Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 11.djvu/244

* JEWS. 218 JEWS. calls the national ifgenciation under the Jlacca- liean licroes. The dietary laws, as laid down in the Hilile and interpreted by Ihe rabbinical authorities, are universally held to be binding among the orthodox .Tews, while only a few of the reform .Jews observe them Ihroiigh ancient habit or through veneration of the past. The use of the Hebrew language among the Jews has generally given way to the vernacular of the countries in which they live. Of late, however, there has been a certain revival in the use of Hebrew, due to the more national .Tewish sentiment-s which have inspired large numbers of the Jews. In the .Jewish colonies in Palestine, Hebrew is the vernacular, and a nundier of .Jew- ish journals and reviews arc published in Hebrew, not only in the East, but in various parts of Kurope. The .Judeo-German. or Yiddish, has also experienced a revival. This language, which has as its base a dialect of German spoken in the Rhine regions during the Middle Ages, has become through the expansion of the (ierinan .Tews east- ward the common tongue of several millions of Jews living in Russia. Austria, and the Halkan Peninsula. When these .Jews were again driven westward, during the closing quarter of the nineteenth century, they carried this Yiddish with them into the new gbcttoes of Western Europe and Northern America. In the large cities of these countries many Y"iddish daily and weekly papers are published. Because of con tact with many other languages and civiliza- tions, this Yiddish has become variously modified by the introduction of Russian. I'olish, Higli German, or English expressions and gi-ammatical forms. The training of men for the Jewish ministry was in former times peculiarly one-sided. The seminaries, or i/eshiboK, devoted their time exclu- sively to rabbinical jurisprudence and Talnnidic law ; secular learning was looked at askance, as the rabbi was not a minister in the modern seise of the word, but a legal adviser and a judge in matters of religious disi)ute. Very early in the nineteenth centiirv the ne<'d for some more inodern course of instruction was felt. A seminarA' for the training of teachers was founded as early as ISO!) in Cassel, Germany. The first regular seminary for the training of rabbis, however, was foimded in Padua in 1S29. In 1854 the conservative semi- nary was established in Breslau : this was fol- lowed by similar institutions in Berlin. London, Paris, Budai)Ost and Vienna. In the United States, afttr some abortive attempts in the sixties and seventies of the nineteenth centiiry. the Hebrew Union College was founded in 187.5 at Cincinnati, by the t'nion of American Hebrew Congregations, under the presidency of Isaac M. Wise. Dr. K. Kohler was elected its president in 1003. This Union, founded in 1873, comprised all the important congregations of the United States which had a leaning toward reform, and the college is therefore generally recognized as the training-place of ministers for this wing of the synagogue. It attempts to give its students an historical knowledge of the development of Jewi.sh history and the .Tewish religion, and to fit them for active preachers and communal workers. As its graduates cannot serve in orthodox con- gregations, the .Jewish Theological Seminary was established in 1886 in the city of New York for the purpose of training rabbis who shall under- stand the principles of .Jew'ish law and be able to interpret it practically to the congregations whom they are to serve. In the year 1902 the .Jewish Theological Seminary of America was enlarged, and Prof. S. Schechter, of Cambridge, Knglaiid. was called to be the president of its fac- ulty. In the year 1893 a training-.school for religious school-teachers was founded at Philadel- phia, with the money left to the ilickwe Israel Congregation, of that city, by Hyman Gratz. It is called Gratz College. In the same year the .lewish Cluuitauqua Society (q.v. ) was founded by Dr. Henry Berkowitz, of Philadelphia, which carries on a sort of .lewish university exten- sion work, by means of Chaulauquan circles in various States, and a sununer meeting at At- lantic Cit,v.. This gave rise in 1899 to the .lewish .Study .Society in London. Work on these lines is also done by the Young Jlen's Hebrew .Associations, the fir.st of which was foundeil in New Y'ork in 1874, and which are now to be fovmd in nearly all the larger cities in the I'nited States. A .Tewish |)ul)lication society was founded in Philadelphia in 184:'). and a second one in New York in 1873, but both of these were short-lived. In 1888 the .lewisli Publication Society of America was organized, in Pliila- delphia, and has since then published a number of works dealing with .Tewish history and .Jewish life. The onl,v .Jewish learned society in the United States is the American .Tewisli Histori<al Society, founded in 1892. In 1893 the .Tewish Historical Societv of England was founded. A similar society {Socirtc dcs Etudes Juifs) exists in France, and its interests cover the whole of .Jewish history; while in Germany there are over a hundred .Jewish literary' societies which give courses of lectures on .Jewish subjects and publish a year-book. The National Council of .Tewish Women, an American organization estab- lished in 1893. has endeavored to foster the re- ligious spirit in the home by the personal inllu- ence of its members and by organized philan- thropic effort. One of the peculiar features of American .Juda- ism is the large development of the Sabbath- schools attached to the congregations. As early as 1838 a general Sunday-school was organized in Philadelphia for .Tews of all shades of belief. In 184.5 the movement spread to New Y'ork; in 1848 the Hebrew Educational Societv was founded in Philadelphia, and in 1864 the Hebrew Free School Association was incorporated in New Y'ork. There were, in 1903. nearly 300 religious schools attached to congregations in the United States, and 27 .lewish free schools. The arrival of large numbers of .Jews from Russi.a and Rumania has made necessarj' the founding of manual training and technical schools, in which the rising .generation ma.v be taught handicrafts, from which they have largely been excluded by legislation in Eastern Europe. Such schools exist in New Y'ork. Philadelphia, Chicago, and other cities, and have been fostered especially by the Baron de Hirseh Fund. A remarkable development in modern .Tewish life is that of the Zionist movement. In a measure it is the continuation of the old Jewish hope of restoration to the land of Palestine. It is also the .Jewish answer to anti-Semitism. Starting with a pamphlet by Dr. Theodor Herzl of Vienna (A JeiLifh fttntp: An Attempt at a Modern !^nlvfinii of the Jeirinh Question. Vienna, IS96: Eng. trans, by D'Avigdor, London, 1896),