Part 18
_Brown Menorah Dedication Exercises_
The Brown Menorah Society held its dedication exercises in the auditorium of the Brown Union on January 16, 1915. The Chairman was Maurice J. Siff, '15, President of the Society. Morris J. Wessel, '11, spoke of the need of the Menorah from the graduate's point of view. Chancellor Henry Hurwitz brought the greetings of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association and explained the purposes of the Menorah movement. President W. H. P. Faunce of the University, in his response, welcomed the Menorah Society to Brown. Rabbi Nathan Stern, of Providence, spoke upon the significance of the Menorah, and unveiled and lit a brass Menorah which he presented to the Society. Dean Otis E. Randall spoke upon "The Educational Value of College Organizations," and expressed the hope that the new Menorah Society would contribute to the uplift of the student body.
President Faunce said, in part: "This Society must justify itself by making better Brown men than ever before. Most especially among its duties it must strive for a type of Brown man that cultivates the best there is in himself, a man who respects himself, soul, body and spirit, the type of man who flings himself gladly into whatever he believes in. And so I hope to-night that every member of this Society will cherish the finest things in the history of his own people if he is a member of the Jewish nation--that he will cultivate everything that is worthy and noble and try to help his brethren throughout the world."
_The Thirty-Sixth Menorah Society_
A Menorah Society has recently been organized at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Boston. The meeting preliminary to definite organization was held in the Technology Union on March 9. Isadore Levin of the Harvard Menorah Society, First Vice-President of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association, brought the greetings of the Association and explained the Menorah purposes and procedure. Leo I. Dana, '16, was elected President.
In a communication to the Chancellor of the Menorah Association, Dean Alfred E. Burton of the Institute writes: "I take pleasure in stating that we shall be glad to have a branch of the Menorah Society formed among our undergraduates, and I can endorse the names of the officers who have been chosen. They are all earnest students in good standing at the Institute and I am sure they will be able to establish a branch of the Menorah Society that will be a credit to the general intercollegiate organization."
The first lecture before the Society was delivered on April 5 by Dr. H. M. Kallen of the University of Wisconsin. The subject was "Hebraism and Nationality."
_Menorah Dinners_
The Menorah Society of Clark University held its "First Annual Banquet" on December 17, 1914. President Max Smelensky, '15, introduced the toastmaster, Samuel Resnick, '13. The speakers were President G. Stanley Hall of the University, President Edmund C. Sanford of the College, Dean James P. Porter, Rabbi H. H. Rubenovitz of Boston, A. W. Hillman, '07, Joseph Talamo, '14, and Chancellor Hurwitz. (For the substance of President Hall's address see page 87.)
The Ohio State Menorah Society held its Annual Banquet on February 21. The toastmaster was Harry M. Udovitch, '14. (Mr. Udovitch was last year President of the Corda Fratres Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs). The speakers were Professor Joseph A. Leighton, Professor Ludwig Lewisohn, President Henry Greenberger, '15, of the Society, Herman Lebeson, '15, Ohio State Representative to the Intercollegiate Administrative Council, Rabbi Morris N. Taxon of Columbus, Dr. Sylvester Goodman, '06, and Helman Rosenthal, '12.
The Harvard Menorah Society will hold its seventh annual dinner on May 3.
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Transcriber's Notes:
Page 90, "alterative" changed to "alternative" (is an alternative)
Page 106, "qualite" changed to "qualité" (l'aquérir la qualité)
This text uses both coöperation and co-operation, as well as today and to-day.
THE MENORAH JOURNAL
_Published Bi-monthly During the Academic Year By The Intercollegiate Menorah Association "For the Study and Advancement of Jewish Culture and Ideals" 600 Madison Avenue, New York_
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VOLUME I JUNE, 1915 NUMBER 3
CONTENTS
THE POTENCY OF THE JEWISH RACE _Charles W. Eliot_ 141 ISRAEL AND MEDICINE _Sir William Osler_ 145 THE WAR FROM A JEWISH STANDPOINT _Richard Gottheil_ 150 O SWEET ANEMONES: _A Song_ _Jessie E. Sampler_ 158 "PATHS OF PLEASANTNESS" _David Werner Amram_ 159 THE JEWISH GENIUS IN LITERATURE _Edward Chauncey Baldwin_ 164 JEWISH WORTHIES: JOCHANAN BEN ZAKKAI _Abraham M. Simon_ 173 ZIONISM: A MENORAH PRIZE ESSAY _Marvin M. Lowenthal_ 179 FROM COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY: _Activities of Menorah Societies_ 194 NOTES _of The Intercollegiate Menorah Association_ 200
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THE MENORAH JOURNAL
VOLUME I JUNE, 1915 NUMBER 3
[Illustration]
The Potency of the Jewish Race
BY CHARLES W. ELIOT
[Illustration: _CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT (born in Boston, 1834), preëminent as educator and publicist; for forty years President of Harvard University; revered not only by Harvard men but by all Americans as a great leader of thought and opinion. Dr. Eliot warmly welcomed the organization of the first Menorah Society at Harvard, in 1906; and to his encouragement is due in large measure the growth of the Menorah movement. At a time when the problems and lessons of the war are absorbing his attention, Dr. Eliot has generously shown his continued sympathy with the Menorah aims and his interest in the Menorah Journal by preparing this article._]
For many centuries the Jews have had no country of their own or even national headquarters. They have been scattered among many nations, all more or less unfriendly, and some cruelly oppressive; yet they have retained, under the most adverse circumstances, the capacity to earn their livelihood, to bring up families, and to maintain the great traditions of their race. The main reason for the indestructibility of the Jews is that they early embraced certain invaluable ideals, and have struggled towards them indomitably for thousands of years.
_Races and Ideals_
The principal difference between races is difference of ideals. Whenever several distinct races come to live side by side on the same territory in the bonds of a peaceful and coöperative fellowship for all common public purposes, it will be found that they have all reached common political and social ideals, although in regard to many racial attributes and even in regard to religious beliefs they remain distinct.
The assimilation of different races can be brought about only by a gradual acceptance of the same ideals and aspirations. For several centuries this process of assimilation has been going on in many parts of the earth, and is now going on at an accelerated pace, resulting in larger conceptions of nationality and larger political or governmental units.
_The Influence of Lofty Ideals on the Jewish Race_
The Jewish race affords the strongest instance of the influence on a human stock of lofty ideals, persistently held wherever on the face of the earth a fragment of the race has planted itself. In all generations and in all environments the Jews have succeeded in competition with other races to a remarkable degree. Among a poor population they are less poor than their neighbors; among a free and prosperous population the Jews become richer and more prosperous than the average. Confined in unwholesome Ghettos, they retain to an astonishing degree their health and vitality, helped doubtless by the dietary and sanitary directions given in their ancient Scriptures. Deprived of the right to bear arms in many countries, and, therefore, unable to resist savage attack, they remain inextinguishable. Wherever they become prosperous they develop an extraordinary community feeling, and take care of their own poor or unfortunate. In short, in all generations and in all their various environments they have exhibited, and still exhibit, a remarkable racial tenacity and vigor. It is manifest that this normal success of the race is not due to any especially favorable material conditions, but to the rare strength and significance of its ideals.
_"The Noblest of Human Ideals": Jewish Monotheism_
What are these ideals? What have they been for thousands of years? The first of the Jewish ideals has been that of one God--the noblest of all human ideals--early attained, and persistently clung to by the whole race. Mohammedan monotheism is noble, and is the main source of the strength of those races which have embraced the religion of Mahomet; but the Mohammedan doctrine of One God arrived thousands of years after the Jewish, and never was so pure. The most significant sentence in the English speech is the first sentence of the Hebrew Bible--"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." That is the first of the Jewish ideals, to which the race has been true in all environments, in weal and in woe; and that belief has delivered it from many sorts of enfeebling and degrading terrors and superstitions.
_The Ideal of the Family_
Another Jewish ideal which has counted for much in the history of the race is the ideal of the family--pure, honorable, and sacred. The veneration of ancestors, which has been an important part of the religion of China and Japan, is only an undue exaggeration of the Hebrew commandment, "Honor thy father and thy mother." The Jewish race has seen fulfilled the promise which is the last phrase of that commandment, "that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee," although in many lands and not in any land of their own. The organized human society most likely to prove durable or permanent is that which possesses and maintains in theory and practise a lofty ideal of the family. The reverence shown by children toward their parents and the devotion of parents to their children, which prevail in Jewish families, are both more intense than is usual in Christian families. These sentiments yield infinite good in any human society; they produce, and pass on from generation to generation, purity of life, family honor, and a real consecration of the best human affections. That is the second potent Jewish ideal.
_The Ethical Ideal of the Ten Commandments_
The third effective ideal is the ethical teaching contained in the Ten Commandments, the most compact and yet comprehensive code of morals ever written. These ethical principles have been held before the Jewish race for thousands of years wherever it has lived, in good times and bad, an ideal toward which the race has always struggled, though with frequent lapses. This code contains the institution of the Sabbath Day, which by itself accounts for much of the extraordinary endurance of the race.
The Jews have always been distinguished for their respect for learning and their zeal for education. In the Ghettos of Europe, under the most discouraging conditions, their Rabbis kept alive the ancient learning, and through many centuries gave the elite of the rising generation some mental training, when no instruction was to be had by the masses of mankind. A persecuted race, provided it retains its vitality and elasticity, receives admirable training in loyalty to its ideals. In the case of the Jews this was a loyalty not only to race, but to religion; and religious loyalty is the finest and most sustaining of all loyalties. The religion of the Jews emphasizes an ideal to which the Jewish mind and heart have responded ardently from the earliest times--the ideal of righteousness. Loyalty to this ideal includes loyalty to race, family, religion, and all righteous persons. The Jews believe that righteousness alone exalteth a nation, a family, or a man.
_Will the Jewish Race Meet the Test of Liberty?_
For two thousand years the Jews have led their daily lives under exposure to bodily harm, injustice, and all sorts of disaster, and under such grievous trials have preserved their ideals. The race is now to be put to another and severer test. In the free countries of Europe and America the Jews enjoy complete political and industrial liberty. They were for centuries excluded from most professions, arts, and industries, and were driven into trade and money-lending. Now all callings are open to them. In the Middle Ages there were only a few directions in which a successful Jew could safely spend his money. Now he can spend it in any direction--wisely and beneficently, or foolishly and ostentatiously. Will the race bear liberty as well as it has borne oppression? The liberty, which is the only atmosphere in which the strongest men and women can develop, often causes the downfall of weak-willed human beings. Rich Jews, like other rich people, are in danger of becoming luxurious--the more so because the race has been cut off from military service, and has not been addicted to out-of-door sports. The worst destroyer of sound family and national life is luxury. If the race is to meet successfully the test of liberty, it will get over its apparent tendency of the moment towards materialism and reliance on the power of money, hold fast to its social and artistic idealism, and press steadily towards its intellectual and religious ideals.
[Illustration: Signature: Charles W. Eliot]
Israel and Medicine
BY SIR WILLIAM OSLER
[Illustration: _SIR WILLIAM OSLER (born in Ontario, Canada, in 1849) Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford and one of the world's leading medical authorities; distinguished not merely as investigator, teacher, and practitioner, but also as essayist and ethical teacher of singular grace and humanity, as shown in the volumes entitled "Aequanimitas" and "Counsels and Ideals." The present address, delivered in London at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Jewish Historical Society of England, is here given its first publication in this country, with Sir William's special authorization._]
In estimating the position of Israel in the human values we must remember that the quest for righteousness is Oriental, the quest for knowledge Occidental. With the great prophets of the East--Moses, Isaiah, Mahomet--the word was, "Thus saith the Lord"; with the great seers of the West, from Thales and Aristotle to Archimedes and Lucretius, it was "What says Nature?" They illustrate two opposite views of man and his destiny--in the one he is an "_angelus sepultus_" in a muddy vesture of decay; in the other, he is the "young light-hearted master" of the world, in it to know it, and by knowing to conquer. Modern civilization is the outcome of these two great movements of the mind of man, who to-day is ruled in heart and head by Israel and by Greece. From the one he has learned responsibility to a Supreme Being, and the love of his neighbor, in which are embraced both the Law and the Prophets; from the other he has gathered the promise of Eden to have dominion over the earth on which he lives. Not that Israel is all heart, nor Greece all head, for in estimating the human value of the two races, intellect and science are found in Jerusalem and beauty and truth at Athens, but in different proportions.
_Medicine in the Talmud_
It is a striking fact that there is no great Oriental name in science--not one to be put in the same class with Aristotle, with Hippocrates, or with a score of Grecians. We do not go to the Bible for science, though we may go to Moses for instruction in some of the best methods in hygiene. Nor is the Talmud a fountain-head in which men seek inspiration to-day as in the works of Aristotle. I do not forget the saying:
"_In uns'rem Talmud kann man Jedes lesen, Und Alles ist schon einmal dagewesen_."
With much of intense interest for the physician, and in spite of some brave sayings about the value of science, there is not in it the spirit of Aristotle or of Galen. It is true we find there one of the earliest instances in literature of an accurate diagnosis confirmed _post mortem_. A sheep of the Rabbi Chabiba had paralysis of the hind legs. Rabbi Jemar diagnosed ischias, or arthritis, but Rabbina, who was called in, said that the disease was in the spinal marrow. To settle the dispute the sheep was killed, and Rabbina's diagnosis was confirmed.
_The Role of Jewish Physicians in the Middle Ages_