ce, her religion, and the inheritance of her
people: this gives her a center of gravity outside of herself. For
thousands of years Jewish women have been taught the value of service;
the dedication of the Self to an ideal. At the same time, they have been
held firm to the realities of marriage by their worship. These two
influences will, I believe, forever make it impossible for Jewish women
in any numbers to accept the egoistic view of marriage and the duties of
women that has been set up in England, as also in other European lands
and in America, indeed wherever Self-assertion has been admitted as the
ruling principle of life.

For these reasons the Jewess, with her special attitude toward marriage
and to life, offers a picture of the deepest significance for the study
of all industrial races. That is why I turn to her in the hope of making
plain to us Western women our mistakes. She, in my opinion, can show us
the path wherein alone in future we can find happiness.

The Jewish women have inherited the most perfect feminist ideal that as
yet the world has known; an ideal of service within the home of which
full life she is the high-priestess; an ideal turning to foolishness the
false values of this industrial age. And this ideal of service, shared
by all, gives to the most unlearned Jewish woman the priceless knowledge
of an eternal truth: a truth that has to be learnt by each one among us
before we can find happiness--that only by losing ourselves can we find
the Self that is eternal. The Jewish woman learns this truth by living
it.

The deep reasons of life lie beyond the realm of individual advantage.
The Jewish spirit, pursuing its ends deliberately and wisely, demands of
women and of men two different devotions. It asks of women devotion to
men, to their children, to their homes; of men, devotion to ideals.
Jewish women do not wait to ask if men are worthy, their thought is of
service. They understand that in each devotion lies an equal glory, an
equal joy, and an equal honor in the sight of God and of man.

There is so much more I would like to say. I would wish to show you
something at least of the success with which religion among the Jews has
been turned to domestic uses. No detail of the home life is left
unhallowed. Even the poorest Jewish home is saved by its ceremonies from
the degrading indifference to decency and tenderness, which is the
terrible feature of the industrial homes of poverty. The sancti