The failure of the Reform Movement should not daunt us from trying again. Since most adjustments in human life proceed by the trial and error method, we should not be discouraged because the first trial happens to be an error. By avoiding the two fundamental mistakes the Movement, we might hit upon a workable and satisfactory solution of the problem of Judaism.
Our first object must be to prepare ourselves mentally and morally for the necessary reconstruction of Judaism. We need a new influx of spiritual energy to be in a position to appreciate the implications of our problem. Unless we can get the Jewish layman to see in the problem of Judaism a challenge worthy of his highest powers of intelligence and will, nothing that rabbinical conferences or institutions of learning can do is of much avail. To manifest that interest is a perplexing spiritual problem, the Jew must effect a complete volte-face in his attitude toward the things of the spirit. Otherwise, all efforts to vitalize Judaism are like trying to get one to breathe in a vacuum. The time has come when the Jew must give heed to the plea of the prophet Ezekiel, "Make unto yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. Wherefore shall ye die, O House of Israel?" (p25-26)
The Need for a Down-To-Earth Religion: A Religious Civilization
Is it conceivable that what is Judaism to most of us should have moved two-thirds of mankind to give up their own cults and worships, and acknowledge the God of Israel as the only true God? Are we to imagine that for the sake of the few misunderstood ideas and mechanical habits that comprise our conception of Judaism our ancestors braved exile, torture and death? Is it possible that for the sake of that unorganized medley of ill-digest doctrines, that for the spasmodic intermittent religiosity which we nowadays designate as Judaism, many more generations will be willing to endure the vexations and annoyances of being Jews? The prevalence of the distorted notion of Judaism accentuates the second fatal mistake of the Reform Movement that is largely responsible for the misconception, because it took a rich, cultural and social life and boiled it down to a platitudinous religious philosophy. Even if that philosophy had something new to say it could not be expected to make itself felt in the life of the ordinary Jew. We hardly need Reinach to remind us that you cannot have a people of fifteen million philosophers.
Moreover, Judaism is not a religious philosophy but a religious civilization. It is a cultural and spiritual complex of language, literature, history, customs, social institutions, organized about a conception of God which has the most far-reaching social and spiritual implications for human life of all times.
A civilization is a spiritual entity. It is the soul of a people. But as every spirit is the spirit of something, and a soul, the soul of something, a civilization cannot subsist without a people. Hence, there can be no Judaism without a Jewish people. The conviction which is essential to being a Jew consists, accordingly, in voluntarily identifying one's self with the living organism of the Jewish people. (p 35-37)
Need for Hebrew
Given however, the Hebrew language, and all Jew will know themselves as one people, no matter how they differ in mental background or religious belief. (p. 43)
Not to Worship the Past or Gamble on the Future
We were wont to glory in our past achievements, and to regale in dreams of our future; but what use are we making of our present opportunities? Mere dependence upon the past is spiritual parasitism. Mere reliance upon the future is a spiritual gamble. Unless we possess the vitality to turn to good account the opportunities which the present offers, we may as well bow ourselves off the world's stage. No one can gainsay the fact that Jews, as individuals, have taken advantage of the freedom to give full play to their powers, and that the number of those who have achieved distinction in life-walks from which Jews had hitherto been shut out is legion. What, however, have the Jews as a people done within the last hundred years to place beyond doubt their possession of spiritual energy? Have the Jews a people created anything cultural or spiritual since the days of the Emancipation? Is not the revival of the Hebrew language the sole proof that Israel's vitality is still unexhausted? How abashed we should stand before the world to-day, if we had not the renascence of the Hebrew language to point to as a guarantee of our spiritual productivity, especially as we have created nothing which is specifically Jewish in art, ethics, philosophy or religion during the last century. (p. 43-44)
On Higher Criticism [Bible Scholarship]
It is high time that Jewish scholars should not be afraid of knowing the Bible. When Jewish scholars will know the Bible, the true story of the Jewish past will be told. And when that story will be told, the Jew will have no less reason to be proud of the Jewish past than were his ancestors who needed miracles and theophanies to convince them that Israel was the favorite of God. other things being equal, the Jewish scholar is likely to have a keener and more sympathetic insight in matters that concern the Jew than the Gentile scholar, and should therefore be better qualified to appraise at their true worth the forces that made it possible for Judaism to play the great spiritual rôle in the history of civilization. The masses of the people may not at first be able to appreciate the untiring labor and devotion that is involved in the restoring our spiritual genealogy... [O]ur own young men and women would regain their Jewish self-respect. One thing is certain: we would at last have an authentic account of the beginnings of the Jewish people which we would not hesitate to put into the hands of the serious-minded Jews who, if they are the reckon with Judaism, want facts and not fiction. (p. 49-50) [And Kaplan was right. Higher Criticism has become the more sensitive Biblical Scholarship which attempts to understand both where the Bible came from and what it has meant in various generations. Today, scholars are more interested in reading the text we have than deconstructing it (though sometimes deconstructing it helps to understand it). -BF]
On Torah
No wonder that one of the ancient sages, describing the Torah in Platonic hyperbole, said that when God wanted to create the world He followed the plan laid down in the Torah, thereby making moral order and purpose the basic law of the world. [I don't understand people who understand this "hyperbole" to mean that the Torah existed before Creation and that God used it to form the world. Does that mean that God created the world such that people would sin and be punished? What good is a world that doesn't listen to you? If you say we are allowed to sin so we can fix ourselves and choose good, why couldn't we have been created good from the outset, since it was in God's plan that we would eventually choose good? -BF]
Neither creed nor ritual of the most exalted kind could have saved the Jewish people from disintegration. If the Torah had not occupied the same place in the life of the Jew that culture occupies in the life of the modern man, the sole effect of persecution would have been to stamp out whatever idealism kept the Jewish spirit alive. It was a spiritual inheritance which helped to develop in the Jew the highest human and social faculties. The Torah was the chief humanizing element in his life.
From being synonymous with culture in its most comprehensive sense, Torah has shrunk for most Jews to a mass of antiquated writings which have no relevance to life. This is why only about one out of every five Jewish children has some inkling of what it is to be a Jew... This failure to appreciate the true function of Torah is responsible for rabbis being compelled to become second-rate reviewers of the latest novels and plays, instead of first-rate Jewish scholars. (p. 61-62)