The Maccabaean

RECENT scientific research has established the fact which had hitherto only been surmised that the material universe is never for a moment in a state of rest, that all matter is constantly in motion and that even the smallest particles are pursued by a ceaseless and violent oscillation. This reaffirms the theory that all matter is but a form of energy. A similar law, I take it, can be postulated for the world of mind and Spirit and for all that properly belongs to and comes under that designation. Since, then, there is no such thing as absolute rest in the physical or intellectual world, I think I am justified in saying that conflicting tendencies never could have been absent in Judaism and that it has always been beset by conflicting forces from various directions ceaselessly acting upon and modifying its form, if not its very essence. Indeed, it is easy to prove that from its earliest existence it was affected by the universal law. We know historically that Abraham had to leave his native home and land in order to escape from the deteriorating influences of the prevailing idol worship upon his newly-discovered truth of Monotheism. We also know that whatever of Hebrew tradition existed among the enslaved tribes in Egypt was considerably affected through contact with Egyptian religious ideas and philosophy. Witness, for exam. ple, the making and worshipping of the golden calf in the wilderness. In the Torah we find Moses himself unwearied in warning the Israelites against borrowing ideas and customs from heathen neighbors, and so too among the prophets and throughout the whole of Jewish history. I do not wish to be tempted into longer

discussion on this point as I only intend treating of the conflicting tendencies in modern Judaism, the Judaism of to-day, the Judaism which is part of our life and which is now such a tremendous issue in our midst.

There are two distinct and separate sets of influence to which Judaism has always been exposed, one external and one internal, one the influence brought to bear upon it by foreign culture and foreign peoples, and the other occasioned by forces from within arising altogether from its historical development. The mode and character of Judaism 5 distinctly affected by the spirit of the age, that Zeitgeist which dominates all things by an iron rule. It is a curious fact which is noticeable through all history that in an age of faith Jews were people of faith, in an age of unfaith and lax observances, they too became easy going and now, together with all other confessions, the Jewish people have sailed into milder and shallower seas of theology. All this has been very forcibly summarized up in the oft quoted proverb “Wie es Christelt Sich so Judelt es Sich?’ This spirit of the age is one of the most fermen- tative elements in Judaism and never was atime when its solvent action wasso powerful as now. The only analogies to it of which Jewish history affords any exatn- ple is in that remarkable new culture which Jews brought back with them from Babylon after their short stay there in the time of Ezra and again when Judaism came in contact with Hellenism. Both left indelible traces upon it, one through its institutions and the other through its philosophy, although curious to say each produced a totally