The Maccabaean

THE Society of the Jewish Renascence (Tehiyyath Yisrael) is an organization that has been recently formed for the advancement of Judaism in an historic, progressive and Zionist spirits. The Society represents an organized effort to introduce into the spiritual life of our people conscious direction in place of aimlessness and drift. To anyone who has the interest of Judaism at heart, the present situation is a matter of grave concern. We are today a people without profound convictions. The study of the Torah, which is indispensable to a living and developing Judaism, has come to be regarded as the duty merely of the few who make the Rabbinate their calling. The entire system of Jewish practice, as conceived and carried out at the present time, is lacking in power of appeal and fails to exert a marked influence upon the life of the individual Jew. Judaism, not being in a position to aid in the solution of the social and economic problems that agitate human today, is gradually becoming a negligible factor in the workday world.

The hope that all these ills will be remedied as soon as Palestine will become our spiritual center should not lull us into inaction. It should be borne in mind that the Jews of Palestine will, for a generation at least, be preoccupied with immigration, agriculture, industry and political affairs. In the meantime, the disintegration of Judaism is going on apace. We cannot afford to wait much longer. Our only hope is in developing at once the larger implications of Zionism for the Jews of the world. These implications of Zionism have to be emphasized not only as a means of keeping alive the enthusiasm for the rebuilding of Palestine, but also as a means of affording the vast majority of Jews who are destined to remain in the Diaspora the guidance which they need to help them in the ordering of their lives, and in their spiritual self-adjustment to present-day conditions.

ZIONISM AS A METHOD OF CONSTRUCTIVE THINKING

Zionism is not merely a political movement based upon the Basle Platform. In its most comprehensive sense, Zionism is Judaism as a living consciousness of a living people instead of as a congeries of abstract doctrines and a number of traditional customs and ceremonies. In focusing our attention upon the collective consciousness of the Jewish people, Zionism defines the task of the Jew to be that of adjusting the Jewish consciousness to the present order of society so as to function normally and healthily. The Jewish consciousness whereof we speak is nothing mystic. One does not have to be a specialist in psychology or sociology to understand what it is. We only have to recall the definite and verifiable fact that in the mental make-up of every one of us there is a distinct background of memories, tendencies and aspirations which most of us are anxious to retain forever. When we die, we want that mental background to be retained and enriched by those who are to live after us. We want that the Jewish consciousness should maintain its place in human life as a force for righteousness. Zionism has taught us to identify and appreciate the reality of the Jewish consciousness, and to regard its possible elimination from

the world with the same dread and horror as we would regard a paralytic stroke which results in aphasia.

The organizers of the Society of the Jewish Renascence are typical of a large number of Jewish men and women who have found in Zionism a method for constructive thinking and planning. They make no pretension to bringing about a reawakening where all has hitherto been dormant. They simply mean to avail themselves of the already existing interest in Judaism and the Jewish future, to consolidate that interest, and to direct it into channels that shall make it fruitful of the highest good for the spiritual welfare of our people. They conceive the task of advancing the cause of Judaism as consisting of the following: 1. The interpretation of the Jewish past; 2. The development of new standards, and 3. The fostering of the spiritual solidarity of Israel.

THE NEED OF REINTERPRETING THE PAST

1. It is not the intention of the Society of the Jewish Renascence to create a Judaism de novo. Its foremost effort will be directed toward awakening an interest in the study of Torah on the part of men and women, young and old. Ignorance of things Jewish has never been so great a menace to Judaism as it is today. Without a knowledge of Scripture, of some of its commentaries, and of the more recent Hebrew literature, Judaism is entirely rootless. Neither anti-Semitism nor the synagogue can keep alive a Torahless Judaism. Our distinctive character, as a people, is neither racial nor doctrinal, but is the result of a past which lies stored up in our literature. The spiritual energy accumulated in the Jewish writings has furnished the Jewish people with the momentum which has enabled it to surmount obstacles that seemed insuperable. The work of the Historical School in Judaism during the Nineteenth Century is an expression of that same tendency to fall back upon the spiritual resources stored up in our writings. Without the scholarship and method of the Historical School to guide us, we should have been totally at a loss how to interpret all that has been handed down to us. The founders of Jüdische Wissenschaft have cleared the ground for all constructive thinking in the future.

Yet, if we are to conserve the good accomplished by the Historical School, we must go much further than they did. They have reconstructed the past so that we can behold it in our mind's eye. They have made the past vivid and athrob with life. But, for our purpose, that is not enough. What we need now is to have the past rendered vital with significance and import for the future. Being interested in the past for its own sake is undoubtedly an indispensable condition to objective appreciation. But, to stop at that point, to overlook in the study of the Jewish past those psychological forces which animate human conduct in all ages, is to fail, on the one hand, to get the deepest possible insight into the past and, on the other, to prevent the past from functioning as a creative force, and as a guide for the future.

The Society of the Jewish Renascence will, therefore, seek to encourage the cultivation of Jewish higher learning, not merely as a department of archæology, but as a part of life. It will seek to foster the cultivation and the