THE JEWISH CHRONICLE

4

THE CLASSIFIED BUSINESS
DIRECTORY

A

CCOUNTANTS

A. F. THAYER

CERTIFIED PUBLIC ACCOUNTANT

AUDITS

MAIN 1736

OFFICE —SYSIFIN — IACTORY

Corporate and other books
opened or closed

617 DIME BANK
BLDG.

Trial It;, teres Rectified

AUTOMOBILES
-Mylon-Galvin
ROSS 8

Co.

The specially designed Car

Woodward Ave.

732

Grand 372

4. elVaMing, ,Lerellen & Company

In Vestment Bankers
MUNICIPAL AND
CORPORATION
List of Bonds owned by us gladly sent upon
request.
CONGRESS and SHELBY STS., DETROIT
Cadillac 2302

BONDS

,

BRICK
Puritan trirlt ti Furl
Oilr T o. 1,::::111"4:;11Y.'ni I'''

■

710 FARWELL BUILDING
PHONE M 2247 — M 3605

O

PTICIANS

YOUR EYES

My methods are painstaking. I make a
thorough examination of every MC coming
under my care. Do not be satisfied with an un-
scientific test. Come to my office, which Is quiet,
relax your nerves and be examined under Ideal con-
ditions. That Is half the reason of my success. My patients

are any best advertisment.
FRED C. 11011411Y.
t104 1.1pirett 111(Ig

Opp. II missies

I. BERKOWITZ

Dress Trimmings and Supplies
Onyx Hosiery and
Merode Underwear
Kayser Silk Gloves
396 HASTINGS ST., DETROIT

Schechter's Drug Store

477 Hastings St., Cor. Division

DETROIT, MICH.

Pfione Cadillac 3299

HAYNES& HUFFMAN

INVESTMENT BANKERS

STOCKS, BONDS, INVESTMENTS

750 PENOBSCOT BLDG.
Phone Cherry 2901

Potts Drug Company

PRESCRIPTION
DRUGGISTS

Phones: Cad. 138 and Cad. 5552
E 25 WOODWARD AVE.

Cor. Charlotte
Orders Called for Delivered Anywhere

You will find the most complete line

in the city of

Dry Gocds, Notions and Furnishings

AT

M. ROSINSKEY'S

351-355 Hastings St.

'Quality Which if Unexcelled at Wholeralt Pricer

the world, finding that circumstances
favor their desires and autonomy is
open for them, seek to organize them-
selves into municipalities of self-gov-
ernment, and eventually even become
ent state, this s their
an independent
business. They will certainly not ask
permission from any group of Jews in
any other part of the world. What
we, who are non-Zionists and non-
Nationalists, object to is that the
Zionistic and Nationalistic movement
seeks to commit the whole Jewish
people, a priest people, to the doctrine
that it is a secular nation. I have
said that if the Zionists would only
eliminate the little word "the" from
the description of their program, and
say that Zionism is a movement to
secure a publicly and legally assured
home for JCWS in Palestine and not
for 'the Jewish people, I would be-
come immediately a Zionist, because
the whole question would become a
practical and a utilitarian one. I hast-
en to add, however, that if the Rus-
sian revolution realizes all our hopes
for the Jews in Russia there will be
no need for transplanting many Jews
from Russia to any other part of the
world. The Jews in Russia love their
country. And when emancipated
they will be confronted with the prob-
lems of Jews in all western lands.
And they will solve it, I have no
doubt, along the lines of loyalty to
their Judaism and a whole-souled
identification with the Russian state
and the Russian people. They will
become Russian in nationality and
will remain Jews in religion. The
non-Zionist and non-Nationalist re-
fuses to see in Israel a modern nation.
Ile believes that modern nations
should express their life in the form
of modern democratic states and
should have place for men and women
of any national or racial origin. The
non-Nationalist and non-Zionist re-
fuses to see in Israel anything else
than a priest people, loyal to the cove-
nant made by God with it at Sinai.
This covenant makes of Israel a
purely religious body, which enables
it to be influenced by any culture and
to enrich any culture. Modern life
for the Jew should be a complete
union, in freedom, of his religious in-
dividtiality with the land and culture
of his environment.
The Jew, therefore, has a duty to
conic to an understanding with his
environment. It depends on him, on
his conscientiousness, on his loyalty,
on his energy, on his character, on
his moral and spiritual life, on his
own self-discipline and self-culture to
'make his Judaism a great factor in
the national life of which he is a part.
;The perpetuation of Judaism depends
•upon Jews. And modern life is a
great. challenge to Jewish resources.
The Jew xyill gain nothing by declar-
ing himself an alien, a foreigner in. a
modern state. He must accept his
modern environment and at the same
time remain a Jew, and become an
efficient, active, religious Jew. He is
the great international spiritual force.
If the Jew seeks to adjust himself
to his environment he will not look
upon .ghettoism as synonymous with
Judaism. There must be no unnecessary
walls of separation. No sanctity attaches
to the gabardine, with all that this im-
plies, as an external sign of the reftisal
to adopt one's self to new conditions.
Judaism is not synonymous with Yid-
dishism. This is now becoming a
great practical question. It seems
that the work of Moses Mendelssohn
will have to be done over again. The
Jewish individuality cannot be ex-
pressed in a thoughtless perpetuation
of Yiddishism. No sanctity attaches

to the so-called Yiddish language. It
is no expression of the Jewish soul.
It is an absurdity to assert that when
we say "%awgen," to reproduce the"
sound of the Yiddish, we arc loyal to
the Jewish soul and to the Jewish in-
dividuality, but when we say "sagen"
we are treacherous assimilators. That
\Own we say "gib mir a chair" we are
faithful to the integrity of Israel, but
when we say "give me a chair" we
have taken the first step on the road
to, the destruction of Jewish
viduality. It seems laughable that
one should be compelled to argue such
things. But, alas, in the present an-
archic conditions of Judaism we have
a school of thought that actually says
that Yiddish must be perpetuated as
the expression of so-called Jewish life.
The truth is, Yiddish is an arrested,
corrupted German. It is the remin-
der of unemancipated Jewry. It is
the grotesque garb of its oppression.
It must not be retained in free and
balmy circumstances for the life of
Israel. We do not say that children
shall not show their respect and love
and loyalty to their aged parents by
conversing with them in the language
which they understand. But we do
say that the ideal should be for the
new generation, in every land in
which Jews are emancipated, to ac-
quire the language of the land and to
use it as the daily speech. If Yiddish
is to be perpetuated as an ideal in
this country, as sonic loudly proclaim,
then it will artificially create a foreign
colony in this country, with all the
disastrous consequences for all Jews
that this would imply. We can he
good Jews in religion and we can be-
come complete Americans in speech
and in manners and in all the exter-
nals of life which make us conform
to the prevailing tastes and standards.
In other countries the perpetuation of
Yiddish also prevents a complete as-
similation to the environment. It,
therefore. prevents the enjoyment of
the full fruits of emancipation. I
know I will be condemned for these
statements. But as they are made
out of profound conviction, I make
them without fear. There is no rea-
son at all for the perpetuation of the
Yiddish. Language is the soul of a
people. If a Jew is to live a happy
and harmonious life in a modern
state he must combine his ,religious
individuality with the culture whose
spirit is expressed in the language of
that state. He is fructified by it. And
in turn, if he is able and has creative
genius, as many modern Jews have
shown, he enriches it. Even the na-
tionality of a modern democratic
state must have a distinct language.
And if the Jew, for the purposes of

daily speech, in which his daily life
is expressed, perpetuates a foreign
language and, above all, such a jar-.
Bois as has nothing to do with any-
thing distinctively Jewish, he . quite
unnecessarily perpetuates his alienism.
If Jewish spiritual individuality is
to be expressed in a distinctive lan-
guage at all, it can only be in what
has cony to be known in Jewish his-
tory as the "holy language"—Hebrew.
It is true the universal religious ideas
and ethical ideals of Judaism can and
have been expressed in all modern
languages. And it is true that the
masses of the Jewish people, for the
last 2,000 years and more, have al-
ways learned the contents of their re-
ligion in the vernacular. But, at the
same time, there is a great good in
Hebraism. There has never heen a
time in which Hebrew, the language
ill which the Jewish creative religious
soul first expressed itself, was not
cultivated. It was a language for the
choice spirits, for the elect minority.
But this was sufficient to maintain
the unbroken tradition. It is absurd
to make Yiddish the expression of the
Jewish soul. On the contrary, it
means nothing for Jewish genius as
such. Only the language of Moses
and Isaiah and I fillel and Yelmdah
Ilalevi is the one in which distinctive
Jewish genius has been expressed.
But as I febrew cannot be made a liv-
ing language for daily speech it will
necessarily be limited to the expres-
sion of Jewish ideals, of real Jewish
individuality. It will be handed down
from generation to generation in lit-
erature and ill liturgy. And if mod-
ern Hebrew is really to express any-
thing distinctively Jewish it will have
to he influenced by the literary tra-
ditions of distinctive Jewish thought,
as this speaks out of our Bible and
out of our post-Biblical literature. I
said that Hebraism has good in it.
But there is a contemporary Hebra-
ism, which considers itself self-suffi-
cient, which means nothing or very
little for Jewish individuality. All
that it does is to reproduce modern
thoughts, which it borrows and assim-
ilates from the environment, in He-
brew literary form. Much of it lacks
religious consecration. And to that
extent t i means nothing for Judaism.
I love the Hebrew language and
would like to sec i4 perpetuated as
the literary vehicle for the expression
of distinctive Jewish spiritual culture.
But our modern Hebraists will have
to go if to genuine Jewish tradi-
tions f they are to help Judaism.
Ilebraism itself is a secular thing and
means nothing for the maintenance of
the covenant made with Israel.
(Continued on page 10)

f,

;

Stone'44

LOAN OFFICE

Offers An Unusual

Selection of

EXQUISITE
DIAMONDS

AND OTHER

A SMOKER'S CREDIT

RG4), UN

CIGAR

Schechter's Bank

Money Forwarded to
All Parts of the World
479 Hastings Street, Corner Division
DETROIT, MICH.

UNREDEEMED
STONES

JEWISH CALENDAR

5688-1917

Rosh Hashanah—Monday, Sept. 17.
Yom Kippur—Wednesday, Sept. 26.
First day Succoth—Monday, Oct. 1.
Atzereth—Monday, Oct. 8.
•Simchath Torah—Tuesday, Oct. 9.
Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan—Wednesday,
Oct. 17.
Rosh Chodesh Kislev—Friday, Nov. 16
First day Chanukah—Monday, Dec. 10
.Rosh Chodesh Tebeth—Sunday, Dec.
16.
Fast day Tebeth—Tuesday, Dec. 25.

You will make a great saving by purchasing many

valuable articles representing unredeemed pledges.

Cherry 4272.

71 Michigan Ave.

_s

