uncomfortable earnestness for
a larger Judaism, radicals dropping out, moderates clamoring for quiet,
and schismatics organizing new and tiresome movements, the Rabbinate
could scarcely do aught else than emit sonorous platitudes and remain in
office.

And beneath all these surface ruffles was the steady silent drift of the
new generation away from the old landmarks. The synagogue did not
attract; it spoke Hebrew to those whose mother-tongue was English; its
appeal was made through channels which conveyed nothing to them; it was
out of touch with their real lives; its liturgy prayed for the
restoration of sacrifices which they did not want and for the welfare of
Babylonian colleges that had ceased to exist. The old generation merely
believed its beliefs; if the new as much as professed them, it was only
by virtue of the old home associations and the inertia of indifference.
Practically, it was without religion. The Reform Synagogue, though a
centre of culture and prosperity, was cold, crude and devoid of
magnetism. Half a century of stagnant reform and restless dissolution
had left Orthodoxy still the Established Doxy. For, as Orthodoxy
evaporated in England, it was replaced by fresh streams from Russia, to
be evaporated and replaced in turn, England acting as an automatic
distillery. Thus the Rabbinate still reigned, though it scarcely
governed either the East End or the West. For the East End formed a
Federation of the smaller synagogues to oppose the dominance of the
United Synagogue, importing a minister of superior orthodoxy from the
Continent, and the _Flag_ had powerful leaders on the great struggle
between plutocracy and democracy, and the voice of Mr. Henry Goldsmith
was heard on behalf of Whitechapel. And the West, in so far as it had
spiritual aspirations, fed them on non-Jewish literature and the higher
thought of the age. The finer spirits, indeed, were groping for a
purpose and a destiny, doubtful even, if the racial isolation they
perpetuated were not an anachronism. While the community had been
battling for civil and religious liberty, there had been a unifying,
almost spiritualizing, influence in the sense of common injustice, and
the question _cui bono_ had been postponed. Drowning men do not ask if
life is worth living. Later, the Russian persecutions came to interfere
again with national introspection, sending a powerful wave of racial
sympathy round the earth. In England a backwash of the wave left