generating into dull platitudes. But if Judaism is essentially the
self-consciousness of the Jewish people, these doctrines will be
viewed as some of its characteristic expressions. As such they
forthwith become instinct with life. To be a religious Jew,
accordingly, means not merely to profess the unity of God in cold
philosophical fashion, but to live over again by means of thought and
symbol the divine intuition, the backslidings, the temptations, the
defiance, the threats, the tortures and the final victory implied in
the "Shema Yisroel." The Jew who does not thrill with exaltation when
he sings the world's most stirring paean, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is
our God, the Lord is One!" is either ignorant or has the blood of a
fish.

Whether Judaism is an ethical monotheism or the consciousness of
Israel is not merely an academic question. These two conceptions
represent widely divergent ways of dealing with the practical problems
of self-adjustment to the novel situation with which Judaism is
confronted. Whether the one or the other view shall prevail will make
a difference in the fight for existence. We protest that if Judaism
will be armed with nothing stronger than the conventional platitudes,
it must succumb. By knowing itself for what it really is, Judaism will
muster new heart and strength. The need for self-adjustment is not of
today; Judaism has been going through that process ever since it saw
the light. But during the past hundred and fifty years, Judaism has
been wrestling with the problem of self-adaptation which both the
redistribution of Jewry and the incursions of materialistic secularism
have called into being. In this comparatively short period of a
century and a half, Judaism has lived through all that the other
religions have experienced within the last three or four centuries. If
we were to compare the different stages in the process of Jewish
self-adjustment we should find them analogous to those through which
European religion in general has passed. These different steps in the
process seem to have been unavoidable because they are the concomitant
of the natural development of the human spirit. A review of the
salient phases in the self-adaptation of religion to the changing
conditions of life and thought will throw light upon the significance
of that vital method of viewing Judaism which has of late worked its
way into Jewish life--for the most part unawares.

_The Storm and Stress Period in