STACK ,fciX 019 !l ^ s & ?t y 0Anvnan-i i i .\MEUNIVER5//. < S 30 C2 ^ ~t, '%03I1VJ-J< .^.OF-CAllFOftto ,^OF-CAl!FO^ C^ ^ vx ^> Stack Annex 5011061 THE TAMING OF THE SHREW; AN ADDRESS IN THE RODEF SHALOM TEMPLE PITTSBURGH, SUNDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1912. Scripture Reading: Esther Hi. Though hosts should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. (Psalm xxvii., 3.) Some years ago, while living" on the Pacific Coast, I enjoyed the privilege of a friendship which I have always cherished, and which has proved an exceedingly helpful factor in my public life. My friend has since achieved an international reputation, but the older I get the saner I find was his counsel. Many were the wise words which fell from his lips, but I remember none more valuable, true and wise than those he spoke to me when, as a young man, I was smarting under a bitter attack which had been made on me. *By the Rev. J. Leonard Levy. Rabbi of the Congregation. Stenographically reported by Caroline Loewenthal. Attitude Toward Critics. My friend told me then that it was his rule in life never to make public a reply to those who attacked him; that, under no circumstances, could he be drawn into a public discussion of a criticism of his motives, his pur- poses, his actions, or his life; that, as far as his critics were concerned, they were "dead to him, but their critic- ism he submitted to two tests. Was it true? Was it untrue? If untrue, he forgot it immediately. If true, he profited by it, by taking it to heart, and by so living thereafter that no such criticism of him should ever again be justly made. May I say to you this morning that I have endeav- ored to live in harmony with that wise counsel. I have now been in public life nearly twenty-eight years, and during that time I have never made an explanation in print, nor written a reply to the critics. I have sub- mitted all criticisms of my actions and views to the two tests mentioned above: Are they true, or untrue? If untrue, they have had as much influence upon me as a babe's finger would have upon the motion of a planet. If true, I have indulged in very careful and painstaking self-examination, in the hope that such well-deserved criticism might never again be valid. Old Year Reflections. I offer as an excuse for this purely personal refer- ence the fact that, when we hold this morning's meeting, the last service of the civil year, we are apt to be intro- spective, our conscience is likely to be a little keener than usual, while our memory is assuredly stirred as we reflect on the passing year. Standing as we do today, on this last Sunday of the old year, on the edge of the highest peak of observation, we may indulge in a little introspection, we may submit ourselves to rigid self- examination, without in any wise doing ourselves harm. I wish to emphasize this point of view to my congrega- tion because I believe that none of us is so upright, so charitable, so noble, so learned, but we can, if we will, improve ourselves during the years that may lie before us. * Reply to Criticism Sometimes Necessary. While my personal attitude has been such as has been described, I have, however, felt it is sometimes necessary to say a word for others, and perhaps, in the most impersonal way, offer a word of excuse, explana- tion or defence in their behalf. I have done this for negroes ; I have spoken this way for Red Indians ; to the limit of my poor ability, I have, on occasions, de- fended Roman Catholics ; and I have, when opportunity served, spoken in behalf of Protestants. There is no reason why I should not do the same for those who ap- parently need it most, my own co-religionists, the Jews ; for scarcely a day passes but some attack is made in some quarter on this people as a whole, an attack which may be perfectly justified with regard to individual Jews, but which is never justified with regard to all Jews. If I were as sensitive, as too many of my people are, 3 on this question, I should be making excuses, submitting explanations, or offering apologies all day long every day in the year. The necessity for doing so does not, however, seem to me to occur so frequently. When there are men in various communities whose pleasure it is to stir up race hatred, religious prejudices, and these men are as insignificant as the reasons they offer, we can afford to answer them by silence. But when these shrews, ( for the word shrew applies to man as well as to woman, as the dictionaries tell us), are men of really prominent position, it is well for us to look to our ways, to examine tUe terms of the attack, to answer it if we find it neces- sary, <>r to ignore it if we find that that method com- niends itself to our better judgment. Jews Are Always Attacked. There is no form of attack upon the Jews as a peo- ple in which some man, at some time or other, has not indulged. \Ye have been accused of every crime in the calendar. If people died from the black death, it was said to be the Jews' fault. If people lived to a good old age and seemed to be unable to die, it was also said to he the fault of the Jews. If wells were poisoned, be- i-ause pe< pic lived in filth, the Jews were blamed. If men were spendthrifts and lost their money, and Jews pro-pered because they were economical and self-deny- ing, again the Jews were censured. What was deemed a virtue in the critics was considered a proof of the ab- sence of the same virtue in the Jews. Pharaoh invites the Jews to Egypt because his prime minister had saved that land ; but another Pharaoh, "who knew not Joseph," requests the co-operation of his nation to crush the very people who had come to Egypt at the invitation of their monarch. Haman is offended because one so-called stiff-necked and obstinate Jew refuses to bow to him. In this Jew he can see nothing more than stiff-neckedness and obstinacy. It never oc- curred to Haman that a religious conviction might pos- sibly be an obstacle in Mordecai's way. The petty rep- resentative of the king decides offhand that Mordecai is stiff-necked and obstinate, but as it would not be digni- fied in a man of H,aman's position to wreak his revenge on one Jew, he decides that all Jews must be killed. Haman is execrated; Ahasuerus has been identified with the crazy Artaxerxes, king of Persia, while Mordecai has become the type of the loyal and patriotic savior of the nation. The Accusations False. No, charge is too silly to make against the Jews, nor is any accusation too absurd to be brought against them. One accuses them of being economic parasites and says that they put their hands in everybody else's pockets ; that they are social vultures and ravens, the birds of prey of society ; that they spin not ; that they make wealth and give no return to society. It is further as- serted that they are rich, and the phrase, "as rich as a Jew," is typical. Yet we know that one non-Jew, a former resident of Pittsburgh, could buy out all the Jews in Pittsburgh, while two or three former Pittsburghers and their friend, the leading captain of industry, easily possess more wealth than all the Jews in America to- gether. One should rarely estimate a Jew's wealth by appearances. One must never determine a Jew's wealth by the amount claimed for it; it, very often, bears in- vestigation. As Rich as a Jew. The phrase, "as rich as a Jew" is as false as every- thing else that has been said concerning the Jews as a whole. The Jews are not parasites, for the vast propor- tion of the Tews throughout the world are toilers; they are active producers. There are parasites among the Jews ; there are usurers and money-lenders, and loan sharks, and Shylocks, among the Jews; but it is an out- rageous falsehood to say that all Jews are of that char- acter, and my position is that he lies who makes any general adverse charge against all Jews. The vast ma- jority of Jews work in the sweat of their brow and are productive laborers. They are a great factor in the American Federation of Labor. Thank God, I have not, thus far, heard of any Jew being tried in Los Angeles or Indianapolis as a murderer, or for having planned the destruction of life and property as a -means of advancing heir cause. Socially Graceless. It is said of the Jews that they have no social graces and are, therefore, undesirable in social life. I admit it with regard to some Jews, as every fair-minded person would have to admit it of some who are not Jews; but I say again that he lies who urges this against all Jews, just as it would be false to say that all non-Jews have no social graces. I was born in England, and I knew something of English culture before I came to live in America. Unpleasant, indeed, were my early impres- sions of the ostentatiousness, the coarseness, the lack of culture that met me on every side in my journey from New York to California. But it would be utterly false were I to say that the American people are coarse, os- tentatious and uncultured because I know some of my fellow Americans who are so. Generalities of such a kind are rarely fair and are uttered, as a rule, by the enemy of mankind, never by its friends. God-killers. It is said of the Jews that they killed him called the Christ and that we cannot expect his followers to asso- ciate with a people who have been God-murderers. On the very contrary, this should make us attractive to the world. I would pay a high price to see a man who could kill God. He would be worth looking at, for he, who had the ability to kill God, would be a unique creature. Surely those who criticize us for having done the ab- solutely impossible should pass as ignoramuses ; they know not what they say. You're Another! Every attack made upon the Jew as a whole can be met by simply quoting two Latin words, Tu quoque, "You're another!" Every accusation brought against the Jewish people as a whole can with equal propriety be brought against every other people in the world. Let me illustrate ! Some of our foes say that we are mater- ialistic and sensual. Very good ! I admit that such Jews can easily be found ; but it is utterly false to make this contention against all Jews. And are there no mater- ialistic and sensual non-Jews? Go to New York next Tuesday night ; go to Chicago on New Year's Eve ; go to the Fort Pitt Hotel or the Schenley Hotel next Tuesday night, and you will, probably, find some Jews in these places; but not all persons there will be Jews. The five thousand seats reserved in the largest hotel in New York at five dollars each have not all been set aside for Jews. No, indeed ; it matters not what accusation is made against the Jewish people as a whole, the same accusa- tion can the Jew bring against those who malign him. Hut it is ever an ill-mending of the case to say, "You're another!" We never prove anything by it. The Latest Accusation. f )n the other hand if an adverse criticism of the Jews as a whole is made by one whose general bearing is friendly to us. it is worth while investigating. Such a critic-ism was recently offered in England and was ex- pressed by m> less a man than Dr. Stanley Coit, a co- worker of Professor Felix Adler, a man who holds a like position in England as does Dr. Felix Adler in America, at the head of the Ethical Culture Society. Dr. Coit is a friend of the Jews, and says that he admires the Jews very much. ly the way, all shrews say that. But he charges the Jew with an awful crime ( ?) and it is our duty to investigate. He says, in an interview published in the "Jewish Chronicle," of London, that the Jews are a menace to Western civilization because they are "religious monopo- lists, imposing their 'arrogant' religious leadership upon other nations and thereby robbing them of their spirit- ual initiative and insight." Poor Jews ! "Religious monopolists !" "Religious leadership !" How strange such words appear when applied to those who, for fifteen centuries, have been like sheep led to the slaughter, and like a lamb that is dumb before its shearers ! True they have not surrendered or died ; but that should be ac- counted a virtue, not a vice. True they have, whenever able, refused to bend the knee to the Haman of social force ; but that is their glory, not their shame. True they have not flattered their oppressors by yielding to ecclesiastical domination ; but, for that they should be approved, not censured. But "monopolists," and "lead- ership," these are queer terms for a scholar to apply to the people who have been called "the despised and re- jected of men !" Greek Artistic Monopolists. I wonder what Dr. Coit would say of the Greeks? The Greeks have produced certain types of architecture and sculpture which have never been surpassed. Greek sculpture has never been equalled, not even by Michael Angelo or Canova. Have the Greeks, therefore, robbed the world of architectural and sculptural initiative? Are the modern Greeks, the descendants of that wonderful Hellenic people which laid the whole world under tribute to it, to be condemned and censured because their fore- bears robbed the world of architectural and sculptural initiative, through being artistic monopolists? I should deem a man who would argue thus a fit applicant for a padded cell in a lunatic asylum. Because it was given to an Appeles, a Phidias, a Praxiteles, to paint and to carve, because it was given to Ictinus and Callicrates to design a Parthenon, the Greeks were enabled to set before the whole world ideals unto which it might aspire ; are they, therefore, the enemies of the artistic element of the world? On the very contrary, they are its friends. Religious Monopolists. As a Jewish teacher I cannot sympathize with Dr.. O it's point of view when he calls my co-religionists "religious monopolists." Anyone who knows the modern lc-\vs realizes that the last thing in the world, of which they seek a monopoly, is religion. Their very attitude toward religion as a class, I must not generalize, I mu>t a Id a saving phrase, with notable and praise- worthy exceptions, is the best proof that they are least interested in a monopoly of religion. But he further argues that we regard ourselves as the supreme spiritual force among men, and this is a menace. Peace! Peace! The Jew may teach the spiritual supremacy of Israel; but who admits it? After all, our critic raises a tempest in a teacup, and we would not be justified in noticing it were it not a fact thatt he most dangerous foe of Israel is just such a friend as Dr. Coit, because of his standing and character. He urges, too, that nationality and religion must be identical, and that each nation should have a national faith called by the name of the nation. We 10 ought to have, he holds, Teutonism as the religion of Germany ; Gallicism as the religion of France ; Anglo- Saxonism as the religion of England; Americanism as the religion of Americaj and Romanoffism as the relig- ion of holy, religious and spiritual, God save the mark, Russia. National Religions. This may sound well, but it is not very attractive, after all. Who would wish to be attached to a religion called by the name of Anglo-Saxonism? While there is much in England's history to inspire one ; while I, as a son of that nation, have great regard for that people ; while I know of the glory which England has shed upon the whole world ; I should, nevertheless, not care to be- long to the religion of the nation which conducted the Boer War. Never could I be a member of the Church which condoned that infamous outrage at the end of the last century. If I have read the history of Germany aright, I remember that the ancestors of the German people put brewed barley, or beer as we call it, into the skulls of their enemies and raised these awful relics on high as they pledged the gods in Walhalla, and then drained the sacrificial draught from the skull of the slain foe. Methinks there is something horrifying as- sociated with that mode of action, and scores of others no less brutal, which would jar my religious feelings, and which would prove no more attractive to any twentieth-century gentleman. 11 Truth Not to Be Blamed. Dr. Coit errs in calling Jews "religious monopolists." They are not to blame if the principles of their faith have been surpassed by none ; if, in place of a mythology, they have a theology ; if time, which weakens and decays all things, has only served to set the truths revealed by Israel in a more beautiful and fuller light. Nor has Israel ever asserted that no other people has a religion. On the contrary; Israel's authoritative teachers, even during thf view. Some have regarded this as great selfishness, as even a wickedness in us; for, they say, "if you are so happy in your faith, why do you not go out and convert the world; surely the man who finds happiness through a religion owes it to others to bring 12 it to them!" In reply to this we have only to say that the Jew finds it a by no means easy task to convert the Jewish people to Judaism, and he cannot help feeling that it would be Wiell for q,thers to convert their own be- fore they attempt to convert strangers. Moreover the Jew denies that it is necessary for one, not born a Jew, to become a Jew in order to be assured of divine favor. Furthermore, the Jew teaches that good non-Jews are just as dear to God as good Jews. For religion, in the last analysis, is a private and personal matter. It is one's personal attitude towards his Maker, and in that matter no one has a right to force his views upon others. How then, can it be truly said that we have a re- ligious monopoly? Our religion is open to all who wish to take it. While we do not actively seek proselytes, we have never refused the ministrations of the synagogue to all who desired to enter it. A monopoly presupposes the inability of others to control or to possess ; whereas whoever wishes Judaism can have it almost for the mere asking. What, then, becomes of the accusation? True or Untrue? The charges brought by these shrews are either true or untrue. Either Pharaoh was right in his diagnosis, or he was wrong. Either Haman was right or he was wrong. Either Torquemada was right, or he was wrong. Whenever an attack is made upon us, it seems to me that, if we are wise, we ought to consider it from these two points of view: Is it true or untrue? Was Pharaoh justified in saying that if the enemy were to enter Egypt, 13 the Hebrews would not help to drive the foe out of Egypt? We know that that was false. Was Haman right in saying, that there was a people scattered through the empire of Ahasuerus who would not keep the king's laws, and that it was not to the advantage of the king to permit that people to remain in his empire? We know that that was as false as Pharaoh's statement. Was Thomas Torquemada right when he urged Ferdinand and Isabella to exile the Jews from Spain? or when he said to the king after Abarbanel had offered to pay a large ransom for his people, "Behold him," pointing to a crucifix, "whom Judas sold for thirty pieces of silver; wouldst thou sell him again?" To have permitted the Jews to remain in Spain, we know, would not have been to re-sell their master, even though the monk thought so. Error Upon Error. When Dr. Coit says that we are spiritual monopo- lists because we have interfered with the spiritual ini- tiative of other people, he errs, because the Jews have been too feeble to force anyone to do anything he did not will to do. When he states that Roman Catholics, as well as Methodists, Presbyterians and other Free Churches, are a menace to Western Civilization, as is also the orthodox Jew, he is in error, for Western, or any other civilization, would be only the more secure if members of these various sects were loyal to their princi- ples. When he urges that each nation should have a national religion, he again errs, for he would set the hands of time backward. Antiochus tried that two thou- sand years ago; Ignatieff and Pobiedonostzeff have tried 14 it in Russia, and the Holy Synod is trying it today in that beautiful land, with what result you all know. Sad Results Ensue. When it was pointed out to Dr. Coit that his posi- tion might lead to brutal results, and that he seemed to sympathize with such men as Stewart Chamberlain and Goldwin Smith, he remarked that he advocated no brutality and that he would not permit the mob to com- mit outrages. Alas ! the mob does not know that ; the mob only knows that there must be something wrong with the Jews because intellectuals discuss them academi- cally and adversely, and the mob immediately pillages and murders. I have been told by men who have traveled through Russia that the Russian peasant is peace-loving, kindly and sympathetic to everyone; that there is rarely any trouble in the Russian, villages be- tween the Russian Jew and the Russian moujik; that, as a rule they get along very well together. It is only when the Russian intellectual ( ?) makes his proclama- tion, only when the higher-ups pass the word along, that the mobs are urged forward, at the instigation of clericals as a rule, and wreak a bloody vengeance upon a poor, weak and defenceless people. Jew's Faults Are Human Failings. We ought, therefore, when a criticism is offered by a friend, investigate it and see if there is any truth in it. But if shrews criticize untruly, we ought to find some method of taming them wherever found. There are Jews 15 who have faults many and bad ; they are, however, the faults of common humanity. It would be expecting too much of ten million people that all of them should be perfect even if they were reared in the most helpful en- vironment ; how much less ought we expect it when we remember the circumstances amid which most Jews have been born, and their history during the past eighteen or nineteen centuries. I have, I think I may safely say, never yet met a perfect man or woman in Israel or out- side of Israel. The only perfect persons in this world are men's first wives, who have died. They appear to have been perfect : but living men and women all have failings of some kind or another. I am perfectly willing to admit, for my people and myself, more especially for myself, that we have faults and many of them. I am perfectly willing to admit that we make mistakes, that we are guilty of errors; but I would like to know what individ- ual, except the critic, is not guilty of some errors? Human, Not Jewish, Errors. I have given my whole life to the study of the Jewish question, and a few other matters; and I have, as yet, been unable to place my finger upon a specific Jewish vice. The vices, mistakes and errors of a Jew, are the vices, mistakes and errors of common humanity. We share them with our brethren of other faiths. We are no better than they in this respect, and we are no worse. Hut again, I make this reservation. If our brethren of other faiths had endured for eighteen centuries, and had in their blood and nerves and veins what we have, I doubt very much if you would find a spark of virtue left 16 in them. The marvel to me is not that Jews have vices but that any Jew has any virtue left in him. No better way could be found to drive good out of men than by constantly kicking, cuffing and cursing them. No surer method of killing one's idealism could be devised than by constantly showing him ill will and by everlastingly defaming him. If we wish to raise flowers, we must provide them with the warmth and light of the sunshine, or something like it. We know that we can never get the flowers of character in those to whom the light of justice and the warmth of mercy have been denied. Jews respond to the sunshine as do all other people, for they are intensely human, and our op- ponents must surely understand this some day. But in the meantime, fearlessly and uncompromisingly we assert to every shrew that the charges brought against the Jews as a whole may, almost without changing a single word, be brought against the people of the shrew who promul- gates the charge against us. The Sweet Uses of Adversity. But even if these charges be untrue, is it not possible that we may, nevertheless, distill some good out of them? that, looking at them fairly and squarely, we may find in them elements which may help us in spite of the malevolent design of our enemies? We ought to under- stand, by this time, and I would that, as we are about to enter upon the New Year, all of us might see that anti- Semitism is not a curse. Anti-Semitism may become to us a real blessing; and when we let the non-Jewish world 17 know that when it pays us the tribute of anti-Semitism, it is helping us, the shrews may soon be tamed. Shakespeare, in "The Taming of the Shrew," shows us how Petruchio tamed Katherine. Not otherwise should be our method. We should bring ourselves to take the position represented by Petruchio, only what was assumed in him, should become real in us as the result of training. He says, "Say that she rail ; why then I'll tell her plain She sings as sweetly as a nightingale ; Say that she frown ; I'll say she looks as clear As morning roses newly wash'd with dew; Say she be mute and will not speak a word: Then I'll commend her volubility, And say she uttereth piercing eloquence: If she do bid me pack, I'll give her thanks, As though she bid me stay by her a week: If she deny to wed, I'll crave the day When I shall ask the bans, and when be married." The Blessing of Anti-Semitism. Tell the world that you appreciate anti-Semitism; thank it for anti-Semitism, as I do in my heart of hearts; what, think you, the world would do? And is not anti- Semitism a blessing? Is not everything which compels us to put forth added effort a blessing to us? Is not everything which lulls us to sleep, when we should be awake, and which deprives us of strength, our foe? If we wrestle with adverse conditions and struggle against 18 them, as does the oyster with the grain of sand which it converts into a pearl, will they not become to us a source of strength? If we desire to use our muscles do we not exercise them the more to gain agility and force? Bless- ing comes from wrestling, not from indolence, laziness and ease ; that which makes us put forth effort is a source of our well-being; not that the enemy means it to be, but because God, by His divine process of distillation of good from evil, turns it to our advantage. You who are fathers of children you love, and mothers of children who are dear to you, do not, for the love of God, ruin them by pampering and spoiling them ! Let them under- stand from childhood that he alone is worthy of being called a child of God who is capable of putting forth effort when effort is needed. Thus anti-Semitism, far from being the curse the weak-kneed among us think it, is a blessing, if we have the spirit of the true Jew, Mor- decai, who bends not, and bows not, when his convictions prevent him doing so. The Weak Jew a Curse. But if, on the contrary, we are spineless and supine, if we have not the courage to withstand the adverse atti- tude of the enemy, then much of what the foe says may be true after all. A strong Jew is a blessing to self and humanity. A weak Jew is a drag upon his own com- munity as well as a curse to his own offspring and to society in general. Zangwill makes one of his charac- ters in his last play, "The Next Religion," point out that though "Jews do not worship Christ, they do worship Christians." If that be true, then has Israel fallen indeed. 19 Let me explain. You ought to know by this time that I harbor no ill will to any person because of his re- ligious faith. I bear no animosity to any man or woman because of their religious affiliations. I would that all men were true to the best in the religion to which they are attached. The world would be all the better place in which to live if all of us were more devoted to the ideals of religion. But I am attached to the Jewish re- ligion and I would that all my congregants knew what Judaism demands of {hem and were loyal to it. Kvery person who is a member of a church has a perfect right to go to his own place of worship and should be given every encouragement to help to main- tain it in a dignified manner. We demand for our people the same right. I never have indulged any other feeling toward non-Jews, and I have never been guilty of accusing all of them of guile and crime because, as I remember, my first sad experience in Pittsburgh occurred when I was robbed of my hard-earned money by a mem- ber of a Presbyterian church. I would rather my tongue fall from my mouth than I would condemn all Christians for the sake of individual Christians. But this does not involve me in playing the kow-tow to the majority, or in weakly effacing my individuality to gain their good will. Nor should it in your case, men and women. SEVEN 4094 Judge Us As Individuals. My position is this: I demand for every individual Jew the right to be judged by his own life, by his own 20 character, by his own standing, by his own actions, as we are willing to do in the case of others. While I say this I recognize the weakness of some Jewish people who do not understand that tfye world approves the Jew who is a Jew infinitely more than the Jew who is a weak imi- tation of what he can never conscientiously be. Sometimes the word Jew is used in a very un- pleasant sense, and when we hear it so employed our anger is aroused. When I read recently to you the definition of the word, "Jew," from a certain dictionary, several people came to me and said I ought to write to the publishers of that dictionary and say to them that it is false to define the term Jew in that way. But I lis- tened not ; I know a more excellent way of meeting the situation. No word, a few years ago, meant anything worse than Socialism. When I was at college there were few terms which conveyed more of horror to a young man's mind than this. It was, however, falsely associated with bomb-throw T ing, assassination, murder, and every other form of evil. We are today removed only three decades from the day when Karl Marx, the father of modern Socialism, died. Only thirty years have passed, but al- ready the Socialists have made the world respect the name. Today it conveys an impression of social effort of an uplifting character, and suggests to all, except the wilfully ignorant who understand nothing, a self-devoted type of manhood, an apotheosis of the public weal. 21 Improve Self! I suggest to the Jews, including myself, that if we wish to tame the shrew, we can best do it by being bet- ter Jews. But we cannot be better Jews unless we know something of Judaism. I make bold to say that the average Jew knows less of his religion than the average member of any other denomination ; that the average Jew spends less time in studying his religion than does the average member of any other denomination. I be- lieve that my people know less of our Bible, (I am speak- ing- of reform Jewish congregations in America ) than do the members of any other church. Can valuable enthusiasm grow out of ignorance? Exercise Care. I have heard some cruel things said about some members of this congregation. I have heard some cruel things said of members of all Jewish congregations, and I wonder sometimes whether these things are true. If you seriously desire to tame the shrews, then you will see to it that men and women who are admitted to Jewish congregations and to Jewish social life, and that men and women who are chosen by Jews to represent them as board members of charitable organizations or as trustees of synagogues, aye of any Jewish organization, are truly representative of the Jews. If these, our representatives, be not worthy of public respect and commendation, then I say unto you that whatever is said of us adversely and by whomsoever it is said, is in- defensible. The Jew must learn from his enemy. The enemy does not mean us to learn, but our foes teach us, 22 nevertheless, some needed truths, and become a source of strength to us unconsciously. He helps us when he does not mean to help us. And, therefore, we may thank God for the enemy, the anti-Semite, if we pay due atten- tion to his criticism and profit by it. Taming the Shrew. If we wish to tame the shrew who attacks the Jew we have it in our power. We need only refer to the record of our people during ages of oppression and tyranny to learn what our conduct must be now that we are free. Spiritual monopolists we never were ; religious monopolists we never aspired to be. At no time in Is- rael's history, since Judaism became a religion, have Jews sought to interfere with the free religious development of any people. Our Bible has ever been an open book. We have urged, wherever we have gone, that education is the birthright of every child. Freely have we given to others Sabbath, Psalm and Savior. Ours was the glory of revealing to a benighted world the universal God ; and the world says that our sacred literature is its most invaluable possession. We ask nothing in return from the world ; we never shall so long as we are true Jews. If we are accepted on equal terms with others we shall do our duty. If we are expected to accept unequal terms, we shall thank the foe and show the stuff of which a Jew is made. The enemy is a friend when he demands a higher standard of us. He forces us to reach heights we should otherwise be unable to scale. If we are strong, we shall respond to the demand. If we are weak, the sooner we 23 disappear the better. Do not you demand a higher standard of morals in your Rabbi than in any other man in the congregation? You are not justified in making such a demand, but you make it, nevertheless. That which might not be noticed in others is regarded as a flagrant perversion of right in your minister. That which might be pardoned in others would be unpar- donable, perhaps, in me. But the same standard as you demand of me, I have a right to ask of you. There is no religious obligation binding on a Rabbi that is not equally binding on his con- gregants. Moreover, you are just as much teachers of religion as I am. Your function is that of ministers at the altar of mankind's faith. You are the priests of the Most High. You, sons and daughters of Israel, are the servants of God for humanity's sake. If difference be- tween us there is, it lies in the fact that I receive pay for my ministrations, while you do not. But if you feel that the only reason that I occupy this pulpit is the fact that it is a source of revenue to me, then the sooner you select another Rabbi for this congregation the better for you and your children and your cause. As teachers of religion to humanity you must mani- fest the same high standard of virtue you demand of your teachers in the pulpit. Such a standard all of us should maintain, ^'e should be as clean, morally and spiritually, as a noble congregation of men and women expects their respected minister to be. Live thus, and every shrew will be tamed. Let a blameless life be the answer which every Jew makes to every shrew. 24 :ifj> .E SOUTHERN REGIONAL UB A 000 072 483 1