pect duced nnial

The Case of Feminism— Mechanisms of Change 87

understand the working of the Divine Love, the Bible serving us as guide to find the Divine power working from within.

4. Beholding in the Mosaic Laws a system of training of the Jewish people for its mission as a nation among the nations of antiquity, planted upon the soil of Palestine, we accept only the moral laws and statutes as a divine, but reject all those social, political and priestly statutes which are in no way shape and form adapted to our mode of life and to our views and habits as people scattered among the nations of the globe, and standing upon the level of a far higher culture of mind and heart than stood the people for whom they are intended.

3. All the Mosaic Rabbinical Laws on diet, priestly purity and dress, originating in ages and under associations of ideas altogether foreign to our mental and spiritual state, do no longer impress us with the character of divine institutions, and fail to imbue us with the spirit of priestly holiness, their observance in our day being apt to obstruct rather than enhance and encourage our moral and spiritual elevation as children of God.

6. While glorying in our great past with its matchless history of one continued wondrous struggle and martyrdom in the defense of the Unity of God, which necessitated the exclusion of the Jewish people from a world stamped with polytheism and idolatry, with all their cruelty and vice, we hail in the modern era of universal culture of heart and mind the approaching realization of Israel's great Messianic hope for the kingdom of peace, truth, justice and love among all men, expecting neither a return to Palestine, nor the restitution of any of the laws concerning a Jewish State, nor a sacrificial worship under the administration of the sons of Aaron.

7. We behold in Judaism an ever-growing, progressive and rational religion, one which gave rise to the religions which today rule the greater part of the civilized globe. We are convinced of the utmost necessity of preserving our identity With our great past; we gladly recognize in the spirit of broad humanity and cosmopolitan philanthropy permeating our age, in the noble and grand endeavor to Widen and deepen the idea and to enlarge the dominion of man, our best ally and help in the fulfillment of our mission and the only means of achieving the end aim of our religion.

8. We therefore hail with the utmost delight and in the spirit of sincere fellowship and friendship the efforts on the part of the representatives of the various religious denominations the world over, and particularly in our free country, toward fémoving the barriers separating men from men, class from class, and sect from Sect, in order to cause each to grasp the hands of his fellow-men and thus form one great brotherhood of men on earth. In this growing religion of humanity, based upon the belief in one God as Father of men, and the conception of man as the ‘mage of God we find the working of the Divine plan of truth and salvation as fevealed through Jewish history.