Yeshiva University - Masmid Yearbook (New York, NY)

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M a:;m I u pc()|ilc wliiili ihn ' s iKii (.ikc inio ajiisiilcraiion iIk I.h( ili.il ilic j( s ,iic- ,1 rouncic-il jicopL-, is liiiulainciii.illy wron . At tlic bcginnin; ol Judaism, llicn is nu mytiioio y, tlicTO are no tkilic.l aspects of ii.iuhl-. Jiulaisni has imiliin lo ilci with race. As a race, Jmlaisni is iiiorc oniplitaifil liian vvc can possibly iiii.it;inc. il is absolutely iiii possible to iinl any racial characteristic whatsoever, of which it could be said, This is Jewish. All imaginable types are to be found among the jews, and this very universalism is what constitutes the greatness of the Jews. The great poet, Jehuila Halevy, said in a deeply philo- sophical book, in Al Khusari : The Jewish people are the heart of humanity. They con- stitiuc a niiiiiatiu ' e ni.uikind. But they cannot be understood as something biological. The Jewish people have not grown up, like a nation. They have not grown like animals or like plants or like rocks. They are joniided. At the begin- ning of their history, we find the decision of one man. a man v ' ho must be interpreted as a historical personality. The Jewish people grow out of the decision of the man, Abraham. It is thus artificial, and that is its greatness. It is not a product of Nature. It is a higher system than the system of Nature. A founded people is basically different from a grown national people. The Jews are not merely a group of people who embrace the same creed. They are bound together nor merely by religious dogmas. The fact that the Jews have no religion which is detached from actual life, has been a deciding factor in molding their existence. Religion as it is com- monly understood is an attitude flowing parallel to life, and in a certain sense, even against life. It is a holiday attitude, a peculiar tension, which has nothing to do with everyday existence. The basic doctrine of the Jews, however, is the sancti- fication of daily life. It strives for the permeation of ever-j-day life with holiness. Thus the prophet Zechariah in his splendid vision declares that in the coming Jerusalem every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto the Lord. Thus, there is nothinc; which does not belong within the realm of holiness. Nothing is excluded, not even eating and drinking or the lowliest liMutions of our bodies. No moment, no action, slight as it may be, stands outside ihc sphere of sanctity. The Jewish law encompasses the whole person, not merely a part of him. TTiis lends an unusually high tension to existence, ' Ihc life of a really great Jew stands in its totality at every moment and in all details in the presence of God. It exists in its completene.ss not only in single holiday hours but in every moment of life. Judaism stresses not only the intellect, but the body as well. It does not recognize the distinction between body ami soul in which the soul is the essential and the body the unimportant element. There is no separation of the inner from the outer, of the higher worlds from the lower worlds. Judaism teaches the doctrine of unity. Unity is its highest principle. Life, in all its manifold aspects, is an indivisible unit. It is a totality including in its scope both the highest thoughts of the intellect and the very lowliest functions of the body. This is an attitude which one may very well charaaerise as modern. In fact, one can even say that our times have still a long way to go before they will arrive at such a view. The Jewish teachings have at all times been wise enough to realize that it is not sufficient merely to think beautiful thoughts. Religion is not simply an inner attitude. Ritual is inseparably bound up with ideals, a ritual which fsermeates all of life. Ritual regulates man ' s everyday be- havior even to the very smallest detail. Jewish tradition has continued this permeation of life with the order of God. The Talmud is a protocol of a conversation of more than a thousand years ' duration concerning these questions, a conversa- tion which was conducted by thousands of the wisest of men. This conversation has never died out; and it will be one of the great tasks of the Jews of our times to revive this discussion, and to continue it. To these wise men, not the slightest detail seemed so insignificant as to be neglected. It is said of a Zaddik that he was once asked where the most holv was to be found, and he Thirl ecK

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MASMID worldliness and realism of the Jews is as magni- ficent as it is modern. It is a realism which is far in advance of all realistic conceptions of out times. God, the world, and man are sharply separated from one another in Judaism. In the tension between these three poles lies true reality. In M other interpretations, these three merge into one another. Either the world becomes submerged once more in God or else God becomes submerged in the world. God is then nothing but the whole world. That is pantheism. Or else, man sinks mystically into God. Then God is made a man, and the idea of God is destroyed. This has been the development of Christian theology. However, it is also wrong for man to become submerged in the world. That is a false teaching, grown out of the soil of a science which is today obsolete. In it, man is only a piece of nature. Man is only a part of Nature, a by-product of Nature. This is also contradictory to modern conceptions. The modern world is coming to believe, more and more, that man is a creature apart from Nature. The existence of man is f indamentally different from the existence of animals or plants. The existence of man is not the same as the existence of a stone. There is no general existence, ' shared in equally by all creatures. It is not true that stones and plants and animals and man all exist uniformly. The existence of man is of a higher sort than that of all Nature. Man is the keystone of Nature, the key to Nature. Modern bio- logy has worked out a strong case for the theory that man is a kind of blue-print, underlying all of organic Nature, just as a blue-print underlies an edifice. The edifice is constructed only by means of the blue-print. Man is the blue-print of Nature. One of the most modern of debates centers about the question as to whether man is a blind-alley of Nature. Modern science is very disposed to deny this. It approaches the biblical interpretation, which has the development of Nature culminate in man. Man must not be interpreted from his animal side, from his zoological side, from the point of view of race or blood. Man is interpreted as a historical creature, a being that lives in a society, as a fellow -creature. To everj ' man there belongs a You. No I can be understood without a You. The most profound characteristic of man is that he possesses speech, that he is addressed and answers. Speech is the highest phenomenon to be found on earth. The historical and socio- logical interpretation of man, the masterpiece of modern times, is Jewish through and through. This leads us to the third main point, the emphasis of society today. Our times have turned away from the isolation of the individual. We are trying to understand the individual in a new way, to bring him into a relation with his fellow- creatures. The individual has his rights; and these rights, unfortunately, are being more and more forgotten today. The over-emphasis of the individual has been followed by its opposite, the over-emphasis of society. Here Judaism is un- questionably faced with great struggles. What is the position of the individual with respea to the whole? The Jewish teachings stress the responsi- bility of the totality for each and every individual. The individual, on the other hand must also answer for the totality. It is important to remem- ber that the majority of the Jewish prayers are worded in the first person plural, we. The highest demand which Judaism makes, the demand of holiness, is not directed only to the individual, but to the people as a whole. It is said, Ye shall be holy — a kingdom of priests — a holy people. Many commandments are directed towards the in- dividual; for example, Thou shalt not kill. This highest of all demands, the one of holiness, how- ever is directed preferably to the totality. But what is it that binds the totality? What is a people? Here we must bring out a fundamental element of Judaism. The Jewish people is a founded people. It is not a nation in the manner of other nations. It was one of the greatest mistakes of Jewish history when the people chose a king for the first time, and said, We also may be like all the nations. Ever} ' conception of the Jewish Twelve

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MASMID answered, That lies deep down in the world, but until now no one has been sufficiently humble to bend down far enough to pick it up. From all this it is quite clear that the Jewish doctrine is directed not only at die individual, but at the entire people. Not only the isolated individual soul is addressed, not only the voice ot conscience in the individual man is called upon, the message is given to the ivhole people, and the individual is always a member of the congregation. The most terrible thing that can happen to the individual is that his soul shall be separated from the people. That is equivalent to death. On the other hand, in belonging to the Congregation of Israel lies the guarantee of immortality. The con gregation of Israel is, as we have already said, a foiiiuled congregation, not one that has evolved from Nature. People can form congregations in many ways. They form groups for practical reasons, because of a common faith, or because they belong to the same or a similar race. But all such ties are relative. Even the peoples of the world are collected about a center which has no absolute reality in itself, for natural realities are not absolute realities. Israel alone is gathered about a center which is nothing but absolute reality itself. Israel stands under no star, as do the other peoples of the world. Its center is absolute reality itself. That is why Israel as a nation is more strongly bound together than any other group in the world. It is the strongest possible form of solidarity! That is why the Jewish community cannot be compared with other communities. It can be understood only from its oivii point of view. Israel cannot be looked upon from an external point of view and explained on bases which lie outside it. None of these per- spectives would be an adequate standpoint from v. ' hich to understand this phenomenon. Israel can be understood only from its own vantage point; and this is its very peculiarity, that it cannot be measured with foreign standards. All other com- munities can be compared with one another. Jewry, alone, stands by itself. The Jewish doctrine sharply distinguishes be- tween God, m.ui, and the world. The world is thus understood, in .1 completely modern way, as something relati c. It is as is termed in physics, a field , a field of relationship . It is useful to differentiate between world and Nature . The world is a Nat ure in the midst of which stands man. All these infinite relationships, the whole system of relations, find their connecting thread in man. Man is the key to these relations and the keystone of their system. Man is the high- est thing in Nature. And his task is to build the world, to build human society. But human society can be founded only upon the order of truth, the order of justice; and the Jewish teachings have dis- cussed the problem of social justice more pro- foundly than any other doctrine on earth. In this relative world, man stands at the center, the high priest of all creation. God is not an abstract, dis- tant principle. He is not simply a First Cause which discharged the world from itself, the world now continuing to be of its own volition. Rather, God is present in this world, but not identical with it. This idea of the presence of God is one which imparts an unusually lofty meaning to life. Man is addressed by the absolute, and he can answer. Man is not an isolated ego, not a shut-off being, a creature who has, as the great philosopher Leibnitz said, no doors and no windows. The I cannot be understood without the You . Indeed one can even say that the You is much more primary than the I . The I awakes only to the call of the You . Thus we oppose these three entities to one another: The absolute God is the only reality ; the relative world is His creation ; and man, addressed and answering, opens upward to- ward reality, and downward embraces all Nature into unity. All the commandments and prohibitions of the Jewish teachings are epitomized in three highest commands. They are prohibitions. Idolatry, mur- der and adultery are forbidden even when one is threatened with death. These three prohibitions are, as it were, chapter headings for the whole series of our maxims of life. These three also {ContDuied on page 60)