BM 
 740 
 H438S 
 
 HERTZ 
 
 STRANGE FIRE 0.- SCHISM
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIX'ERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 The 
 
 4 O 
 
 Strange Fire' 
 of Schism . . 
 
 SERMON 
 
 Delivered at the Lauderdale Road 
 Sephardic Synagogue 
 
 I'.V 
 
 THE CHIEF RABBI. 
 
 M'KIL 26. 19H— 5674. 
 
 "Ami Nachib iiiul Ahiltii, the sous of Aiiron. tatik 
 each of them his censer, and put lire thereon and 
 laid incense thereon, and offered strange tire 
 before the Lord. K'liicli he had not commanded 
 them. .And there came forth fire from before the 
 Lord, and devonred them, and they died before 
 the Lord." — Leviticus x.. li.
 
 The Library 
 University of California, Los Angeles ' 
 
 m The gift of Mrs. Cummines, 1 963 1 
 
 Rei-kinted kkom 
 
 THK "JEWISH CHRONICLK," 
 
 Mav 1st. IQlt— 5674.
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 £>M 
 lH-0 
 
 THE "STRANCi: FIRE" OK SCHISM 
 
 [■'And Nidab aiid Ahiliii, the sons of Aaron, took each of them lii:^ 
 censer, and put fire thereon, and laid incense thereon, and offered Strang- 
 fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them. And thcrr 
 came forth fire from before the Lord, and devoured them, and 
 «£i(i they died before the Lord.] — (Leviticus x. 1-2.) When the day of this dire 
 ■^ tragedy opened it promised to be the proudest and happiest of Aaron's 
 ^>j^ life. As he, the High Priest, was moving about in his magnificent robes 
 ,5^ and performing the solemn duties of his e.xalted oflice at the dedication 
 , of the newly-finished Tabernacle, the foremost man of 600.000. how he must 
 <5n^ have been envied I Yet the sun that had risen so proudly for him was 
 soon to be darkened. In the midst of the celebration, at its climax in fact, 
 horror suddenK* seized all — for Aaron's sons were lying dead at his feet. 
 They had offered forbidden fire before the Lord, and swift and signal was 
 their punishment. "There came forth fire from the Lord and devoured 
 them, and they died before the Lord." Mysteriously — th(! Rabbis explain 
 — only their souls were consumed ; their bodies remained intact, 
 D^V ^lUI K'S]n PDnt^. Of old, the death of the sons of Aaron was a favourito 
 text of preachers to point the moral of the mutation of fortune : 1'. 
 not of to-morrow, not even of the morning, for thou knowest not w,...; 
 the same day may bring forth. Instead of pursuing this theme, how 
 ever, let us rather ask the question how these young men, the eldest - • 
 of the High Priest, near kinsmen of the Lawgiver, could have bee:, 
 guilty of such an act of 
 
 IRRKVERENC1-: AN'P 1-Ol.l.V 
 
 as that of introducing strange fire into the sanctuary. Again, what must 
 have been the motives behind this rash crime that such a terrible fate 
 should have befallen them ? From among the reasons assigned b> 
 Tradition for this catastrophe, we shall select some that are of special 
 significance. The offering of strange fire, the Rabbis say. was but a co; 
 ([uence of an even greater desecration on the part of N.adab and Abilj;;. 
 They had dared enter the sanctuary in a state of intoxication. P^'MrV 
 tJ'npO'? 1D3D3, I'^or does not Scripture immediately after this trai,-' 
 proceed witli the command to Aaron: "Drink neither wine n'>i -f 
 drink when ye go into the Tabernacle, lest ye die." A carcfnl 
 the text, they tell us, will disclose a second reason. Tliey i 
 neither Moses nor Aaron ; they did not even consult each 
 taking the step they did. Each of them took his censer and 
 strange fire on the altar of the Lord. .Apart from all else, th' 
 a deliberate disregard of their elders in office. And l.i-ilv. \> 
 it N^as even more: pride and unfilial jealousy fill 
 
 *Sermon delivered on Sabbath last at the I-auderdale Road Seph 

 
 "When will these old men die? How long must we wait to lead the 
 congregation ? " they asked themselves. It was this impious ambition 
 seething in their breasts which led them to commit their unhallowed 
 deed. which called down that terrible retribution upon them. 
 
 n"3nn "ics ?npn ns :^r^:: i:ni cno i^7n d«:pt ':l" mr in'3i<? m i'? ^dn 
 
 •D nS^31P'D rX"i3. \ow, the story of Nadab and Abihu as expounded by 
 our Rabbis is typical of many a movement in the Jewish religious life of 
 the past, and illuminative of much religious unrest at the present day. 
 •At various periods in the past men have arisen who separated themselves 
 from the congregation, who insisted on 
 
 OFFERING STRANGE FIRE 
 
 in Israel's sanctuary. More often than we are aware, have sects and 
 schisms been rampant in Jewry. Even the prophets inveighed for 
 centuries, early and late, against the ha moth, the private altars on the 
 high places where, in defiance of the Divine Law and in disregard of 
 the central sanctuary at Jerusalem, each man served God in his own 
 fashion. In the days of the Sages we have the Hellenists, the Sadducees, 
 the Essenes. After the close of the Talmud, we meet the Karaites. And 
 later, in the Middle Ages, we encounter the Kabbalists, down to the 
 Sabbatians and the Chassidim of modern times, and the Radical of our 
 own day. Certain fundamental similarities are common to all these 
 sects alike. Foremost among these similarities is the fact that their 
 founders are all of them in a greater or lesser degree disciples in 
 spirit of Nadab and Abihu. Thus, for example, it was the pride, 
 ambition, and jealousy of one powerful individual that were responsible, 
 in the eighth century, for the founding of Karaism. Anan, having 
 failed to secure the office of Exilarch, then the highest position within the 
 gift of Jewry, rallied round him all the elements of religious revolt in that 
 unsettled period and welded them into the most formidable anti-Rabbanite 
 Jewish sect. Like Nadab and Abihu, again, the leading spirits of Jewish 
 schisms are, of course, rebels against all constituted Jewish authority, 
 present or past. But the principal cause responsible for the conduct of 
 the Nadabs and Abihus in all generations is — intoxication .' The Jew, 
 with his wonderful intellectual avidity, and assimilative power, is the first 
 to be touched by new ideas. Greek philosophy, the culture of Alexan- 
 dria, the Arabic writers, the Rationalists of modern times, have all 
 alarmingly affected him, and rendered the living waters of Judaism stale 
 and insipid for him. He is the soberest of peoples ; and just because 
 he is so sober, the slightest taste of an intoxicant causes him to lose 
 his balance. It is spiritual intermarriage, much more so than the sporadic 
 cases of actual intermarriage, that in all periods of intellectual ferment 
 and transition, decimates his ranks. Many a son of Israel then takes 
 
 MIS OWN CENSER. 
 
 and puts strange fire thereon, and rushes into the Sanctuary of the Eternal. 
 And, alas ! the parable of Nadab and Abihu fulfils itself to the very letter in 
 the ultimate fate of these sects. I need say nothing of those lesser known 
 schisms of early Christian and (iaonic times, whose very names have vanished 
 from the consciousness of Isr.iel ; but even in the case of such larger 
 
 4
 
 movements uc lincl tli.it, with two or three exceptions, they have all totally 
 disappeared. Those still remaining, like the Samaritans and the Karaites, 
 have shrivelled up to a handful. And if their outward history proves that 
 " The j,'reenest leaf divorced from its stem 
 To speedy withering doth itself condemn," 
 
 spiritual sterility is the tale of their inner liistory. For none of them, living 
 cr dead, seem to have produced anything of lasting worth in the realm of 
 thought, or left anything of eternal value in the world of spiritual 
 endeavour. '' The Karaites," says Rabbi Abraham ben David, five cen- 
 turies ago, " have never advanced the cause of Israel. No great 
 book for the strengthening of the Law, or the spread of wisdom, have 
 they produced : not even a great song, strengthening or consoling. Dumb 
 dogs all, unable to protect the sheepfold of Israel!" A somewhat similar 
 judgment has to be passed on the Radical schism of recent generations. I 
 shall confine myself to my personal observation of this school of Judaism 
 in a country where it does not, as here, possess the charm of either isola- 
 tion or novelty. In America this attempt 
 
 TO TRANSFORM JUDAISM 
 
 is over seventy years old, and has been tried, and found wanting, in 
 hundreds of congregations. It also was started by men who rushed into 
 the Sanctuary in a state of intoxication— intoxicated with the verbiage of 
 German Rationalism and mid-nineteenth century cosmopolitanism. It is 
 ([uite beside the question to protest that they may have been honest 
 in their beliefs. Honesty will not save a man from the consequences 
 of his defiance of the physical or of the spiritual laws of the 
 universe ; and honesty will not acquit a leader of men at the 
 judgment-bar of history for lamentably lacking the insight of the 
 statesman or the self-respect of the freeman. Had they possessed these, 
 the founders of the Reformed Jewish Church of America could not have 
 found Hebrew so alien and estranging, or placed such a pathetic reliance 
 on the etificacy of strange fire for kindling the spirit in modern Israel. 
 Individualists all, they laboured, and not altogether in vain, to hasten the 
 return of what to them seemed the Golden Age - no king in Israel, and 
 every man doing that which is right in his own eyes. Each " Rabbi " (for 
 some mysterious reason, men who have definitely broken svith Rabbinic 
 teaching and the Rabbinic scheme of Jewish life, insist on assuming this 
 title), each " Rabbi " a law unto himself, at will banishing the Sepher Torah 
 from his synagogue, abolisliing Sibbath and I^'eslival. and liailing even the 
 most blasphemous vagaries of that form of 
 
 HIGHER ANTI-SEMITISM 
 
 called Bible Criticism as final and definitive truth ! W) wonder that a 
 number of such " Rabbis " have, in the course of one generation, publicly 
 renoimced Judaism or gone over to Christianity - an unheard of thing in 
 all the preceding thirty-three centuries of our chequered history. Out- 
 wardly, and at a distance, the pomp and brilliance of American Reform 
 Judaism may be da;^zling. At a nearer view, its light is seen to be but a 
 phosphorescent sheen, the accompaniment ot disintegration and decay. 
 Divine fire warms, cheers, is a Sinaitic bush of everlasting life and light.
 
 >^,v..-,> ..,, devours, cremates tlie soul, even when the body remains 
 intact. The loyal son of the Torah should not be blinded by a passing 
 phenomenon of to-day, nor disheartened by defections from the historic 
 form of 'ii" ''lith : — 
 
 " Truth crushed to earth shall rise again ; 
 
 The eternal years of God are hers ; 
 
 But Error wounded writhes in pain 
 
 And dies among his worshippers." 
 
 Vou will now, I am sure, pardon me if I introduce a personal note. 
 I recall with interest to-day that the very first sermon in my life was 
 pre;iched, twenty-four years ago, in the Sephardic Synagogue of Philadelphia; 
 and the saintly guide of that historic congregation, Dr. Sabato Morals, has 
 been the most potent religious influence in my life. I have thus early been 
 led to a high appreciation of the role of the Sephardim in the annals of 
 Judaism. Whereas, other sections of Jewry, living in a semi-barbarous 
 environment, have imfortunately often had religion without culture ; or, 
 during the last century and a half, too often culture without religion— for 
 one thousand years and more religion ivitli culture has been the charac- 
 teristic of Jewish Sephardic life. And in our own day none, I am sure, 
 realise the fatal danger of 
 
 CULTURE WITHOUT RKI.IGION, 
 
 or of religion without culture, or of the experiment, equally fatal, of introducing 
 strange fire into the Sanctuary of Israel, more than this Sephardic mother- 
 congregation of England, with its fine traditions and its illustrious roll of 
 learned Hahamim. When one takes leave of a living friend, the Rabbis 
 tell us, one's greeting should be 01755'? "j?, " Proceed in peace." Similar, 
 also, are Jonathan's farewell words to David at the conclusion of today's 
 Haphtorah. Now that my sermon is ended, let them also be my parting 
 greeting. We are parallel communities — "nations" we used to speak of 
 each other in earlier days, " sister congregations " we now say. Each 
 guarding its individuality, let us continue to co-operate in the fullest degree 
 in Jewish education, both higher and elementary, in the fostering of Jewish 
 institutional life, and Jewish social service. Dl^Sf? "1?. Proceeding from 
 strength to strength, ours be a progress without the loss of any Jewish 
 values towards an ever greater realisation of our ideals. No Jewry has 
 nobler opportunities, or graver responsibilities, than has the Jewish com- 
 munity of England. It is for us worthily to live up to these unparalleled 
 opportunities and (jnit ourselves as men of these responsibilities. Let us be 
 strong, and strengthen each other, in the performance of these our holy 
 tasks. And once more, in the words of Jonathan : " Go in peace, forasmuch 
 as we have sworn both of us in the name of the Lord, saying : The Lord 
 shall be between me and thco, between my seed and thy seed, for ever." 
 
 rai *jn] P31 irai '3*3 .t.t >i ick? 't otya i:n:x lyjL" i^vii^': il-x dvw -p 
 
 .ci7)v IV ir-iT
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 • Box 951388 
 
 LOS ANGELES. CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed.
 
 ;K.-';, \ :■: iLir,- 
 
 AA 000 604 372
 
 /.'.'.•^■\><-f77 
 
 Y^^-^ ^i^^^,^ 
 
 wmi 
 
 [University 
 Southerc 
 Library