Page:Jews and Judaism (Morris Jastrow).djvu/21

 should be no higher master for you than it. If your convictions, your honest and clear convictions. reached after the best thought you are capable of, lead you in a direction diverging from the path of what has hitherto been understood under Judaism, you are bound—bound I say by the laws of traditional Judaism—to follow what you hold to be right. I believe that it is no paradox to say that such a man is a better Jew than one who countenances a clash between theory and practice, who sacrifices on the altar of accommodation or policy what he holds to be true, even if externally he clings to practices which have hitherto been identified with Judaism.

It is not essential whether what you hold to be the truth is really correct or not. But it is essential that you follow what you hold to be true. You must do it, if you wish to be honest. We must not only love truth, but have the most absolute confidence in it. Whither it points, we must go. Where it leads, we can safely follow. I say, therefore, if congregations no longer accept the essential doctrines of Judaism in the sense in which they have hitherto been understood. it is neither a crime nor a misfortune, but let them say so, and if this be the case, do that which follows logically from the position they have taken. Let them not, however, halt between two opinions or sail under false colors.

From the point of view of conviction and not of policy or accomodationaccommodation [sic], all those questions which now agitate American Jews must be judged. In discussing, for example, such a question as that concerning a day of rest, let us not ask, can it be kept, but must it be kept on the seventh day? If you acknowledge the authority of the Bible in the sense in which the term authority has hitherto been understood, there is no question whatever but it must be kept, and you must do it, at least as well as you possibly can. If you do not believe in this authority, by your honest convictions do not hold the Bible of divine origin and authority, as the terms have hitherto been understood, then you must say so, and—I lay stress upon this—act accordingly. It is not a question of transferring Saturday to Sunday, it is a question of convictions. The