Jews -- Periodicals; Jews -- United States -- Periodicals
--is the best indication of this. Liberal Judaism has not touched the
minds or hearts of the masses. The radicals despise it as a
capitalistic system of compromise with the social environment. To the
rest of the working classes, it makes thus far no appeal whatever. It
is only upon the radicals that the "Judaism of yesterday" has lost its
hold, and to them liberal Judaism can have no appeal. To the rest of
the Jewish people it can be significant and really developed into the
"Judaism of to-morrow" only in so far as it can succeed in
reincorporating itself into the common life. I am an old social
service person, and I am prepared to deny categorically that such a
reincorporation is possible through social service. What is needed is
sympathetic intelligence, insight into the life and aspirations of the
masses, return of the classes to the masses, participation in their
ideals, their traditions, and their common life. It is not by a
cutting off from the past, but by a development out of it that such a
reincorporation can be consummated.
If liberal Judaism is to be a living and growing force at all, it can
become so only by accepting the inevitable conditions which govern all
life. Life is organic; religion is only one of the many organs of
human society, even Jewish society. Its health and vitality are
dependent upon the health and vitality of the social residuum. The
hope of liberal Judaism lies in a reincorporated national life for the
Jews. That alone can preserve the Jewish religion, either from
petrifying as orthodoxy through resistance against environmental
pressure, or from evaporating as reform through submission to
environmental pressure.
_University of Wisconsin_
[Illustration: Signature: H. M. Kallen]
III
THE HEBREW GENIUS[D]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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