has always run with the stream of the immediate.
As Zionists, we believe it is impossible to attain permanent forms of Jewish life in the golus. Neither orthodoxy nor reform can long be maintained with the actualities of life tempting the Jewish people away from their own; with material conditions forcing to concessions; with the intellectual and spiritual voices of alien peoples speaking and persuading and leading astray. But in orthodoxy we see, for the time being, something positive in Jewish life; it may be subject to deterioration, to empty formalism, but it is anchored safe to Jewish tradition; it is a positive factor; it knows where it stands; it preserves, in its religious forms, the things we Zionists believe should be preserved as the seed, which we shall transplant into our own national home. Reform Judaism, however, by abandoning its anchorage in Jewish tradition and hitching itself to every whim and vagary of the disintegrating portion of Jewish life, rather than clinging to the positive and upbuilding things in Jewish life, must now make way for a newer form, a temporary one, it is true, but at least an honest one, based upon conviction. There is no authority in reform Judaism, and without authority, in the sense of experience in life, no religion or sect can hold its own in the face of the seriousness of life itself. If you repudiate the Bible, the Talmud, the thousand and one traditions of the Jewish people, built up out of their centuries' old experience, you are the inprovident householder, who lays up nothing for the rainy day. Seeking life for the day, you lose life in the days to come. The Jews, as individuals, have been doing that these many years in the golus, but they, as members of a nationality, always held as sacred the everlasting things their ancestors had treasured up for them.
Had the reform Jews been wise in their day, they might have repudiated the authority of the Law in golus, but they would have upheld the idea of authority somewhere; and where, more naturally,
can that authority be found, than in the Jewish national life, and then they could have given part of the day's work to the immediate things, and, at the same time, they could have done something for the coming of that day when all the anomalies of Jewish life are to disappear in the natural life of a nucleus of our people living under normal conditions.
The path of life was open to them; but they went down the path of death, where they are now floundering, each with his own fad and hobby, which he thinks will transform the way of dissolution into the way of life.
We have had our say on reform Jews, many times. If we have criticized these unfortunates too severely and have even laughed at their wretchedness, it has been because their salvation lies in their own hands; they can save themselves by abandoning the reckless, ridiculous, harumscarum reform Judaism which they have sanctified these many years with their uninspired prayers, and come back to the people, whom they have abandoned. Let them become Zionists, and reform their religious beliefs on the basis of a mission of the Jews which provides for a normal life on their own territory.
They will only have a future when they recognize that the Jewish people also have a future.
THE SITUATION IN RUSSIA.
Mr. A. Lubarsky, who recently returned from Russia, has had some interesting views, as a result of his visit, which he contributes to Das Yiddishe Volk. The most encouraging thing Mr. Lubarsky mentions is the fact that of all the activities in Russia, the Zionist movement holds its own with greater enthusiasm, perhaps, than in pre-revolutionary days. The literary and Palestine work of the Zionists goes on unabated. Hebrew is cultivated there to an amazing extent. The culture of the Russian Jews is slowly drifting toward the Hebraic, and, proportionately, away from the Yiddish.