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THE JEWISH CHRONICLE
THE JEWISH . CHRONICLE
Issued Every Friday by the Jewish Chronicle Publishing Company.
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
FRIDA'V, SEPT. 21, 1917
Yom Kippur Thoughts
It is distinctive of Jewish teaching that it posits as a fundamental
principle the divineness of humanity. Not in one man, as is taught
by our sister faith, but in all men there burns the spark of the divine.
This distinctive teaching lifts the faith of the Jew into a class by
itself, in that it pre-supposes for man the power to become like God.
This note rings out in every page of Scripture. In other faiths man
is the creature graceless, fallen, weak and impure, but through the
ages the Jew has proclaimed in the words of his law-giver: "Ye shall
be holy as I, the Lord your God, am holy," or as the Psalmist .so
nobly phrases it, "Man He has made but little lower than the angels,
and with glory and honor He has clothed him."
It is just because of this higher conception of •human possibili-
ties that the Jew's code of morality is one marked by severity. There
is none of the soft "turn the other cheeky' philosophy in the faith of
the Jew. Because he believes that in every man there is a germ of
the divine, he holds that wrong doing must react and recoil upon
the sinner. For this reason justice and not love in the Christian sense
is the basis of his ethical philosophy.
. • Sometimes it is said, especially of Reform Judaism; that it is an
easy faith, a religion of convenience. Nothing could be farther from
the truth. Judaism is an easy faith to understand, but perhaps of
all faiths the most difficult to practice. It is easy to understand be-
cause in its philosophy reason is its unchanging guide, but it is diffi-
cult to practice because in its ethical system stern justice that de-
mands a spiritual retaliation for every wrong committed, is funda-
mental.
On the great Sabbath of Sabbaths which comes to us as the
climax of the Tishri holydays, this truth must come home to the
Jew with especial significance. Yom Kippur is the day of self ex-
amination; it is the hour when conscience speaks. What of it that
for our sins the world condemns us? The world is soon enough
appeased and soon forgets if we but right the wrongs we' do. But
on Yom Kippur the Jew stands before another judge—the judge
whose judgment is unerring not only as concerns our overt acts, but
as concerns as well our thoughts, our attitudes, our motives and all
those hidden purposes that no human eye has the keenness to descry,
and all those sacred.thoughts that are locked within the human heart.
Even to these, however, conscience holds the key, and if the Jew
shall stand in that humility which best befits him,•he shall be moved
to true repentence by the call from within more surely than by the
call of the world.
It is not because of the severity of the penalty which Conscience
metes out to man that we must fear it. Very often the penalty, like
the crime it judges, is hidden from human eyes, but our respect for
its decision rests in this, that it exemplifies the truth proclaimed by
Israel's teachers through the ages, that what one does he inevitably
does to his own self ; that as he lives well or ill, he exalts or degrades
himself in his own eyes; that as his ideals are low or high, he becomes
more a brute or more a god. The prophets in Israel, preaching re-
pentance, seldom hold out the threat of legal penalty for wrong, but
rather like Isaiah, they compare the sinner to the stubble that shall
be devoured by the flame, or to the root become rotten, whose blos-
soms shall fade into dust.
That this is. always true is axiomatic. For our sins and short-
comings most of us go scot-free, so far as the penalties of the world
are concerned, but for all that we are not unpunished. Are we the
same in our own eyes after we have sinned as we were before? Are
we the same in our possibilities for efficient living and for the ade-
quate realization of our own powers if indulgence of the passions
and of our lower appetites. have come to dominate us? A life in
which sentiment has been lived down, in which the better impulses
have been stifled, in which the voice of conscience has been refused
•
a hearing, is a life that cannot commend itself to the one who lives
it or bring to him the measure of satisfaCtion that comes to the man
who, at the cost of sacrifice and struggle, follows the bidding of the
voice within. It is the reward of righteousness that it stimulates the
moral growth of a man, and the penalty of wickedness that it brutal-
izes him. The man who habitually yields to the worst within his
nature lives down the thing in him that links him to the divine. He
kills his conscience. He strifles the voice of God within him. He
becomes a brute, kindred to other brutes though he wear the form
of man. Than this there can be no harsher punishment for sin. And
all the penalties that man may mete out to the wrong-doer cannot
compare with it.
Therefore, it must be true that when in their practices men ha-
bitually fall below the moral standards of their times, when they fail
altogether to ifse the opportunities for well-doing that life puts before
them, and when they go out of their way to escape plain duty, they
are to be pitied rather than blamed, for they have lost their suscepti-
bility to moral influence. They have become spiritually dull and
blind, they are no longer men, but only brutes who once were men.
In other words, the recoil of sin is not so much ,upon society or upon
-the world as it is upon the guilty individual. Man sins and by that
fact he becomes less than he has been.
In the light of these thoughts, it is no exaggeration to say that
the greatest sins that men commit, and for which the Yom Kippur
demands atonement, are those against their own better selves. After
all, but few men lie or steal or murder. The majority live well within
the law. They recognize the restrictions which living in a civilized
community lays upon them. llut is this all that human living means
and is this negative respect for righteousness enough ? Is this the
sort of code that makes man but little lower than the angels or that
answers the demand that he be holy as his God is holy?
In other words, is a regime of life that takes no care of the realiz-
ation of one's own best nature all sufficient? The 'Jew through all
the ages has answered this question in the negative and so he must
answer it today. Yom Kippur, as the day of self examination, de-
mands of the Jew that he should stand before the bar of conscience
and ask himself whether he be making the most of his own life or
whether he is frittering it way in follies and in vanities. Undoubt-
edly a large majority when they look inward will find little satisfac-
tion in the sort of lives they live. But, self condemned, they will in
pleading turn to a merciful God and ask that He forgive them 'and
strengthen them to live a larger and a fuller life hereafter. To bring
this about is the real purpose of the Jew's atonement. May that
purpose realize itself for the uncounted thousands who shall stand
in reverence before their God this week.
Dr. Rosenau's Twenty-Fifth Anniversary
Congregation Ohev Sholom of Baltimore and its distinguished
rabbi, Rev. Dr. William Rosenau, are to be heartily congratulated
upon the latter's completion of a quarter of a century of continuous
service in the ministry of that congregation. During the twenty-five
years that Dr. Rosenau has lived in Baltimore, he has stamped the
influence of his virile personality upon the community. Few are the
cities in this land where the Jewish life is more intensively lived than
in Baltimore. In no small measure is this due to the teaching and
preaching of Dr. Rosenau.. Standing as he does among the leading
reformers of America, Dr. Rosenau has never yielded an iota of prin-
ciple nor compromised his Jewish convictions for the sake of con-
venience. His reform has been of the constructive type. It is to
be hoped that for many a year he may be spared to serve his people
and the Judaism of this country. The modern pulpit needs men of
his type. In his jubilee celebration the Jewry of America may well
rejoice.
A Word of Appreciation
A word of sincere appreciation should be spoken- for those great
industrial plants in our city whose managers have responded in such
splendid spirit to the request that their Jewish employes be excused
from work on their high holydays. Especially is this true of the
Ford Motor Co., the Cadillac Motor Co. and the Lincoln Motor Co.,
who together have thousands of Jews in their employ.. In these
times when production must be pushed to the very limit, it is no
small sacrifice for great manufacturing concerns to permit so many
men to absent themselves from work for two or three days. However,
these various companies do so gladly because they appreciate the fact
that to compel Jews to work on these days would be a violation of
their sacred rights of conscience. The request made of these and
other Detroit companies to excuse their Jewish workmen was granted
in both letter and spirit. The consideration shown is indeed highly
appreciated.