|
For
some time past the public prints have given exaggerated accounts of a
secession among the Jews at Frankfort on Maine, which we declined
noticing, as we fee1 little inclination to lend our aid to give
publicity to the doings of any number of transgressors who may happen to
associate for the purpose of sinning by system, in place of acting
wickedly each upon his own responsibility. In our estimation the above
Society is but an evidence of the deplorable state of irreligion in
which many of the continental Jew are sunk; and this new manifestation
which consists in the rejection of the rite of circumcision as well as
the authority of the Talmud is but a step, though a very important one,
farther than that which took place in London about three years ago. It
surprised us more, indeed, that some of our friends in England should
hurry on so thoughtlessly upon the dangerous road of producing sects in
the bosom of our religion, than that Germany should be the field for
such an act. It has always been our boast that we were an homogeneous
people, that we had one God and one law; and it has been reserved for
modern times to give the lie to this honest boast, and we are sorry,
mortified in spirit that we cannot avoid recording that this is so. We
always exercised the liberty of differing in minor matters, our religion
is one of freedom of opinion, and in some little matters, freedom of
action. But it has been reserved for the ultra-liberalists to form
themselves into distinct sects with avowed peculiar doctrines, by which
they sever themselves from the majority of Israel. We have thus a Temple
Association at Hamburg, a congregation of British [Reform] Jews at
London, and a Reform Society at Frankfort. The reader will observe that
the whole have adopted distinctive names, some new term of organization
unknown to the past history of our people. We have but little feeling of
religious persecution in our disposition; but still we must
unhesitatingly condemn those who thus bring disunion in Israel, and we
leave it to the candid Christian whether such exhibitions of separation
can well be justified by any alleged defects in our system. It may be
that these violent acts of the few will cause the many to think of the
danger which such associations may ultimately cause to the church of
God, and induce a union of all who fear the Lord to swear fidelity to
the law of Sinai and promote a strict observance of the precepts. At
least we hope so; and for one we here pledge our word that we will join
hand and heart with any number of brethren who may so unite to endeavour
to spread a more religious manner of life than is now generally
witnessed. And why should not associations be resorted to for good as
well as for evil?
It
was not our intention, however, to say much on the subject for the
present; we merely wished to lay before our readers an extract from a
letter of the 15th of March, which we find in the Orient, No.
14, of this year, since without such an opportunity we doubt whether we
should ever have alluded to the existence of such a body of sinful
seceders as the Reform Society of Frankfort, a society whose abrogation
of circumcision proves that they mean to destroy the law of Moses, not
to restore it by renouncing all rabbinical authority. “The Reform
Society, whose visible field of labour is for the present only
limited to the abolishing of circumcision, finds itself opposed in its
humane exertions, calculated only to promote concord and the happiness
of families (ironical), by a new obstacle, not called forth by the
defunct spirit of Rabbinism with its spectral aspect, but by the
friendly images of the present. We mean by this expression the women,
whose opposition is the more dangerous to the principles and tendencies
of the Reform Society, since their tender words or their yet more
dangerous outbreaks of anger are accustomed to overcome the most
absolute will of the men. We have already seen many women who have not
submitted to the religious principles of their husbands, and who have
not found in the coldness of philosophy and the whirling and turmoil of
enjoyments any compensation for the soft emotions of religious feelings,
to which the female mind leans so pre-eminently, which were to be
sacrificed to their husbands’ modes of life; but in the question
regarding circumcision their religious sentiment is displayed in the
strongest manner, and they manifest in this point a powerful opposition
to their husbands. The following occurrence, which took place this week
in our community, exhibits their truly religious sentiment in the best
light. A member of the board of our congregation refused, because he is
likewise a member of the
Reform Society, to have his new-born son circumcised; his wife employed
all means of persuasion to obtain from her husband the permission to
have her child entered in the covenant. But even the bodily weakness of the state where the wife ought to receive
all possible indulgence and be guarded against all mental excitement, a
state in which a tender treatment and indulgence become the holiest duty
of the husband, had to yield to the obligatory power of a paragraph of
the Reform statutes; ‘a man must be consequent’ was the tyrannical
order of the day, which sacrificed the tenderest emotion to the general
and high(!) aim of the society. But that which could not be obtained by
the weeping eye and the mild petition of the wife, was at length yielded
to the threatened prospective of an entire dissolution of the tender
bonds of love; and the angry earnestness of the wife effected this much,
that the father, though he did not entirely consent to the circumcision,
left the field, and let the religious act be performed, without,
however, sanctioning this holy consecration by his presence. Such are
the happy divisions, and such is a statute, which hurls the
burning torch of discord in the holy life of the family, to separate
children from parents, husbands from wives, brothers from brothers; this
is the result of a society whose only divinities are reason and
progress, to which its members must swear fidelity.”
The
account further states that the society intends to extend its operation
also to the women, in order to avoid all danger of opposition on their
part, and that in future no man shall be received unless his wife also
joins.—But we trust that the noble spirit of Israel’s daughters will
spurn to be bound by any other statutes than the law of God. Thanks,
noble daughter of Jacob! thanks in the name of all Israel; how gladly
would we make public the name of her who so nobly withstood the mandate
of her domestic tyrant! it is a bright spot in our dark history of the
present day; but this sign assures us that all is not yet lost whilst
such a spirit prevails, whilst such a heart beats in one bosom. Cheer
up! the Lord yet lives, and we will revive despite our apostasies. Our
cause is not lost whilst there are such defenders. It is indeed
suffering now; but there will be a revival, it will triumph again, it
cannot perish. Esto perpetua. |
