Ahad Ha’am (“One of the People”) was the pen name of Asher Ginzberg (1856-1927), who was born in Kiev, the son of a Hasid, and grew up to become one of the greatest essayists of modem Hebrew and leader of that aspect of Zionism which looks to Palestine as a center of cultural inspiration rather than as a focus of Jewish political power.
The translation of the present essay is taken, by the publisher’s permission, from the Ahad Ha’am volume of the “Philosophia Judaica” series published by The East and West Library of the Phaidon Press in Oxford, England. The contents of the book were selected and translated by Leon Simon, who also provided it with introductory notes and a glossary. Dr. Simon’s preface to the essay published here follows:
In 1909 Mr. Claude G. Montefiore, a leading member of the Anglo-Jewish community and a pioneer of ‘Liberal’ Judaism in England, published a two-volume commentary on the Gospels under the title The Synoptic Gospels. The book was avowedly intended to help Jewish readers towards a better appreciation of the New Testament; and, though it was of course written from what its author regarded as a Jewish standpoint, . . . it exhibited what orthodox Jews could not but regard as a distinct leaning towards Christianity. To Ahad Ha’am—then living in London—it was a sign-post indicating clearly whither the Reform movement in Judaism, divorced from Jewish nationalism, must lead. He was moved by it to write an essay (published in 1910 under the significant title ‘Between Two Opinions’) of which the thesis is that compromise between Judaism and Christianity is impossible, and that ‘the Gospels can be introduced only into a Judaism which has lost its own true spirit and is nothing but a corpse.’
The only part of the essay here translated is that in which the author deals with the fundamental difference between the Jewish and the Christian outlook, and develops the illuminating theory that the religious and ethical conceptions of Judaism derive their specific character from the ineradicable bent of the Jewish mind towards the abstract. The rest of the essay is a criticism of Mr. Montefiore’s book.—Ed.
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If the heathen of the old story, who wished to learn the whole of the Torah while he stood on one foot, had come to me, my reply would have been: “ ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness’—that is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary.”
What essentially distinguishes Judaism from other religions is its absolute determination to make the religious and moral consciousness independent of any definite human form, and to attach it without any mediating term to an abstract incorporeal ideal.
We cannot conceive Christianity without Jesus, or even Islam without Mohammed. Christianity has deified Jesus, but that is not the important thing. Even if Jesus had remained the “son of man,” had remained simply a prophet, as Mohammed is to the Moslems, it would still be true—and this is the significant fact—that Christianity links up the religious and moral consciousness with the figure of a particular man, who is regarded as the ideal of absolute perfection, and belief in whom is an essential part of a religion inconceivable without him. Judaism, and Judaism alone, depends on no such human figure. For Judaism God is the only ideal of absolute perfection, and He only must be kept always before the eye of man’s inner consciousness, in order that man may “cleave to his attributes.”
No man, not even the most perfect, is free from shortcomings and sins; no man can serve as an ideal for the religious sentiment, which strives after union with the source of perfection. Moses died in his sin, like any other man. He was simply God’s messenger, charged with the giving of His Law; his image is not an essential part of the very fabric of the religion. Thus the Jewish teachers of a later period found nothing to shock them in the words of one who said in all simplicity: “Ezra was worthy to be the bearer of the Law of Israel, had not Moses come before him” (Sanhedrin, 21a). Could it enter a Christian mind, let us say, to conceive the idea that Paul was worthy to be the bearer of the “message,” had not Jesus come before him? And it need scarcely be said that the individual figures of the other Prophets are not an essential part of the fabric of Judaism. Of the greatest of them—Hosea, Amos, Isaiah and others—we do not even know who or what they were; their personalities have vanished like a shadow, and only their words have been preserved and handed down from generation to generation, because they were not their words, but “the word of the Lord that came unto them.”
This applies equally to the Messiah, whose future coming is awaited. His importance lies not in himself, but in his being the messenger of God for the bringing of redemption to Israel and the world. Jewish teachers pay much more attention to “the days of the Messiah,” than to the Messiah himself. One of them even disbelieved altogether in a personal Messiah, and looked forward to a redemption effected by God himself without an intermediary; and he was not therefore regarded as a heretic.
This characteristic of Judaism has perhaps been the principal obstacle to its wider acceptance. It is difficult for most men to find satisfaction in an abstract ideal which offers nothing to the senses; a human figure much more readily inspires devotion. Before the triumph of Christianity the Greeks and the Romans used to accuse the Jews of having no God, because an incorporeal divinity had no meaning for them; and when the time came for the God of Israel to become also the God of the nations, they still could not accept his sway without associating with him a divine ideal in human form, thus satisfying their craving for a less remote object of adoration.
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This is not the place to discuss why the Jewish people, in contrast to the rest of the world, has a preference for the abstract ideal in religion and morality. Be the reason what it may, the fact remains. So it has been these thousands of years; and so long as the Jewish people undergoes no fundamental change, it cannot be influenced on the religious side by a book like the Gospels, which finds the object of religious devotion and moral emulation not in the abstract Godhead alone, but primarily in a man born of woman. It matters not whether he be called “Son of God,” “Messiah,” or “Prophet”: the Jews cannot accept with religious fervor, as the word of God, the utterances of a man who speaks in his own name—who says not “thus saith the Lord,” but “I say unto you.” This “I” is in itself sufficient to estrange Judaism from the Gospels for ever. “Ye shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy”—that is Judaism. “Ye shall be holy, because the Messiah (or the Prophet) is holy”—that is an ideal no doubt better calculated to inspire devotion and religious fervor among the Gentiles; but it will never light the flame of religion in a Jewish heart unless the last vestiges of true Judaism have first been obliterated. It was not for nothing that our ancient teachers called God “the Holy One, blessed be He.” For Judaism absolute holiness exists only in the one God.
No doubt there have been now and again sects of Jewish mystics, influenced consciously or unconsciously by foreign ideas, which have diverged more or less markedly from the characteristic Jewish attitude in this matter. But the sect is merely a temporary aberration, a sort of breaking-out of some foreign element which has found its way into Jewish life at one time or another. Our history shows that in the end either the sect disappears of itself, or its adherents desert Judaism. Sects come and go, but Judaism is permanent.
This preference of the Jewish mind for the impersonal is equally evident in the Jewish conception of the aim of religion and morality. There is no need to dilate on the familiar truth that Judaism conceives its aim not as the salvation of the individual, but as the well-being and perfection of a group, of the Jewish people, and ultimately of the whole human race. That is to say, the aim is always defined in terms of a collectivity which has no defined and concrete form. In its most fruitful period, that of the Prophets and the divine revelation, Judaism had as yet no clear ideal of personal immortality or of reward and punishment after death. The religious and moral inspiration of the Prophets and their disciples was derived not from any belief of that kind, but from the conviction of their belonging to “the chosen people,” which had, according to their belief, a divine call to make its national life the embodiment of the highest form of religion and morality. Even in later times, when the Babylonian exile had put an end to the free national life of the Jews, and as a result the desire for individual salvation had come to play a part in the Jewish religious consciousness, the highest aim of Judaism still remained a collective aim. For proof of the truth of this statement there is no need to look further than the prayers in the daily and festival prayer-books, of which only a minority turn on the personal needs of the individual worshiper, while the majority deal with the concerns of the nation and of the whole human race.
Which of these two aims is the higher? This question has been endlessly debated; but the truth is that in this matter we cannot establish any scale of values. A man may attain to the highest level in his religious and moral life whether he is inspired by the one aim or by the other. But individual salvation certainly makes a stronger appeal to most men, and is more likely to kindle their imagination and to inspire them to strive after moral and religious perfection. If Judaism, unlike the other religions, prefers the collective aim, this is yet another instance of the characteristically Jewish tendency to abstractness and the repudiation of the concrete form. So long as this tendency persists—so long, that is, as the Jewish people does not lose its essential character—no true Jew can be attracted by the doctrine of the Gospels, which rests wholly and solely on the pursuit of individual salvation.
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The same tendency shows itself in yet another direction, and this perhaps the most important of all: I mean in regard to the basis of morality. That Jewish morality is based on justice, and the morality of the Gospels on love, has become a platitude; but it seems to me that not all those who draw this distinction fully appreciate its significance. It is usual to treat the difference as merely one of degree, the moral scale and its basis being the same in either case. Both doctrines, it is supposed, are directed against egoism; but the Christians claim that their religion has reached a higher point in the scale, and the Jews refuse to admit this claim. Thus Christian commentators point proudly to the positive principle of the Gospels: “Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them” (Matt. vii. 12; Luke vi. 31), and throw it in the teeth of Judaism, which has only the negative principle of Hillel: “Do not unto your neighbour what you would not have him do unto you.”
But if we look deeper, we shall find that the difference between Judaism and Christianity on this point is not one of less or more, but is a fundamental difference of view as to what is the basis of moral conduct. It was not by accident that Hillel put his principle in the negative form; it was because the positive formulation is repugnant to the Jewish conception of the basis of morality. We should have no cause for satisfaction if we found the doctrine in its positive form attributed to Hillel in some text or other; we should question the authenticity of a text which put into. Hillel’s mouth a pronouncement so out of harmony with the spirit of Judaism.
The root of the distinction lies here also, as I have said, in the preference of Judaism for abstract principles. The moral law of the Gospels asks the “natural man” to reverse his natural attitude towards himself and others, and to put the “other” in the place of the “self”—that is, to replace straightforward egoism by inverted egoism. For the altruism of the Gospels is neither more nor less than inverted egoism. Altruism and egoism alike deny the individual as such all objective moral value, and make him merely a means to a subjective end; but whereas egoism, makes the “other” a means to the advantage of the “self,” altruism does just the reverse. Judaism, however, gets rid of this subjective attitude entirely. Its morality is based on something abstract and objective, on absolute justice, which attaches moral value to the individual as such, without any distinction between the “self” and the “other.”
On this theory a man’s sense of justice is the supreme judge both of his own actions and of those of other men. This sense of justice must be made independent of individual relations, as though it were a separate entity; and before it all men, including the self, must be equal. All men, including the self, are under obligation to develop their lives and their faculties to the limit of their capacity, and at the same time each is under obligation to assist his neighbour’s self-development, so far as he can. But just as I have no right to ruin another man’s life for the sake of my own, so I have no right to ruin my own life for the sake of another’s. Both of us are men, and both our lives have the same value before the throne of justice.
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I know no better illustration of this point of view than the following well-known B’raita: “Suppose two men journeying through the desert, only one of whom has a bottle of water. If both of them drink, they will both die; if one of them only drinks, he will reach safety. Ben P’tura held that it was better that both should drink and die, than that one should witness the death of his comrade. But Akiba refuted this view by citing the scriptural verse: ‘and thy brother shall live with thee.’ With thee—that is to say, thine own life comes before thy neighbour’s” (Baba M’zia, 62a).
We do not know who Ben P’tura was; but we do know Akiba, and we may be sure that his is the authentic voice of Judaism. Ben P’tura, the altruist, does not value human life for its own sake; for him it is better that two lives should perish, where death demands no more than one, so long as the altruistic sentiment prevails. But Jewish morality looks at the question objectively. Every action that leads to loss of life is evil, even if it springs from the purest sentiments of love and compassion, and even if the victim is himself the agent. In the case before us, where it is possible to save one of the two lives, it is a moral duty to overcome the feeling of compassion, and to save what can be saved. But to save whom? Justice answers: let him who has the power save himself . . . .
But when a man came to Raba, and asked him what he should do when one in authority threatened to kill him unless he would kill another man, Raba answered him: “Be killed and kill not. Who hath told thee that thy blood is redder than his? Perhaps his blood is redder” (P’sachim, 25b). And Rashi, who generally gets to the root of the matter with his instinctive understanding of Judaism, correctly explains thus: “The question arises only because you know that no religious law is binding in the face of danger to life, and think that in this case also the prohibition of murder ceases to be binding because your own life is in danger. But this transgression is not like others. For do what you will, there must be a life lost . . . . How do you know that your life is more precious than his in the sight of God? Perhaps his life is more precious.”
If a question like this were put to a Christian priest, we may be sure that he would begin to expatiate in glowing terms on a man’s duty to sacrifice his life for another, to “bear his cross” in the footsteps of his Messiah, so that he might win the kingdom of heaven—and so forth. But the Jewish teacher weighs the question in the scales of objective justice. As a life must be lost in any case, and nobody can say which of the two lives is more precious in God’s sight, the plea that the law may be broken in order to save life does not entitle you to break the sixth commandment. You must therefore be killed, and not kill. But suppose the case reversed: suppose the question to be whether I can save another from death by giving my life instead of his. Raba would reply: “Let the other be killed, and do not destroy yourself. For do what you will there must be a life lost; and how do you know that his blood is redder than yours? Perhaps yours is redder.” From the standpoint of Judaism every man’s blood is as red as any other’s; every soul is “precious in the sight of God,” be it mine or another’s. Consequently no man is at liberty to treat his life as his own property; no man may say: “I am endangering myself; what right have others to complain of that?” (Maimonides’ Code, Laws of Murder XI. 5). Jewish history of course records many cases of martyrdom, which will remain precious and sacred memories for all time. But these are not cases of one life given for the preservation of another similar life; they are sacrifices of human life for “the sanctification of the Name” (the religious and moral ideal) or for “the good of the community” (the religious and moral aim).
And justice demands that we rise above sentiment not only in deciding between the self and other, but also in deciding between two other persons. Forty years ago Abraham Geiger drew attention to the unique character of the Biblical injunction “Neither shalt thou countenance a poor man in his cause.”1 All other moral codes warn us only against favoring the rich and powerful; and the Gospels themselves favor the poor, and exaggerate their merits and the greatness that awaits them in the Kingdom of Heaven. All this is very well from the point of view of sentiment; but a morality based on justice rises above sentiment, and teaches us that, while charity is a virtue, and it is our duty to help the poor if we are able, we must not let compassion induce us to sin against justice by favoring the poor man in his suit.
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According to Herbert Spencer, the pinnacle of moral development will be reached when the altruistic sentiment becomes a natural instinct, and human beings can find no greater pleasure than in working for the good of others. Similarly Judaism, in conformity with its own principles, looks forward to the development of morality to a point at which Justice will become an instinct with good men, so that in any given situation they will be able to apply the standard of absolute justice without any long process of reflection. They will feel even the slightest deviation from justice instantaneously, and with the certainty of intuition. Personal and social considerations will not affect them in the slightest degree; their instinct will judge every action with absolute impartiality, ignoring all human relations, and making no difference between X and Y, between the self and the other, between rich and poor. Such is the moral ideal of Judaism; and because Judaism links the fulfilment of its moral aspirations with the advent of the Messiah, it endows the Messiah with this faculty of intuitive justice. The Talmud (Sanhedrin, 93b) says of the Messiah that “he will smell and judge,” on the basis of the scriptural verse (Isaiah xi. 3): “And shall make him quick of understanding (Heb. ‘smell’) in the fear of the Lord; and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes”; and Kimhi comments on this verse as follows: “Because the sense of smell is a very delicate sense, he gives the name of smell to the most delicate perception—that is to say, the Messiah with little scrutiny will feel which men are good, and which evil.”
But this development lies hidden in the bosom of a distant future. For the present the human race still lacks the instinctive sense of justice, and even the best men are apt to be so blinded by self-love or prejudice as to be unable to distinguish between good and evil. For the present, therefore, we all need some touchstone, some fundamental principle, to help us to avoid weighting the scales of justice to suit our personal ends or inclinations. Hillel has given us such a principle: “Do not unto your neighbour what you would not have him do unto you.” Altruism would substitute: “Do unto your neighbour what you would like him to do unto you.” In other words, take the circle of egoism, and put the “other” at its centre instead of the “self”; then you will know your whole duty. But Judaism cannot accept the altruistic principle; it cannot put the “other” in the centre of the circle, because that place belongs to justice, which knows no distinction between “self” and “other.” But in the circle of egoism there is no place for justice except in a negative form. It will certainly be just not to do as egoism would not be done by; but to do as egoism would be done by—that is something without any limit, and to make it obligatory is to tilt the scales of justice to the side of the “other” and against the “self.”
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Even that “great principle of the Torah” (as Akiba called it) “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Lev. xix. 18), though in form it appears to be positive, is in reality, if rightly understood, negative. If the Torah had meant that a man must love his neighbour to the extent of sacrificing his life for him, it would have said: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour more than thyself.” But when you love your neighbour as yourself, neither more or less, your feelings are in a state of equilibrium, with no leaning either to your own side or to your neighbour’s. The true meaning of the verse is: “Self-love must not be allowed to incline the scale on the side of your own advantage; love your neighbour as yourself, and then justice will necessarily decide, and you will do nothing to your neighbor that you would consider a wrong if it were done to yourself.” For proof that this is the real meaning we have only to look further in the same passage of Leviticus, where we find (ib. 33-34): “And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not do him wrong. The stranger that sojourneth with you shall be unto you as the home-born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself.” Here it is evident that to love the stranger “as thyself” means to carry out the negative precept “ye shall not do him wrong”; and if the stranger is expressly placed on the same footing as the native, this shows that in relation to the native also the intention is only that self-love must not prove a stronger motive than justice.
But in the Gospels “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” is interpreted in an altruistic sense: it means that your own life is less important than your neighbour’s. Hence there is some excuse for the Christian habit of attributing this verse to the Gospels, as though it had originally appeared in the New and not in the Old Testament. It is true that the meaning which they put on the verse belongs not to the Mosaic Law, but to the Gospels.2
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But it must be remembered that in addition to the relation of individual to individual there is another and more important moral relation—that of nation to nation. Here, also, some great principle is needed to keep within bounds that national egoism which is fraught perhaps with even greater danger to the collective progress of humanity than individual egoism. If we look at the difference between Jewish and Christian ethical teaching with this requirement in mind, we shall see at once that the altruism of the Gospels provides no sort of basis for international relations. A nation can never believe that its moral duty lies in self-abasement or in the renunciation of its rights for the benefit of other nations. On the contrary, every nation feels and knows that its moral duty is to maintain its position and to use its opportunities to create conditions in which it can develop its potentialities to the full. Hence Christian nations have not been able to regulate their relations with one another on the moral basis of their religion; national egoism has inevitably remained the sole determining force in international affairs, and patriotism, in the Bismarckian sense, has been elevated to the position of the supreme moral criterion.
But the Jewish law of justice is not confined within the narrow sphere of individual relations. In its Jewish sense the precept “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” can be carried out by a whole nation in its dealings with other nations. For this precept does not oblige a nation to sacrifice its life or its position for the benefit of other nations. It is, on the contrary, the duty of every nation, as of every individual human being, to live and to develop to the utmost limit of its powers; but at the same time it must recognise the right of other nations to fulfil the like duty without let or hindrance. Patriotism—that is, national egoism—must not induce it to disregard justice, and to seek self-fulfilment through the destruction of other nations. Hence Judaism was able thousands of years ago to enunciate the lofty ideal “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation” (Isaiah ii. 4), because that ideal is no more than the logical consequence of the idea of absolute justice, which lies at the foundation of Judaism.
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1 Das Judentum und seine Geschichte (2nd edition), p. 26.
2 John Stuart Mill wrote: “In justice to the great Hebrew lawgiver, it should always be remembered that the precept to love thy neighbour as thyself already existed in the Pentateuch; and very surprising it is to find it there.” (“Three Essays on Religion,” 2nd edition, p. 98). Had Mill understood the precept in its original sense, he would certainly not have been surprised to find it in the Mosaic Law. But even so logical a thinker could not emancipate himself from the influences of his education and his environment; and it did not occur to Mill that a meaning had been read into this verse which was opposed to its literal sense.
