Self--the forgetting of
the ultimate values of life.

There are other modes of thought for Jewish women. The expression of her
own individuality is not a matter to which she can attach supreme
importance; rather is she unconsciously finding an escape from this
burdening consciousness of individuality by ever seeking identification
with her husband, with her children, with her home, with her own people
and with God. She possesses the inestimable good of being bound by a
great tradition. It is ever thus with those who are conscious of a
sufficient inner life: the modern cry for individual freedom is but one
result among many of the poverty of our lives.

The Westernized Jews, it is true, are more or less tainted with the
errors of industrial communities. It is, of course, where the early
marriages of the ghettoes prevail, where the married woman religiously
covers her own hair with a wig immediately after marriage, where
marriage, as I have said, is regarded as a duty, and love, therefore, is
not considered to be of overwhelming importance, that the full
difference between Jewish and Gentile traditions is seen.

This difference is partly due directly to religious influences.
Christianity considers marriage as a concession to human wickedness and
the continuance of the race a doubtful benefit. "A remedy for sin" as
the English Prayer Book states with such delightful frankness. When I
remember this Christian view of marriage, I am not surprised at the
corruptions into which we have fallen; it is an atmosphere rich for the
development of industrial values. The Jews have never fallen into this
hateful denial of life. Judaism still considers it a command of God to
increase and multiply: the unmarried life, not the married life, is
regarded as sinful. The ascetic view of marriage, as well as the
romantic view that love is everything, are both anti-Jewish.

The Jews, and, I think, even more strongly the women, can never be
individualists. I must again emphasize this fact, for everything else
depends upon it. Never can the Jewish wife and mother come to seek
personal pleasure as the chief aim in marriage, or delight greatly in
expressing her own individuality in spiritual union. She is not absorbed
by her own joy or engrossed by her own sorrow. She is content to be
married, and accepts any disadvantages that come from that state; she
believes in her husband, in her children, and even if these fail her,
she believes in her ra