bscurity and
sluggishness of its former parochialism. This great world crisis will
be either the making or the unmaking of American Jewry, and no Jew
whose mind is unclouded by the ephemeral passions of party strife can
do aught except ardently pray that the Jews of America may emerge in
triumph from their supreme test.

[Illustration: Signature: Israel Friedlaender]

Our Spiritual Inheritance

BY IRVING LEHMAN

[Illustration: _IRVING LEHMAN (born in New York, 1876), educated at
Columbia (A.B., 1896; A.M., 1897; LL.B., 1898). Justice of the Supreme
Court of New York; associated with a number of Jewish institutions,
including the Jewish Theological Seminary and the Y. M. H. & Kindred
Associations. Justice Lehman has taken a particularly keen interest in
Jewish University students, and as Chairman of the Graduate Menorah
Committee since the formation of the Intercollegiate Menorah
Association, he has been generously helpful in promoting the ideals
which the Menorah movement embodies. Devoted Jew and public-spirited
American, his personal example has been an inspiration to Menorah men
all over the country._]

IF a Jew of the Middle Ages, or even a Jew living to-day in almost
medieval conditions in Poland, were present to-night,[A] he would
certainly say, "What sort of a conference of rabbis is this, at which
a layman is presiding, another layman is to speak on 'The Religion of
the Hebrews,' and a third layman is to speak on a social movement?"

To the old-time Jew a conference of rabbis meant a conference of men
learned in the law and its authoritative interpretation in the
Talmud--men whose duty it was to teach this law and who would confer
among themselves upon the application of its abstruse and technical
rules to the daily needs of their congregations. But they could
recognize no questions and no problems not fully covered by that law;
consequently they could recognize no right in any person not an
authority on that law to take any part in such a conference except to
ask for the advice of the rabbis appointed to teach the law. That was
the attitude of our ancient leaders, and it met with the full and
unqualified approval of the Jewish laymen, because it fulfilled all
the requirements of our medieval condition. Until recent times we were
a people apart, living among the nations of the world, but not a part
of them. We had no right to join in the general civic life. Our life
consisted in the memory of a n