A Jewish Reform Project with Particular Consideration Given to Its Ethical Aspect
Samuel Peltyn
1885
In our past lie the answers to all the problems that our present time raises, and in it also lie the keys to the secret gates of our future. [ . . . ]
Onto ground already prepared since the time of our original distinction as a tribe, fertilized with tears of our memories of the destruction we had suffered, there fell new seeds—sown by the adherents of that faith [Christianity], born of their own womb—seeds in the form of persecutions, expulsions, and repressions of every kind. And from this sowing there could not but emerge a bitter stalk of bitterness, of profound resentment toward the persecutors. Pursued and beaten, wandering in the marginal places where he was barely allowed to eke out an existence, the Jew barricaded himself ever more impregnably in his memories, traditions, customs, and mores; he sought spiritual consolation in cultivating his Talmud and the shrubbery that grew in his field, and found comfort and solace in his native corner where he concentrated all the emotions of his heart, all the longings of his soul. And the more he turned inward and cocooned himself within his own cloth, the more he distanced himself from the hostile world, looking out at it ever more contemptuously from within his shell and detaching it from his own ethical obligations, just as that world treated him.
He was not permitted to settle anywhere permanently, nor to work the land as others could, as he had been accustomed to do in his own fatherland. So he led the life of a wanderer, not even growing to cherish the land on which he settled and from which any whim or interest of those who offered him hospitality might suddenly drive him out. He was forbidden to take on dignified work and was contemptuously shoved aside to the fullest extent—so he traded whatever and however he could, if only to earn his daily bread and secure his safety. He sold goods, lent money on interest to gentlemen who, despising the Jew, nevertheless sought him out in times of need and often returned the money taken from him with curses and blows. He was excluded from the laws, so he attempted to find a way around the limitations imposed on him and to evade the guardians of those restrictions. He found himself in the position of one who is persecuted, whose instinct for self-preservation compels him to seize every available means of defense against the blows aimed at him.
Thus, he responded to open hatred—with a deeper, hidden hatred; to oppression—by closing himself off all the more tightly; to exclusion—with evasion; to fences—by going under them; to restrictions and prohibitions—with subterfuge and by taking advantage.
Trade and intermediary roles in every form, with all their negative characteristics, had to become the almost exclusive occupation of Jews. Finding fertile ground in their dialectically trained minds, in their sense of grievous wrongs inflicted upon them by the world, with the passage of time these characteristics had somehow entered into the body and blood of this people, to become traits of its character that did not originate in its home.
Thus, internal and external factors contributed jointly to distorting the essence of the Jew, to creating that mix of positive and negative aspects that today manifests, in any average individual specimen of this folk, as such glaring abnormality.
The direction that the culture of the Jews has taken under the pressure of state disintegration—a direction not commensurate with the fundamental idea of their faith—has derailed them religiously and spiritually. On the thorny road down which their later fate would lead them, in that struggle for survival which they would have eternally to wage with hostile elements, they acquired exceptional virtues: love of family, generosity, fervent faith, unbreakable spiritual strength, sobriety, moderation, and endurance. But at the same time they acquired defects and deformities in their thinking, character, appearance, and behavior, that made of them a phenomenon unique in the world—and that made the name Jew a synonym of everything deserving of the wrongs done to them.
That is what their sad past has made of the Jewish people. [ . . . ]
Our Present Time
Newer Times
While our fathers lived behind the gates of their Jewish ghettos, far from the communal life of the folk, they were able to freely hold onto their traditions and customs. The world did not know them and did not wish to know them. It held too much disdain for the wanderers to want to draw closer to them, while they, for their part, strong with the spirit of faith and unity, paid with mutual disdain for the ill-treatment that made their lives miserable, and continued living according to the plans sketched out for them by the past.
But a new era dawned. The spirit of freedom blew across the world and tore down the ghetto walls, behind which Israel lived, closed off. After this there came a great time. Finally, at the head of the march of civilization there too resounded a liberating slogan for the oppressed tribe. That slogan would first resound in France, toward the end of the last century, for the pioneers of the idea of liberty; and its echo soon spread across the entire West.
It was then that the Jewish people emerged from their musty dwellings and settled in the lap of the societies from which, until then, they had hidden away in disdainful aloofness. But, though abandoning their ghettos as dwelling places, they carried them in their spirit. As they came into contact with the civilization of the age, that spirit would come into even sharper conflict not only with that civilization, but also with the interests of these same liberated folk. [ . . . ]
It is time that we throw off the rags in which the past has wrapped us, that we: religiously—from mystics and ritualists become people of a truly moral life; nationally and socially—from the supposed chosen people—become members of the human family; from wandering castaways—permanent citizens of our own native countries; from half-Asiatics/half-Europeans and from disdained wanderers—a people as deserving of respect and esteem as others!
For the fulfillment of this we do not need to take or to borrow anything from anyone. In the treasure trove of our own native sciences we can find everything that we need to restore our health. The ground of these sciences is excellent. We need only root out the weeds that have grown up on it over time, remove the mud deposited on it by heavy storms, and a clean soil capable of growing life-giving shrubs will appear.
We will complete the work of this rebirth in no other way than with the help of a radical religious-social reform, in, at first, a small circle of the inoculated. In time it will grow into an entire community to which we shall entrust the tender, solicitous hand of education.
Credits
Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7.
