Although the expectation of universal adherence to the God of Israel still figures in Jewish liturgy, it is an ultimate rather than a practical hope. Jakob J. Petuchowski here discusses the past and present meaning of a Jewish mission to the Gentiles, and suggests also that such a mission today might revitalize Judaism for the Jews themselves.
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Some time ago a call for conversions to Judaism was issued from the floor of Reform’s Central Conference of American Rabbis. A body of Orthodox rabbis was quick to protest, as might have been expected. For this call was made in the course of a report on conversions to Judaism that had been mostly performed by Reform rabbis before officiating at what would otherwise have been mixed marriages; and Orthodoxy regards this motive as incompatible with the sincere desire to take upon oneself the “yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven.”
It is a pity that the whole question of Jewish missionary effort should be confused by a side issue. It is conceivable, for example, that a rabbi who performs “conversions” for the sake of marriage would not favor any effort at a wholesale conversion of Gentiles. On the other hand, many rabbis adhering to the traditional restrictions on conversion for marriage might favor a greater effort in this direction, construing the “mission of Israel” to involve an appeal to the world at large to turn to Judaism. In any case the whole question is, at best, complex and needs patient exposition, for the Jewish attitude to proselytism has undergone many changes though the ages, and must be understood in its varying historical contexts—including that of the present.
The crucial doctrine of any one religion implies the negation of the basic thought of every other religion. If the first of the Ten Commandments states: “I am the Lord, thy God,” the second, quite logically, demands: “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” Since the man of religion claims to be in possession of the Truth, it follows that those who do not accept his particular revelation are in error. The next step is to make those who wander in darkness see the great light; thus the missionary idea is born. Two sets of feelings are working here, often together. On the one hand, the missionary’s fanatical devotion to his ideal may impel him to bring the whole world under its sway—if need be with fire and sword. On the other hand, the missionary may be animated by unbounded love for his fellow men. He wants to save them from the perdition which he feels to be in store for them if they do not avail themselves of the salvation he can bring. It will be remembered that in the Middle Ages the Church burned Jews and heretics not only ad majorem Dei gloriam, but also in order to save their souls from eternal damnation.
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When what we know as Judaism first emerged, its adherents seem to have recognized the legitimacy—for others—of other forms of religion. Yahweh was the God of Israel. He was the mightiest God of all. But this did not cancel out the fact that Kemosh, to take but one example, was the legitimate god of the Moabites. When David was compelled to take refuge among the Philistines, he represented his plight as one that forced him to worship the Philistine gods. Conversely, when Ruth decided to cast in her lot with Naomi, she declared: “Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”
But this legitimation of different deities on a geographical basis could not survive the development of the Hebrew prophets. If Yahweh is the God not only of Israel but all mankind, then all other gods are merely “wood and stone, the work of men’s hands.” Ultimately the nations will recognize the error of their ways, and they will say: “Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. And He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths. For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”
The Babylonian Exile helped to clarify the concept of the universal God and the role of Israel in the divine scheme of things. If the God of Israel could be worshipped in Babylon, then you need not even be a born Israelite to worship Him. Your Gentile neighbor, without having to immigrate to Palestine, could share your faith. The Exile was, therefore, providential. Israel was the Servant of Yahweh, and his mission was to be “a light unto the nations.” A contemporary prophet proclaimed: “Let not the alien, that hath joined himself to the Lord, speak, saying: ‘The Lord will surely separate me from His people’!” Rather did he hold out the hope that the reconstructed Temple would be “a house of prayer for all peoples.”
This hope, as we know, was not fulfilled. But in the Hellenistic and Roman days of the Second Temple, Judaism conducted very active missionary propaganda, Jesus described the Pharisees as crossing land and sea to make converts. Many of the writings now found in collections of Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha were originally Jewish propaganda leaflets addressed to pagans in their own language and imagery. Josephus claimed that there was not a Greek or barbarian city into which the observance of Jewish customs had not penetrated, and classical Roman authors bear him out—though, unlike Josephus, they do not find this state of affairs commendable.
This propaganda was in large part an appeal to reason: first the pagans were to be convinced of the futility of their idols, and then they were to be converted to Judaism; conversion by compulsion was not envisaged.1 But Judaism was never an easy religion to take upon oneself. Many pagans, to whom its theological and ethical content was attractive, refused to submit to the full “yoke of the Law,” though they might accept one or another Jewish observance. The synagogues of Alexandria and Asia Minor were frequented by such semi-converts, who became known as “Fearers of the Lord.”
From this group, too, came many of the first Christians, but Paul’s repeated warnings to his disciples against the adoption of Jewish ritual would indicate that Jewish missionary propaganda continued to represent a serious threat to Pauline Christianity. The competition went on for many years—until Christianity won the battle for the soul of the old Mediterranean world by becoming the state religion of the Roman Empire. Henceforth, the death penalty was decreed for missionary and convert alike.
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Throughout the Middle Ages many outstanding individuals, and even a whole people—the Khazars—found spiritual refuge in Judaism. But active missionary propaganda had ceased. The rabbis of the Talmud argued about the prerequisites of the true proselyte to whom, depending upon external political factors, a more or less hearty welcome was extended. Of course, the ultimate unification of mankind in the service of the God of Israel still figured in the Jewish hope for the “End of Days,” and remains even now a leading element in the liturgy of the New Year’s festival. But, somehow or other, no active steps to bring that about were contemplated. The conversion of the world now became part of that whole Jewish eschatology whose fulfillment was conceived in miraculous rather than practical terms.
Yet the idea of what may be called a “passive mission” persisted. Although the destruction of the Temple and the Exile were generally regarded as merited punishments for the sins of Israel, an alternative view was also recorded in rabbinic literature: that God had scattered the children of Israel to the four corners of the earth in order to bring all men under the wings of the Shechinah. Since the Jew was to live in such a way that his behavior would constitute a “sanctification of the Name of God,” there was the natural corollary that his example might well make the Jewish God and Judaism attractive to the Gentile. Indicative of this mood is the story told in the Talmud of Simeon ben Shetah, who was so scrupulously honest in a business transaction with a pagan that the latter exclaimed: “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Simeon ben Shetah!” The countless martyrs, too, who died “for the sanctification of the Name,” did not fail to make an impression on at least some Gentiles. One of the most moving documents we have preserved is the fragment of a Hebrew prayerbook written by Obadiah ha-Ger, a Crusader no less, who was converted to Judaism.2
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But this does not change the fact that Judaism remained a non-missionary religion. Nor did unfavorable external conditions alone account for this. Jews risked and lost their lives for the right to practice Jewish ritual, and they would have done the same to seek converts if that were deemed necessary. It would seem, rather, that the medieval Jew lacked one important motivation which would have justified his taking the risks involved. When the medieval Church engaged in missionary work, its ideal intention was to rescue the non-believer from perdition, since “there was no salvation outside of the Church.” But there was no such countering Jewish sentiment: there could be salvation outside of the Synagogue. “The righteous of all nations have a share in the World to Come.” And, in fact, the righteousness that would entitle the Gentile to his share in the hereafter was specifically defined by the Talmud in seven simple rules of elementary human morality, the so-called “Seven Laws of the Sons of Noah.” God, it was claimed, had made a covenant with mankind as a whole in the days of Noah; and, unlike the covenant He later made with Israel, this Noahitic covenant had no ceremonial or ritual provisions. The Noahitic laws prohibited idolatry, blasphemy, murder, adultery, theft, and the eating of part of a living animal; on the positive side, the establishment of courts of justice was commanded. And, though the grosser manifestations of idolatry were prohibited, the “Son of Noah,” unlike the Jew, could remain within the limits of the law even if his theistic belief extended not to Yahweh, but to “associates of God.” Clearly, then, the Christian or Moslem living by the dictates of a faith that did not conflict with the Noahitic covenant could be saved without submitting to Jewish law. Not only did the Jew not proselytize, he carefully scrutinized the motives of the would-be convert. If he was moved by a desire for marriage, or by love for someone, or by fear, he could not be accepted. In general, the principle governing the admission of unsolicited proselytes was summed up in the phrase: “Let your left hand thrust them away, and your right hand draw them nigh.” In practice, this meant that the would-be convert had to answer the following questions: “Why do you insist on becoming a Jew? Do you not see that this people is the most lowly and crushed of all the peoples, suffering from persecution for the sake of their observances?” If the would-be convert persisted, he was warned that many things now permitted to him would be prohibited under the Jewish law. Thus, while the medieval Jew could sing with great fervor:
All the world shall come to serve Thee,
And bless Thy glorious name
he did not feel called upon, as the pious Christian did and still does, to engage himself in the “winning of souls.”
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With Emancipation and the granting of civil rights to the Jews of Western Europe and America, the question of a Jewish mission took on a new significance. The Orthodox Jew, to be sure, could pretend, at least in theory, that nothing was changed: Emancipation meant alleviation of the sufferings that had become so characteristic of Jewish life, and therefore was to be welcomed. But, after all, it was only an external matter—exile was still exile. For the nascent Reform movement, however, the idea of exile lost its significance. One of Reform’s first steps was to eliminate from the prayerbook all reference to the Messiah and the Return. These Jews were Germans now—and, later, Americans—and they did not look forward to a Messianic return to Palestine. But if the Jews were not “in exile,” if they were not a people that looked forward to a common political future, what were they then?
They were, Reform said, a universal religious brotherhood. This was not to deny their ultimate common roots in the soil of Judea. But some eighteen centuries had passed, and it was evidently part of the divine plan to transform the Jews from a nation into a “church.” The centuries since the destruction of the Jewish state, then, were not to be regarded as a period of probation leading toward forgiveness and Return. Rather were they to be understood as a divinely ordained “education” intended to wean Israel away from its Palestinian and political past towards a larger field of religious activity.
It was not hard to find authority for this transition from a negative-sounding “exile” to the universalistic overtones of a “world-embracing religious community” in the very sources of rabbinic Judaism itself. Reference has already been made to the deviant rabbinic view that saw the dispersion of the Jewish people as a means of bringing all men under the wing of Israel’s God. This view was now resurrected, and, together with the Deutero-Isaiah’s concept of the “Servant of the Lord,” became the chief support of the new Jewish outlook.
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To many Jews, especially those from Eastern Europe, Reform’s “mission” idea seemed an absurd attempt to reduce the totality of Jewish cultural expression to a few theological propositions, some of which the non-Jewish world had already accepted, and others of which it was unlikely ever to accept. To historians and sociologists of a later generation, the Reform concept of a “mission” looked like a piece of feeble apologetics by which those just short of being complete assimilationists tried to account for their incomplete assimilation. And in any case, there seemed to be a paradox to many in the fact that the same group that “diluted”—as it was often said—Judaism to the end of making it more and more like Christianity, was the same one that made a chief point of the Jewish mission to the Gentiles.
But was it mere apologetics? Is it not true that the German Jew caught up in Emancipation regarded Judaism as a purely religious question? Nobody forced the Jew of the Emancipation era to remain a member of the Jewish community; if he remained one it was because of his religious beliefs. For now, by the acceptance of baptism, he could not only gain a “ticket of admission to European culture” (in Heine’s phrase), but could hope to obtain important positions in government, law, and the universities. As a communicant member of the Anglican Church, Benjamin Disraeli could become Prime Minister of England.
It is wrong, therefore, to regard Reform Judaism with its “mission” doctrine as a mere device to ease assimilation. Assimilation could be got without the efforts of theologians. Whatever may be our final judgment on Reform, we must credit the men who propounded the “mission” doctrine with sincere religious convictions.
Moreover, the historic fact is that any religious interpretation of Judaism cannot, ultimately, do without some form or another of the “mission” idea. The “End of Days,” the prophetic hope for the future, has always been part of Judaism. The first question a man will be asked before the Throne of Judgment, so runs an ancient tradition, is: “Have you been looking forward to salvation?” A basic element of this hoped-for salvation (yeshuah), one around which all the other eschatological hopes clustered, was the Return to Palestine, the Coming of the Messiah. But, as we have seen, the Western Jew was now quite content to stay where he was. And if we believe, with a Talmudic sage and with the great Maimonides, that the sole difference between our age and the Messianic era can be defined as the absence in the latter of Jewish persecution at the hands of “foreign” governments, then this hope, too, promised to be fulfilled in “exile.” But there had to be an “End of Days,” a vision of some Messianic future yet to be, to provide the dynamics for continued Jewish existence. This need was met by the “mission” theory.
In itself, of course, the idea of a united mankind worshipping the God of Israel was nothing startlingly new. It had always been part of the Jewish hope for the “End of Days,” and had received its classic formulation in the prophecies of the Second Isaiah. What was new was the forceful way in which it was now put—to the exclusion of much else that had hitherto been regarded as an integral part of the Jewish Messianic hope. New, too, was the reinterpretation of the Jewish past exclusively in terms of a universal mission.
How far-reaching this reinterpretation could be was illustrated by Rabbi David Einhorn’s prayer for Tisha b’Ab, the traditional fast day in commemoration of the destruction of Jerusalem. “When at last his great sacrifice of atonement is completely wrought, he [Israel] will find his reward in seeing all men gather into one brotherhood, doing God’s service in love to man. In this our hope, this day of mourning and fasting hath, according to the word of Thy prophet, been turned into a solemn day of rejoicing in view of the glorious destiny of Thy law and our high Messianic mission which had its beginning with the historic events which we recall today.”
“Doing God’s service in love to man,” to be sure, was a formula that bound the human brotherhood to no specific religious denomination. One could do God’s service as a Christian or a Buddhist, à la Toynbee. But Isaac M. Wise, the great organizer of American Reform Judaism, was much more specific: he predicted, half a century ago, that liberal Judaism would be the religion of all Americans in the 20th century.
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There can be no doubt that those Reformers who held the mission theory with any degree of consistency sincerely believed that the Gentile world might eventually turn to Judaism. The growth of democratic institutions, the concern with social betterment, and, above all, the constitutional establishment of the equality of all men seemed to them to indicate that the Hebrew prophets were carrying the day. And certain liberal trends in contemporary Christianity made it seem as though the more pronouncedly “Jewish” dogmas of Christianity were slowly rising to the surface. The resultant Unitarianism was felt to mean a rapprochement with Judaism, especially insofar as both Unitarianism and Reform Judaism boasted of having broken the shackles of the past. So closely did these two liberal offshoots of the traditional religions come to resemble each other that the Reformers often had to answer the question: “What is the difference between Reform Judaism and Unitarianism?” The answer invariably pointed to their different historical antecedents. Reform Judaism was, after all, unwilling to renounce the yichus of belonging to the “people of the prophets.”
Yet the cords of the Jewish tent were stretched wide to facilitate the entry of converts. The requirement of circumcision was dispensed with. A proselyte’s statement of belief in the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of Man, and the mission of Israel was regarded as sufficient. In England, Claude Montefiore, the founder of the radical Liberal Synagogue, argued that only such festivals should be retained in the Jewish calendar as had meaning for the Gentile as well as for the Jew. The festival of Purim, for example, with its presumed exclusive appeal to the born Jew, was dropped. The barest minimum of Hebrew was retained in the Reform service, nor did the Jew have any longer to observe the “Oriental” custom of covering his head. The dietary laws, too, were abolished, in order, as Kaufmann Kohler claimed, to facilitate intimate contact between Jew and Gentile as part of the “mission of Israel.” With all this, the “mission” had no great success. The overwhelming majority of those who applied for admission to Judaism still did so for the sake of marriage—and continue to do so today. These “converts” came, and would continue to come, without any concept of a “mission of Israel.”
Why did the mission have so little impact? For one thing, because there proved to be very little beyond verbal fervor behind it. The obverse of Reform’s tolerance and responsiveness to the non-Jewish environment was its relativism as compared to Orthodoxy. Reform does not claim to be in possession of the absolute truth: all religions lead to God; Judaism is but one of them. We are still groping, even as others are. Consequently, the Reform Jew felt himself even less strongly impelled than his Orthodox brother to urge his particular brand of “salvation” upon his neighbor.
Thus, in spite of all the homiletical fervor which has always marked Reform pronouncements on the issue, the glorious “mission of Israel” resolves itself into what it has always been over the past eighteen centuries: the “passive mission” that works through “precept and example.” And the steps taken to “Occidentalize” Judaism and make it more attractive (by making it less “different”) to the outsider, far from swelling the ranks of Judaism with sincere and convinced converts, seem rather to have led to a weakening of the attachment of the Jew himself to Judaism. Instead of assimilating the world to Judaism, these efforts have all too frequently resulted in an assimilation of Judaism to the world—as Solomon Schechter had warned they would.
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No doubt there are many liberal Christians who could easily subscribe to the conversion formula used by the Reform synagogue if they were inclined to cut themselves loose from the symbolism and emotionally charged pageantry through which, in spite of their liberalism, they have been accustomed to express their faith. But if this possibility rests simply on the fact that liberal Christianity and liberal Judaism have come to resemble each other, the question is: why should a liberal Christian become converted to liberal Judaism? And here we must touch upon an irony of the present situation: if, as the early Reformers staunchly maintained, Judaism is Ethical Monotheism, then a theistic God concept would seem to be a conditio sine qua non of any form of Judaism which claimed to have a mission to the world at large. It so happens, however, that there are liberal Christians whose concept of God is much more in accord with the theistic tradition of Judaism than are the “humanist” disquisitions on the “God idea” of many rabbis who occupy Reform and Conservative pulpits. Who, then, is to convert whom to a more vitally “religious” religion in the name of the Jewish “mission”?
The trouble is, of course, that the non-Orthodox Jew has no definite program on which to campaign. The Orthodox Jew could conceivably enter the arena with the Creed of Maimonides in one hand and the Shulchan Aruch in the other. He could say to the prospective convert: “Here is the Law. Here is a new way of living. Take it!” And then the convert would really have taken something; he would not merely be moving from one “branch” of universal religion to another. But the spokesmen of a non-Orthodox Judaism, on the other hand, can often offer only a statement of beliefs couched in the vaguest of terms, and recommendations that certain rituals be practiced for aesthetic reasons, or for philosophical or therapeutic ones, or as “folkways.” If the prospective convert is confronted with a statement that leaves it an open question whether or not God is a Person, whether or not there is such a fact as Revelation, whether or not prayer is answered, and with an idea of ceremonial practice completely divorced from any idea of “divine commandment”—if he is confronted with a non-committal statement of this kind (which, at the moment, seems to be the best we can do for him), then he might think twice before burning his inherited bridges to salvation behind him.
It might be argued, of course, that the making of creeds is foreign to Judaism. We have no dogma-making synod, and even the thirteen Articles of Maimonides have never received formal, or even general, approval. As far as the practical observances of Judaism are concerned, there is no agreement among non-Orthodox Jews about their obligatory character (nor is there likely to be any until a theological framework is created that invests the ceremonies of non-Orthodox Judaism with an earnestness that would mark them as an integral part of the man-God relation). Yet possibly just this comparative freedom from dogma and ecclesiasticism might be one of Judaism’s chief appeals. Here the convert can find piety without abdication of reason, the hope of immortality without renunciation of the world, and revelation without fundamentalist literalism. There must be many to whom this type of religion would have an enormous appeal.
But it is only fair to point out that “Judaism” is not the only label attached to this kind of religion. It can be had in many of the liberal Christian churches as well. If Judaism is to be offered qua Judaism, it will have to be presented in a definition per genus et differentiam. If we offer only a more “rational” religion, what do we have to show that cannot be obtained anywhere else?
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Like Judah Halevi’s reconstruction of the debate which led to the conversion of the king of the Khazars, a modern programmatic statement of Judaism might well begin with a consideration of Jewish history, rather than with scholastic proofs of the existence of God. What is the “secret” of Jewish survival:? What is there in the heritage of Judaism that has enabled the Jew to retain his spiritual and emotional equilibrium under the most adverse conditions?3
This would be the context in which to mention the Jew’s belief in his destiny as a people and as an individual, and the concomitant belief that his every act is of significance, both for his own spiritual growth and for the advancement of the ideal society. Nor is history haphazard; its course is determined by the goodness and evil of man. Man’s freedom to act gives him his intimations of the divine and raises him to the position of “God’s partner in the work of creation,” which is daily renewed. There is no aimlessness or despair in Jewish life. Obstacles are there to be overcome, though the struggle is not always easy, or successful.
Above all, the God of Judaism is a unifying principle. There is no artificial dichotomy between body and soul, between matter and spirit. The one like the other is the handiwork of God. Man can serve God in the enjoyment of legitimate earthly pleasures as much as in the more narrowly prescribed “religious” exercises. He need not die unto his flesh in order to enhance his best spiritual qualities. Not escape from mundane life, but the sanctification of the totality of that life, is the highest aspiration of the Jew.
Man’s deeds, not his theological professions, bring him close to God or remove him from God. The speculative avenues by which man reaches God are manifold; but they are supplemented by the whole people’s experience of the God of history. Complete trust in God crowns man’s search. But, along with saints noted for their complete submission to the inscrutable will of God, Judaism also honors the man of faith whose moral sense is outraged by happenings beyond his comprehension. There is room in Judaism for an Abraham and a Jeremiah, a Job and a Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev who “argue” with God. Such “struggles with God” are neither heresy nor sin.
Nor, again, is sin something inherent in man’s constitution, something transmitted through the generations from a mythical “Fall.” A man is responsible only for his own acts. If he has sinned, the “gates of repentance” are always open to him. Confession to God—not to any intermediary—remorse, and avoidance of the same sin when temptation arises again, are the sole means of restoring his harmonious relation with God.
In addition to prayer, Judaism conceives of study as a form of worship. From the early rabbinic identification of Torah with wisdom through the recognition of reason as a source of truth in medieval Jewish philosophy, culminating in Maimonides’ demand for a cultivation of the secular sciences as a preliminary to the full understanding of Judaism, there has been a persistent trend in Judaism to seek for a knowledge of God’s ways in all branches of serious study. In Judaism, then, while there may be a conflict between the scientific theories of one age and those of another, there can be no conflict between religion and science as such; God reveals Himself through the mind of man.
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All this, our statement would conclude, is part of the heritage of Israel. Consciousness of this heritage has led to the developing concept of Israel as the Chosen People of God. Manifold symbolic acts have helped, on the one hand, to keep alive the sense of these values, and, on the other, to preserve the group identification of the widely scattered members of the House of Israel. While, indeed, one or another aspect of this heritage may be found in some non-Jewish religions, especially in their liberal offshoots, it is in Judaism alone that they are all found together, derived as they are from the same basic Hebrew view of God, man, and world.
The fact that Judaism has always had room for the rationalist and the mystic alike, for the prophetic reformer as well as for the priestly conservative, should indicate how much freedom Judaism gives, even in its more traditional conceptions, to the inclinations and the temperament of the individual. Modern Judaism, therefore, does not base its appeal on “reason” to the exclusion of the “heart,” or the reverse. It is precisely the unique fusion and interaction of both, and their consequent mutual reinforcement, that encourages the psychological equilibrium of the practicing Jew. That—and the no less important repercussion of Jewish ideals on the pattern of Jewish community life.
Equally important, in comparison with other religious systems, is what Judaism does not contain. It has, for example, never made any dogmatic pronouncements about the reality of Heaven and Hell, though it has enabled its adherents to hold any number of divergent views on immortality. Modern man in search of a religion he can accept, need find no stumbling block in Judaism on that score. Again, Wherever in a modern church you find a positive approach to the sexual aspects of marriage, it will be at the cost of suppressing a whole complex of Paulinian ideas that, for nearly two thousand years, have been basic to the Christian view of man. No such difficulties beset the modern Jew, who can look back to an old tradition in which marriage is considered to be the first commandment that God gave to man, and which prescribes a formula for the marriage service beseeching God to make the newly wed couple as happy together as He did His original creatures in Paradise.
It is to be clearly understood that we have only spoken of “aspects” of Judaism. There is more to Judaism that would appeal to modern man than we have mentioned; and some of the “aspects” singled out by us may not be considered to be of such importance by others. What we have set down here is offered merely as a basis for further consideration in trying to draw up the program of a Jewish mission.
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Some further considerations of a problematical nature cannot be avoided here. The early Reformers stated categorically: “We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community.” But even if the Jews in 1885 defied classification as a “nation” in the sense in which the Germans or the French constituted nations, they were yet something different from a “church.” They were, in fact, and still are, a people. This fact persisted in obtruding itself upon the Jewish mind, so much so that the Guiding Principles of Reform Judaism, published in 1937 to supersede the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885, contain statements such as these: “Judaism is the historical religious experience of the Jewish people” and “Judaism is the soul of which Israel is the body.”
Here is a missionary problem that the churches do not have to face. By becoming a Jew, the proselyte not only becomes a believing and practicing Jew; he also becomes a member of the Jewish people. Is such a thing possible? Tradition answers yes. A proselyte who asked Maimonides Whether he could join his new co-religionists in praying to “our God and God of our fathers, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” was told that he could most certainly do so. Abraham, whom the Bible calls “father of a multitude of nations,” is the spiritual father of all true believers, a concept, incidentally, which figures very largely in Paul’s attempts to prove that the Christian Church is the true “Israel.” To this day, the proselyte is called to the reading of the Torah as ben Avraham, “the son of Abraham.” And the Talmud claims a pagan ancestry for quite a few of its outstanding teachers. The proselyte, coming to Judaism with a rational conviction of its superiority, will by sharing in the life and destiny of the Jewish community be absorbed in the mainstream of Jewish peoplehood. No less a patriot and Messianic enthusiast than Rabbi Akiba, one of the pillars of rabbinic Judaism, is described as a descendant of the Canaanite general, Sisera, mentioned in the Book of Judges.
The concept of the proselyte as a “son of Abraham” certainly means that Jewish peoplehood was never identified with race or nation in the modern sense. Perhaps that is why in Jewish circles where the contemporary form of nationalism has been elevated almost to a fundamental religious dogma, there is a reluctance to admit Gentile converts. And it is only too true that in recent pronouncements and statements issued by American Jewish religious bodies, one cannot always be so sure whether it is Judaism or “Jewishness” that is being sponsored. Often, indeed, Judaism is presented in nationalist, if not altogether in racist, terms. Where lack of conviction precludes the use of religious terms, political terminology is a handy substitute. Nor do those at the other extreme—the Jews “by religion only”—offer a more satisfactory definition of Jewish life. Insisting in militant publicity campaigns that Judaism is purely and simply a religion, some of their number may yet be found more frequently at Jewish country clubs than in the synagogue.
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Happily for our purposes, Judaism defined itself long before the modern terminologies and ideologies arose to becloud the issue. It defined itself, that is to say, with qualifications. For just as the term ehad (unique) as applied to God indicates that He is beyond complete definition, so, say the Rabbis, does the same term ehad, as applied by Scripture to Israel, show the unique position of the Jewish people and its incompatibility with normal classifications. Knesseth Israel, the “Community of Israel” (or, as Schechter would have it, “Catholic Israel”)—that is how the Rabbis liked to refer to what was both their people and their religion. Knesseth Israel was the group of liberated slaves that entered into a covenant relationship with God at Mount Sinai; the covenant was for a time identical with the political state in Palestine, but it became no less real when this state was extinguished. The immortal memories of the common past kept alive the sense of “peoplehood,” coupled as it was with the ever present reality that “all Israelites are responsible for one another.” But as mere “peoplehood” it would not have been worth speaking about had it not been for the religious aims and ideals that were the raison d’ être of this “people.”
It has to be remembered, of course, that the word “religion” as commonly used by us has a much narrower connotation than the Rabbis of old would have accepted. Their understanding of Judaism permitted a distinction between the “holy” and the “profane,” and there are “degrees” of holiness in the realm of the “religious” itself. But the dichotomy of “religious” and “secular” would have been quite meaningless to them—just as the division into “rabbinate” and “laity” is a very recent innovation in Judaism, and of doubtful value. In fact, the concept of a religion that is coextensive with life (and vice versa) may be said to be one of the characteristics of classic Judaism.
But, classical definitions apart, the “Community of Israel,” or the Jewish Community, is, in fact, what Jewish peoplehood has come to mean for the vast majority of American Jews, whether they realize it or not. And the stress here, quite in the tradition of Knesseth Israel, is on both the adjective and the noun. It is this sense of a community of interests expressed in a group dedicated to communal as well as to personal ends which makes Jewish peoplehood a meaningful concept, and perhaps never more so than at the present time when people complain of “rootlessness.” If the practical “mission of Israel” is ever to become an actuality in our day, the all-inclusiveness of the Jewish people (community), as contrasted with the Jewish or the Israeli nation, is something that will have to be explained not only to the prospective convert, but clarified among Jews themselves.
Whether or not the proselyte will ultimately take an interest in the State of Israel will have to be a problem quite distinct from his conversion. This is not to deny that the State of Israel could have an important role to play in the mission of Israel. Judah Halevi tells us that the loss of Palestine was one of the reasons that delayed the conversion of the king of the Khazars. The practicability of Judaism as a “this-worldly” religion will undoubtedly be judged from the outside on the basis of the social, intellectual, and diplomatic standards of the State of Israel. The state, as it were, will be regarded as the show-case of Judaism in action. But it might be a matter of generations before the State of Israel could fill this role. Nor must her importance be exaggerated at the expense of non-nationalistic manifestations of Judaism. After all, Judaism could have no mission to the world were we to be convinced that a full Jewish life could only be lived on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean.
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But what of the attitude of the Jewish community towards the convert? Our traditional sources are quite outspoken on this point. The Biblical commandment “Love ye the stranger!” was understood by the Rabbis to mean: “Love ye the proselyte!” That this has not invariably been true in modern Jewish communities may, in part, be due to the fact that the vast majority of modern proselytes are merely “proselytes for the sake of marriage” who have not come for the love of God or Judaism. This may well account for the withholding, on the part of the community, of the respect and complete social acceptance traditionally due the convert.
This state of affairs is, of course, not improved by the perfunctory nature of the “conversion” ceremony and the modicum of preparation for it demanded by the Reform synagogue. Both from the point of view of the convert and from that of his ultimate acceptance by the Jewish community, it is psychologically wrong to make the “entrance requirements” easy. It was this psychological insight which, n the rabbinic discussion on whether circumcision was a conditio sine qua non for conversion to Judaism, was decisive. (The early Reformers were completely unaware of these deeper implications.) The proselyte must be made to realize the gravity of the step he is taking. But, on the other hand, the Jewish community must appreciate the sacrifices which the proselyte has made in order to find “shelter under the wings of the Shechinah.”
This, however, immediately involves a further problem: what will the convert find in his new religious community? We assume that he will be a Jew by conviction. But the Jews who make up the congregation in which he will find himself are primarily Jews by birth and habit. Only a minority have ever given serious thought to the theological implications of their “Jewishness.” Will the convert find in the synagogue what he is looking for? Or will he be repelled by the distance he cannot fail to notice between the Jewish ideal and the Jewish reality?
We have no ready-made answer for this, and no precedent to go by. But perhaps we are entitled to hope. Is it not just possible that even the Jew “by birth and habit,” or at any rate his son, will sooner or later search for the rationale of his “Jewishness”? And, if and when he does so, is it not plausible to assume that he will find very little satisfaction in the mere fact of “being different” from the non-Jewish world? Especially if he does not really want to be regarded as an “outsider” by his Gentile neighbor? It is then that the Jew might come to a realization of the value of the religio-ethical community of which he is nominally a part. And particularly if this Jewish community should regard itself as an open community concerned with the problems of society as a whole, and welcoming all who wish to join it, then there is hope that the individual Jew will live up to what the world expects of him, namely: to embody the ideals he preaches to others. The convert may then find what he is looking for.
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Some conclusions may now be drawn. It is clear that those Jews who deem Judaism to be a religion for Jews alone do not face up to the future hope of Judaism as outlined by prophet and Talmudist alike. If Judaism has no message for mankind as a whole, it might easily become the exclusive cult of the Israeli state. Elsewhere it might be able to survive as a tribal relic for a little while longer. Its religious observances will then indeed become mere “folkways,” and its theology will lack that sweep which, in normative Judaism, has always embraced the “End of Days” as well as the “Days of Yore.”
But if, on the other hand, it be conceded that Judaism has a mission to the world, the time has come for some clarification. Since most of us no longer speak in terms of a miraculous divine intervention, this mission will either be the “passive mission” such as was forced upon us by medieval intolerance, or it will mean the resumption of more open missionary activity.
To conceive, with Franz Rosenzweig and his latter-day disciples, that the missionary aspect of Judaism is being fulfilled by Christianity as a kind of “Judaism designed for pagans” would mean ascribing to twenty centuries of Christian history an importance quite out of keeping with the Jewish species aeternitatis—even as it would be to fly in the face of any number of historical facts, such as the active Jewish missionary propaganda in the early Christian centuries, and the particular political conditions that enabled Christianity to overcome its Jewish competitor in the 4th century. But to part company with Rosenzweig on his interpretation of Christianity does not mean that, as Jews, we have to ignore the Christian achievement. Maimonides saw in both Christianity and Islam a “paving of the way for King Messiah.” But Maimonides does not fail to add: “When King Messiah arrives in truth, then they will immediately repent and know that they have inherited falsehood from their fathers, and that their prophets and their fathers have led them astray.” It is only Rosenzweig’s quasibiological understanding of Jewish peoplehood that enables him to see Christianity as Judaism for the Gentiles.
Twenty centuries ago the synagogues of the Hellenistic world were regarded by educated pagans as schools of a viable philosophy of life to which they felt increasingly attracted. Today the synagogue will have to re-emphasize its teaching function in order to appeal to the modern seeker after a satisfying Weltanschauung. As this writer imagines it, the missionary outposts of modern Judaism—if they should come into existence—would often take the prosaic form of libraries and reading rooms. No damnation can be pronounced on “unbelievers,” but Judaism can be presented as an answer to many of life’s problems, an answer meriting the attention of modern men and women, whether they be of Jewish “stock” or not.
We must still affirm that salvation belongs to “the righteous of all nations”; the man seeking his personal “salvation” is not required, absolutely, to become a Jew. But a militant Judaism would insist that the case is different with the salvation of the world as a whole. This is envisaged in terms of an all-embracing Judaism. While not claiming a monopoly on the key that will unlock the gate to the “kingdom which is not of this world,” religious Jews do believe that the plans for God’s kingdom on earth have been delivered into their keeping; that Judaism, as the religion with the most positive approach to all aspects of human life, holds the best promise of enrichment for the earthly life of mankind as a whole. Those Gentiles, therefore, who have this larger salvation at heart, should be made acquainted with what Judaism has to offer, and should be invited to cast in their lot with the household of Israel.
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That this mission should find quick success is too much to hope for, and it is not seriously suggested that the next decade or two will see the fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy that “ten men from the nations of every tongue shall take hold of the robe of a Jew, saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’ ”
For one thing, it may take that long, if not longer, for Jews to set their own house in order for the outsider to feel its attraction. But it is precisely the thought of making Judaism “attractive,” and the resultant stimulation for Jews to reconsider their own religious heritage, which might well be the first, and the most significant, by-product of re-opening this whole discussion of the “mission of Israel.” For, after all, the serious consideration of a mission presupposes that the Jew is convinced in his own heart that he has something valuable to share with others. If this presupposition cannot be made, we need neither discuss the mission, nor would we be entitled to take the hope of Jewish “survival” very seriously. Conversely, however, if the Jew is convinced that Judaism is true, that the pattern of Jewish community life is valuable in terms of both individual and social fulfillment, then it is hard to see how he could reconcile with his religio-ethical tradition any attempt to withhold this boon from the rest of mankind.
In dealing with the “mission of Israel” in this, its “domestic” setting, it is precisely the present lack of a concrete platform, noted earlier, which must be our point of departure. Whether the contemporary denominational set-up within American Jewry will prove helpful in this context may be legitimately questioned. Coming into existence in response to a particular historical situation that no longer obtains, the denominations have to use all possible means of promotion and advertising to justify their separate existence in the eyes of the Jew born into their ranks. Whether the interested non-Jew who has decided to become a Jew will be more attracted by the group that worships without hat than by the one which is less like the church of his childhood is hardly an important question. Nor is it a question of the one or the other non-Orthodox group offering the more satisfactory theology, since the differences in theistic belief cut right across the denominational lines. And, apart from those who are forced to defend vested interests, it can no longer be seriously argued that one rather than another Jewish denomination is more essentially “American” and better suited to the environment. Ultimately it will have to be recognized that there are only two basic types of Judaism: the Orthodox and the non-Orthodox variety. The position of the former is already determined, and has been so for many centuries. It is the latter, in its several manifestations, which has promised to come to terms with present-day realities. A preoccupation with the practical “mission of Israel” may go a long way to making good this promise.
As any one in the educational field knows from his own experience, many a problem that has been unclear to the teacher will be clarified the moment he is charged with presenting it to his students. What the “mission of Israel” might accomplish for the Jews themselves could be conceived in very similar terms. Moreover, it might even be argued, as Leo Baeck has done, that a dedication to the idea of “mission,” and it alone, can give Judaism the necessary dynamics for survival—now that the original impetus of both Reform and Zionism has lost itself in the complacency of achieved ambitions. A return to the idea of an active Jewish mission—apart from its ultimate benefit, as we believe, for humanity as a whole—might, therefore, well be the salvation of American Judaism in the fourth century of its existence.
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1 Only once, under the Maccabean ruler John Hyrcanus (135-104 B.C.E.), was Judaism imposed upon other peoples, fellow Palestinians, at the point of the sword. But this was a political rather than a religious move, and the Jews were to have ample cause to regret it.
2 It can be seen in the Library of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and is listed as Geniza Fragment No. 8.
3 See Arnold J. Wolf, in COMMENTARY, April 1953, on how this “pragmatic” approach to Judaism is eagerly pursued by some contemporary Japanese.
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