THE JEWISH CHRONICLE'
8
THE JEWISH CHRONICLE
Issued Every Friday by the Jewish Chronicle Publishing Company.
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ANTON KAUFMAN
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RABBI LEO M. FRANKLIN, - -
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Entered as second-class matter March 3, 1916, at the Post Office at Detroit,
Mich., under the Act of March 3, 1879
FRIDAY, MAY 25, 1917
Our Confirmants—The Tokens of
Israel's Safety
Hundreds of Jewish boys and girls throughout the length and
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breadth of our land, proclaiming at confirmation's altar their fealty
to the faith of their fathers, give assurance that the future of the Jew
is safe. Not ours the temerity to assert that all is well with the Jew
today, nor the folly to blind our eyes to the many tokens of indiffer-
ence and lassitude and ignorance that beset our paths. To deny a
weakness is not to cure it. What we need is a proper diagnosis.
What is it fundamentally that gives rhyme and reason to the cry
of the pessimist in our ranks today? Is it, as cowards would have it,
that Judaism has lived its life ; has done its work ; has fulfilled its mis-
sion, so that now it is ready for the grave? Is it as weaklings hold
that the odds against the Jew are tod great and that it were better for
him to give up a battle destined to be bootless and fruitless, and to
submerge his religious individuality in the sea of the majority faith?
Or is it perhaps that Judaism, as some of our ultra-spiritual (?) ladies
and gentlemen would claim, has not in it that soft solace and that
satisfying peace which other cults—especially of the newer sort—
offer to the bowed spirit and the broken heart? Is it that the faith
of the Jew is out of harmony with the dictum of science—a thing
intellectually outgrown, as in sophomoric wisdom those young men
and young women would have it, who have become drunk to the state_
of stupidity by the odor of the cup of philosophy which their lips
have as yet not even tasted? Does Judaism fail to offer to the per-
sonal life and to the community life those ideals and inspirations
which lift the individual and the social whole above the plane of
earthliness, sanctifying man's relations with his fellows and giving
dignity to his life in his own eyes?
Or will an analysis of the Jew's faith prove now, as it has proved
since the day when, according to the legend of the Revelation, the
thunders of Sinai roared their message into the ears of men, that
not in Judaism, but in Jews, lies the fault and the weakness; that Ju-
daism is as mighty to save in this day as it has ever been, but that
Jews need reawakening; that what we need is not a new religion but
a new generation of religionists. ,,
Surely, the question as thus put, answers itself. The weakness
in our religious situation roots in a failure to adjust properly our age-
old faith to the conditions of this new world in which we are living.
On the one hand there is manifest the vain effort to save the old forms
that spell no living message to the hearts of men, by closing our eyes
to the. great truths which every day is uncovering to our gaze, and on
the other hand there is the no less stupid effort to show our ultra-
liberality by vociferously applauding every new movement and cast-
ing overboard every sentiment that the ages have hallowed. But to
be forever identifying the new and the true is the height of folly.
Some things are indeed new because they are true, but few things are
true because they are new. The great problem is to readjust our-
selves so as to put the new and the true into proper relationship ; to
realize that many of the mysteries which science is just beginning to
explain are in closest harmony with the very fundamental tenets of
Israel's old faith, and that frequently which is thought to be new in
the fashionable cults of the day, is, so far as it has truth in it at all,
Jewish to the core. Once let Jews know their Judaism ; once let Jews
study intelligently their Bible and their sacred literature ; once let
Jews redeem themselves from the ignorance of their religion that,
like a stone about their necks, weights them down today, and Judaism
will come again into its own. Before the fundamental truths for
which Israel has stood through the ages, all religious fads and vagar-
ies will vanish into thin air, and from the churches of the new faiths
to which he has been attracted, the Jew will turn piously and perhaps
penitently homeward to his synagogue to find there that spiritual
peace which for him is to be found nowhere else.
It is out of this conviction that we find in the confirmation a token
of great promise to Israel. The children of today, taught as their
parents were not taught, concerning the faith of Israel, are the van-
guard of the new generation that shall save the faith of the Jew.
They shall perhaps not esteem the forms of faith as previous genera-
tions have done, nor observe all the ceremonial rites which tradition
has handed down. But this they shall do: They shall love a faith,
the spirit of which though come down through uncounted ages, they
know to be in accord with the last word of truth that science has
spoken in this latest day—a faith that answers the cravings of the
human soul in its supreme hours and that inspires its devotees to high
thinking and to clean living. Verily, it is an old faith for a new gen-
eration, and our confirmants—symbolizing that new generation—are
the tokens that the faith of Israel will endure.
Out of the Depths
Out of the depths of their misery and degradation three million
men, women and children are lifting their voices in a pitiful plea for
help to their brethren in prosperous America. Their cry is not merely
for food and clothes and shelter. It is for the chance to live. In the
midst of a world surfeited with woe and wretchedness, the lot of the
Jew is more terrible than that of others. Because he is a Jew he bears
a double portion of the world calamity. If you would have these mil-
lions of your co-religionists suffer and die, then let your cars be dull
to their plea and your souls be unmoved to pity by their suffering.
But if your human sympathies and your sense of Jewish brotherhood
is touched by their calamities, answer their cry as God has privileged
you to answer it. The campaign for funds is on in Detroit. The man
—if such there be among us—who shall refuse to help in this great
cause, shall stand despised by this fellows, even though they • may not
all have the courage to ostracize him for his pitiless selfishness. But
surely there shall not be many such among us. Detroit will do its
duty. We shall hear the cry of those millions of our brothers and
sisters in faith who out of the depths of their despair are calling on
us to "Give more than our share."
Billy Sunday and Zionism
At last the secret is out ! We know now why so many rabid anti-
Semites are so earnestly hoping and praying that the Zionistic pro-
gram may fulfill itself, and that the Jews may be nationally rehabili-
tated in Palestine. Among the latest recruits of the cause is the Rev.
Billy Sunday, who, in an address in the metropolis last week, is re-
ported to have made the prediction that Palestine falling into the
hands of the Allies, would mean the restoration of the Jewish nation-
ality there. Great was his rejoicing at the thought of this glorious
consummation of the dreams of some of our people. Yet the secret of
his joy did not lie in the fact that the Jew, so long persecuted, might
regain his independence and be able to work out his spiritual destiny
unhampered. Nor did it consist, as it does for some American and
European merchants, in the fact that with the Jews in Palestine they
would be rid of some of their most troublesome commercial competi-
tors. But Billy's joy rooted in the fact that once the Jews should be
restored to Palestine, thus fulfilling part of what he conceives to be
Biblical prophecy, within two days the Jews of the world would go
farther in that fulfillment and accept Christ as their king. As a matter
of fact, he said within the shortest possible time after the restoration,
there would not be a Jew in New York, for all Jews would have be-
come Christians.
So our Zionistic friends had better go a bit slow in basing their
hopes for Jewish restoration upon the words of the prophets. "The
devil can quote Scripture for his own purpose," and Billy is not the
first to have construed the realization of the Zionistic program as the
first step in the wholesale—nay, the universal—conversion of the
Jews to Christianity. For our part we are not greatly worried by his
portentous prophecy. But surely our Zionistic brethren should 'have
No Presents, Please
This is the earnest request of the members of the Confirmation
Class of Temple Beth El, a request that is sincerely endorsed by their
parents and teacher. Will not their friends have the good taste to
abstain from sending gifts which they know in advance will not be
welcome? If you must spend your money, give it to the Fund for
the Relief of Jewish War Sufferers.
Now it is the Jewish Comment of Baltimore that awakens to the
fact that the forthcoming Jewish Congress is to be nothing more than
an instrument for Zionistic propaganda. In fact, our Baltimore con-
temporary is rather riled at its discovery, that such shall be the case.
We cannot understand what the editorial staff of that splendid journal
have been doing all these months. To us the whole program has been
perfectly apparent from the beginning, and we cannot see how anyone
who is at all open-eyed could have been blind to the facts in the case.