It is a privilege to be with you, and I note with pleasure that two of you have brought your wives. Let me compliment you both for marrying women who look so much younger than yourselves. My good friend in the realm of jurisprudence has asked permission to make a statement and pose a question before I address you on the theme for today.
I have listened to you as carefully as I would to an attorney pleading a case in court. It was my hope that I might hear something of importance, something worthwhile. I confess my disappointment. You have presented your own position a little more cleverly than others, you are fluent and persuasive, but underneath it all is the unprovable idea that Jesus was the Messiah. I understand that you refer to Him as "The Prince of Peace." There has been no peace since He was born. He has not brought peace in any century. If, when the Messiah comes, He is to bring peace, what kind of Messiah is it who has seen more bloody wars since He came than ever occurred before?
Thank you, Your Honor. You are plain and positive in your statements. One does not need to speculate about your meaning, and I respect that fact. If you achieve nothing else, you will make me a better man. I shall try to avoid arrest, lest I be brought into your court. This is a forum of free men. You must feel under no compulsion to agree with me against your conscience. Your Honor will no doubt recall the statement by Judge Learned Hand, in the Oliver Wendell Holmes Lecture, at Harvard in 1958: "In the end it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy."
Your Honor, you have put your finger on a real problem. I have no intention to evade it. I will face it as squarely as I can. But with your permission I will attend to the prior issue, and when I have dealt with it, I will return to your question.
I am to examine whether or not Judaism, as a system involving ethical or moral values, can ever achieve on earth the state of things regarded by the prophets as "the kingdom of God." In doing so, I shall give some attention to why I think there was a grave change in modern Jewish thought from the traditional concept of a personal Messiah. I recognize that many of your Orthodox brethren would "rather fight than switch." They still cling to the hope of a personal Messiah, a hope that you have surrendered.
You are not responsible for the change of thought. You inherited it. You are responsible, however, for examining it critically to see whether or not it is the truth. As Henri Amiel put it in his Journal, "Truth above all, even when it upsets and overwhelms us." I want to explore with you today the roots, growth, and fruits of the system of thought that has enticed so many of you to abandon the faith of your fathers. I realize that you regard your present position as a sign of maturity. You feel that you have outgrown, intellectually, the ideas with which your predecessors were comfortable. You no longer need the "security blankets" that you think were woven of myth and fantasy in a childhood age of the world.
I am not so sure you have improved your position. It is possible for man to shiver in the nakedness of despair, if he casts aside the covering that I believe God prepared for him. And I think that both Jews and non-Jews in our day are victims offerees that operated before we were born, to sell a man on the idea that he is his own God, and outside of him there is no other. I am not so foolish as to deny that history often is shaped by its recording more than by happening. Both the one who writes and the one who reads the record interpret it. You may disagree with my interpretation and violently oppose it, but that will not upset me one bit. My love for you will not be abated by your lack of concurrence. Your conformity with my views is not a condition of my addressing you.
The Cartesian philosophy greatly affected Baruch Spinoza, who was born in Amsterdam, where he was educated carefully in Jewish theology. When Spinoza developed his philosophy, he became alienated from Orthodox Judaism and withdrew from the synagogue. He was excommunicated by the rabbis, who secured also his banishment from the city. Living in abject poverty outside the urban sprawl, and supporting himself by grinding optical lenses, Spinoza wrote tracts and treatises. These eventually served to inspire some well-known philosophers and poets, among whom were Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, William Wordsworth, and Percy Bysshe Shelley.
I have not the time, nor do you the interest or patience, to review the writings of Spinoza. Perhaps his greatest work was Ethics Demonstrated With Geometrical Order. None of us can know to what lengths others will carry our thinking when we are gone. No doubt Spinoza, who died in 1677 at the age of forty-five, would be astounded if he could return to our world and see some of the material that is credited to the principles he enunciated.
Before Spinoza's death, the writings of Descartes had affected the thinking of a brilliant German baron, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz. He discovered the fundamental principles of infinitesmal calculus in 1675. Seven years later, he invented a calculating machine capable of performing operations in multiplication, division, and extraction of square root. It was with von Leibnitz that the rationalistic concept entered Germany. Here it was destined to become systematized by Baron Christian von Wolff, who brought it into sharp controversy with the existing ideas about God's revelation.
From the roots of this philosophy grew the religious system called Deism, which eventually was espoused by our own statesmen, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. Deists, however, designates a group of British writers of the eighteenth century who rejected the belief in a revelation from God. It was their contention that by an understanding of nature, and through employment of human reason, an individual may determine for himself the religious idea suitable for an expression of his personality. Scripture, to the rationalist, was not a revelation from God. It was the historical record of man's own striving for meaning in the world of his existence. Miracles were ruled out.
With the advent of the evolutionary theory, the need for an intelligent Creator to explain the origin of the universe was eliminated. It was but one step more in the direction toward the humanism of our day, in which man becomes his own God, and human reason is enshrined as the ultimate criterion of morality and influence.
So that I shall not be charged with exaggeration, or with building a case out of cobwebs, let me tell you what was taught when I attended the School of Judaism, as the only non-Jew enrolled. The eminent rabbi suggested that Moses was a clever political manipulator. He took advantage of a conveniently occurring earthquake, accompanied by a thunderstorm, to go up on top of Mount Sinai and remain hidden for almost six weeks. Afterward he came down with a couple of rocks he had chiseled and passed off as sacred stones. This was an imitation of some of the heathen priests of that day. This was the origin of the Torah, according to one of your most brilliant instructors. It is no wonder that wild, pie-eyed thinkers, like the author of Chariots of the Gods, would postulate that the ark of the covenant was actually a receiving set for messages from outer space, with the cherubims on the mercy seat acting like antennae to pick up transmissions from other planets.
This kind of thinking was not original with the rabbi. It was absorbed by him in a theological school. The same thing is taught in Protestant seminaries, which really do not deserve the designation, since they no longer protest anything. Some of them exhibit the truth of the adage, "If you do not stand for something, you will fall for anything!"
If you can tolerate me for saying it, I hold that your philosophers and thinkers, like those in the modern non-Jewish world, became victimized by both naturalism and humanism. Their denial of the supernatural betrayed them into the renunciation of a personal and intelligent First Cause as the source of life and being. God became only a nonpersonal force, something like magnetism or electricity, unexplainable and yet handy for us. Albert Einstein stated this position clearly when he asserted that he did not believe in a God who rewards good and punishes evil. He stated, "The presence of a superior reasoning power...revealed in the incomprehensible universe forms my idea of God."
Scrapping the idea of a personal God who could reveal His will and purpose also washed down the drain the hope for a personal Messiah. To some, the prophets became mere idle dreamers or fanatical enthusiasts. The sacred Scriptures were no longer sacred. Max Nordeau said of the Bible, "We find collected in this book the superstitious beliefs of the ancient inhabitants of Palestine, with indistinct echoes from Indian and Persian fables, mistaken imitations of Egyptian theories and customs, historical chronicles as dry as they are unreliable, and miscellaneous poems, amatory, human, and Jewish-national, which are rarely distinguished by beauties of the highest order, but frequently by superfluity of expression, coarseness, bad taste, and genuine Oriental sensuality."
Some of you still entertain a hope of "saving" mankind, and many of you do not. For those who do, that hope is centered on an emphasis on social justice and equity, which you believe is inherent in Judaic cultural thought. Before I discuss this further, let me make three of my convictions clear.
1. I do not deprecate the need for social justice. I contend for it as sincerely as you do.
2. I do not deny the great contribution made by Jewish thought in this field.
3. I do not believe that any code of human ethics, regardless of its magnitude, can ever unite the world.
Judaism cannot transform the world. My first reason for believing that the ethical code of Judaism cannot transform the world spiritually is that it failed to transform your fathers. Even in a locked-in culture, separated and segregated from the heathen around them, they did not practice the moral values you project. Instead, they were constantly rebuked by the prophets for immorality, cupidity, and idolatry of the grossest kind. It would seem to me that, if there were a redemptive value in the system based on the Torah and haftarah, it would have exhibited itself under the circumstances that then obtained. Instead, the opposite was the case, and the people stoned the very prophets who called for justice and mercy.
Judaism is not effective. If a moral code had no effect when there was at least a nominal belief in and respect for God, on what grounds can we assume that it will have the desired effect when responsibility to God has been abrogated? The strength of any moral code is the authority behind it. If the only authority is that of consensus, and if modern man thinks of himself as a mere animal, a trousered ape, then consensus is simply "the law of the pack." The survival of the fittest will become the law of the future.
Judaism cannot forgive sin. Man exhibits universally a sense of alienation. He is alienated from the very world of mankind itself, and he exhibits it in hostility. He is at odds with himself, and he knows the anguish of a battlefield inside his own spirit. The problem is sin, which is ignored and even denied in our day of theorization. Sin separates from God. It leaves man dangling hopelessly over a cliff from which he cannot claw his way back to solid ground.
In one of our after-sessions, some of you challenged the very concept of sin. One of you quoted the statement of Oscar Wilde that there is no sin except stupidity. If that were true, the author of the aphroism would be the chief of sinners. Although he was educated at Trinity College in Dublin, and Magdalen College in Oxford, he ended up arraigned and convicted on a charge of sodomy. He served two years in prison, after which he fled from Great Britain. He finished out his unhappy days under the assumed name of Sebastian Melmoth. Laughing at sin does not eliminate it. Treating it lightly no more eradicates it than scoffing at smallpox makes that disease go away. Sin is an offense against the majesty of God. It is the attempt of the created to dethrone the Creator and inject himself into His place. Until man is reconciled to God, he cannot be reconciled to others. No code of behavior can produce that reconciliation because it cannot provide forgiveness. If I agree to pay cash from now on, that does not take care of my debts contracted in the past.
It seems absurd to act as if there is no God, when there is an innate sense crying out that there must be. Only a personal Messiah, assuring a love so deep that it transcends all other considerations, can bring healing. Moral codes, regardless of how good they may be, only produce frustration in the unforgiven. They tend to increase the guilt consciousness by the very futility of attempting to live up to them.
Judaism cannot provide an ideal. Man needs an ideal toward which he can strive, by which he can be challenged. That ideal cannot be found in a mere moral code. Such a code only encourages one to become his own ideal. Man knows he is not ideal, and his abject failure in seeking justification by law enforces the thought. The world will never be brought to a sense of oneness until there is a central figure in the universe, recognized as Lord of all, exemplifying all that is best in mankind. We follow leaders, and as we do we move in a common direction toward a common goal.
You postulate that man will become better by education, and I would never speak disparagingly of education. Aristotle declared, "All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth. Educated men are as much superior to uneducated men as the living are to the dead." Yet, unless the heart is changed, and the inner being given a new sense of direction, education increases our problem instead of alleviating it. An educated criminal is the worst kind of criminal, and an educated fool is the worst kind of fool. You will argue that moral education is not within such a category, and you may be right. Still, education in moral values, without a spiritual regeneration to enable a person to attain such values, may only aggravate the human predicament. Furnishing a book on survival to a man at the bottom of a well is not the answer to his problem. What he needs is a rope let down from above by a hand that is powerful enough to lift him up. Man can learn better how to live when he knows what life is and where it is. There must be a point of reference.
It is not the mere teaching of law, but the teaching of the law as of God, that makes the difference. The Torah without the Shema is simply another form of philosophy. To your pious fathers, the knowledge of God was everything. To know God was to know the very secret of life. The word of God was given to a covenant people. It had to be taught, not simply to make life easier or happier, but to enable those who learned to exhibit the qualities of a people adopted by God and brought into covenant relationship with Him.
The Jews have been dispersed throughout the nations of the world. I mention this as a fact of history. I do not condone, but rather deplore, the unfortunate persecutions and captivities that have sometimes caused it. Yet the Jews never have converted a single nation. The Judaic principle never has transformed a people, except as it has reached it fulfillment in the Christian faith. Based upon the past, there is no real ground for expecting the leaven of Judaism to affect the world lump for good.
I am bound by conviction to reject the hope of world transformation and peace, except on the basis of acceptance of the divine penetration in the person of the Messiah. The Messiah who was promised by your prophets and seers cannot be a system or a code. It was for this reason that Isaiah declared, "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given." As you are aware, I believe that the Messiah has come, and I believe it upon the testimony of Jews. All that I know about Jesus, with very few exceptions, I have learned from Jews. During His life span upon earth, Jesus only once crossed over the Palestinian border. He was reared by Jews, He lived and associated with Jews, and sent His chosen representatives during His lifetime only to Jews. Jews were dispatched to Jews, and forbidden to go to goyim.
My conviction results from what Jewish prophets foretold, and from the testimony of Jewish nationals that it was fulfilled. I come, then, with no non-Jewish propaganda to try to influence you to accept a non-Jewish faith as valid. I believe that "salvation is of the Jews," if I may borrow that phrase. I do not believe that it stems from anything the Jews have yet to offer, although they have much to give. I believe it is from Someone whom they have already given, and from the recognition that He is the atonement and our hope.
Jesus did not come to destroy the Torah, but to fulfill it. I do not believe that a Jews who accepts Him as the Messiah denies the Torah, but becomes fulfilled in the goal of the Torah.
What you are asking me to do is to turn my back upon my best friends, deny my parents and accept another religion, which means nothing to me. What would I gain by doing that? I would be crazy to fall for that!
I know it is very difficult for any of us to listen dispassionately when the very inner being is in revolt against what we think is an attempt to sway us. I am happy that you have such an emotional reaction, for it demonstrates that you think very deeply about matters relating to your life. Perhaps it will help you a little if I point out that you are mistaken on three counts. I am not asking you to turn your back upon any friend whom you cherish. I am not asking you to deny your beloved parents. Surely you could not do that. I am not asking you to accept another religion at all.
The fact is, I do not believe that Jesus came to bring another religion into the world. He is not the author of a new religion. When He came, your fathers had a good religion, and He participated in it. He was circumcised on the eighth day, presented in the temple, and made His bar mitzvah. It turned into a gala occasion, with all of His friends and relatives going up to Jerusalem to celebrate it. Jesus attended the synagogue meetings, participated in the reading of the haftarah in His home synagogue, and generally conducted himself as an iluy, a scholar.
The religion of your fathers was a good religion. It was God-given. It had all of the ritual, liturgy and pontifical majesty generally associated with religion. But Jesus came to put an end to religion as an approach to God. He came to make possible a relationship instead of a religion. He came to offer men a new dimension of life, the life of God, the abundant life.
It is true that when I accepted the offer of life on the God level, I was deserted by some of my friends. They deserted me, however. I did not leave them. I loved them more intensely than before. I had been reared in a background where men still sought to please God, or to placate Him, by stated and stately performances conducted by a clergy, or special priesthood. I gave it up for life! My mother thought I had lost my mind. My companions thought I was "off my rocker." But I was confronted with the historical fact of Jesus. My very integrity demanded that I accept Him. The attitude of my loved ones toward me is a matter between themselves and God. One cannot choose the consequences of his acts. He can only respond and accept the consequences.
You ask me what you would gain by becoming a disciple of Jesus. I can answer that question only by telling you what I have experienced. I have gained an inner sense of peace, of justification and acquittal. Jesus of Nazareth has been the bridge over troubled waters. He has made me to lie down in green pastures. He has restored my soul. Once I sought acquittal upon the basis of my own goodness. My righteousness was an attempt to be good by law, to be perfect by precept. Then I learned that God sent Jesus to be my righteousness. What I needed was to trust in Him.
I have gained a freedom to love all men, even my enemies. One has to be free to do that. Although we are grown men from varied backgrounds, professional men in the community, pragmatic, practical, and sometimes hard-nosed, I can say unashamedly that I love you. I do not love you because you are good. I do not love you because I am good. I love you because our Father loves you. He loves you as you are, not because you are the people He would have you to be. That is also the way He loves me. He paid sin's penalty for all of us, and thus made the divine overture of love. I accept that overture.
Because I am firmly committed to His nature and approach, I make the overture of love to all of you. I do not ask that you come to me. I come to you. I do not ask that you love me. I simply say that I love you. I shall continue to do so. I yearn for all of you to be my brothers, not in that washed-out, faded kind of sense in which we are caught up together in the human perspective, but in the real sense of being members of one family. Let me make it clear to you, however, that the price of my regard for you is not that you accept what I say. I shall love you regardless of how you react to my words.
I ask you not to fall for anything that you think would make you less responsible, or lacking in intelligence. The implication that you would be crazy to fall for what I am saying is based upon your failure to grasp the implication of what I say. It is my hope that, as we continue to think and study together, I may clarify this matter. We have a wide chasm, across which I seek to throw slender threads of thought to make it possible for us to bridge the expanse. We have not touched upon our problems very deeply.
You will recall your old saying, "The Torah has no bottom." Learning as an art has a place of beginning, but there is no end to it. I do not want to be an amorets, an ignoramus, and neither do you. The Talmud has a saying, "Better a learned bastard than an ignorant priest." I am not anxious to be either of the two, but I would like to see all of us sit at "East Wall." I crave for all of you that you shall be sheyneh yidn, beautiful Jews, in the fullest meaning of that term, orderly, dignified, and harmonious. To this end I pray for you, and ask your prayers in my behalf as well.