unity for Jewish service. The organization goes on the
principle--both the Intercollegiate and the constituent
Societies--that nothing Jewish is alien to it. For this reason the
Menorah takes no sides; for this reason it is Hebraic and not
Judaistic. For this reason it welcomes everything Jewish without
exception--theological and secular, Russian, German, French, English.
It requires only that a thing shall be Jewish, that it shall be a
possible part of the organic total we call Hebraism.

Hebraism is the flower and fruit of the _whole_ of Jewish life. Its
root is the ethnic nationality of the Jewish people, and with this
also the secularizing reformers agree when they prohibit and
discourage the marriage of Jew with Gentile.

Many of us, however, are not content with merely the _status quo_.
Throughout the nineteenth century it has thrown us into a series of
dishonorable compromises. We want a condition--I speak now for myself
and not for the Menorah--we want a condition in which the genius of
the Jew, the Hebraic spirit, may express itself without any need of
compromise. The orthodox Jew, at least, retains his integrity with his
darkness. But we are in danger of losing our integrity. We concede to
our environment point after point. But we are not liberated in spirit
by these concessions; we are merely turned into amateur Gentiles. The
orthodox sectary makes no concession to environment, and tends to
petrify and die. The reformed sectary makes too many, and tends to
dissolve and die. This is the penalty for the _status quo_.

Life, to be sure, consists of compromise and concession. But for
integral living we must make them as masters, not serfs. There must be
one place where the ancestral spirit of the Jew will not need to adapt
itself to the world, but will, like the English or French spirit,
adapt the world to itself. That place is determined nationally, just
as the places of all European culture are determined nationally and
racially.

_The Aspiration for a Jewish State_

Pride in ancestry is not pride of race, but pride in the spirit of the
race, and pride of ancestry is not pride merely of background, but
pride in the obligations that ancestry sets. All aristocrats have one
motto--it is _noblesse oblige_. This must be the motto of the Jew. We
must hence carry our obligation in the spirit of the prophets, which
is not primarily a theological spirit, but a purely humane spirit, for
which the necessity of man