ical Judaism," of the larger orthodox
sect. But the period of the great prophets is not the period of
Judaism, and strictly speaking, the term Judaism excludes the
prophetic element as an active force in Jewish life. This is
significant, and to me the significance seems tremendous, for so far
as my personal sympathies are concerned they go entirely with the
prophetic aspects of Judaism, or better, of Hebraism.

_Hebraism and Judaism_

Hebraism and Judaism are words now in the English language and their
usage is determined for us entirely by the writers who become
authoritative either by their style or through the weight of their
opinion, and this usage has given the term Hebraism a meaning such
that it stands for the entire spirit of the Jew, not only in religion
but in all that is Jewish; in English the term Hebraism covers the
total biography of the Jewish soul, while the term Judaism stands only
for a portion of it. Now the Jewish soul is the important thing, but
no one has ever met a soul without a body (at least the people who
claim they have met it are still required, for belief, to show
evidence more than they have thus far shown); generally speaking, soul
and body are co-ordinate and mutually imply each other. You cannot
have one without the other. This is even more the case when you are
dealing not with an individual but with a people. Hence it is the
history of the Jewish body-politic with which Hebraism and its
components, including Judaism, co-ordinate.

For this reason the gentlemen who stated the object of the Society in
the constitution of the Harvard Menorah Society were compelled to take
into consideration the following historic fact: There was a time in
the history of mankind when religion and life were coincident. You
know that the prophets were reformers. The orthodox religion which
they fought was the religion of the land. They were progressive
religionists, just as the gentlemen who are in the Reform sect to-day
claim to be progressive religionists. When they established their
religion, _it_ became the religion of the whole nationality, for all
ancient religion is national religion. Religion for the Greeks, and
religion for the Jews, and religion for the Syrians, and for the
Babylonians, and the Romans, was essentially national and political,
and the political nationalism of religion in the time of the Roman
Empire was the immediate basis for the persecution of the Jews by the
Romans. The lat