but imitation of his supposedly Jewish betters. All the Christian psalmody of the public schools, all the Gospel reading and misionary effort of ten thousand Gentile battalions have not a fraction of the influence upon a Jewish child whose home-training is Jewish and protective, that one well-meaning un-Jewish philanthropist, man or woman, with the hallmark of American culture, be it ever so superficial, exerts upon this same Jewish child. Under existing conditions of American Judaism, it no longer takes a generation to change the outlook of orthodoxy into one of rabid radicalism. In the same way that fine apparel, a dash of education, a modicum of superficial culture changes the personnel of the foreign Jew into the guise of a full-fledged American with a full understanding of the rights and privileges of an American citizen, so does the American atmosphere, surcharged with business competition and material conceptions of life, change and utterly metamorphose the one-time man of Jewish life and habit into a careless, non-observing Jew, neglectful of any but the material comfort and interests of his children; and the children reflect the parental attitude. It is the Americanized children of these newly metamorphosed—I speak of the majority, not of the few exceptions—it is the Americanized children, high-stepping, eager for life's prizes, eager as well for social advancement, who doff the last traces of the Judaism once observed by the elders, now a questionable if not an unknown quantity in their lives. This new generation it is that threatens as great harm to Judaism as was ever inflicted upon it by the thoughtless followers of the so-called school of progressive Jewish thought. The same desire that four or five decades ago moved a large
and unthinking portion of American Israel to depart from the Jewish life and to strive after assimilation with the life of their American environment is moving these new Jewish American brethren of ours to drift away from the restraining influences of Judaism, and to become one with its environment. There is, however, this difference in the attitude of both, and it is a difference that carries with it the one ray of hope in an otherwise dark outlook. That large contingent of American Jewish men and women who can count from two to several generations of American culture and of the grafting upon them of America's best traditions have for the most part run the entire gamut of American Judaism, from a one-time decent and consistent observance to gradual non-observance, to subsequent laxity and lawlessness, and back again to a timid would-be conservatism that is knocking at the doors of the elders to be reborn forefathers.
This body of American Jews, backed up and upheld by those of our more recently arrived brethren whose minds and vision are not obscured and clouded by their misleading environment, will soon be compelled to realize the duty that devolves upon it of becoming missionaries to their own people. From this body of American Jews must come the spirit and desire to awaken in the heart of American Israel that Jewish consciousness which will reckon with itself first as a Jew, then as an American citizen; for by this time it has been conceded by the most progressive of our brethren that to be a loyal and consistent Jew does not detract from good citizenship in America. It is this contingent that will be moved to declare themselves not only firm in the faith of their forefathers, but who will be willing to bear out their declaration by