“Four Epistles to the Jews of England” first appeared during 1901 in the Jewish Chronicle in London. They still possess relevance, although the panegyric on the East-European Jews in the second “Epistle” reads today more like an elegy than an admonition.

The “Epistles” are printed here by permission of the Jewish Publication Society of America (the copyright owners) which included them in a small collection of Schechter’s writings, called Studies in Judaism, Second Series, published in 1908 and reprinted in 1938. We have taken the liberty of changing some of the punctuation and of inserting additional paragraph breaks.—Editor.

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I beg to submit to your readers the following passage taken from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson:

What a strange idea to think me a Jewhater! Isaiah and David and Heine are good enough for me, and I leave more unsaid. . . . The ascendant hand is what I feel most strongly; I am bound in and with my forbears; were he one of mine I should not be struck at all by Mr. Moss, of Bevis Marks, I should still see behind him Moses of the Mount and the Tables, and the shining face. We are nobly born; fortunate those who know it; blessed those who remember.

I quote Stevenson as an author familiar to your readers. The same sentiment, however, is expressed, if less forcibly, by hundreds of Jewish writers in ancient and modem times, all of which goes to show that the now fashionable cry (among the Little Israelites), of our being Anglo-Saxons or Englishmen of the Jewish persuasion, is but a sickly platitude.

Those familiar with Judaica know that the cry was raised in Germany some generations ago, many rabbis and many more laymen shouting it with the whole power of their lungs: “We are Germanen of the Mosaic persuasion!” The theory is now exploded in Germany, and our repeating such platitudes after the terrible experience of the last decades can only be explained on the principle of Martineau, who remarks somewhere that in matters intellectual the English are sometimes apt to act as the younger brothers of the Germans, putting on the trousers which their elder brothers left off wearing years ago.

The doctrine professed now by those who are not carried away by the newfangled “yellow” theology is: there is no Judaism without Jews, and there are no Jews without Judaism. We can thus only be Jews of the Jewish persuasion. “Blessed those who remember!”

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Jews As Missionaries

I offer for the consideration of your readers another quotation. It is taken from a correspondence, still in manuscript, between two scholars of my acquaintance: “Can you imagine the ancient chosen people of God going about begging for a nationality—clamoring everywhere, ‘We are you!’—joining the Boxers of every nation on earth, and using the last crumbs of the sacred language in which God-Shalom addressed his children to invoke his blessing upon the ‘Mitrailleuse,’ the ‘Krupp gun,’ ‘Dum-dum’ and ‘Long-tom,’ and other anti-Messianic contrivances?”

The terrible irony of the situation becomes apparent when we remember that while millions of Aryans lay eager claim to the name and heritage of Israel, Israel, ashamed of its Semitic origin, seeks to disavow itself and to ape the Occident in all things except its admiration for Israel. It has become for it almost a sacred duty to Occidentalize its religion. It forgets all the while that, however richly endowed the European genius may be, religion is not one of its gifts. Not a single European god has survived the awakening of mankind from savagery and barbarism. Nor has Europe produced a single great religious founder. St. Francis of Assisi, the hero of modem sentimentalism, remains, despite all decoration in the latest French style, a crude imitation of the Semitic original.

But perhaps the saddest feature amid so much that is farcical is that we still profess to have a mission to the world. The idea of this mission is certainly an old one. A community forming a Kingdom of Priests must have the whole world for its parish. But is the constant endeavor to level down the intellectual and spiritual standard to that of our surroundings compatible with the missionary ideal? Missionaries are only with the people, but not of the people. They share their griefs, but hold aloof from their orgies. They convert the world, but do not allow the world to convert them. They neither court popularity nor pander to prejudice. They must destroy the idol before they can proclaim the God. Abraham, the first missionary, the “Friend of God,” had to stand alone contra mundum, and in this his real greatness is said to have consisted.

Such passive virtues as we may possess are somewhat too common to be very imposing, while our success in the various callings of life is of too material a nature to be used as a spiritual weapon. In the realms of pure thought we remain in spite of all our boasting only second-rate, not possessing a single man who might be called a leader of thought. It is more than passing strange that under the screw of the Inquisition and the Cherem we could produce a Spinoza, while today, with all our prosperity, we cannot show even a commentator on Spinoza.

But the world will never be conquered by mediocrities. If, then, our endless talk about a religious mission is not to degenerate into mere cant, a religious atmosphere will have to be created quite different to that in which we have lived hitherto. This atmosphere will, in the first place, have to be thoroughly and intensely Jewish. The center of gravity of all our thought and sympathies will have to be placed, irrespective of country, among Jews. Whatever our political destiny may be, our religious destiny can never be worked out by the West in isolation. The religious energies of all our brethren of the West and of the East, in closest communion, will be required for its consummation.

We have got the men, we have got the money, and a good deal of system, but they have the simple faith, they have the knowledge of Jewish lore, and they have the will and the strength, inured as they; are to suffering, to live and to die for their conception of Judaism. They permit no “free love” in religion. Universality means with them what it meant with the prophets and their Jewish successors—that the whole world should become Jews, not that Judaism should fade out into the world. We have the method and they have the madness; only if we combine can the victory be ours. A closer communion of sympathies will probably be facilitated by our devoting some more time to the Hebrew language, which is still the depository of all that is sacred to the Eastern Jew. From this literature we shall obtain the revelation of his standard of religious fervor and real spirituality, the height of which remains unsuspected and undreamt of by the Occidentals.

Above all, religious enthusiasm and zeal, if they are to be effective, will have to be brought to the boiling point. It is only that zeal which will consume all worldliness, which will suffer no rival, and which will not falter in its devotion because of any dread of one-sidedness that can be of any use to the missionary.

Now Judaism has often been accused of being deficient in enthusiasm, the great mysterious power of spiritual propagation. It was always inconceivable to me how such an accusation could be brought against a people which has produced the Psalms, or in a later period, the great allegorical commentaries on the Song of Songs. But in view of the constant boast of our common sense, and the pains we take to avoid anything which might be suspected of eccentricity or even idealism, our morbid craving for the applause of the majority, and our eager desire to lose ourselves in the majority, our deification of the balance sheet and the cold, stiff, business-like spirit in which our institutions are conducted, we cannot deny all justification for these attacks. I shall probably be told that we are acting thus as practical Englishmen. But where then are our John Wesleys, our Newmans, or even our Liddons? Surely, they, too, were eminently English.

Spiritual Religion Versus
Spiritual Men

I had occasion in my last letter to use the word “spirituality.” The term is obscure, and it has caused a good deal of confusion. A few explanatory remarks, therefore, may perhaps prove instructive to your readers.

Some, indeed, identify the term with “morality.” There is some truth in this, inasmuch as nothing immoral can possibly be spiritual. But, unfortunately, people are too eager to be guided by the principle of Becky Sharp, according to which your chances of heaven increase with the number of the ciphers in your banking account, and they are thus inclined to think spirituality the exclusive privilege of wealth. Some witty Bishop is recorded to have said of his worldly brethren of the dissenting camp, “that their second horse stops at the church door of its own accord.” Our smart carriages do not stop at the synagogue or at any place of worship, but they are too often the symptoms of a spirituality betokened by a strong antipathy to the religion of the humbler classes, and an insatiable appetite for new prayers—chiefly written for the benefit of the poor.

Others, again, believe spirituality to be opposed to the Law, and especially the ceremonial part of it. Their religious superiority can, therefore, only be shown by the rejection of both. For instance, if you refrain from food and drink on the Kippur, walk to the synagogue, and spend the day there reading your ancient liturgy, and listen to an exposition by your preacher of the lesson from the Scriptures, then you are a worshiper of the common type, a slave laboring under the yoke of the letter. But if you ride up to the temple after an ordinary breakfast, pass an hour or two there listening to an oratorio and in following a sermon on the merits of the last novel of Hall Caine, or on the more subtle subject of the intellectual relations between Master David Grieve and the Reverend Robert Elsmere, and employ the rest of the day in looking after your affairs and taking your other two meals, as a rational being should, then you have acted as a spiritual Jew, and have worshiped your God in spirit and in truth. This may seem a caricature, but signs are not wanting that matters are drifting that way.

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Now, I do not intend to give a new definition of “spirituality.” It is as indefinable as the spirit itself, and its meaning can be as little conveyed in words as a soul can be painted. But I may be permitted to reproduce here the substance of a conversation between a foreign gentleman and myself bearing upon our subject, which conversation, though rambling in part and largely colored by prejudice and partiality, is not without the merit of freshness. I must only premise that my benighted foreigner hailed from a certain town in Russia where he lived as a mere layman, occupied with his trade, which circumstance, however, did not prevent him from being an excellent Talmudist and a person well versed in other branches of Jewish literature.

Our acquaintance is of comparatively recent date, and was made in a German watering place. Our conversations were long and many, on all possible subjects, English Jews and English Judaism among them. And then there happened a strange thing. Whilst he spoke with the utmost deference of our great philanthropists and the enduring merit of their labors on behalf of Israel, he fairly staggered at our claims to the religious leadership of Judaism. On my representing to him that there was probably no Jewish community in the world in which the subject of religion occupies the mind of the people so much as in ours, and this, too, as I added with some emphasis, spiritual religion, he answered, “That is exactly where we differ. You incessantly prate about a spiritual religion, whilst we insist upon spiritual men.”

When I asked for further explanation, he replied vehemently: “It is your Western arrogance with your pretensions to perfection—your theologians, indeed, have never forgiven Judaism for insisting upon man’s shortcomings—which prevents you from tracing the evil to its real sources. It flatters your vanity to think yourselves demi-gods, or even gods only hyphenated with man. When you find your idols wallowing in the mire of their appetite, like any other animal, you proceed to blame religion for its lack of spirituality, as not being sublime enough for your darling gods. But did the Psalmist, whom even you consent to patronize in your moments of condescension, plead for new commandments, or did he pray for a new heart and a new spirit to perceive the wonders of the old ones?

“We, of the East, have a less elevated opinion of ourselves. You reproach us with being servile and cringing, which means, in fact, that we are not blind to our inferiority. Instead of blaming religion, we reproach ourselves. It is not that which comes from the Torah which defiles. It is the things which proceed out of the man, his mental attitude during the performance of the Divine commandment, his purpose in fulfilling it, which may leave a defiling effect even on things heavenly and pure. ‘Two men may be eating the Paschal lamb,’ say the ancient rabbis, ‘the one devours it like a mere glutton, with the intention of satisfying his appetite, and is a stumbling sinner; the other eats it with the purpose of showing obedience to his Maker, and is a walker in righteousness.’

“Even more incisive are the Jewish mystics who declare that ‘Torah (or religion) performed without love and awe never takes its flight into the regions above.’ Man has thus to furnish the Law with wings of love and awe to make it return to God who gave it, and it is his fault if, instead of this, he becomes a dead weight to the Law, dragging it down to the earth and to things earthly against its real nature. But your much-glorified man is, unfortunately, an unreliable beast. ‘Wherever a man is, there shall be a lie,’ was a favorite saying of a great writer. This may be an exaggeration, but he is certainly a creature of mixed motives, full of cross references, which mostly point to his own dear self.”

My friend continued: “Now, having recognized how greatly the proper performance of a Mitzvah is dependent on the nature of the performer, and that it is man who becomes a burden to the Law, not the Law a burden to man, we left religion undisturbed, and set to work upon man. Our remedy for all evil is the principle, lishmah, or lishmo, which insists that the commandments of the Torah should be carried out with the sole purpose of pleasing God, thus raising the standard of the performer to that of the performance, in the same proportion as he is able to divest himself of worldly interests and selfish motives. Hence the radical difference between your ideal of a great man and ours.

“When you speak of your leaders, you praise them as ‘men of affairs,’ ‘great organizers,’ ‘finished orators,’ ‘suave diplomatists,’ ‘statesmen,’ and similar expressions, all of which have a certain ring of worldliness and worldly success about them, suggesting the acting of a part, and the acting it well. When we get enthusiastic about our rabbis or Zaddikim, we describe them as ‘sacred unto God,’ ‘holy and pure,’ ‘contrite of spirit’ (zerbrochener Jüd), or as ‘men hiding themselves in the stuff’ (I Sam. 10:22), and by similar phrases conveying the idea of an ascetic life, a shrinking from publicity—religious delicacy.”

I interposed that asceticism was a monastic ideal, and that there is no room for it in Judaism.

“Oh!” he exclaimed angrily, “this is again one of your platitudes. Who is Judaism? You and I, or is it the prophet Elijah, Rabbi Zadok, R. Simon ben Yochai, Bachye, and the Gaon of Wilna?”

“To be sure,” he added, “you are the people of muscular Judaism. Of course, you are only parroting the silly phrase prevalent some half-century ago when it was suddenly discovered that outdoor sports and good feeding and brutality of the martial kind were an integral part of primitive Christianity. You at once took up the phrase, and are now thoroughly convinced that nothing is so conducive to holiness as underdone beef and stout, bare knees and championship contests at football. It is only your ignorance of Jewish life and Jewish thought that makes you so susceptible to every fashionable craze of the moment, and ready to claim it as the Jewish ideal.”

In this way he went on pouring out torrents of abuse and speech, which I dare not repeat, but I will record here his concluding remark, which was to the following effect: “One of your philosophers,” he said, “maintained that the world cannot be too often reminded that there once lived such a person as Socrates, and you cannot too often remember that Baal Shem, R. Elijah Wilna, Krochmal, the last real great reformers of Judaism, not mere aesthetes, were Russian or Polish Jews. As for spirituality in particular, I will only direct your attention to a book Nefeshha-Khayim, written by one of the pupils of R. Elijah Wilna with the express purpose of checking the mystical tendencies represented by the Hasidim, and I challenge you to show me, in your Anglo-Judaean publications, a single page equalling it in spirituality and in depth of religious feeling.”

I am now reading the book, and I am compelled to confess that our “alien” was right.

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Despising A Glorious Inheritance

Some time ago, when discussing University topics with a colleague, my friend made the remark that Jews and women are in proportion to their lesser numbers more strongly represented in the various branches of natural science—to the neglect of all other subjects—than any other section of the nation. With that inveterate habit of ours to interpret all facts in a way flattering to our vanity, I at once jumped to the conclusion that there must be some mysterious mental affinity between “Johanna Bull” and “Young Israel,” making them take up the same intellectual pursuits in life. My friend shook his head, and said: “The reason is simple enough, neither Jews nor women have any traditions of real learning.” To be a member of a community in whose ears it is always dinned that it represents “the people of the Book,” and to be suddenly told that one is a mere parvenu in the world of thought, is bad enough; but what makes it worse is the unfortunate circumstance that the taunt is not entirely devoid of truth.

I am only a teacher, not an educationalist, and University statistics do not fall within the range of my studies; there may thus be some flaw in the figures which were at the disposal of my friend. But his remark was perfectly justified, if it was based on the very insignificant part we take in the study of Semitics, more particularly in that of the Hebrew language. In this respect we resemble much more the Japanese and the Hindus whose traditions are pagan, or the African races who have no traditions, than the dwellers of these islands with whom the original language of the Old Testament is an object of deep love and reverential study. Now and then a Jewish undergraduate takes advantage of his confirmation days, and freshening up his Parashah and his prayer book, he manages to carry off a Hebrew exhibition or sizarship. On rare, very rare, occasions it even happens that a Jewish undergraduate takes up Semitics as a subject for honors. But there the matter ends.

Unlike the Anglo-Saxon of Christian persuasion, the Anglo-Saxon of Jewish persuasion never becomes a Semitic student or even a “Hebrew scholar,” devoting to the study of the sacred language all his time and energies. All classes of the nation are engaged in this labor of love—sons of cabinet ministers, sons of generals, sons of high ecclesiastics, sons of great financiers, making theology and the study of the Hebrew language—sometimes the study of the Hebrew language without the theology—the sole occupation of their lives, toiling in it enthusiastically until their dying day, and enriching it with their contributions. We are the only cool-headed people who remain perfectly indifferent in the presence of all this enthusiasm. The consequence is that with one glorious exception we are as little represented in that gigantic literature which centers round the Bible—commentaries, archaeological researches, studies in Cuneiform and Egyptology, grammatical treatises, histories of Israel, and other helps to the “Book”—as the semi-civilized races mentioned above.

Like politics in America, theology and all that is connected with it has become with us a close profession of no mortal interest to those who are not in it, which a gentleman may tolerate and even contribute toward maintaining, but in which he must never engage personally.

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The situation becomes serious when we have to witness that even those classes that are supposed to constitute the close profession of theology are gradually drifting away from the study of the Torah, becoming strangers to any deeper knowledge of Jewish literature. I am referring to the Jewish clergy, who, laboring under a cruel system which reduces man to a mere plaything of politico-economic forces, are rapidly losing touch with the venerable rabbi of Jewish tradition, whose chief office was to teach and to learn Torah.

With us the duty of learning (or study of the Torah) seems to be of least moment in the life of the minister. As long as he is in statu pupillari, most of his energies are directed toward acquiring the amount of secular learning necessary for the obtaining of a University degree, whilst in his capacity as full Reverend he is expected to divide his time between the offices of cantor, prayer, preacher, bookkeeper, debt-collector, almoner, and social agitator. No leisure is left to him to enable him to increase his scanty stock of Hebrew knowledge acquired in his undergraduate days. Occasionally rumor spreads anent some minister, that he neglects his duty to his congregation through his being secretly addicted to Jewish learning. But such rumors often turn out to be sheer malice, and form in the worst case only the exception to the rule. Of course, as in so many other respects, we are also in this only imitating the Establishment, in which, by a peculiar history of its own, the man of business or the great organizer has of late years gained the ascendency over the man of thought and learning.

Now, there is even in the Church a party which resents this ascendency, rightly feeling that souls cannot be “organized” and that the qualities which go toward the making of a “man of God” are not exactly those required of a successful manager of a company. But this distrust of the man of affairs must grow deeper in a community professing a religion that, unlike Christianity, which to a certain extent began life with defying learning and throwing down the gauntlet to scholars, entered upon its career (of Rabbinic Judaism) with the declaration, “On three things the world is based: on the study of the Torah, on worship, and on lovingkindness.” Such a religion cannot well convert itself suddenly into a large charity agency, without doing serious injury to one of its most important lifesprings.

Nor must it be forgotten that the Church is not quite dependent for its necessary modicum of learning upon the bishops’ bench or on the rest of the active clergy. For this ample provision is made in our great universities where Queen Theology is still holding her own, and where there is hardly any branch of divinity for which a chair was not created and endowed in such a way as to make its occupation desirable. But there is naturally little room in our alma mater for that special sort of learning of which the synagogue is in need (of post-biblical literature), whilst we can hardly hope that the laity will devote itself to a subject holding out little hope of success in the world and public recognition. We can, therefore, only rely upon our rabbis, who were always considered the depositaries of the Torah, to remain faithful to their trust; and unless we choose to degenerate into a mere ranting sect, we shall have to give up looking upon our ministers as superior clerks in whom the businesslike capacity is more in demand than any other virtues they may possess.

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But if there was ever a time when a revival of Hebrew learning meant the very existence of Judaism, it is this. It must be clear to everybody, I think, who does not allow himself to be deceived by the few political distinctions which have fallen to our share within the last fifty years, that the new century does not open under very favorable auspices for Judaism.

Everything seems to be out of gear. Our Scriptures are the constant object of attack; our history is questioned, and its morality is declared to be of an inferior sort; our brethren are either directly persecuted, or allowed to exist only on sufferance everywhere with the exception of England and Italy. The number of conversions is constantly increasing, assuming in the less enlightened countries such frightful proportions as are known to history only in the days of Ferdinand the Catholic; whilst even in the more civilized parts of the world, where we enjoy full equality with our fellow-citizens, some of our greatest families, forming in the days of yore the pride and the hope of Israel, are perpetually crumbling away through conscious and unconscious amalgamation. It is no exaggeration to say that every letter patent conferring nobility upon a Jew contains an indirect invitation to leave the Pale and join the majority of his new compeers.

Worst of all is the attitude of the younger generation, who, if not directly hostile, are by dint of mere ignorance, sadly indifferent to everything Jewish, and thus incapable of taking the place of their parents in the synagogue. Notwithstanding our self-congratulating speeches at the annual distributions of religious prizes, it is a fact that ignorance is on the increase among our better situated classes. Very few are capable of reading their prayers, and less are able to understand what they read; whilst the number of those who know anything of Israel’s past and share in its hopes for Israel’s future, form almost a negligible quantity. Those who have some dim recollection of the religious exercises practiced in the houses of their fathers, still entertain some warm regard for Jewish life and Jewish ways of thinking; but religious warmth, like heat in general, is apt to evaporate with the increasing distance of the conductors, and the children or the grandchildren of these sympathetic lookers-on are bound to end in that cold critical attitude toward Judaism terminating in the drifting away from it altogether.

The outlook is thus dark enough; dark enough, indeed, to be followed by some great revival or renaissance, or as the rabbis put it: “The redemption of Israel is preceded, like the dawn, by intense darkness, as it is said: When I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.” Now the Renaissance is usually described as the moment in history in which man discovered himself. In a similar way the Jew will also have to rediscover himself.

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This discovery, which should be undertaken with a view to strengthening the Jewish consciousness, can be made only by means of Jewish literature, which retains all that is immortal in the nation. There it will be found that we have no need to borrow commentaries on our Scriptures from the Christians, nor constantly to use foreign fertilizers in our sermons. Jewish soil is rich enough for all purposes, and those who, instead of using their dictionary of quotations and other aids to pious composition, will courageously dig in the perennial mines of Jewish thought, will find that there is no need to go begging for an “over-soul” from Emerson, or for crumbs of a tame pantheism from Wordsworth, or for a somewhat brusque immortality from Tennyson, or even for a Kingdom of God with something like a converted political economy from Ruskin. I yield to no man in respect for these writers, but unless we are prepared to see the synagogue lose its Jewish complexion, the Jewish pulpit must be reserved for the teaching of the Bible with illustrative matter as is to be found in the Mekhilta, Sifre, Pesikta, and in the writings of Ibn Gabirol, Judah Halevi, Maimonides, Nahmanides, Luzzatto, the Gaon, the Baal Shem, and other Jewish classics.

Above all, however, it is, as already indicated, of supreme importance that we repossess ourselves of our Scriptures. The Torah is, as the rabbis express it, “the bride of the congregation of Jacob,” but to acquire a knowledge of it through the medium of Christian commentaries means to love by proxy, and never to gain the spiritual nearness which made it so easy for our ancestors to die and even to live for it.

I am not unmindful of the profit which the biblical student may derive from the works of such men as Ewald, Dillmann, Kuenen, and many others of the same schools. But it must not be forgotten that there is such a thing as a Christian bias, prevalent even in works of the Higher Criticism, and to ignore Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Kimchi, in favor of Stade and Duhm, means to move from the Judengasse into the Christian Ghetto. With Christian commentators, whether orthodox or liberal, the Old Testament is only a preamble to the New Testament, all the prophecies and hope of salvation culminating in Jesus. Post-biblical Judaism is almost entirely neglected by them, in spite of the light it may shed on many biblical points, insisting as they do that Jewish history terminated about the year 30 of our era.

With the Jew the Old Testament is final, though its aspects may vary with the interpretation given to it by an ever-changing history and differing phases of thought, whilst it is Israel, “the servant of God,” in whom all the promises and hopes of the Prophets center. It is in this spirit that a Jewish COMMENTARY should be written to the whole of the Bible (including the Apocrypha) for the great majority of the Jewish public, with whom the Scriptures should again become an object both of study and of edification. This should be the next task to which our clergy should devote themselves in the near future.

But a quite different standard of learning will have to be created to enable them to undertake such a task. Our ministry will surely rejoice in the opportunity of being translated from the noisy platform, with its temptation of loathsome and vulgar selfadvertisement, to the quiet study, and the community, if it is as ‘much alive to the duties of the West End as it is to its responsibilities to the East End, will have to relieve the minister from many an uncongenial and unprofitable duty, which not only makes learning among us impossible, but deters many a noble and independent thinker from entering the sacred profession to which he could add only luster.