Our Daily News Letter

(By Our London Correspondent)

The Liberal movement in Jewry was described as a “rebellion” by Chief Rabbi Joseph H. Hertz, in a sermon delivered this week at the St. John’s Wood Synagogue. This was Dr. Hertz’s third address in his series on the subject of Liberal Judaism.

Terming the Liberal movement as ” a revolt against the Jewish Law, the Jewish life and the ‘whole historic Jewish outlook,” Dr. Hertz said, inter alia:

“This is a serious indictment; and no one appreciates its seriousness, and my responsibility in framing it, more than I do: but it is the only interpretation that the facts of Liberal Judaism and its history permit. The Prophets of that new Doctrine tell us that they look forward to a’ Judaism’ in many respects different from any Judaism which the world has hitherto known. And with the rejection of the Torah, the virtual abolition of the Abrahamic Covenant and the Sabbath, the repudiation of Zion and the Restoration, and the transvaluation of all Jewish values-their ‘Judaism’ is already different from any Judaism the world has ever known.Some of them add that when that new Judaism has been fully evolved, its expounders will not quarrel over the name-whether it should be Judaism or Christianity or some new neutral term-by which it is to be known.

“Strong resentment is felt in some quarters over the statement that the New Paths not infrequently lead to Christianity. But surely it is fatuous for Liberals to fight history, their own history at that. All anti-Nomian parties in Judaism, i. e., all schismatic movements that reject the binding authority of the Torah-sooner or later abandon Judaism and Israel altogether. It was so in the case of Paul, in the case of Sabbathai Zevi and the Frankists. and it will be so in the case of our latter-day Paulinians.

“In fact, the history of Liberal Judaism may be said to open with a move towards apostasy. David Friedlander, the morning star of Liberal Judaism, in 1799 petitioned the Lutheran authorities at Berlin to admit him and his fellow-Liberals to their Church. The moral weakness of Jewish religious leaders that could descend to such coquetry with the dominant Church filled even a wayward child of Israel-Heinrich Heine-with contempt for what these leaders loved to call the ‘Jewish Reformation.’ There were sections. of Berlin Jewry in his day who desired evangelica! Christianity under Jewish names, even as certain sections of London Jewry a hundred years later desire evangelical Christianity, or Unitarian Christianity (or anything as long as it is Christianity), under Jewish names. With these people, infatuation with everything Christian is a veritable mania. The sentiment recently attributed to Dr. Stephen Wise of New York, that Jews must accept the ethical code of the Founder of Christianity, though this has been denied by him, has been uttered over and over again by scores of American Jewish Liberals during the last generation. Many Liberals, both in England and America, endorse the anti-Jewish gibe as to the alleged ‘inadequacy’ of the Hebrew Scriptures; and proclaim the need of the Hebrew Scriptures; and proclaim the need of supplementing them by the New Testament. ‘Judaism,’ they declare, ‘must come to terms with the Gospels.’ Needless to state that whensoever Jews have ‘come to terms with the Gospels’-from the days of the Jewish Christians in ancient Palestine to the Liberal ‘New Israel’ movement at Kishineff-open apostasy to the Christian Church has been the result.

“In the meantime as in early Christianity, the rejection of the Torah is but too often accompanied by a fierce intolerance toward the parent body. The much-vaunted universalism of Liberals is empty and does not seem to include the fellow-Jew.

“Thirty years ago in Switzerland, it was the pronouncement of two ‘rabbis’ against Shechita that largely helped towards its prohibition in that country, And recently in England, when a formidable agitation threatened to rush Parliament and public opinion into a condemnation of the oldest humane method of slaughter in the world, on the alleged ground that it was cruel; at a time when the religious liberty of English Jews was in jeopardy-the minister of the local Liberal Synagogue permitted himself to speak of the ‘conflict’ between the laws of Shechita and the latest views of experts on the requirements of humane slaughtering. He ignored the considered opinion of the world’s leading authorities-Lister, Virchow, Dubois-Reymond, Haffkine, Leonard Hill and literally hundreds of others-who uphold the humaneness of Schechita, and was quite prepared to strengthen the hands of the maligners of his people. He has, however, since explained that when he spoke of the conflict between Shechita and humanity, he meant to express his sympathy with Orthodox Jews in this matter!

“In a similar spirit, when some years ago the Massachusetts Legislature showed its willingness to grant to people who observed Saturday as their day of rest the right to keep open their places of business on Sunday, a prominent rabbi of the same School was responsible for the defeat of the Bill. ‘Orthodox Jews,’ he maintained, ‘have brought so many sacrifices for their religion. that it will do them no harm if they bring this additional sacrifice, and continue to close their shops on two days of the week.’

” ‘We need a new morality,’ is the much-applauded sentiment that was proclaimed at the consecration of the local Liberal Synagogue. It is evident that a little of the old morality might still be found useful; that part of it, at least, which looks askance upon ridiculing the religious beliefs of other people and forbids violating the conscience even of fellow-Jews.

“In the light of my forty years’ study and personal observation of the movement in both the New and the Old World, I presented Liberal Judaism to the Community not in vague generalizations, but by an array of historical facts. I have shown that Liberal Judaism forsakes the Fountain of Living Waters and hews for itself cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.”