The Present Nationalistic Tendency in Judaism
All sections of thought in Israel are in complete accord that its mission is to bring about the kingdom of heaven upon earth. The means by which this mission is to be carried out, and which involves as a first principle the existence of the Jewish people, are on the one hand by ideas which are universal in their purport, embracing as they do the whole human family, and on the other, these ideas are sustained by practices which are national only in their application. These phases of Jewish life and thought are not, however, antagonistic to each other, for there is no conflict in Judaism between universalism and particularism, but both aspects supplement each other. Thus the very election of the Jewish people through Abraham is accompanied by the promise that through his seed all the peoples of the earth would be blessed. Judaism is indeed intrinsically universalistic, but there were certain epochs when it could only live by fully developing the forces inherent in its nationalist element. Even Christian historians must admit that although the endeavors of Ezra and of the Maccabees were strongly and decidedly nationalistic, they were not only justified, but absolutely imperative if Judaism wished to exist and to carry out its appointed task in the religious evolution of the human race. It has been well pointed out by Lazarus in his Ethics that in the difference between the universalistic and particularistic conceptions of Judaism, it is not the ultimate goal which is in dispute, but only the means of attaining it. Since Judaism is not an inorganic mass, but a body manifesting continual growth, it is natural that the efforts for hastening the "far-off divine event, to which the whole creation moves," should not be conceived and carried out by the Jews of all ages in absolutely the same manner.
A century and a half ago the question how the purpose of Jewish history can best be realized would have brought the reply that it is above all the bounden duty of every Jew to fulfill the Mitzvoth of the Torah; i. e., to carry out God's will as embodied in His revelation to Israel, and that such a course would hasten the day when the Messiah would come to gather together the scattered Jewish people into its own land. There would thus end the Jewish tragedy, and there would at the same time be introduced into the world a new order of things.
With the endeavors for reform initiated by Moses Mendelssohn these views have, however, lost their force and become untenable. The Jew began to look in the world around him, to participate in the general advance and to demand the recognition of his rights as a man. The general trend of thought at the time favored greatly the Jewish appeals for emancipation, which were supported by serious efforts to step out of the exclusiveness into which they had been forced and to which they had become accustomed. The Jews were thus gradually freed from the degraded state into which they had hitherto been kept, and they have since shown that when the opportunities are given to them they are as able and willing to fulfill the duties of citizenship as any of their non-Jewish compatriots. The persistent aim of the Jews in western Europe has been to adapt themselves so far as possible to the manners and aspirations of the dominant nationality among which they lived, so as not to form any longer a strange people living on sufferance, but a recognized religious confession possessing equal rights with the Christian denominations.
This beau ideal of what has been termed the period of assimilation has, however, turned out in many respects illusory. In passing such judgment upon an epoch, which, with all its fault, was one of the most fruitful in Jewish history, it is not necessary to overlook the great advantages which adaptation to the life and thought of the great Teutonic and Latin races has brought to the Jews individually and collectively. We can, however, only properly esti-