### Felix Adler, leader of ### he Ethical Culture Society ###ho died this week, was edu# for the rabbinate by his father,
Samuel Adler. Later, in ###ny, he was tutored for the ### ministry under the distin###d Jewish savant, Abraham ### and perhaps we shall not be ###rong in saying that he pur###he rabbinical calling through-###fe and died a rabbi. That he ###red in that light to the world ###ge, despite the professed un###ianism of the Ethical Culture ###y, was demonstrated at the ### of Samuel Gompers, when ###s of the American Federation ###bor, deeming it proper that ###be rabbinical participation at #bsequies, invited “Rabbi” Felix ### and Rabbi Wise.
DOUBT WITHIN FAITH
###ere is no indication that Dr. ###er upon his return from Ger###y intended any secession from ### Jewish synagogue. He preached ###he temple. The members of the ###gregation were duly impressed ### his scholarship, by his character, ### the sermon itself. But there ### objection. Some of it—now ### all the principal figures are ###e—we may admit emanated form ### politics which seems inseparable ###n organized community life. But ###re was objection too on the ###re of the Godlessness of the ser-#. One of the trustees is said to ###e voiced this objection by saying ###t the effort was “too much like ###t of the Book of Esther, in that ### name of God did not occur in #######ut the objection to an extent ###ried its own refutation. After ### the Book of Esther is a good ###ish book. It is read in the syna###gue and enjoys a high repute.
### committee visited Dr. Adler and ### to him the question direct: “Do ### believe in God?”
### Yes,” replied Dr. Adler, “but not ### your God.”
### he upshot was that Dr. Adler ###s carried further than he prob###y had originally intended.
JOINED JEWS AND CHRISTIANS
{SPAN}###{/SPAN} Dr. Adler was an engaging {SPAN}per###ality{/SPAN} and there gathered about {SPAN}###{/SPAN} men and women, with whom he formed the Ethical Culture Society. Unattached and independent, he now felt he could work all the more effectively with an absolutely clean slate. But he had cut himself off from all the power that tradition brings, and had in a measure lost force by appearing to cut himself off from his people, though this he strenuously denied. And his life bore evidence that he remained staunchly devoted to his people. But it cost him strength.
He exulted on one occasion that for the first time since Paul, Christians and Jews, at the Ethical Culture Society, were now worshipping together. Yet if many Christians came it was largely during the earlier years, when he was a novelty. One could point to a number of conforming temples, where as many non-Jews could be seen as at the meetings of the Ethical Culture Society.
The founding of the Ethical Culture Society was in itself the evidence of the strength of his Hebraic spirit. It was the old Jewish quest for Utopias. Faith is loaded with a heavy baggage from the past. Why not create a new one, unburdened with this historic luggage. The weakness consisted in the weakness of all Utopian enterprises, in that the human factor in the equation is underestimated.
WALDO FRANK’S CRITIQUE
Ethical culture could not be indicted as violating any of the canons of logic, but it violated psychological principles. It is cold and austere. One who sat at the feet of Dr. Adler and who later was to rise in the literary world—Waldo Frank—described it as “sterile”. It is of record too, that other members at funeral services of their kin asked of the Society Leaders if it would not be possible for them to recite the Kaddish at the services. Not all of the members, it appears, were ready to get along completely without the Kaddish at least.
Waldo Frank has questioned the motives of many of the members of the Society. To him it appears that it was an attempt to escape from the Jewish name. Prosperous Jews, chary of complete assimilation in another faith, but unwilling to be known as Jews joined the Society that they might be known not as Jews but as Ethical Culturists.
It is scarcely necessary to state that, whatever might have been the motive of some of these “joiners”, Felix Adler was inspired only by what he believed was the highest. He spoke up passionaltely for the Jew, if not for Judaism. When Jews were persecuted, he protested with zeal and ability, even if he did not, as his brother-in-law, Justice Brandeis, embrace Zionism. One may read with admiration today his protest in the seventies against the then persecution of Jews in Germany—the prototype of the similar oppression of today. As the Jews today are accused by the Hitlerists of being the Communist stronghold, so then they were attacked by the reactionaries as being the force behind German liberalism.
THEY SOUGHT SCAPEGOAT
Jews were swamping the universities, it was charged, and the clerical Jew-baiter, Stoecker, was urging the Germans to imitate their ancestors and roast Jews in the public squares. There was a further similarity to present conditions in the international economic depression of that day and, to Dr. Adler, the German oppression of the Jews was but the seeking of a scapegoat for economic conditions.
“In this country,” said Dr. Adler, in 1878, “the greenback delusion for a time assumed surprising proportions among the people where distress was general and we have lately seen it vanish quickly before the first gleam of a returning prosperity. In Germany, they are seeking their scapegoat in a different direction. It is the presence of the Jewish element which is held accountable for the prevalent evils.”
Dr. Adler must have been reminded again in 1907 that the world was far from his broad non-sectarian outlook, when he was appointed Roosevelt exchange professor to Germany, and there was some question whether Germany, which did not then allow Jewish professors, would accept one from abroad. It must have gone hard on the Teuton spirit, but they were constrained to swallow it.
In a practical way, Dr. Adler certainly fulfilled the promise to Abraham: “In you shall the people of the earth be blessed.” The social history of the span of time which he covered cannot forget the man who was largely responsible for the institution of district nursing among the poor and the man who played so vital a part in reinvigorating our school system by the introduction of manual arts and the sciences in the school curriculum.
WOULD HE DO IT NOW?
One may be forgiven for speculating as to whether Dr. Adler, appearing fresh on the scene today, instead of 1876, would have founded the Ethical Culture Society after its present pattern. For he was like another Jewish exponent of ethics, “a God-intoxicated man.” In 1931, he said, “Personally, I am intensely religious. I feel myself to be a vehicle of the Divine power and all the influence I have is due to this vehicle.”
I recall too a little anecdote related to me by Dr. Joshua Bloch, chief of the Jewish Division in the New York Public Library. The story harks back to the days when Dr. Bloch was a student in one of Dr. Adler’s classes at Columbia University.
Dr. Adler had been saying that the ethical culture movement had room for the scoundrel as well as for the saint. For the scoundrel needs to reform and the saint to perfect himself.
“But,” Dr. Bloch interposed, “can the sinner who desires to atone find in the ethical culture movement that satisfaction which he can derive at church and synagogue by repentance to his God?”
“Maybe not,” answered Dr. Adler after a pause, and then he added, “perhaps that explains why the ethical culture movement has not made the progress anticipated.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
