The graduates of the Jewish Theological Seminary represent an organic growth of the main stream of Judaism as it has developed throughout the ages, Dr. Cyrus Adler, President of the Seminary and Chairman of the American Jewish Committee, said in speaking last night at the opening of the Rabbinical Assembly of the Seminary attended by about 150 Rabbis.
This organic growth, he went on, developed into a way of life that included a recognition of some religious duty from the time of rising up in the morning to the time of lying down to sleep. It permeated the agricultural, industrial and commercial life of the true adherents of Judaism which fixed the relation of every Jew to his fellow men, which sanctified the life of every individual however lowly, and gave humility
to the greatest thinkers and philosophers. This in its aggregate is what we call Judaism-without qualification, without borrowing adjectives from church or from political parties-going along in the main broad stream and leaving it to others, if they insist, to divert little creeks here and there and label them with names like specimens in a museum. I hope you will not consider it pedantic if I keep on insisting upon this. If you must qualify Judaism, call it Traditional Judaism. One of our best friends among Christian scholars, George Foot Moore, called it formative Judaism. For myself I prefer the absence of any qualification.
There is no need to fear the barbs of professional critics, Dr. Adler continued. Some of you may have smarted under ###### who are writing ostensibly in the guise of fiction, others ostensibly in the guise of truth but still producing fiction. Every manner of man who is trying to do a useful thing in the world becomes a target for the arrows, sometimes poisoned, sometimes benign, of the more or less clever archers. The clergy have been such a mark more often than almost any profession, although many a medical man and lawyer might feel that his profession had been singled out. But you gentlemen are professionally engaged in teaching people to be good, and it is so easy to sneer at this effort. If your consciences are clear, do not let these sneers disturb you. They are not nearly so widely known nor so forcibly put as the book blurbs would have you believe.
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.
