Liberal Judaism; an essay

Prefatory Note

The scope and object of this essay are sufficiently explained in the text. It does not represent the views of any existing organisation or party. Its composition was not suggested to me from without, and no one but myself is responsible for any of the statements and opinions which it contains. For help in the revision of proofs I am much indebted to two friends, but their help was strictly limited to enabling me to express my own ideas with greater clearness and precision. Pages 194 to 207 are taken, with slight modifications, from an article published by me in the Jewish (Quarterly Review about three years ago.

C. G. M.

yanuarf 1903.

Chapter I

The object of this book is to offer a few notes and suggestions about a particular phase of a particular religion. The religion is Judaism, and the phase is commonly known as " liberal " or " reform " Judaism. But even this description of my object is not sufficiently limited. It is not liberal Judaism as a separate organisation, or liberal Judaism in its history and development, of which I wish to speak, but that particular and individualised form of liberal Judaism which I myself happen to hold. The personal element is not brought in because the writer attaches any importance to himself, but in order that it may not be supposed that he is speaking in the name of liberal Judaism as a whole, and still less in the name of Judaism generally. No authority attaches to this book. Though statements will be frequently found such as "Judaism teaches" or "Judaism rejects" such and such a particular doctrine, it will be easily seen from the context whether the doctrine is one which is taught or rejected by practically all Jews at the present time, or whether all that is meant is that the Judaism in which the writer believes teaches or rejects it.

We have to remember that Judaism as a living religion is not contained in any book or expressed in any document, but that it is the religion professed by Jews, just as Christianity is the religion professed by Christians. As there are many forms of Christianity, so there are many forms of Judaism. A Roman Catholic would, I suppose, say that the only true and complete form of Christianity was Roman Catholicism, and so, too, a form of Judaism could be found which would say that the only complete and true form of Judaism was itself. Perhaps some other form of Christianity could be found which would also make the same exclusive claim, and perhaps more than one form of Judaism could be found to do likewise.

Again, there is at least one form of Christianity which many Christians would deny to be rightly so called. By this denial they imply that there are certain doctrines which are so essential to Christianity that any person who rejects them cannot properly be called a Christian.

The number of these " essential doctrines " has gradually diminished. Five hundred years ago a person would have been regarded by the vast mass of Christians as not justly or properly caUing himself a Christian if he did not believe in many doctrines which he now may reject or explain away, while still being considered by the great majority of educated Christians as rightly entitled to the name. And those persons who, by their rejection of a few " essential doctrines," are still held by most Christians improperly to retain the name of Christian, themselves stoutly defend their position and their claim. They call themselves Christians, and they feel themselves Christians. Is, then, a man a Christian who so calls and feels himself, be his religious beliefs what they may? We should at last seem to come to a palpable absurdity. There must ultimately be some limit where Christianity ceases. The rejection of certain doctrines and the acceptance of others must at last make it absurd for the title of Christian to be any longer used. Its use would ultimately be an abuse.

Precisely similar is the case with regard to Judaism and the Jews. I am not alluding here to the obvious fact that the word " Jew " is also used to describe or denote a person who belongs to a particular race. It is clear that such a person may become a Christian or an Atheist or a Mohammedan, and yet, from the point of view of race he remains, and must remain, a Jew. I throughout use the word

Jew to denote a person who holds certain religious opinions, be his race what it may. Such a person may be descended from non- Jewish ancestors, or he may himself have been born a Christian, but in my eyes he is none the less a Jew.

Using the word, then, in this religious sense, and in this sense only, the parallel with Christianity holds. There are some Jews who would say that if a man does not hold certain doctrines and fulfil certain rites he is no longer a Jew. (I add the words " fulfil certain rites," because some Jews lay far more stress on rites than on beliefs.) Just as in the case of Christianity, so, too, in the case of Judaism, the number of these essential and qualifying beliefs and rites has gradually become smaller. But there are persons who call and feel themselves Jews, who in the eyes of other Jews are not rightly and properly to be considered Jews at all. Again, as in Christianity, so in Judaism, there must be a point at which the mere assertion that a man is or feels himself to be a Jew is not enough to substantiate his claim. Common sense, for instance, might say that a man who denies that such a person as Jesus Christ ever existed cannot legitimately call himself a Christian ; common sense might say that a man who denies that God exists cannot legitimately call himself a Jew.

Even so, however, the matter is not so simple as it might seem. Some of the writers, for example, in the Encyclopedia Biblica, hold so much of the Gospel narrative to be unhistorical that they can hardly be said, in any ordinary sense, to believe in Jesus as a historical figure. Yet they would indignantly repudiate the charge that they are no Christians. So, too, a man may adopt a Spinozistic attitude towards the conception of God, and yet claim to be a Jew. In fact, some good Jews are in the habit of claiming Spinoza for Judaism. In short, definitions become more and more difficult as men's opinions become more delicately shaded, and the colours run inseparably one into the other. It may, perhaps, be argued that a man's religion is what he himself feels it to be, and that just as dogmatic tests applied by authority may produce hypocrisy, so tests of classification applied by any other than the person classified may produce absurdity and injustice. On the other hand, a man may quite conceivably make a wrong diagnosis of his own religious beliefs. He may be a Jew, or have ceased to be a Jew, without realising it. It seems, therefore, safest to rely on neither test exclusively. When, however, a man's own view of his religious position coincides with the view formed by outside observers, then the question of inclusion or exclusion may be settled with reasonable, though not with absolute certainty.

Yet it must be admitted that the doubt as to the propriety of a man's calling himself Christian or Jew tends at present in one direction. The doubtful persons are those who are often called "liberal," " latitudinarian," " heretical " ; the persons who would deny them the right to use the title are often called, or call themselves, " orthodox," " conservative," "traditionalists." The liberals do not deny that the conservatives may rightly be called Jews or Christians as the case may be ; it is the conservatives who doubt the right of the extreme liberals to this denomination. And we have seen that if the liberalising process, that is, the denial of certain doctrines and the assertion of others, — for there is assertion of the new as well as rejection of the old involved, — goes on beyond a certain undefined and perhaps undefinable limit, then the doubt of the conservatives becomes justifiable. By "justifiable" I mean that a jury of completely informed and completely impartial outsiders would so regard it. But it would be necessary to add the proviso that such a jury must attach considerable weight to the evidence of the suspected person as to his own religious position. Outsiders in so internal and subjective a matter as a man's religion do not necessarily see the truth most clearly.

If, then, Judaism as a living religion is the religion professed by Jews, there are as many varieties of Judaism as there are varieties of religious belief among the persons who, within the limits indicated above, may justifiably call themselves Jews. This may seem a hard saying. It might seem as if Judaism, or any other religion, ought to be easily describable on paper. Such and such doctrines are Judaism ; such and such doctrines are Christianity ; such and such creeds and articles constitute Judaism ; such and such creeds and articles constitute Christianity.

For instance, in the ordinary Jewish prayer-books there is a document which is called the " Thirteen Principles of the Faith," and in a footnote these principles are called " Articles of the Jewish Creed." Is not Judaism these articles ? Certainly not. Judaism as a living religion is not any series of articles, but a state of the mind ; if there were no Jews, there would be no Judaism. These articles may be believed in by a number of Jews, but, even then, the way in which they are believed, the manner in which they are interpreted, may include an enormous number of differences and varieties. Moreover, not all Jews believe all these articles. The present writer, for instance, disbelieves in five or six of them. Thus, here again, there is room for wide variety.

A Jew may believe in a number of doctrines which many other Jews call " superstitions." It may be shown scientifically and historically that these "superstitions" have been picked up and borrowed from some other religion, and then it will be argued that they are non- Jewish or un- Jewish, and that if the entire religious belief of every Jew is to be called a phase of Judaism, a great injustice to Judaism will be done. But such reasoning is inaccurate. From the point of view of the living and actual religion, the date at which a particular belief or superstition was adopted is of very minor importance ; all the observer can say is that such and such beliefs are now held by persons who justifiably call themselves Jews. The Judaism of these persons includes those beliefs. The beliefs may be inconsistent with other beliefs which they also hold : they may be accretions of recent date and of un- Jewish origin : none the less the Judaism of these persons is not accurat^y described if those beliefs are omitted.

It may, indeed, be found that certain beliefs are common to all, and that other beliefs are common to the vast majority of Jews. Some beliefs may be described as accretions of foreign origin. Of these, some would seem consistent with, or developments from, the native or ancient stock of beliefs ; they have been thoroughly assimilated, and they have come to stay. Others seem inconsistent with "essentials," and are therefore likely to drop ofF and decay. But we cannot argue that a doctrine held by a numerical majority is therefore an " essential," and likely to remain for all time a constituent feature of the religion. For instance, the belief that Moses wrote the Pentateuch is held by a numerical majority ; yet it may reasonably be argued that it is not only not an " essential " doctrine, but that it will gradually disappear altogether. For though the Judaism of any particular Jew includes all his religious beliefs, it may also be true to say that some beliefs are essential to Judaism, while others are not. The test of "essentiality " will naturally vary ; the " essential " doctrines of one age will not be essential in the belief of another. And, in any one age, different doctrines will seem essential to different persons, and some persons will maintain a larger number to be " essential," and others a smaller. Yet a few doctrines might be found, such as the Existence and Unity of God, which all Jews now living would regard as essential, and which have been considered essential in every age.

Within the innumerable minor and individual varieties of Judaism, there are certain broad types or phases. There is a broad type lo LIBERAL JUDAISM chap.

of Judaism which may be called " orthodox " ; there is a broad type of Judaism which may be called "liberal" or "reform." The Judaism of which I shall here mainly speak is an individual variety of the liberal type.

It is often said by modern Christians that Christianity is not a creed but a life. The same thing is said by modern Jews about Judaism. What is meant is, that both religions lay great stress upon conduct and feeling, and upon the spirit and temper in which a life is lived. Beliefs may be held in a nerveless and feeble manner without influencing conduct, without giving colour and tone to the whole of life. That is true, but none the less is it true that at the back of the life which such Jews and Christians declare to be Judaism and Christianity respectively, there are opinions and doctrines about religion and morality which would admit of being stated and described. If it be said that Christianity is not a creed but a life, this very assertion implies a particular doctrine : a belief that a certain kind of life may fitly be called Christian, and that the state of mind which issues in and directs that life is true Christianity. The religion as it exists and is realised in that mind and life is capable of being described in words, although we must always remember that such words are an inadequate representation of the real thing.

I LIBERAL JUDAISM u

The actual, living religion is not the written page, but the person — as he thinks, wills, and feels.

As human nature is extremely complex, it is not easy for any one to set forth his own religion fully and truthfully. It is still more difficult to know the religion of another. A man can give a historical account of the religious opinions of others, so far as these have been described in writing, or observed in action, or heard in speech, but it is not easy to penetrate far into the recesses of another's soul. What is pregnant with meaning to one mind is meaningless to another. A philosophical system of religion except to a philosopher is mere words.

The present writer is no philosopher, and his book is unphilosophic and unsystematic. But for that very reason it may have greater meaning to every-day folk. He writes as a liberal Jew, but the Judaism he is about to speak of is just his conception of Judaism, and his only. He claims and feels himself to be a Jew, and he calls his own religion Judaism, but whether it can justly be called Judaism is not for him, but for others to decide. Nevertheless his own claim and feeling must be reckoned with in arriving at a decision. I again acknowledge that there must be a point at which it becomes absurd to docket such and such religious opinions with the label

"Judaism." Because a man is in a small minority it does not follow that his chosen label is inaccurate ; but, clearly, if ninety-nine per cent of existing Jews deny that the label can be given with propriety to those opinions, the man who holds them must either be in " advance of his age," or self-deluded on the question of nomenclature.

Yet if the Judaism of which I shall here speak is only my Judaism, I believe that it is also something like the Judaism of many other persons, and that it will be something like the Judaism of very many more. I trust, too, that it may, to some small extent, interpret other people's states of mind to themselves. There are many persons who do not quite know what they believe or disbelieve. They are uncertain whether, or how far, they still are Jews. They are doubtful whether there can still rightly be phases of Judaism answering to their religious needs and consistent with their religious opinions, so far as these latter are articulate or known to themselves. They hesitate what to teach their children, and often abandon the task to others or to chance. If I had not the case of such persons in mind, and if I did not hope that I might help two or three of them, this book would never have been written. My own religious opinions and my own conceptions of Judaism are of no importance whatever. They are only important if they can be of use for others, and thereby of use to Judaism. For if to the State no single one of its citizens is of no account, far less should a Religion consider a single soul that professes it a negligible quantity. Judaism must desire that every one born within its pale should be saved for itself

Chapter II

Though a man's personal religion is not what he has read about religion, but what he himself believes, feels and experiences. It is doubtful how far any one could rightly be called a Jew who knew nothing of the past history of Judaism. It is clear that he must somehow be linked on to the past ; he cannot start with an absolutely clean slate, devise his own religion, and call it Judaism. He must therefore possess a certain minimum of knowledge. This minimum he may have obtained either orally, from parents, teachers, and environment, or through books. No man, in sheer loneliness or independence, creates his own religion. He is a link in a long and very strange chain which stretches back to vague beginnings. Hence, too, a writer on Judaism or on Christianity, however much he may profess and desire to speak unofficially and unhistorically, or to describe his own personal religion and no more, must nevertheless say something about the past. For Judaism and Christianity are historical 14

Chap. II Liberal Judaism ' 15

religions ; and there are certain periods of their history which are of special or even of supreme importance. They are also literary and documentary religions ; the story of their foundation and early growth is recorded in a particular book — the "Bible"; and part of the religion of every Jew or every Christian to-day is the view he takes and the belief he holds about this particular book. If a man had never heard of the Bible and of the Bible heroes, he could clearly not call himself, with any reasonable justification, a Christian or a Jew.

Nevertheless it is only incidentally that any questions of history can here be dealt with. I cannot attempt any sketch of the history of Judaism, or an account of the origin and development of its various doctrines. These doctrines must be discussed without any adequate presentation of their history and growth. Nor can I venture upon any systematic treatment of fundamental questions. What religion means, how it can best be defined, is beyond the sphere of the present book as it is beyond the power of the present writer. Fundamental doctrines will be spoken of unphilosophically. And I must start with the most fundamental and difiicult of all, namely, with the conception of God and of his relation to man.

I shall essay no "proof" of "God's"

existence, for I must assume that I am writing for the benefit of persons who could honestly say that they «' believe in" God, though of what they mean by " God " they could give no coherent or consistent account. They are not philosophers. To such persons, for whose benefit I write, I also belong. Yet we are not ashamed of our own incapacity. We call God infinite Spirit, though we have no wholly clear idea of what we mean by spirit or by infinity. We arc not frightened by the double limitation of our human nature and of our unphilosophical training. We know what we mean when we say we " believe in God " sufficiently well for all religious and practical purposes. And, therefore, sketchily and unphilosophically, with no attempt at completeness or system, I now proceed to speak of certain aspects of the Divine Being, so far as my own personal religion conceives them.

" God is Spirit." By this we primarily mean that he is incorporeal. All Jews are united on this point : it has been a dogma of the Synagogue from the second Isaiah onwards. It is a striking fact that whenever we try to explain God's nature to ourselves, we fall into saying what God is not. In seeking to define the positive statement, " God is Spirit," we almost inevitably tend to say that it means " God is not a body."

Maimonides long ago held that the only attributes applicable to God are negative. While (as will be maintained later on) we feel that there is a generic likeness or even kinship between God and man, we can sometimes best explain our conception of God bycontrasting his nature with man's nature, and by denying that God possesses certain qualities which are possessed by man. So, too, when we say that God is omnipresent, we mean that he is not " locally " nearer one part of the universe than another, but as infinite Spirit is spiritually all-pervading ; he is " near " to all spirits, and they can spiritually draw near to him, their origin and creator.

"God is self-conscious Reason." Here, too, all Jews are agreed, and they mean by the words something like this. Man is self-conscious and rational. Goodness and knowledge in any of their higher forms are inconceivable by him except as immanent in or pertaining to a self-conscious and rational mind. Who can conceive what the divine reason may be like ? Who may venture to conceive the divine self-consciousness } Yet if the words " reason " and " self-conscious " are not strictly applicable to God, that is only because God is more than they, not because he is less. " He is a person, but not like ourselves ; a mind, but not a human mind ; a cause, but not a material cause, nor yet a maker or artificer. The words which we use are imperfect expressions of his true nature ; but we do not therefore lose faith in what is best and highest in ourselves and in the world." ^

" God is eternal Reason." To conceive a life without end is very hard ; to conceive a life without beginning makes our human faculties reel ; yet we believe God to be eternal in both directions. And the backward eternity of the Infinite Reason and Spirit is important because it implies, as I fancy all Jews would hold, that God is eternal not only in the sense that there never was a time when he was not, but also in the sense that he is exempt from the limitations which to us make past, present, and future exclusive each of the others.

" God is spirit," " God is mind," " God is reason." These words denote the same thing. For if God, as all Jews hold, be one, then the many aspects of his unity are yet all essentially the same. His being is infinitely rich, and yet absolutely one. That is the marvel and the glory of it, the last and the final explanation and consolation for all the problems of evil.

" God is the Creator of the World." The first article of the Thirteen Principles of the Jewish Faith, which were drawn up by Moses

^ Jowett : Dialogues ofPlato^ vol. iv, p. 43 (third edition).

Maimonides in the twelfth century, declares that " God is the author and guide of everything that has been created, and that he alone has made, does make, and will make ail things." In the sense of this article, many of us no longer believe the dogma. The old idea was that God " made " the universe out of nothing : he created the very material with which, workman-like, he " made " the whole world of " things." There are obvious objections to such a theory, which even they who are not philosophers can easily understand. God is not outside the world as the watchmaker is outside the watch ; we rather regard him as the Spirit of the world, immanent in it as well as transcendent. Whether this belief also implies that God and the Universe are both eternal I do not pretend to know. All we are concerned to maintain is that matter was never self-existent or independent of mind ; in other words, that the "world" was always guided by God.

As we believe in an immanent as well as in a transcendent Deity, the laws of nature are the laws of God. It would seem true to say, that in these laws God reveals or manifests himself. They are an aspect of the divine nature. If God is reason, then God himself is, as it were, a sort of eternal guarantee that two and two will always be four and never five. Just in the same way is he a guarantee that any other piece of ascertained truth will remain eternally true. He is one ; truth abides. Therefore what are commonly called " miracles," if these mean interferences with the laws of the universe, seem inconsistent with the divine nature. It seems a sort of contradiction in terms to suppose that God suspends or changes a part of his own self-manifestation, an aspect of his own being. The Biblical miracles are great stumbling-blocks on quite other grounds than this, but, on purely religious and theoretic grounds, many of us cannot fit them in with the purest conception of God to which we can attain. Liberal Judaism must live without miracles, or it will not be able to live at all. It is perhaps scarcely necessary to add that liberal Judaism is keenly responsive to that sense of awe and wonder which a contemplation of the recurrent marvels of nature must as constantly arouse.

Far more important for us than any other aspect of the Divine Being is his relation to man. Our view of this relation is best prefaced by the conception of God upon the ethical or moral side. It is very odd that the Thirteen Principles take all this side so much for granted, that, except incidentally, they say nothing whatever about it.

" God is goodness," " God is righteous-

11 LIBERAL JUDAISM 21

ness," "God is love." AH these statements seem to say the same thing. Christians lay great stress upon the third : " God is love." The words themselves come from the New Testament, and are found in the First Epistle of St. John iv. 8. They express ethical perfection in one particular light. The argument, " Love one another, for God is ethical perfection," would not be so clear and cogent as the argument, " Love one another, for God is love." But whatever be the terms and words which we use to indicate the divine goodness, the same remark will hold of them as of the divine reason or self-consciousness. God's goodness must immensely transcend our own, but it transcends it as including it and passing beyond it, not as denying it. If we have the right to say anything more of God than that he is, then his reason and goodness must not be wholly alien to our own. If his righteousness is wholly alien to our righteousness, the statement that God is righteous becomes unmeaning.

It seems to me an essential feature of Judaism that God's righteousness, justice, mercy, goodness, and love should be regarded as identical. All these different words mean the same thing looked at from different points of view. For God's unity is absolute and incomparable. With us men there may be some conflict between justice and love, between righteousness and compassion : in God such conflict is impossible. The mere idea of it is absurd. It is always the one God who, in all his operations and relations, in all his judgments and dealings, is perfect, immutable, the same. Upon this doctrine of Unity, Self-sameness, and Immutability, it is reasonable to lay the greatest stress. The opposite pole to it is conveniently illustrated by Milton's Paradise Lost, where God the Son pleads and argues with God the Father, and the divine justice in the Father is traversed and even conquered by the divine pity in the Son. From such grotesque conceptions of Deity, which possess religious and ethical dangers as well as grotesquery, the Jewish dogma of the Unity has kept the Jews almost wholly free.

Between our conception of God as pure reason, or perfect intelligence, and our conception of him as perfect goodness or love, lies our conception of him as truth. For truth has a double aspect, looking towards knowledge and looking also towards goodness. God is truth as much as he is love. He is fidelity, changeless and undeceiving. Therefore, since God is truth, the human life which is spent in the service of truth must be acceptable to him, an imitation of the Divine. Hence, too, as a further outflow from the conception of God's unity, there can be no possible opposition or conflict between Religion and Science. All truth is a revelation of the God of truth, and all truths must, in the last resort, be consistent with each other.