te.

My mother, as we know, had not the initial impulse to depart from
ancient usage that my father had in his habitual scepticism. He had
always been a nonconformist in his heart; she bore lovingly the yoke
of prescribed conduct. Individual freedom, to him, was the only
tolerable condition of life; to her it was confusion. My mother,
therefore, gradually divested herself, at my father's bidding, of the
mantle of orthodox observance; but the process cost her many a pang,
because the fabric of that venerable garment was interwoven with the
fabric of her soul.

My father did not attempt to touch the fundamentals of her faith. He
certainly did not forbid her to honor God by loving her neighbor,
which is perhaps not far from being the whole of Judaism. If his loud
denials of the existence of God influenced her to reconsider her
creed, it was merely an incidental result of the freedom of expression
he was so eager to practise, after his life of enforced hypocrisy. As
the opinions of a mere woman on matters so abstract as religion did
not interest him in the least, he counted it no particular triumph if
he observed that my mother weakened in her faith as the years went by.
He allowed her to keep a Jewish kitchen as long as she pleased, but he
did not want us children to refuse invitations to the table of our
Gentile neighbors. He would have no bar to our social intercourse with
the world around us, for only by freely sharing the life of our
neighbors could we come into our full inheritance of American freedom
and opportunity. On the holy days he bought my mother a ticket for the
synagogue, but the children he sent to school. On Sabbath eve my
mother might light the consecrated candles, but he kept the store open
until Sunday morning. My mother might believe and worship as she
pleased, up to the point where her orthodoxy began to interfere with
the American progress of the family.

The price that all of us paid for this disorganization of our family
life has been levied on every immigrant Jewish household where the
first generation clings to the traditions of the Old World, while the
second generation leads the life of the New. Nothing more pitiful
could be written in the annals of the Jews; nothing more inevitable;
nothing more hopeful. Hopeful, yes; alike for the Jew and for the
country that has given him shelter. For Israel is not the only party
that has put up a forfeit in this contest. The nations may well sit by
and