in general, be recommended on grounds of national expediency and loyalty, but the sanction of the observance lies solely in the will of the nation to observe them, in the fact that they are the creatures of that will, and hence they can have no authority over it. It is not hard to detect the kinship of this theory, with that chauvinistic nationalism which has found expression in the writings of men like Bernhardi and Treitschke.
The superiority of the traditional position with regard to the Torah over this more modern view lies in the great objectivity of the moral standard which it affords. A generation or so ago, when the ideal of individual, personal liberty was emphasized, it was popular to speak of "the God within," to see in the force of personality the leading manifestation of the Divine, to say with Emerson that "Jove nods to Jove from behind each of us." But this doctrine was soon found to have its weaknesses. For it was impossible to distinguish between this "God within" and one's own ego with all its vanities, follies and lusts, how many of us transfer this heresy from the individual to the nation. It is the "God within" the nation whom alone so many ardent nationalists, Jewish and Gentile, recognize as supreme.
But such a conception is most abhorrent to the Jewish point of view. Ahad Haam, in his keenly analytic essay on Judaism and the Gospels makes the greater objectivity of its standards the chief distinction of Judaism as against Christianity. Jesus, he points out, prepares his significant utterances with the words, "I say unto you"; the Jewish prophets begin, "Thus saith the Lord." No human passion, not even that of love is a safe guide for conduct, only the recognition of an impersonal law that is not the creature of our own desires can be such. And if in the case of an individual subjective standards are inadequate, in the case of a nation they are even less adequate. For large aggregates of individuals are ever prone to evade moral responsibility. Corporations have been characterized as "bodies without souls." Mobs perpetrate a lynching where no individual among them would singly commit murder. It is this which makes war possible in an age that regards murder as a crime.
The prophets of Israel, therefore, notwithstanding their intense nationalism, were always insisting on the possibility of Israel's erring and incurring the wrath of God. Israel they regarded as God's chosen people, but this did not mean that God had delegated to Israel the authority to make its own standards of right and wrong. On the contrary, Israel is to be held to the strictest accountability.
Israel may accept God's law, which is right, and live, or reject God's law and the right, and die, but Israel has no power to alter or amend the Law. Right is right, neither because I, as an individual desire it, nor because I as a member of a national group desire it, but because the Creator who laid down all conditions of life desires it. The Torah may, so far as its text is concerned, be considered the product of the Jewish People, but this has never given it its sanctity or authority in the eyes of the Jewish People. It is the expression of the genius of the Jew, but in the same sense that the law, "Thou shalt not steal," may be said to express the character of all honest men, not because they have made the law, but because they have chosen to abide by it. In relation to the moral
law man stands not as inventor but as discoverer. Israel's history is one long quest for this law, and as his Torah was in every age the chart that guided him successfully in this quest, he is surely justified in assuming that this instrument was intentionally given him for the use by the Divine Author of the Law himself.
I think that this will suffice to illustrate the superiority of the traditional attitude to the Torah as authoritative over Israel to the newer view of it as merely deriving its authority from Israel. A few words, however, remain to be said in answer to a possible objection that might be raised against the views here outlined. It might be said that, since the Torah in its original form was intended to meet conditions very different from our own, it cannot be applied to changing circumstances without some process of interpretation, and that the process of interpretation makes Israel virtually its creator and renders impossible in reality that objectivity of standard which we have set up as constituting, in ideal, the superiority of the traditional sanction. But even if we allow the widest possible latitude to Israel as interpreter of the Torah, a much greater degree of objectivity is, nevertheless, assured by the dogma of revelation than by any substitute theory of the T'orah’s place in Jewish life. This can be made more clear by analogy with the moral life of the individual. If Iam a believer in “the God within” doctrine, I am given great confidence in every impulse and intuition of mine and act upon it. If, on the other hand, I believe that morality is not of my own making, although I am dependent on my individual conscience for the interpretation and application of moral law, I will not act on my first intuitive impulse. I would probably ask myself, “What is the accepted law for this situation?” If it does not seem to fit the case, I would then ask, “Wherein is it exceptional? Are there other accepted principles that apply? What would be the effect if my action were made a precedent?” etc. Similarly, the necessity of seeking a “better” from the Torah for every deviation from commonly accepted norms, although it gives ample opportunity for the exercise of the national conscience in construing and applying the law to meet new conditions, forces an objective attitude of mind in the consideration of every important issue.
Ours is an age of nationalism, and the nationalism, as conceived by the nations of Europe, is today devastating the world. The glorification of the national will, the national genius, the national culture, without reference to universal moral laws that nations may accept or reject but cannot alter, must and will be held responsible for the present war. When "the tumult and the shouting dies," when penury and grief, empty chairs and full grave-yards, ruined habitations and ruined lives will occupy that place in the popular consciousness left vacant by the passions of conflict and the greed for glory, will there not inevitably be a revulsion of feeling against the nationalism that wrought all this woe? And if our Jewish nationalism be but the nationalism of Europe translated into Hebrew, will it not, too, fall under suspicion? It is for us to establish our Jewish nationalism on a traditional Jewish basis that it shall reflect the broad, objective moral outlook of Judaism and not the narrow, arrogant national egotism of the Christian nations. If we fail to make this distinction, we endanger our whole movement.