministry.

Dayan Lazarus said that although he differed from Rev. Simmons, he had never entertained for a moment that feeling of separation which seemed to haunt him. If he might say so, it was the other part of the Community, (not the Orthodox), which had sought to separate itself from them by its mental superiority and higher religiosity. There were many shades of opinion in regard to religious belief, and they were perhaps all needed for a corporate Kol Israel. He would not like to say that the students of Jews’ College did not read economics, and were unacquainted with the modern currents of art, literature and life. He knew they were so acquainted. He hoped that the new generation of students of Jews’ College, who he hoped would become Rabbis in large numbers, would dispel the misconception that the Jewish Minister was a mere follower of Rabbinics. He strongly repudiated Mr. Simmons’ remarks that it was three hundred years ago that the Shulchan Aruch was revised. It was being revised every day, and every Beth Din had the right, which it exercised, of making such revision when it was necessary. As a Minister of 24 years standing, he had no reason to make even one complaint against any oppression by members of the laity of the Jewish Minister.

The Rev. Livingstone said he would like to express agreement with the Rev. Simmons in his appeal for reciprocity, cohesion, and tolerance between the sections of the community. Quoting Tolstoy, “the Jew is the emblem of religious toleration,” he said that if this were so it should commence at home. In connection with the function of the Jewish Minister, he thought the Minister’s most important function should be his ability and willingness to represent the community in the public and civic life of the town in which he resides. Participation in the social, literary and educational affairs of the community helped the Jewish position and was highly valuable.

The Rev. A. A. Green said that his ideal of a Jewish pastor was the existence of a love and understanding between the Minister and the Congregation, so that they would listen to him whatever he said. The reason they had a clergy at all, was because of the decadence of Jewish learning among the laity. He did not like all this difference between laity and clergy in regard to religious duty, and they must aim at the levelling up of the laity to the same high conceptions said to be possessed now by the clergy.

Moses Mendelssohn was a protagonist of religious and political freedom, and condemned any attempt on the part of the representatives of the State to force upon its subjects abherence to certain religious doctrines or creeds, Rabbi Dr. Salis Daiches said in the course of a paper read to the Conference on “Moses Mendelssohn as a Philosopher.” Even organized religion itself, he held, has no right to adopt methods of coercion. It can only teach, persuade, educate, and guide, but it should not punish, condemn or even threaten. He condemned in the strongest possible terms the weapon of excommunication, whether employed by the Church or the Synagogue.

Mendelssohn, like Moses Maimonides, Rabbi Daiches went on, recognized the supremacy of Reason, and approved of Judaism, because its laws and its postulates confirmed the demands of Reason and Conscience. He had no difficulty in reconciling historic Jewish teaching and traditional Jewish practice with his philosophic views, and, although he was extremely tolerant towards others, he was strictly observant himself, in regard to all the requirements of Jewish Law and Ritual. His struggle against all forms of intolerance and bigotry was splendidly illustrated in his attitude to Spinoza who, he said, has been greatly misunderstood by his critics, and whose conception of God and the universe could be reconciled with the postulates of natural religion. To Mendelssohn it always appeared that if thinkers would only give up quarrelling about words they would soon discover how much their ideas coincided and how little there was that separated them from each other.

The motives for producing his last and most important philosophical work was the desire to do everything possible for the spiritual advancement of his children. The ultimate effect on his offspring turned out to be the reverse of that anticipated. But that was not Mendelssohn’s fault. It was his misfortune, and the customs of the time were mainly responsible for it.

Moses Mendelssohn, he concluded, (Continued on Page 8)

Rabbi Dr. Maurice H. Harris of New York in the discussion on Dr. Daiches’ paper, said that the greatness of Mendelssohn was not so much as a philosopher, but as a man.