in the past the Jews had been a nation founded on
a spiritual ideal; because his tradition taught him that on the slopes
of Mount Sinai, the Lord had entered into a covenant with his
fathers--and not only with them stood there that day, but also "with
him that was not there that day" but who came after them; and that by
virtue of this covenant, Israel became unto the Lord a kingdom of
priests and a holy people; and because the value of this tradition,
the force of this spiritual ideal was greater to him than the
security, the right to live and work freely among his fellow men,
which he could have obtained only by discarding his Judaism.

During all the centuries since the dispersal, the Jews have had a
common history, a common tradition, a common spiritual ideal, and they
have survived by reason of the force of this common inheritance. It is
this common inheritance of a past founded on a spiritual force that
to-day, in my opinion, constitutes Judaism.

_America Demands Adherence to our Spiritual Ideals_

RACIAL Judaism is in one sense, but in the sense of a race that has
stood for a spiritual ideal and is bound together by traditions of the
value of that ideal, and not simply a race that is bound together by
ties of common descent. At all times and in all places a Jew meant not
merely a descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not merely a
descendant of the people who once ruled over the promised land, but
one who considered himself bound by the covenant of his fathers, at
least to the extent that he would be true to his spiritual ideals,
whatever these ideals might be. Judaism is in that sense a racial
religion, but it is and at all times must be a religion and not simply
a race. True, we now differ among ourselves as to the content of our
religion. True, many of us now deny that that covenant which has kept
alive our race and religion was ever in fact made, but we cannot deny
our history and our past. We cannot deny that by virtue of the
tradition of that covenant our fathers considered themselves under a
peculiar obligation, and that by virtue of that tradition they sought
to become a kingdom of priests and a holy people.

That tradition at least is our own heritage, and he only is a Jew who
recognizes the force of spiritual ideals, and by virtue of that
inheritance also for himself assumes the obligation involved in being
a member of a nation of priests and a holy people.

If that spiritual concept and not me