Preached in City Pulpits

Scoring “bargain-counter religion” in which adherents seek a “universal insurance policy against all hurt,” Dr. Stephen S. Wise characterized Judaism as “a religion that asks and tasks” in his sermon on “What Religion Asks of Us and What We May Ask of Religion” at Free Synagogue services held yesterday morning in Carnegie Hall.

“Religion,” Dr. Wise declared, “must furnish a goal and motor power. It is the business of religion to teach men what to do and what to do without. However, it must not teach wordly resignation, for then it abets social injustice.

“Religion gives us a self-measuring standard of life because it brings something unique to human aspiration–holiness.

“Unlike Christianity, Judaism does not furnish a certain, dogmatic explanation of the hereafter. Jews ask no guarantee. It would rather be of my people to whom immortal life is a supreme adventure, than have a dogmatic certitude about the future life.”

Dr. Wise enumerated three things which he said a man may not ask of religion. “He may not ask a road-map of heaven, a guarantee against the difficulties of life, and a panacea for all wrongs.

“On the other hand the Jewish religion demands, in the words of Micah, that you do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before God.”

Dr. Wise decried as unjust the attempt of one race to try to enslave others. He ridiculed neomysticism. “which is neither new nor mystic, which looks upward, not outward, and ignores humanity.”

OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW TIMES

Although in recent years attempts have been made to ridicule the Old Testament, the sentiments expressed therein are still new, declared Rabbi Samuel H. Goldenson in his Sabbath sermon before the congregation of Temple Emanu-El, Fifth avenue and Sixty-fifth street.

Discussing the possible reasons for the attacks on the Old Testament, Dr. Goldenson declared that, as “the only fair way of judging men is not by taking haphazardly a part of them, but by looking at them in the direction in which they are moving, in precisely the same way the Old Testament is to be judged.

“It is a body of books, all on the same level of expression, of genius, of idealism or lack of ldealism,” he continued. “It took a thousand years to produce the Bible, and possibly thousands of minds have contributed to the making of it.” In the present crisis, he said, “we have turned to the Bible and found a God whom we may worship.”

He cited passages in the Books of Malachi, Isaiah and Jeremiah which could be applied to current problems, and quoted a sentence from Amos. “The Twentieth Century,” he declared, “is just beginning to enter into the conception of society that, 2,500 years ago, Amos the shepherd boy had described.

“The sad thing is that you and I do not know our heritage, or, what is worse, do not care,” Rabbi Goldenson concluded. “That is the tragedy of Israel. The Twentieth Century is just beginning to incorporate into its life some of the insight of the Bible.”

OBSTACLES TO UNITY

Discussing the problem of Jewish unity, Professor Mordecai M. Kaplan, in his sermon before the Sunday morning forum of the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, 15 West Eighty-sixth street, declared. “The most formidable obstacle to Jewish unity is a wrong state of mind which Jews have developed concerning the proper agencies for Jewish public activity.

“They have been trained by their leaders to be institutionally-minded instead of communally-minded,” he explained. “Most lay leaders place the particular institutions which happen to be their hobbies above the interests of an integrated and spiritually creative Jewry. A. meeting of Federation trustees is usually a tug of war, each one pulling for the institution he represents. The spiritual leaders are equally short-sighted.”

Unity will be achieved, he declared, when Jews learn to merge these institutional interests and subordinate them to the main purposes of Jewish life.

The sixth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” should never be paraphrased by man, declared Rabbi William F. Rosenblum at Temple Israel, 210 West Ninety-first street. “There is no place for murder in a human society that seeks to become part of the divine pattern,” he said.

Taking the example of the Scottsboro case in Alabama, he declared that no one acquainted with the record would pretend that there “exists no doubt as to the guilt of the Scottsboro boys for the crime they are alleged to have perpetrated upon the two white girls in questions. I, for one, believe the Scottsboro boys are innocent of the crime with which they are charged. A Jury composed of white men and women who have fed upon the prejudices of the South can hardly be expected to clear itself of reasonable doubt. There is no reason to the Scottsboro verdict. It should be set aside.”

ATTACKS DICKENS’ “LIFE”

That the recently-published story by Charles Dickens, “The Life of Our Lord,” continues the ancient legend of Jewish guilt was the assertion of Rabbi Louis I. Newman in his sermon before Congregation Rodeph Sholom, 7 West Eighty-third street.

The book, he said, “adds nothing to our knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth and merely reinforces the ancient legend of Jewish guilt in the death of the Rabbi of Gallilee. There is no particular distinction of style and the story will always be considered one of the minor works of Dickens. There is the same tendency to isolate Jesus from the people which bore and nurtured him; the same desire to emphasize the miracles and the fantasies, the same emphasis upon Jewish hostility to the teachings of Jesus. The “Life of Our Lord” is merely a rewriting of the Gospel story without any attempt at scientific criticism and analysis. It adds nothing to Dickens’ fame, and in fact tends to detract from it.”

Dickens might have rendered a service to historical and literary research if he had depicted the true Jesus, Rabbi Newman added. “The publication at this season of the year of the Dickens story does nothing to improve an understanding of the essentially Jewish message of Jesus of Nazareth,” he declared. “The unremitting emphasis upon the morbid and unhappy end of Jesus on the cross has served to encourage hostility and hatred against the very people whose blood Jesus bore in his veins.”

Two goals are indispensible for the ultimate freedom and happiness of the Jew, Rabbi Israel Goldstein declared in his sermon on “Preparing for Freedom” before Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, Eighty-eighth street, West of Broadway.

“There are two fronts on which the Jewish problem must be solved,” he explained. “First, through the establishment of economic and social justice in the lands where he lives, will be removed the chief prop of anti-Semitism which has been the unjust economic order and its consequent evils. Second, through the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine where Jewish immigration will be unrestricted as it should be in the Jewish homeland, millions of our Jews will have a place where to achieve physical and spiritual well being and the Jewish people as a people will have a new dignity in the eyes of the world.”

MESSAGE OF THE SABBATH

“During the period immediately before Easter, the Jew is reminded of the great Sabbath and its message,” Rabbi Joseph Zeitlin declared in his sermon before Temple Ansche Chesed, West End avenue and 100th street. “Essentially, Sabbath is a day of rest and also a day of spirituality. It is not sufficient for man simply to abstain from physical labor on that holy day, but he must turn his mind and interest towards the real values in life.

“The fact that there are so many hundreds of thousands of American men and women who are unemployed and idle presents a dangerous situation,” he continued, “First they must be fed and clothed. Then, and then only, have we the right to expect them to use their leisure time to cultural advantage. Let us hope that the very effective work of the CWA will not be interrupted, for only when man has sound body can we hope for him to have sound mind.”