our has come now to wear the jewel on our breasts
before all the world. The Rabbis worked for their time--we must work
for ours. Judaism was before the Rabbis. Scientific criticism shows its
thoughts widening with the process of the suns--even as its God, Yahweh,
broadened from a local patriotic Deity to the ineffable Name. For
Judaism was worked out from within--Abraham asked, 'Shall not the Judge
of all the earth do right?'--the thunders of Sinai were but the
righteous indignation of the developed moral consciousness. In every age
our great men have modified and developed Judaism. Why should it not be
trimmed into concordance with the culture of the time? Especially when
the alternative is death. Yes, death! We babble about petty minutiae of
ritual while Judaism is dying! We are like the crew of a sinking ship,
holy-stoning the deck instead of being at the pumps. No, I must speak
out; I cannot go on salving my conscience by unsigned letters to the
press. Away with all this anonymous apostleship!"

He moved about restlessly with animated gestures as he delivered his
harangue at tornado speed, speech bursting from him like some dynamic
energy which had been accumulating for years, and could no longer be
kept in. It was an upheaval of the whole man under the stress of pent
forces. Raphael was deeply moved. He scarcely knew how to act in this
unique crisis. Dimly he foresaw the stir and pother there would be in
the community. Conservative by instinct, apt to see the elements of good
in attacked institutions--perhaps, too, a little timid when it came to
take action in the tremendous realm of realities--he was loth to help
Strelitski to so decisive a step, though his whole heart went out to him
in brotherly sympathy.

"Do not act so hastily," he pleaded. "Things are not so black as you see
them--you are almost as bad as Miss Ansell. Don't think that I see them
rosy: I might have done that three months ago. But don't you--don't all
idealists--overlook the quieter phenomena? Is orthodoxy either so
inefficacious or so moribund as you fancy? Is there not a steady,
perhaps semi-conscious, stream of healthy life, thousands of cheerful,
well-ordered households, of people neither perfect nor cultured, but
more good than bad? You cannot expect saints and heroes to grow like
blackberries."

"Yes; but look what Jews set up to be--God's witnesses!" interrupted
Strelitski. "This mediocrity may pass in the rest of the world."

"And d