<^\UIBRARY0A M Stack Annex 501SC 63 THE CLIMBERS. AN ADDRESS IN THE RODEF SHALOM TEMPLE PITTSBURGH. SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1912. Scripture Reading, Proverbs viii. Whoso rindeth wisdom rindeth life, and shall obtain favor from the Lord. (Proverbs viii.. 35.) The name of Charles Darwin is associated in the minds of many persons with the idea that he taught that the human family is descended from the monkey, and that there is a missing link, yet to be discovered by bio- logical investigation, which will prove that he was cor- rect. It is needless for me to tell you who read that Darwin discovered nothing of the kind, that he never made any such statement. The popular opinion grew out of one of the falsehoods forged by his enemies. *By the Rev. J. Leonard Levy, Rabbi of the Congregation. Stenographically reported by Caroline Loewenthal. Homogeneous to Heterogeneous. It probably arose from one of the many untruthful statements made, especially by weak clergymen, in de- fense of their weaker faith. Mr. Darwin is responsible for the discovery of a series of laws which were dimly adumbrated before his time ; but, after -forty years of patient observation, he was able to teach, with the au- thority of positive knowledge, that everything in Nature develops from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, from the simple to the complex. While it may not be necessary, it may be well, to illustrate. Society, in its beginnings, was very simple; but it has developed and has now become exceedingly complex. The brain of the animal is simple; that of man i^ convoluted and complex. Religion, originally, wa a very simple matter; but it, too, has become very complex. In a word, everything tends to grow from the simple or homogeneous, to the complex or heterogeneous. In course of his biological observations and his many discoveries, Darwin found that Nature has certain defin- ite and unvarying methods of operation which are known as Laws, to some of which he gave the names Natural Selection. Variation, Heredity, Environment, and so forth. When the smoke of the conflict cleared away, it was seen that Darwin was not the demon and fiend he had been represented, and that among other laws which he had discovered was that exceedingly great truth which we must all learn to apply to our lives as well as to N'ature, the law of the "Survival of the Fittest." The Fittest Survive. Darwin showed that struggle, contest and war pre- vail all through nature ; that they always will prevail, and that the larger and .greater and stronger always seek to take advantage, in some manner or other, of their op- portunities to the detriment of the smaller and weaker and less efficient; that among trees on the mountain side, for example, all compete for the heat, light, soil and moisture, and that this contest causes some trees to be dwarfed at the expense of those which grow heavenward ; that were we able to study all conditions, we should find that, ultimately, certain trees survive while others dis- appear, and that those which persist survive because they are fittest to survive. Nietzsche's Application. Immediately after Darwin's discoveries had become well established in the minds of the thoughtful, a Ger- man philosopher, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche applied these biological laws to human experience. Nietzsche showed that the survival of the fittest must be taken to mean the survival of the strongest. Germany responded to this teaching by becoming an armed camp. The phil- osophy of blood and iron, of force and fist, became apotheosized and, fKom the Emperor down, the German people evolved into a perfect fighting machine. It was, and still is, held that, if Germany is to maintain her posi- tion in Europe, conscription must be rigidly enforced and the young German must be developed into a physi- cal giant. Strange, is it not, two thousand years after the pro- mulgation of the doctrines of the "Prince of Peace"; two thousand years after the crucifixion of the young Jew who said, "My kingdom is not of this world 7 ' ; strange, is it not, after teaching, from almost every pulpit in Eu- rope for well nigh two millennia, "Resist no evil," that great nations should find it necessary to support their theological and moral philosophies by the power of armies, thus, whether they believe it or not, proving, apparently that the fittest are the strongest. The Jew's Dissent. As a teacher of the Jewish religion, I beg to dissent. As one spiritually nourished by the teachings of the He- brew Bible, I find myself in perfect accord with such teachings of the Prophets of Israel as, "By strength shall n- man prevail," (I. Samuel ii., 9); "Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit, saith the Lord," (Zechariah i\ -.. 6. ) If there ever was in the history of the world a peo- ple who. from the standpoint of the merely physical, ought long since to have proved itself unfit to live, the Jews are that people. Small, weak, for centuries denied all opportunity for physical development, shut up for ages in filthy ghettoes and narrow streets, and stunted in the Judengass. the Jews were, by a refinement of cruelty, denied the chance of even strengthening their bodies by life on the farms of Europe. Governments, by barbaric restrictions, enforced privations and compulsory legisla- tion which reduced the Jews to want, penury and de- spicable forms of trade, conspired to break the physical force of the Jewish people and to diminish their strength and size. It was not always thus. In Palestine, before the Roman conquest, the Jews had been a hardy mountaineer or agricultural people, and a recent study, by eminent archaeologists, of ten thousand graves of Jews buried in ancient Palestine, shows that the average height of a Jew must have been not less than 5 ft. 8 inches. But the advent of the State religion in Christian Europe resulted in the murder, mutilation, massacre and assassination of Jews, so that their numbers have been reduced and their phy- sical force vastly diminished. Even in the days of its greatest prosperity, the Jewish kingdom was but a tiny stretch of land between Phoenicia and Philistia, between the mountains of Edom and Moab and the Mediterran- ean Sea, a narrow strip of territory about fifty by one hundred and fifty miles. Strongest Not Fittest. If the Nietzsche idea is correct, Israel should have departed long since ; and yet this people lives. But Babylon, the mighty empire of antiquity, is gone. Tyre, that controlled the commerce of the world, has disap- peared. Alexandria, the New York of two thousand years ago, is today a miserable, filthy little hole; with the exception of one central square, the Place Mehemet Ali, Alexandria is but a heap of ruins, filth and degrada- tion. I have mentioned these three, but the same may be said of the mighty empires of Assyria, Persia, Syria, Greece, Rome, Spain. Great, indeed, were they in ex- tent; but gone the way of all flesh are they. We should learn from this that they who indentify the fittest with the strongest err, and that the word "fit- test." in the sense that Darwin used it in the phrase "the survival of the fittest," must signify other qualities than mere- physical prowess. Napoleon said, "I observe that (ixl i> >n the side of the strongest battalion," but Na- poleon ended his life a captive on the island of St. Helena. It is surely true that all who repose their faith completely in things of the earth, who are wedded to the merely material, who believe that the tangible and visible things of this world, because they manifest might and power, are the fittest to survive, have an incorrect conception of the true interpretation of universal life. The Spiritual Survives. C'ltme with me into some humble, but truly Jewish, home and you may see some poor father studying with his child, poring over the musty volumes of ancient Jew- ish lore, thus endeavoring to fit his child to become a successful struggler in the affairs of the world. That man may know nothing about Darwin, or Variation, or the Survival of the Fittest, or any other modern biological term-. Hut he does know, by an instinct developed in the sons and daughters of Israel for thousands of years, that they who would survive can only do so through qualities of mind and soul, never by merely physical or material strength. Here and there we find individuals who have learned this law and are applying it to them- ^elves and others in their environment; but, I believe, the time is fast approaching when men and women in America will more generally understand this philosophy of our Scriptures, and will pledge their faith to the be- lief that it is the human spirit, mental, moral and relig- ious, which gives man the power by which he survives. Diplodocus vs. Dog. For if body, size, strength and might, were the forces which should survive, then the Diplodocus in the Car- negie Museum should be living today while the little dog should long since have disappeared. If might and strength and power were the fittest to survive, then the mastodon should still roam over the world while the lit- tle horse should long since have disappeared. No ; the survival of the fittest does not mean the survival of the strongest. It means the survival of the best, the noblest, the highest, in every phase of existence, and as we fully understand that moral strength, and mental strength, and spiritual strength, far transcend bodily strength, we ought to realize that the elements which make man fit- test to survive are the qualities of mind and spirit or soul rather than physical force, even though it be that of the mighty giant. God's Justice Involved. Were it not so, God were unjust. Were it not so, there would be naught but injustice in the universe. Were it not so, then the Prophets of the human race were lunatics while the rulers of the marts and markets of the world possess the highest wisdom. For, if God so con- structed this universe that the man of physical might should prevail, then is He not God but a demon. If God made this world .so that physical force, the fist and the brutal power of might, are the expressions of His will, then is He indeed a Jupiter and not a Jehovah, then is He only a Mars and not the Master of all worlds. But a correct interpretation of history brings to those who have the slightest faith in God and man the assurance that God did not so form the world. He made it as a realm in which spiritual forces are to become supreme ; as the Scripture writer points out in the lesson read this morning, "whoso fmdeth wisdom findeth life, and shall obtain favor from the Lord." We Follow Our Nose. r>ut the truly wise man is still rare; the man of true wisdom is still hard to find. Most of us are still influenced by the sight of our eyes, and attach little importance to the teachings of those great and good and wise men whom we call prophets. Most of us are still men of little faith. Most of us still identify the survival of the fittest with the survival of the strongest, and most of us still believe that mundane power, material strength, material wealth, material prowess, gains for man the proud distinctions and positions he craves rather than do mental power, and moral force, and spiritual grace. Mrs. Schreiner's Opinion. 1 commend to your attention a little book which ap- peared a little time ago, and was written by Mrs. Olive Schrciner, of South Africa, under the most distressing circumstances. Her work would, probably, have been published in several volumes, but when the Boer War broke out a great misfortune befell her. A couple of months before war was proclaimed Mrs. Schpeiner was ordered from her home at Johannesburg by her physician because of ill health. She left behind her the manuscript 8 on which she had spent years of labor. While she was away the contents of her house were burned and her manuscript was destroyed. She had made such exten- sive research in preparing and writing this book that she was not willing to /die without giving to society a few of her suggestions, and these she has made in a little book called "Woman and Labor." Force Going, Intelligence Coming. Mrs. Schreiner tries to prove that the age of force is passing while the era of intelligence is coming. She leads us to believe that the clay is near at hand when the Jewish ideal will not only be better understood but be victorious ; when the spiritual ideal of an invisible Deity will lead to the worship of God, not by the beauty of the church building or church service, not by the beauty of the carved statue or excellent man or woman, but by the beauty of that holiness which finds expression in a life of justice and mercy. But let the gifted author speak for herself. She says, (Pp. 221-223.): "The Jews, whose history has been one long story of op- pression at the hands of more muscular, physically powerful, and pugilistic peoples; whom we find first making bricks under the lash of the Egyptian, and later hanging his harp as an exile among the willow-trees of Babylon; who, for eighteen hundred years, has been trampled, tortured, and despised beneath the feet of the more physically powerful and pugilistic, but not more vital, keen, intelligent, or persistent races of Europe; has, today, by the slow turning of the wheel of life, come uppermost. The Egyptian taskmaster and warrior have passed; what the Baby- lonian was we know no more, save for a few mud tablets and rock inscriptions recording the martial victories; but the once captive Jew we see today in every city and every street. .After long ages of disgrace and pariahism, the time has come, whether for good or for evil, when just those qualities which the Jew possesses and which subtilely distinguish him from "thers, arc in demand; while those he has not are sinking into disuse. Kxactly that domination of the reflective faculties over the o imitative which once made him slave, also saved him fruin lieciimiii.tr extinct in wars; and the intellectual quickness, tin t'ar-H.yhted keenness, the persistent mental activity and self- c'>ntrl. \\-hich cmild net in those ages save him from degrada- tinn "i cumpeii^ate for his lack of bone and muscle and com- Iiative inMinct. are the very qualities the modern world de- mand> and cmwns. The day of Goliath with his club and his oath- is fa>t pa-sin^, and the day of David with his harp and skillfully constructed >liiiR is coming near and yet nearer." The Jew in America. I'.y the waves of good or evil fortune we have found our way to .America. Created with a spirit which takes u> hack four thousand years, endowed with hopes which >pring from the teachings of mankind's prophets, identi- fied with a religion which for simplicity, for beauty, for optimism, for idealism, has no equal and certainly no su- perior, we have, after being buffetted for ages by brutal monarchs, found our way to free America. America has not yet entered into her own. She is still a youth among the nations. As a man of English birth but now an American citixen, especially on such a day as this which marks the forty-seventh anniversary of my birth and when I am most apt to be reflective, I realize a great dif- ference between England, the mother country, and America, my adopted country. American Society. In America a society is in course of development which is a joy to mankind. One may see here in this land an idealism which rejoices the soul and a loyalty to the 10 things of the spirit which is divinely enchanting. But one may also see that, with the sudden accumulation of wealth by those who were poor a few years ago ; that with the, so to speak, overnight acquisition of riches, many have lost all sense of proportion. A story in the Talmud tells that, when Noah came from the ark, he desired to develop a vineyard, but he found that the seed would not root in the earth. An angel came to him and bade him kill a lamb, take its blood and spread it upon the earth. This he did, but his efforts were futile. The angel returned to him and charged him to take the blood of a lion and spread it over the earth. This being done his labors were still uncrowned by success. A third time the heavenly messenger appeared and now urged Noah to take ? pig and spread its blood upon the earth. It was then found that the seed took root and the grapes soon grew. One interpretation of this fable teaches us that, when men take a little wine, they become gentle as a lamb ; a little more may make them strong like a lion ; but too much will cause them to become filthy like a pig. The Plutocracy. It is not otherwise with wealth ; when fortunes grow slowly we find some degree of modesty; when fortunes grow abundantly we still find some degree of unselfish- ness; but when fortunes grow suddenly we usually find a loss of all the graces, while over-bearing, impudent and ignorant arrogance beyond all reason or endurance re- places them. America presents all too many illustra- tions of this truth. Her curse and her blessing are her wealth. The blessing arises from the potential good in- 11 herent in wealth ; while a curse abides upon the ends to which much wealth is being put. We are in the grasp of plutocratic opinion. It has been said quite humorously that when one goes to Boston he is asked, "What do you know?" before he can enter polite society ; when he goes to Philadelphia, they ask, "Who was your father?" before one can enter the ranks of the superior set; but when one enters New York, he is asked "How much are you worth?" and upon the answer will depend his social success. This metropoli- tan sentiment is all too common, and if America is to survive to fulfill the high function her seers and states- men have assigned to her. she must develop a worthy society which is to inspire the imagination and stir the aspirations of a nation anxious to play a positively benefi- cent part in the world. The Climbers. It is not good for man to live alone. Bacon was right when he said, "Who delights in solitude is either a wild beast or a god," and there are not many gods in America or elsewhere. Normal human beings were made for social life. We crave the company of our fellowmen, following the law of like to like; and out of this desire human society arose. Like wheels within wheels groups form and, in well-organized and civilized communities, the highest and noblest group is called specifically "so- ciety." In its ranks are found the finest flowerings of the race. It represents the highest culture, the noblest friendships, the most exquisite sentiment, the best ideals found in man. By such society I do not mean that spur- 12 ious form of it which s,eeks the limelight of notoriety, which loves to find its names in the "slush" columns of third-rate newspapers, and which displays great anxiety to record its entertainments in great detail through re- porters who have no more idea of fine society than the hosts of the occasion. Like everything genuine society's counterfeit representation exists, and, dragging at the heels of the highest group, may be found "the climbers," who bear the same relation to the chosen among the hu- man family as the monkey does to man. Characteristics of Climbers. The music of "the climbers" is rag-time; their phil- osophy is falseness ; their morals are mush. For the golden key of character which opens the way to genuine society, the climbers have brass; for intellect they have phrases ; for poise they have pose ; for honor they have PecksnifTian pretense ; for friendship they have syco- phancy. They manifest a love of luxury without effort; they desire position without duty ; they pamper the body and deny the soul. Social leaders leave their cards at the door when they call ; but the "climbers" have other kinds of cards which they use at their tables, and when they wish to pay homage to your mental gifts they en- tertain you with playing cards. That is the high com- pliment they pay to the intelligence of their guests. The "climbers" are unfit to be recognized by those above them, or to be seriously considered by the infinites- imally small number below them. Without real moral worth, without a noble ambition, they often ally them- selves with religious and philanthropic bodies, solely to 13 gain a recognition to which they are not entitled. If they did but render a little unselfish service, one might feel inclined to pardon some of their glaring and out- rageous bad manners; but the "climber" works for none but self. Compress every term suggesting disgust and loathing and hate into one, and that will but feebly ex- press the gentleman and lady's view of the actions of the "climber." The Climber's Nihilism. America is still in the process of making. She is passing from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous in the attempt to prove herself fittest to survive. She is not what she yet will be, and until the aristocracy of char- acter has firmly entrenched itself in the whole of Ameri- can life, the plutocracy of shoddy, fustian and prunello will, fur a time, prevail. The "climbers" are instinctively conscious of this transition and take advantage to press their ugly personalities upon the attention of the few below, and the many above them. This element in American social life makes the cul- tured in foreign lands judge the American people with great harshness. For the "climbers" are the personifica- tion of all the objectionable qualities which evoke the scorn of men and women who refuse to worship the climber's trinity, gold, silver and copper. Their out- look on life is through the boudoir mirror and they see a thing of "shreds and patches," of paint and powder and padding. Their minds are centered on self hence they arc pessimists. They feed on gossip and vulgarity 14 hence they are moral Dyspeptics. Their hourly hope is an invitation to higher ranks hence they are neuras- thenics. They govern themselves neither by human nor divine laws hence they are anarchists. Knowing them- selves, they have faith in nothing hence they t are atheists. Society and the Climbers. We must learn to discriminate between society which it is an honor to enter, and the company of the "climbers" which is loathsome and disgusting to per- sons of good taste. Ours is, in each case, the birthright of American opportunity and we ought not sell it for money. Shall I repeat for the thousandth time that I have nothing against money as such? The reproof which I utter is only against the crooked way some have of making money, the evil use to which money is put, the false worship of money, and the still falser estimate put upon it by those who have much of it and none of it. If we are worthy men and women we shall value making a life more than making a fortune; we shall seek the so- ciety of our real superiors, not because we wish to go where we are not wanted, but because we would improve ourselves by contact with those whom we may, in some way, serve and gain spiritually by our service to them. This is the proof of that wisdom which, if a man find, brings him life and also obtains for him the favor of God. In this age there is no place for the climber, the lounger, the idler. Neither hedonism, nor asceticism is worthy, for roses without thorns and thorns without roses are undesirable. The "climber's" life is worthless. 15 God gave us the social instinct to be indulged, and the law of like to like is inexorable. Society should be a great "order of merit," and entrance to its halls should he the privilege conferred by the best only on the best, thus impelling all to cultivate the best instincts of hu- man nature. Some day in America the social group will be organized on this line, and in that happy age, yet to be, "climbers'' the spurious counterfeits of noble am- bitions will be horrors unknown and nightmares for- gotten. The Three R's. T<> this end we of America need more consistently and persistently consider the "three R's," Reading, Re- pose and Religion. After all, man is a mind and it has its claims which cry for recognition. I never cease telling those foolish parents the mistake they make in their ab- surd worship of success by any method but righteous effort, and the still greater, and less pardonable, error of rearing their children without due preparation for life's duties and obligations through over-much atten- tion to the exterior and over-little care for the child's graces of character. There are many men and women whose children will never thank them even if they leave them great fortunes. The greatest misfortune that can come to a child is to have parents who are climbers, whose hearts and souls are set upon wealth, who love wealth, who envy the glitter of wealth, and who give no time to the development of the child's mind and soul. 1 know many men and women who will yet have reasons to weep over the mistakes they have made in 16 having provided their j children with everything which pertains to the earth, and having succeeded only in rais- ing little more than high grade animals. A boy once came home from school and told his father that he had learned that day that he was descended from a monkey, "Oh," said the father, "I am not prepared to answer for you ; but I know that I, your father, am not descended from a monkey." How true to life! Read! We need to read more. Do not tell me your eyes are too tired when you come home at night. Your eyes, in many cases, are not too tired to see the playing cards; why, then, are they too tired to read a helpful book? I beg of you, with all my heart, not to be so foolish as to set such a bad example to your own children, fastening your hearts to the vain glories of a society of which "climbers" are the leaders, instead of seeking wisdom and thus stand well before your own educated conscience and the presence of your Maker! Read a little more and play cards a little less, O ye people of America, and thus set higher ideals before your children. Repose. Remember, too, that life needs a little more repose. Here in America we are always in such a rush, we have but little time for ourselves. We endeavor to put a whole week's work into a single day. I am not surprised that we find so many people in America suffering with neurasthenia, that the hospitals are full of neurotic pa- 17 tients. and that the psychoneuroses exist in America to an alarming degree. I am not surprised that modern fads like Christian Science should prevail in America; because when people are told as a metaphysical truth, that there is no such thing as matter, so many, through lack of reading, prove that it is also a physical truth, for their brain contains no matter, neither gray or white. \Ye need more repose if we are to become a thinking people. I low wise are those Roman Catholics who insist that the teachers who are to lead the people must have the opportunity of quiet, peaceful reflection! I am almost convinced that Moses, when he came out of Egypt with his people, must have found himself among some in- cipient climbers, and he left them for forty days and forty nights to get away from the social set that came out of Kgypt. \Yithout more repose we shall have no plain living and high thinking. Religion. \\ e also need more religion in America. Several years ago while crossing the Atlantic, a deacon of a New ^>rk City church was a fellow-passenger aboard ship. Me was a very handsome man, of fine address, and he |M.s-.<.-od a beautiful voice. In fact, I never heard the twenty-third psalm recited so exquisitely in all my life a> when that man read it at the Sunday morning service. Me had a habit of playing one of the American games, I do not know much about it. but its name suggests fire. Me played cards every day with some acquaintances he met on the boat, and once when I sat in the smoking- 18 room I saw him cheat at, cards. Despite this, even while the scoundrel was cheating, he was whistling "Nearer my God to Thee." I cannot believe that he was a re- ligious man even though he was a church deacon, but I do know that he could whistle "Nearer My God to Thee" while he played the thief. Such transparent wrongdoing is possible in persons calling themselves religious because, with many, re- ligion is something for Sabbath, for Sunday, or for holi- days ; or with them it is something to talk over with the clergyman once perhaps in five or ten years when such men call on him in person; or something to take off and put on again like a garment ; or a matter solely for the churches. Some feel, forsooth, that religion is much too serious, and beautiful a thing to mar by taking it into their every day life ; and so the precious sentiment is safely stored in cedar chests, and they go out into the world without it. Fairness. Now religion in the final analysis, means to be just, and to be kind, to be humble, and to be true. If as Jews we think, if there should be any aspiration in us above all other considerations as the product of our faith, it should be almost a passion for fairness ; for the Jew when he is true is always fair; fair to himself, fair to his customer and to society, fair in his home, fair in his office, fair everywhere if he is a real Jew. Our Backsliding. But alas, many of us have allowed ourselves to be- 19 come seduced from the high ideals of Judaism. There are, thank God, splendid exceptions. I know men just as devoted to Judaism as were their fathers of old in \\'.>rms. <>r Prague, or Toledo, or Seville, or York, or I.<>ndn. I know men just as fearless as their fathers \vliD. by their fidelity, shamed the foes of their faith. I know Jewesses who would just as readily die for their faith'-, sake as did their pious forebears in ancient times. i'.ut many of us have allowed ourselves to be caught in the vortex of the "climbers" so that we set too high an estimate mi mere wealth no matter how obtained. I dare >ay to you. on this day which is a very sacred oc- casion to me. that if the Jew wishes his children to enjoy the opportunities which America offers, he must change; not all Jews, of course; many have no need to change, but only to continue to progress. Many are loyal Jews and patriotic Americans. But very many among the Jewish people must change. My Position. I have been criticised in Pittsburgh for "knocking men's business." 1 shall knock the character of business to which I am opposed until my tongue can no longer knock against my palate; not because I am opposed to any man, but I hate such business, I despise such busi- ness. I am a father, I have children, and so have most of you; and more for the sake of these dear children do I speak than for my own sake. I recently chanced to look up a word in a dictionary, a copy of which lies be- fore me, and I happened to find on page 385, that the word Jew is given as a synonym for avarice, and is de- 20 fined as, "a crafty dealer, or grasping money lender." I find this slanderous and unjust statement in a diction- ary recently published in America, "A crafty dealer, a grasping money lender." I say to you in all earnestness that, if there are crafty dealers who call themselves Jews, they must quit their craft; if there are among us grasp- ing money lenders, they must quit their grasping habits. Climbers in Our Ranks. This is my point of view as a teacher of Judaism. But such a sweeping and wholesale denunciation of our people is as false as it would be for me to say that all Americans cheat at cards while singing "Nearer my God to Thee," that American and shoddy, or American and vulgarity, or American and roguery, were synonyms. One cannot justly indite a whole people. Till I am no longer able to work I shall endeavor to be worthy to serve our holy cause, and also to defend your children and my children against the charge that a Jew means a crafty dealer or a grasping money lender. This I shall not do by saying that all Jews are perfect, for no people is, but by admitting that there are some crafty dealers and grasping money lenders among the Jews who are a disgrace to themselves and to us; that there are men and women among the Jews of whom we are not proud and whom we will not permit to represent, or rather misrep- resent, us ; that we have our proportion of social "climb- ers" who are, alas, admitted to polite society only be- cause they have money, but who would be ignored were it not for their money ; and that in these respects the Jews make the same mistake as do other Americans. 21 Wholesale Condemnation Unjust. I say this with a full knowledge of what I am say- ing, after great deliberation and with intense earnestness, and I mean every w r ord of it; and I further say that we are fools when we make of ourselves human ostriches, burying our heads under the sand, as it were, and calling every one an antisemite who comments unfavorably on the f. iolish mistakes of some Jews. I deny the injustice of the statement that all Jews are equally guilty, for that is a pure invention, a malicious falsehood. I admit nf the lews what is true of all Americans, that we have our dregs and foam and froth, but between these we find the great body of good, pure wholesome wine; that we have. sinners as well as saints; that there are para- >itic, as well as pious, Jews. Resenting to the utmost the aspersion of wholesale condemnation of Jews, I urge you, men and women, to set your seal of disapproval on those who bring the Jewish name into disrepute and thus by virtuous living, confound the enemy. I do wish that the day would soon dawn when such a malicious definition would be as great an absurdity when applied to any Jew, as it now is when applied to all Jews. To this end let us realize that America offers us greater and wider opportunities than merely making money. We are in a Promised Land; let us worthily seek to reap the glorious harvests of virtue and piety and true living. Let us prove that we understand the end and aim of life to be the acquisition of that wisdom which brings life and obtains the favor of God. Such wisdom excels knowledge, as light excels darkness. Such 22 wisdom is rooted in reverence for God rather than in the fear of man. Such wisdom only good men possess; the "climbers" have only the shadow of it. Seek Wisdom. On his deathbed lay a great Rabbi in ancient Israel. Around him were gathered many of his pupils who came to ask their master to bless them before he winged his flight to the eternal home. Rabbi Jo'hanan ben Zakkai, for it was he, raised himself on his pillow with great difficulty and, stretching forth his hand upon the head of one of his pupils, he said, "May the fear you have of God be as great as the fear you have of man. This is my parting blessing." The students wondered and, look- ing into the face of their expiring teacher, said to him, "Master, should we not fear God more than man?" The Rabbi, slowly moving his heavy hand in dissent, an- swered, "Would that you feared Him as much? If a man would sin, he looketh not above into the eyes, as it were, of his Maker, but he looketh around to see if man is gazing upon him." Would you really live? Then pass each day in God's sight. Would you be helpmates to your children and give them a real position in America? Then remember your God. Would you, as members of the Jewish faith, be to your children a beneficence, a providence? Then sing morning, noon and night, in season and out of sea- son, in your houses and on the streets, sing as long as your tongue can move, aye until you believe it, and live it, "Whoso findeth wisdom findeth life, and shall obtain favor from the Lord," who will bless him and his, here and hereafter. 23 UNIV. OF CALIF. LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES CAtlFO% <=> I ^\l LIBRARY^ ERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000 072 485 6