The Maccabaean

Achad Haam's masterful essay on "Judaism and the Gospels," which appeared in a recent number of the London Jewish Review, and which we commented on, briefly, in our last issue, contained a keen analysis of the condition of the advanced wing of Judaism in England, and pointed out that whereas the German reform movement was practical in its motives, in England the reform movement directed by Mr. Claude G. Montefiore springs from a spiritual cause.

This portion of Achad Haam's essay has not received the attention it should have received and it is for that reason we give excerpts from the article bearing on this point:

English Jewry is at ease. There are no doubt traces here and there of anti-Semitism, nor are there wanting in the inner life of the community indications of what may be called "servitude in freedom." But when all allowances are made, the Jews enjoy a firmer and a more secure position here than in other countries, and anxiety for the future, with all that it involves, plays a smaller part in their mental life. Hence their internal development is more "normal" than elsewhere; it is less at the mercy of external and accidental influences, but is rather determined by the spiritual and cultural resources of the community itself, and corresponds at any given time to the extent of those resources. To this circumstance is due the comparatively late appearance of the Reform movement in Anglo-Jewry. True, in the heyday of the German Reform movement a few people in England attempted to follow the German example; but their small experiment never grew to considerable dimensions, or showed any capacity for development. The reason is that whereas in Germany there was an external, political impulse towards Reform —the desire to combat anti-Jewish feeling, and thus to facilitate the attain-

ment of civil and political rights land this motive was less felt. For though certain political restrictions were still in force, the position of the Jews was much better, and their relations with non-Jews were much more satisfactory than in Germany.

But in more recent years education and the circumstances of life have brought about a change in the internal, spiritual condition of the Anglo-Jewish community; a new generation has arisen, which is very far removed from the spirit of Judaism. It is this internal change in the Jews which has called into being the Reform movement which we now see developing before our eyes. To the difference in origin corresponds a difference in character. In Germany the Reform movement, practical in its motives, took a practical shape. Geiger and other Reformers endeavored, on the one side, to alter the religious practices, and to bring them into conformity with what they conceived to be the needs of the time; but on the other side they laid stress on the grandeur of the religious and moral principles on which Judaism peculiarly was based, and tried to emphasize the difference between Judaism and Christianity. But in England the Reform movement springs from a spiritual cause from a conviction on the part of many Jews that they are spiritually akin to their Christian environment. It is not merely the external observances of traditional Judaism that fail any longer to appeal to them; its innermost spirit, the fundamental ideas by which it is distinguished from Christianity, have lost their hold. Hence the movement here aims right at the heart; it wants to change the spirit of Judaism, and to overthrow its historical foundations, so as to reduce its distinctive features to a small compass, and to bring it as closely as possible into accord with the Christian ideas of the non-Jewish community. Thirteen years ago this movement was begun in England by a body of