Page:Leo Jung - Foundations of Judaism (1923).pdf/19

 and listening to speeches which, instead of helping to solve their dimly understood, though acutely felt, difficulties, enhance them by appeals to do the impossible, where the simple and easy has been neglected.

Church religion means the end of religion. God must not be a Sunday or Shabbos dignitary, whom you must not visit in working clothes. He is either the God of every minute of your life, or He is the mere outlet of hysterics or some sentimental vacuity. God, to become the guide of our life, must be taught. Judaism teaches that God is not some philosophical abstraction retired from human spheres of action and wrapped in contem plation of Himself, the “ Akyneton Kynon " of Greek Philos ophy, but He is vitally interested in every human being, caring with a Father's care for every one of His children, Jew or Gentile, great or small. And Judaism teaches moreit proclaims that God who has given us life, has created us for His own end: the perfection, out of free will, of the human race. This doctrine of Judaism is em bodied in a term unknown outside our religion, and hardly understood, in its full sense, even among the Jews. This is “Mitzvah." There are few Jews with the advantage of Jewish upbringing who have not heard or used this term. But, how many have been conscious of its profound influence upon the character—religious, social, and intellectual, of the Jew! Mitzvah means commandment—it also means good deed. Mitzvah tells the Jew that in whatever he does he ought to consider God. Train your self to regard the ideal as the main object in life, to which the material must bow! Tell your little ones that they pray on awakening so that God be their first thought in the morning.