Chosen Peoples

professor, Kant, the hope is not altogether ausgechlossen that in the internal convulsion that must follow the war, there may be an upheaval of that finer Germanism of which we should be only too proud to say that it is Judaism.

VIII

But meantime we are waiting, and the soul 'waiteth for the Lord more than watchmen look for the morning, yea, more than watchmen for the morning.' Again, as in earlier periods of history, the world lies in darkness, listening to the silence of God-a silence that can be felt.

'Watchmen, what of the night?' Such a blackness fell upon the ancient Jews when Hadrian passed the plough over Mount Zion. But, turning from empty apocalyptic visions, they drew in on themselves and created an inner Jerusalem, which has solaced and safeguarded them ever since. Such a blackness fell on the ancient Christians when the Huns invaded Rome, and the young Christian world, robbed of its millennial hopes, began to wonder if perchance this was not the vengeance of the discarded gods. But drawing in on themselves, they learned from St. Augustine to create an inner 'City of God.' How shall humanity meet this blackest crisis of all? What new 'City of God' can it build on the tragic wreckage of a thousand years of civilization? Has Israel no contribution to offer here but the old quarrel with Christianity? But that quarrel shrinks into comparative concord beside the common peril from the resurrected gods of paganism, from Thor and Odin and Priapus. And it was always an exaggerated quarrel-half misunderstanding, like most quarrels. Neither St. Augustine nor St. Anselm believed God was other than One. Jesus but applied to himself distributively-as logicians say-those conceptions of divine sonship and suffering service which were already assets of Judaism, and but for the theology of atonement woven by Paul under Greek influences, either of them might have carried Judaism forward on that path of universalism which its essential genius demands, and which even without them it only just missed. Is it not humiliating that Islam, whose Koran expressly recalls its obligation to our prophets, should have beaten them in the work of universalization? Maimonides acknowledged the good work done by Jesus and Mohammed in propagating the Bible. But if the universalism they achieved held faulty elements, is that any reason why the purer truth should shrink from universalization? Has Judaism less future than Buddhism-that religion of negation and monkery-whose sacred classics enjoin the Bhiksu to camp in and contemplate a cemetery? Has it less inspiration and optimism than that apocalyptic vision of the ultimate victory of Good which consoles the disciples of Zoroaster? If there is anything now discredited in its ancient Scriptures, the Synagogue can, as of yore, relegate it to the Apocrypha, even as it can enrich the canon with later expressions of the Hebrew genius. Its one possible rival, Islam, is, as Kuenen maintains, as sterile for the future as Buddhism, too irretrievably narrowed to the Arab mentality. But why, despite his magnificent tribute to Judaism, does this unfettered thinker imagine that the last word is with Christianity? Eucken, too, would call the future Christian, though he rejects the Incarnation and regards the Atonement as injurious to religion, and the doctrine of the Trinity as a stumbling-block rather than a help. Abraham Lincoln being only a plain man, was not able to juggle with himself like a German theologian, and with the simplicity of greatness he confessed: 'I have never united myself to any Church, because I have found difficulty in giving my assent, without mental reservation, to the long, complicated statements of the Christian doctrine which characterize their Articles of Belief and Confessions of Faith.' 'When any church,' he added, 'will inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification for membership, ... 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might, and thy neighbour as thyself,' that church will I join with all my heart and with all my soul.'

Can one read this and not wonder what Judaism has been about that Lincoln did not even know there was such a church? But call the coming religious reconstruction what you will, what do names matter when all humanity is crucified, what does anything matter but to save it from meaningless frictions and massacres? 'Would that My people forgot Me and kept My commandments,' says the Jerusalem Talmud. Too long has Israel been silent. 'Who is blind,' says the prophet, 'but My servant, or deaf as My messenger?' He is not deaf to-day, he is only dumb. But the voice of Jerusalem must be heard again when the new world-order is shaping. The Chosen People must choose. To be or not to be. 'The religion of the Jews is indeed a light,' said Coleridge in his 'Table Talk,' 'but it is as the light of the glow-worm which gives no heat and illumines nothing but itself.' Why let a sun sink into a glow-worm? And even a glow-worm should turn. It does not even pay-that prudent maxim of the Babylonian Talmud, Dina dimalchutha dina ('In Rome do as the Romans'). Despite every effort of Jews as individual citizens the world still tends to see them as Crabbe saw them a century ago in his 'Borough':-

Nor war nor wisdom yields our Jews delight,

They will not study and they dare not fight.

It is because they fight under no banner of their own. But the time has come when they must fight as Jews- fight that 'mental fight' from which that greater English poet, Blake, declared he would not cease till he had 'built Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land.' To build Jerusalem in every land-even in Palestine-that is the Jewish mission. As Nina Salaman sings-and I am glad to end with the words of a daughter of the lofty-souled scholar in whose honour this lecture is given-

Wherefore else our age-long life, our wandering landless,

Every land our home for ill or good?

Ours it was long since to join the hands of nations

Through the link of our own brotherhood.

AFTERWORD

DR. ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, Reader in Talmudic and Rabbinic Literature in the University of Cambridge, in seconding the vote of thanks to the speakers, moved by the President of the Jewish Historical Society (Sir Lionel Abrahams, K.C.B.), said that the Chairman had already paid a tribute to the memory of Arthur Davis. But a twice- told tale was not stale in repetition when the tale was told of such a man. He was a real scholar; not only in the general sense of one who loved great books, but also in the special sense that he possessed the technical knowledge of an expert. His 'Hebrew Accents' reveals Arthur Davis in these two aspects. It shows mastery of an intricate subject, a subject not likely to attract the mere dilettante. But it also reveals his interest in the Bible as literature. He appreciated both the music of words and the melody of ideas. When the work appeared, a foreign scholar asked: 'Who was his teacher?' The answer was: himself. There is a rather silly proverb that the self-taught man has a fool for his master. Certainly Arthur Davis had no fool for his pupil. And though he had no teacher, he had what is better, a fine capacity for comradeship in studies. 'Acquire for thyself a companion,' said the ancient Rabbi. There is no friendship equal to that which is made over the common study of books. At the Talmud meetings held at the house of Arthur Davis were founded lifelong intimacies. Unpretentious in their aim, there was in these gatherings a harmony of charm and earnestness; pervading them was the true 'joy of service.' Above all he loved the liturgy. Here the self-taught man must excel. Homer said:-

Dear to gods and men is sacred song.

Self-taught I sing: by Heaven and Heaven alone

The genuine seeds of poesy are sown.

And, as the expression of his inmost self, he gave us the best edition of the Festival Prayers in any language: better than Sachs'-than which praise can go no higher. This Prayer Book is his true memorial, unless there be a truer still. Perhaps his feeling that he might after all have lost something because he had no teacher made him so wonderful a teacher of his own daughters. In their continuance of his work his personality endures. At the end of his book on Accents he quoted, in Hebrew, a sentence from Jeremiah, with a clever play on the double meaning of the word which signifies at once 'accent' and 'taste.' Thinking of his record, and how his beautiful spirit animates those near and dear to him, we may indeed apply to him this same text: 'His taste remaineth in him and his fragrance is not changed.'

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