The Denver Jewish news., 1921-09-28

lmogen. Beatrice, Cleopatra, Lady Mac
beth, Regan--incomparable they are for
goodness and badness, for wonder and
horror and delight. How pale in com
parison the women of the Bible-Rebec-
ca. Hannah, Ruth These are not of
Shakespearean mold or speech. And l
hear of few Jewish women of later
times who are at all Shakespearean.
Theirs is another glory. They have
mOthered great race. This supreme
thing was never done. can never be done
by ribald scorners of the old moralities,
for those scorned moralities are at bot
tom nothing less than laws of nature.
The Mothers of Israel have done it be-
cause the ancient law of chastity was
engraved upon their hearts.
The Jew was the first to discover that
God is holy, that men and women are
holy. And when the holy Hebrew
Mother faces the ribald scorners of the
ancient morality / hear her say: Your
new fashion is not new. My people
have seen it in all the dying nations
scorn of the old morality, pride in the
license of beasts. We saw this fashion
in Sodom-in every SOdom-and always
we saw Sodom consumed with fire and
birthstone.
Vision. Israel is a dreamer. Not all
the individuals. In ancient times and
in all times thousands of them have had
no vision, even at the base o. Sinni, ex-
cept the vision of the golden calf. The
proverb warns them: Where there is
no vision the people perish" And be-
side the text stands the story of the
tribes who were .'unmindful of the Rock
that begot them and forgot God who
gave them birth"-the story of the
tribes that were lost.
But the greatest of the Israelites are
seers and the best of the Israelites be-
lieve in their vision. Jacob lay down
at night with stone for a pillar. "And
he dreamed and behold ladder set up
OIL the earth. and the top of it reached
to heaven; and behold the angels of
God ascending and descending on it,"
When Jacob awoke the stone under his
head was not so real as that ladder.
Smart youth-enlightcned, emanci-
pated, seeing one inch deep into the
bOttomless Reality and cock certain
that there is nothing dceper-knows
that the vision of Jacob is an illusion.
Call it Illusion. But see that Jacobs
vision and the like of it have made of
his children n race which forty cen
turtles could not destroy. 1t is the Vision
of God which has given the Jew his un-
conquerable viii to Live
Nv
l do not derive new theories, new
fashions. Our race must forever
struggle away from less perfect toward
more perfect adaptations to reality.
must therefore experiment with thou
sand new ways of living, better and
worse, But the essential thing about
a theory or fashion is not whether it is
new, but whether it is true, whether it
will work, whether it will in fact help
save our distracted world from such
ruin as once fell upon Ninevah and
Tyre ! would therefore not overlook
IA theory and way of life which have
worked under every hard condition, in
every land, In every civilized century.
would turn TO the Majesty of Israel
and ask what secret of the InfleNible
Reality he has found by which to sur
vive and by which to fill the four cor
ners of the earth with virile sons. Other
wisdom. higher wisdom we may think
to possess or to discover. But none
have found substitute for the triple
Wisdom of the Jew.-Thrift, Chastity.
Vision.