FOUNDATIONS OF JUDAISM
as a whole the Jew is today as he has been the whole course of human history: the strongest force of righteousness, the relentless enemy of injustice, God's witness on earth. No other nation would have survived clean and kind after the awful sufferings we have experienced. Yet we seem by some divine power to have brushed away all the dark cruelty, all the nauseating hypocrisy, we stand before the nations of the 20th century and pro claim as ever before "Shema" and "Weohavto" above valuta and munitions and war poetry.
The answer lies in our recognition of the method of Judaism. The Torah, while it insists on the divine in Man, never loses sight of our flesh-and-blood-frailty. It realizes that great ideals must be more than taught, they will never be realized by the masses without their minds and hearts being gradually trained.
Synagogue
and Life.If you take our Tom, Dick or Harry, who lives his ordinary harmlessly selfish life, thinking of himself first, second and third again, considering his own affairs the center of Man and very unwilling to submit to incon venience or to bring sacrifices for things as nebulous as the betterment of the human race, if you take this common type of mortal and for an hour a week submit him to unmitigated oratory — you may arouse in him a sense of your extraordinary gift, you may even for the moment impress him to the point of serious reflection. But for the moment only. The standpoint of your sermon 100 % idealistic and his life 100 % materialistic are too dis tant from each other for any durable effect. He leaves the church or the temple and his ordinary life swallows him and his good intentions and all the spirituality that the preacher has striven to knock into his brain.
There is no bridge to conquer the chasm between his life and your sermon. This and nothing else is the reason for the beggarly array of empty benches in many a house of God. Men get weary of attending services
14
