Oil 
 
 }Q 
 
 E UNCHANGING LAW 
 
 SHEARITH ISRAEL'S HERITAGE AND HOPE 
 
 Sermon preached in the Spanish and 
 Portuguese Synagogue Shearith Israel, 
 Central Park West and Seventieth Street, 
 New York City, on Sabbath Shuba, 
 Tishri 3, 5877, September 30, 1916. 
 
 By 
 
 The REV. D. DE SOLA POOL, PH. D. 
 
 Printed by Request.
 
 2096429
 
 SHEARITH ISRAEL'S HERITAGE AND HOPE 
 
 "And Moses said unto all Israel, set your heart to all the words 
 which I testify against you this day, that ye may command them to your 
 children to observe and to do all the words of this Law. For it is not 
 a thing too insignificant for you, but it is your life and through this 
 thing you shall prolong your days in the land." 
 
 Deuteronomy XXXII, 46, 47. 
 
 To the non-Jew, the phenomenon of our survival as a nation 
 in face of the fall and disappearance of great empires and powerful 
 states, is an inexplicable riddle. It appears to him a miracle that 
 the weak and defenseless Jew has persisted through the home- 
 lessness, the rightlessness, the hatred, the persecution and the 
 unrelenting inhumanity of humanity which have been his lot for 
 two thousand years. 
 
 But we who live the Jewish life see no miracle in our survival. 
 We know that our survival is the necessary outcome of our Law. 
 The real miracle is this instrument of our persistence the Law. 
 Truly marvelous is the preservative and life-giving power of the 
 God-given Torah, the Law which Moses taught us and which in his 
 farewell message he solemnly impressed upon us as our life and 
 the length of our days. 
 
 Can this claim, that the Law is the cause of our persistence 
 as a people, be substantiated ? It is one of our privileges, living as 
 we do in these latter days, that we may measure the claims made by 
 the Bible for the Law against the actual effects of the Law as seen 
 in Jewish life. The stark facts of Jewish life and the plain 
 teachings of Jewish history are the assays with which we are able 
 to test the pragmatic validity of the Law. Moses himself in today's 
 Parasha bade us apply this test in order to obtain a true under- 
 standing of the underlying providence in history. "Call to mind 
 the days of old, firan the years of successive generations. Ask thy 
 father, and he will recount to thee, thine elders, and they will tell 
 thee." When in dispassionate weighing of empirical facts we 
 judge the Law by this standard of its practical results, as attested 
 by history, the claims made for the Jewish Law by Moses and other 
 Biblical teachers are brilliantly vindicated. Indeed, not only does 
 the Law prove to be an unequalled force for good in character 
 building, safeguarding morality and ensuring individual and social 
 happiness, but it proves to be essential for the preservation of the 
 Jewish people.
 
 No fact emerges more clearly from our history than this that 
 observance of the Law, and this alone, has preserved us as Jews, 
 while disregard of the Law has rapidly induced the Jewish ruin 
 of those who neglected it. Whenever we Jews have unbuckled the 
 defensive armor of our Sabbath which differentiates us from our 
 neighbors; whenever we have disregarded our own festivals, fasts 
 and holydays, the dietary laws and the other distinctive ceremonies 
 and rites which ensure our separatism and preserve our Jewish 
 individuality, the giving up of these time-tested and time-hallowed 
 defenses has meant our Jewish surrender to the forces of oblitera- 
 tion. These are unassailable historical facts. 
 
 Let others, therefore, talk in general terms of the need of 
 modifying the law. They may voice theoretic claims of the necessity 
 for progressing with the times. They may assert the putative need 
 of modernizing and re-interpreting the Law. We serenely point 
 to the relentless logic of history and show how observance' of the 
 traditional Law has been our life and the length of our days. We 
 show how adherence to the Law has linked father and' son, from 
 generation to generation, in an unbroken chain of tradition. The 
 voice of history tells us that when the Law of Jewish life has been 
 broken or reformed away, groups and sects have formed themselves, 
 and these sectarian groups, through growing divergence from the 
 Jewish Law and growing conformity to the standards of non-Jewish 
 neighbors, finally drifted out of Judaism. 
 
 Reform of Judaism, being essentially an assimilation or 
 adaptation of Judaism to the standards of the non-Jewish environ- 
 ment, has always been and must always be progressive. Tampering 
 with the Law is a process that once begun cannot, be checked. It 
 is the taking away of a brick here and a brick there, so that the 
 weakening wall bulges under its weight more and more from the 
 true until at last it crashes down in ruins. Of what avail for 
 defense is a wall that is breached? "He who breaks down a wall, 
 a snake shall bite him," says the Preacher. "He who makes a 
 breach in the hedge of the Law," say the Rabbis, "gives entry to 
 the insidious influences of destruction." 
 
 Let us test this general affirmation by specific facts of recent 
 history known to all of us. It is an illuminating historical truth 
 that, with the exception of this congregation, which is two hundred 
 and sixty years old, and our sister Sephardic congregation in 
 Philadelphia, which is about one hundred and seventy years old, 
 there is no Jewish congregation in the United States more than 
 fifty or sixty years old which has not given way to the progressive 
 influences of reform. These two are the only old congregations in 
 which the congregant knows at all times where he stands and in
 
 which he can be sure that the Judaism of today is the Judaism of 
 yesterday and the Judaism of tomorrow. Every other old congrega- 
 tion has drifted from the moorings of the Law and has re-inter- 
 preted Judaism to suit both the advancing 1 whims of its successive 
 ministers, and the insistent demands for an easier religion made 
 by congregations "who have not been willing to listen to the Law 
 of God, who have said to the seers 'See not,' and to those who have 
 visions, 'Give us no vision of the right. Speak to us easy words; 
 see visions of pleasant illusions.' " 
 
 Therefore, when the voice of criticism is raised and we are told 
 of the supposititious need of reform, we in this synagogue do not 
 even discuss these theoretic claims. We point to facts. We call 
 attention to our stability and abiding continuity. We are content 
 to stand the contrast with the fitful instability, capricious vagaries 
 and, above all, the sterility of congregations which have gone from 
 one reform to another. Liberal Jewish congregations may have 
 a seemingly prosperous present ; but they have cut themselves off 
 from the past and have cut off from themselves the future. We, 
 respecting the past and the future, give acquiescent recognition to the 
 warning of the Sage "Remove not the ancient landmark which thy 
 fathers set up." Yea, we "hearken to our father who begat us 
 and do not despise our mother when she is grown old." 
 
 Today ten years ago I first entered this pulpit. I spoke then 
 on the text that I have again chosen: "For the Law is your life 
 and through it shall ye prolong your days." Then I advocated 
 traditional Judaism because I had been so trained, and, perhaps, 
 because I had not seen reform Judaism. Now I advocate traditional 
 Judaism because I have seen reform Judaism and have appraised its 
 inherent failure. These ten years of work, experience, study, 
 thought and prayer have been for me years of growing clarification 
 and determination of religious views. Now as the decennium closes, 
 I embrace this opportunity of reaffirming the conviction grown far 
 stronger within me with the lapse of years that strict and faithful 
 adherence to the Law spells our Jewish life and the length of our 
 days. As a Sheliach Tsibbur, minister, servant, mouthpiece of this 
 congregation, I pledge myself anew, and the congregation which 
 I serve, to abiding loyalty to the Law given us from God and 
 expressed through the hallowed Judaism of our ancestors. Such 
 individuality as the ministers of this congregation may possess 
 must be exerted in other directions than in rewriting the prayer 
 book, annulling the Law and explaining away the Bible.
 
 We in this congregation cannot be hypnotised by the cry of 
 the necessity for progressing with the spirit of the age ; for we 
 know that the dominant life in the lands of our dispersion is un- 
 Jewish, and we refuse to endanger our traditional Jewish life by 
 transforming it in response to every novel influence from without. 
 We remember the fable told by Rabbi Akiba when he was found 
 publicly studying and teaching the Law in defiance of the prohibition 
 of the Roman government. He said: "A fox was once walking 
 by ~<\ river bank, and he saw the fish in the water swimming about 
 in great agitation." Spake the fox : "From what are you trying 
 to escape ?" The fish answered : "From the nets of fishermen." 
 Then counselled the fox, "Come on to the dry land and let us live 
 together in peace." But the fish answered, "O fox, called the 
 wisest of animals, but in truth the most foolish, if we are in danger 
 in our lifegiving element, how much the more danger would we face 
 in the element that means our death?" "Even so," said Rabbi 
 Akiba, "if observance of Judaism is difficult, it is at least our 
 natural element and our life, as it is written "for it is your life 
 and the length of your days." How much better off are we with 
 the Law and its difficulties than without the Law, but facing certain 
 destruction." 
 
 The Law is our life and the length of our days. Loyalty 
 unswerving to the life of the Law and the Law of our life 
 that shall remain the tradition, that the policy, that the motto of 
 this congregation. "Set your hearts to all the words which I testify 
 against you this day, that ye may command them to your children 
 to observe and to do all the, words ol this Law. For it is not a 
 thing too insignificant for you, but it is your life and through this 
 thing you shall prolong your days in the land." 
 
 Deuteronomy XXXII, 7. 
 Isaiah XXX, 13. 
 Ecclesiastes X, 8. 
 Abodah Sarah 27b. 
 Isaiah XXX, 9, 10. 
 
 Proverbs XXII, 28; Sifri to Deuteronomy XVII, 14, with the revision 
 of Elijah Gaon. 
 
 Proverbs XXIII, 22; Mishna Berachoth IX, 5 and Rashi Berachoth 54a. 
 
 Deuteronomy XXX, 20. 
 Berachoth 61b.
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000 049 474