from which, if religion emerge at
all, it will emerge without its dross? Are not we Jews always the first
prey of new ideas, with our alert intellect, our swift receptiveness,
our keen critical sense? And if we are not hypocrites, we are
indifferent--which is almost worse. Indifference is the only infidelity
I recognize, and it is unfortunately as conservative as zeal.
Indifference and hypocrisy between them keep orthodoxy alive--while they
kill Judaism."

"Oh, I can't quite admit that," said Raphael. "I admit that scepticism
is better than stagnation, but I cannot see why orthodoxy is the
antithesis to Judaism Purified--and your own sermons are doing something
to purify it--orthodoxy--"

"Orthodoxy cannot be purified unless by juggling with words,"
interrupted Strelitski vehemently. "Orthodoxy is inextricably entangled
with ritual observance; and ceremonial religion is of the ancient world,
not the modern."

"But our ceremonialism is pregnant with sublime symbolism, and its
discipline is most salutary. Ceremony is the casket of religion."

"More often its coffin," said Strelitski drily. "Ceremonial religion is
so apt to stiffen in a _rigor mortis_. It is too dangerous an element;
it creates hypocrites and Pharisees. All cast-iron laws and dogmas do.
Not that I share the Christian sneer at Jewish legalism. Add the Statute
Book to the New Testament, and think of the network of laws hampering
the feet of the Christian. No; much of our so-called ceremonialism is
merely the primitive mix-up of everything with religion in a theocracy.
The Mosaic code has been largely embodied in civil law, and superseded
by it."

"That is just the flaw of the modern world, to keep life and religion
apart," protested Raphael; "to have one set of principles for week-days
and another for Sundays; to grind the inexorable mechanism of supply and
demand on pagan principles, and make it up out of the poor-box."

Strelitski shook his head.

"We must make broad our platform, not our phylacteries. It is because I
am with you in admiring the Rabbis that I would undo much of their work.
Theirs was a wonderful statesmanship, and they built wiser than they
knew; just as the patient labors of the superstitious zealots who
counted every letter of the Law preserved the text unimpaired for the
benefit of modern scholarship. The Rabbis constructed a casket, if you
will, which kept the jewel safe, though at the cost of concealing its
lustre. But the h