Rabbi Isaac Lichtenstein
1824-1909
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Part 2

A Jew still works as a teacher in my late community of Tapio Szele, who, conversing with a sorely afflicted man, whose sickness is incurable, and to whom no consolation remains but faith and trust in God, tells him, the hardihood of folly: “There is no God.” This infidel avoids, calumniates, and insults me, because I preach the gospel. There is yet another, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, who does not understand the difference between thine and mine, who observes the law of Moses only in so far as it does not touch his gain, who keeps his business open on Sabbaths and festivals, and sells Chametz at Passover; this man rages against me with fanatic unappeasable fury. Yes, men who continually make light of the mightiest precepts of Jewish law persecute me; liberal-minded Rabbis, who practice the greatest leniency to themselves and others in religious matters have declared me outlaw and excommunicate, and branded me as unfit for my office, on account of my testimony for Jesus Christ.

Why, I ask, this unconquerable apathy, this blind inextinguishable hate, this fanatic rage against one of the greatest, most exalted, most excellent of the founders of religion, who, it is impossible to deny, has brought to a whole world, civilization, salvation, redemption, and blessed faith? It is incomprehensible! In our days, when the thoughts and judgments of the past are being recast, and even a monster of Nero’s type finds champions and eulogists, when a conservative Rabbi publishes a critique in favour of Spinoza, who combated every positive religion – in these days, I say, an old man, who for forty years has held his office in honour, is robbed of his modest livelihood and persecuted to the uttermost, because he has dared to raise the cry to his people. “Search and seek, plunge into the pure, untroubled stream of divine teaching; take note of the general moral ruin and degradation, and consider the good of your children. Let go prejudice, be reasonable, be upright and impartial; and, when you have thus made way for your stifled and buried religious convictions, the Old and New Testament will witness to you, beyond all dispute, that Christ is our only hope, our Saviour and Messiah; that He, only He, and no other will bring us to Zion, to the House of our God.”

But, be it as it may, I will not conceal my deep-rooted convictions, or be dismayed either by the mean, malicious tricks of secret foes, or by the rough blows of open enemies. “For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake will I not keep silent, until her righteousness arise and her salvation as a lamp that burneth. That the Gentiles may see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory, and thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of the Lord shall name.” (Isaiah 62:1,2) “I say, then, hath God cast away His people? God forbid! For I am also an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God hath not cast away His people which He foreknew. Or, know ye not what the Scripture says of Elias, how he made intercession to God, against Israel, saying, Lord, they have killed Thy prophets, and digged down Thine altars, and I am left alone, and they seek my life. But what saith the answer of God to him? I have reserved to Myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed the knee to Baal. Even so there is a this present time also a remnant according to the election of grace.” (Romans 11: 1-5)

I sow the seed undismayed and undiscouraged, though it may be with tears. The time will assuredly come when it will ripen and bear fruit, when he will return with joy who bears his sheaves with him. “Here I stand on my watch and set me upon the tower, and look and see what will be said to me, and what I shall answer him that reproveth me. The Lord, however, answers me and says, Write the visions, paint it clearly on a tablet that he who runs may read. The vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak and not lie. Though it tarry, wait for it, for it will surely come, and will not tarry. Behold, he who is stiffnecked, he will have no rest in his heart. But the just shall live by his faith.” (Hab. 2:1-4)

“For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto every one that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For therein is revealed the righteousness of God from faith to faith, as it is written, The just shall live by faith.” (Romans 1:16-17)

If I speak here of faith and confess Jesus as our Messiah; if I speak with enthusiasm of His world-wide misson, of the Light-tower – the Tower of David – which is built to illumine the dark horizon with its heavenly radiance, so that we may not go astray in the wilderness of this life, but keep the narrow road of salvation in sight; if I bring forward the simple, sublime, unsurpassed, divine teaching of the New Testament, and recommend every one who strives after righteousness and the fear of the Lord to seek therein for themselves; if I encourage my Jewish brethren to draw from the crystal spring and youth-renewing well of the apostle, that they may recover in body and soul, and, newborn, may rejoice and be glad in the living God; -- if I do this, it is not to force into undue prominence any dogma, any sign or wonder, but simply to draw attention to the God-ordained way of Salvation, as contained in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. There Christ stands as the central point – the miracle of history, the goal of Israel’s history of miracle, in whom all its power and perfection is found. Israel, shy of miracle, who has the God miracle as his father and author; Israel, whose history is encircled and filled in with the miracles of God, stumbles at the miracles of the New Testament! Israel, whose prophets were continually obliged to confirm their words by miracles and signs – who have known and Elijah and an Elisha, who, on necessity, multiplied meal and oil and bread, cleansed lepers, and raised the dead (1 Kings 17:14,21; 2 Kings 4:5-44; 2 Kings 5:1-27) – Israel, I say, stumbles at the miracles of Jesus Christ, in whom Israel’s line of prophets culminated and ended.

Leave, for the present, these signs and miracles of Christ, and concern yourselves with those words in His gospel which go home so powerfully to heart and conscience. So doing, you will make progress in the way, the Being of Christ will be revealed to you, and truly it ill be as (Isaiah 9:5), miracle in Person, the miracle of all history.

They are all miracles of healing and love, in which His calling as Savior is apparent, and His love to the miserable is evidenced by deed. Miracles to satisfy the curious, to serve His own glory, or for the relief of His own personal necessity, you will seek for in vain in His holy life. Miracle served His word, to strengthen faith where it found entrance. For such as opposed Him and yet sought for signs, He had only the drastic reply, “This evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of the prophet Jonah.” (Matthew 12:39)

He required faith, as God requires faith of those who come to Him seeking help; faith, that is, openness to His Word, devotion to His person, reliance on His help. “Jesus turned Him about, and when He saw here He said, Daughter, be of good comfort, they faith hath made thee whole.” (Matthew 9:22) “And there shall come forth a shoot out of the stem of Jesse, and a tender shoot from his roots. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord; and shall make Him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord; and He shall not judge after the sight of His eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of His ears. But with righteousness shall He judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth; and He shall smite the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips shall He slay the wicked. And the righteousness the girdle of His reins.” (Isaiah 11:1-5)

Thus does Isaiah describe the coming Son of David, such divine attributes do the prophets ascribe to Him. Truly He is a miraculous Person, both divine and human, but still I will not enlarge here upon His wondrous birth and wondrous return to the Father – a stone of stumbling to the unbelieving, notwithstanding that an Elijah also ascended to heaven in a fiery chariot and in storm. (2 Kings 2:11)

Again, I will not speak of the Holy Spirit or the Christian doctrine of the Godhead – Father, Son, and Spirit – although our Chassidim, who claim to be successors of the heroes of the Talmud, and with whom the orthodox in Judaism now go hand in hand, believe in a tenfold godhead, in ten emanations, who with En-Sof (the Eternal) form one absolute, inseparable unity, with ten sides and ten faces. These say, “As the fire with its flames and its sparks is but one, so the Eternal with the Sefirot radiating from Him is one

in being.” Many also of our most advanced Rabbis cannot think of God without the Schechina[1] (glory) and the  Holy Spirit. Neither will I here represent Christ as the Lamb of sacrifice whose death was atonement, although our Talmudists often repeat:

“The righteous bear the sins of their generation.”

And,

“As the death of the red heifer is an atonement, so also the death of the righteous is atoning.”

But I will here only emphasize the fact that that Jew is an enemy to his own flesh, a traitor to himself, and morally a suicide, who does not finally recognize Christ as his Messiah, and render Him the homage due to Him – who does not unite with the pioneers and heralds of Christ and exclaim in accord with them, “Sing to the Lord a new song, for He has done wondrously. His right hand and His holy arm have gotten him the victory. The Lord has proclaimed His salvation before all peoples, He has revealed His righteousness, He remembered His grace and His truth to the house of Israel.”

“Here is the patience of the saints, here are they who keep the commandments of God and faith in Jesus, who is not come to destroy but to fulfill the law and the prophets.”

Brethren, away to Jesus, who by the wings of His Spirit has borne countless thousands into a purer region, into the kingdom of heaven; who alone has made fruitful the spirit of the nations, who has averted the deathblow from the human victim of degraded heathen sacrifice, who has given a new direction to thought and manner of life, and a new existence to nations and states. Who like He has awakened dead consciences out of their senselessness, taught true dignity and nobility, broken down the separating walls of classes and races, and established brotherliness and equality of mankind before God? Certainly He has effected that which was prophesied of the Seed of David, His work has been that of the predicted Messiah and the true Seed of Abraham, through Him all nations of the earth are being and will yet be blessed. It is possible to shut our eyes to these patent facts, but we are not the less blind for doing so.

It is true you can point me to curse and not to blessing, and bring to my remembrance the iniquity and abominable treatment which has encountered us in the name of Christianity through all the centuries; the torture, the oppression, martyr-piles, and the blood, which stain so many pages of the Church’s history. You may well make me note the hateful doings of the Anti-Semites, and their attempts to poison the minds of the peoples against us, but, I ask, is Israel in its past and present itself free from such reproach? have we nothing to mourn and repent? Have our ancestors ever spoken in the same spirit of our father Abraham, “Let there be no strife between me and thee, between my herdsmen and thy herdsmen, for we are brethren?” Has not bitter unappeasable strife raged between tribe and tribe, brother and brother, among those nearest related?

Have there not been in the past, and are there not yet, Jews enough who, full of envy and mistrust, endeavor to spoil their brother of honour, and would even snatch the scant food from his mouth? “These are wicked people, Jews only by name,” so you answer me; but I tell you on the authority of the plain teaching of the New Testament, that Christians who do not love every one, whose hearts do not beat in love and brotherliness to their neighbor, regardless of class or race, who are revengeful or do evil of any kind, that such are Christians in name only, like those Jews who are only Jews according to the flesh, – Christians who are alien to the spirit and word of Christ, unregenerate, sin-stricken souls, whom every true Christian, every real follower of Christ, must denounce as unclean, and avoid, – Shadows of the night which disappear before the light of day. Look, then, not into the darkness, but into the light. “Light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.” God has His people among the peoples, and Christ His spiritual disciples in the churches. Step out of your narrow circle and rub your sleepy eyes; look about you, and see what is being done on every hand by the true disciples of Christ; see the sacrifice of their faith, the work of their love, the life and endeavor of their spirits. Admire those noble Christian women who, instead of frequenting places of entertainment, balls, concerts, and the like, for the love of Christ, visit hospitals, tend the sick and bind up wounds, who venture on gloomy nights into dens of vice, to raise the fallen, to save the tempted from destruction, and lead the erring to virtue and to God.

Continued