blissful unconsciousness, the praises of which Carlyle sang
quite consciously. We are treading the narrow ledge of a precipice.
Men like Zollschan, Ruppin, and Theilhaber have pointed out the awful
chasm that threatens to engulf us. It requires not a little courage to
maintain our nerve and avoid being seized with the vertigo. But
courage alone is not enough. We must take into account the narrowness
of the path and tread over it warily.

_We Must Face the Real Problem of Judaism_

WE Jews must do some very hard thinking, of a kind, perhaps, that we
have not been called upon to do before. That task dare not be shirked.
We must not give in to that tendency which breaks out whenever we have
something very difficult to do, of turning to anything except that
which we know demands peremptory attention. A task that is thus
neglected revenges itself by haunting us and upsetting whatever we
undertake. Instead of giving to the problem of Judaism the careful
deliberation that it requires, we get busy with a thousand and one
things, whereby we hope to escape the need of concentrated attention.
We have become fussy and fidgety. We are divided into committees and
sub-committees. In place of clearness of thought we have a confusion
of tongues. Our case illustrates the truth which Pascal enunciated,
that most of the evils in the world can be traced to the inability of
a person to sit in his room and think.

Without deprecating any of the undertakings to bring order out of the
social chaos in Jewish life, we must place at the present time chief
emphasis upon the serious consideration of our inner problem, the
problem of the Jewish soul and of the Jewish spirit, the problem of
Judaism. We may well envy the thousands of soldiers on the
battlefields of Europe to whom it is a joy to meet death for the sake
of their respective flags. Each of them has a cause to die for. Most
of us, by reason of our Jewish descent, find life, particularly in the
higher sense of the word, to be a keener struggle for existence than
our neighbors do. Yet it would not be half so wearing if our
difficulties were consecrated by an inspiring cause or by a thrilling
loyalty. Why need we be poverty-stricken in spirit, bereft of
everything that makes struggle sweet and suffering endurable? We must
put the very question, What is Judaism? in a new way and in a
different spirit. We must have the definite purpose in mind, of so
understanding it as to know what to do