Jews -- Periodicals; Jews -- United States -- Periodicals
Another Jewish ideal which has counted for much in the history of the
race is the ideal of the family--pure, honorable, and sacred. The
veneration of ancestors, which has been an important part of the
religion of China and Japan, is only an undue exaggeration of the
Hebrew commandment, "Honor thy father and thy mother." The Jewish race
has seen fulfilled the promise which is the last phrase of that
commandment, "that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy
God giveth thee," although in many lands and not in any land of their
own. The organized human society most likely to prove durable or
permanent is that which possesses and maintains in theory and practise
a lofty ideal of the family. The reverence shown by children toward
their parents and the devotion of parents to their children, which
prevail in Jewish families, are both more intense than is usual in
Christian families. These sentiments yield infinite good in any human
society; they produce, and pass on from generation to generation,
purity of life, family honor, and a real consecration of the best
human affections. That is the second potent Jewish ideal.
_The Ethical Ideal of the Ten Commandments_
The third effective ideal is the ethical teaching contained in the Ten
Commandments, the most compact and yet comprehensive code of morals
ever written. These ethical principles have been held before the
Jewish race for thousands of years wherever it has lived, in good
times and bad, an ideal toward which the race has always struggled,
though with frequent lapses. This code contains the institution of the
Sabbath Day, which by itself accounts for much of the extraordinary
endurance of the race.
The Jews have always been distinguished for their respect for learning
and their zeal for education. In the Ghettos of Europe, under the most
discouraging conditions, their Rabbis kept alive the ancient learning,
and through many centuries gave the elite of the rising generation
some mental training, when no instruction was to be had by the masses
of mankind. A persecuted race, provided it retains its vitality and
elasticity, receives admirable training in loyalty to its ideals. In
the case of the Jews this was a loyalty not only to race, but to
religion; and religious loyalty is the finest and most sustaining of
all loyalties. The religion of the Jews emphasizes an ideal to which
the Jewish mind and heart have responded ardently from the earliest
times--the ideal of righteousness. Loyalty to this ideal includes
loyalty to race, family, religion, and all righteous persons. The Jews
believe that righteousness alone exalteth a nation, a family, or a
man.
_Will the Jewish Race Meet the Test of Liberty?_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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