J.D.B. News Letter

British Jews Criticized for Failure to Further Jewish Learning (By our London correspondent)

The Intellectual Level of Anglo-Jewish Life was the subject of addresses deliverd at Jews’ College last night by Professor Brodetsky of Leeds University and Herbert Loewe, Lecturer in Rabbinic Hebrew at Oxford University, under the auspices of the Independent Order B’nai B’rith.

Mr. Loewe said that the Jewish Board of Guardians, the Home for Incurables, and the like, were all excellent in their way. Some of those bodies, however, dealt with “the mad and the bad,” and where they as a community lamentably failed, was with the normal.

“As a body,” he said, “the Liberals have done far more than the Orthodox to further Jewish learning. There is a lack of a standard of values in a certain section of the Jewish press. The Jewish public is indifferent. We rate wealth too high and learning too low. Our religion classes are excellent, but we have no extension lectures, no Ebraries for general use. The Jews’ College and the Beth Hamedrash libraries are accessible only at the cost of disturbing the librarians. Why,” be asked, “have we no district libraries. We have far too few Jewish books, and those we have we owe to our Liberal colleagues.”

He instanced Singer’s Prayerbook, the Notes to Singer’s Prayerbook, and the Jewish Quarterly Review; he would, however, except the excellent Jews’ College series. Why, he continued, was the Orthodox Machsor so expensive? He cited two cases, in proof of the assertion that the Community was doing little towards promoting Jewish learning. The Cambridge Readership in Rabbinics had fallen into abeyance, when it became vacant with the death of Dr. Israel Abrahams. The Jewish Quarterly Review had been allowed to lapse.

Professor Brodetsky expressed his alarm at the present degradation of Jewish standards of learning. He believed that humanity was never so much in need of Judaism as today. Could sentimentalism take the place of moral faith? Were they abandoning the healthy rationalism of Judaism for the sentimentalism of the Mount?

He wished that Jews had less professional men and more genuine Jewish students. There was an excess of Jews going into Law and Medicine, and isolated instances were observable even in this country–such as recently at Leeds–of a tendency to introduce the principle of the numerus clausus. He himself favored Jews going into industry and supporting Jewish learning. An educated laity had always been the tradition of Jewry. The species was practically extinct.

Anglo-Jewish support for the Hebrew University had been a disgrace to the community. The only excuse offered was that Palestine had enough professional men. They forgot that Palestine needed Jewish, as it needed scientific learning. The specialist was made to feel that secular studies took him away from Judaism. The number of Jewish scientists not known to be Jews, was startling. It was his fervent hope, Professor Brodetsky said, that the Jerusalem University would make Bio-Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, etc., Jewish studies once more.

The present tendency was to consider that when an examination had been passed, all need for further study ended. Yet the perpetual student was the ideal of the rabbis. The English Jew was immeasurably below the English Gentile in thirst for knowledge.

He pleaded on behalf of their children, Professor Brodetsky concluded, to raise the intellectual level of Anglo-Jewry.

Dr. Buechler, the Principal of Jews’ College, referring to the two blatant instances adduced by Mr. Loewe, of the discontinuance of the Jewish Quarterly Review, and of no support being forthcoming, even from old members of that particular Cambridge College, when the appeal was issued, for the perpetuation of the chair in Rabbinics, after Dr. Abraham’s death, said that there must first be overcome the open contempt towards Jewish learning.

“My own attempts at arousing the communal conscience,” Dr. Buechler went on, “are met with utter indifference. We here at Jews’ College,” he said, “are not obscurantists. The pulpit ought to be the expression of the mind of the man who stands in the pulpit; it should reflect all the amassed learning and meditation of the preacher.” He was sorry it was not done, because not all the preachers occupying pulpits were qualified. They had not passed through a course of learning, or attempted to supplement their prescribed studies by continuous reading. A man who did not every day add some bit to his learning was not worthy of the pulpit he occupies.

“We are faced here,” Dr. Buechler said, “with fundamentals in every phase of life of the Jewish community. The Jewish community is stagnant. Unless we make up our minds to stir up those responsible for individual sections of the community, we ourselves shall be held responsible.

“Jews’ College is not doing its duty by the larger community. I myself am never heard outside Jews’ College. This is because I have to give 15 or 16 hours instruction weekly, in addition to my administrative duties.”