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depth psychology not only as diagnosis but as therapy. For Freud, while basing his science on the gloomy as- sumption that man was naturally bestial, was neverthe- less child of the Enlightenment in the faith that reason could make bestial man human. Herein lay, Liebman observed, the sum of what religious man had striven for: self-fulfillment through self-understanding.
And it is here that we touch on a crucial difference between Liebman and the pessimists who questioned the optimistic interpretation of man that had lain at the heart of the Enlightenment. Joshua Liebman was in the grand reforming tradition begun by Solomon Schindler. Liebman, too, thought that a cooperative economy would be superior to competitive capitalism, for in guaranteeing bread and status it would give us a less anxious and therefore "healthier human nature." However, it was first necessary to build better human beings in preparation for the better society. Equally important, the individual, irrespective of time, place, and culture, faced problems that were unrelated to the market place: "the universal human dilemmas of con- science, love, fear, grief, and God .... " Whereas Solo- mon Schindler started with the environment, Joshua Liebman began with the individual in the belief that the root of evil was in the very stuff of human nature.
The rabbi agreed unqualifiedly with Freud that every person is born with "primitive instinctual drives toward murder, incest, and cannibalism." These drives, known
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as the Id, are in the unconscious. If uncontrolled, they lead to evil. If repressed, they also lead to evil. Conven- tional religion, Liebman observed, demands that onc deny sensual and hostile thoughts. Denied, these thoughts guiltily bury themselves in the subconscious only to erupt in such disorders as hypertension and ul- cerative colitis, asthma and masochism, the inferiority complex and suicide. Miserable, men make others mis- erable through anti-social acts of one sort or another.
If men once comprehended that they are not to blame for the Id, which is innate, then they would not retreat from themselves in guilt. And without guilt they would be secure to love others and do good. It was Liebman's belief, although not Freud's, that God had endowed man with conscience. Fortunately, innate good was stronger than innate bad. Liebman was con- vinced that conscience, once apprised of the existence of the Id, would negate its "angers, resentments, pas- sion, lust, and envies ... . " Man was thus not doomcd to be the prisoner of his inner primitive self. Self-knowl- edge would lead to self-love, from which would come the implementation of the Golden Rule. The second commandment of Joshua Liebman's "commandments of a new morality" reads: "Thou shalt learn to respect thyself and then wilt thou love thy neighbor as thyself."
Men and women, Liebman continued, need outlets for their anger, aggression, and lust. The best sublima- tion was work, although the rabbi recommended that
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one talk about and thereby cleanse one's self of anti- social ideas. In extreme cases the psychiatrist was to be consulted. Typical of the rabbi's advice was to express "as much grief as you actually feel" on the death of a loved one, lest repression thwart genuine need and dis- tort personality. Also: "we must learn how to extricate ourselves from the bondage of the physical existence and coexistence of the loved one," and find someone "partially capable of replacing that relationship." Lieb- man acknowledged that long ago Jews discovered these principles and institutionalized them in Shiva. But men, brought up on "the superficiality of modern civili- zation," substituted for that ancient wisdom the false value that to hide emotion is good taste.
All this was accurate psychiatry, and it was presented in a palatable and clear way for laymen. But was it re- ligion? And was it Judaism? Liebman's answer - and he posed the questions himself - was yes and no. At times, he noted that psychiatry was merely the "key" to the temple - the nature of man - but only religion could give ideals and purpose; psychiatry delineated what is and forecast what could be, while religion an- nounced what ought to be. However, Liebman also identified the voice of psychiatry with the voice of God. He assumed that "whatever aids mankind in its quest for self-fulfillment is a new revelation of God's working in history," and concluded "that psychology's discov- eries ... are really the most recent syllables of the Divine."
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Whether or not this was mere rhetoric is not clear. What is clear is that Liebman rejoiced in the way psy- chiatry and religion dovetailed. The purpose of the first was to make amoral man moral, while the essence of the second was simply "the accumulated spiritual wis- dom and ethical precepts dating from the time of the earliest prophets and gradually formulated into a body of tested truth for man's moral guidance and spiritual at-homeness in the universe." Together psychiatrists and clergymen would teach men how and why they could and must practice tolerance and forgivencss; avoid self- pity, pride, insincerity, and cynicism; develop "the unity of man within himself"; open up the "untapped reser- voirs of ... creativity"; love and be loved. Healthy men at peace with themselves would not covet, and mature men free of nasty childhood memories would not com- mit adultery. Above all, religion and psychiatry would cooperate to prove the indispensability of "free will" to the grown-up, responsible, and divine-made man.
Joshua Liebman was a theist who traced disbelief to "lovelessness in early childhood, endocrine disturbances in adolescence, or a covertly hysterical fcar of emotion in adulthood!" From case studies, the rabbi concluded that the atheist often denied God because, as a child, he had trusted his parents only to be let down traumat- ically; and when "the parental idols toppled from their pedestal, God toppled with them." Similarly, the ag- nostic neither believed nor disbelieved in God because
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he had grown up in an "inconsistent home" of loving and friendly parents but a "stern and avenging" God.
When Liebman asked, "should not belief in God likewise be explained as the result of childhood resi- dues?" he seemed to be building a trap for himself. Ac- tually, the question was a rhetorical device to make clear the rabbi's own conception of the Divine Being. His answer to the question was " 'Alas yes.'" Modern man, brought up by the stern father, believes in a "prim- itive, highly anthropomorphic Father dwelling in the sky .... " Liebman himself had believed the Deity to be like his grandfather, until he came to understand the character of a divine power who alone created order, conscience, and intelligence. Mature men in a democ- racy must regard God as justice-seeker and truth-seeker who has chosen man as His partner to create the good society, not as a petulant, scolding, punishing, omnipo- tent "feudal deity." Joshua Liebman counted on demo- cratic America to "be brave enough to ... create its own God idea rather than rely upon outworn tradition."
We have in Rabbi Liebman's words on immortality the final element of his humanism. He did not refute the logic of theologians who contended that God would not create the hero of Earth only to destroy him after one moment in the continuum of time. Still Liebman did not accept this logic. Rather he advised men to consider the value of death, for who would want to live eternally through endless struggle, and without the
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drama of beginning, middle, and end? Awareness of death is a blessing that teaches us to clench "the fra- gility and nobility of the human dream," the rabbi ob- served. Again, in a phrase often quoted by others after his own death: "it is the knowledge that our years are limited which makes them so precious."
Temple Israel's famous rabbi was reading Aging Suc- cessfully when he died suddenly in 1948 of a heart at- tack. In death as in life Joshua Liebman was evidence of tragic irony. He accepted life on its own ironical terms - that man had vast potentialities for good but infinite capacity for evil. His name was fittingly me- morialized by the founding of the Joshua Loth Liebman Chair of Human Relations at Hebrew Union College. The purpose is to combine the insights of religion and social science so as to isolate and then remove the evil that leads men to hate and fight. Shortly before his death Liebman made plans for an institute of human relations, and the title of an unfinished manuscript he had been preparing reveals what was on his mind: Hope for Man. Joshua Liebman remained faithful to the Re- form Jewish idea that Messiah means a democratic and peaceful society for mankind.
III
Rabbi Joshua Loth Liebman's death shocked a city, if not a nation, for he was more than the rabbi of a con-
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gregation. He was a pastor for many and all sorts of Americans, as the uncommon popularity of his radio sermons and book demonstrate. Eight thousand persons passed by his bier, while the throng who attended funeral services at Temple Israel was so numerous that the bulk could not get into the synagogue. Governor Bradford was there, as well as a number of Protestant clergymen. And from the provisional government of Israel came a telegram of sympathy. School was let out in Boston, the Massachusetts General Court adjourned for the night memorializing Joshua Liebman's name, and memorial services were held -in churches as well as synagogues - for the deceased clergyman. As a pas- tor for troubled persons in a troubled world, Joshua Liebman not only healed, but served as an emissary from Jewry to Christendom.
His congregation was proud of him, and members went to him with personal problems. Shortly before his death a psychiatric social worker was appointed to aid him in counselling. However, there were many who had no such neuroses as required medical care. These were not comforted by Liebman, although they were stimulated. A writer for the Ladies' Home Journal asked one of the officers of Temple Israel whether Liebman gave his congregation peace of mind. The answer was: "No." "Josh stimulates us too much, makes us think."
In making people think Joshua Liebman was in the tradition begun by Solomon Schindler, who had be-
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lieved in education as well as edification through the sermon. Liebman and his congregation, rejecting Schin- dler's idea that Jews were simply a religious group, re- turned to certain of the ancient folk traditions. This return reflected the need for group solidarity in a world that had witnessed the destruction of European Jewish life and the growth of American anti-Semitism. Lieb- man also defended the return on the grounds that the human psyche was so constituted that it needed the emotional outlet provided by religious liturgy; reason was not enough. Yet, Joshua Liebman's Peace of Mind embodies the hope that men will be reasonable enough to cure themselves of childish emotions so as to attain inner balance. Like Schindler, Liebman, although de- scribing man as part animal, was a rationalist.
That Jews are a people, that worship must satisfy emotional need, and that the synagogue ought to pro- mote social justice - these are ruling ideas in Reform Jewish thought at midcentury. Like his three predeces- sors Abraham Klausner was ordained at Hebrew Union College. Prior to assuming the pulpit of Temple Israel in 1949, he served as a chaplain in the United States Army during World War II and thereafter as assistant to the President of his theological alma mater. When he resigned from Temple Israel in 1953 he was succceded
Fabian Bachrach
Abraham J. Klausner
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by Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn, who for seventeen years since his ordination had served at Central Synagogue of Nassau County in Rockville Centre, New York.
The present rabbi approves of the credo adopted by the Central Conference of American Rabbis that "Ju- daism is the soul of which Israel is the body." Already he has gone beyond his predecessor in formalizing the conception that Jews are a people with a strong emo- tional tie to the folk past: Shabbos candles are lighted at services, and the rabbi wears a tallith-stole on his robe. For some years he has been an editor of The Recon- structionist, a magazine that champions the idea that Jewishness is peoplehood. Like his two predecessors, he supports the Jewish state of Israel. All of this Rabbi Gittelsohn defends on the grounds that the Reform in Reform Judaism means continuing change for the better.
Roland Gittelsohn, author of two books and man of action, is devoted to the endless task of achieving de- mocracy. He has written: "If Judaism stands for any- thing, it stands for the brotherhood of men - all men." Vitally concerned with removing prejudice, he served in 1947 on President Harry S. Truman's Committee on Civil Rights; and sensitive to the dangers imperilling civil liberties, he has spoken out against reckless defa- mation of character. In 1952, the rabbi won a Freedoms Foundation award. A chaplain with the Fifth Marine Division at Iwo Jima, Rabbi Gittelsohn knows the
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meaning of struggle and misery, but also of triumph. One of his books is entitled, characteristically, Little Lower Than The Angels. His religion, deriving from belief in God as beneficent and moral mover of the uni- verse, is, in the words of William James, "the religion of healthy-mindedness." In fine, the present and sixth Reform rabbi of Temple Israel brings to Boston the classical Reform Jewish principle that Judaism justifies itself "by playing a vital, functioning role in achieving this-worldly salvation. . . . "
Part Three
The Rabbi Looks at the Future
Hal Harrison
Roland B. Gittelsohn
CHAPTER EIGHT
Temple Israel's Tomorrow
T .0 turn from the past to the future is at once to attempt the most difficult and most intriguing part of this evaluation. Difficult, because not even with the most instructive insights of our history would any honest man pretend to accurate clairvoyance. Intri- guing, because though we have been largely determined beyond our will by the past, we have it within our pres- ent power, in part at least, to act in determination of the future. Indeed, this is in a sense the reason for un- dertaking such a study as this on the occasion of Tem- ple Israel's Centenary: that we may learn enough about the past, and apply it with sufficient intelligence in the present to influence our congregation's character in the future.
At many crucial moments our development reflected that of Reform Judaism at large. But it would be a serious and disparaging mistake to assume that Temple
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Israel's role has always been a passive one. As often as we have reflected tendencies and developments initiated elsewhere, we have ourselves pioneered in such changes, and thereby have influenced in turn the larger body of congregational life in American Reform Judaism. We cannot be content to have it otherwise in the future. While we shall always be responsive to the best in the world around us, we shall also be jealous of our role as one of the truly great congregations of the country, not only in a physical sense, but also in the influence we exert on the future of congregational life in general. In a sense, therefore, we undertake more than the foolish might at first suppose when we seek to inquire into the future activity and role of Temple Israel.
I
There are three directions for the future which I my- self hold very close to my mind and heart. First - and perhaps foremost - I believe the chief responsibility of our congregation is to make Judaism as a religious civili- zation meaningful and functional in the lives of our individual members. For better or for worse, whether we like it or not, the synagogue has outgrown some of its previous roles in American life. It is no longer an essential center for the social or communal activity of the American Jew; numerous secular and fraternal or- ganization now fulfill that function in whole or in part.
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Nor is the synagogue any longer an exclusive sponsor even of Jewish education; there is an increasing number of Jewish schools now developing under communal auspices. Nor, finally, is the synagogue as greatly needed now as it once was to provide general cultural oppor- tunity for the community as a whole. In earlier days, a lecture or forum at Temple Israel often provoked as much excitement and attention among Christians as among ourselves. Today, even apart from the competi- tion of television and radio, Boston has become, in the only partially facetious words of one contemporary, a community in which half the population travels about lecturing to the other half.
If the synagogue today is less indispensable than be- fore in these respects, it is far more essential in provid- ing a functioning religious orientation for its members. One of the strange paradoxes of our time is that, while men and women of all faiths today may be better ad- justed to home and community and nation than were their fathers, they are far less adjusted to their universe. For Jews, no other agency can take the place of the synagogue in providing this larger and vastly more im- portant kind of adjustment. Our principal purpose in the future, therefore, must be to offer our members such knowledge and reinterpretation of their traditions as will actually function in their lives. We must give them a mature acceptance of life's inevitable tragedies, and stimulate them to ethical conduct consistent with
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the challenge of their ancient prophets. There may be other agencies equipped to give some kinds of Jewish education; only the synagogue can provide the proper kind of Jewish religious education.
This means teaching and learning and knowledge. It means that pulpit and classroom must be coordinated to make our people Jews not merely by the accident of birth, nor by coincidence or convenience or social homo- geneity, but by deep conviction and faith. There was a time when Temple Israel members were proud of the fact that half or more than half the attendance at re- ligious service consisted of Christians. While, of course, men and women of all faiths, indeed of no faith, are always welcome, it is far more important now and in the future that our attendance be calculated in terms of our own members who are regularly present. Our first task must be to help Jews find their place as such in the universe.
II
A second responsibility Temple Israel must face in its immediate future is that of bringing the insights of prophetic Judaism to bear on the making of American society. In the earliest period of colonial settlement, it was scarcely necessary for Jews to do this in person. One wishes that the average Jew today knew as much about Jewish biblical tradition as the average educated Protes-
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tant knew in our nation's infancy. Those who settled New England's shores, establishing here the outlines of what soon became the United States of America, con- sciously followed the patterns of Jewish learning and values in many ways. Early American civilization bore the unmistakable imprint of Judaism.
Today this is no longer true. If we believe that Juda- ism as a religious civilization still has something positive to contribute to the making of America, then it follows inescapably that there must be individual Jews in America who will know enough about their heritage to apply it to the crises of contemporary life. Judaism has unique attitudes to express, and therefore unique con- tributions to make, on many problems currently of con- cern to all Americans: on marriage and the home, on labor and industrial relations, on the responsibilities of public servants and ordinary citizens. Entirely aside from the need for knowledge of these attitudes by Jews them- selves for their own sake, it would be an unforgivable waste for America if we failed to know enough about our own Jewish past to make it a factor in the shaping of America's future.
Temple Israel was organized during the New Eng- land Renaissance, at a time when - influenced and in- spired by social visionaries like Emerson and Thoreau - men were experimenting at Brook Farm and else- where so as to establish a just society. The need for such bold experimentation is greater by far today than
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it was then. We have no record of how our congrega- tional fathers looked upon those of their contempo- raries who took religion seriously enough to apply it in their social conduct. We can, however, say with cer- tainty that if they understood their own Judaism, they must have seen in these efforts the sentences of modernity punctuated with the accents of ancient Jew- ish prophecy. No less is true of us today. We cannot profess or pretend to take our Judaism seriously unless we apply it to every problem of political or economic import where ethical considerations are at stake.
Both Rabbis Schindler and Fleischer, unfortunately, believed it necessary for Jews to surrender much of their own unique heritage in order to join with Christians in bringing religion to bear as an influence on society. We know today - or ought to know - better. It is pre- cisely in the proportion that we preserve our distinctive- ness and add the particular instrumentation of prophetic Judaism to the symphony of American life that we help most to eliminate our most grievous social ills. Again, therefore, the inescapable conclusion is that our people must have knowledge of Judaism. And the congregation as such must make it both possible and desirable that they obtain such knowledge. It is my fervent hope that, in addition to general knowledge of our religious civili- zation, we soon have in Temple Israel a Social Action Committee whose specific charge it will be to study the problems of our time in the perspective of Jewish re- ligious and social ideals.
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III
Not even so brief a prospectus as this could be con- cluded without adding, as an area for Temple Israel's growth in the future, the field of interfaith relationships. It may immediately be protested that here is another in- stance where the synagogue no longer has an exclusive or indispensable jurisdiction. True. But the synagogue does have, now perhaps more than ever, a unique con- tribution to make to our relations with our Christian neighbors. Far too much of the effort now being ex- erted in this direction is excessively apologetic. It aims at inducing the Gentile to accept us because, after all, we are so much like him that it hardly pays to quarrel over the insignificant difference.
The influence of the synagogue in general - of Tem- ple Israel in particular - must be quite in the opposite direction. It is altogether unworthy of us or our proud heritage to plead for good will by minimizing our unique- ness. Our congregation must increasingly build good will between Christians and ourselves precisely on the ground that we are different, and have, therefore, something unique to contribute to American culture. In an earlier time, Minot J. Savage thought he was pay- ing a compliment to liberal Jews as well as liberal Chris- tians when he wrote: "the Christian's ceasing to be a Christian, and the Jew's ceasing to be a Jew." Today this would be no compliment. Today - and tomor-
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row - Temple Israel must strive for the preservation of what is unique in Judaism and for good will based on the acceptance, indeed the encouragement, of that uniqueness. While doing that, we must also seek to help our fellow Jews choose as their liaison with all general causes in the community, not those Jews who know least about Judaism and whose zeal for more gen- eral work is actually a flight from themselves, but rather those Jews who know most about Judaism and who will, therefore, have most to contribute to the community.
IV
That we propose in some respects to depart from the ways of our founders does not mean or imply criticism of them. It rather suggests we intend to compliment them by assuming that, even as they adjusted Jewish tradition to their day, so we mean, in the same spirit, to adjust it to the changed circumstances of our own.
Temple Israel's tomorrow will be one of bringing rich Jewish religious inspiration to its individual mem- bers, of insuring that Judaism will be one of the several quantities to be added to the sum total of American life, and of establishing a mutually reciprocal relation- ship between our neighbors and ourselves on the basis of positive acceptance rather than of apologetic denial. In facing these tasks it is important that we be an active congregation, not just an active pulpit with a group of
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more or less passive followers. The health of Temple Israel, indeed of any Jewish congregation, is to be diag- nosed in terms of its members as a whole not by the success of its rabbi. Let us, then, face forward to the future as a group determined that our affiliation will be neither nominal nor minimal. Let us expect - and de- mand - that Temple Israel will make of us, here and now, "a kingdom of priests and a people of holiness."
Our Contributors
Os scar Handlin, author of our Foreword, is a Harvard Ph.D. and Professor of History at Harvard University. His course on American immigration attracts annually a large number of graduate students and under- graduates. He has written prolifically in the areas of American social, intellectual, and economic history. His chief works include Boston's Immigrants: 1790-1865; Commonwealth: A Study of the Role of Government in the American Economy; This Was America; The Up- rooted. For the last he won a Pulitzer Prize. His most recent publication is the Harvard Guide to American History, which, together with the Harvard American his- tory department, he helped to compile.
Bertram W. Korn holds a Doctor of Hebrew Letters from Hebrew Union College and is currently Senior Rabbi of Philadelphia's Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel. Formerly Assistant Professor of American Jewish
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Our Contributors
History at Hebrew Union College, he is now Editor of the Yearbook and Chairman of the Committee on Con- temporaneous History, both sponsored by the Central Conference of American Rabbis. He is also a member of the Council of the American Jewish Historical So- ciety and the American Jewish Tercentenary Committee of 300. Dr. Korn is a regular contributor to the scholarly journals and wrote the script for the film, Isaac M. Wise: Master Builder of American Judaism. His chief work is American Jewry and the Civil War, described by the Saturday Review of Literature as "a fascinating, scholarly volume." He contributed Chapter I to this volume.
Lee M. Friedman, octogenarian member of Temple Israel, is a prominent Boston attorney who has won dis- tinction in several fields. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He is a Trustee of the Boston Public Library. The possessor of the finest private library in America on Judaica, he has written much on the history of the Jews, and has served as President and is now Honorary President of the American Jewish His- torical Society. Among his numerous publications are: Early American Jews; Robert Grosseteste and the Jews; Zola and the Dreyfus Case; Rabbi Haim Isaac Carigal; and Jewish Pioneers and Patriots. He contributed Chap- ter II to this volume.
Moses Rischin is an Instructor at Brandeis University and is working for a Ph.D. at Harvard. His focal interest is American social history. At Brandeis he teaches Ameri- can civilization and American Jewish history. His dis-
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Our Contributors
sertation is on the American Jewish labor movement. He is the author of "Abraham Cahan and the New York Commercial Advertiser: A Study in Acculturation" and "From Gompers to Hillman: Labor Goes Middle Class." His Inventory of American Jewish History, prepared for the American Jewish Committee, is to be released by the Harvard University Press this year. He contributed Chapter III to this volume.
Arthur Mann is a Harvard PH.D. and Assistant Pro- fessor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- nology. He has contributed to Commentary, the New England Quarterly, the Antioch Review, and the Missis- sippi Valley Historical Review. His major interest is so- cial and intellectual history. His book, Yankee Reformers in the Urban Age, is to be released by the Harvard Uni- versity Press in the fall of this year. He contributed Chapters IV-VII to this volume.
Roland B. Gittelsohn is a graduate of Western Re- serve University and Hebrew Union College. He was Rabbi of Central Synagogue of Nassau County, Rock- ville Centre, from 1936-1953, when he was called to Temple Israel. He was on the Executive Board of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1949 to 1951; Chairman of its Placement Committee from 1949 to 1952; and is currently Chairman of the Commission on Justice and Peace. He served on President Harry S. Tru- man's Committee on Civil Rights and was a member of the Midcentury Committee for Children and Youth. He
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Our Contributors
is a national network preacher over Church of the Air (CBS) and Message of Israel (ABC). During World War II, as chaplain with the Fifth Marine Division, he re- ceived the Navy Commendation Ribbon, Navy Unit Ci- tation, and Presidential Unit Citation. Rabbi Gittelsohn delivered the sermon dedicating the Fifth Marine Divi- sion cemetery at Iwo Jima. He is a contributing editor of The Reconstructionist and author of two books: Modern Jewish Problems and Little Lower Than the Angels. He contributed Chapter VIII to this volume.
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