Discipline
exile the complete atmosphere of our national life: our holy festivals are largely national, and even in those which are predominantly religious there is the continuous, minor theme of our separate nationalism. One holiday celebrates the liberation of the Jewish people from Egypt, another the deliverance of the people from the Asiatic-Greek oppressor, another the confusion of a national enemy, still others celebrate the time of the Palestinian harvest (the irony and tragedy of it!) with appropriate prayers and ceremonies: and even in our "pure" religious festivals the memory of our national institutions, our Temple, our hereditary priesthood, maintains an unbroken background of suggestion.
And with these recurrent climaxes in our religious life dominated by the national consciousness, the general tenor of all our religion repeats this theme from day to day. The discipline of our religion, of our Jewishness, is a corporate discipline, the subjection of the individual to the mass. I repeat this
121
