JEWS IN AMERICA FROM 1800 UNTIL WORLD WAR II --- Episode 4

          WHAT THE GERMAN JEWS WHO SETTLED IN 
          NEW YORK CITY WANTED WAS TO BE 
          ACCEPTED ---- doesn't sound unreasonable to me 

   There was an earnest desire among the wealthy Jewish community in New York to "fit in," both with each other and with the wider society. As the names given to the Seligman offspring illustrate, what those prosperous German Jews wanted, perhaps above all, was to be accepted as Americans. 
   The loyalty this generation of German Jewish migrants felt toward the United States had its origin in the contrast between the restrictions they had experienced in Germany and the freedom and opportunities they had found in America. Until the Civil War, America had been for these migrants almost everything that they had been promised it would be. Of course, every Jew in America would, at some time or other, have come across anti-Semitic prejudice , but the state itself was not Hebrews anti-Semitic; there was no institutionalized anti-Semitism enshrined in law, decree or officially sanctioned customs. In the years during and after the Civil War, however, this began to change, partly because of the conspicuous success of the German Jews, and partly because life in the United States for everyone during these years became darker and more troubled. 

           THE ETHICAL CULTURE SOCIETY --- AFFLUENT 
           JEWISH FAMILIES BELONGED TO THIS CLUB TO
           LOSE THEIR JEWISHNESS 

   The leader of the EthicalCulture Society was Felix Adler, a German Jew whose father, Samuel Adler, was, from 1856 to his death in 1873, the rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, the spiritual center of "OUR CROWD." When Samuel Adler died, Felix, then just twenty-two years old, was invited to deliver a sermon at the Temple Emanu-El, presumably as a prelude to being invited to take his father's place as rabbi. However, as the sermon he gave, "The Judaism of the Future," effectively ended any possibility there might have been of him succeeding his father. At the same time, however, it inspired in the minds of many who heard it a vision of what Reform Judaism might evolve into. 
   In the sermon Adler spoke of the "ruins" of religion, among which he explicitly included Judaism, and asked the question : what remains when the ruins are removed ? His answer, which would form the basis both for the EthicalCulture Society and for the Weltanschauung in which Oppenheimer was brought up, was : MORALITY. Judaism, Adler proclaimed, was well placed to provide leadership to the religion of the future, since it always had been , essentially, a religion of DEED rather than creed. In this sense, Adler claimed, Judaism as a moral force "was not given to the Jews alone," but rather had a destiny "to embrace in one great moral state the whole family of men."  

   Adler's talk of the "ruins" of Judaism did not go down well among the majority of the congregation of Temple Emanu-El, and he was never asked to address the synagogue again. However, for a small but influential minority his view of the "Judaism of the future" seemed to be the perfect solution to two pressing problems : (1) how to be a Jew if one did not actually believe any elements of the Jewish creed ; and (2) how to combine being a good Jew with being a good American. 

   After a career asa rabbi was denied to him, Adler was offered, and accepted, a professorship in Hebrew at Cornell University. While there, he ran into trouble when he was accused of being an atheist, but, back in New York City, moves were afoot to attract him back as the head of the Judaism of the future--- the vision of which he had outlined in his divisive sermon. And so, in 1876, Adler gave a talk in New York in which he announced the establishment of a new organization, the Ethical Culture Society . This was to be a religion without a religious belief, a "practical religion."  " We propose," Adler announced : 


     to entirely exclude prayer and every form of ritual . . . freely do I own to this purpose of reconciliation and candidly do I confess that it is my dearest object to exalt the present movement above the strife of contending sects and parties, and at once to occupy that common ground where we may all meet, believers and unbelievers, for purposes in themselves, lofty and unquestioned by any . . . freedom of thought is a sacred right of every individual man. . . DIVERSITY IN THE CREED, UNANIMITY IN THE DEED. This is that practical religion from which none dissents. This is that Platform broad enough to receive the worshipper and the infidel. This is that common ground where we may all grasp hands as brothers united in mankind's common cause. 

   "Adler's proposal for a new movement," Howard B. Radest, a historian of the movement has written, "had the virtue of completing an Americanization without betraying what his listeners regarded as the core of the Jewish faith ---its prophetic tradition --- It was, we suggest, no accident that Adler's address echoed the First Amendment to the American Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, for at Cornell Adler had traced the connection between prophetic and democratic values." 
   The Ethical Culture Society received its certification of incorporation in February 1877. It was not then, nor was it ever, a mass movement. In some ways it was more like an exclusive club : to become a member one needed the sponsorship of another member. "The Sunday Meeting," Radest writes, "was a social occasion, too. Here one greeted old friends, came to see and be seen, came to be entertained." It was not a religion at all, still less a proselytizing one. "Ethical Culture seemed to make it difficult for people to discover it or, having discovered it, to find their way into its ranks. In some circles the impression still exists of a rather select group."