THE IDEA OF TORAH IN JUDAISM
by George Foot
in Menorah Journal vol. 8, pp. 1-14.
Copyright 1922.
The word and idea most characteristic
of Judaism in all its history is "Torah," and when your
committee did me the honor to invite me to deliver the Leopold Zunz Lecture,
casting about me for a subject fitting the occasion and the purpose of the
foundation, I could think of none more appropriate than just this central and,
so to speak, constitutive idea.
I have used the Hebrew
"Torah," not out of any predilection for foreign phrase but because I
have no English for it. It is a common observation
that terms in different languages do not cover one another in extension. There
is, for example, no one English word that corresponds to the
French droit, as we should
find it used in a treatise on law. The case is much worse with Torah. For
Judaism is implicit in that word. It means what it means because it belongs to
a group, or system, of religious concepts which as such are peculiar to
Judaism; it arouses feelings that come out of the peculiar history and
religious experience of the Jewish people. The words by which we may try to
represent it in another language-whether it be the Greek nomos, the Latin lex, the German Gesetz, or the English "law"-are
not equivalent because they lack these implications and bring with them other
and quite different associations. Even for
the external aspect of Torah, nomos, lex, Gesetz, "law"
are inadequate: they convey the idea of normative authority derived from the
custom of the community, the edict of a ruler, or the statute of a legislative
body; none of them suggest the divine origin and authority which is inseparable
from Torah. Moreover, the word Torah itself does not mean "law," in
the juristic sense, but something
more like "instruction, direction"; nor is the Torah exclusively or
even predominantly legal. The instructions or responses of the priests are
Torah; the message of the prophets is Torah; the counsel of the wise is Torah;
a Psalmist introduces his review of the great deeds of God, "Give ear, my
people, to my Torah"; in the Pentateuch,
Genesis is as truly Torah as Leviticus, the story of the Exodus and the
wandering, the exhortations of Moses in Deuteronomy, as truly as the strictly
legislative parts of the books.
Still less do these various terms for
"law" express the content of Torah, which may be concisely defined as
revealed religion, with the further weighty implications, first, that the whole
Torah is a revelation of religion; second, that all religion is explicitly or
implicitly contained in the revelation; and finally, that revealed religion
embraces the whole life of the individual and the nation; there' is no partition
between secular and religious; righteousness and holiness are the principles of
civil and social life as well as of that which we set off as specifically
religious, of morals as well as of piety, of ceremonial purity as well as moral
integrity.
Scripture was a written deposit of
Torah the authenticity of which was guaranteed by the fact that the writers had
the holy spirit of prophecy. The fact was universally assumed, but there was no
theory of the mode of inspiration; the Platonic conception which Philo adopted
has no parallel in rabbinical sources.
The Rabbinical Attitude Toward the Scriptures
Where a religion possesses Scriptures
to which divine authority is attributed, it sooner or later becomes necessary
to determine what these Scriptures are, or to put it in the way in which the
necessity actually arises, to exclude the writings to which this character is
erroneously attributed. This process is commonly called the formation of a
canon (list) of Sacred Scripture. This stage was reached in Judaism in the
generation before the destruction of the
The Scriptures were conceived not only
to be as a whole a revelation from God, but to be such in every single word and
phrase, and to be everywhere pregnant with religious meaning; for religion, by
precept or example, is the sole content of revelation. This led, as it has done
wherever similar opinions have been entertained, to a fractional method of
interpretation which found regulation, instruction, and edification in words
and phrases isolated from their context and combined by analogy with similar
words and phrases in wholly different contexts, and to subtle deductions from
peculiarities of expression. To a student indoctrinated in modem philological
methods, the exegesis of the rabbis and the hermeneutic principles formulated
from their practice and as a regulative for it
often seem ingeniously perverse; but we must do them the justice to remember
that not only their premises but their end was entirely different from ours. We
propose to ourselves to find out what the author meant, and what those whom he
addressed understood from what he said;
and to this end we not only interpret his words in their relation to the whole context and tenor
of the writing in which they stand, but
endeavor to reconstruct the historical context-the time, place, circumstance,
and occasion of the utterance, its position in the religious development, and
whatever else is necessary to put ourselves, so far as possible, in the
situation of contemporaries. The aim of the rabbis, on the contrary, was to
find out what God, the sole author of revelation, meant by these particular
words, not in a particular moment and for particular persons, but for all men
and all time. What they actually did
was, speaking broadly, to interpret everything in the Scriptures in the sense
of their own highest religious conceptions, derived from the Scriptures or
developed beyond them in the progress of the intervening centuries. Thus they
not only deduced piles of halakhot from every
tittle of the Torah, like Akiba,
with a subtlety that was quite beyond Moses' comprehension and almost made him
faint, but found everywhere the enlightening truths and edifying lessons which
they put into the text to take out again. But that has always been the method
of religious exegesis as distinguished from historical.
The Written and the Unwritten Torah
The Scripture was for them a revelation of God, complete, and wholly consistent in all
its parts and in every utterance. That it contains an imperfect record of the
historical development of a religion, or in theological phrase, the record of a
progressive revelation for the education of the human race-such modem ideas, if
they could have understood them at all, would have seemed a plain denial that
the Torah is from Heaven.
Torah was not coterminous with
Scripture. Only the smaller part of God's revelation had ever been written
down; the unwritten Torah handed on from generation to generation by tradition
was much more voluminous. That the written Torah was from the beginning and all
through accompanied by a living tradition is unquestionable. A large part of
what we call the legislation in the Pentateuch could never have been carried
out in practice, or even understood, apart from domestic and social tradition,
the ritual tradition of the priests, and the juristic tradition of the elders
and the judges. Indeed the lapidary conciseness of the formulation in the
written law itself presumes such a concomitant. We are not here concerned with
the history either of the written or the unwritten Torah as modern scholars
endeavor to construct it, but only with the consistent doctrine of Judaism
about them, in which the historical idea of development in our sense has no
place. This did not, of course, prevent the recognition of certain epochs in
the history of the Torah, such as the work of Ezra and the Men of the Great
Synagogue, or the decisions and regulations of the Soferim, but what they
did was conceived to be the restoration of Torah that had fallen into desuetude
and oblivion, or the bringing to light what was implicitly contained in it.
The Chain of Tradition
From this point of view the unwritten
Torah handed down by tradition was revealed no less than the written Torah-it
would not otherwise be Torah; and inasmuch as the universal belief at the
beginning of the Christian era, and doubtless long before, was that the whole
religion of Israel, in idea and act, with all its distinctive institutions and
observances, was revealed to Moses at Sinai, it necessarily followed that this
revelation included the unwritten as well as the written Torah, down to its
last refinements, and even to the last question an acute pupil might ask his
teacher.
The written Torah in Scripture had by a
singular divine providence been transmitted without the minutest change, even
in the spelling since its origin. A similar guarantee of the authenticity of
the unwritten Torah was necessary, and this was found in the chain of
tradition: it had been transmitted from Moses, through Joshua and the Elders
and an unbroken succession of prophets, down to the days of the Great Synagogue
among whose members were several prophets, and there after through the "Pairs"
to Hillel
and Shammai, from whom it passed into the carefully guarded tradition of
the schools. The genuineness of tradition as a whole and in particulars could
only be assured if in every generation it had been in the custody of
trustworthy men, especially qualified for the task. Similarly in Christian
theory, the bishops were the keepers
and transmitters of the Apostolic tradition.
Authority in Jewish Tradition: Scholastic-Not
Ecclesiastical
The principal task of the schools in
the first and second centuries of the Christian era falls under two heads:
Midrash, the study of the Scripture by which
the harmony of the written and the unwritten law, and of the one with the
other, was established-and Halakhah, the precise formulation of obligations and
prohibitions, practical regulations for observance in all spheres of life, and
many cautionary ordinances designed to keep man at a safe distance from the
unwitting infraction of a law. The Midrash
was not in theory and intention a derivation of the unwritten law from the
written or a discovery of authority for the unwritten law in Scripture; and
whatever increment the unwritten law received from this source was, in the
apprehension of those who made it, only a bringing to light of the unity of
revelation.
The unity of the Torah in its two
branches was always assumed. The authority of all parts of it was the same; for
the divine revelation was one, complete and final, from which nothing could be
subtracted, and to which nothing was to be added-nothing had been kept back in
heaven. In theory and intention purely conservative, the work of the schools in
the interpretation of Scripture and the formulation of tradition was in fact
the way of progress; through it the unchangeable Torah was adapted to changing
conditions.
As in other religions which recognize tradition
as a concurrent authority with Scripture-in Christianity and Mohammedanism, for
example-not only is a guarantee of the authenticity of tradition necessary, but
an authoritative definition, exposition, and application of tradition. But in
comparison with Christianity, it is a significant difference that in Judaism
and in Mohammedanism this authority is not ecclesiastical but scholastic; it
was the learned who were the voice of tradition, and this, it may not be
superfluous to observe, in the sphere of the Halakhah only. Dogmas, in the
proper sense of the word, are only the fundamental articles of Judaism, the
unity of God and the revelation of religion in the Torah, to which was now
added the resurrection of the dead. The Haggadic tradition, however highly
esteemed, is not binding.
The Identification of Religion With Education
Since God has made a revelation of his
character, of his will for man's conduct in all the relations of life, and of his
purpose for the nation and the world, the study of this revelation in its
twofold form is the first of obligations, the worthiest of occupations. When
pursued for its own sake, such study is a religious exercise and a means of
grace. Theman whose "delight is in the Torah of the Lord, and in His
Torah, doth he meditate day and night," is the ideal not merely of the
scholar but of the religious man. Study, as well as prayer, is 'abodah, like the service of the altar.
Familiar is the eulogy attributed to R. Meir in an appendix to Aboth: "He
who studies the Torah for its own sake not only attains many good things, but
deserves the whole world. He is called friend (of God), beloved, lover of God,
lover of mankind; he delights God and men. It clothes him with humility and
reverence, qualifies him to become righteous, pious, honest, and trustworthy.
It keeps him far from sin and draws him near to virtue. Others have from him
the benefit of good counsel, wisdom, understanding, and power, as it is said,
'Counsel is mine and sound wisdom; I am understanding, power is mine' (Prov. 8.
14). It gives him royalty and dominion and discernment in judgment; to him the
mysteries of Torah are revealed; and he is made like a welling fountain and
like a river that never fails. He is modest and self-controlled, and forgiving
of insult. It magnifies and exalts him above all the creatures."
It would be easy to accumulate examples
to show that the zeal of learning in the rabbis is a religious enthusiasm, and
that the true end of learning is character. This conception of individual and
collective study as a form of divine service has persisted in Judaism through
all ages, and has made not only the learned by profession but men of humble
callings in life assiduous students of the Talmud as the pursuit of the highest
branch of religious learning and the most meritorious of good works.
The religion God had revealed was a
religion for every man and for the whole of life, and the condition of the
religious life, inward and outward, was knowledge of this revelation, that is
of the Torah. This led to an effort, unexampled in antiquity, to educate the
whole people in religion upon the basis of its sacred Scriptures. Elsewhere the
religious tradition was preserved by a priesthood which made no attempt to
instruct others in it and sometimes jealously kept it from the knowledge of the
laity. This was true not only of the art and mystery of the cultus, but in even higher degree of the meaning of the cultus and of the esoteric theologies
and philosophies which were evolved by priestly speculation, The profounder
truths of religion were-in the view of those who possessed them-not only beyond
the capacity of the multitude, but were mysteries that would be profaned by
vulgar access.
A Complete System of Religious Education for All
For the Jews in the dispersion, who had
lost their knowledge of the ancient tongue, the Scriptures were translated into
Greek; the lessons in the synagogues were read in this translation, and the
expository homily or other discourse was delivered in the same language. We are
so familiar with translations of the Scriptures as well as of other books into
all manner of languages that it takes some effort to realize how radical this
step was. The Greek translation of the Pentateuch is the oldest piece of
translation on a large scale of which we have any knowledge; and even if the
age had been more given to translation of secular books than it was, the
translation of sacred books has always encountered strenuous opposition not
only from the jealousy of the learned but on religious grounds: the words of
sacred Scripture in the original are the very words of revelation, and this
quality cannot be communicated to the words of another, language, no matter how
faithful the version may be. That this way of thinking and feeling was shared
by the Jews is evident not so much from the occasional
depreciation or condemnation of the Septuagint in utterances of Palestinian rabbis, as in the
Alexandrian legends which en deavor to confer upon the translation the
authenticity of the original by means of a divine supervision over the
translation or the miraculous unanimity of the translators. But if the
religious instruction of the masses in Greek-speaking countries was not to be
abandoned altogether, it roust be given in a language they understood; before
this imperative necessity all scruples had to give way.
In
The synagogue is a unique institution
in ancient religion. Its services had no resemblance to the public worship in
the temples; there were no offerings, no priesthood, no pompous ritual. Still
less were they like the salvationist sects of the time, the mysteries, with
their initiations and the impenetrable secrecy which enveloped their doctrines
and their doings. To the Greeks the synagogue with its open doors, its
venerable books, the discourses of its teachers on theology and ethics, seemed
to be a school of some peculiar philosophy. A school it was in Jewish
apprehension also-a school of revealed religion, which was itself for
Hellenistic Jews like Philo the true philosophy.
Elementary schools for boys were early
established, some supported by the community, some private enterprises. It was
from the Hebrew Bible that the pupils learned to read. The lessons in the
synagogue were read by members of the congregation, and the regulations for
this part of the service which we have from the latter part of the second
century assume that ordinarily there would be several present competent to participate
in it-an indirect testimony to the existence and efficiency of the Bible
schools. Many, doubtless, did notprogress beyond this stage; but others
continued their studies until they had acquired a
more extensive knowledge of the Bible, for which the Bet ha-Midrash, where the
better educated part of the community gathered, especially on Sabbath
afternoons, afforded additional opportunity. Those who aspired to what we
should call the academic career frequented the rabbinical schools, in which
they learned Halakhah and Midrash, and at a more advanced stage Talmud (in the
older sense of that word). These studies demanded unusual accuracy of memory
and an acute intelligence, and many fell out by the way; only the elect few
carried their learning to the point where they were recognized as qualified
masters of the law and received the venia docendi et decernendi. A Midrash on Eccl. 7.28 ("I
have found one man of a thousand") tells us: "Such is the usual way of the world; a thousand
enter the Bible school a hundred pass from it to the study of Mishna, ten of
them go on to Talmuld study, and only one of them arrives at the doctor's degree.” Through the higher education was
ensured a succession of qualified teachers in
every stage; edifying homilists for the synagogues, and in the scholars and
their academies a decisive authority for the definition
and application of the norms of the Halakhah.
That this system of education as we
know it in sources dated rom the second century of the Christian era was in
reality much older, whatever changes in form may have taken place in the
meantime, is to be seen very clearly in Ben
Sira, whose reputation as a coiner of aphorisms for the conduct of life
sometimes makes us forget that he was an eminent member of the class of soferim, professional scholars.
The Universal Aspect of the Torah as Divine Wisdom
The Torah had, however, yet another
aspect. For Judaism, while in history and in actuality a national religion, the
religion of one of the smaller peoples of the earth, was in idea and in destiny
universal. As there is but one true God, one revelation of His character and will, so in the future all mankind
shall acknowledge the sovereignty of God, the malkut shammaim, embrace the true religion, and live
in accordance with its precepts.
The revelation of religion, the Torah,
is universal. A significant expression of this idea is the identification of
Torah with Wisdom. It is the peculiar wisdom of Israel. Moses says of the
statutes and ordinances which by God's command he delivered to the people: "Observe therefore and do them,
for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples,
that when they hear all these
statutes shall say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people" (Deut. 4.6). But
it is this because Torah is divine wisdom, or to
put it in the way the rabbis conceived it, the Wisdom that speaks in the eighth
chapter of Proverbs is the Torah. The
identification is a commonplace in the rabbinical literature, and l many passages of Scripture referring to wisdom are
interpreted in this sense; it appears in Sifre as a universally accepted truth.
We can, however, trace it much farther back. In Sirach 24, 23 ff., after a
eulogy of wisdom pronounced by itself as in Prov. 8, the passage concludes:
"All this (that is, all the great things that he has said of wisdom) is
the Book of the Covenant of the Most High God, the Law which He commanded
Moses, an inheritance of the congregation of Jacob."
In Proverbs, Wisdom was present at the
creation of the world, not as a passive onlooker, but as a participant in the
making and in the joy of the Maker. She was at God's side as a skilled
artificer, or artist. Identifying Wisdom with Torah, and taking the word amon
in the sense of instrument, Akiba speaks of the Torah as the instrument
with which the world was created. According to others it was the plan, or
pattern, after which the world was made. Or again, the world was created for
the sake of the Torah. It is permissible to modernize the last words: The world
was created for religion; a stage on which, under the guidance of revelation,
the right relation between God and men might be realized.
The identification of Torah with divine
wisdom and its connection with creation made it premundane: "The Lord made
me as the beginning of his way, the first of his works of old." For the
Torah was created, however long
ago; Judaism has no parallel to the eternal Koran of Moslem dogma, rival of the
eternity of God. And since God foresaw that men would sin by transgression or
neglect, He at once created repentance as the remedy. Without that provision He
would never have created the world and frail man in it.
The Torah which was before the world is
unchangeable for all time. In the
World to Come, indeed, certain prescriptions for the law will have no
application because the conditions they suppose cannot occur; but there is no
abrogation and no supplement, only perfect fulfillment. And since perfect
fulfillment supposes perfect understanding, God Himself will be the teacher
there. The wisdom God has searched out and given to
The Torah Intended for All Nations
The Torah was in nature and intention
for all men. How then did it come that it was the exclusive possession of the
Jews? God of all mankind could not have been so partial in His revelation. The fundamentals of the Torah, it
was taught, had been given to Adam; with one addition (eber min ha-Hai) they had been renewed to Noah for all
branches of his posterity. At Sinai, in the desert that was no man's land or
every man's land, the Law had been offered to all nations in their several
languages or in the four international languages, and been refused by them
because it condemned their favorite sins; Israel alone accepted it. "All
that the Lord hath spoken will we do and obey," was the response of the
people at the foot of Sinai when Moses delivered to them the revelation of God's will he had received
(Exod. 24.7; cf. 3). There for the first time
the sovereignty of God, which hitherto had been acknowledged only by
individuals, was confessed by a whole people.
The
Of greater religious significance than
the offering of the Torah in the remote past to the forefathers of all the
Gentiles is the emphatic teaching that the Torah, by virtue of its origin and
nature, is for every man. R. Meir found this in Lev. 18.5; "My statutes
and my ordinances, which if a man do,
he shall live by them." It is not said,
"priests, Levites, lay Israelites," but "a man," therefore even a Gentile; nay, such a Gentile
who labors in the Torah (or, does the Torah) is in that respect on an equality
with the high priest. Other texts
are quoted in the same sense; for example, 2 Sam. 7.19, "This is the Torah
of mankind, Lord God"; Isa. 26.2, "Open the gates that a righteous
Gentile (goi saddik) preserving
fidelity, may enter in thereby" (cf. Psalm 118.20).
The Jews were the only people in antiquity
who divided religions into true and false, affirming that Judaism was the only
true religion and that it was destined to prevail over all the rest and become
universal. Their pretensions and the manner in which they asserted them,
especially their mordant satire on polytheism and idolatry, were resented by
people of other races and religions, and contributed not a little to the
general prejudice against the Jews that was so widespread in the Hellenistic
and Roman world. If, as Philo
complains, Judaism was alone excepted from the universal religious toleration
of the times, it is fair to the heathen to say that Jewish intolerance toward other religions gave great provocation. Early
Christianity, it may be
added, inherited the attitude, and suffered the same consequences.
Judaism as a Proselyting Religion
But if some of the methods employed to
turn the heathen from the error of their ways had a prejudicial effect, on the
other hand the faith of Judaism in its truth and universal destiny made of it
the first proselyting religion in the Mediterranean world. The universality of
the true religion, in the age when "the Lord shall be one and His name
one," and "the Lord shall be king over all the earth," was not,
indeed, expected to come by human instrumentality or through historical
evolution, but in a great revolution wrought by God himself, a catastrophic
intervention such as the prophets had so often foretold. Meanwhile, however,
the Jews had a twofold task in preparation for that great event; first, to make
the reign of God a reality for themselves individually and as a people; and,
second, to make known to the Gentiles the true God and his righteous will and
convert them to the true religion. This conception of the prophetic mission of
In the two or three centuries on either
side of the Christian era Judaism made great numbers of converts throughout the
wide dispersion. Various Oriental religions in that age were offering the
secret and the assurance of a blessed immortality through initiation into their
mysteries, and drew into their mystic societies many seekers of salvation. Judaism
on the contrary, as we have seen, appeared to ancient observers to be not a
mystery but a philosophy. It had a high doctrine about God which was publicly
taught in its synagogue schools, a rule of life, and venerable scriptures in
which both the doctrine and the rule were contained; and it sought to make
converts by rational persuasion. In this aspect Judaism is sometimes called a
missionary religion; but if the phrase is used it must be understood that it
was a missionary religion without an organization for propaganda and without
professional missionaries. The open doors of the synagogue, a noteworthy
apologetic literature, and the individual efforts of Jews in their various
social spheres to win over their neighbors, were the only instrumentalities in
the conversion of the Gentiles.
Polytheism
and idolatry were the salient characteristics of the religions in the midst
of which the Jews in the dispersion lived. More intelligent Gentiles,
instructed by the prevailing philosophies, regarded both as popular errors, but
made no effort to combat them, and were not
hindered by their personal convictions from taking part in the rites and festivals of their
cities or of the state. Judaism alone was
uncompromising. The worship of gods that were no gods was not merely an
intellectual error but the sin of sins against the true God, the sin from which
all others sprang. Its monotheism was not a philosophical theory of the unity
of deity in the abstract, but a theological doctrine of the nature and
character of God drawn from His revelation of Himself. There was nothing He was
so intolerant of as the acknowledgement of other gods and the worship of vain
idols: "I am the Lord, that is my name; and my glory will I not give to
another, neither my praise to graven images" (Isa. 42.8).
To convert men from polytheism and
idolatry was therefore the prime effort of Judaism among the Gentiles, and it
might well seem that the renunciation of these from religious conviction was in
principle the abandonment of
heathenism and acceptance of Judaism. Even from Palestinian teachers come such
utterances as, "Whoever professes
heathen religion is as one who rejects the whole Torah, and whoever rejects
heathen religion is as one who professes the whole Torah"
(Sifre, Deut. 54, end; ibid. Num.
111, f. 31b. end).
The One Treasure That Could Not Be Destroyed
Next to this the emphasis was laid upon
morality, which in Judaism--one of its singularities-was an integral part of
religion, and especially on the avoidance of those vices which the Scriptures persistently associate with heathenism-'abodah zarah and 'arayot.'[1]
If to this was added observance of the Sabbath and of certain of the
rules about forbidden food, and attendance in the synagogue, a man might well
be regarded as a convert to Judaism, even though he had not formally been
admitted a member of the Jewish people by circumcision and baptism nor assumed
as a proselyte the obligations, hereditary for born Jews, of the whole written
and unwritten Torah. The number of such "religious persons" was
large, and through them the leaven of Judaism was more and more penetrating the
mass of Gentile society. Thus the
This rapid expansion was arrested by
the climactic disasters that befell the Jews in the three-quarters of a century
from Nero to Hadrian. But when everything else seemed to be lost, Judaism clung the more tenaciously to the one
treasure that could not be taken from it, the Torah. The
The Adaptation of Judaism to Changing Conditions
Today the situation of Judaism is again
somewhat similar to that which it occupied in the Hellenistic world or in the
Moslem world of the Middle Ages. In the lands of the modern Diaspora, and above
all in
The work of the Tannaim,
which appears to be the deliberate antithesis of this Hellenizing tendency, was itself a no less
far-reaching adaptation of Judaism to the conditions which ensued upon the
destruction of Jerusalem with the cessation of the Temple worship and the calamities that befell the
nation under Trajan
and Hadrian. The preceding period had been characterized by an adaptation to
expansion, with the ideal of universality; now threatened with dissolution in
the surrounding world, rabbinical Judaism became by force of circumstances an adaptation to
self-preservation, and made of the unwritten Torah, with all its distinctive
institutions and observances, not only a wall of defense without, but the
organic bond of unity within. The survival of Judaism through all the
vicissitudes of its subsequent history is proof of the thoroughness of this
adaptation.
In the Middle Ages, again, from the
tenth century to the thirteenth, the Jews, especially in Moslem lands, took an
eager part in the
intellectual life of the times. Scholars and thinkers equipped with all the scientific and philosophical
learning of the time set themselves not
only to prove the truth of the religion as revealed in its Torah but its
eminent rationality. This movement, of which Maimonides
is the conspicuous exponent, was again an adaptation to a new intellectual
environment in the progress of the times.
Finally, when, in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, the Jews of central and western Europe emerged from their
intellectual isolation, the same capacity for adaptation manifested itself not only in the assimilation of contemporary
philosophy, as in Mendelssohn, but in the field of critical and historical
investigation, of which Leopold Zunz,
whose name we honor tonight, was one of the shining lights. Through these
studies the way was made to a new apprehension of the ancient Torah. It had
been accepted as a unitary revelation, which shared in its way the timelessness
of its author; it had been
interpreted in the sense and spirit of Hellenistic, or Greco-Arabic, or modern
philosophies; it was now to be understood as an historical growth. This way of
apprehending it led to a discrimination not only in the Talmud but in the Torah
itself between forms and ideas that belonged to outgrown stages of the
development and what is of permanent validity and worth, and so to the
conception of a progressive development of the latter elements in the future.
But, however apprehended and
interpreted, Torah remains the characteristic word and idea of Judaism. The
much debated question, race or religion? is a false alternative. The Jews are a
race constituted by its religion-a
case of which there is more than one other
example. Those who fell away from the religion were in the end eliminated from
the people; while multitudes of converts of the most diverse ethnic origins
have been absorbed in the race and assimilated to it by the religion. External
pressure would not have held the Jews together through these centuries without
the internal cohesion of religion-a living and progressive religion; and apart
from religion no temporary exaltation of national feeling can in the end
perpetuate the unity and peculiarity of the race.