HENRY GREENBERGER

University of Pennsylvania

OUR Menorah at Pennsylvania has passed through a crisis which for a time threatened its welfare, but happily the present internal condition is healthy and assures the new administration the hearty support of the entire membership. Despite difficulties our work has been successful and varied. Last year fourteen regular meetings were held, some devoted to programs by our own members, others to outside speakers.

Among those who addressed us last year were Dr. Cyrus Adler, '83, President of the Dropsie College; Rabbi Henry Berkowitz, Chancellor of the Jewish Chautauqua Society, on the "New Teaching of Religion"; Dr. Henry M. Speaker, Principal of Gratz College, on "Jewish Literature"; Rabbi Haas of the Baron de Hirsch School, on "Woodbine, a Jewish Town"; Dr. Isaac Husik of the Semitic Faculty, on "Philosophic Movements of Medieval Jewry"; and Dr. Henry Malter of the Dropsie College, on "The Written and the Oral Law."

In addition to the regular meetings we have been for the past three years conducting a Jewish Discussion Group, led by Rabbi Marvin Nathan of this city, which has proved very popular. The group meets at the noon hour and attracts also non-Menorah men, women students, and liberal-minded non-Jews. This year in order to accommodate the students whose schedules prevent their attending this group, we expect to institute another to be conducted either like the present or in such a way as to utilize the services of the Rabbis and other prominent Jews of Philadelphia.

Our policy this year concerning new members differs decidedly from that of the past. While we are by no means more restrictive or exclusive than heretofore, we feel that the method of "rushing" men into membership is psychologically wrong. It cheapens the organization in the eyes of non-members and thereby defeats its own end. Instead of attempting to cajole freshmen into joining, we shall endeavor to attract the serious-minded men on the campus by the quality of our programs and the variety of our activities. With the strong men in, the others will follow, and in this way our membership will be one of both quality and quantity.

Another innovation this year will be the acceptance of women students as members. The attitude of the University toward mixed membership in organizations that meet on the campus has been unfavorable and as a result women students have been admitted only to the Discussion Group and to public meetings. Their wholesale application for admission into the Society, however, prompted us to intervene in their behalf, and in view of the seriousness of our purpose the authorities consented to make the exception. Hereafter, therefore, we shall be able to offer membership, on an equal footing, to all students.

Although our attention this year will be directed mainly to intensive work, the Menorah will continue to act unofficially as the medium between the Jewish students here and local communal activities. In a quiet way, also, we intend to exert our influence upon local Jewish organizations so as to induce them to take a more active interest in Jewish affairs. They will be invited to attend our public meetings and assistance will be offered them in arranging programs along Jewish lines. We shall further offer to furnish them with speakers from among our members.

A real need of our Menorah, and probably of other Menorahs, is some extra incentive to induce the writing of Jewish papers. The establishment here of a Menorah Prize would, we feel confident, work wonders in stimulating interest in Jewish problems. We look forward to the early filling of this need.

Of our work this year we are very optimistic. Several papers have already been prepared by members and others are promised. A number of notable men, including Provost Edgar F. Smith, of our University, and Professor David W. Amram, '87, of the Law Faculty, will give us addresses. We are in addition organizing a Menorah Orchestra with the idea primarily of presenting to the public the best Jewish music, and we hope in this way to combine business with pleasure.

JACOB RUBINOFF

Penn State College

THE Penn State Menorah was organized on April 27, 1913. Our activities from the beginning were characterized by a willingness on the part of the members to devote a great deal of their time to the mapping and carrying out of our weekly program. The significant fact that the Society has held forty talks during the past year, most of which were delivered by its members, is in itself proof of the conscientiousness and devotion that the men of Penn State bring to the Menorah Society.

As is quite natural, our organization did not at first strike all the Jewish students as something worth while, but in a comparatively short time we found that ninety per cent. of the Jewish students of the College were members, and that our attendance for the past year averaged thirty-five out of a possible forty.

Our meetings are held every Sunday morning from ten to twelve o'clock. Our constitution states that any member who absents himself for three consecutive meetings without a legitimate excuse is automatically expelled. Thus far no man has been expelled. Members of the Menorah Society are excused from the chapel by the Dean, provided they attend all the Menorah meetings.

Our Society has also striven to get desirable lecturers. Owing to our limited treasury, we must depend upon the Intercollegiate Association for support, else we can make but very little headway.

The Menorah Library has proved a big boon, for practically every man is making use of the books for his own reading and in the preparation of papers for our meetings.

We were very fortunate in having been offered the services of Professor O. F. Boucke as a lecturer for the Society and as teacher of a special course of study on the Old Testament. Professor Boucke's assistance is bound to add materially to the prestige of the Menorah on the campus. At an early meeting this year we had a most interesting and inspiring talk by President Sparks, who is taking a deep interest in the Menorah movement.

It is our belief that the Menorahs in colleges and universities that are isolated from the large cities (a good example of which is Penn State) are bound to have by far the greater success, because the students enjoy more opportunity of being together and doing more things in common. In our Menorah Society the Jewish students find their chance not only to study things Jewish in common, but to come together and exchange their thoughts on all subjects in which they are interested.

M. TRUMPER

University of Texas

THE Menorah Society closed a successful year with a banquet held May 18, 1914, at the Hotel Driskill, Austin. In addition to forty-three students and faculty members, there were present four honored guests: Dean W. J. Battle of the University of Texas, Rabbi Henry Cohen of Galveston, and Messrs. J. Koen and N. Davis of the Austin Jewish community. The opening address was delivered by the President of the Society, Mr. L. W. Moses, who traced the growth of the Menorah Society of Texas from its beginning in 1907 through its affiliation with the Intercollegiate organization and its consequently renewed vigor. Dean Battle, as head of the department of Greek in the University, spoke on "Hellenism and Hebraism," discussing the essential principles of the two cultures and comparing their influence on modern civilization. Mr. H. J. Ettlinger of the University Faculty elected as his subject, "The Menorah in Its Relation to Other Student Activities," and he elaborated on the many reasons why the Jewish student should select the Menorah Society as one of his extra-curricular activities. Rabbi David Rosenbaum of Austin and also of the University faculty, taking excellent advantage of his position as a representative of both the University and the community, gave an instructive talk on "What Judaism Expects of the Student."

Rabbi Henry Cohen, speaking eloquently on "Judaism as a Factor in Modern Life," took up each one of the Ten Commandments and summarized their influence on society to-day. A poem written especially for the occasion was read by Mr. Israel Chasmin, and piano selections were rendered by Miss Beatrice Burg and Miss Minna Rypinski. The program closed with the installation of officers for the year 1914-15.

We lost ten members by graduation last June, but our membership has none the less increased on account of the greater number of Jewish students at the University this year.

The opening meeting of the year was attended by fifty out of the fifty-eight Jewish students. In enthusiasm it resembled a football rally, and the new students caught the spirit of the occasion. Since then a number of other meetings have been held, with an average attendance of forty. At the first meeting, Professor L. M. Keasby of the Department of Institutional History gave an eminently just interpretation of Jewish history from the point of view of the economic development of mankind. At the next meeting, Israel Chasmin reviewed Dubnow's Essay on Jewish History. At the last meeting, Rabbi J. Bornstein of Houston, Texas, spoke on Jewish Music. We are looking forward to an illustrated lecture by Professor Gideon of the Department of Architecture on "The Architecture of the Synagogue, Past and Present."

Through the fund for local speakers which we are raising and through the aid of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association, we hope to have a speaker at least every month for the rest of the year.

The Menorah Library which we have received through the Intercollegiate Menorah Association is greatly appreciated by the University and will be of much help in the work of the Society.

H. J. ETTLINGER

University of Washington

IN the summer of 1913 several Jewish students met and discussed the feasibility of organizing a Jewish society on the campus. As a result, a meeting was called at the Y. M. H. A. rooms in the first week of the 1913-14 semester. Cards for the meeting had been sent to all men students known to be Jews. There was an enthusiastic discussion of the purposes of the meeting, and it was decided to effect a permanent organization, which should include the Jewish women students as well, and to begin active work. Our purposes were then somewhat different from what they are at present. We felt that if our union could bring about a better understanding between the various Jewish elements in the city of Seattle and throughout the State of Washington, we should be accomplishing something worth while. The fact that the student body itself was composed of these various elements would aid us, it was believed, to bring that result about speedily and effectively.

And so members of the Menorah Society joined the Jewish lodges in Seattle, Jewish synagogues, and the "Modern Hebrew School," so that they might effect their objects both from within as individual members and from without as the Menorah Society. Our members volunteered to teach at the Modern Hebrew School, an orthodox institution, one day in the week. The offer was accepted gladly and greatly appreciated. At the same school, a class was conducted by one of our members for the instruction of Jewish men in the fundamentals of citizenship, and over twelve of this class passed the examinations and secured their citizenship papers. Another member organized an athletic club among Jewish boys, and still another member did much valuable work at the Settlement House.

At the meetings of the Society, which were held in the quarters of Jewish organizations downtown and at members' homes, papers bearing on Jewish questions were read.

During the past summer it was felt that by affiliating with the Intercollegiate Menorah Association greater impetus would be given to our Society, and steps have already been taken for admittance into that body. President Henry Landes of the University has expressed, I believe, the favorable attitude of the whole University toward the Society, as shown in the letter quoted below.

This year we shall devote more time to the study of Jewish culture and ideals. A course of lectures is being arranged which will bring noted Jewish men of the Pacific Coast to our University. It is hoped also that we may have the benefit of speakers from the Intercollegiate Menorah Association. Of course, the work we began last year down town will be kept up, but it will now be done unofficially.

EIMON L. WIENIR

From a Letter of Acting President Henry Landes of the University of Washington to the Chancellor of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association:

"In behalf of the University it gives me great pleasure to endorse this movement and to assure you of the satisfactory university standing of the students who are members of the local society. The scholarship of the students is good, several of the number having obtained highest grades in most of their studies. I feel sure that the organization in every way is worthy of recognition by the Intercollegiate Menorah Association and that such recognition will be of great assistance to these and other students in the formation and conservation of the culture and ideals of the Jewish people. The University recognizes the large debt modern culture owes to these ideals and feels assured that the Menorah organization among us will be of the greatest assistance in keeping alive a keener consciousness of this fundamental part of our civilization.

"The University will be glad to assist the Association by permitting it to use University rooms for its meetings, under the usual regulations governing the use of rooms by student associations.

"Personally I shall be glad to co-operate in any way I can to make the work of the local Society successful.

"HENRY LANDES, "Acting President"



University of Wisconsin

TO have the student members of the Society furnish the largest part of the program has been the policy of the Wisconsin Menorah for the past two years. Because of its advantages, the same policy has been adopted for the current year.

In the past, the programs have been of a diverse nature, many phases of Hebrew life and letters having been touched upon. The program committee has put forth special efforts to assign to members those subjects in which they have special interest.

The work of the past year came to a close with a large banquet, at which Professor I. Leo Sharfman, Judge Max Pam of Chicago, and Professor Joseph Jastrow and Dr. H. M. Kallen of the Faculty of the University of Wisconsin gave short talks.

Although the Wisconsin Menorah may be said to be still in its infancy, there is no doubt that, with its membership, which includes both men and women, steadily increasing, it will soon be ranked high among the Menorah Societies of the Middle West.

FLORENCE J. ELLMAN

Yale University

AT a meeting held soon after the college opening, the Yale Menorah Society inaugurated what bids fair to be a most successful year. President Arthur T. Hadley addressed the meeting (for the address of President Hadley see above, page 45), as did also Professor Charles F. Kent of the Yale School of Religion.

Professor Kent said:—"It is a great pleasure for me to face the work of the new year with you, and it is a source of congratulation that the Menorah is no longer an innovation but an established institution at Yale. It seems a pity that Jews do not inherit Hebrew as a birthright, but fortunately the study of Hebrew history and ideals can proceed without this knowledge.

"Men must appropriate old ideas and interpret them into the terms of modern life and thought, for in the old we find the germ of the new. It is in Jewish history that we must look for the first true commonwealth or democracy, where the king was chosen by the people and where his authority was derived solely from and rested in the people. This has no ancient parallel, not even in Greece. International peace was also one of the great fundamental teachings of the prophets of Israel.

"Religious education is to be traced directly to the Jews,—and this is one of the great needs of America to-day. Not to the Greeks but to the prophets do we turn for religious education. Hebrew sages were the forerunners of the modern religious education movement, for they devoted their time to developing the moral and spiritual ideals and character of the individual. And then the great teacher of Nazareth was a Rabbi, a Jew. The social motif is exceedingly strong throughout Jewish history and literature. Social justice, social service, and the universal brotherhood of man are the dominant ideas in the Old Testament, and they constitute a heritage of priceless value to the world and to our country to-day.

"All success and joy to you in your work, for the Menorah fills a large gap in the life of the University."

We hold lecture meetings fortnightly. Among the speakers thus far have been Professor Richard Gottheil of Columbia University and Mr. Samuel Strauss of New York. In addition to these regular meetings study groups have been planned under the direction of Rabbi Louis L. Mann of the Temple Mishkan Israel of New Haven.

Mr. Norman Winestine who was last spring elected President for this year has been awarded a fellowship at the Dropsie College of Philadelphia and has therefore left the University. Mr. Charles Cohen has been chosen President to take Mr. Winestine's place. R. HORCHOW



Notes

Of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association

Third Annual Convention

The Third Annual Convention of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association took place at the University of Cincinnati on Wednesday and Thursday, December 23 and 24, 1914. A report will be published in the next number of the Journal.

Menorah Prize Awards

The Harvard Menorah Society Prize of $100, established by Mr. Jacob H. Schiff of New York, was awarded last May to Henry Epstein, '16, for an essay on "The Jews of Russia." The judges were Professor David Gordon Lyon of Harvard, chairman; Professor William R. Arnold of Harvard, and President Solomon Schechter of the Jewish Theological Seminary. This is the seventh award of the Harvard Menorah Society prize since its foundation in 1907-8. (For the list of previous awards, see The Menorah Movement, 1914, page 102.)

The Wisconsin Menorah Society Prize of $100, established in 1911-12 by Mr. Julius Rosenwald of Chicago, was awarded for the first time, in 1912, to Marvin M. Lowenthal (adult special student in Letters and Science) for an essay on "The Jew in the American Revolution." There was no competition in 1912-13, but last year the prize was divided into two equal parts and awarded to Hemendra Kisor Rakshir (senior in Letters and Science) for an essay on "The Jews and the Interest Rate in Angevin England," and Percy B. Shostac (senior in Letters and Science) for an essay on "A Short Survey of the Modern Yiddish Stage." The prize for 1913-14 was awarded again to Marvin M. Lowenthal for an essay on "Zionism." The Committee of Award consists of Professor R. E. N. Dodge, chairman, Professor E. B. McGilvary, and Professor M. S. Slaughter, of the University of Wisconsin. The chairman has stated that the Menorah prize is the best prize offered by the University of Wisconsin.

The Michigan Menorah Society Prize of $100 was established in 1912 by Mr. Julius Rosenwald of Chicago, but was not awarded the first year. Last year three prizes of $50 each were awarded, one to Paul Blanshard, '14, for an essay on "The Approach of Reformed Judaism to the Unitarian Movement in the United States," one to Miss Judith Ginsburg, '15, for an essay on "Disintegrating Forces in Contemporary Jewish Life," and one to Miss Sadie Robinson, '15, for a general discussion of Jewish problems upon the text of Proverbs 30, 13. The judges were Professor Robert E. Wenly, chairman, and Professor I. Leo Sharfman of the University of Michigan, and Rabbi Leo M. Franklin of Detroit, Mich.

Cornell Menorah Prizes

The Cornell Menorah Society offers this year the following prizes to the undergraduates of the University: a prize of $25 for the best essay on any subject relating to the status and the problems of the Jews in any country; a prize of $25 for the best essay on any subject relating to Jewish literature in English; and a prize of $25 for the best essay or poem in Hebrew. The judges will be Professor Nathaniel Schmidt of Cornell University, chairman; Professor M. M. Kaplan of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and Professor I. Leo Sharfman of the University of Michigan.

Gift from the Harvard Menorah Society

The Harvard Menorah Society has made a gift of $50 to the Intercollegiate Menorah Association. The sum is taken from the Associate Membership Fund of the Society. This Fund consists of the dues of associate members (graduates), "which shall be used exclusively for the substantive work of the Society" (Harvard Menorah Constitution, Article IV, section 4). The control of this Fund is in the hands of an advisory committee, consisting of the President of the Society and two associate members designated by the Executive Council of the Society.

* * * * *

Transcriber's Notes:

Page 14, "Ayran" changed to "Aryan" (of the Aryan peoples)

Page 29, in the original text the Hebrew letters were used without a translation. [Hebrew: kosher]

Page 35, "Judea" changed to "Judaea" (muse of Judaea)

Page 44, "ony" changed to "only" (Not only have the)

This text uses both to-day and today.



THE

MENORAH JOURNAL

VOLUME I APRIL, 1915 NUMBER 2



For Small Mercies

BY ISRAEL ZANGWILL

Thinking of Poland and her tortured Jews, 'Twixt Goth and Cossack hounded, crucified On either frontier, e'en the Pale denied, Wand'ring with bloodied staff and broken shoes, Scarred like their greatest son with stripe and bruise, Though thrice a hundred thousand fight beside Their Russian brethren and are glorified By death for those who flout them and abuse,—

I suddenly was touched to thankful tears. Not that one wave had ebbed of all this woe, Not that one heart had softened in "the spheres"[A] One touch of bureau-malice to forego, But that amid blind eyes, dumb mouths, deaf ears, One voice in England[B] said these things were so.



FOOTNOTES:

[A] Only permissible form of Russian reference to the Tsar and his Counsellors.

[B] The London Nation.



From Across the Seas

From Dr. Max Nordau

Madrid, Spain



I hail most cordially the appearing of THE MENORAH JOURNAL with the noble and impressive program which you develop. It shows your consciousness of the new duties of the rich, free and powerful American Jewry, your readiness to assume fully the moral responsibilities which your privileged position imposes upon you, and your comprehension of the needs of the present hour. Your journal seems the promising beginning of that organization in which we are so sorely wanting and without which we will achieve nothing in the forthcoming deep transformations of the old world.



From Dr. Moses Gaster

Chief Rabbi (Haham) Spanish and Portuguese Congregations of the British Empire



I am glad to see that you have brought out again the Menorah from the corner into which it had been thrust, that you have polished up the old candlestick, nay, even more, that you have trimmed the wick and poured the oil into the cup, that you are kindling a light which is to dissipate the darkness spiritual, more dangerous, more terrible than darkness physical. What our people really want is to be able to see that light of truth, that light of hope, of humanity, of knowledge, of idealism, which has been ours through the ages. We have never allowed our lamp to be extinguished, whether it burned in a remote corner in the ghetto, smoky, ill trimmed, even evil smelling; still there was the light sufficiently strong to illumine the pages of the Torah and the Talmud, even the pages of the writers of philosophy and science. It was quite sufficient if one lamp was kept alight. This is the greatness and the beauty of it,—that from one, one can kindle a thousand.

There is no limit to which the light cannot reach and there will be no limit, I hope, to the light which you will now spread. It will reach the remotest corner of the universities and schools of learning, nay, even more, it will bring everywhere a measure of knowledge and of truth, and above all it will illumine and warm. It will reach the eyes of those who have hitherto refused to see the beauty of their own past and the greatness of their own future. They may then learn to live in the present by the teaching of the past and by the hope of the future. Make both known.

In conclusion, I can only express the wish that you keep steadily and exclusively to Jewish questions, Jewish problems, Jewish learning. Make your readers know what they can find in Jewish literature and make the students of the various universities realize that in the libraries of Europe and America there are vast treasures accumulated which await the hand and the heart of the Jewish scholars. There are great and grave problems which await solution and the field is unlimited. Let them begin to till the ground of our own field, and turn the furrows and sow the seed, and the golden harvest is sure to repay them for their labor in the service of love and truth, and above all of devotion to Judaism.



From Norman Bentwich

Professor of International Law, School of Law, Cairo, Egypt



You are indeed happy in the moment of your appearance. I am not of those who regard this world war as a terrible catastrophe. I can see in it with God's grace the preparation of a great uplift of humanity and especially the coming of redemption for Israel. But the more glorious the vision of the future the greater the need of light, and more light, to illuminate the present and to enable the young generation to advance steadily towards the vision and make it reality. That is what I believe the function of THE MENORAH JOURNAL to be, and your first number is an earnest of the sincerity of your aim and the goodness of your means.

The Jewish people stand on the brink of a new era in which they are to resume their true function of the spiritual teacher of mankind. And American Jewry, it is a truism to say, has a vital and a leading part to play in moulding the destiny of the Jewish people. So we may adapt the old Rabbinic saying: "He who saves the soul of a single Jewish student is as though he saved the world." THE MENORAH JOURNAL in holding up the light of the Jewish spirit to the young men and women of America is doing the work of humanity.

May I express the hope that the Menorah Societies will direct the gaze of their members to the land of promise and the land of the prophets, where the inspiration of Judaism has always come and whither the hopes of Jewry have always turned. Living as I do, in the reflection of Palestine as well as in the shadow of the Pyramids, I am very conscious of the need for a continued Passover from the ideas of the various Egypts that beset the Jewish people to the message that calls us, in spirit if not in body, to the land of our fathers. To-day in Palestine the light has begun to shine brightly again. Judaism has relit there its prophetic lamp, which in centuries of stress and darkness has never been permitted to fade away altogether. In our own time the Menorah has been re-established in the Temple of the land by a new band of Maccabees. But a single branch, so to say, of the seven branches as yet shows its clear light. But if the Jewish youth wills it, the whole Menorah may be lighted and shine full and clear to the world with fresh lustre. In our day there may be a new Hanukka, a rededication of the Hebraic light—if only we will it.



The Jewish Problem Today

BY JACOB H. SCHIFF

[Illustration: JACOB HENRY SCHIFF (born in Frankfort-on-the-Main, Germany, in 1847, came to America in 1865), one of the world's leading bankers (senior member of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., New York), and a prince of philanthropists, noted for his personal devotion and munificent gifts to many causes for human betterment. He was among the first to encourage and befriend the Menorah movement, founding in 1907 the annual Menorah Society Prize at Harvard. The present article forms the approved substance of an interview granted by Mr. Schiff to the Editors of The Menorah Journal on March 4, 1915. Mr. Schiff's statement regarding the need for a separate Jewish Relief Fund is given special significance by the fact that he is Treasurer of the American Red Cross.]

It is hardly possible to exaggerate the horrors of the Jewish conditions in the war-stricken countries, especially in the three Polands. According to the reports we get, conditions in Russian Poland are such that Belgium's plight is a mere bagatelle in comparison. The Jewish people there have been outraged in the most terrible manner, both by the Poles who denounced them to the Russians as enemies and spies and then by the Russians themselves, who treated them as such. It is only after the Russian armies are forced to leave that the Jews are given protection by the Germans. In saying this I do not want to be misjudged, for it is well known that I am a German sympathizer. But the fact is that the Russians and the Poles alike have been inhumane to the Jewish population.

According to the latest reports, the conditions are not being improved in any way. And the relief so far has been entirely inadequate. It has never been adequate. We need millions for the immediate relief of our brethren, and so far only about half a million has been forthcoming from American Jews. This in spite of the fact that all parties and factions in Jewry are acting together in the work of relief, except only one organization, the B'nai B'rith, and for this there is some reason, because the B'nai B'rith have their own lodges abroad and they want evidently to apply their relief to their own members first.

"We Must Have a Jewish Relief Fund of Our Own"

We must have a Jewish Relief Fund of our own in addition to the Relief Funds for other people in the war-stricken countries, because the Jewish problem forms everywhere a problem of its own. It would be rather hard to say whether, were it not for the specific Jewish Relief Fund, the Jews would get as much relief as the other suffering people, but there is very little doubt that the Jews in the war-stricken districts, especially in Poland, have suffered a great deal more than the rest of the population. The Jews, therefore, need more relief, particularly as the civilian population has been against them.

Beyond the immediate measures for relief we can for the present do nothing. We must act from day to day. As the war goes on we must simply keep on trying to relieve the distress. As to what is in store after the war, I am unable to form a picture, at least so far as Russia is concerned. The hope is expressed that when peace is restored Russia will do better than heretofore for her large Jewish population. But we have been disappointed so often by Russia's promises that we should believe this only when actually done and not before. I have little confidence at all in the assertion that Russia will mend her way in the future.

"There Is Only One Way to Solve the Jewish Problem in Russia"

There is only one way to solve the Jewish problem in Russia and that is nothing less than the entire removal of the Pale. We must ever demand this and accept nothing else. When the Jew can go where he pleases, and trade where he pleases, and live where he pleases, the Jewish question in Russia will be solved. It is the government, the governing classes, in Russia that create the enmity towards the Jews. I believe there is no people anywhere who have at present or ever had less anti-Jewish feeling than the mass of Russian people. When once the pressure brought by the bureaucracy is removed and the Jews are permitted to have normal relations with the mass of the Russian population all over the country, the Jewish question will be a thing of the past.

The situation is different in Poland and Roumania, where the people themselves are anti-Semitic. It may appear strange at first that there should be such a difference between the Polish people and the Russian people in their attitude towards the Jews in their midst. But it may be easily explained. People who are oppressed generally become narrow by the oppression. The Poles and the Roumanians have had long to suffer from oppression to a great extent, the Poles from Russia and the Roumanians for many years from Turkey, from whose yoke they were freed only a few decades ago. It is generally a fact that when the servant becomes a master he makes the most intolerant master. Even if a Polish autonomous kingdom should be created, it could not be much worse for the Jewish population than it is now. But the Russian people have been happy. They have gotten used to their despotic government and do not feel it in particular, and they have little prejudice against their still greater oppressed Jewish neighbors.

The great numbers of Jews who have gone into the war and are fighting heroically will, I have no doubt, make a convincing demonstration of Jewish patriotism in every country, and that should make for an improvement of Jewish conditions all over, except possibly in Russia.

"I Am Afraid England Has Been Contaminated By Her Alliance With Russia"

But I am afraid that England too has been contaminated by her alliance with Russia, because England doesn't want to do anything that is displeasing to her ally, more through fear to offend her than through respect for her. So far, at least, it has not come true, as it was hoped in certain quarters, that England might apply pressure upon Russia to obtain an improvement in the condition of the Jews. And unfortunately the conditions in England itself affecting the Jews are certainly not as good now as they have been formerly. England has always been our great friend. In England there existed no such thing as anti-Semitism. But now there are, I fear, signs of a change.

In Germany the Jews do not suffer. They have a high standing and occupy many high positions. There has, it is true, always been a certain anti-Semitic tendency in Germany. But I think this war will crush out most of that, in fact all class differences. I am quite convinced that anti-Semitism in Germany is a thing of the past.

"When Peace Negotiations Begin, We Should Take United Action"

What part America and the American Jews should play in the efforts to bring about a permanent betterment of Jewish conditions elsewhere, it is hard to say. America has already gone pretty far by breaking off commercial treaty relations with Russia. Whether the United States could or should go further is difficult to judge at this time. It is certainly clear that the solution of the Jewish problem in Russia along the lines already suggested would solve the passport problem and would pave the way for the resumption of regular treaty and commercial relations between the two countries.

I do not think there is anything to do now for the Jews and for Jewish bodies in America except to work harmoniously together in the raising of relief funds. Of course, we must always be on the alert and ready to take a definite position whenever the proper time arrives. But not now. When peace negotiations begin to be talked about, I think it will be well for such bodies as the American Jewish Committee, possibly the B'nai B'rith and other organizations, to take united action. What action they should take it is hard to say. It is a very difficult question to decide at this moment whether or not it would be advisable to have special Jewish representatives present at the peace negotiations to look after the specific Jewish interests. Whatever influence should be brought to bear at the proper time should originate with the American Jewish Committee, which is the most suitable unifying Jewish agent in America to-day.

"Arouse the Jews of America From Their Apathy"

For the present, however, I repeat, what we need is to raise relief funds to a much larger extent than we have done so far. There has been too much apathy among the American Jews. They have done much less than at the time of the Kishineff massacres, when almost a million and a half was raised. Now, with conditions infinitely worse, we have thus far not been able to raise half as much as was readily given then. Unfortunately we have become used to horrors and they do not touch us any more as deeply as they should. Moreover, we have weighty and costly problems of our own at home. We have to expend such enormous sums for home problems that American Jewry seems unable to bear much more. But notwithstanding this more must be forthcoming. We Jews must give until it hurts, until it really becomes self-sacrifice; we must stir up our people to the terrible condition of our brethren abroad. And the Menorah Societies, which represent the most intelligent and idealistic Jewish youth of the land, should do their share in making known the tragic conditions and in arousing the Jews of America from their apathy.



Nationality and the Hyphenated American

BY HORACE M. KALLEN

[Illustration: HORACE MEYER KALLEN (born in Silesia, Germany, in 1882, came to America in 1887), studied at Harvard (A. B., Ph.D.), Princeton, Oxford, and Paris. He has been assistant and lecturer in philosophy at Harvard, instructor in logic at Clark University, and since 1911 of the faculty of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin. At the request of the late William James, he edited his unfinished book on "Some Problems of Modern Philosophy." Besides contributing to philosophical and general periodicals, Dr. Kallen is the author of a recently published book on "William James and Henri Bergson." Dr. Kallen was one of the founders of the Harvard Menorah Society, and has rendered signal service, both by tongue and pen, to the Menorah movement.]

The United States of America are at peace with all the world. Our government is not taking sides in the great war; officially we are the friends of all the embattled powers. And yet—we have but to take up any newspaper, anywhere in America, to find violent praise of one side, violent blame of the other. The sentiment of our country is divided. On all sides, our diverse populations are emphasizing afresh their European origins and background. The German in German-American, the Slav in Slavic-American, the Briton in British-American, have awakened, have become demonstrative and emphatic. The President, observing this, has declared his official and personal boredom with the "hyphenated American," and the conception expressed in this phrase has become an issue in the written and spoken discourse of our country.

Why, in an officially neutral country, has this come to pass? When we look closely to the ground and principle of the division of sentiment in our population, we discover this significant fact: the division is not truly determined by the merits of the European issue; it is determined by the lines of our population's European origin and ancestral allegiance. The Americans of German and Austrian and Magyar ancestry are pro-German; those of French or British or Russian ancestry favor the Allies. Only the Jews seem to be an exception to this rule. Being mainly from Russia, their favor should go to the Russians, but their newspapers, almost without exception, favor the Germans. The case of the Jews, however, is an exception that proves the rule. Although the majority of them came from Russia, they have had no part in the Russian polity; they have been oppressed, persecuted, terrorized, as their brethren still are in Russian territory. As Americans, what portion and what hope have they in Russia that they should desire Russian victory? None. But they are not for this reason in favor of Germany. The headlines of their newspapers do not celebrate German victories, but Russian defeats. The Ghetto's partiality to Germany is a consequence of its loyalty to Jewry. Kinship of blood and race, ancestral allegiance, determine with the Jewish masses in America also, what side they take in this war. Although they have no political background in Europe, and their civil allegiance is absolutely American, they too are hyphenated in sentiment—Jewish-Americans.

Such is the fact. Its significance lies in what it reveals, and what it reveals is a force much deeper and more radical, distinctly more primitive and original, than anything else in the structure of society. It hyphenates English and Germans and Austrians and Russians and Turks no less than it hyphenates Americans, and, in the failure of the external socio-political organization of Europe to give it free play, it is the chief, almost the only, cause of the present unendurable European tragedy. Its name is nationality.

Two Mosaics of Nationalities: A Contrast

Nationality is not nationhood, although it is the most important constituent of nationhood. Many nationalities may compose a nation (such is the case of the British, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Turkish Empires, of the Swiss Republic, of our own Union), and then the relation between the nationalities will determine the strength or the weakness of the nation. Again, a single nationality may be divided among many nations (such is the case of the Poles, of the Serbs and other Slavs, of the Jews), and then the stability of the nations will be largely determined by their effect on the nationalities divided among them.

The Swiss Republic, for example, is a nation composed of three nationalities, two of which belong to powers at war with each other. These are the French and the German; the third is the Italian. Yet the nationhood of Switzerland is the most integral and unified in Europe to-day, because Switzerland is as complete and thorough a democracy as exists in the civilized world, and the efficacious safeguard of nationhood is democracy not only of individuals but of nationalities. The German, French and Italian citizens of the Swiss Republic are to-day under arms to defend the neutrality of their nation from possible violation by German, French or Italian belligerents, and in defending their nation, they are defending also the autonomy of each other's nationality. In Switzerland, nationhood, being democratic, is the safeguard and insurance of nationality.

Contrast Swiss nationhood with Austro-Hungarian nationhood. Austria-Hungary is the immediate and direct occasion of the great war by reason of the fact that, although she is a mosaic of nationalities like Switzerland, her government, instead of being a democracy, has in the long run been directed toward the control and exploitation of many nationalities by one or two. Hungary contains a population of seven million Magyars among twelve million Slavs; yet the Hungarians, having the economic and political upper hand, have sought to Magyarize by force and trickery this almost doubly greater and culturally equal population. They have tried to compel Magyar forms and standards in language, in literature, in history, the arts, the sciences, religion, law, in every intimate or remote concern of the daily life and national genius of their Slavic subjects. The result has been the steady disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian mosaic, the increasing use of force to hold it together, the corresponding increase of restlessness among the subject-peoples, plot and counterplot, the assassination of the Archduke, and the attack on Serbia, which precipitated the war. In this war Austria has come off worst of all the combatants, and for the same reason: the attempt to maintain the unity of a nation of nationalities by the force of one of them instead of by the democratic cooeperation of all. In Austria-Hungary, nationality, having been exploited and suppressed, has been the enemy and destroyer of nationhood.

America A Commonwealth of Nationalities

In this country the whole spirit of those institutions which constitute American nationhood makes for the liberation and harmonious cooeperation of nationalities. This spirit is also a part of the Hebraic spirit, a part of the explicit program of our prophets, those champions and vindicators of social justice and international righteousness and peace; and this, significantly, is the spirit that literally inspired the democracy of our America.

For the democracy of America had its first articulate voicing in the Pilgrim Fathers and the Puritans of New England. These men and women, devoted to the literature of the Old Testament, and upheld by the ancestral memories of the Jews, were moved to undertake their great American adventure by the ideal of nationality. It was not because of an overwhelming oppression of body and soul that the Pilgrims adventured to America. It was not "freedom to worship God" that they sought. They had that in Holland. They sought freedom to be themselves, to realize their national genius in their own individual way. Their English manners, English speech, English history, and English loyalty were, in fact, more important to them than their Hebrew Bible. They used that as the spiritual pabulum which nourished their English corporate life. Their Calvinism was a reinterpretation of its prophetic nationalism expressed in the doctrine of the "chosen people"; their political institutions were a modification of the ideal political order it was supposed to reveal. As Cotton Mather narrates, his grandfather, John Cotton, found, on his arrival in New England, that the population was much exercised over the framing of a "civil constitution." They turned to him for help, begging "that he would, from the laws wherewith God governed his ancient people, form an abstract of such as were of a moral and lasting equity." So "he propounded unto them an endeavor after a theocracy, as near as might be to that which was the glory of Israel." Out of this beginning the democratic mood of America surges; in such conceptions the ideals which express the mood have their origins. These ideals are the conservation of nationality, and the equality of men before the inconceivable supremacy of their God. Hebraism and English nationality—these are the spiritual background of the American commonwealth.

Political freedom in America has tended to generate self-expression of each national group, and our country is to-day, broadly speaking, a great cooeperative commonwealth of nationalities, British, French, German, Slavic, Jewish, each freely developing, in so far as it is self-conscious, its national genius, its language, literature and art in its own characteristic way as its best contribution to the civilization of America as a whole,[C] realizing in this way the ideal of the democracy of nationalities, of international comity and cooeperation which our prophets were the first to formulate.

American nationhood, thus, is in the way of becoming what Swiss nationhood fully is, the liberator and protector of nationality; its democracy is its strength, and its democracy is "hyphenation." "Hyphenation" may, it is true, become perverse. As an expression of the cooeperation of nationality with nationality in the life of the State, it is inevitable and good; as an attempt to subordinate all nationalities to one, to use all for the advantage of one, it is partial, undemocratic, disloyal. Our nation is a democracy of nationalities having for its aim the equal growth and free development of all. It can take no sides. To require it to take sides, German or Anglo-Saxon, Slavic or Jewish, is to be untrue to its spirit and to pervert its ideal.

The Renaissance of Nationality in the Past Century

It is the attempt of one nationality to dominate and to impose its character, culture and ideals upon others that has been the basis of all the great wars in Europe, of all international injustice from the beginning of history.

The movement in modern history which we call progressive has been a movement toward democracy in both the internal affairs and external relationships of nations. Men did not realize its entire significance until the nineteenth century; only then did it come to full consciousness in fact and idea, urged equally in Greece, in Germany, in Ireland, in Italy. Its great voice is the Italian thinker and patriot, Mazzini. In a marvelous essay entitled "Europe, Its Condition and Its Prospects," he wrote, at a time when the hope of social and international democracy seemed extinguished: "They struggled, they still struggle, for country and liberty; for a word inscribed upon a banner, proclaiming to the world that they also live, think, love and labor for the benefit of all. They speak the same language, they bear about them the impress of consanguinity, they kneel beside the same tombs, they glory in the same tradition; and they demand to associate freely, without obstacles, without foreign domination, in order to elaborate and express their idea, to contribute their stone also to the great pyramid of history. It is something moral which they are seeking; and this moral something is in fact, politically speaking, the most important question in the present state of things. It is the organization of the European task. In principle, nationality ought to be to humanity that which division of labor is in a workshop—the recognized symbol of association; the assertion of the individuality of a human group called by its geographical position, its traditions and its language, to fulfill a special function in the European work of civilization."

Modern Europe saw the overthrow of the Holy Roman Empire, of the imperial aspirations of Louis XIV, and of Napoleon before it realized the natural fact and moral principle which underlay these overthrows, and which finally so successfully asserted themselves as to unify Italy and cast off the Austrian dominion, to liberate Greece, Bulgaria, Roumania and the other Balkan States from the Turk, to unify and create contemporary Germany. The last quarter of the nineteenth century saw the renaissance, often in the face of overwhelming suppression, of the language and cultures of Czechs, Bohemians, Poles, Irish and Jews. It saw the rise of nationalism in the Oriental dependencies of Great Britain. It saw the beginning of an acknowledgment of the full rights of nationalities by both Austria and Great Britain, the grant of local autonomy to the various nationalities in the Austrian Empire, of progressive home rule to India and South Africa and Ireland. The twentieth century seemed to be moving peacefully toward the fulness of democracy—when came the war.

The Present War: Nationality vs. Imperialism

Let no one be deceived into believing that this war is a struggle for the economic domination of the world, springing from commercial rivalry and industrial intrigue. No. Nothing is so international as economic life—we in America know that now to our own cost also—and if commercial interests and capitalistic counsels had had their say, there would have been no war. England was Germany's best customer, France her great creditor, Russia supplied her with unskilled labor. The socialist international was against war, the peace party was against it, the intelligence of the world was against it. When it came, it shattered all these international organizations into national units, it smashed the solidarity of even science and art, which are the most international enterprises in the world. And why? Because its cause was something deeper than economic interest or the other secondary interests. Here is the question that the war is to decide: Is the whole of mankind to be dominated in body and in spirit, without its consent, by a portion of it, and to be compelled "to elaborate and express the idea" of the portion? or is the whole of mankind to be self-governed, in a cooeperative commonwealth, each part of which, by elaborating and expressing its own idea, contributes its best to the whole?

This is the issue between the warring powers and each claims that it is defending itself against the aggression of its opponents. Each claims to be fighting for democracy. In the face of these claims, history has the deciding voice. Now, historically, England, more than any other power, has stood for the democratic and cooeperative idea. Her colonies have autonomy, her more backward dependencies are encouraged toward autonomy. Since the Boer war, when imperialism passed away, she has moved toward the position of Switzerland. Even Ireland has obtained home rule. "We are a great world-wide, peace-loving partnership," said Mr. Asquith,[D] has reiterated again and again the principle for which all the Allies are fighting: believing that "the preservation of local and national ties, of the genius of a people which has a history of its own, is not only not hostile to or inconsistent with, but on the contrary, fosters and strengthens and stimulates the spirit of a common purpose, of a corporate brotherhood," the Allies seek to defend public right, to find and to keep "room for the independent existence and free development of the smaller nationalities, each with a corporate consciousness of its own . . . and, perhaps, by a slow and gradual process, the substitution for force, for the clash of competing ambitions, for groupings and alliances and a precarious equipoise, of a real European partnership, based on equal right and enforced by a common will."[E]

It is hard to believe that Russia can be fighting for such an end. Fear of Russian barbarism is what brought Germany into the lists, the Germans declare, to defend western ideals and western democracy. Yet Russian government is Prussian in its organization, and it is on the side of the ideal of western democracy that she is explicitly aligned. The contradiction is striking, and it is still more striking when we recall that in her armies are over a quarter of a million of Jews, and that in the other armies there are half as many more. For the Jews the war is more than civil; it is fratricide. On the face of it they have no inevitable personal or political stake in the war's fortune. England has acknowledged their "corporate consciousness" and given them maximal opportunity for "free self-development"; so has France. Russia has oppressed and horribly exploited them; Germany, though infinitely better than Russia, has set them conditions in which "free development" is synonymous with complete Germanization. Austria and Turkey have dealt with them somewhat after the manner of England and France. The contradiction of the Jewish position outdistances that of the Russian. But both contradictions are resolved in the fact that the ideal in question concerns not Russia alone, nor England alone, nor the Jews alone, but the whole of Europe, the whole world. What is at stake is not something local, personal, political, but a universal principle, the goal toward which mankind has been so slowly and deviously crawling from the beginnings of modern history—the principle of democracy in nationality and nationality in democracy.

It is for this that our brethren in the armies are fighting; it is for this that they are undergoing crucifixion in the Pale, for this that our people have suffered and died from the beginnings of our history. Our whole recorded biography is the narrative of a struggle for social justice against the exploitation of class by class within our polity, for nationality against imperialism without. Our statesmen and leaders were the first to formulate the ideal of the cooeperative harmony of nationality, and the ideal of international peace.[F] Mr. Asquith is echoing our prophets, and our embattled brethren are engaged in the defence of a principle which is the constituent of the genius of their own nationality.

The Service of Jewish Nationality to Civilization

The genius of their own nationality! That with all its implications is an issue in the war not only as a principle but as a fact. The Jewish people are the great historic incarnation of the casus belli. In fortune and in disaster, through difficult and terrible centuries, they have cherished their language, their history, their culture, have sustained their "corporate consciousness" and in terms of it have served civilization in all the institutions of civilization. Not freely, not by free development; not because of conditions, but in spite of them. The Bible, whose moral vision inspires the world, we gave the world only as we had or yearned for "independent existence" and "free development." Our best, like the best of every people, has been a function of this "independent existence and free development." We also, scattered among the nations, tortured and oppressed by the mighty and the weak among them, are among "the smaller nationalities" for whose sake the war is being fought. With Serbia, with Belgium, with Poland, we claim our public right and our national security, and we claim it not merely for ourselves, but for the service of all mankind. For as we have had a role "in the organization of the European task," so we still have a role, and in that division of the labor of civilization in terms of nationality we have our task to accomplish, our service to render. This task, this service, is the expression of the Jewish idea, the flowering and fruitage of the Hebraic spirit, which, rooted in our historic past, planted on our national soil, shall realize in modern terms, in social organization, in religion, in the arts and the sciences, a national future that by its inward excellence will truly make Israel "a light unto the nations."

The indispensable condition for such a realization is autonomous nationality; not nationhood, necessarily, but autonomy. This, more than civil rights among other nationalities, is our stake in this great war. In the last analysis, the Hebraic culture and ideals which our Menorah Societies study, can be advanced, can be a living force in civilization, only as a national force. Our duty to America, inspired by the Hebraic tradition,—our service to the world, in whatever occupation,—both these are conditioned, in so far as we are Jews, upon the conservation of Jewish nationality. That is the potent reality in each of us, our selfhood, and service is the giving of the living self. Let us so serve mankind; as Jews, aware of our great heritage, through it and in it strong to live and labor for mankind's good.



I think I see in your Society a recognition of the real spirit of our country's motto, e pluribus unum. That does not mean a sinking of the differences between us all into absolute uniformity, but rather the harmony that can result from the recognition of these differences and developing our own individualities so that we shall have variety in unity.—From an Address before the Yale Menorah Society by Professor Benjamin W. Bacon of Yale University.

FOOTNOTES:

[C] For a fuller treatment of this point compare in the New York Nation for February 18 and 25, 1915, the author's articles on "Democracy Versus the Melting Pot."

[D] Cardiff Speech, 2d October, 1914.

[E] Dublin Speech, 25th September, 1914.

[F] Cf. Isaiah, II, 2-4; XIX, 23-25; XI, 6-9; LXV, 17-25, etc.



Yankee and Jew

An After-Dinner Address

BY G. STANLEY HALL

President of Clark University



I feel an unwonted embarrassment in speaking to you to-night, first because the light After-Dinner View of Life, which is my theme on your program, is far from being serious enough, and I must totally abandon my plan and speak entirely extemporaneously, although upon a subject in which I have an old and strong interest.

Again, I am always embarrassed in talking to members of your race because I feel a little as Napoleon did when he told his soldiers in Egypt that forty generations looked down on them from the top of the Pyramids. You know your ancestry in general back for thousands of years, and I am rarely fortunate in being able to go back as much as nine or ten generations to the Puritans of the "Mayflower," but there I stop and everything before that is a blank. David Starr Jordan tells us in his book that there is perhaps no man alive who has not kings or queens in his ancestry, but adds that we all have had murderers among our predecessors, too.

There Is Much In Common Between Yankee and Jew

There is much in common between the Yankees, whom I represent, and the Jews, and this alone ought to give us a friendly feeling toward one another. We are both misunderstood and caricatured. The Yankee stands for a peculiar sort of closeness in money matters and a shrewdness which has even given its slang name to a neighboring New England State, the "Nutmeg State." Perhaps we have both done too much in the past to deserve this reputation for super-cleverness. One of you has referred to the fact that there are Jews who do not like to acknowledge their race. In that respect we are alike, for there are many Yankees who are ashamed of being known as such. Long years ago, when I was a student in Germany, I was introduced one evening to a young German countess. She said in her broken English, "I am so glad to meet an American. I have heard you have many funny people there, the Dago, the Paddy, the Nigger, and many more; but I have heard that the lowest people there are what they call the 'damn Yankees.' How I would like to see one of them!" This, bear in mind, was soon after our Civil War, and she received her impression of us doubtless from Confederates. I did not have the courage to acknowledge my nationality to her, but diverted the topic to some of the other people she had mentioned.

The old New England Puritan taught sternly. He was a patriarchal head of his family. In my boyhood, Saturday evening or perhaps better Thanksgiving Day, when their descendants all gathered together as long as either of the grandparents lived, we had an illustration of something very like Heine's touching picture of an old Jewish peddler who worked hard through the week, but on Friday night put on his long black coat and his three-cornered hat, lit the seven candles at the table, and told his children and grandchildren how Jehovah had led His people through the wilderness, and how the Egyptians and all the other naughty people who persecuted them were long since dead, while the chosen race survived. And so happy in his race was this poor peddler and so proud of his pedigree that, as Heine says, had the great Rothschild entered at that moment and asked him what favor he could do, he would reply simply: "Stand out of my light, that I may finish telling the law to my children."

The Eugenics of the Jewish Race

We Puritans were brought up on the Old Testament, the spirit of which, far more than that of the New, pervaded the life of old New England. Every day after breakfast, no matter how busy the season or how late the breakfast, my grandfather read to the assembled family a chapter from the Old Testament, and perhaps remarked upon certain passages. After graduating from college and when I became a tutor in a prominent Hebrew family in New York, and especially when I had to teach the children their Sunday school lessons and freshen up the small knowledge of the Hebrew language that I had, I realized very keenly how closely related were the Jews to the Yankees,—with this tremendous difference, that you are increasing in numbers while we are decreasing.

As I read the Old Testament, the substance of the covenant with Abraham was that if he kept Jehovah's law, his seed would be multiplied like the stars of Heaven. This placed society and life in that early day squarely on a eugenic basis, for it makes the number and success of good children the supreme test of every human institution, activity, and every kind of culture. This I take it is one of the chief characteristics of your race, and I hope it may long be so.

I am going to avail myself of this opportunity to say a few words about a topic that has for centuries been a point of the very greatest difference and tension between your people and mine, namely, the character and work of Jesus. Please do not be shocked till you hear what I have to say. Such of us psychologists as have recently been interested in the psychological aspect of Jesus' life and work understand, as had never been understood before, how purely Jewish he was. Scholars have lately given to his figure a radically new interpretation.

"An Extremely Representative Man of Your Race"

According to many conceptions the chief trait of Jesus was a strong and deep enthusiasm for the loftiest things of life. He was a little ecstatic all the time, illustrating the higher powers of man. His soul was unconquerable by misfortune and disaster, like that of the Jewish race itself. He was also organizing victory out of defeat, and his greatest triumph was over death itself. Some think that his youthful dreams and ideals were to be an agrarian lord of a manor, or a grand country gentleman of the Jewish order, making contracts with servants, leasing out farms and vineyards, giving feasts, and the like, for more than half the parables pertain directly or indirectly to such a vocation. But this youthful dream he was unable on account of poverty and his station in life to realize; so two very natural changes took place in his soul. He came to hate the rich because they were wasting their opportunities and never doing anything; but far more important, he developed from these juvenile reveries his world-transforming ideas of the kingdom, which created the church, visible and invisible, and re-made society.

The Jews are never beaten; if checked in their aspirations they, like the prophets in the days of captivity, strike out in higher and nobler ways. Thus you ought to be proud of Jesus for, as he is now being understood, he was an extremely representative man of your race. The real enemies of the Jews are now claiming that no such man ever lived, which is the view of Drews and his school, some holding that he was a deliberate invention of the early decades of the first century, and others, like Jensen, that he was a revived Babylonian myth. But these new views show that Jesus was not an Aryan, as a few of the pan-Germanists have claimed, but a typical Semite. It does look now, in view of the teachings of such men as Gobineau and various of his successors, that the Aryans are the highest and best people in the world and that the Germans are the very best of all the Aryans, that it is Germany that has come to consider itself the chosen people, the elite, superior race. But certainly Germany is not very Christian. It was only converted in the thirteenth century, and Luther soon threw off the fully developed Christianity of Rome. Since then we have had the Tuebingen School, that resolved everything into myth, and the very many other negative points of view expressed in Nietzsche's supremest condemnation of Jesus as a wretched degenerate, while Wagner's deliberate slogan was, "Das Deutschtum muss das Christentum siegen."

The Rapprochement of Jew and Gentile in America

I wonder if the time is not near at hand when your people will reconstruct your conceptions so much as to recognize Jesus as a typical, golden, Jewish youth, worthy of being an ideal for young men. We certainly do have in his life as now interpreted exactly what youth needs above all things,—ambition, enthusiasm, idealism, all of them absorbing, all of them diverting physical and sensuous energy into the very highest culture sphere, sublimating desire, and making us understand that youth is not complete without a great effort at achievement. The very essence of youth is excitement. There must be tension, strain, a tiptoe attitude, a strong "Excelsior"-like ambition to climb, and a corresponding horror of inferiority, Miderwertigkeit. Youth is an age of idealism, and the tension decade of adolescence needs a regimen and an idealization all its own, to set back-fires to temptation. Instead of the current altogether too plain talk on sex hygiene and teaching, we must realize that every enthusiasm or real interest, be it in the multiplication table or in literature, debate, athletics, is an alternative. It reduces temptation and stores up energy as the great reservoirs in the middle west store up the floods that come down from the mountains, so that they shall irrigate and not devastate the land. Jesus, in the new interpretation of Holzmann and Baumann, stands for this kind of enthusiasm.

I cannot but wonder, therefore, whether, in view of these new conceptions, Jew and Gentile are not going to meet in this country and even agree about Jesus. It is difficult at least to see which of us would change most if there were this rapprochement. We must neither of us abandon our birthright. We must be the very best Puritan Anglo-Saxons we possibly can, and you must be the best Jews possible, for out of these component elements American citizenship is made up. This country stands for the dropping of old prejudices, such as those that are inflaming Europe now with war. If we can satisfy each other's ideals and meet half way the thing is done, and the melting pot which America stands for has got in its work. I want the Menorah Society to feel that it is in the van of this movement.



"Golden Rule" Hillel

BY MOSES HYAMSON

[Illustration: MOSES HYAMSON (born in Suwalki, Russia, in 1863, came to England in childhood). Rabbi and jurist; educated at Jews' College and University College of London; for thirteen years Senior Dayan of the London Beth-Din (Jewish Court of Arbitration), in which capacity, because of his erudition in both the Jewish and the common law, he rendered notable service to the British community. In 1913 he accepted a call from the Congregation Orach Chayim of New York. Besides being a contributor to the Jewish Quarterly Review and other learned publications, Dr. Hyamson has published "The Oral Law and Other Sermons" (1901), and an annotated edition of the medieval "Collatio Romanorum et Mosaicarum Legum" (1912).]

As the students and teachers in the famous school of Shemaya and Abtalion assembled for worship one wintry Sabbath morning, they were astonished to find their lecture-hall exceptionally dark. On looking up they descried what seemed to be a human form lying prone across the skylight. Willing feet ascended the roof and willing hands swept away the snow from a young lad's half-frozen form. They brought him down, and although it was the holy Sabbath, kindled a fire to revive the chilled body. "Worthy is Hillel," they exclaimed, "that the Sabbath should be desecrated for his sake!"

So runs the Talmudic tale. The incident happened in Palestine in the century before the common era. The boy Hillel had come from his obscure home in Babylon, bent upon study at the most famous school in Palestine, whose teachers, Shemaya and Abtalion, were heads of the Synhedrion, the Supreme Court of Jurisdiction. Poor and proud, Hillel supported himself by manual labor while he was securing his education. Like Abraham Lincoln, he was a woodchopper. One half of the small amount he earned daily served for his meals, and the other half he paid to the porter at the college for his admission in the evening. On this short Friday in mid-winter he had been able to earn nothing, and in his keen anxiety not to miss the lecture and discussion, he clambered to the roof of the college hall, braving snow and cold for the words of the living God as expounded by his teachers.

Within a few short years Hillel himself had succeeded his teachers as the head of this famous school, and also as President of the Synhedrion. Hillel's career is a shining example of the democratic principle which has always prevailed in Jewish life, of the opportunity open to all men of talents, however humble their origin, to achieve position in the republic of Jewish learning. And learning combined with noble character, as in the case of the great Hillel, carried authority in Jewish life. It is true that Hillel was not without letters patent of nobility; though he came from poverty and obscurity and from an alien land, he was, according to tradition, of the blood of David. It is not, however, to this accident of birth, known only later, that Hillel owed his quick rise and supreme eminence in Jewish life, but to his distinguished attainments, to his profound learning not only in the Jewish Law but in many secular fields of knowledge, to his bold and original mind combined with a pious devotion to tradition, to his indomitable energy and industry, his nobility of character, his sympathy with the people and his understanding of their needs.

"What To Thee Is Hateful Do Not Unto Another"

It was Hillel who first enunciated the Golden Rule, although in negative form. The story that is told in the Talmud is one of the most familiar; yet no repetition can lessen its point and charm. A heathen, it is related, came to Shammai, the leader of a rival school, requesting to be received into Judaism and instructed in the whole of the religion while he stood upon one leg. Shammai, an architect by profession, threatened the heathen with his builder's measuring rod and drove him out. The man went to Hillel with the same request. Hillel, gentle, patient, democratic, received the man hospitably and answered: "The whole of Judaism can be summarized in one short sentence: 'What to thee is hateful do not unto another.' That is the essence of the whole Torah; the rest is commentary."

And in the interpretation of that "commentary" which, together with the Torah itself, enshrined the spirit of Judaism and made it a throbbing reality in the life of the nation, Hillel brought out the humanity of every regulation, the true intent behind it, whenever literal enforcement would have worked hardship or might have defeated its true intent because of the changed circumstances since its enactment. While keeping faithfully within the spirit of Jewish tradition, Hillel struck out into innovations, new precedents and legal institutions, which testified at once to the remarkable insight and boldness of his mind as a jurist and to his tact and sympathy as a leader of the people. Some of his innovations anticipate in a striking way the developments under similar circumstances of the common law of England and the United States many centuries later.

Hillel As A Jurist: His Sense of Social Justice

For example, it happened that the first year after Herod's accession was a Sabbatical year, which, according to the Deuteronomic provision (Deut. 15, 2), set up a Statute of Limitations and effectively barred the recovery of all debts. The people, impoverished by the exactions of the Government and by the failure of the harvest, were compelled to have recourse to money lenders. But those who were able to accommodate the needy were reluctant to do so on account of the imminence of the Sabbatical year and its legal bar to the recovery of past debts. Hillel's keen mind and sympathetic heart found a way out of this difficulty. He set up the institution of the Prosbul, by which a creditor received the right, when making a loan, to register the debt in court. In this way the great jurist anticipated in a remarkable manner a principle accepted so many centuries later in the common law of England and America, namely, that the Statute of Limitations does not apply to recorded judgments. Such judgments can always be sued on and recovered. And so the new ordinance established by Hillel removed the hardship of the Biblical enactment, the purpose of which was humanitarian. By Hillel's innovation, the true spirit of that law was maintained, and applied in accordance with its real intent in an age when the economic conditions were vastly different from the time when the law itself was established. Our modern lawyers and reformers in this country may well take a leaf out of this progressive conservatism of our great democratic teacher Hillel.

Other decisions of Hillel equally significant could be cited. To lawyers especially, the study of them is fascinating; they are full of startling relevancy in the present time of unrest and agitation for legal reform in this country. And not without reason. What we are keen for now is a greater measure of social justice in a democratic community. A study of Hillel's jurisprudence—both the theory and the decisions affecting the workaday life of the people—will give one an appreciation not only of the beautiful spirituality of the master, his erudition and his imagination, but the characteristic coalition of letter and spirit, the emphatic sense of social justice, which has prevailed in the whole system of Jewish law.

Hillel's Public Spirit and Humanity

Thus Hillel, while head of his famous school of instruction, became the founder of a school in another sense—a school of interpretation of the Torah. This school, as already indicated, was marked by a leniency and elasticity of interpretation of the traditional law quite in contrast to the harshness and rigidity of the contemporary school of Shammai; it is the school of Hillel, leaning to the spiritual and the humane, that has prevailed ever since in Jewish law. Hillel made the people realize the truth of the famous text about the Torah: "It is a tree of life to them that grasp it, and of them that uphold it, everyone is rendered happy. Its paths are paths of pleasantness and all its ways are peace." Those who have mistakenly conceived the Jewish law as something dour and rigid, unlovable, unspiritual, should study the decisions and dicta of this great master.

Hillel's character is illustrated by a number of pregnant sayings of his that have been recorded in the Talmud. "Do not separate yourself from the community," was one of his characteristic sayings which genuinely expressed his public spirit. His sense of individual and social responsibility is summed up in his three famous questions: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am for myself alone, what am I? And if not now, when?" His peace-loving nature and humanity found voice in his counsel: "Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace, pursuing peace, loving God's creatures and bringing them near to the knowledge of the Law." His disinterestedness, his liberal pursuit of the Law, that is, of knowledge, made him confidently say: "He who aggrandizes his name, his name shall perish. He who does not add to his store of learning and good deeds will suffer diminution. He who does not teach deserves death. He who uses the crown of the Law for selfish needs and personal advancement will be destroyed." Who had a better right than Hillel, graduate of poverty, to warn his contemporaries: "Do not say I shall learn when I will have leisure; perhaps you never will have leisure." And in every case, even when the conduct of a man seems most reprehensible, as when one of his colleagues Menahem left the Synhedrion to take service under the tyrant Herod, Hillel holds to this advice: "Judge not thy neighbor until thou art in his place."

Many a tale is narrated of Hillel's patience, unfailing courtesy and tact, tolerance and humility, even under the greatest provocation. The man who bet 400 Zuz that he would break Hillel's patience by silly and far-fetched questions lost his own temper at the consideration with which he was treated. And so the proverb became current, "Patience is worth 400 Zuz." And other tales are told of Hillel's considerate dealing with heathens who wished to embrace Judaism, in contrast to the harsh treatment meted out to them by his contemporary Shammai.

Sage and Saint

His perfect consideration and charity had in it even something of the quixotic. When a man came to him for assistance, he was wont to help him according to his previous position in life. Thus, in one instance where a man had formerly enjoyed great wealth but had suffered reverses, Hillel not only provided for him according to his previous standard of living but, it is related, even hired a horse for the man to ride on and a footman to run before him. It is added that on one occasion, when Hillel could not obtain a runner, he himself served in that capacity.

His wife, we learn, was a fit helpmeet to the sage and saint. Their domestic life was a perfect harmony. Once on returning from a journey Hillel heard a sound of quarreling in the neighborhood of his house. "I am certain," said he, "that this noise does not proceed from my home." On another occasion Hillel sent his wife a message to prepare a sumptuous meal for an honored guest. At the appointed hour Hillel and his guest arrived. But the meal was not ready. "Why so late?" asked Hillel. "I prepared a banquet," the wife replied, "according to your desire. But I learned that a couple were to be wedded to-day and they were too poor to provide a marriage feast, so I gave them our meal for their wedding banquet." "Ah, my dear wife, I guessed as much."

But the greatest and most constant hospitality was shown by Hillel to a guest who was always with him and uppermost in his thoughts. Every day it was his habit to withdraw for a while for private meditation. "Whither art thou going?" asked his colleagues and disciples. "I have a guest to whom I must show attention." "Who is this guest?" "My soul," was the solemn reply; "to-day it is with me, to-morrow the heavenly visitant may be departed and returned home."

Is it any wonder that, after forty years of activity in the Patriarchate, when Hillel died (in the year 10 of the common era), men said of him: "Meek and humble-minded, a saint has departed from among us, a disciple of Ezra the Scribe." The title fitted his career, for he came like Ezra from Babylon to Palestine and like Ezra he restored the Law when it was threatened with destruction. Great as a student, he was great also as an inspirer of other students. He left eighty distinguished disciples, of whom the youngest was that famous Jochanan ben Zakkai who became the savior of Judaism at the destruction of the second Temple.



EDITORS' NOTE—Dr. Hyamson's portrait of Hillel is the first in a series of character sketches of Jewish Worthies to appear in THE MENORAH JOURNAL. The second paper will be on Hillel's disciple, Jochanan ben Zakkai.



The Quality of Mercy

A Sixth Act to "The Merchant of Venice"

BY WILLIAM M. BLATT



Characters: SHYLOCK, JESSICA, ANTONIO, GRATIANO, PORTIA, ISAAC, a servant of Shylock.

Scene: A street in Venice.

Time: An afternoon, two years after the last act of "The Merchant of Venice."

As curtain rises, Portia and Gratiano discovered standing and looking down the street, Gratiano pointing.

Gratiano Now Lady Portia look a long way off And see if you can recognize a friend.

Portia A friend? One person only do I see— A man, quite old, who hobbles with a staff.

Gratiano He is the one I mean. Now look again And try to recognize his face, his beard.

Portia Why, is it not old Shylock? Sure it is. And met most opportunely, on my word. Now, dear Gratiano, with this icy heart We must needs waste a score or two of words.

Gratiano To make him help his daughter Jessica?

Portia That is the task.

Gratiano Too much for Hercules.

(Enter Shylock.)

Portia A moment, Shylock, of your precious time. You must remember meeting me before.

Shylock Remember, nay then, how could I forget The noble judge who spoke so clean and fair And took away on quibbles all I owned.

Portia Not all, good Shylock, half of it remained.

Shylock Oh, true, I thank you for the half you left. I thank that kindly merchant, him that begged The Duke to quite remit the City's fine Which never would have done him any good— I thank him for accepting what was all He could have claimed, the half of my estate.

Portia In trust——

Shylock I know. In trust until I die. And trust Antonio to eat it up. Is it not known that when he takes a risk Of more than common danger and doth lose, He makes a record that he did invest A part of my belongings in the venture? Belike by now there's not a ducat left. For that however I have naught but joy Because it means that she who was my daughter And that Lorenzo who's her paramour Will, when I die, inherit penury.

Gratiano But if Antonio's trust should disappear They still would come by all you leave yourself; 'Twas thus the Duke decreed.

Shylock I know a thing Or two that I could tell and make the face Of son Lorenzo somewhat longer grow.

Gratiano Faith, often did Lorenzo say to us "The Jew will find a way to cheat me yet."

Shylock To cheat him out of what? The gold he earned By robbing me, debauching my—my child?

Portia Nay, let us not be quarreling, old man, I have a message that I want to give.

Shylock No message from my daughter—none to me.

Portia I meant not message, what I have is news. Poor Jessica has come to sorry straits. Her husband, having heard of what you spoke, The loss of what Antonio received, The tricks you have been playing with your own, Fell out with Jessica; they came to words; From words, they say, to blows. And so it seems He left her in a pitiable state.

Shylock (laughing wildly) Good, good, good, good. I prithee tell me more.

Gratiano The fiends fly off with thee. Hast thou a heart And canst thou hear the sorrows of thy child In laughter and with joy?

Shylock She is no child Of mine. She is a wench who lied and stole Repaid my love with treason. Broke my heart And left me weakened for mine enemies To ruin and to taunt. Tell me the rest, Leave not a portion out. Describe her pain, Her hunger, her remorse. I would know all.

Portia The font has failed to change thy cruel soul; Thou art a Christian, Shylock, but in name.

Shylock Well, blame thy sacred water. Blame not me.

Gratiano And so poor Jessica must starve and die?

Shylock Why, no. For you and she (pointing to Portia) should be her friends. You Christians will not let a Christian fall.

Gratiano Now there we cut the venom from thy tongue For Jessica will not accept our aid.

Portia Indeed, old man, we know not where she is. We told you, that you might go search for her. Bassanio did offer her employment But she refused, belike because her shame Would not permit that we should see her shame. And so she fled.