reminds one of the
Biblical parable,--for parable it is though the chronicler know it
not,--that even in slave-ridden Egypt the angel of death could not
touch the Jewish home. It was exempt from the ravages of death,
because within it was something of immortal quality, something immune
to the challenge of destruction. The Jew who knows something of the
history of his people, over and beyond the list of boarding-schools so
Christian as to shut out Jewish children, knows that this was
prefigured by the prophet when he announced in the unforgettable word
of the Hebrew Bible: And He shall turn the heart of the parents to the
children and the heart of the children to the parents. That is exactly
what the Jewish home did, turning the hearts of parent and child to
each other, knitting them together in one indissoluble tie, so that
the home become as naught else the very soul of Israel.

CHAPTER XIV

THE JEWISH HOME TO-DAY

So much for the traditions of the Jewish home! What of it in this day
and generation? The fact cannot be denied that the Jewish home is
seriously threatened in our time. I do not go so far as a commentator
on Jewish affairs, who declared as long as a decade ago: "The Jewish
home, as we have known and loved it for ages, has ceased to be. It is
no longer a Jewish home but the home of Jews. All the grace and beauty
of Jewish ceremonial and custom have died out of it. The young
generation goes out into the world, unaffected by the influences that
held past generations loyal, and so Judaism and the community go alike
to waste." And, yet, that the indictment is not wholly unjustifiable
came to me when I learned of a Jewish mother who insisted upon a young
married daughter averting the birth of a child, because its coming
would interfere with and abbreviate a long-planned summer vacation in
European lands. The home which trifles with life's dignities and
sanctities in this fashion is become a mockery of the one-time
majestic Jewish home.

It will be noted that the reference is not to the vast majority of
Jewish homes in West European lands and in our lands, for these are
the homes of the poor. And the homes of the poor present a problem,
which in the absence of economic-industrial adjustment no ethical
aspiration will solve. As for the largest number of Jewish homes in
America, in them dwell victims of the mass migration movement which
has within two generations transplanted huge numbers from continent