with them from their native lands, will easily give up the little we may graft on them here. Americanization must be accomplished by the slower, but more lasting method. Forced blooms die quickly. Blooms slowly ripened in the sun live their normal life. The same thing applies to the immigrant and particularly to the Jewish immigrant. He has been forced long enough to take on the color of his surroundings. Let us for once permit him to live his own soul life. Let the sun of American freedom help him to ripen into an American. Let us allow him to bide his time while giving him opportunities to learn what America is. While doing so let us not interfere with his Jewishness. The more he loves that, the more loyal he is to it, the more loyal an American he will be.
Those who believe that the Jews are a religious group and nothing else, believe that one may be a loyal Judaist and a patriotic American. They are absolutely correct in this belief. Their very loyalty to one ideal makes them capable of real American patriotism. But that holds good also for the Jew who is
loyal to his people with the loyalty of the nationalist. His Americanism is even stronger because he has an appreciation of the national group. His Americanism is more fervent because of his loyalty to his own national group.
I know I have not touched upon the problem of Judaising the settlement. It is a subject worthy of a special article because it involves the division of certain communal functions. I shall therefore leave it untouched at this time. I merely wish to bring up a few thoughts that may stimulate others to express themselves on this important subject. It is a subject worthy of consideration because it deals with the welfare of our country as well as of our own people. It is a subject worthy of discussion because it will help us to bring about a better understanding of the Jewish social center and the people with whom it works. Only as there is such an understanding between the Jewish social center and those who form its very life, no lasting results can be accomplished.
The Jewish and the Christian Point of View
ALMOST all people agree that with the conditions existing in Europe, the present war was inevitable. It is rather interesting, however, to note the divergence of ideas that bring them to this same conclusion.
One of our New York rabbis claims the war is due to the fact that the religion of Europe, Christianity, concerns the individual only and not the state. This sets up a double standard—the individual having moral obligations to his state, but the state having none toward its citizens or toward other states, and it is this unmorality of the nations, leading to imperialism and economic injustice, that makes peace impossible.
A Christian minister, in speaking of the war, attributed it to the immorality of the people. They had been growing too gay, he said, and thought of nothing but the pleasures of this life, and it was in order to save them, spiritually. that the Lord brought about this war. According to him, it is a punishment for the sins of the people—not for the sins of the nations.
In these contrasting conceptions is shown the marked difference between the Jewish and Christian point of view. The Jew, because his religious ideals are national, concerns himself with the morality of nations as well as of individuals. He believes that this war is the result of a lack of understanding by the nations of their responsibilities to one another, and that another such war can be avoided only when a proper adjustment of national and international affairs is affected.
The outlook of the Christian, on the other hand, is entirely personal. His stand is that so long as men sin there will be war. He is concerned with the moral well-
(Written for the Hadassah Group of the Zionist Training Schools)
being of the individual and with his salvation. From a religious standpoint, he is not concerned with the social group. It does not occur to him that a community of righteous individuals might still not live up to their highest social responsibilities.
The history of the rise of Christianity explains this attitude of the Christian. At the time Jesus preached the need for personal salvation seemed stronger than anything else, and a single aspect of the Jewish religion, the personal, labelled anew, attracted to itself a large mass of people.
The seeking for personal salvation at this time was due largely to the social corruption of the world, and, in Palestine, to the national weakness of the Jewish people.
Rome had conquered all the world, and the Jews, small in number, and weak through internal dissension, knew they could not resist much longer. They felt the nation must go to pieces. Some were far-sighted enough to keep their national faith. To those that had lost hope, Jesus came with the message of personal righteousness, with personal salvation as the reward. The ideal of social good was drowned by the cry, "Save your soul!"
The saint, the great man in Christian life, is typical of this extreme personal morality. He lives apart from the world and its sins, and abstains from all its pleasures in order that he may become righteous.
The prophet, the ideal of the Jewish people, is righteous, too, but his aim is quite different from that of the saint. He works among his people, and for his people, and it is for their righteousness that he strives.