Liberal judaism and hellenism, and other essays

Front matter

BM 155 .M66 1918 Montefiore, C. G. 1858-1938 Liberal Judaism and hellenism

LIBERAL JUDAISM AND HELLENISM

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited

Preface

A year or so before the War I was asked to give a short course of Lectures in the United States on some subject connected with Liberal Judaism. The Lectures would probably have been delivered in 19 15, and two of them were actually written before the War began. The others were written subsequently. As, under the changed conditions of the world, it had become quite uncertain whether the Lectures would ever be delivered, or whether, indeed, I should ever again have the pleasure to find myself in America, I have determined to publish them as essays in book form before they become too musty and out of date. Most of them have been enlarged and altered since they were first written. Part of the first essay has already appeared in the Hibbert Journal for January 19 18, and is here reprinted by permission. A large portion of the fifth essay, and a small portion of the sixth, were printed in the series of Papers for Jewish People, published by the Jewish Religious Union for the Advancement of Liberal Judaism. But I ought, perhaps, to add here that I do not in any way write as the official spokesman of

vii viii LIBERAL JUDAISM

the Union, and that the opinions expressed on more than one point may not be shared by many members of the Union or of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue. When I say : " Liberal Judaism holds and teaches so and so,'' this must always be taken as an abbreviation for : " Liberal Judaism, in my conception of it, and in the conception of those who think with me, holds, or should hold, teaches, or should teach, so and so.'' The essays which form this little book all deal with Liberal Judaism, and consequently contain various references to Orthodox Judaism. Not long ago one thought of Jews as divided into two classes only : Orthodox Jews and Liberal Jews. But, with the rise of modern Jewish nationalism, an entirely fresh division of Jews has made its appearance : nationalists and anti -nationalists. And this fresh division is, in regard to the old cause of difference, a cross division. For among the nationalists are Orthodox Jews and Liberal Jews ; and among the anti- nationalists are Orthodox Jews and Liberal Jews. While it is sad for Liberal Jews to be sharply separated from their fellow "Liberals" (as doubtless it is sad for Orthodox Jews to be separated from their fellow " Orthodox ") upon so vital and important a subject, it is some compensation for us Liberal anti- nationalists to be brought nearer to many Orthodox Jews, and to be actively united with them upon a question which, in our eyes, is not merely political, but also religious, — united with them, that is, in maintaining that all Jews, whether Orthodox or Liberal, are held and linked together by

PREFACE ix

the tie, not of nationality, and not even, essentially and primarily, of race, but of a common religious faith — a faith which has, indeed, its two main sections or phases, but is yet justly described, as regards each of these sections, by a single and historic name. Though the Liberal remains no less ardent in his Liberalism, and the Orthodox no less ardent in his Orthodoxy, this active uniting together in a common religious cause has made one Liberal Jew, at any rate, appreciate the better, as regards Orthodox Judaism, what has lately been so well said in a more general connection :

" We may be firmly convinced that the religious experience of mankind cannot be subjected to the forms of the past, and yet we cannot seriously think that the religious experience of former ages meant nothing, or even that its forms are to us insignificant. Even the man who is most clear that for him the religion of the spirit is best expressed in the simplest terms cannot be unmoved by the words which have expressed the devotion of far more than a thousand years, and the rites and ceremonies which have slowly grown round this devotion." x

C. G. M.

1 Christianity in History, by Dr. Vernon Bartlet and Dr. A. J. Carlyle (1917), P- S63-

Contents

i

PAGE

Liberal Judaism and the Old Testament . . . i

III Liberal Judaism and Rabbinical Literature . .136

IV Liberal Judaism and Hellenism .....

V Liberal Judaism and Democracy ..... 242

VI

Liberal Judaism and the Future .... 284

I

LIBERAL JUDAISM AND THE OLD TESTAMENT

In every phase of Judaism since the completion of the Canon, the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, has played a distinctive and essential part. And to-day, too, its position remains of central importance. Liberal Judaism, then, must take up a certain clear attitude towards those venerable documents that form the Hebrew Bible. It must be able to explain that attitude in tolerably simple words to all fairly educated persons. It is true that Liberal Judaism is itself no fixed quantity. It changes and will change. Nor is there in existence only one type or kind of Liberal Judaism. There are various kinds, or, shall we rather say, there are various degrees ? The attitude of one kind or degree of Liberal Judaism to the Old Testament will not be wholly the same as the attitude of another. Nevertheless we have reached certain general agreements in our Liberalism. And thus, though there are still varieties and degrees (and most happily it is so, for absolute agreements are a sign of stagnation and decay), it is yet possible to put the question : What is the general attitude of Liberal Judaism to the Hebrew

Bible? My own answer may not be wholly the same as the answer of another, who is no less, or perhaps more, of a Liberal than I. But I hope that, in my main conclusions and arguments, I shall carry with me the sympathy and agreement of a large number of Liberal Jewish students and adherents.

They will, at any rate, agree with me as to the importance, the delicacy and the difficulty of the subject itself. A conflict is going on, which has to be settled : there are different needs which have to be harmonised. We want, and we mean, to continue to keep and to love our Hebrew Bible ; but we want, and we mean, to be true to ourselves ; we want, and we mean, never to palter with the truth. The Hebrew Bible is still very precious to us : we are convinced that it can, and will, remain precious to us — to us and to our children. But we do not conceal from ourselves that there are troubles connected with it which cause us anxiety and perplexity. It is these troubles which need adjustment and smoothing out. They are, in reality, less caused by the Hebrew Bible itself than by the way in which we used to be taught, or the way in which our fathers and grandfathers were taught, to regard the Bible. If we could only start afresh, the troubles would be less conspicuous and puzzling.

Let us make a sort of rough list of these troubles, so that we may have faced them at the very outset quite bravely and honestly. The first, then, is the critical trouble : the trouble of dates and authorship and accuracy. We no longer believe, for instance, that the Pentateuch is a unity, or that it was written by Moses. We no longer believe in the accuracy of all its statements (including the long series of miraculous stories), we no longer believe in the early and Mosaic origin of most of its laws. Connected with this critical trouble is the trouble about inspiration. We do not deny a divine element in the Pentateuch or in the Prophets, but we recognise a large human element as well. We no longer see perfection in every law or every teaching. And this falling away from perfection we may regard as constituting the ethical trouble and the religious trouble. The ethics of the Hebrew Bible and its religious doctrines are not all of a piece. There is much development : there is also some retrogression. Some teaching is sublime and ideal : other teaching is superseded and imperfect. Then there is the liturgical trouble and the ceremonial trouble. The worship of the Synagogue has been closely mixed up with its attitude towards the Law. The ceremonies — both public and private — are dependent upon the Law, and are the outcome of the Law.

How are we to retain institutions — for instance, circumcision — the origin and sanction of which, as given in the Law, we no longer believe in ? If the miracles connected with the Exodus did not take place, if the details of the festival were not then ordered by God, how can we still celebrate the Passover ? And so on. It is easy to multiply the instances. Lastly, we may recall the education trouble. If we adults can thrash out a working theory for ourselves, which satisfies more or less fully our minds and hearts, what shall we say to our children ? True and false they understand : good and bad : white and black. But in-between varieties they find more difficult. All the more need, then, to come to clearness ourselves, in order that we may do our best for the children. For in them lies our hope for the future. We, who are more than thirty and forty and fifty, are all very well in our way, but the really interesting people are the boys and girls and the babies.

We may sum up our troubles by saying that we want to combine two attitudes towards the Old Testament, both of which we are convinced have value, and both of which we are convinced have validity. On the one hand, there is the attitude of freedom, about which I will say more in a moment ; on the other hand, there is the attitude of authority. For though the supreme authority must be our own conscience, our unfettered and honest judgment, reacting to the most assured results of criticism, history and comparative religion, nevertheless some authority the Hebrew Bible is still to retain. It is not quite the same as other books, though it must be criticised, investigated and estimated in precisely the same ways as other books are investigated and estimated, and be subjected to the same canons of criticism and research. Yet when all is said and done, Liberal Judaism still emphatically asserts of this book : " Herein is the ringer of God. Here are words, here are teachings, for which the Divine Spirit is, in some true sense, the Source.,, As the patriarch said of the place, so do we say of the book, " God is in it," and because God is in it, it has an authority of its own, and a special authority for us, who are the inheritors of the charge, of which the book describes the foundation, and to which it asserts the claim. " Ye are my witnesses." If that statement was made without any divine warranty, Liberal, as well as Orthodox, Judaism collapses like a pack of cards.

On a lower level the trouble of the two attitudes may be described as an attempt at, or the need of, a reconciliation between freedom, on the one hand, and the maintenance of historical connection, on the other. Judaism is an historical religion, and Liberal Judaism must be so too. It cannot neglect the past, or ignore it. Its very organisation, its ceremonies, its public worship must, to a large extent, be the creations and the outcome of the past. Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles, must still be our Liberal Jewish festivals. Our solemn and holy days must still be the Days of Memorial and Atonement.

And yet we must have freedom, by which I do not merely mean freedom to declare a given institution or rite obsolete and to neglect its observance, but freedom to be true to the highest dictates of our conscience, freedom to accept the surest conclusions of ingathered knowledge and research. Free eyes and ears, free heart and mind — these are fundamental necessities. If any statement or law in the Hebrew Bible does not seem to our considered judgment, and to our sifting and weighing conscience, the highest morality and religion, we must be free to say so. Liberal Judaism must require no prevarications, suppressions or palterings : it can do with no reservations, harmonisings or hidings. There must be no slippery explaining away, and no uncritical " reading into " the actual words of the text. If the Hebrew Bible be not capable of bearing the whitest and strongest light, then, too, are the days of Liberal Judaism numbered. Honesty and frankness : these we need no less than reverence and respect.

Let me now deal somewhat more fully with the difficulties that have been just enumerated. The " inspiration " difficulty and the " critical " difficulty may be taken together.

Liberal Jews of all shades and varieties unanimously reject the doctrine of verbal inspiration. A doctrine of inspiration is substituted which, in the first place, allows for a human element of error and inadequacy, and in the second place, restricts the divine element in extent as well as in degree. That is to say, there are many utterances in the Bible, even though they be spoken in the name of God, which, on moral and religious grounds, we cannot call inspired at all. There are others which seem to deserve the name, and in which we mark the workings of the Divine Spirit. Now doubtless this is crudely and un philosophically expressed, and Liberal Judaism earnestly needs its philosophers, who will put its conclusions into philosophic form, and give them a philosophic justification and expression. But for us ordinary people what I have said, if, as I believe, it enshrines a truth, will serve. The good and true are of God, and the better and truer they are, the more of God do they contain. Or shall we say, the better and truer they are in relation to their age and environment, the more of God do they contain ? That is inspired and divine in the Bible which is original and good and true ; that is purely human which was never good and was never true. If the prophet Malachi makes God say, "I hated Esau," that is neither good nor true ; it is human, it is uninspired. If he says, " Have we not all one Father ? " that is good and true : that may be human, but it is also inspired and divine.

With this divergent view of inspiration, Liberal Judaism combines a divergence from orthodoxy as regards the miraculous. The miracles recounted in the Biblical narratives are not regarded as evidence of their truth. This changed view has grave consequences. Each narrative has to be treated on its merits, and the results will vary in different cases. In some cases the narrative in which the miraculous incident occurs may be supposed to be historic in the main, while the amount of historic fact — the proportion of fact to legend — may be very different in each particular instance. In other narratives, again, there may be no historic substratum whatever, or none which can now be elicited. The importance of a miraculous story is also of a very varying quantity. We are, for instance, tolerably unconcerned as to the substratum of fact in the miracles attributed to the prophet Elisha, whereas what Moses said and taught and did — when we have removed the miracles that surround his career — will always remain a fascinating and also an important problem. Together with our orthodox brethren we celebrate the festival of the giving of the Law. But Orthodox Judaism is, I think, more concerned about the literal truth of the narratives in the nineteenth and twentieth chapters of Exodus. It tends to cling to the reality of the lightnings and the thunders, and of the descent of God upon the mount, and of the divine voice audibly proclaiming the Ten Words, and of the tablets of stone upon which the divine artificer engraved them.

That these marvels actually occurred Orthodox Judaism must, I think, maintain ; whereas Liberal Judaism can look at such strange tales in a modern manner — a truly grave and important difference between us, which it is only fair and honest to take into serious account. Yet when this inspiration and miracle trouble has been fairly faced, it is doubtful whether many people will find it very troublesome. So far as the Hebrew Bible has true religious and ethical value and greatness, so far will that greatness and value be unaffected by any fresh view of inspiration or by any denial of miracle. No miracle and no theory of inspiration can make a given utterance better than its contents. They can neither add to the excellence of that utterance nor diminish it. But, on the other hand, the old theory of inspiration can cause great trouble if it conflicts with our ethical and religious judgment. Nor can a miraculous tale bolster up a bad or an imperfect ethical utterance. To those who believe that God is the Source of Goodness, what is good is divine : the more good, the more divine. But we can never any more be induced to believe — and we are surely glad of it — that any conception or utterance is good and true and perfect because it is contained in a book which is alleged, either by itself or by any dogma or theory, to be inspired and divine. The authority of the good and the true lie in themselves. They carry with them their own credentials. The new view of inspiration, the small account of miracles, may cause trouble as regards liturgy, public worship and education. They need cause no trouble as regards the value and authority of all that the Bible contains which is excellent and noble and true. Nor does the Old Testament become " the same as any other book," if we do not cling to miracles and verbal inspiration. We cannot any longer maintain the greatness of the Law because its enactments are placed in the mouth of God. They have to justify themselves by themselves, not by an alleged authorship in heaven. Judged by its contents and by its effects, judged by its originality, judged by its character as a whole, the Old Testament will remain capable of maintaining its greatness and its worth even without the miracles, and without the verbal inspiration of all its parts and all its sentences. And if it cannot maintain them without these, then they are not worth maintaining, and they will not be maintained.

Connected with this trouble about inspiration and miracles is the trouble about criticism. Liberal Judaism is bound to accept the assured conclusions of historical and critical investigation. Whither the argument of truth leads, thither Liberal Judaism must follow. Not that I mean by this that Liberal Judaism must cry " Amen " to every hypothesis of the critics as one succeeds the other. But I mean that it must be precisely as open-minded and as independent on any question which falls within the province of criticism and history as the Greek or Roman student would be open-minded and independent as to questions concerning Homer or Solon or Romulus. Orthodox Judaism, for instance, as 1 understand it, stands or falls with the unity and Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. And therefore orthodox Judaism has, as it were, to declare the subject settled before the study of it has begun. It has to say : " Whatever your impious conclusions may be, I assert that Moses, under God's guidance and inspiration, wrote the Pentateuch, or, at any rate, all the Pentateuchal laws, and to that assertion, whatever arguments may be brought forward upon the other side, I must and I shall adhere." Liberal Judaism, on the contrary, must be free. It must have no fear of truth ; it has to recognise, and it does recognise, that any Biblical narrative or code must be studied and criticised precisely in the same way as the narratives and codes of any other book, and must receive no exceptional treatment whether favourable or hostile. As, then, the assured conclusions of honest research are that the Pentateuchal code is not a unity, that • extremely little, if any, io LIBERAL JUDAISM i

of it goes back to Moses, and that much of it is centuries later than the Mosaic age, Liberal Judaism accepts the verdict and has to reckon with it. And accepting the verdict, Liberal Judaism has sought so to -adjust itself that, in its relations with the past, it may be practically independent of historical and critical research. " Practically independent," I say : it does not follow, and I do not mean to assert, that the independence is absolute. But Liberal Judaism can never shut its eyes and its ears : it has always to be ready to hear and to listen, and it can never say to research, " Thus far shalt thou come and no farther: thus much can I allow and no more." Within its own field, history — by which I include criticism, comparative religion and subsidiary disciplines — must be unfettered and supreme, and Liberal Judaism must recognise its supremacy and bow to its decisions. For we worship the One God, who, in His flawless Unity, is Truth as well as Goodness, the Source of Knowledge as well as the Source of Love.

Here, again, the trouble turns out to be no trouble to Liberal Judaism. Criticism has justified our position and even partially created it. If, for instance, the Law were what it asserts itself, and what orthodox Judaism believes it, to be — the sheer and undiluted word of God dictated unto Moses — we could not stand towards it in an attitude of respectful, but unfettered, freedom. We could not, as we now do, pick and choose, accept and reject. We could not be free in the arrangements of our public worship, and in our liturgy, free in our judgments of the good and the permanent, the imperfect and the obsolete. Or rather, even as we saw in the inspiration trouble, our free judgments and conscience would be brought up sharp against a terrible coni AND THE OLD TESTAMENT n

tradiction. For the perfectly good God would apparently have said and ordered what is by no means perfectly good. From all such contradictions, troubles and difficulties, we, by accepting the conclusions of criticism (quite apart from philosophical or metaphysical considerations) are saved and set free. Whether any rational theory of the divine can accept such a statement as, "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying," matters not. Or, rather, we need not discuss it. But because we know that the words which God is alleged to have spoken to Moses proceed from a time far subsequent to Moses, the superscription troubles us no more.

On the other hand, we need not be troubled because the compilers of the laws added the superscriptions. We shall not regard the ordinance to "love the stranger" as any the less good, and as therefore any the less divine, because it is thus superscribed. For the laws of the various codes were put together by the compilers with the idea that they were legitimately to be regarded as Mosaic. Moses was the original fount of legislation, and all the right laws of Israel might be considered as the outflow of his spring. To the compilers, most of the laws were old in the sense that they found them or elaborated them, but did not invent and devise them. And such old laws were not only " Mosaic," but the will of God, and therefore divine. It is possible that a few of the latest laws, dealing with the priestly dues and the sacrifices, may have been drawn up by the compilers, and given a superscription which their compilers knew that they did not deserve. But of such laws I would observe, (i*) that they are precisely those laws which have, for us, no moral or religious value or importance ; (2) that even these laws were the development of other and older laws ; and (3) that we must not judge the compilers by modern conceptions of this particular matter. The compilers knew well enough that to lie is an evil and a sin, but it is very doubtful whether, even as regards the latest laws, they believed or realised that they were guilty of ascribing to God and to Moses what should not and could not be ascribed to them. Hence the results of criticism only emancipate. They need not cause us trouble. The antithesis : Absolute truth (i.e. Mosaic and divine), or valueless forgery, is a false antithesis, and belongs itself to an uncritical and unhistorical age.

As a result of this fresh point of view, which criticism has helped to provide for us, certain old controversies and theories have now lost their asperity and interest. They have gradually faded away under the newest light. We shall not seek to show that all moral and religious excellence is contained within the pages of the Hebrew Bible. In later Jewish literature outside the Bible there are also contributions of value and of truth. Nor does Liberal Judaism claim that God has suffered no aspect of truth to shine through other than Jewish windows. Whereas in olden days it seemed to aid men's faith in God if they thought that the teachers of other religions were either wicked or deluded, and that all religious literature outside their own was valueless or trivial, we now find it more consonant with the graciousness and goodness of God if, from many centres and at many times, the human spirit has been enlightened by the divine. Truth is complex and subtle and many-sided, and there is nothing alarming, but, on the contrary, there is much which is reassuring and comforting, if the religious and moral truths of the Hebrew Bible can here and there be supplemented or deepened or emphasised by ingatherings from other races and other literatures than our own.

On the other hand, although, or rather just because, from our Liberal Jewish standpoint (which believes in progressive revelation, and is unable to hold that perfect and final truth can be enshrined within a book) we cannot consider that the Old Testament contains complete religious truth, we hardly feel even the necessity of replying to the view that the Old Testament is the mere preparation and the New Testament the complete fulfilment. I shall have to speak more in detail about the New Testament in my second chapter ; it suffices here to say that the New Testament is also a book, and thus falls under the rule of imperfection and incompleteness v/hich all books must display. The New Testament was written by men, and records the sayings of men, and must, therefore, partake, like the Old Testament, of human limitations and human inadequacies. Revelation is progressive ; revelation — the enlightenment of man by God — did not cease in any particular year or at any particular date, and therefore the New Testament cannot contain, any more than the Old Testament can contain, the sum total of religious and ethical truth, both in extent and in« degree.

The Liberal Jewish position is emancipating. It puts us upon a height. We breathe a purer and serener air. If there are troubles, there are also compensations. The Hebrew Bible remains to us in all its peculiar glory. We can take from it all it can give to us : we have no need to seek for more. We have no need to try to put into it, or to draw out from it, more than it contains. Its teachings were i4 LIBERAL JUDAISM i

added to and were developed, but it is not a mere preparation, it is not a mere part of a finished whole, it is not the dawn before the noontide. It is a whole in itself, and has its own comparative completeness ; and in it will, as we believe, be found, and out of it will, as we believe, be drawn, the fundamental religious doctrines of all the ages that are to come. Over and above its central and loftiest teachings and its fundamental and permanent doctrines there are other doctrines and other teachings to be shed and discarded, but it is very doubtful whether the proportion of shed and discarded teachings and doctrines will be higher than in that other book to which it is so often supposed to be the mere introduction and the stepping-stone. For from the New Testament, too, as we believe, some central and loftiest teachings, some fundamental and permanent doctrines, will help to form " the religion of the future," but not less here than in the Old Testament are there, or will there be, other teachings and other doctrines to shed and to discard.

This shedding and discarding process brings us up to the ethical and religious troubles which were enumerated in our list. And once more the trouble can be regarded as an emancipation. Would it still be said : " Is a sacred Scripture worth having, can a Bible be a Bible, if it contain imperfections ? " Liberal Judaism, which regards nothing as perfect save God alone, is not agitated by such a question. So long as the said Scripture contains much that is good and great and true, we are not perturbed that (being a book and creation of man, even if of man inspired by God) it should also contain much that is imperfect, transitional, obsolete, and even several things that are false or bad. The imperfect or false things would