ember what was said of Emerson,--that "he was an
iconoclast without a hammer, removing our idols so gently it seemed
like an act of worship." The dissenter need not be a vandal and the
filial dissenter ought to be farthest from the vandal in manner
touching the religious beliefs of parents. I would not carry the
reverent manner to the point of outward conformity, but it may go far
without doing hurt to the soul of a child, provided the spiritual
reservations are kept clear.

CHAPTER VIII

CONFLICTING STANDARDS

The conflict of today is oftenest one between parental orthodoxy and
filial liberalism or heresy. My own experience has led to the
conviction that the clashing does not ordinarily arise between two
varying faiths but rather between faith on the one hand and unfaith or
unconcern with faith on the other. As for the Jewish home, the problem
is complicated by reason of the truth, somehow ignored by Jew and
non-Jew, that the religious conversion of a Jew usually leads to
racial desertion as far as such a thing can be save in intent. In the
Jewish home, racial loyalty and religious assent are so inextricably
interwoven,--with ethical integrity in many cases in the
balance,--that it is not to be wondered at that conflict oft obtains
when the loyalty of the elders is met by the dissidence of the younger
and such dissidence is usually the first step on the way that leads
to a break with the Jewish past.

And the battle, generally speaking, is not waged by parents on behalf
of the child's soul nor yet in the interest of imperilled Israel, but
in the dread of the hurt that is sure to be visited upon the guilt of
disloyalty to a heritage cherished and safeguarded through centuries
of glorious scorn of consequences. I should be grieved if a child were
to say to me: "I cannot repeat the ancient Shema Yisrael, the
watchword of the Jew: I find it necessary to reject the foundations of
the Jewish faith." My heart, I say, would be sad, but I would not
dream of attempting to coerce the mind of a child. I would look with
horror and with heartbreak upon the act of a child, who under one
pretext or another took itself out of the Jewish bond and away from
Jewish life. If, I repeat, a child of mine were to say "I can have
nothing to do with Israel," I would sorrow over that child as lost
because I should know that its repudiation of the household of Israel
was rooted in selfishness colored by self-protective baseness. But,