Page:George Eliot and Judaism.djvu/97

 calls out to him, "As to the connection of our race with Palestine, it has been perverted by superstition till it's as demoralising as the old poor-law. The raff and scum to there to be maintained like able-bodied paupers, and to be taken special care of by the angel Gabriel when they die. It's no use fighting against facts, we must look where they point; that is what I call rationality. The most learned and liberal among us who are attached to our religion are for clearing our liturgy of all such notions as a literal fulfilment of the prophecies about restoration, and so on. Prune it of a few useless rites and literal interpretations of that sort, and our religion is the simplest of all religions, and makes no barrier, but a union, between us and the rest of the world." Others will say that the establishment of a national State is not the aim of Jewish history at all. Taking the analogy of the