DS 113 F74 FRIED LANDER THE FUNCTION OF JEWISH (EARNING IN AMERICA THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES THE FUNCTION OF JEWISH LEARNING IN AMERICA BY PROFESSOR ISRAEL FRIEDLAENDER Reprinted hy courtesy of the General Publication Committee of the Students' Annual of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America New York. 1914 THE FUNCTION OF JEWISH LEARNING IN AMERICA BY PROFESSOR ISRAEL FRIEDLAENDER Reprinted by courtesy or the General Publication Committee of the Students' Annual of the Jcwmh Theological Seminary or America New York, 1914 THE FUNCTION OF JEWISH LEARNING IN AMERICA* BY PROFESSOR ISRAEL FRIEDLAENDER THE nature of the subject no less than the place and the occasion imperatively demands that in attempting to discuss a ques- tion which reaches deeply into the problems of the Jewish present, I should endeavor to look upon it in the broad perspective of Jewish history in which a thousand years are but as yesterday when it is past. I shall therefore request you to detach yourselves for a moment from your surroundings and to accompany me in your imagination to an earlier period of the Jewish past which is re- moved from us by such a millennial yesterday and yet in many essential aspects anticipates the situation in which the Jews of America find themselves to-day. I refer to the period marked by the rise of Jewish learning in Spain. For many hundreds of years Judaism had been centered in Babylonia, where the foundations were laid upon which the structure of post-biblical Judaism has been resting down to this day. Through the medium of the Exilarchate and, above all, through its colleges and academies, Babylonian Jewry guided and controlled the spiritual life of the Jews all over the world. Although situated in the midst of the powerful Persian Empire with a highly developed religion and culture, the Jews of Babylonia managed to live a life of their own, easily adapting themselves to the demands of the environ- ment which were merely of an external nature. But in the middle of the seventh century a new factor began to disturb the serenity of Babylonian Jewish life. The victorious Arabs changed not only the political character but also the religious and cultural com- plexion of the Babylonian lands. The young generation among the Jews began to hearken to the new ideas which followed in the wake of the Mohammedan arms and a deep religious unrest, the un- avoidable result of a mixture of cultures, took hold of the thought- * From an address delivered at the Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning in Philadelphia, on Founder's Day, March 9, 1914. 124 bs 1/3 FUNCTION OF JEWISH LEARNING IN AMERICA 125 ful elements of the Jewish community. It seemed, to quote the words of an illustrious thinker of that period, 1 "as if men had sunk in seas of doubt and were covered with the waters of error. Yet there was no diver to bring them forth from the depth and no swimmer to seize them and to rescue them from drowning." The official leaders of the community looked with indifference and dis- dain upon the spread of what to them seemed but newfangled and shortlived ideas. But when the new influences began to crystallize themselves in sectarianism and religious factions sprang up which did not shrink from denying and opposing their authority, the powers that be at last bestirred themselves. They realized the necessity of making concessions to the new spirit of the age, and when the presidency of the leading academy at the time, the cele- brated Yeshibah at Sura, became vacant, they decided to call to this post which involved the religious leadership of Babylonian Jewry a man who would not only possess an intimate knowledge of the traditional sources of Judaism, but would also exhibit a thorough understanding of what at that time was looked upon as modern culture. Such a man, however, could no more be found within the ranks of retrograde Babylonian Jewry, and the Baby- lonian authorities saw themselves compelled to entrust the Gaonate of Sura, for the first time in 700 years, to a foreigner, Rabbi Saadia al-Fayyumi of Egypt. But the remedy was applied too late. For in the meantime the Eastern Caliphate had entered upon a period of political and spiritual decline. Tolerance and liberty of conscience had given way to bigotry and fanaticism and with it the external condition of Babylonian Jewry had changed for the worse. Their political freedom and, as a consequence, their economic prosperity were greatly curtailed. They now lacked not only the men but also the means to keep up their time-honored position in the Jewish world. Strife, the inseparable companion of retrogression, only helped to accelerate the process of decline. The colleges and academies whence light and leading had for centuries gone forth to the whole of Israel now depended for their subsistence on the generosity of the Jews outside of Babylonia, and Babylonian Jewish supremacy was at an end. 1 S.itulia Gaon, in the introduction to his Kmnnoth irc-Droth. 126 STUDENTS' ANNUAL Scarcely, however, had the sun of Jewry set in the East, when it began to rise in the West. On the Iberian peninsula, the New World of that period, the Western Caliphate was rapidly blossoming into strength and beauty. Originally a colony of the Caliphate of Baghdad, it finally obtained its independence and with the vigor and courage of youth began to erect a magnificent structure of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all its citizens. The Jews who had helped the Arabs to wrest the peninsula from the semi- savage Goths took from the very beginning an active and prominent part in the political, economical and cultural development of the country. As far as Judaism is concerned, the Jews of Spain were at first dependent for their spiritual guidance on their brethren in Babylonia. Their religious difficulties were solved by the Geonim of Sura and Pumbaditha and even their liturgy had to be imported from distant Babylonia. But on this gray horizon of spiritual mediocrity there rises like a morning star the luminous figure of Hisdai ibn Shaprut, a man with universal Jewish interests, whose sympathies embrace the far-off semi-Jewish Khazars, whose liberality extends to the col- leges and academies of Babylonia, but who at the same time realizes the necessity of an independent Jewish life in the new land. He supports native Jewish talent in the person of Menahem ben Saruk, but also endeavors to attract scholars from abroad, such as Dunash ibn Labrat, who introduces the science of Hebrew philology, and Moses ben Hanokh who transplants the center of Talmudic learn- ing into the Iberian peninsula, and with the men the farsighted Hisdai cautiously transfers the libraries of the "old country." The scholars in Spain, at first looked down upon by their colleagues from the earlier seats of learning, gradually equal, then rival and finally excel their former masters. Like a focus which first gathers the rays of the sun and then sends them forth into space, Spanish Jewry passes through a period of spiritual dependence to one of spiritual supremacy. Jewish culture in Spain becomes the uni- versal possession of the whole house of Israel and for hundreds of years illumines with its beauteous rays the darkness and narrowness of the Jewish middle ages. What has just been said of Judaism in Spain of a thousand years ago applies, with scarcely more than a change of names, to Jewish America of to-day. But American Jewry resembles in one FUNCTION OF JEWISH LEARNING IN AMERICA 127 more essential aspect its predecessor on the Iberian peninsula. For just as the Babylonian period of isolation was superseded by the Spanish period of association with the environment, so does Ameri- can Judaism with its imperative duty of forming part and parcel of American life follow in the wake of the long period of isolation in Poland and Eussia. And however deeply we may love and ad- mire the transcendent beauty and incomparable intensity of Jewish life and learning in the Russian Jewish ghetto, the force of logic and of history compels us to connect ourselves, over the chasm of centuries, with our predecessors in Spain who were confronted by conditions and problems similar to those with which we in this country have to battle to-day. It is, therefore, natural to expect that a study of the Spanish period of Jewish history will yield to us many valuable lessons which, with the help of a kind Providence, we may turn to good account in the new Jewish center now rising before our eyes in this land. The first lesson which impresses itself upon our mind as a re- sult of our study is the unique significance of Jewish learning in the life of the Jewish people. Great and glorious as were the external successes of the Jews in Spain, what alone has survived the ravages of time and the vicissitudes of the Goluth and what alone has been woven inextricably into the texture of the Jewish consciousness are not their political, economic or charitable achieve- ments, but the Jewish learning which they acquired and developed. Hisdai was the most influential diplomat at the most influential court of the period, but what entitles him to the gratitude of posterity is not his political genius or the diplomatic skill with which he brought the insolent Sancho Ramirez and his crafty grandmother, Queen Toda, to the feet of Abdarrahman the Third, but his patronage of Jewish culture in Spain. What makes Samuel Hanagid a prominent figure in the annals of Judaism are not the services he rendered as prime minister to the obscure Berber princess, Habus and Badis, but his introduction into the Talmud and the prowess with which he handled the Hebrew lyre. And what gives Moses Maimonides his commanding position as the Moses of post- Talmudic Judaism is not the medical skill with which he treated the vizier al-Fadil or the fair inmates of Saladin's harem, but the "strong hand" with which he acted as the "guide of the perplexed" to the eternal fountains of Jewish truth. And speaking of our own 128 STUDENTS' ANNUAL times, however intensely we may feel mortified by the sufferings of our brethren in Eussia and however deeply we may feel gratified by the successes of our fellow-Jews in Germany, long after the victims of the Czar's tyranny and the objects of the Kaiser's favor will have become dim recollections of the past, Russian-Jewish "Lamdonuth" and the German "Science of Judaism" will stand forth as the great contributions of Eussian and German Jews to the treasury of Judaism. And whatever social, political and eco- nomic accomplishments a kind Providence may have in store for us in this free land, the standards by which a later age will judge the American phase of Jewish history will be neither our wealth nor our influence nor even our philanthropy, but that alone which will remain the inalienable possession of the whole of Israel, our additions to the spiritual armory of the People of the Book. But just as the Spanish period impresses upon us the unrivalled significance of Jewish learning in the development of our people, so does it illustrate to us the tendency which Jewish learning is to pursue in our own days if it is to obtain and to retain the role of a leading factor in Jewish life. The deeper we penetrate into the conditions of that period, the clearer are we led to recognize the remarkably harmonious complexion of Jewish culture in Spain : its close and intimate association with the general culture of the age on the one hand and, on the other, its ability to preserve and to develop its distinct Jewish character and to sink deeply into the hearts and the minds of the Jewish people. Granted that Hebrew philology followed in the wake of the remarkable philological achievements of the Arabs and that the technical terms of Hebrew grammar were fashioned after non-Jewish models, the hokmath ha- dikduk, the science of Hebrew grammar has yet become a char- acteristic feature of Jewish culture in the lands of the Goluth. Granted that the glorious Hebrew poetry of the period, as was already pointed out by Harizi, owes its stimulus and development to the poetry of the Arabs and that even the Zionides of Judah Halevi imitate the construction of an Arabic Kasida, yet the poems of Halevi or Ibn Gebirol are recited with fervor in the synagogues of the diaspora. Granted that the Jewish philosophy of the period is influenced and determined by the thought of the Muslim environ- ment and that the very title of Bahya's celebrated work is a copy of a well-known phrase of the Mohammedan Mutazilites, the Ho- FUNCTION OF JEWISH LEARNING IN AMERICA 129 both ha-Lebaboth is nevertheless the classic work of Jewish de- votion and Yigdcd which is in part an epitome of Aristotelian philosophy is an integral portion of the orthodox Jewish liturgy. Granted even that the great religious code of Maimonides is ar- ranged in a manner reminiscent of the Mohammedan fukaha and that its wonderful Hebrew diction is permeated with Arabisms, the Mishne Torah has nevertheless become a "second Torah" in post- Talmudic literature, and to explain a "difficult Rambam" is still an object of glory and ambition in the Russian-Jewish Yeshibahs. Jewish learning in Spain may have been molded by the non-Jewish environment, but in spite of it, or rather because of it, it became the inseparable heritage of Spanish Jewry and through it of the Jews of the world. What is true of the Spanish Jews of a thousand years ago, is equally true of the American Jews of to-day. We, too, live in a powerful environment which we cannot and, indeed, dare not dis- regard. The general culture of the land stands before us like an iron wall and we shall be cracked like a nutshell if we attempt to run our heads against it. The only solution left to us is that of adaptation, but an adaptation which shall sacrifice nothing that is essential to Judaism, which shall not impoverish Judaism but en- rich it, which, as in the case of Jewish culture in Spain, shall take fully into account what the environment demands of us and shall yet preserve and foster our Jewish distinctiveness and originality. Let the cynics in our midst sneer to their heart's content at what they chose to brand as minhag America, Jewish learning in this country, like that of our ancestors in Spain, will rise and develop in intimate association with the culture of our neighbors. It will be American in language, in scope, in method, and yet be dis- tinctively Jewish in essence, the proud possession of American Israel and through it in God's own time the cherished property .of Universal Israel. Finally what gives Jewish learning in Spain its peculiar char- acter and flavor is, as has already been implied in the foregoing, its connection with practical life. Ardent as was the longing of the period for the higher and finer things of existence, its culture, with all its passionate quest for sweetness and light, is strongly colored by the healthy hue of reality. Jewish learning in Spain is not weltfremd, as it was in other lands and in other ages ; and it is 130 STUDENTS' ANNUAL anxious not only to meet but also to anticipate the legitimate demands of practical life. It is not accidental that the emphasis of Jewish learning in Spain is to be found just in those branches of knowledge which are the distinguishing characteristics of the general culture of the age. At this distance of time we may feel inclined to smile at the passionate heat with which men of affairs no less than men of letters were prone to discuss insignificant minutiae of Hebrew philology or hair-splitting subtleties of Jewish philosophy. But a deeper study of the period convinces us that what seems unimportant to us was an important and integral part of the general culture of the time, and the failure to satisfy the peculiar philological and philosophical cravings of the age within Judaism would have compelled the educated Jews to seek their satisfaction outside of Judaism. When Saadia Gaon engages in the discussion of what to us might seem a superfluous question as to whether God is able to change yesterday into to-day, it is not the fruitless search of a theory monger, but the legitimate desire of a Jewish leader to solve in a Jewish way a problem that agitated at the time the minds of both Jews and non-Jews. And Maimon- ides, this giant of intellectualism, who regards the study of meta- physics as the ultimate and exclusive goal of all human existence, constructs the enormous edifice of his literary activity with the clearly expressed view to the practical demands of the time. What Jewish learning was to the Jews of Spain, it must be to the Jews of this country. We, too, are confronted by great and complicated problems of Jewish life, problems not merely of Jewry, but of Judaism. We live in a period of great physical and spiritual upheavals in the life of our people. "In our own time, to repeat the words of Maimonides in the introduction to his Code, excessive persecutions overpower us. The pressure of the time makes itself felt everywhere and, as a result, the wisdom of our wise is vanish- ing and the understanding of our men of understanding is hiding iteelf." The tremendous process of Jewish immigration brings us constantly face to face with the necessity of evolving harmony out of the terrible chaos resulting from it. There is spiritual unrest outside of Judaism ; there is greater spiritual unrest within Judaism. The perplexed of our own age are more numerous and more difficult to deal with than those of the Spanish period. In a crisis like this Jewish learning cannot afford and indeed cannot be permitted to FUNCTION OF JEWISH LEARNING IN AMERICA 131 stand aside. It must be called upon to abandon its attitude of neutrality, to descend from its lofty pedestal of pure theory and to take an active hand in the solution of the problems of practical life. Yes, of practical life ! But in advocating the practical function of Jewish learning, I should not like to be misunderstood. If I may for a moment speak personally, my notions of scholarship were fashioned in a country in which Wissenschaft and Leben are looked upon as opposites, a country which is proud of the fact that Hegel wrote his Pkanomenologie des Geistes, undisturbed by the roar of cannons on the battlefield of Jena. To be sure, scholarship to be useful to life must be detached from life. For scholarship is the point of Archimedes which is to pull life from its axis and to lift it to higher forms of existence. It is the pioneer which, regardless of consequences, blazes a path in unknown regions. What today creeps as a truism through the sluggish brain of the Philistine, flashed but yesterday as a paradox through the creative mind of the scholar. The scholar who from the window of his study flirts with the mob on the street is not a champion of scholarship but a traitor to scholarship, for he lowers scholarship which is the mistress of life into a handmaid of life. And to be sure, in this country, with its unmistakable drift towards the tangible and material things of life, we need more than anywhere else the corrective and restraining influence of an idealistic and theoretic scholarship. To repeat the favorite plea of Professor Schechter, a community so essentially practical as ours stands in dire need of a few men who have the courage to be unpractical. A certain aloofness in scholar- ship is not only permissible, but indispensable, if scholarship is not to degenerate into fakirdom. But with all this, when the purely scholarly task of blazing new paths is accomplished, it is the right, nay it is the duty of the scholar to throw them open to the public. He who works in a laboratory and rushes into the headlines of the newspapers to tell the people of his half-authenticated experiments is a sensationalist who is rightly looked down upon by his fellow- scientists, but once the results have been definitely established, it is the sacred duty of the scholar to share them with his fellowmen. This is the attitude which Jewish learning in America ought to adopt towards the practical problems of Jewish life. While keep- ing itself aloof from the dust of the public arena, it ought to 132 STUDENTS' ANNUAL assume with energy and yet with dignity its rightful position as guide and teacher. It ought to carry the lofty and weighty message of our past into the midst of our present-day life and so drive out from it the shallowness and emptiness that threaten to engulf us. It should enable us to view the puzzling difficulties of the fleeting moment in the broad perspective of our history and help us to find a solution which shall lift us beyond the narrow horizon of the present into the luminous regions of a Jewish future. Such is the great and honorable function of Jewish learning in America. Having emphasized the practical aspect of Jewish learning in America, I should be untrue to my own plea, were I to limit myself to mere theoretic considerations. I shall, therefore, attempt to offer a few practical suggestions looking towards a more regular and more fruitful association between life and learning. It is not my intention to discuss the tasks and possibilities that face Jewish scholarship in America on its purely scientific side. There are men in our midst who can speak with greater weight and authority on this particular aspect of our problem. I shall confine myself to one single proposition which, though of a scientific character, borders closely on practical life. I believe we Jews can claim without arrogance that we are a gifted people. But it seems to me that in few other branches have our talents been so strikingly displayed as in the domain of lin- guistics. Corporately the Jews speak nearly all the languages of the earth and we often jestingly refer to the fact that, not satisfied with the natural organs of expression, we try to improve upon nature by forcing our limbs into the service of speech. It is not accidental that the creator of the only successful international lan- guage, the Esperanto, is a Jew, and one might name on the spur of the moment at least a dozen languages which have been for the first time investigated and described by Jewish scholars. Now it so happens that we have the rare fortune of being the contem- poraries of a linguistic phenomenon which stands entirely unparal- leled in the history of languages, the phenomenon of a tongue which thousands of years ago was the medium of expression of a great nation and a great literature, which, having vanished from the mouth of its people, remained deeply rooted in its head and its heart, and after following it in all its wanderings and vicissitudes, now rises phoenix-like before us in its ancient home. The only FUNCTION OP JEWISH LEAHNINQ IN AMERICA 133 drawback of this wonderful linguistic spectacle lies in the fact that it is our own language developed by our own people on our own soil. I refer to the revival of the Hebrew language in Palestine. Now whether we be Zionists, non-Zionists or even anti-Zionists, whether we look upon Palestine as the land of our fathers or as the land of our children, or whether even America be our Zion and Washington our Jerusalem, the fact remains that the rejuvenation of the Hebrew language in Palestine stands without a parallel in the history of human speech, and that what the most authoritative philologists pronounced to be impossible has become reality before our very eyes. What then would be more natural than that we Jews should be the first to study and the first to present to the world this unique linguistic phenomenon which so marvellously illustrates the contention of the psalmist that out of the mouth of babes and sucklings strength is ordained? What a disgrace if we Jews should be preceded by others in a domain which is so essen- tially and peculiarly our own? And yet the danger of such a disgrace is staring us in the face. The Germans are very active in Palestine at present, and active not only politically but also, as is always the case with them, scientifically. Only lately two dif- ferent presentations of the Arabic dialect spoken in the Holy Land have been published by German scholars. And I am positively haunted by the fear that one day I shall find on my desk a bulky volume bearing the bulky title "AusfiihrUches Lehrbuch des in Paldstinc, gesprochenen neuhebraischen Idioms" and my Jewish self-respect will have received a slap in the face. Verily the Jews of America who boast of their practical sense and are at the same time alive to the claims of Jewish learning cannot neglect this particular claim which is strictly scientific and yet borders so closely on living and throbbing reality. The other direction in which Jewish learning in America calls for stimulus and support is of a less technical and of a more per- sonal character. I have pointed out before that a certain aloofness in the scholar is fully justifiable, and that too intimate a contact with the crowd may even prove fatal to him. Yet the scholar remains a human being just the same and like ever)' other human being he needs the sympathy and encouragement of his fellowmen. It is a fatal mistake to think that financial support is all that scho^rsihp needs and calls for. Coarse vegetables may well thrive 134 STUDENTS' ANNUAL on the moisture they receive from the soil; delicate plants require in addition the warming rays of the sun. What brought Jewish learning to such glorious blossom in Spain were not alone the liberal stipends of the Jewish Maecenas, but their personal inter- est, their readiness and their ability to learn from the scholars whose patrons they were. What in a later age made Jewish learn- ing in Poland the leading factor in Jewish life was certainly not its financial substructure nor even exclusively its religious sig- nificance, but the commanding position it occupied in the social fabric of the people. Theoretically the scholar may well be aware of the importance of his vocation ; he may easily persuade himself that the broad and majestic river of life ultimately goes back, often by circuitous and subterranean roads, to those far-off sources of learning which lose themselves in the mountains. But in moments of lonesomeness and despair, when his hopefulness is blighted and his enthusiasm is stifled by the indifference and ignorance that surround him, the feeling steals over him that he may after all be but a superfluous fixture in the life of the com- munity, and such a feeling spells instantaneous death to his pro- ductivity and usefulness. Old Europe realized this danger long ago. While stingy in her material support of learning she manages by a cleverly devised system of social recognition, such as titles, medals, prizes, memberships in learned societies and numerous tricks of a similar order, to coax scientific research out of the scholar as honey is coaxed out of the bee. We in the new world have, thank Heaven, outlived the senilities of crafty old Europe. The German Titel- wesen has no attraction for us and the artificial distinctions of Europe fail of their purpose in a land in which the head of the nation is just plain Mr. President. But what the scholar so urgently needs and so sadly lacks is social recognition of a higher kind, the recognition that he is a useful and valuable member of society, or, what is more, the opportunity of serving as such, the realization that the fruits of his labor, however circuitous the route may be, will ultimately reach the people and contribute towards its progress. If this problem which deeply affects the whole status of Jewish scholarship in this country is to be solved, I believe there is only one solution for it, a solution about which we in America cannot be doubtful. For if there is anything which is characteristic of this FUNCTION OF JEWISH LEARNING IN AMERICA 135 country it is its tendency towards corporate endeavor, its ability to merge the narrow and sluggish rivulets of individual energy into the broad and swift current of a corporation or society. "When an American has an idea," quoth a famous French writer, "he directly seeks a second American to share it. If there be three, they elect a president and two secretaries. Given four, they name a keeper of records and the office is ready for work; five, they con- vene a general meeting and the society is fully constituted." The number of Jewish scholars in this country has, praise be to Heaven, long ago reached the minimum required by the French writer. We have a goodly number of men who as professional scholars are actively engaged in the various branches of Jewish learning and we have many more who are interested in it passively as amateurs and sympathizers, and yet there is not a single society or organiza- tion which should represent the brotherhood of Jewish scholars to themselves and to the world. There is in this country a Society of Biblical Literature, made up, with few exceptions, of Christian theologians; there is an American Oriental Society, but there is no corresponding organization for the wide field of Jewish scholar- ship. What we need is a Society of Jewish Learning which shall bring the scholars scattered all over this land into personal contact with one another and shall set the standards of Jewish scholarship. At the periodical meetings held by the society the scholars will sub- mit to one another, both for instruction and inspection, the fruits of their research, and at an annual gathering the broad lines of progress in the field of Jewish scholarship will be made known to the outside world. Such a society will no doubt provide a consider- able amount of that stimulus and encouragement which Jewish scholarship needs and up to the present still lacks. Yet another organization which shall even more directly render Jewish scholarship useful to Jewish life is still a desideratum in this country. At present the tlcwish scholar in America who may feel inclined to share with his people the fruits of his endeavors and to contribute his mite towards the shaping of Jewish com- munal life has no means of doing so, without exceeding those limits of propriety with which a wise convention hedges him around. The medium of the book unfortunately reaches but the few and there is no journalistic or social vehicle of which the Jewish scholar can avail himself without loss of dijmity, while the non-Jowinh 136 STUDENTS' ANNUAL agencies which are generally far more effective in reaching the Jewish public are, as a rule, hermetically closed to him. Now what is still a consummation to be wished for here, is an accomplished fact in Germany. German Jewry, which numbers not quite one- fourth of the Jewry of America, can boast of no less than 221 societies for Jewish History and Literature which are primarily engaged in the popularization of Jewish learning and offer the Jewish scholar an effective and yet dignified opportunity to com- municate himself to the Jewish public. There is scarcely a town in Germany which does not possess such a society, and in many cases the local society is identical in its membership with that of the entire community. In these societies the whole immense range of Jewish thought and life is viewed in the broad perspective of Jewish learning, whether it be a topic such as "the logical founda- tions of the belief in God," or some practical problem of German Jewish life. These 221 societies are united in a large central or- ganization, at the head of which are to be found some of the leading scholars and some of the most eminent men of affairs of German Jewry. Of course, I do not contend that this German model must or can be exactly reproduced in this country. Condi- tions here are vastly different and I have picked up sufficient American patriotism to persuade myself that in many respects we can do things better than the people on the other side. But the fundamental idea underlying this organization which has in part been also imitated in England is an absolute necessity in this country, if Jewish learning, instead of becoming a dead weight upon American Jewry, shall again be a tree of life for the Jewish people and exercise a steadying and ennobling influence on the life and thought of this community. And finally, whatever we decide to do in support of Jewish learning in America, let us do it quickly. We live in a critical moment of our history, critical in the literal sense of the word, for the very next step will be decisive for the future course of our development. The Jewish people whose life has not been allowed to flow in a broad and smooth riverbed, resembles that wonderful natural phenomenon, the geysers or intermittent springs, which, having accumulated tremendous forces under ground, suddenly shoot forth to great heights and then remain silent. We in America are on the eve of such a magnificent outburst, for we FUNCTION OF JEWISH LEABNING IN AMERICA 137 have been gradually and unobservedly accumulating the im- mense stores of energy of European Jewry, and they are now seek- ing an outlet. Woe to us if we allow the next spurting forth of our strength to go to waste, if we fail to catch the precious liquid of Jewish productivity and to preserve it for the future. Now is the time to rear the structure of Jewish learning in America and to secure for it its rightful position in the life of the community. The opportunities which are at our disposal now may be lost irre- trievably in the next generation. In the springtime of the science of Judaism its founders looked forward to the moment when the child of their care would be taken over by non-Jews and be granted a place at the universities as a part of the general culture of mankind. But after bitter experience has shown us that the hatred of the Jew has penetrated even into the sacred precincts of science and that Jewish learning, distorted by bias and prejudice, has been brandished as a weapon against Judaism, we realize more clearly than ever that we are the natural and rightful guardians of our own vineyard. And standing, as we do, on the threshold of a new period, a period which we hope will figure in future Jewish history as the Rise of Jewish Learning in America, we cannot but be guided by the motto of the wise Hillel : "If I am not for myself, who is for myself ?" and, above all, "If not now, when then ?" UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 315 A 001 110 332 2 A ''^te^'