Page:Jews and Judaism in America (Ezra).djvu/17

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continues as fiercely as ever. Each endeavours to expose the fallacies and the shortcomings of other; each endeavours to convert and to win more adherents to his ways of thinking and living and at the close of the nineteenth century we find Judaism all over Europe and America sharply divided into two opposing camps. Of late the differences of opinion have been deeply intensified rather than minimised, owing to the ascendency of Dr. K. Kohler, a most radical reformed rabbi, to the Presidential chair of the Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati. This rabbi and teacher in Israel has thrown a bomb-shell by presenting an ultimatum to the Jewish world that the "Bible and the Talmud as taught by him, are not binding and authoritative." Nay, the Bible which we have hitherto been taught with our life-blood to look upon as our previous legacy and "the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob", is now declared by the official loader of Reform Jewry in America, to be a collection of folklore and its contents borrowed and robbed from the code of Hammurabbi! What then is the future of reformed Judaism in America? Will it meet the same fate as that of the Berlin reformers? Experience teaches us so and the earlier they throw off sailing under false colours the better it will be for Judaism in general and the Jews in particular. As of old, Jewish champions of True Judaism are not wanting in Israel and to-day the faithful followers of the "old path", fired with the spirit of Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremaiah and others are valiantly struggling against the "new" spirit, the spirit of deformed Judaism that has set in in the free soil of America.

Now, a word on the position and influence of Zionism in the United States. Unlike other countries, Zionism had to struggle hard in winning adherents to its cause. Much of its success may be attributed among others to Mr.