27 December 1912; Vol VIII, No. 13

Zionism and Religion
Professor L. B. Wolfenson

You, my Jewish reader, have without doubt noticed that Jews have the gift of reasoning and observing, just as we all know the Irish have the gift of speech. Not that the Jew does not know how to express himself, but to put it briefly, the Jew is a born philosopher; and where in any given case he might not measure up to the standards set for philosophers by the world at large, he probably is in his own estimation. In short, what Jew is not a philosopher?

We will be safe in saying, therefore, that the Jew is predisposed to accept the Truth and to search for it. Like Bacon, he may say: “For myself I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of Truth; as having a mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the resemblance of things (which is the chief point) and at the same time steady enough to tix and distinguish their subtler differences; as being gifted by nature with the desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of imposture. So I thought that my nature had a kind of familiarity and relationship with Truth.”

In the century-long search for Truth, it has been found that progress has resulted only where a large number of individuals has made the truth which has been discovered a feature of their daily lives. The truths of Geometry would never have spread abroad in ancient Egypt, nor have resulted in progress and betterment, had they not been applied on a large scale to marking the boundaries of land after the annual floodings of the Nile, and to the large building operations of the Pharaohs, famous all the world over since antiquity for their pyramids and temples. The beauties of literature and art and the delights of science would never have made Greece famous in antiquity and throughout the centuries since, had not the people of that liberty-loving nation been generally alive to these precious gifts of enlightenment. The practical arts of politics and government would never have reached the high plane of effectiveness to which they were carried by the ancient Romans, had not the sense for arms and government been the common characteristics of the Roman citizens.

In every direction in which you may turn, you will find that the central truths and facts of civilization and progress have been embodied in the life of some nation at some time, to such an extent that the various nations and races are emblematic of one or more special truths about which the progress of the world is centered.

Even the nations of the present day stand each for some definite idea of progress. Thus Germany typifies industrial supremacy; England, imperialism and government, as did Rome of old; France, thrift and science; the Norse countries, the arts and commerce of the sea; and so we might go on.

What, now, is the Truth for which the Jew stands? I do not refer to the so-called mission of the race in this inquiry. I am sure that Israel’s mission was never peace nor any messiahship, or the like. The Jew, in fact, never had a mission, any more than did the Roman or the Greek, or the Englishman of today. But the J’ew has a central Truth in his history just as have the other peoples that have influenced the progress of the world in thought or deed.

The Jew never had a great empire of territory, never produced a great commerce, never developed industry, never created works of painting and sculpture, never laid the foundations of the world’s science. But the Jew is universally credited by those who know with having originated and practiced the purest and most enlightened form of religion known to his time. The central Truth of the Jew is, therefore, religion.

The truth of Religion-without doubt one of the greatest motives in men’s lives,-this great influence upon the world it is that has made the Jew. It made the Hebrew distinct. from the other peoples of antiquity, and the Jew a separate entity in the long centuries of the world’s history since. It is this Truth that has constituted the achievement of the Jew in the family of world-nations, and it is this that makes the Jew a separate race in the eyes of the world at the present time.

In this connection it must be pointed out that there is a distinct.and decided difference between the theological practices which have grown up in Judaism, and the religious tenets of the faith. The latter are very few indeed, and the chief and most prominent one was borrowed by Mohammed in the famous cry of the Arab, “God, there is no god but He,” which Jews know as the “Shema’ Isroel”; Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord our God is One. As a pure religion, Judaism has no peer. It is, moreover, a religion adaptable to any time and age.

Now, you Jew of this day and age, you who have the great background of the accumulated world’s knowledge and progress, will you reject the achievement of your people by turning from your religion and people? Will you deny the inheritance which the world accords you? Turning from your religion is turning from your people, and turning from your people is turning from your religion; and this is as true whether you are a Zionist, or a religious Jew, reformed or orthodox. Denying your race is denying your religion, and denying your religion is denying your race, and nation.

Because there has been so great a striving of the Jew after Truth as to be admittedly right in the matter of religion, is he now to yield his proud position of the philosopher and fail to recognize his opportfnity in the present ? Is the Jew now to become shortsighted and abandon his search for Truth? There has been error on the part of the religious Jew in holding aloof from Zionism and looking askance, yea, even worse, opposing Zionism with the foolish and unthinking statement, “Do you expect me or will you yourself go to some Jewish home or state-least of all to Palestine for hardship, and barter away comfort and an assured position in my or your present home ?”

You and I, Sir, may not leave our present home, but why should not others, who have not the comfortable home that we have? It will be at least just as easy for them to build up opportunities in a Jewish home as in. .a. n.on- Jewish one. And the advantage to Jews at large is that the central truth of Religion will be kept alive and be developed in a Jewish home, while in Gentile surroundings this great Truth is rapidly losing the large number of individuals, which, as was pointed out before, is the indispensable prerequisite for making Truth effective for progress and development.

You, the Jew interested in the Jewish religion, are greatly in need of the race and nation of Zionism, if you desire to make your Truth continue and not leave it atrophy. Nor will the hypertrophy lavished upon the religion of the Jew, either in reform or orthodox circles, in the disconnected, self-satisfied, and partisan spirit of American sectionalism, or even of national American, or English, or German, or any other merely national Judaism, as manifested in unions of congregations or associations of Rabbis, serve to keep alive the perishing body of Judaism. A unifying and centralizing force for Jews the world over, which alone can quicken and revive, is needed; and sorely needed, at this time. This force is to be found in racial and national aspirations of world-Zionism.

But although the religious Jew is vitally in need of Zionism, we Zionists must not sit back in indolent complacency and imagine that we and our movement are perfect and incapable of improvement. If the truth of religion had its birth and development in the Jewish nation and race, and if this Truth still requires the central, unifying idea of race and nation, it must be remembered that the race and nation receive their importance in the eyes of the world at large from the Religion which they developed.

Thus the Zionist must reckon with Religion. In this, the movement has been at fault, just as Socialism, up to very recent times, avas at fault in being not merely non-religious, but irreligious and atheistic. This defect is now being remedied in Socialism in certain circles, and so it must be in Zionism.

And if the Zionist, particularly the educated and cultured one, who in supercilious pride has often leaned toward atheism, or to Christianity, persists in his course of opposition to Judaism as a religion, he will soon forfeit the respect of the man less fortunate in opportunity for self advancement and culture, but who adheres to Religion and has with him in his faith in Religion such men of physical science as Clerk Maxwell or Kelvin who, in the words of J. A. Thompson in his “Introduction to Science,” find that, “In face of the often terrible failures of human endeavor, the element of tragedy in things as they are, and the chill that follows the vision of our fair earth and all that it contains becoming cold and cindery as the moon, many a one of great repute in the world of science . seeks to steady himself in the thought of some Abiding Reality, saying as of yore, ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills.’

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