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 *
 
 REFORM JUDAISM 
 
 DISCOURSE; 
 
 AT THE CKI.KllKATION OF 
 
 Dr, Samuel Hirsch's I0th Anniversary 
 
 DELIVERED BY HIS SON, 
 
 THE RABBI OF CHICAGO SINAI CONGREGATION.
 
 REFORM JUDAISM. 
 
 -^DISCOURSE*- 
 
 AT THE CELEBRATION OK 
 
 Dr, Samuel Hirsch j s 7Dth Anniversary J 
 
 DELIVERED B Y HIS SON, 
 
 THE RABBI OF CHICAGO SINAI CONGREGATION.
 
 -TO THE- 
 
 * 
 
 Inform CongrEgation "KenesEth Israsl 
 
 -OF- 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, 
 
 I inscribe most respectfully this discourse, as a small token of 
 gratitude, and in the assured consciousness, that they, a Reform 
 Congregation, assembled in honor of a Reform-Rabbi, expected 
 from me, the teacher of a sister Radical Congregation, on that 
 occasion, the exposition; of the tendencies .' of Reform Judaism, as 
 contained in this discourse, now reproduced in somewhat ampli- 
 fied form, but unchanged in {cmper, tone, and language. 
 
 EMIL G. HIRSCH. 
 Chicago, III. , June i6th, 1885.
 
 Stack 
 Annex 
 
 5~cro 
 
 STANDING, as I do, in the midst of this garden of flowers 
 whose every budlet is symbol of respect, whose every 
 breath is fragrant with the rich perfume, of veneration, I 
 must follow, above all, the promptirigs of my fyeart, and 
 return thanks to you for this ovation so generously brought to one, 
 if dear to you, still dearer to me. We, who are privileged to call 
 him father, had thought to celebrate this glad day in the quiet sur- 
 roundings of yonder home. The family table was intended by us 
 to be aglow this hour with the soft light of that love a tribute of 
 filial gratitude which is enkindled in the hearts of children rivetted 
 by thousand golden ties to that of the devoted, self-forgetting pa- 
 rent. Your generosity demands from us the sacrifice of the quiet 
 pleasures of a private family gathering for the louder demonstrations 
 of a public celebration. It is a sacrifice you demand, but one 
 that brings, in return, its rich compensation. The circle of the 
 family has widened ; it merges into the larger rhythm of a spiritual 
 homestead. The family hearthstone has grown into the altar, the 
 home into this house sacred by its clustered associations. For, in 
 very truth, the congregation here assembled, has a right to number 
 itself among the 'family of its venerated teacher. The ties of a 
 spiritual union replace the cords of blood identity; relationship ot 
 thought that of the flesh. Two decades have ripened into richest 
 fruitage, the seedgerms of spiritual oneness ; sunlit times of joy, as 
 well as beclouded days of sorrow, have wooed into blossom the 
 flowers of affection. He, to whom to do honor this congregation is 
 gathered, has faithfully shared your joys and borne with you your 
 tribulations. At opened graves, he stood with you, mellowing with 
 words of consolation the pungent bitterness of bereavement, his 
 tears mingling with yours, bedewing the soil ready to keep what 
 was mortal of many near and dear to you. And often the sad vis- 
 itor, monitor of our mortality, has come during the well-nigh 
 rounded score of busy years spent with and among you.
 
 This spiritual family counts to-day the links in the golden chain 
 of its love, and alas ! many are broken. I look around I, who am 
 almost a stranger among you and miss many familiar faces. Many 
 a voice that erst would welcome me home, on former returns to this 
 city of my adolescence, is silent now ; many a hand then stretched 
 out to give warm greeting to the guest, is now cold, benumbed by 
 the untimely chill of death. Where are those two so trusty men, 
 who for the larger portion of my father's ministration among you, 
 stood at the helm of the ship, guiding its course with firm grasp, 
 through dangerous eddies and over treacherous shoals ? They sleep 
 the sleep of the just planted in the "acre of God" their memory 
 blessed among us forever. And with them so many friends are 
 gathered into eternal rest ! Such memories, common and sacred to 
 teacher and congregation alike, are, indeed, strong rivets of spirit- 
 ual union; in the joy of one that shared your burdens, well may 
 you claim to participate. And even so, many a time the merry 
 peals of marriage feasts have called him to your sides, and you to 
 his. The vows of love many of you have spoken them before him 
 that he might bless the auspicious beginnings of your jointed lives. 
 The -intimacy of hours of tears and smiles accords the right to you 
 to crowd aside his own children, and speak with them the words of 
 thankfulness that he, your guide, he, our father, has been spared 
 us to see the light of this day. 
 
 But a deeper meaning than even the gathering of his spiritual 
 family, this hour must treasure. Is it merely a tribute to an honest 
 man, who ever valued principles higher than persons, prized perform- 
 ance of duty more than perfidious policy ? I hold not ! Honesty is, 
 indeed, not such a rare virtue in the Jewish pulpit, that its precious 
 possession should call for special recognition. Many there are, who 
 like the beloved hero of this occasion, showed in critical hours stead- 
 fastness of purpose, at greatest sacrifice of comfort and worldly gain. 
 Many there are, who like him, would rather take up, with all they 
 treasure near their heart, the pilgrim's staff than immolate at the 
 altar of fleeting popularity, principles and character. No, deserv- 
 edly known as he is, for the unbending firmness, when fundamental 
 'issues trembled in the balance, this quality alone cannot be the 
 melody of this beautiful hour.
 
 Or, is it meant to be a protest against the cry so often heard to- 
 day that, as religion is an imposition, so its teachers are self-consci- 
 ous impostors ? Such rebuke, indeed, would be timely. For the 
 "philosophers," on whose lips this charge never stales, are as plenti- 
 ful as the stars in heaven and the sand by the sea. But the refut- 
 ation of their ill-directed onslaught lies in the seventy years them- 
 selves, the happy completion of which we remember. The three 
 score and ten are incarnation of the truth that religion is not an im- 
 position, that the Rabbi plays not the impostor. Well nigh fifty 
 years has your teacher eaten the bread of the Rabbi. Has he sold 
 himself for bread and butter as they would have it ? Bread and 
 butter, indeed ! The bread of the Jewish Minister is but seldom 
 buttered. I, who have been privileged from earliest infancy to 
 share the intimacy of such a life, I know and many know it with 
 me that the bread the mere bread of the Rabbi is not com- 
 pensation for the would-be-entailed loss of manhood ! The im- 
 postor seeks for greater profit than the ministry at best, does 
 offer. Impostor, indeed ! Is this reward for slave-service to be 
 the defenceless victim of malicious gossip; to have your purest 
 motives misconstrued ; to be the target of every little scribbler 
 of the so-called Jewish press, generally a coward, sending his harm- 
 less arrows from the cover of anonymity? Bread, indeed ! As though 
 he who is fit to occupy a Jewish pulpit was too stupid to cast his lot 
 in other lines ; as though he would not be as successful a merchant, 
 as skilful a physician, as eloquent an advocate, as the philosophers 
 who assail him ! No ! the minister is not an impostor. It is his 
 heartblood that he pours out in his sacred calling. Days like the 
 present rich compensation as it brings for an honest life honestly 
 spent, are rare ; few dare hope to reach its golden dawn. To 
 silence the silly cry of silly accusers cannot be the burden of its in- 
 spiring message. 
 
 What then does this glad hour proclaim ? If I mistake not, it is 
 meant above all to answer another cry, loudly iterated among us to- 
 day. To voice the answer, I conceive you have called me to occupy 
 this place. Forget that it is the son who speaks to you. For, j'jxj 
 DS^Sn *"?]} TJ7O P'""' ^6 son cann t gi ve testimony in behalf of 
 the father. Not filial sentiments alone, not what Dr. Hirsch is to
 
 your Congregation, should winged words of mine now spell ; not 
 what services he has rendered to the Judaism of this city have I 
 from distant town, at your bidding come to describe. But me, 
 the Minister of a Radical Reform Congregation, have you, a 
 Reform-Congregation, summoned to speak to you of the yeo- 
 man's service done by your Rabbi to the cause of Radical Re- 
 form. Fifty years of the seventy closing to-day were consecrated 
 to that cause. Is it true that those years of study and thought 
 have labored for a barren shadow? This, many among us, 
 would have us believe. Reform is a failure ! this the hoarse 
 cry of ravens, ready to fatten on the crumbs from Reform ban- 
 quets. Ah, in very truth, if reform meant nothing higher than 
 the puerilities of " hats off or hats on !" if without principle for its 
 foundation it was. but the outgrowth of the whims of congregational 
 majorities, it deserved, indeed, to fail ; and no one could rejoice 
 more in its failure than I should. Radical Reform is not a failure. 
 1 Conservative Reform a knife without a blade and handle may be 
 such ! Radical Reform has a principle in which it lives. It can- 
 not acquiesce iit the call for a truce of warfare, now uttered by 
 many who are weary of the strife. Like its God, HDIl^D JJ M &$ 
 it is a warrior ; it is aggressive. Not yet can it rest on its laurels ! The 
 great men who are its saints, were all weaponed with the prophetic 
 hammer, splintering to fragments the rock of opposition. Willing 
 to co-operate in all directions, where principles were not at stake, 
 they rather stood alone, than sacrifice their very spiritual life to the 
 Moloch of peace, and the cheap praise, to be acquired, by reading 
 marrowless essays I should almost have said school-boy essays 
 in Rabbinical,. conventions. Radical Reform Judaism is true to its 
 German origin. It willingly bears the burden of this foreign birth ; 
 but ,it does insist upon its inalienable right to dwell and develop in 
 America. The danger to Judaism in America lies, most assuredly 
 not in the diffusion of German ideas, or German skepticism if you 
 so choose, but rather in the affectation of American devotionalism and 
 emotionalism, which is as far removed, with its Bibliolatry, from 
 sound honest old Jewish Orthodoxy as. is the quiet Pacific from the 
 boisterous Atlantic. This ' ' Americanism ' ' is even now bearing 
 curious fruit. It gives us^he Hebrew, where we should have the
 
 Jew. Radical Reform claims the latter as its title of honor, leaving 
 the former gladly to the Young Men's Hebrew Association. For it 
 is conscious that as Jews we have a mission while as Hebrews we 
 would be but one of the many races peopling the Earth a mission 
 in a higher sense even than our Secret Orders represent, among 
 whom the word is a favorite, but the substance yet a foreigner. To 
 prove that this is the tendency of Radical Reform Judaism ; that, 
 therefore, it is not destructive but in the highest sense constructive 
 a glance at its history will suffice, a history which may be the more 
 rightfully reviewed on this occasion, as one of its brightest pages 
 bears the name of our Septuagenarian. 
 
 It is customary to locate the source of Reform Judaism in the 
 writings of Moses Mendelssohn. But this is a mistake. Moses 
 Mendelssohn was a Reformer in another direction. He was 
 the outrider of dawn, announcing the speedy coming of the sun's, 
 radiant chariot ; but the day star's rising he saw not. His service 
 to Reform Judaism was of a preparatory character. He shared 
 the philosophy of his time. With Kant, for him religion was 
 natural in man, an inborn grace and quality of humanity need- 
 ing no revelation from above. Judaism, however, was not re- 
 ligion; it was legislation divinely revealed, and -as such fixed 
 in its obligatory character forever. His philosophy thus made him 
 an orthodox. The misconception to class Mendelssohn among the 
 religious reformers has forged, in many a controversy, the suppos- 
 edly invulnerable armor of many a knight of the good Jewish press 
 who will quote Mendelssohn in refutation of the later "Reformers,", 
 and shout most lustily "treason," upon the .discovery that the 
 younger Reformer deviates in spirit from his assumed forerunner. 
 The untenability of Mendelssohn's religious views is attested by his- 
 tory's verdict, written in the wrecked life of his own children. Only 
 as a social Reformer do we glorify the sage of Dessau. It was he, 
 through his translation of the psalms and the pentateuch, that made 
 the Jews in Germany Jewish Germans. He taught them the lan- 
 guage of the fatherland. He thus unlocked the gates of their lin- 
 guistic Ghetto. He furnished them the key wherewith to open the 
 doors of the palace of German philosophy, destined speedily to 
 emancipate German Judaism from the heavy bondage of pilpulistic
 
 8 
 
 Talmudism. And they came, the young men, that had learned 
 with sure foot to walk the jungles of Talmudic disquisitions, with a 
 thirst well nigh unquenchable for the more methodic training, the 
 systematized knowledge to be garnered in the halls of German learn- 
 ing. From the East, they passed to the West, and while in the cognate 
 sounds of the tongues of the Syrian mountains or the Arabian de- 
 sert, they listened to music familiar to them, wont as they were to 
 chant the songs of the Jordan ; in the Western philosophy, a new 
 revelation came to them, a new world was opened to them, into 
 which they had to grow, and from which they drew the secret of 
 Judaism's innermost being, the story of its rise and development, 
 the necessity and power of its rejuvenation. To that generation of 
 men belong the clustered stars of first magnitude, whose light will 
 shine on for a long time still, though the orbs from which it sprang, 
 be no longer set in the visible skies. The German University trained 
 the giant intellect of our Zunz, the man of encyclopedic grasp, clear- 
 ing the track across the tangled forests of Jewish literature. It gave us 
 our Geiger, critical and constructive ; Jost, comprehensive and tho- 
 rough; Stein, poetic and silver-tongued ; Wechsler, deep and keen ; 
 Herzfeld, learned and persevering. At the feet of the master-minds 
 of Germany, these had sat ; and, indeed, not to no purpose. The 
 solitude of the student's closet measured not the sweep of their en- 
 thusiasm. From sered parchments and dusty scrolls ; from volumes 
 hoary with age, and documents mossed by the centuries, they turned 
 to the fresher light and brigther colors of active life. The granite 
 rocks they had quarried in the mines of Jewish history and thought, 
 they now spread as a foundation whereon to rear the grander struct- 
 ure of Israel's new Temple. Ah ! those were glad days of virgin 
 Springtide, when enthusiasm tempered in its glow by the balmy 
 breezes of chaste poesy, warmed and wooed, stirred and staid the 
 hearts of German Israel ! Those the ever memorable years of the 
 German Rabbinical conventions, where men met, jealous of their in- 
 dividual independence, but zealous for the grand cause common to 
 all ! Science, the kind mother, had pointed the way ; her sons were 
 not slow to follow the direction. The men of theory were joined by 
 the men of practice. Holdheim, the skilled dialectician, grasped 
 the hand of Geiger; Einhorn, of fiery tongue and shrivelling scorn;
 
 the two Adlers, the peers of all; Phillipsohn, journalist and preacher 
 with those named before, and many more, pilgrimmed to Braun- 
 schweig, and Frankfort and Breslau, planning, counselling, working, 
 debating, reviving, reconstructing! The old matron, Judaism, still 
 lived. The tide of apostacy, the bastard offspring of the Mendels- 
 sohnian era, was diked: a new day had come a glorious day of new 
 life and new love! Youngest of all, but perhaps eagerest, certainly 
 equally well equipped, was Samuel Hirsch. 
 
 The Republic of letters had long since conferred upon him the 
 crown of citizenship. His " Religionsphilosophie " had anchored 
 Jewish theology to the firm mooring of systematic philosophy. His 
 " Messias-Lehre" philosophic sermons, had, while exposing the 
 naked cowardice of the first families of Berlin who, to gain position 
 and honor, led their children to the baptismal font, boldly sketched 
 the true trend of Judaism and its true hopes; and his "Reform' 1 '' 
 had shown his comprehensive grasp of the hour's burning issues. 
 These m'en met! Is it true, their work was in vain? Is it 
 true, that, as we are assured in the beautiful organs of new Ortho- 
 doxy, that their undertaking was prompted by unprincipled yielding 
 to convenience and fashion? Who will dare, if not lost to truth, 
 dare repeat the slander ? No, we know it, on the adamantine rock of 
 conviction, not on the quick-sands of convenience, on the ledge of 
 principle, not on the swampy underground of popularity, did they 
 plant their feet. That Israel had left Palestine not as an exile from 4 
 home, bearing the burden of guilt, doomed to yearn for the return 
 to the altars on Zion, where alone he could discharge his religious 
 obligations; but as a missionary, to suffer and sigh, live and die for 
 the truth entrusted to him ; that onward and upward, not downward 
 and backward the ultimate goal of his pilgrimage lay: this was, this 
 is' our fundamental principle. It is the pivotal point of divergence 
 between Orthodoxy and Reform. From it, as a necessary inference, 
 flows our right to discard Oriental symbolism and Oriental memories 
 in outward forms, in liturgy and in life. ' ' Doings and doctrines must 
 be harmonized!" this, therefore, the watchword of Reform, as con- 
 ceived of by the man, whom we to-day honor. If the Jew is no longer 
 a citizen of the East, desires no longer ever so to become again, his 
 Synagogue should not in its prayers and its lessons accentuate, as
 
 10 
 
 vital truths, hopes and beliefs and practices which from the rising 
 sun, from Palestine and Jerusalem, from the Davidic dynasty and 
 Aaronitic altar, take their music and meaning. ' ' Doings and 
 doctrines must be harmonized!" said Hirsch. For Judaism is not 
 law, but life, not ' ' Gesetz, " but " Lehre. ' ' In this crystallized anti- 
 thesis, the philosophy of Reform is tersely stated. To a truer 
 level this distinction lifted the practical efforts, than even the method 
 of Holdheim, who attempted to refute the Talmud by the Talmud, 
 succeeded in doing. This distinction is also broader than Einhorn's 
 twofold division of Jewish tenets into Ceremonial and Moral laws, 
 ascribing eternal authority to the latter, the essence, while holding 
 the former to be of a temporal character only, subject to change. 
 And though Einhorn consistently classed not only trivialities and 
 obsolete institutions under this head, but even the Sabbath as far 
 as the choice of the day is concerned, yet a little thought will show 
 that his system presented difficulties, which Hirsch' s is free from. 
 
 Judaism is not law. To conceive of it as such has been the fatal 
 error of the ages, of both friend and. foe. "Judaism is law" so 
 shouted Paul, the arch-enemy of Judaism; "the Jews are slaves 
 under the law. ' ' Do our good orthodox not know that when they, too, 
 raise that cry, they concede the .very position of Christianity, that, 
 thus they are the Christianizers, not we. Judaism, the Judaism of 
 the Prophets is not law. It is doctrine, Lehre. It is not exclusive, 
 but world-embracing! Place yourselves on the high plateau of the 
 second Isaiah, listen to his burning words! What a contrast be- 
 tween him and the lame rigidity and frigidity of Ezra's and Ne- 
 hemiah's legalism! In his eyes burns the glow of holy enthusiasm, 
 in theirs blazes the glare of cursed fanaticism. From the clear, crisp 
 heights of his world-embracing hope, they lapsed into the narrow, 
 dark valley of bigotted exclusiveness. We know their times; we, 
 perhaps, recognize the necessity of their measures. We understand 
 the dire stress under which later Talmudic Judaism, to save itself, 
 withdrew behind towering ramparts and bulwarks of prescriptions 
 and prohibitions; "fences around the original law!" II^ 1 ^ 10 IV 4 ? IV 
 But blame us not, if we turn for inspiration again to the beaming ideal 
 countenance of the great seer of the captivity, and spurn the for- 
 bidding frown of the zealous but narrow legalists of the second
 
 II 
 
 Commonwealth! In accord with the spirit of the prophets, 
 Hirsch showed the so-called ceremonial laws to be only symbols. 
 Symbols speak a picture language. All symbols merely suggest the 
 underlying truths and doctrines. Symbols are, for instance, these 
 flowers, which greet us this morning. In themselves, they are mute. 
 As messengers of your veneration, they voice a heavenly thought. 
 But they will wither, the thought will survive! The suggested thoughts 
 of our religious ceremonies were formerly understood by all. In- 
 carnations of Jewish eternalities, they were welcome and proficient 
 teachers of religious truths. But the living spirit in course of time 
 left them. They uttered sounds in a foreign tongue, unintelligible. 
 They were canonized, then, by superstition into fetiches, galvanized 
 by romanticism into seeming beauty and warmth, tolerated by in. 
 difference, scoffed at by the irreligious, deplored as parasites by the 
 deeply religious. Away with them, when they are dead! The 
 eternal spirit of Judaism lives. Give it then the symbols translucent, 
 the language modern, the garb beautiful, through which its ever 
 true teachings may shine and cheer and warm and lift up! A slave's 
 chain must not be Jacob's jeweled frontlets! "Life must not be 
 crushed in the skeleton embrace of a dead past!" (Einhorn) Do- 
 ings and doctrines must be an indissoluble unity! Externalities 
 must not crowd out eternalities! 
 
 This view of the relation of the Symbol to the underlying Thought, 
 of Life to Liturgy, explains at once the position your Rabbi has 
 taken on the Sabbath-question. The Sabbath is, indeed, the corner 
 stone of Judaism. If Judaism, as Dr. Hirsch teaches in his cate- 
 chism, makes " work religion, and religion work," if our religion is 
 the goodspell of labor, its dignity and its liberty, the Sabbath is the 
 preacher of this, its most essential doctrine. But is it chained 
 to the day? It was your guide who, in a pamphlet, laid before the 
 Rabbinical conference at Breslau his views, and urged his colleagues 
 to take measures here also to heal the gaping wound, to bridge the 
 yawning chasm between profession and performance, between life 
 and teaching! Say not, it was he who did attempt to transfer the Sab- 
 bath! Life had made the transfer. This concession to the majority is 
 practically made, not only by the wicked Radicals, but also by the 
 pious Orthodox and Conservative, who, at best, allow others to
 
 12 
 
 keep the old Sabbath for them. The Jew having become a citizen 
 of the modern world cannot devote as he should his energies to 
 the betterment of self and others in those channels for which he is 
 fitted, if blind sentimentalism stands between him and the free choice 
 and exercise of profession and pursuit, exiling him to a Ghetto of his 
 own making, now that the Ghetto of hatred has crumbled. " Six 
 days shalt thou work!" not five. Work and rest, HDN^D and 
 nni.39* are corelatives, the two conditions of the B'rith, the 
 covenant. This is thus not a question of gain and profit, it is an 
 issue of life and death, of principle and free prerogative. Dr. 
 Hirsch, as all other Radicals, does not wish to sunder the ties 
 which bind us to our past and to the whole community of Israel! 
 Reform Judaism breaks not with history. It spins out its golden 
 thread into the texture of futurity. We are not a sect, a branch 
 lopped off from the parental sapgiving trunk! No, the nexus and 
 connection with past and present is sacred. And as the whole 
 community is not ready to take that step which alone would give us 
 again a real Sabbath, without landing us in a social Ghetto, where, 
 I ask, was the wrong, is the crime in that kindred movement, which 
 Dr. Hirsch was the first to father in this country ? Is it treason to 
 utilize the day which is de facto our day of rest for the purpose of 
 instruction and edification ? Rise ye from your graves, ye old 
 Orthodox! Cite your authorities in proof of the claim that prayer 
 and preaching on the first day of the week is sinful ! Ah, you, 
 Joseph Karo, you Moses Isserles, would find none! The sorry 
 glory of this new rHfJl'? mfJI belongs to those, who claim to 
 be your followers, but who, though often editors of Jewish 
 papers and Reverends of Congregations, cannot even read your 
 writings! "That movement has condemned itself," so they 
 shout; " it is a failure!" Is it ? If it is, your Sabbaths are still sorrier 
 failures. It is not love for the Sabbath-queen which causes many 
 to oppose this movement, but allegiance to four other queens and 
 their court; it was not love for Judaism, but love of the honors of the 
 lodge room, which wrought here the new doctrine that our Lodge 
 Temples may be opened on Sunday, while our Congregational 
 Temples must be closed ! The reports of your President show that the 
 movement has strong adherents in your midst. In Chicago, the
 
 movement is not a failure. The son, carrying out the intentions 
 of the father, has been privileged to see his seed sprout into 
 fruitage though with characteristic honesty, the true and valiant 
 yeomen of our orthodox press, either pass over the fact of our suc- 
 cess with silence, or do not hesitate, ad majorem dei gloriam, to 
 tell downright falsehoods! 
 
 And as the Sunday movement is not anti-Jewish, so in its every 
 thought true Reform is enthusiastically Jewish. Hirsch's work 
 prove this; His Religionsphilosophie was written against Hegel's 
 "Christian State" dogma, against the low ranking set by Hegel- 
 ianism to Judaism. His Briefe gegen Bruno Bauer are a classical 
 defence of our religion. And what is his Humanitat als Religion, 
 if not the grandest apology of Judaism, a gauntlet thrown down to, 
 a lance pointed against the Anti-Semitism of German Masonry? It 
 shows that Judaism and Humanity are not divorced, but twain made 
 one; that every thought of true humanity is of Judaism, a flower 
 grown on the soil of Biblical philosophy and prophetic inspiration. 
 His other writings, scattered in different periodicals and composed in 
 three langu ages, breathe the same spirit. In many a controversy 
 was he engaged; hot and bitter often was the fray. Tooth and nail 
 had he to fight his opponents. Read them his contributions to the 
 Jewish Times and the Zeitgeist the. two organs of consistent Reform 
 can the seed there scattered have fallen on barren soil ! I think, 
 it has not ! 
 
 Already he, who stands in the twilight sun of the eventide, may 
 enjoy one satisfaction, gratifying in the extreme. What he, forty 
 years ago, with the intuition of genius almost spontaneously saw, 
 latest researches in' Biblical literature, in ethnology and folk-lore and 
 religion, have corroborated. What Judaism may claim as its own, 
 is the prophetic doctrine, the " Lehre /" the institutionalism of the 
 Synagogue is legacy of heathen times, belongs to Hebrewism, not 
 Judaism. The prophets often protested against this institutionalism. 
 To decry these researches as the cranky lucubrations of; Jew-haters 
 and infidels, we may leave to the ignorance of bigotry. Notwith- 
 standing its impotent protest, the fact stands that our forms even 
 of Biblical Judaism as such are of heathen origin. The Sabbath 
 is as zform an old Semitic moon-festival; our holidays are originally
 
 nature-festivals; our sacrificial code a copy or twin-sister of similar 
 priestly ordinances among other nationalities, the dietary and levit- 
 ical purity laws are not exclusively Jewish; yea, the Rite of which 
 they would now make a Sacrament of admittance into Judaism, 
 though it cannot be mentioned, is not Abrahamitic. The prophets 
 taught Judaism. They utilized the old heathen vases to hold the 
 flower of their Ethics! Symbols suggesting, under prophetic transfor- 
 mation, the new Judaism, of heathen parentage these forms are not 
 inseparably bound up with the prophetic idea. We gave to the 
 world the tenets; the world gave us the forms. So was it at all 
 times; so will it ever be. 
 
 But, if the Moses's of this second liberation from Egypt have this 
 satisfaction of approval at the hand of philology and history, they 
 have not the proud consciousness of a practically completed victory. 
 On the contrary, a strong tide has set in, running backward. There 
 is nothing surprising in this. After periods of great enthusiasm, 
 always come years of exhaustion. History moves in spiral lines. 
 The generation which bore the yoke of Egypt, never enters the 
 land of the future. JOH D*?^ p^H DH 1 ? j'N "DlOn TH We, 
 cf another generation, we are summoned to cross the Jordan. Of 
 the trusty leaders who led the Exodus, but three remain, and upon 
 the youngest of them, the snow of seventy winters has laid its 
 flakes. Sam. Adler and Phillipsohn are the two other survivors, 
 and Zunz, the erudite, with the burden of ninety years, keeping now 
 as ever aloof from practical religious issues. The other stars of the 
 clustered constellation of brilliancy have sunk beneath the horizon; 
 who can tell when the three, standing in the uncertain, if mellow 
 circle of light, precursor of advancing Night, will follow them that 
 set in their van ? Ours it is to care that their lights have not shone 
 in vain. These flowers will wither, these voices be hushed. Yon 
 parchment will sere. The memory will abide a memory which 
 enfolds the pledge to realize the hopes of this life of three score and 
 ten. To me a voice seems to call out with somewhat modified 
 bearing UTTUpr JIN WO $*?& WHll^ H&'N Happy you 
 young men will only be, if you put not to shame the work of these, 
 our Patriarchs! The danger is lurking in the dark: a specious plea for 
 peace is heard on all side. Compromise threatens to displace con-
 
 15 
 
 viction. This is not as it should be. Ask not, care not for the ap- 
 proval of the other parties in Judaism! We are Radicals: not 
 pluckcrs up by the root, but preservers of the roots of our religion. 
 And if I must say it, it is this courage of conviction which I begin 
 to miss in the Eastern Reform congregations! Show your colors; 
 and if Orthodoxy or Conservatism cannot follow, lead on, march 
 on! Not we are the apostates; rather they are! apostates from the 
 progressive spirit of prophetism. And if they are sincere, and we 
 are, we stand nearer to each other, than were we on a common plat- 
 form of platitudes, contenting none, convincing none, carrying 
 none! Like Gad and Reuben, we lead the van! Upward, onward 
 then! Our religion is of the heart; in its conflicts, its doubts, and 
 darings, not in the cravings of the appetites, feel we the heaven- 
 set call of religion. History, the curves of the throbbing heart 
 of mankind, is our Sinai, and above all its thunder and smoke, 
 we hear the proclamation: I am the Lord thy God! a God who 
 approves of our beginning, for it is He, who leads us from Egypt 
 through the desert to the land of liberty. Like Moses, in the 
 Biblical legend, I fancy our beloved teacher to-day is standing on 
 the height of a towering mountain. Not backward is his eye 
 turned; all the bitterness of the pilgrimage is forgotten, yea even 
 the thought that the people's guilt it is which bars his entrance 
 into the loved land of dreams and hopes, is softened and blends a 
 subdued undertone with the melody of the supreme, superb mom- 
 ent. Forward his eyes wander: there laughs the river, slopes the 
 grove, waves the field and smiles the vineyard. A happy people, 
 happy in the possession of that which the fathers strove after, tents 
 in peace along the nestling plains fringing rock, sea and sand! And 
 a whisper wings its upward flight: {ir\2&& "]f"D "IC"' may 
 thy strength not grow less, thou who hast broken tablets of stone in 
 holy service! His is the dream of Moses; ours the hope that his 
 lot may rather be that of Caleb, that with us he will ford the rush- 
 ing Jordan, and on yonder shore will still be able to say, fN TO3 
 Piny TlD as then, so now my strength is equal to the task assumed. 
 
 Thanks, then to you, the Congregation, for this glad day! Thanks 
 to all who have come, of their own prompting, to share our joy! 
 Thanks to all who labored for the accomplishment of the long pre-
 
 i6 
 
 pared plans! But from these roses rises a peal, its echo is taken up by 
 the walls and domes, along the opened ark its ringing tones roll: On- 
 ward! Upward! in the spirit of the devoted friend and teacher, our 
 father, upward with the prayer that he may be spared unto us for 
 many years to come, onward in the assurance that his work, our 
 cause, is blessed of God. Amen! 
 
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