JUDAISM AND THE FUTURE.

"The Whole Edifice May Crumble Within Two or Three Generations."

There is a "Modernist"' movement in Judaism. This is proved by an article under the title of "A Rabbi takes Stock," by Solomon Goldman in the "Menorah Journal," a Jewish magazine of high standing. He says: —
The weakness of our present situation is in large measure due to our timidity to analyse fundamentals. We campaign breathlessly, build feverishly; we plunge desultorily from one activity into another; we hold conventions and adopt resolutions. But any suggestion to examine the premises upon which we are carrying on all these activities is shouted down with cries of "agnostic," "destroyer," "intellectual!" We thus succeed only in revealing our despair and pusillanimity. Happily, we cannot seriously hope to crush the spirit of enquiry with ex cathedra pronouncements. Rhetoric will not silence, much less convince, anyone. We must learn to face the facts pressed upon us by present-day living and thinking. And one of the outstanding facts of our day is that our life has rapidly become secularised. This may be extremely annoying to many of us; to some it may mean the breakdown of our civilisation: but we cannot escape it by withdrawing into the synagogue as into an ivory tower.

 The Jewish "Unsynagogued."

 The fact is that the synagogue has ceased to be a dynamo in Jewish life. The most vital endeavors of Jewry to-day are initiated and promoted by the "unsynagogued." The leaders in the up building of Palestine and in Jewish education, the rejuvenators of the Hebrew language, the champions of modern Jewish knowledge, the promoters of Jewish art, all these with but few exceptions are known not to be synagogue Jews. Are we waiting for a miracle to bring these apikoraim back? Shall we stupidly consider ourselves the "remnant?" Or shall we try to understand what it was that, made men so thoroughly Jewish abandon the age-old centre of Jewish life and thought?
 Judaism must be re-defined in terms of the whole of life. Nothing that enhances the physical, ethical, spiritual or aesthetic welfare of the individual dare be overlooked in its perspective. To be sure, some congregations have taken cognisance of their ineffectiveness and opened their synagogues to a few secular activities. But their ideology remains unchanged— hence their failure to win adherents. They sought to save themselves by grafting the vulgarities of modern life on to a body that needs surgical treatment. What good can a few "activities" accomplish as long as the mental attitude of pulpit and pew remains palaeolithic?
 Both Reform and Orthodoxy still cling to the theology of the Middle ages. Not even Reform Judaism has advanced beyond the reasoning of the scholastics, who were themselves tremendously influenced by the "dialectical elaborations of Aristotle." Classical philosophy which, as Professor Dewey has pointed out, is largely the rationalisation of the spirit if not of the letter of ancient traditions, is still swallowed hook, line and sinker, without the least attention to the irreparable damage inflicted on it by the "social philosophers." And it is upon this exploded "classic metaphysical idealism" that the whole structure of our theology rests. No wonder that it is confined to the static atmosphere of the synagogue.

 Must Be Scrutinised.

If religion is again to play a part in the furtherance of human happiness, its philosophy must be relevant to human experience. The old idealism will have to pay its respects to the reconstruction taking place in our ways of thinking. In place of immutable dogma and stereotyped creeds we shall have to be satisfied with functioning hypotheses. Threadbare words and limp concepts will have to find a new, vital meaning. The criteria of modern thinking will have to be applied to the terms God and soul, sin and evil. Our ethical concepts and moral usages, too, must be submitted to careful scrutiny. The conflict between religion and science is no longer confined, as it was in Tennessee, to the contradiction between the Mosaic cosmology and the theory of evolution. The chasm unfortunately is much wider. Upon critical analysis some time-honored ethical precepts and moral standards have been found to be inimical to the welfare of modern man. This was to be expected. For even if we assume that to some men was given the power to "make the leap in the dark," in Huxley's phrase, it would still remain questionable whether their contemporaries and successors always adequately understood them. But we no longer view folkways, mores, and institutions as having leaped into sudden existence in response to a divine fiat.
 We know that all tradition and usage have a history. We perceive them as so many efforts on the part of the race to escape misery and find happiness. Their source is man living in some form of society. Coerced by environmental pressure, frightened by misunderstood natural phenomena, stirred by overwhelming emotions, driven by the conflict of human wills, man groped his way into belief, ritual, custom, and law. The results often met the exigencies of the moment; they assured to society a certain degree of stability. The civilisation of the ancients was thus the remit of their experience; their religion, their comprehension this experience. That which was vouchsafed our ancestors cannot be denied to us. Our religion and our morality must also be the outgrowth of our own experience and intelligence. In short, we must develop our science of religion, even as they did their theology.
 We do not mean, of course, to imply that man is to start de novo, that he is to forget the past completely. That even were it possible, would prove cataclysmic. Man can build only on the foundation provided for him by previous generations. We will find in the past achievements of the race considerable guidance and encouragement to live and create. But we must study the past, not only reverentially, but critically as well. We cannot assume that all the accounts which have come down to us from the past are literally true. We must not hesitate to separate the grain from the chaff. The interpretation of history found in sacred and learned literature need not be considered as final. On the contrary, we often are to-day in a better position to understand the movements and events of the days of long ago than those who preceded us by centuries. Jewish history is certainly no exception. We must see whether it cannot be made vital. Our whole past must therefore be re-valuated.

Reconstruction of Judaism.

Jewish history records that the preachment of peace when there is no peace caused the destruction of the first temple. History may repeat itself. The whole edifice of Judaism may crumble within two or three generations should we continue to turn our heads away from reality. The reconstruction of Judaism must begin with the reconstruction of the synagogue. Ventilate it, renationalise it, beautify it, make it alive to the needs of the Jewish people of to-day, to thousands of men and women, and it will take on a new sense of value which all will recognise.

Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1928) http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article49374968