betray its absence.

_Mistaking the Shadow for the Thing Itself_

IN the instance quoted, it is both amusing and painful to follow the
author's vacillating description of Judaism. At first Judaism is a
form of belief. Then it becomes the effect of that belief upon thought
and conduct. From that it evolves into some irreducible minimum of
conformity, if we can only get hold of it. This being difficult, it
gets to be a series of colorless platitudes. Such a definition calls
up the image of a streamlet, now leaping over rocks and boulders, now
meandering upon level ground, and finally losing itself in the
marshes. The fitfulness and inconsistency of the formulation, the
picking up of the different threads of thought without following out
any one of them to its conclusion, are characteristic of this type of
definitions. They are as devoid of vitality as a long drawn-out yawn,
and their want of logic is exasperating. The merest tyro can see that
one can profess the principles they embody without being a Jew. There
are many sects that would heartily subscribe to all of them.
Universalists, Deists, Theists, Unitarians, and even Ethical
Culturists hold these doctrines. As matters stand at present, these
sects engage more actively in spreading them than we do.

What is fundamentally wrong with the above definition and with the
entire class of formulations of which it is an instance? The tendency
to mistake the shadow of a thing for the thing itself. The main cause
for misapprehending the true character of Judaism is the proneness to
regard it merely as a form of truth, or, at best, as the effect of a
truth upon thought and conduct, and to overlook entirely the fact that
it is a living reality, a very strand of the primal moving forces of
the world. "Judaism is the truest form of truth," says one writer.
"Judaism gives, to truth the most truthful shape," says another. Now
and then they speak of it as a "form" of life, but it turns out to be
only a lip service, or a homiletical phrase. They fail to follow up
the clue which is more than once suggested to them by the difficulty
of expounding Judaism as a form of truth. That being a Jew has always
involved conforming to certain principles and modes of life is a
truism. But these principles or observances by themselves constitute
only the outward expression of Judaism. The mathematical formula which
states the law of gravitation is not the same as the force of
gravitation itself