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The Position of Faith in the Jewish Religion. 53
THE POSITION OF FAITH IN THE JEWISH
RELIGION.
What do we mean by the word "faith"? It is sometimes
objected to employ this term in connection with Judaism.
Is Judaism a faith, or is it only a code of rules and
regulations ? This question is one of great consequence to
the future of Judaism. Faith is one of those words which
have many meanings, and it is therefore essential, for the
purpose of making these observations clear, to state what is
here meant by the expression. Let us then define faith in
two ways — first, as a faculty by which mankind is able to
apprehend truths which do not lie completely within the
sphere of ordinary demonstration; and secondly, as applied
to Judaism, the word is to represent the particular body of
truths which compose that part of Judaism which does not
lie within the sphere of demonstration. This kind of state-
ment seems necessary, because Judaism contains much that
does appeal to the ordinary methods of understanding. A
vast number of its rules and regulations can be reasonably
justified by the common test of expediency and practical
utility. But there is yet behind all these a group of ideas
which cannot be explained in the same way. Throughout
the Pentateuch and the Bible generally, not to mention the
entire range of literature which has gathered round it and
holds a place of sacred authority in the minds of most Jews,
there are ideas and views which must necessarily be called
dogmas.
It will be obvious to which set of thoughts I refer. The
belief in God, and in the moral perfection of God, and in the
doctrine of man having been created in the divine image ;
and then again the election of Israel, and Israel having
peculiar relations to God and to the world — all these are
matters that stand out quite apart from other things which
belong to Judaism, such as the latter six of the ten com-
mandments, the dietary laws, and numerous other regula-
tions, all of which appeal straightway to our common sense
54 The Jewish Quarterly Review.
rather than to this faculty of faith. There is no doubt that
Judaism, as understood by a large majority of adherents,
contains rules and regulations so numerous and minute, that
they appear almost to stand in the place which, in the case
of Christianity, is filled by faith. Faith in other creeds
means something more than the apprehension of truths that
lie outside the sphere of ordinary demonstration. The dif-
ference in this respect between the claims of faith in the case
of Judaism and in the case of Christianity is that in Judaism
it assumes only what is not inconsistent with reason, though
logically undemonstrable ; whereas in Christianity faith claims
a function altogether independent of reason, and sometimes
hostile to it. The propositions contained in the Athanasian
creed are all more or less capable of being submitted to the
tribunal of reason or logical test. Reason and logic can say
Aye or Nay to the question as to whether there can be three
undivided parts in one uncompounded whole. Yet faith here
claims to be the sole arbiter of the question. But in the case
of Judaism reason can neither affirm or deny the presence of a
Divine Being, nor the other propositions which grow out of
that one. The ordinary methods of logical test and demon-
stration have nothing whatever to say to assertions of this
kind. And it is precisely these matters with which faith in
the case of Judaism is called into exercise. Wherever there is
a point in which mathematical or other demonstration is pos-
sible, faith has no function in Judaism. For this reason a Jew
can, consistently with his adherence to Judaism, accept every
fully established teaching of literary criticism in respect to
the interpretation of Scripture, and in regard to the notions
of miracles, whereas the strict adherent of Christianity in any
of its forms cannot do so. Faith in regard to Judaism and
faith in regard to Christianity have different claims, and do
not hold in all respects quite the same place. But it is none
the less true that Judaism without faith is as unreal as
Christianity without it. Judaism is quite as dependent upon
faith as Christianity is, although its faith has other claims,
and in no case conflicts with reason. The fundamental teach-
ing and profession of Judaism in Deut. vi. 4, " Hear, O Israel,
the Lord our God is one, and thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, etc.," is one that could bring neither
comprehension nor acceptance without at once making a
claim upon the faculty of faith. To a man without faith,
such a command could convey no meaning. It is quite
otherwise with many other statements and commands con-
tained in the Pentateuch. " Thou shalt not steal," or *' Thou
shalt not kill," are perfectly intelligible to a person whose
The Position of Faith in the Jewish Religion. 55
faith is entirely dormant, and might be obeyed without
reference to the faculty of faith.
Professor Graetz, in his instructive article in the first
number of this Review, wrote : " In order not to mistake the
essential characteristics of Judaism, one must not regard it
as & faith, or speak of it as ' the Jewish faith.' The applica-
tion of a word is by no means unimportant. The word often
becomes a net, in which thought gets tangled unawares.
From an ecclesiastical standpoint, the word 'faith' implies
the acceptance of an inconceivable miraculous fact, insuf-
ficiently established by historical evidence, and with the
audacious addition credo quia absurdum. Judaism has never
required such a belief from its adherents." True ! but would
it not have been more explicit if Professor Graetz had gone
on to state that the credo quia absurdum was just the dif-
ference between the use of the word faith in the two different
systems of Christianity and Judaism, rather than to have
expunged the word altogether? For on another page he
proceeds to explain that "the positive side (of Judaism) is
to regard the highest Being as one and unique, and as the
essence of all ethical perfections, and to worship it as the
Godhead — in a single word, monotheism in the widest accep-
tation of the term." Then he goes on to remind us that the
divine perfection gives the ideal for the moral life. " ' Be ye
holy, even as I am holy,' is the perpetually recurring refrain
in the oldest records of Judaism," says Professor Graetz. To
what faculty then of the human mind does this " idea of
divine perfection " appeal if not to the faculty of faith ? And
what is the belief in the Supreme Being at all, and in the
" ideal for the moral life," if it be not a faith ? Surely to
deny the use of the term " faith " in such a case as this is to
rob our vocabulary of the only word which can adequately
express our meaning. It is just possible that the aversion of
Professor Graetz and other Jews less scholarly to the use of
the word faith in connection with Judaism may be accounted
for by two considerations. First, on account of the different
use to which the term is applied in Christianity. Faith there
is made to reconcile propositions that are so much at variance
with the Jewish religion that there may be a lurking fear
that if " faith" is once admitted into the Jewish vocabulary it
may serve to raise up dogmas that are opposed to Judaism.
Surely the more satisfactory way of dealing with the question
is to define clearly what the special province of faith is in
regard to Judaism, and thus to present the clear contrast
between its functions in the two systems. Secondly, what
may be called the religious genius of the Jewish race may
56 The Jewish Quarterly Review.
induce people to mistake the true cause for their acceptance
of truths which do not lie within the sphere of ordinary
demonstration. The beliefs in the Supreme Being and in the
election of Israel are so deeply rooted in the Jewish mind
that it may be supposed that these two propositions are
acceptable to the Israelite by mere intuition or hereditary
mental habit, and have been acquired by the individual Jew
without any reference to the exercise of the faculty called
faith. That, however, appears to be a somewhat loose way
of getting rid of precise terms, and is altogether a shifting of
the ground. It would be much more accurate to say that
faith is a faculty with which the Israelite appears to be
endowed in such a remarkable degree that the dogmas of his
race present themselves with so much force that they look
like axioms, and seem to be imbibed from his birth without
any extraordinary effort at seeking to believe. That, no
doubt, is true, as to the mental assent which nearly every
born Israelite seems to give to certain propositions. But
what shall we say about the application of those beliefs
throughout the history of Israel, and throughout an indi-
vidual career ? There is something more than credulity
required to make particular propositions, like the existence of
the Supreme Being, and the relation of man to God, act as
living forces upon human character. Here something is
called into action which cannot be expressed in the English
language by any other word than " faith." It is something
much more than the intellectual process of belief that has
led so many thousands of Jews to die for Judaism. No mere
mental process would reconcile millions of men to lives of
oppression and martyrdom, and still less would any opinion
have the force about it to give them the necessary endurance
and patience under all kinds of suffering. Something is
called into exercise which is fraught with saving power,
something that has in it not only the intellectual element of
assenting to or dissenting from certain statements, but the
higher or spiritual quality which we recognise as love and
devotion. Faith is the exact and only word which conveys
all this meaning and my contention is that it is at least as
tremendous a factor in Judaism as it is in Christianity.
In order to appreciate the true value of faith as a factor of
Judaism, it is necessary to contrast the two distinct functions
which it is intended to perform in regard to Judaism, and in
regard to Christianity. The reason for this necessity arises
from the fact that popular notions attach certain meanings to
words which do not always represent their exact significance.
Faith is popularly supposed to do service by reconciling the
The Position of Faith in the Jewish Religion. 57
supernatural or the miraculous, and in this sense Professor
Graetz is right when he defines it "from an ecclesiastical
standpoint " as the word which " implies the acceptance of an
inconceivable miraculous fact, insufficiently established by
historical evidence." In this respect faith has an enormous
province in Christianity, whereas in Judaism it has none.
Christianity is structurally founded upon " an inconceivable
miraculous fact," and Judaism is not so founded. Miracle
belief is a necessity in Christian theology, but it is by no
means indispensable in Hebrew theology.
Professor Graetz appears to have fallen into the not un-
common error of dismissing a particular term because that
term has many applications, some of which are not those that
Judaism requires. I have thus attempted to show what
Judaism does not require of faith. Let us now see the part
that faith has to take in the Jewish Religion. First the very
apprehension of the Supreme Being is an act of faith; secondly
the conviction that the Supreme Being has decreed that one
particular group of people shall be for all time his " Kingdom
of Priests " or " Holy Nation " for some special purpose is
another act of faith. And here faith becomes transformed, as
it were, from a passive to an active state. The Israelite being
convinced much more by faith than by mere reason that he is
in actual fellowship with a commission divinely appointed,
his life is conducted entirely with reference to that commis-
sion, and nothing but faith enables him so to conduct himself.
Here the idea of faith as an abstract word becomes the name
of a particular factor in human nature, and is thence a virtue.
It embraces within itself many other virtues. It creates or
calls into play virtues that were otherwise hidden or inactive.
As an example it is pregnant with courage, with hope, with
patience, with determination, with self-sacrifice, sometimes
with inventive power, and in its highest form, beginning
from the starting point of the sacred commission, it fruc-
tifies into an enthusiasm of humanity — that is a love of
mankind, an unquenchable desire to labour for the good of
fellow men. Such an enthusiasm as this Jewish faith is
capable of working is the exact reverse of what it might
vulgarly be supposed to have commenced from. The
separateness of race and the thought of God having made a
particular choice, bear a totally different colour under the
elevating influences of faith. The separateness means distinct
obligations specially incumbent, and the particular choice
signifies one out of the many ways of Providence for
bestowing good and blessings upon mankind. To the mind of
a strictly religious Jew, the history of his race presents one
58 The Jewish Quarterly Review.
vast spectacle of a discipline, namely, the discipline of faith.
From the bondage in Egypt to the wandering in the desert, and
from the destructions of the two Temples, the exile and the
dispersion, to the latest sufferings in South-Eastern Europe, he
traces the hand of God refining him in the furnace of affliction,
and perpetually equipping him with a greater and holier gift
of that which he considers the highest of all gifts, namely,
the gift of faith. This is the most impressive illustration of
the power of faith which history has yet supplied. The history
of the Jewish race is the history of faith in a sense more
remarkable and striking than any other history. Faith as a
great human virtue is thus exalted in the life of Israel, and
stands out as the most brilliant example to mankind. So far
from Judaism being without the factor of faith it rather
appears to be the one Religion of all others in which faith in
the sense of a virtue — not a mere mental process — plays the
fullest part. Where is there faith so highly developed as that
which enables the European Jew of the nineteenth century
to see in a record of thirty-three centuries of the most varied
and varying detail— one unbroken continuity, one unbatned
plan, a single destiny, an eternal truth ?
Since writing the foregoing, I have had the advantage of
reading the luminous article on "English Judaism," by Mr.
Israel Zangwill, in the July number of this Review. That
article appears to be a comprehensive survey of the numerous
different conceptions of Judaism which Mr. Zangwill has
observed among his fellow Israelites in England. He has
tabulated these conceptions under thirty-two different labels.
Perhaps that is a needless multiplication, seeing that some of
them lie outside Judaism altogether, and that many of them,
according to the very labels employed, are no conceptions at
all. With regard to Mr. ZangwilPs multiplication of labels, it
might be observed that his industry in that direction could
have been spared if he had made the simple observation that
there is a vast variety in human temperament, and there are
many shades of mental and spiritual character among all men,
and, therefore, that no two men see things exactly in the
same way. But the object of my reference to that article
here is, that it being an impartial essay on the question,
" What is Judaism ? " written with large resources of informa-
tion, and conceived throughout with critical power, I regard
it as a valuable confirmation of my own proposition, that
faith is an indispensable factor of Judaism, and that a parti-
cular kind of faith is its special and distinguishing charac-
teristic. The apparent despondency as to the future of
Judaism with which Mr. Zangwill's paper concludes does
The Position of Faith in the Jeicish Religion. 59
not appear to me to be the necessary result of his investi-
gations. Nor am I convinced by his arguments, on page
400, that the transition of Jewish conceptions from one
age to another, and from one mind to another, does either
"historically" or "logically" suggest a change of name,
because that very characteristic faith belonging to and distin-
guishing Judaism is of a kind which indicates the singular
power of adaptability inherent in it. If Judaism were only
a code of regulations and not a faith, it would hardly be
necessary to despond about its future now, because it could
not have lasted beyond a very limited period, and then only
within quite restricted conditions. It is just because it was
a faith, and pre-eminently a faith above all things, that it has
endured up to the present — not only over a vast span of time,
but under numerous different conditions of extraordinary and
exceptional variety. Where there is no faith, that is no
spark of trust and confidence in the divine purpose respecting
Israel, the Jewish religion is undistinguishable, even though
there is ample evidence of racial identity. On the other hand,
where there is this faith, that unquenchable thirst for the
waters of spiritual life, together with the unshaken conviction
that the " Guardian of Israel slumbers not nor sleeps," the
Jewish religion may be equally recognised in the minyan
room of a Polish city, or in the " reformed " synagogue of
Western Europe. The unity of Israel is established by reason
of that common faith far more than by the uniformity of
traditional observances. Here, again, Mr. Zangwill has shown
that so-called " orthodox " adherence to ceremonialism may be
observed among Jews of different opinions upon religion
itself. In other words, religious diversity is possible with
ritual resemblance. Diversity in ritual practice is surely of
much less consequence to the future of Judaism than diversity
in religious conviction. It can truly be said that some of the
worst Jews are among the most observant, but it cannot be
said that the best Jews are among those who have no reli-
gious convictions and are without faith. From the first
calling of Abraham to be the father of a great nation, in
whom all the families of the earth would be blessed, to
the sanctification of the emancipated groups at the foot of
Sinai, two distinct propositions were made apparent : 1. That
Israel had a divine call, and 2. That that call was to have
consequences which concerned mankind at large. Both these
propositions are of the nature of religious beliefs, and are
essential to any description of Judaism. Far more essential
are they than any dogmas as to the manner of the revelation.
Whithersoever literary criticism may lead us in respect to
60 The Jewish Quarterly Review.
the interpretation of statements touching the circumstances
of what is understood by revelation, there remains the here-
ditary impression among Jews that their distinct existence
as Jews signifies a highly spiritual purpose, affecting the
religious aspect of civilization. They are Jews in consequence
of their conviction about the great event to which they owed
their nationality. They have continued throughout the ages
to be Jews by reason of the continuance of that conviction,
and Judaism will cease when that conviction evaporates, but
not before. No amount of ceremonialism can keep the
Jewish religion alive without the faith that constitutes it.
With that faith present, Judaism will not merely survive,
but operate as a potent force among the religious influences
of mankind. It will thus operate under, or in spite of, con-
ditions of ever varying adhesion to ceremonialism. It will
exist amid very much ceremonialism, and it will also exist
with comparatively little. The ceremonialism is in part
incidental to Judaism, in some measure it is indeed a mere
accretion. In no case can Judaism be intelligently defined
as a composition of ceremonialism. Eveiy thoughtful person
is bound to distinguish between the rules and regulations
of an institution and the object for which the institution
exists, and the source of its vitality. A mere outward
observance, however rigid and minute, whether traceable to
the "Auld Lang Syne" motive or any other not based on
spiritual conviction, is no pledge whatever of the future of
Judaism. But the form of Jewish adhesion which Mr.
Zangwill says "gladdens the simple heart of the Russian
pauper as he sings the hymns of hope and trust after his
humble Friday night's meal," is not of the dead nature of
mere outward ceremonialism, but it is the living faith which
"gladdens the simple heart" of that Russian pauper. It is
not ceremonialism by itself but the living faith behind it,
which, as Mr. Zangwill truly says, " still solaces the foot-sore
hawker, amid the jeers and blows of the drunkard and the
bully, and transfigures the squalid Ghetto with celestial light."
Where there is this vital faith among the members of the
Jewish race there is Judaism, and it is the same in the
villages of Russian Poland as in the Universities of Oxford
and Cambridge ; the same in New York City as in the East
End of London, provided always that we are sure of the
presence of that vital faith, and that those who are conscious
of it are equally conscious of their fellowship with the great
mass of Israel, scattered though it may have been through
all historic times and through all known regions. The Jewish
claim to the guardianship of eternal truth would never have
The Position of Faith in the Jewish Religion. 61
been established without the corresponding claim to the power
of universal adaptability. The power of assimilation which is
so remarkable in the Jewish race, their absolute capacity to
become patriots of every country and to acquire every cast of
mind, together with the fact that Judaism is present to-day,
with equal evidence of organization, in Jerusalem and in
Paris, in London and in Constantinople, in the Polish Ghettos
and in the cities of the United States, are without doubt
abundant testimony wherewith to establish this claim to the
possession of eternal truth.
In conclusion, whatever may be the opinions of individuals
as to the desirability or the obligation of certain views or
observances from a Jewish point of view, Judaism is essen-
tially a faith of the highest spiritual character. And
although that faith does not make claims of the same kind
as faith does in other religions, it does demand the most
steady and resolute adherence to truths enunciated three
thousand years ago.
Oswald John Simon.
