. As long, indeed, as I am an apostle of
the Gentiles, I will honor my ministry, in
the hope that I may provoke to jealousy
those who are my flesh, and may save some
o£ them. For if the rejection of them is the
reconciliation of the world, what will the
recepdon of them be but life from the dead?”
(Romans 11:13—16).

Copyright 194} By Radio Replies Press

-\ihii Obstat: rt. rev. msgr. Edward g. Murray, dj>.
Imprimatur: william cardinal o’connell
ARCHBISHOP OF BOSTON.

riINTÏD AND BOUND IN TH£ U. S.

DEDICATED

TO

The Sisters

of

Notre Dame de Sion

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Introduction

Upon glancing at this correspondence the thought will
naturally arise as to who Mr. Isaacs really is, and why the
letters are addressed to him.
Mr. Isaacs is a composite personage, made up of the Jews
contacted personally and by mail during my years of union
with the Messiah in His Mystical Body, the Church.
The name was selected because all children of Jewish par­
entage, save converts to Judaism or descendants of persons
who became Jews through conversion, are Isaacs in the sense
of being descendants of the twelve patriarchal sons of Jacob,
the son of Isaac. The Jews became the chosen children of God
through God’s promise that "in Isaac shall thy (Abraham's)
seed be called” (Gen. 21:12).
The divine promise was developed to its fullness through
Judah (one of the twelve patriarchal grandsons of Isaac) in
his descendant, King David, and lastly in Jesus, the Messianic
Son of David. Isaac prefigured Jesus Christ in his miraculous
birth; in being offered for sacrifice by his father; and in being
a demonstration of God’s power to "raise up even the dead”
(Heb. 11:17). Hence Isaac embodies all that I want My dear
Mr. Isaacs to know.
These letters, though of a controversial nature, were writ­
ten in a spirit of charity, which commands love of my fellowIsraelites for the love of God, irrespective of their philosophy,

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INTRODUCTION

practices, and characteristics, among which is an intense
hatred of converts from the Synagogue to the Church.
Through these letters there runs an emotional strain due to
an ingrain sympathetic appreciation of the pathetic lot of the
Jews. Ability they have; so have they the zeal that enables
many of them to be successful in almost any sphere of activity,
in any country where they are not deprived of the right to
exercise their natural rights. Everybody knows that the exer­
cise of those rights is denied them in many instances. When
it co'mes to social relations, there is a barrier raised that causes
them to be segregated, even in our democratic America. The
primary reason is dealt with in these letters to Mr. Isaacs.
Yet a further word is in order.
Hostility towards Jews is all too often due to lack of Chris­
tian charity on the part of persons who are Christians in name
rather than in practice. Yet in the Jews themselves, rather
than in unchristian Christians, will be found the primary
reason why they “are underlings,” as some Jews realize them­
selves to be. Sin, personal sin, is the source of moral affliction,
and man is the soil in which it grows. The source of the pa­
thetic status of Jews is just as surely sin as it is the basic cause
of the “blood, sweat and tears” that is afflicting the people of
the whole wide world during our present generation. This
universal principle was stressed recently by His Holiness Pope
Pius XII in these words, which we all should ponder,

“God at times lets trials befall individuals and peoples,
trials of which the malice of men is the instrument in a
design of justice directed toward the punishment of sin,
toward purifying persons and peoples through the expia­
tion of this present life and bringing them back by this war
to Himself.”
Of this principle praying Jews are well aware, though they
do not attribute it to the sin of sins, the denial of Israel’s
most sublime personage, the Son of David, their Messiah. He

INTRODUCTION

ίχ

comes unto His own today, as He did twenty centuries ago,
and His own receive Him not (St. John 1:11). A more un­
charitable act no man can commit than to deny his kith and
kin. Such an act becomes the sin of sins when it is a denial of
the Prophet whom Moses told Israel to hear. The words of
God the Father, that came to Israel through Isaiah twenty­
seven centuries ago, apply literally to their rejection of Jesus
as their Messiah, viz.—
“The ox knoweth his owner, and the master his crib, but
Israel hath not known me, and thy people hath not under­
stood’’ (Isa. i).

Just as David bemoaned the action of his fellow-Israelites,
who stopped their ears to the voice of God, and foretold their
punishment as a result of it (Ps. 57), so did the Messiah be­
moan the deafness and blindness of Israel, and foretold the
resultant affliction the Jews would suffer. This affliction Jews
have suffered for nearly twenty centuries, it makes life hard
for them today, and it will no doubt continue to keep them
cast down until they salute Jesus as David saluted the Lord
(Ps. 117:26), and as the Jews saluted their Messiah, with
hosannas during His triumphal march through the Holy City
on the first Palm Sunday,

"Jerusalem, Jerusalem! . . . How often would I have gath­
ered thy children together, as a hen gathers her young
under her wings, but thou wouldst not: behold thy house
is left desolate. For I say to you, you shall not see Ale
henceforth until you shall say ‘Blessed is he who comes in
the name of the Lord!’ ” (St. Matt. 23:37—39).
There is a great spiritual void in the hearts of many Jews
that they long to fill. The Synagogue does not and cannot
fill that void. It causes many Jews to enter all kinds of move­
ments with but temporary satisfaction, as only a small per­
centage of them realize that in the Christian way of life, lived

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INTRODUCTION

in union with the Messiah, can be found the soul-satisfaction
they yearn for.
The hope of the Jews, the ultimate cure for the inhumani­
ties they suffer, lies in their spiritual assimulation in their
Messianic Lord. He compassionately awaits, with outstretched
arms, their coming into the Kingdom He established as the
father in the parable of parables awaited the home-coming
of his prodigal son. The Kingdom is theirs, they are the
original heirs, loyalty to the faith of their fathers of old in
Israel commands them to accept the inheritance that awaits
them. In these letters to Mr. Isaacs will be found the argu­
ments which prove that passing from the Synagogue to the
Church follows from belief in Old Testament Judiasm. Jews
who have seen in Jesus the Expected of Israel, have, from the
days of the Apostles, considered their conversion to be the
realization of the full-blossomed fruit that sprang from the
seed that Moses planted, the prophets watered, and Israel
prayed for.
May these letters lighten the burden my fellow-Israelites
bear, by causing them to accept the invitation the Divine Son
of the Lily of Israel extends to His stray sheep,

"Come to Me, all who labor and are burdened,
and I will rest you.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from Me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for your souls.
For My yoke is easy,
and My burden light” (St. Matt. 11:28-30).

Contents

PACE

Introduction
(Central theme of letters)
1 Fear and Love of God
2 Reform Judaism Examined
3 Origin of Reform Judaism
4 Orthodox Judaism
5 Democratic and AuthoritativeReligion
6 Conservative Judaism
7 Laicized Judaism
8 Jewish Priests and Sacrifices
g Are Temple Sacrifices Necessary?
10 Does End of Sacrificial Cult Matter?
11 The Soul of Judaism
12 Soul of Judaism Living On
13 Judaism Before Moses
14 Judaism and Dogmas
15 Israel and a Personal Messiah
16 True and False Messiahs
17 Genealogical Status of Jews
18 Jews Uninterested in Genealogies
19 Do Jews Proselytize?
20 His “Anointed of the Lord”
21 Was Jesus a Jew?
xi

vii
3
y
9
n
i)
iy
19
25
27
31
35
39
45
46
49
54
58
64
68
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LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS

Considering that you believe in God, our start is easy. I
am assuming, of course, that you believe in the God of Abra­
ham, Isaac and Jacob, whom I as a Catholic worship. Yet,
even here, it were well to realize that when a Jew becomes a
Catholic he gets a deeper and broader concept of God. That is
because Catholics conceive God to be something more than
the Creator of the world; a jealous God of an exclusive people,
the children of Israel, with emphasis upon fear rather than
love. God is looked upon by Catholics primarily as a loving
Father of mankind. The emphasis of Catholics is upon the
love of God, confidence in Him, and gratitude towards Him
for all things, believing that the cross He permits them to
bear is an opportunity to gain a crown. Catholic love of God
leads the faithful to a realization of obligation to their fellow­
man irrespective of his racial, national and religious affilia­
tion, to a degree unknown to Judaism. In a word, Catholic
fear of God is secondary to love of God.
While fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, it is not the
end thereof, which is love. Yet filial fear of God, like love, is
a grace wrought in the soul by God. This to me is very im­
portant, as it was the beginning of my realization that Juda­
ism, as a whole, is a negative, whereas Christianity is a posi­
tive approach to God. One of the striking characteristics of
the Christian religion, that follows from its concept of God.
is its universality, whereas Judaism is primarily for the de­
scendants of Jacob. That is one of the reasons why the Church
of the Messiah is called Catholic.
My daily task, as a campaigner for Christ, will necessitate
proceeding slowly in replying to the many points you thrust
at me in your letter. Yet I promise to cover every one of them
in between my engagements to address audiences in the
streets, squares and parks of our country. My objective will
be to make plain that affiliation of Jews with the Catholic
Church is not a denial of the faith of their fathers of old in
Israel. On the contrary, it is an affirmation of their belief in
the religion of Judaism of old; the realization of the great
spiritual inheritance which the holy writings of Moses and

REFORM JUDAISM EXAMINED

5

the prophets foretold would come to those children of Israel
who follow the faith of their fathers to its fulfillment in the
coming of the Son of David.
This is the belief that led the Apostles, Jews, all of them,
to follow Jesus as their Messiah at the cost of martyrdom.
This is the belief that brought three thousand circumcised
Jews, through baptism, into the Catholic Church on her
birthday, the First Pentecost Day.
This is the belief that converted Saul into St. Paul, for
which he willingly bore forty stripes less one, was imprisoned,
stoned, suffered shipwreck, and joyfully permitted himself to
be beheaded.
This is the belief that, ever since the coming of the Messiah,
caused the conversion of lovers of the faith of their fathers
into an understanding that the Old Dispensation of Israel is
fulfilled in the New Dispensation of Jesus. Pray God that
Mr. Isaacs will be the next to be listed.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G..............

2.

Reform Judaism Examined

My dear Mr. Isaacs:
It is of import that the Judaism you profess be examined,
as I hold that you, not I, have denied the faith of our holy
fathers in Israel.
You are a Reform Jew. That being so, then you have
ceased to be an Old Testament Jew, if ever you was one;
then are you not governed by the Law of Moses as set forth

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in his Books, The Torah, as understood by our forefathers.
Reform Judaism is as far from the Mosaic religion in the Old
Testament as Unitarianism is from the religion of Christ in
the New Testament. This is said because Reform Judaism
and Unitarianism are alike in principle. That is why Alfred
Segal, the Jewish columnist, asked—
“What is there in my Reform Temple which I could not
get in the Unitarian Church down the street?” (‘‘Am.
Israelite,” Jan. 14, 1937.)
That is why Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch, Sinai Congregation,
Chicago, co-editor of the Jewish Encyclopedia, foremost
leader of Reform Judaism for four decades, could say—
“If ever we come to consult who are our co-religionists, we
will discover that we have much more in common with the
Unitarians and the Ethical Culture people than with
Orthodox Jews.”
If you were to substitute Reform Jew for “circumcised Jew,”
I would agree with your contention, as no “Reform Jew
could consistently (or rather logically) become a Catholic.”
He would have to be converted to the basic principles of his
forefathers in Israel before he could “consistently” become
a Catholic. First, because the principles of Judaism proper
are unchangeable, as the Jews of old and Catholics believe,
and not evolutionary as Reform Judaism holds them to be.
Second, a Catholic must believe in miracles, as did the Jews
of old, he must believe that God, the Maker of nature, is
above and beyond nature. Therefore God can and has acted
directly without going through the ordinary, immediate
cause leading to an effect, which we designate as natural. Here
are ten Old Testament miracles Jews must believe.
i- The Ten plagues of Egypt—Exodus, chapters, 7, 8, 9,
io, 12.
2. Parting of the waters of the Red Sea—Exodus, 14.
3. Feeding with manna—Exodus, 16.
4. Death of Cor, Dathan and Abiram for rebellion against
the authority of Moses and Aaron—Numbers, 16.

REFORM JUDAISM EXAMINED

7

5. Budding of Aaron's rod, as sign that he was God’s
priest—Numbers, 17.
6. Feeding of one hundred men by Elisha with twenty
loaves—4 th Kings, 4.
7- Resurrection from the dead by touching the bones of
Elisha—4 th Kings, 13.
8. Deliverance of three children from fiery furnace—
Daniel, 3.
9- Deliverance of Daniel from lions—Daniel, 6.
10. Deliverance of Jonah from sea monster—Jonas, 2.
Reform Judaism denies these, and other miracles, the
denial of which relegates the Old Testament from the read­
ing desks of synagogues, and the pulpits of churches, to the
folklore shelves of libraries.
Again, Reform Judaism denies belief in a personal Mes­
siah. This in itself is an utter denial of the divine promise
around which the Judaism of our fathers of old in Israel
centered. Belief in a personal Messiah is the central hope of
Israel, for which all true Jews have prayed morning, noon and
night throughout the Jewish ages. That is why Rabbi Schecter said, while president of the Jewish Seminary of America,
“The statement of some moderns, to the effect that Rabbinism did not hold the belief in a personal Messiah essen­
tial, is unscientific and needs no refutation for those who
are acquainted with the literature” ("Some Aspects of Jew­
ish Theology,” p. no).
From the literature to which Rabbi Schecter refers, I present
for your consideration the opinion of Moses Maimonides, the
greatest Jew ish authority on the Torah during the past eight
hundred years. He said—
“One must believe and regard it as true that the Messiah
will come. One must not think that his coming will be post­
poned; if he delays his arrival, wait for him. One must not
fix the date, for, nor read into the Bible one’s opinion
concerning his coming—. One must believe that, in accord­
ance with the predictions of all the prophets from Moses
to Malachi, the Messiah will be more exalted and more

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LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS

honored than all the kings that ever existed. Whoever
harbors and doubts or whosoever lowers his dignity, such
a one denies the Torah.—It is a part of this tenet that Israel
will have no king except one from the house of David and
the progeny of Solomon. And he who opposes this dynasty
denies the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, and the
words of his prophets” (“Commentary on M. Sarh,” io,
principle 12).

Reform J udaism is a man-made religion; it originated in
Germany during the first part of the last century. True
Judaism is God-made, it dates back to the covenant made by
God with Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees twenty centuries
before the Christian ages.
Thus it ought to be plainly evident to you, Mr. Isaacs, that
when it comes to things basic to Judaism—its unchangeable
principles, miracles, and belief in a personal Messiah—I, a
“circumcised Jew” transformed into a Catholic Christian, am
in harmony with the faith of our saintly fathers of old in
Israel from Abraham to Moses to Malachi. On the other hand,
you are in harmony with Rabbis Samuel Holdheim and
Abraham Geiger, of Germany, the ex-Orthodox Jews, who
originated Reform Judaism, and not with the faith of the
Torah Jews of old.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G...........

j.

Origin of Reform fudaism

My dear Mr. Isaacs:
I am in receipt of your letter of recent date, in which you
object to my classification of Reform Judaism as "man-made.”
I hasten to reply thereto, though the answers to your first
letter have not yet been completed.
My declaration is so firmly an established fact, that it sur­
prises me to have you ask, “Is not ancient Judaism ‘man-made’
according to your line of reasoning? Did not the understand­
ing of it come through a man? Is it not called the Mosaic
Law?” It is so designated, yet it is not man-made, as Moses
was not its author, and has never been so declared in Israel.
He was only the human instrumental agent through whom
God placed His Law’ in the keeping of the Children of Israel.
It was to be obeyed, and carried forth by Israel, until the
“Prophet God will raise up” came, as Moses said, whom "thou
shalt hear” (Dent. 18:15). He came. He is the Messiah, Jesus,
whom you refuse to hear as God said you should. Converts
from the Synagogue to the Church giving Him ear, cry out,
as did Nathanael, who became St. Bartholomew’ the Apostle,
“We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and the
Prophets wrote” (St. John 1:45).
Reform Judaism is man-made, because it was introduced
into Jewry by men who had no authority whatsoever to mod­
ify the Law that came from God through Moses and the
Prophets, for instance, by repudiating belief in a personal
Messiah. Jewry has not. and never did have, any more power
to repudiate belief in the coming of a personal Messiah, than
the Catholic Church has to repudiate belief in His second

IO

LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS

coming. The Messiah made His first appearance out of Beth­
lehem Ephrata, as foretold by Michaes (5:2); and the Messiah
promised to come again, this time in all His glory.
While Reform Judaism claims Moses Mendelssohn (Berlin,
1729-1786) as its progenitor, its real existence as a Judaic sect
is due to the work of the two German modernized rabbis
mentioned in my last letter. As proof of its human origin, I
herewith present a quotation from the “Encyclopedia of Jew­
ish Knowledge” (N. Y.t 1934, p. 267)—
“Reform Judaism began in Germany in the first quarter of
the 19th century, and there particularly under the great
leaders, Samuel Holdstein and Abraham Geiger, experi­
enced its largest initial growth and achievement.”

It is most important to keep in mind the fact that ancient
Judaism was the product of the covenant God made with
Abraham, the ancestor of Israel, about the year 2083 b.c.; and
that God did not make any covenant with Moses Mendels­
sohn, Samuel Holdstein, Abraham Geiger, or any American
rabbi, thirty-nine or forty centuries later. Its importance lies
in that the only religion man is morally obligated to obey is a
God-made religion. Ancient, and not modem Judaism is
therefore the religion to which man is duty-bound to submit
his will for direction in matters of faith and morals, if the
Law of Judaism has not been fulfilled in the coming of
Jesus as the Messiah, and the establishment by Him of the
Church to take the place of the Temple and the Synagogues.
My desire to follow the will of God would lead me prayer­
fully to wear the tephillin · in the synagogue today, instead
of praying with beads in the Church, if the King of the Jews,
predicted to come, had not come and had not substituted one
spiritual society for the other.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G..........
• Tephillin, phylacteries, made of two leather boxes which contain pieces
of parchment (with texts from Exodus and Deut.) and leather scraps. One
box is worn on the head near where the hair begins to grow, the other box
is strapped to the left arm, near to the heart. They are a reminder to every
male Jew that he must study and obey the Torah each day.

4.

Orthodox Judaism

My dear Air. Isaacs:
You are correct in concluding, from my style of writing,
that I purpose to publish my letters. Thus, if I fail to induce
you to return to belief in Judaism proper, and then to grad­
uate to Judaism full-blossomed, the letters may be of use to
those Jews who will examine the arguments presented in
them, with minds that are not obscured by dislike of the
writer. It is my love of you, as a soul made in the same image
and likeness as mine, and not fear of your expressed hostility
towards converts from Judaism to Catholic Christianity, that
prompts me to continue. I do not think you are as dangerous
as you appear in your letters, save to yourself, for, as a writer
once said,
“The greatest hatred, like the greatest virtue and the worst
dogs, is silent.”
You may continue to write in your unrestrained manner,
if you so will, with the assurance asked, that your letters will
not be published, nor your identity revealed.
Now that another obstacle to an examination of the matter
at issue has been brushed aside, a return may be made to the
question of Judaism.
You no doubt know, that, when speaking favorably of the
religion of Israel, I have in mind the J udaism of old, which
has been called Orthodox since the days of the Paris San­
hedrin assembled by Napoleon 1. It represents the major
portion of the synagogued Jews. Its voice on the platform,
through the etheric waves, and in the press, is not as loud as
the number of Orthodox Jews, relative to the number of

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LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS

Reform Jews, warrants, as the Rabbis in the limelight are,
with a few exceptions, of the Reform variety. Perhaps that is
why Professor Horace M. Kallen, the active Zionist member
of the American Jewish Congress, said:
"The religion of orthodoxy is more organic than reform,
however, for orthodoxy is a way of living, while reform is
only a way of talking’ ("Judaism at Bay," N. Y., 19)4,
p. 84).
If God has not as yet made the “new covenant” predicted
by Jeremiah
if the thousands of millions of Chris­
tians have been in error in believing during nearly twenty
centuries, and continuing to believe, that Jesus is the ex­
pected of Israel, the Messiah foretold to come by the greatest
and holiest Jews, then is Orthodox Judaism the only Judaism
of the Torah, despite the many Talmudic additions that have
made obedience to its mandates a burden that many in Israel
have found to be unbearable.
Of course, to hold any Judaism to be true Torah Judaism,
as is sincerely believed by members of synagogues, is an un­
sound notion. First, because ancient Judaism was a divinely
instituted, authoritative religion. Its authority centered in its
priesthood. Its high priest was, as Vallentine’s Jewish Ency­
clopedia says, “the supreme ecclesiastical authority and chief
representative of Israel before God” (London, 1938, p. 284).
This priesthood exists no more. The worship of ancient Juda­
ism centered in divinely ordered sacrifices, which are no
more, as there are no priests to offer the oblation called for
in the Torah. Besides the Temple, the single central sanctu­
ary, where "the burnt offerings and sacrificesand tithes” were
commanded in Deuteronomy 1 a to be offered has not existed
since the days of Titus nineteen centuries ago.
These three holy things, basic to the Mosaic religion—
priests, sacrifices and Temple—being of the historic past, the
Orthodox Judaism of today is but a reflection of what has
“gone glimmering through the dream of things that were.”
If reasons in the minds of Jews for adhering to Orthodox
Judaism, or any other present-day Judaism, were as plentiful

DEMOCRATIC AND AUTHORITATIVE RELIGION

I)

as blackberries in the summer season, it would be a difficult
task to find one sound one among them with which to refute
the last two paragraphs of this letter.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G..............

Democratic and Authoritative Religion

My dear Mr. Isaacs'.
Looking at my last letter, in order to bring to mind the
point dealt with therein, I realized that the closing words
were in the nature of a challenge. Hence there was no need
of an apology for immediately coming back at me with a reply
thereto. It places upon me however the responsibility of deal­
ing with the two points you raise—authority and priesthood
—instead of continuing to answer some of the points in your
first letter, as planned.
You want “democracy in religion, and not a religion gov­
erned by a priesthood that claims divine authority.” I regret
your failure to see that the issue is not what you want, but
rather what Old Testament Jewry calls for. Yet your demand
will no doubt be seconded by many persons who do not dis­
criminate between a God-made and a man-made religion.
Your viewpoint will no doubt be applauded during these
times when the batde is on for the “four freedoms” that
totalitarianism denies. That is because many persons fail to
discriminate between the authority of the Church, which
comes from above, and the exercise of the authority of the
state which rightly comes through the consent of the popu-

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LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS

lace. While all power comes from God, the authority of the
persons who exercise such power, in a God-made spiritual
society, is made known to man through revelation. It was set
forth by Moses, and defined, as occasion necessitated, by the
high priests and Sanhedrin (the high court) for the Jews; and
by Jesus Christ, and the Church to which He delegated His
power, for all the people of the world from the time the
sojourn of Christ on earth ended. The exercise of the power
of the State in the U. S. A., is by the consent of the governed,
as defined in the Declaration of Independence, Constitution,
and Bill of Rights.
The Jewish priesthood was an aristocratic caste of the tribe
of Levi. Supreme authority centered in the house of Aaron,
of the tribe of Levi, the office of High Priest, when vacant,
being assumed by the eldest son, if he had the qualifications.
This hereditary, genealogical priestly caste, was displaced by
the priesthood without genealogy, in the Catholic Church. It
is democratic insofar as the men ordained for service at the
Altar of the Catholic Church are selected solely on the basis
of their moral, intellectual and physical fitness, irrespective
of their racial, national, or social status, or lineage. This
democracy of the Catholic Church was recognized by Presi­
dent Woodrow Wilson, who said in his “New Freedom,”
“The only reason why government did not suffer dry rot in
the Middle Ages under the aristocratic system that then
prevailed, was that most of the men who were efficient
instruments of government were drawn from the Church—
from that great religious body which was then the only
Church, that body which is now distinguished from other
religious bodies as the Catholic Church. The Catholic
Church was then, as it is now, a great democracy. There
was no peasant so humble that he might not become a
priest, and no priest so obscure that he might not become
a Pope of Christendom; and every chancellery' in Europe,
every Court in Europe, was ruled by these learned, trained
and accomplished men.”
Of course, a man-made church may be as democratic as a
social club. It may not only select its own rabbis or ministers,

DEMOCRATIC AND AUTHORITATIVE RELIGION

ZJ

and govern itself by the will of the majority, but it may also
shape its principles by vote of its membership, as it often does.
But right reasoning compels the conclusion that a God-made
Church if such exists, must be governed by the will of God
(as defined by its priestly authority) and not by the will of
man in a democratic or an autocratic manner.
There is but one Infinite God, hence there can be but one
Church of God, especially when that Church is the Body of
the Lord Jesus, as St. Paul declared the Church of Christ to
be {Eph. r.23). There was but one spiritual society of God’s
making before the thirty-third year of Christian reckoning,
and that was the Church of the Jews. It ceased to be of God
when it ceased to have a priesthood, sacrifices, and a Temple,
though many Jews believed, and still sincerely believe, other­
wise. Only one organic, visible, spiritual society of God’s
making has existed since then; that is the Catholic Church,
the one and the only Christian Church that dates back his­
torically to the first century of the Christian era. And the
Catholic Church would cease to exist if the existence of her
priesthood and sacrifice wære no more, if that were possible.
Members of such God-made spiritual societies know that
true religion is of God. They are governed by divinely re­
vealed principles which bind man to God; as from God man
came, and his primary purpose in life is to attain to an eternity
of happiness with God. Ancient Judaism, like the Catholic
religion, held God to have willed that man be directed and
served through His ordained priesthood. Its head in the Old
Law was Moses who lived on through Aaron and his succes­
sors in the high priesthood. That is why Jesus, the Messiah,
said to the crowd and the disciples,
“All things, therefore, that they (the Scribes and Pharisees)
command you, observe and do—for they have sat on the
Chair of Moses” (St. Matt. ajrz-j).

The Jewish religious system, as I said, was hierarchial. It
had its Sovereign Pontiffs, its High Priests. It had one visible
head in the beginning, Moses, who annointed his brother

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Aaron as the first High Priest, followed by Aaron’s son
Eleazar, and in turn by successive first sons of the family of
Aaron, who sat on the chair of Moses. Jesus, the Messiah, is
the High Priest of the New Dispensation. He lives on through
His bishops and priests, chief of whom are the occupants of
the Chair of Peter, which was instituted by the Messiah. The
Jewish priesthood ceased to speak, with authority when the
Veil in the Temple was rent, for shortly thereafter, on the
First Pentecost Day, the Church of the New Dispensation
began to function. Yet the Jewish priesthood continued to
live a precarious existence, though without divine authority,
until the destruction of the Temple in the year 70 a.d. Its
“last High Priest,” says the “Encyclopedia of Jewish Knowl­
edge” (p. 428), “was chosen through political intrigue. He
was not of the high-priestly (Aaronic) lineage, nor was he in
any way worthy of the office.”
A Jewish religion without a divine priesthood, such as
it had when the high priest functioned, as commanded in the
Torah, is like a horse without a bridle, there is no telling into
what doctrinal road it will run. It is lack of coherent, priestly
authority in Jewry that accounts for its doctrinal intellectual
chaos. It fails today to agree on the simple primary questions,
“What is a Jew?” “What is Judaism?” My prayerful hope is
that you will get a proper understanding of the faith of your
fathers of old in Israel. Then will you realize that the Juda­
ism which added glory to Israel; the Judaism of the priestly
days of Israel, is no more, as it was divinely displaced by the
priesthood and Church of the "New Covenant.” Then will
you understand that when a Jew enters the Catholic Church,
he continues his religious life with the God of Israel, under
the guidance of the priesthood of the Messiah.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G..........

6.

Conservative Judaism

My dear Mr. Isaacs'.
Having noted that no mention has been made of Conserva­
tive Judaism in any of my letters, you inquire whether I line
it up with Orthodoxy or Reform Judaism in principle,
I have deliberately refrained from mentioning Conserva­
tive Judaism, in order not to confuse the issue, which is
Orthodox Judaism as the Judaism of our fathers of old in
Israel, or the non-existence of any Judaism to which the sons
of Jacob are obligated to pay sacred allegience, because it has
been displaced by Christianity.
The clear-cut issue is Orthodox Judaism versus Christian­
ity, that is because Orthodox Judaism may claim some degree
of continuity with Judaism of old, as it stands for the God,
the Messiah, the priesthood, the sacrifices, belief in revelation,
resurrection, etc., as set forth in the Old Testament; while
Reform Judaism is the opposite, being a denial of all that is
basically Jewish from a doctrinal point of view, even to the
point of being indoctrinated sympathetically in many in­
stances with the God of Spinoza, though mouthing the God
of Moses.
Conservative Judaism, as an organized division of Ameri­
can Jewry, is of a later date than the Reform sect. Its influence
has been due largely to the work of Rabbi Solomon Schecter,
the founder of the United Synagog of America (1913). Its
center of operation is the Jewish Theological Seminary of
America, N. Y. C., of which Rabbi Louis Finklestein is presi­
dent.
While Conservative Judaism stands for more Hebrew and

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tradition than does Reform Judaism; while it has always
stood for a homeland in Palestine, which the Reform division
of Jewry opposed until the advent of Hitler to power, and
then only as a place of refuge for the unfortunate Jewish
exiles, nonetheless its middle-of-the-road position in doctrine
has caused it to be classified as neither “fish, flesh nor good red
herring, ’ as Moses is not divided in the Conservative Judaic
way. If anything in Moses is to be amended or abrogated, it
must be done with authority of a divine nature, which neither
the Orthodox, the Reform, or the Conservative wing of
Judaism possesses.
The best evaluation of both Conservative and Reform
Judaism that I have come across of recent date in the Judaic
world came from the pen of an Orthodox Rabbi, Morris
Besdin. I present it to you as my answer to your inquiry—
"In vain will you search for a clear definition and concrete
exposition of the philosophy and ideology and Consenative Judaism. It is in its very nature a shifting and variable
quantity, depending upon the form and shape given to it
by individual exponents. There are congregations that
style themselves conservative, whose avowed tenets of belief
and whose mode of worship approximate those of tradi­
tional Judaism, while there are other congregations in the
conservative fold which both in theory and practice are
hardly distinguishable from Reform Judaism.—They do
not recognize the absolute authority of the Shulhan Aruch
(code of Jewish law, standard authority for Orthodox Jew­
ish practice), nor do they regard Jewish custom and tradi­
tion as binding.”
“It is obviously very convenient to retain verbal allegiance
to the Jewish faith without abiding by its restrictive stat­
utes.”—“Conservative Judaism is a new pattern of Judaism
in accordance with the latest mode. It is essentially the
developmental evolutionary' view of religion adopted by
the Reform movement.”
"Conservative Judaism differs (from Reform Judaism) only
in this respect: that while the reformers followed a process
of systematic amputation, their moderate representatives
are content with plastic surgery. The former killed the

19

LAICIZED JUDAISM

patient; the latter disfigured him beyond recognition.”
. . And here is the dividing line between Orthodox and
Conservative Judaism. To us the existence of God and the
authenticity of tradition are accepted as absolute truths.
One who denies these beliefs cannot claim allegiance to the
Jewish faith. The Commandments of the Torah, we view
as eternal verities not subject to time and space” (J'The
Jewish Outlook,” N. Y., Dec., 1940).

Nothing further need be said about Conservative Judaism.
Hence I purpose to refrain from discussing it in the future, as
in the past, unless you raise some issue specifically related to
that appeasing sect in Jewry.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G..............

7.

Laicized Judaism

My dear Mr. Isaacs:
I had occasion to read my letter on Reform Judaism, and
your reply thereto, to a friend, in order to get his reaction. His
response was “That fellow does not know when he is down
and out.” My friend's remark was appropos, for after setting
down the well established fact that Judaism proper was a
divine, priestly, hierarchial, authoritative religion; that its
divine character became a thing of the past when its priest­
hood was no more, you hitch-hike to polemical fields entirely
foreign to the issue dealt with in my letters. Your reply called
to mind the parson in Goldsmith’s “Deserted Village”—

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“In arguing, too, the parson own’d his skill,
For even though vanquished, he could argue still.”

Yet among your verbal briers there is an argumentative
bud, faded though it be, that may be impetaled, belonging, as
it does, to the species I have dealt with in my last letter. It is
that there is no need of “such Judaism” as existed in the past,
as “the sacrifices in the Book of Leviticus have been abro­
gated.” You are partly correct, there is no need of “such
Judaism” today, or any other kind of Judaism, as all that was
great and glorious in the Judaism of the historic past has been
divinely elevated to a sublime, supernatural status such as
Judaism had never before attained, and embodied in the
religion of the Messianic Kingdom, the Church, that Jesus
the Messiah instituted. The part of your statement that I have
just quoted, relative to the abrogation of the sacrifices, is only
a half-truth, hence not relevant. The Mosaic sacrifices ended,
or more correctly, were displaced by the New Sacrifice which
the Jewish prophet Malachi said would be instituted, and
which was instituted by the Messiah before the gesture of
abrogation took place.
You should have said, as do Jewish writings, that Rabban
Johanan B. Zaccai and his associated teachers, assembled at
Jabnah, voted to “abrogate the sacrifices and (also) the laws
of purification,” after the Temple was destroyed; after the
high priesthood of Aaron and the Sanhedrin ceased to be.
Heinrich Graetz, Jewry’s leading historian, says—
“Without the altar, it seemed as though it were impossible
to approach God, or as though God had forsaken his peo­
ple. The festive seasons used to be determined by the San­
hedrin. But the Sanhedrin was no more; who was to
regulate and announce the time for the festivals?” There
came forth Rabban Johanan ben Zaccai. He set up a San­
hedrin (Vol. 2, p. 248). “By transferring the Sanhedrin to
Jamnai (Jabnah, Jabneel, a coastal town south of Jaffa),
and separating its functions from the temple site, Rabban
Johanan likewise separated Judaism from the sacrificial
cult and made it independent.”

LAICIZED JUDAISM

21

“He cherished the hope that Jerusalem and the Temple
would soon be restored by a Messianic miracle and that
sacrifices would then be reinstituted” (p. 250).
Great is Diana of the Ephesians, when sacrifices can be
“abrogated” after they had ceased to exist, when the high
priesthood and Sanhedrin were no more! Here are two of a
couple of dozen quotations, taken from Jewish writings,
which prove that Judaism as a divine, authoritative, priestly
sacrificial religion had ended with the destruction of the
Temple, an event that took place before Rabban Zaccai
abrogated the unabrogatable sacrifices, and assumed to sub­
stitute prayers in place of them.
The “Encyclopedia of Jewish Knowledge” says:

“The fall of the Temple and the disappearance of the high
priesthood occurring at the same time, that form of inter­
cession, ground for possible belief in human symbols of
divine authority, vanished. Nothing remained but the sub­
lime faith in the indivisible, omnipresent Creator . . .”
(/>· 364).

The same thing, though more clearly expressed, is found in
"Mid Channel,” by Ludwig Lewissohn, viz.—
“With the destruction of the Temple the sacrificial cult of
the Jews was destroyed. For among the people there was
but one temple and one altar.—Hence the Jewish people
were suddenly laicized. Priests and sacrifices and tangible
mysteries were no more” (p. 259).
A Mosaic religion “laicized,” as is the Judaism of the
diaspora,· is a supernatural, priestly, sacrificial religion secu­
larized. A Mosaic religion “laicized” is not the Mosaic reli­
gion of our fathers of old in Israel. It is not a religion to which
you, I, or any other person of Jewish parentage is morally
obligated to give allegiance.
Pardon me for repeating that there was no Temple, high
priesthood or sacrifice when at the meeting in Jabneh their
abrogation was brought about, and still more, there was no
* Diaspora, Jews living outside of Palestine, voluntarily or through exile.

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Sanhedrin. The end had come to the supreme j uridical court
of the Jews, with its high priests officiating, such as sum­
moned Herod before it for transgressing the law, by putting
Hezekias and the men with him to death; the Sanhedrin that
condemned Jesus for claiming to be the Messiah.
The high priests, and the Sanhedrin, legislated and inter­
preted the Law with divine authority in pre-TempIe days.
They exercised the power to amend and set aside some of the
requirements of the Law, such as the decree issued in the days
of Ezra, when the giving of tithes to the priests, referred to
in Numbers 18:21, was abrogated. But they, who spoke with
authority such as the assembly at Jabneh never possessed, did
not assume to have the power to issue decrees that would put
an end for all time to Israel paying divine homage to .Al­
mighty God, and atoning for sin, through the Torah-com­
manded sacrifices. The true religion of God in Israel ended
with the end of its priesthood and sacrificial cult. The same
principle applies to the Catholic Church. The popes, or
bishops in union with the pope, may abrogate such laws as
the eating of meat on Friday, and the celibacy of the cleigy,
but they have not the power, nor would they assume to have
the power, to abrogate the Sacrifice of the Mass, which was
instituted at the Last Passover feast of Jesus and His Apostles,
displacing it with prayers. The religion of Catholic Chris­
tianity would end, as a divine religion, with the end of its
sacrificial cult, assuming this impossible thing to be possible.
I will deal further with this matter in my next letter. In the
meantime, please to weigh carefully the foregoing as it is vital
to the understanding of why Catholic Christianity is held to
be Judaism full-blossomed.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G..............

8.

Jewish Priests and Sacrifices

My dear Mr. Isaacs:
I believe that the foundation cause of the differences be­
tween Jews and Catholic Christians lies in the question of
authority. That is my excuse for endeavoring to throw further
light upon the subject dealt with in my letter on democracy
in religion. Also because in it lies the justification for passing
from the Synagogue to the Church.
God, the Creator of the Universe, man included, is Au­
thority per se. He is the Maker of the laws that manifest
within His creation. He made not only the natural law, but
also the moral law which governs man in relation to his fel­
lowman, and to the Maker of the law. God rules the uni­
verse. He rules the relationship of husband and wife through
the Church and the State; children through their parents;
citizens through their legitimately instituted civil authori­
ties; and rules man, in things that concern his spiritual
welfare, through His priesthood. “He who resists” such "au­
thority,” says St. Paul, “resists the ordinance of God; and
they who resist bring on themselves condemnation” (Rom.
13:2).
The Jewish Church wras governed by the priestly authority
God designated. The main religious function of the priests
was to conduct the worship that the Jews were commanded
by God to offer to Him through sacrifices, going so far as to
set forth the details of the sacred rites, which Moses recorded
in the Torah. The authority of the priests of Jewry lasted
until the Veil in the Temple was rent, the Veil that hid from
view the inmost and exclusive sanctuary of the high priest.

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That took place at the moment the body of the Messiah was
rent upon the cross.
The Jewish priesthood was exclusive and temporary, being
composed of the sons of Levi, the high priest being the first
sons of one family therein (Aaron), and limited to the time
preceding the coming into being of the promised new priestly
order. That priesthood of the Messianic dispensation, fore­
told to displace the priesthood of Aaron, was to be a continua­
tion of the Messiah in the world, who was “called by Goda
high priest according to the order of Melchisedech” (Ps. 109;
Heb. 5:10). Its public work began after the Holy Spirit, sent
by the Messiah, descended upon the Apostles. The Jewish
priesthood, sacrifices, etc., were, as the Evangelists and Apos­
tles believed, but a shadow and figure of the priesthood of the
Universal Church the Messiah estabished.
The Jewish priests paid homage to God through bloody
sacrifices; the priests of the Messiah, through an unbloody
sacrifice, the “clean oblation” foretold by Malachi over four
hundred years before it was instituted (1:2). One is as high
above the other as the Jesus is above Moses. St. Paul said,
“If the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkled ashes of
a heifer sanctify the unclean unto the cleansing of the
flesh, how much more wall the blood of Christ, who through
the Holy Spirit offered Himself unblemished unto God.
cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living
God” (Heb. 9:13—14).

The priestly occupants of the Chair of Moses commanded
obedience by God’s mandates under the severest penalties—
“He that will be proud, and refuse to obey the command­
ment of the priest,—and the decree of the judge, that man
shall die” (Deut. 17:12).
The occupants of the Chair of Peter also commanded obedi­
ence, having been given the power to bind and to loose
(St. Matt. 16), though through moral suasion, the penalty­
being excommunication in extreme cases. During the middle
ages, when heresy, for instance, was considered by the state to

JEWISH PRIESTS AND SACRIFICES

25

be a crime, the culprit was turned over to the civil authori­
ties, if he insisted upon being unrepentant. The civil sen­
tences meted out were at times of too extreme a nature.
The children of Israel were a “peculiar people,” a people
especially favored by God, a people who were spiritually far
above the peoples who surrounded them. They were “a king­
dom of priests, and a holy nation,” as Moses told them they
would be when he came down from the Mount of Sinai
(Exod. 19:5-6). This was all conditioned upon their obeying
the covenant God made with them. This they promised to do,
and “a priestly kingdom,” in Hebrew a "kingdom of priests,”
they became. Thus were the Jews sanctified. That did not
mean that all Jew's were kings in the sense that Saul, David
and Solomon were kings; that did not mean that all Jewish
men were priests as were Aaron, Eleazar, and their successors.
The kings had to be of the house of David, and the high
priests of the house of Aaron, and only a minority of the Jews
belonged to these two houses.
Of course, Jews were also priests in the sense of offering
themselves to God in spirit, in the conduct of religious serv­
ices in the home, as well as ministering to the halt, the lame,
and the blind. All Catholic Christians are considered to be
priests in the same sense as all Jews were priests from the days
of Moses, and more so, for they unite with the priests at Mass
in offering the Sacrifice to God the Father.
In order properly to understand the issue, I hope you will
keep this fact in mind, that God commanded worship through
sacrifices, that is definitely designated sacrifices which were
to be offered to God by specially designated priests: that Jews,
like Catholics, considered sacrifices and priests to be cor­
relative terms, as one implied the other. Also that the priest
who offered the sacrifice acted as mediator between God and
man, and man and God.
The days of Jewry as a “kingdom of priests and a holy
nation” are no more; no more has Jewry a divinely ordained
priesthood, sacrifice, or mediator. Why? Because Jesus took
the place of Moses; because a new priesthood, with the Sacri-

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fice of the Mass, displaced the priests, sacrifices, and Temple
of old; because the followers of Jesus, the Messiah, became
the chosen people of God, being, as St. Peter said, “A chosen
race, a royal priesthood, a purchased people” (z Peter 2:9).
And, as St. John said, “Jesus Christ, the prince of the kings of
the earth, hath made us a kingdom of priests to God the
Father” (Apoc. 1:6).
Surely it is an indisputable fact that the Jewish priesthood
is of the historic past. Surely the priesthood must have been
of divine, spiritual import to Judaism proper, otherwise
Orthodox Jews the world over would not have prayed since
Temple days, and continue to pray daily, for the Aaronic
priesthood and sacrifices to be reinstituted. Surely the laiciz­
ing of Judaism, through the ending of its priesthood and sac­
rifice, ended Judaism as the religion of God, judged by the
requirements of the Old Testament. Surely the cessation of
divine leadership, oblation, and mediatorship, cannot reason­
ably be called a temporary affliction, for it has lasted through
a period of nineteen centuries. Surely God, who guided man
in his moral journey from earth to heaven through His
priests, in the days before His Only Begotten Son came upon
earth, did not leave man without priestly guidance for over
nineteen Christian centuries. Such a concept borders on
blasphemy, for it charges God with having abandoned man.
leaving him to drift spiritually with every kind of glimmer
that enters his unguided mind.
If a sacrificial and mediatorial priesthood has existed dur­
ing the Christian ages, and continues to exist, it must be in
the Catholic Church. She is the only spiritual society with
a priesthood and sacrifice, that rightly claims to be the perfec­
tion of the priesthood and sacrifice of old; and to have had a
continued historic, active existence from within two months
after the Veil in the Temple was rent, over thirty-five yean
before tire Temple was destroyed.
If justification for passing from the Synagogue to the
Church is desired, it will be found in the ground covered in
this letter. Sons of Israel who take part with Catholic priests

ARE TEMPLE SACRIFICES NECESSARY?

27

in offering sacrifice to God, in lieu of the priests and sacrifices
of the Old Testament which are no more, remain true to the
Mosaic principle of paying homage to God through sacrifice.
They remain true to the Mosaic principle of submission to
the will of God as taught, interpreted, and served in the
Church of God’s making.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G..............

9.

Are Temple Sacrifices Necessary?

My dear Mr. Isaacs·.
I am pleased to learn that some of your Orthodox Jewish
friends have been reading and commenting on my letters,
and that in the future their opinions are to be included with
those you express. I am pleased, because the Judaism your
friends profess is the only existing Judaism that has any legiti­
mate right to claim relationship, in principle, with the Juda­
ism of old, even though it lacks Mosaic vitality, being minus
a priesthood, sacrifice and Temple.
You ask whether I object. My answer is, certainly not. You
may not only show my letters to your Orthodox friends, but
you may also publish them in the Jewnsh press. This is only
said tauntingly, for the possibility of a convert from the Syna­
gogue to the Church getting into the Jewish press is as remote
as that of a defender of the Synagogue getting his letters into
the Nazi press of Hitler’s Germany.
You emphasize one point in particular in your letter re-

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ceived today, which will be dealt with at once. It relates to
sacrifices. You hold that “sacrifices do not necessarily have to
be offered in a temple, and on an altar.” That is true of per­
sonal sacrifices, but not of the public, the collective sacrifices
recorded in the foremost writings of Israel. You cite the sub­
jugation of the desires of the flesh by the spirit; the widow
giving her much needed mite to a holy cause; and the devo­
tion of Jews (you should say Orthodox Jews) in their syna­
gogues on the Sabbath Day, at the cost of a day’s wage each
week. Those are laudable personal sacrifices, which no doubt
bring blessings from Almighty God. But they are not dis­
tinctively Jewish sacrificial acts, save going to synagogues in­
stead of churches to pray. They are not sacrifices demanded
exclusively of Israel by God, as recorded in die Torah, hence
they are foreign to our discussion.
Salvation from spiritual death was the objective of the
Mosaic sacrifices. It was to be obtained through public, ex­
terior, animal, burnt, meat, incense, and first-fruit offerings.
Thus a public acknowledgement was made of dependence
upon God; of thanksgiving for His bounty; of desire of peace
of heart, home, and Israel; and especially as an atonement for
sin. Such sacrifices were offered to God by the priests and
the priests only.
Before the Mosaic revelation, every man was his own priest,
minister of his own sacrifices, such as Abel, Melchisedech and
Abraham offered to God. The sacrificial function was gen­
erally exercised by the heads of families, the princes, ancients,
and persons of high virtue. Such persons needed no special
authorization to offer sacrifices, as was given by God exclu­
sively to the sons of Aaron for the Torah sacrifices.
It is too bad to have to repeat, in order to direct your mind
to the central point, that God commanded sacrifices to be
offered by the priests of Aaron, who are no more; in a central
place, which is no more. The Jews of those sacrificing days
had one God, one ritual, were one exclusive religious family
of God’s making, being aided in this union by having one
center of worship. The principal bloody sacrifice, the sin

ARE TEMPLE SACRIFICES NECESSARY?

2$

offering, was a ram (a he-lamb) “without blemish” (Levit, r.i;
5:5). It was slaughtered and offered to God by the priest. This
was the God-commanded way to obtain remission of the sins
of Israel under the Law.
The blood of the lamb having been given to the priest,
was poured round and about the altar, thus offered to Je­
hovah. Through the blood of the victim, and the scapegoat
driven into the wilderness with the sins of Israel on its head,
God was adored, petitioned, and atoned for sin. The blood
being the life-stream of the animal, symbolized the pouring
out of life as a libation of love. God gives life, and thus life is
given back to Him. The object of this immolation was to
remind Jews that they are sinners, as we all are; that their
offenses warranted death; and that they desired to make
amends. St. Paul, advanced in the Law above many of his
contemporaries in Israel (Gal. 1:14), said,
“With blood almost everything is cleansed according to the
Law, and without the shedding of blood there is no for­
giveness” (Heb. 9:22).
You, and your Orthodox friends, know that the Jews of the
diaspora have been unable to worship God with sacrifices as
did our fathers of old in Israel, as with the end of the Aaronic
priesthood and the fall of the Temple, all sacrifices ceased.
Why? Why? Why have Jews no more sacrifices? Answer, if
you can. It is the question of questions that Jews should
ponder, for it embodies the primary cause and cure of the
affliction Jews have suffered throughout the Christian ages.
The Catholic answer to the question is Jesus the Messiah.
He is, as the Jew John the Baptist hailed Him, “the Lamb of
God who takes away the sin of the world” (St. J. z:2p). There
was no need any more of priests offering God the blood
of lambs, as the Lamb of God (slaughtered by His enemies),
who was “without blemish,” offered His Blood, once and for
all, “for the sin of the world.” No longer were sacrifices to be
offered for an exclusive circumcised people; henceforth all
baptised persons who worshipped the Lamb of God, who
offered Himself as a sacrifice, were to be God’s chosen chil-

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dren. The high priest of Israel sacrificed exclusively for the
children of Israel; while the Messiah, as High Priest of ah
humanity, offered Himself as a sacrifice for all humankind
during all time. Christ, who could have called “twelve legions
of angels” to check the action of the high priest, the San­
hedrin, Pilate, and the Roman soldiers, permitted Himself
to be put to death, thus laying “down His life for us.” Isaiah
foretold it over seven hundred years before the Messiah came
in these words:
“He was led like a sheep to slaughter; and just as a lamb
dumb before its shearer, so did he not open his mouth"
{Isa. 53:7).
Aaron, and his descendants, were high priests of Israel,
succeeding to the post at the death of the incumbent. Jesus,
the Son of David, is the one and the only High Priest of the
New Covenant, being, as King David foretold, “a priest for­
ever according to the order of Melchisedech” (Ps. 109:4).
His name is Jesus, whom you, my dear Mr. Isaacs, and all your
fellow-Jew's unfortunately reject. This Lamb of God died but
once, that was on the Cross. Yet He Lives on in the priests
of the Catholic Church He established, which is His Mystical
Body. Through these priests, the Sacrifice on the Cross is con­
tinued in the Mass, though in an unbloody manner, in “re­
membrance” of Him, as He commanded at the Last Passover
Supper of the Old Law (St. Luke 22:20).
The Mosaic sacrifice was a bloody one, as you well know;
whereas the Sacrifice of the Mass, in which Christ is remem­
bered, which unfortunately you know not, is the unbloody
Messianic Sacrifice that Malachi, the last of the prophets
recorded in the Old Testament, called a “clean oblation,”
which would be offered, as it is, “from the rising of the sun
unto the going down thereof” (Mai. 1:11).
The Mosaic sacrifices are no more, having been preor­
dained by God to be but temporary. The Sacrifice of the Mass
is eternal. It bears within it a divine appeal to the stray
sheep of Israel to come to their Messiah in and through His
blood.

DOES END OF SACRIFICIAL CULT MATTER?

The ending of the priesthood and sacrifices of Israel would
not be bemoaned by the Orthodox Jew’s of our day, were they
to realize that they were displaced by the Jew of Jews with a
Sacrifice that is as much more potent as Jesus is more potent
than Moses.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D....G..............

io.

Does End of Sacrificial Cult Matter?

My dear Mr. Isaacs:
Your comeback to my explanation of the sacrifices of the
Law, in relation to the Sacrifice of the Mass, is that I “scribble
along as if there were not two sides to a question." This fling
could be dismissed with the equally terse and trite statement
that there are two sides to a fly-paper as well as two sides to
a discussion. Though there is a world of difference to the fly
whether it gets on the sticky or the smooth side of the fibrous
material; just so it makes a world of intellectual and spiritual
difference which side you or I get on in the discussion of
Judaism and Christianity.
It were well to hold in mind the fact that there are two
sides when discussing Reform J udaism in relation to Ortho­
dox Judaism. Reform Judaism denies what Orthodox Juda­
ism affirms regarding (i) a personal Messiah, (2) miracles,
(3) the priesthood and (4) sacrifices, therefore one of these
two sides must be wrong. I have held that Reform Judaism,
according to the requirements of the Torah, is to Judaism of

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old what Unitarianism is to sound Christianity, biblically in
error. Is that not a recognition that there are two sides to our
discussion? I, who am contemptuously branded as a “meshumad,” for passing from the Synagogue to the Church, firmh
believe in these four-square fundamentals of Torah Judaism,
while you deny them, and assume at the same time to be one
of the faithful of Jewry. While I am one with the Orthodox
Jews in upholding those basic Mosaic principles, just enumer
ated, I have found myself conscience-bound to break with
them, because the Messiah they look for I believe to have
appeared on earth nineteen hundred years ago; that their
hope for the reinstitution of the Aaronic priesthood and sacri­
fices is in vain, as they have been displaced by the priesthood
of the Catholic Church and the Sacrifice of the Mass. That's
my side. It is explicit and affirmative; whereas your side is a
negation, a rejection of the faith of your fathers of old in
Israel. Reform Judaism is as far from having any right to
claim to trace its source in the Books of Moses as its rabbis
have for claiming to trace the origin of their bodies from the
Pithecanthropus Erectus. The Orthodox Jews rightly declare
Reform Judaism to be:

“Essentially a developmental evolutionary religion. It has
reduced Judaism to the status of an abstract missionarv
faith and removed the bonds of religious duty and obliga­
tion.—It retains verbal allegiance to the Jewish faith with­
out abiding with its restrictive statutes” (“The Jewish Out­
look,” N. Y., Dec., 1940).

Secondly, you present a sort of a I don’t care a d------state­
ment, from the “Book of Jewish Thoughts” (p. 189, N. I’.,
1941), to sustain your side of the argument, imagining it to
be indisputable because it came from Rabbi Kaufmann
Kohler, the editor of the department of theology and phi­
losophy of the Jewish Encyclopedia, viz.:
“What did it matter, if the Temple fell prey to the flames
for the second time, or if the whole sacrificial cult of the
priesthood with its pomp were to cease forever? The soul

DOES END OF SACRIFICIAL CULT MATTER?

J5

of Judaism lived indestructibly in the House of Prayer and
Learning” (the Synagogue).
It seems to matter a great deal to the Orthodox Jews, who
comprise the great majority of the synagogued Jews of the
world. They bemoan the loss of the Temple and the culmi­
nation of the sacrificial cult continually in prayer and fast­
ings.
If it matters not, then why is the 14th of the “Eighteen
Benedictions” recited by Orthodox Jews three times a day,
thus calling for the return of the Shekinah (special presence
of God) which took place in the Holy of Holies of the Temple
and for the restoration of the sacrificial ceremonies (Abodah)?
If it matters not, then why are special prayers said on Sab­
bath days, called musaf (addition), in sorrowful commemora­
tion of the loss of the Temple and sacrifices?
If it matters not, why is instrumental music forbidden in
Orthodox synagogues? Why are Jews forbidden to use exact
replicas of the utensils used in the Temple until the Temple
is restored?
If it matters not, why is the destruction of the Temple re­
membered by the bridegroom breaking the glass, from which
he drank wine, during his wedding ceremony?
If it matters not, why is deference paid to the Temple by
forbidding kneeling in prayer, save on New Years Day and
Yom Kipper (Day of Atonement)? Why are Temple prayers,
including those of the high priest, recited on Yom Kipper?
If it matters not, then why is Capuroth (means of atone­
ment) celebrated the day before Yom Kipper reminiscent of
the scapegoat in the Temple?
If it matters not, why is the loss of the Temple, and its
sacrificial cult, solemnly remembered on the Ninth of Ab
(5th month), Tisho B’ab, the day of mourning, with a strict
fast, reading the Book of Lamentations, etc.?
It is an anamolous thing for rabbis to claim to be Jews, in
the Old Testament sense of the term, and to dismiss the non­
existence of the priesthood, sacrifice and Temple, as if they
mattered not to Judaism, imagining that the synagogues fill

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the void. Yet these same rabbis (as well as others) celebrate the
Feast of Chanukah every year. This is the feast of the rededication of the Temple after the destruction of it by Antiochus
Epiphanes, King of Syria, who despoiled the Altar with a
burnt offering of swine. This feast is the remembrance of the
reinstitution of the sacrificial worship in the days of the
Machabees, as well as the miracle of the cruse of undefiled
oil, which burned for eight days, when formerly the oil
therein lasted but one day.
The greater part of the story of this feast is in the Books
of the Machabees; books (rejected in the canon of the Jews of
the diaspora) which the Catholic Church placed in the Canon
of Holy Scripture. It is the story of Mattathias, the High
Priest, who refused to respond to the King’s command to
begin a pagan worship in honor of Zeus, the Greek god; the
priest who seized the sword and killed the apostate Jew who
attempted the blasphemous worship. This challenge of the
High Priest, the defender of the priesthood and sacrifices that
the editor of the theological and philosophical departments
of the Jewish Encyclopedia says matters not, was followed by
his brave battle cry, “Whoever wishes to support the Cove­
nant of the Lord, follow me.”
The Feast of Chanukah is in remembrance of Judas
Machabees, who took up the sword, when the high priest was
killed, and led the defenders of the faith of Israel of old on to
victory. It is the story of the heroic martyrdom of Hannah
and her seven lion-hearted sons, whom the Catholic Church
honors in the Sacrifice of the Mass annually on August first:
whose alleged relics rest today beneath the altar of the Church
of St. Peter in Chains, in Rome. After encouraging her seven
sons to die rather than forsake the true faith of Israel, Han­
nah bared her breast to receive the death blow rather than to
deny belief in the One True God; rather than to deny the
priesthood and sacrifices as called for in the teachings of
Moses, things that matter not to modernized rabbis.
Chanukah is an inspiring feast that helps to keep alive the
love of the faith of Israel of old in the hearts of converts from

THE SOUL OF JUDAISM

55

the Synagogue to the Church. My hope is that Chanukah will
some day be made a first class feast in the Church. It would
then be devoted entirely to the principle of religious faith­
fulness, and not a prayer for the impossible, the rebuilding of
the Temple Herod desecrated and the soldiers of Titus de­
stroyed; nor the reinstitution of the sacrifices of those intense
historic days, as God displaced them with a priesthood and
Sacrifice of a higher order.
I will return to your letter again next week. In the mean­
time, permit me to say, prayerfully, that if ever the grace of
God leads you, as it did me, into the Catholic Church, it will
be because you believe the Aaronic priesthood, its sacrifices
and Temple, to have been of vital import to the Judaism of
the days before the Messiah rose from the dead and ascended
into heaven; and that the same God of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob who instituted them instituted the priesthood and
Sacrifice of the Catholic Church.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D....G..............

n.

The Soul of Judaism

My dear Mr. Isaacs'.
I regret my inability to respond to your assertions as tersely
as you respond to my “discourses.” One need not read many
of my letters to realize that I am not an elegant or terse writer,
due to lack of literary' ability and an ardent, sometimes overardent desire to substantiate what I say with perhaps too

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much data, and with what I consider to be sound arguments.
For these reasons, I must ask to be excused for not adopting
your “which nobody can deny” style, that makes you feel
cocksure that “the existence of Jews is all that needs to be
pointed to in order to prove that Judaism lives on." Your
terse declaration that “Jews without souls would not be Jew
may or may not be as sound as it is nice-sounding. It depends
upon what you mean by Jews, and whether by souls you refer
to the life principle of the persons, or the belief they profess.
When you speak of “Jews,” you enter tire intellectual grave­
yard of the Judaic world, as there is no agreement in Jew
as to “what is a Jew?” That question has been discussed so
often in the Jewish press without coming to a consensus of
opinion, that I found it necessary to begin my “Jewish Pano­
rama” with the chapter “What Is a Jew?” When Jewry lists
atheists of Jewish parentage and devout Orthodox Hebrew
as Jews in its “Who’s Who in American Jewry” (1939), it has
lost its religious intellectual bearings. I have before me some
evidence of this intellectual confusion-confounded that has
engulfed Judaism. It is a “Self-Analysis of a Modern Jew,"
that appeared in the “Jewish Voice” of Los Angeles, Cali­
fornia, July, 1936. It was written by William Kadison. He
begins by dismissing the racial and nationalist theories, as
JewTs are not a distinctive race or nationality. He claims not
to have attended a synagogue service since his thirteenth
birthday, when he was Bar Mitzvah (confirmed). He ques­
tions “the deeds and miracles recorded in both the New and
the Old Testaments,” brazenly declaring, “I’m an atheist."
He has no use for what is called “Jewish culture,” being “in
discord with most hebraic philosophy.” When asked regard­
ing “his faith,” “my friend straightened up—not in uncon­
scious defiance—and there seemed to be a glow in his eyes
when he replied; ‘I’m a Jew.’ ”
Looking at persons calling themselves Jews as a whole,
their existence implies the existence of Judaism, whatever its
status may be. Yet there is a world of difference between Jews
and Judaism. One refers to persons, the other to principles.

THE SOUL OF JUDAISM

J7

‘‘Jews without souls would not be Jews,” if referred to as
persons, for I assume you hold that the soul is the life prin­
ciple of man. Therefore, when the material soul leaves the
body, he no longer trods the earth. If your dogma refers to
religion, the spiritual soul (in the sense of belief), as I as­
sume it does, kindly remember that the soul of Judaism is
the Mosaic Law, the vital principles that classified Jews doc­
trinally as a distinctive religious division of society. Juda­
ism proper, that is as it is set forth in the Old Testament, is
organic. Some of its requirements, for instance, its dietary
regulations, could be modified by priestly or Sanhedrin au­
thority, when the Sanhedrin existed. But abrogation or re­
pudiation of its primary requirements would virtually be
repudiation of Law, insofar as it repudiates the Author of
those requirements, who is God. The decalogue of those
requirements I have found to be as follows: Belief in the One­
ness of God; the coming of the Messiah; the Commandments;
submission to the spiritual authority of the Aaronic priest­
hood; sacrifices of a public nature; circumcision; purifica­
tions; prayer; dietary regulations; and benevolences.
Considering that the God concept of Reform Jews has a
tendency to veer towards the spiritual pantheism of Spinoza;
that it denies belief in a personal Messiah, a priesthood and
sacrifices; its soul, though sentimentally Mosaic, is devoid of
the supernatural spirit and heavenly flame that gave the world
a Moses, an Isaiah, a Job, a Tobias, a David, a Daniel, and a
Mother of the Maccabees. “Jews” with such wishy-washy
Judaic souls would still be Jews, but in name rather than in
fact, when judged by the above enumerated decalogue of
Mosaic requirements.
The Orthodox Jews, for whom I have a friendly sympa­
thetic regard, despite their bitter hostility towards converts
from the Synagogue to the Church, affirm those things that
Reform Jews deny, as you well know. The Orthodox Jews
bemoan the non-existence of the priesthood of Aaron, its
form of worship, and the destruction of the Temple, and
prayerfully look, for the coming of the Messiah. Unfortu-

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nately, they fail to realize that the holy Jewish and Christian
principle of the resurrection of the body, in which they con­
tinue to believe, applies not to the Judaism of old, for which
they yearn. They fail to appreciate the fact that that holy
Judaism has passed from its caterpillar stage to which it will
never return, for it was divinely metamorphosed into the
butterfly stage nearly twenty centuries ago.
The eyes of both Reform and Orthodox Jews seem to be
held, for they see not that the soul God implanted in the faith
of their fathers of old is not in the Judaism of our day, be­
cause (with apology to Pope)—
The vital spark of Mosaic flame
Quit, O quitted its Judaic frame.

Fortunately, Jews, in growing numbers, are coming to see
that the death of Old Testament Judaism was a blessing, and
not an affliction. Just as temporal death, of those who die in
the Lord, means a new, a higher, an everlasting life, so does
the demise of old Mosaic Judaism mean a new, a higher
supernatural life here on earth and in the world to come. It
portends the shining sun of the Messiah, the “horn of salva­
tion for us in the house of David—, as He promised through
the mouth of the holy ones, the prophets of old,” of whom
Zachary, the father of St. John the Baptist, told us in his
"benedictus.” Hence, converts from the Synagogue to the
Church, quickened by the grace that comes to them through
the holy waters of baptism, seeing that “Death (of Judaism,
as well as physical death) is swallowed up in victory,” exultingly cry out, “O death, where is thy victory? O death, where
is thy sting?” (r Cor.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D....G........

»©©©©®©©©®®®©©©©©©®©©©®®®©©©®®©©©®©®®©®®®©®©®©©C

12.

Soul of Judaism Living On

My dear Mr. Isaacs·.
There is much more of import to be said than was covered
in my second last letter regarding Rabbi Kaufman Kohler's
flinging to the wind the loss of the Jewish priesthood, sacri­
fices and Temple, as if they were not vital to the life of Juda­
ism. Therefore, I am writing to clinch the fact that Judaism
minus the holy Mosaic triad of divine worship, that is as­
sumed not to matter, is Judaism secularized, hence not of God
as was the Judaism of our fathers of old in Israel.
I would refrain from dealing further with the statement of
Rabbi Kohler were not his attitude, towards those things I
hold to have been vital to all the great in Israel of old, quite
common among the publicly known rabbis of our country.
A review of the latest edition of the Union Prayer Book, is­
sued by the Central Committee of American Rabbis (1940),
enforces this fact, which is not as well known outside as in­
side present-day Jewry. It was written by Rabbi Beryl D.
Cohon, of Temple Sinai, Brighton, Mass. He rightly insists
that the changes in the Union Prayer Book leaves the “qual­
ity” of Reform Judaism entirely different than the “quality”
of Orthodox Judaism. He emphatically insists that the intro­
duction into the Prayer Book of more Hebrew than appeared
in earlier editions; also the "Yizkor” (Orthodox memorial
service), eta, “does not mean that the Union Prayer Book
marks a return to Orthodoxy.—Orthodoxy and Reform
(Judaism) do not differ merely in terms of more or less He­
brew, more or less custom, more or less tradition. The differ­
ences are in content and quality, and not quantity” (Empha-

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sis mine). The difference in “quality” of these two Judaisms
is seen in what does not appear in this Prayer Book, which
“reflects the collective mind of the Reform rabbinate.” Let
the Rabbi proceed—

“The present prayer book has not restored prayers for a
personal Messiah, nor for the resurrection, nor for a mirac­
ulous revelation, nor for animal sacrifices in the Temple on
Zion. There is no compromising with Orthodoxy” (“Jewish
Advocate,” Boston, April 12th, 1940).
You will no doubt agree that the “holy wrath of the Ortho­
dox,” which the Rabbi says was aroused by the earlier edi­
tions of the Reform Prayer Book, would be aroused today, at
the appearance of this latest edition, were not the minds and
hearts of all divisions of Jews centered in counteracting the
Nazi-inspired brutality, rather than in defending doctrinal
differences. Hence the rabbis who believe in a personal Mes­
siah, miracles, divine revelation, the resurrection of the body,
sacrifices and the Temple, have refrained from declaring, as
did the English rabbis when the earlier edition appeared,
that it is “a great evil,” “an abomination,” “that must not be
brought into a Jewish home.”
If it does not matter to the modern rabbis that the priest­
hood, sacrifices and Temple are no more, it does matter much
to the religious Orthodox division of Jewry. It also matters
much to converts from the Synagogue to the Church, insofar
as it is the basis for the belief that their non-existence is due
to having been displaced by the priesthood and Sacrifice of
the Messiah as predicted by Moses and the prophets of Israel.
To such converts, it marks the difference between the dark­
ness of present-day Judaism and the light that is the Messiah.
The light of Jewry is unfortunately darkness, hence Reform
rabbis dismiss the ending of the priesthood, sacrifices and
Temple of old as of no import; while Orthodox rabbis ap­
preciate the loss, but are blind to the cause. It has been truth­
fully said by the religious-minded author of “Guesses at
Truth,”

SOUL OF JUDAISM LIVING ON

41

"In darkness there is no choice. It is light that enables us to
see the difference between things; and it is Christ who gives
us the light.”
“Oh, let it slide by, a fig we Reform rabbis care. We have
the synagogue, the house of learning and prayer,” is, in a
word, what the Rabbi Kohler says. That is like saying (imag­
ining the impossible, the non-existence of Catholic worship)
—“What do wTe care if there have not been any cathedrals,
priesthood or Sacrifice of the Mass for centuries, the soul of
Catholicism lives on industrially in the Holy Name Socie­
ties.” Synagogues were not basic to the Law, as were the Ark
of the Covenant, the Tabernacle, the Holy of Holies in the
Temple. Synagogues were instituted to teach the Law that
Reform Judaism denies almost in its entirety; while Ortho­
dox Judaism clings to its dead carcass. Synagogues, which
meant places outside the Temple, where the Jews assembled
for study and prayer, were not contemporaneous with Juda­
ism in the earliest centuries of its existence. They date back
to the Babylonian captivity, that is six hundred years before
the Christian ages; nearly four centuries after the Temple of
Solomon was built; about nineteen centuries after the Ohel
Moed, the portable sanctuary, was used for prayer and sacri­
fices by the priests in the wilderness. The synagogues in the
days when the Temple existed, were places of assembly for
prayer and study of the Law’ that centered in a priesthood,
sacrifices and Temple. Darkness, if not wilfulness, alone can
account for failure to see that synagogues can no more be
substituted for the Temple than reading desks can take the
place of the central altar called for in the Torah.
Then, again, you do not seem to realize that Rabbis can
no more take the place of the priests of Jewry than Sunday
School teachers can take the place of priests in the Catholic
Church. Rabbis are not ordained, like the priests were in
Jewry. Joseph Leftwich, formerly editor of the Jewish Tele­
graph Agency says,

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“There is no such thing as a centralized Jewish body, re­
ligious or secular. There is certainly no Jewish church,
with a hierarchy, and a centralized rabbinate, and ecclesi­
astical or administrative government. Each congregation of
ten Jews or more is autonomous, completely independent,
and may elect its own Rabbi and arrange its own service.
Judaism has only the Torah. The Rabbi is not a priest
The priesthood passed with the Temple. Even the Rab­
binical diploma, unlike the Christian ordination, confers
no sacred power and is not a license. It is simply a testi
monial of ability of the holder to act as Rabbi if he wishes
and is elected” (“What Will Happen to the Jews," Lon­
don, 19)6, pp. 131-132).

There is no such thing as the consecration or ordination of
ministers, teachers of the law in Jewry, as that ceremony
ceased with the ending of the Aaronic priesthood. Jacob
Berab, the Talmudist, endeavored in 1520 a.d., “without suc­
cess,” to
“reintroduce the Semichah (laying on of hands) institu­
tion, for ordination had lapsed—and restoring the jurisdic­
tion of the Synhedroin, in order to create one of the neces­
sary conditions of the Messianic redemption” Ç'Valien­
tine’s Jewish Encyclopedia," p. 84).
Rabbi, which means master, was originally a title of respect
given by pupils to their teachers, or to any one more learned
than themselves. Priests, on the other hand, were ordained of
God, not only to teach, but also to offer sacrifices for sins, etc.,
functions that could not and cannot be assumed by rabbis
(Levit. 4; 3; 6; 12; 13; Num. 3·. 14—13).
While the rabbis of the leading synagogues of our country
have been graduates of Hebrew seminaries, you know as well
as I do, that most of the rabbis have assumed the title them­
selves or been given it by the groups of ten or more Jews
over whom they have officiated, as “no one can effectively
deny them the title rabbi,” as the American Jewish Commit­
tee says, in the “U. S. Report of Religious Bodies.” That is
why time and time again the discussion has gone on in the

SOUL OF JUDAISM LIVING ON

4J

Jewish press as to “Who is a Rabbi?” especially during "pro­
hibition days,” when “boot-leg Rabbis” made their appear­
ance. Adolph Kraus, in his retiring address as president of
the B'nai B’rith, said—
“As the right to expound the Jewish law has been assumed
by schochets (slaughterers of ritually pure meats) who are
called rabbis, for any congregation, no matter how small,
any one of its members may be elected as a Rabbi. Under
such circumstances is it any wonder that a ‘Rabbi,’ so-called
can be found who will be very liberal in issuing certifi­
cates” for “sacramental wine” (B’nai B’rith Magazine,’’
May, 1925).

The declaration of Rabbi Kaufman Kohler, that the “soul
of Judaism lived on indestructibly in the House of Prayer
and Learning,” may sound pleasing to the ears of Jews, but
it lacks religious sense, as the Mosaic “soul of Judaism” died
with the death of its priesthood, sacrifices and Temple. Jews,
not the Judaism of Moses the Law-giver, lived on, many of
them, especially among the Orthodox, having been God­
fearing men and women. I have had to limit this last state­
ment to the Orthodox Jews, as the spiritual life of Reform
Jews is at a low ebb. This is vouched for by many Reform
Jews, three of whom I will quote, though your Orthodox
friends need no evidence to prove this point. Dr. Louis I.
Newman, author, one of the leading New York. Reform rab­
bis, asks,
“Do modem synagogues give to Jews a sense of ‘holiness’?
Most of them do not.—Though Jews have a reputation for
being a people of prayer, and though they have through
their poets created the Psalms, the modem Jew is looking
for a religious emotionalism of which he is incapable. A
prominent clothing manufacturer—very generous in his
charities and very’ sympathetic as a human being—re­
marked that the synagogue ‘bored him’; the rabbis could
not interest him—” (July 19, 1940).
Alfred Segal, Cincinnati, the able Jewish columnist, said,
in his “Plain Talk,” after having been one of the eight who

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paraded through the synagogue with the scroll of the Law.
"You, I mused, have written about the imminent death of
Orthodoxy, but today you seem like a pall bearer of Re
form and a hired pall-bearer at that ... A stooge! ...
Consider: Which is the more vital . . . Orthodoxy <x
Reform?
"And Reform rabbis are consciencious doctors doing the;·
best to make the blood flow again in the hardened arteria
of Reform Judaism. Oh, there are plenty of temples, plent-·
of rabbis, plenty of dues-paying members, plenty of every
thing but life in the stiffening bones’’ (“Am. Israelite
Cinn., Oct 22, 1936).
Rabbi S. H. Markowitz, Ph.D., of Fort Wayne, Ind., said in
a lengthy article telling of his seminary days, in the Hebrew
Union College, Cinn., when “we rebelled against tradition
when “we sophisticated intellectuals, product of the prag­
matic age, snickered,” at some of the ancient practices. Re
form Judaism, said he, is “a lovely theory, but it just doesn't
work out in practice,”

“Reform Jews simply threw overboard all traditions, al!
ceremonies and institutions. And with what results? Our
people are bereft of religion. Those practices by means of
which our people manifested and gave expression to their
religious idealism were cast aside. Reform Jews became
religionless.
"Some of our people seized upon Gentile good will as their
religion; others made patriotism their supreme emotion.
“We have loud Jews, we have aggressive Jews, we have ser­
vile, submissive Jews, we have Jews who are blatant and
Jews who are cringing. We have Jews who are afraid of an'
gesture that the non-Jewish world might make. AntiSemitism is their religion. It is a far greater concern to
them than Judaism” (“Indiana Jewish Chronicle” April
r93i).

Jews do live on indestructibly, despite the persecutions
they undergo. They seem providentially destined to keep up
their existence as a distinctive group in human society, as St.

JUDAISM BEFORE MOSES

4$

Paul foretold nineteen hundred years ago in his Epistle to
the Romans (/o; 11). They live on as witnesses of the Old Law
fulfilled in the New Law. They seem destined to live on until
the end of time, when the veil over their hearts will, by God’s
grace, be lifted; when the remaining remnant of them will
see, what converts from the Synagogue to the Church have
seen since the days of the Apostles, Jesus as their Messiah; and
in the priesthood and Sacrifice He instituted the full-blossom­
ing of the faith of their fathers of old in Israel.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D....G..............

/j.

Judaism Before Moses

My dear Mr. Isaacs:
Your command will be obeyed. My reply to your query
will be "short and to the point.” My agreement with you
makes that possible, as “Jewish religious history did not be­
gin with priests and sacrifices at a central altar,” etc., as you
say. Judaism began with Moses; Israel began with Abraham.
About four hundred years before the world heard of the
sacrifices recorded in the Torah, God made a covenant for
the Jews with Abram, who, through his son Isaac, followed
by his son Jacob (father of the twelve tribes of Israel), be­
came the patriarchial ancestor of the Jews. God changed
Abram’s name to Abraham (raham, in Arabic, being a vast
number), signifying him to be the “father of the multitude."
God commanded circumcision of Abraham as a token of the
covenant (Gen. /5; 16; 17).

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The Law, which includes the Commandments, the Aaronic
priesthood and sacrifices, came from God through Mose.
Moses is the Law-giver, the founder of the Jewish religion:
the inspired writer of the Torah which all Jews were moral!'
obligated by God to obey. The Commandments you can, and
I assume do, obey; but Jewish worship of God, as God com­
manded in the Torah, is a thing impossible to obey, being of
the long gone past. God has not ceased to demand worship
through sacrifice at the altar. Then where* can such sacrifice
be offered? In one place only, in the Church of the Messiah,
through the Sacrifice He commanded to be offered in re­
membrance of Him. That’s to the point.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G........

14.

Judaism and Dogmas

My dear Mr. Isaacs:
The poetic spirit of Emerson, rather than the exact intel­
lectual mentality of Moses, must have guided your pen during
the visit to California you so graphically described. Or was
it the balmy atmosphere of the City of the Angels that caused
you to relax into saying one thing, while presenting me with
evidence to prove the contrary?
You must be one of those souls in the mind of the author of
“Self-Reliance” when he said—

“With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.—
Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon

JUDAISM AND DOGMAS

^7

balls, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard
words again, though it contradict everything you said to­
day.”

If that be not so, then how account for quoting Rabbi
Barnett R. Brickner of Cleveland, as saying, that
“By the Messiah, Judaism means not a person, but a time
of peace, brotherhood and righteousness” {National Mes­
sage of Israel Broadcast)?
while enclosing with it a marked page of the “B'nai B’rith
Messenger” {Los Angeles, Jan. 16th, 1942, p. 6) for my en­
lightenment, containing “Maimonides’ Articles of Faith—
which were accepted by Israel as binding on every Jew, and
were thus embodied in the daily prayer book?” Maimonides’
Article No. 12 says—
“I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah,”
a person.

Such contradictoriness seems to be a Judaic affliction, when
religion is the subject being considered; for when dealing
with economics, law, etc., Jews are consistent. If that be not
so, how account for the B’nai B’rith Messenger saying that
"Judaism is neither frozen dogmas nor static religion. It is
simply a body of spiritual truths?” Is Judaism really without
dogmas? that is positive, declared beliefs “spiritual truths,”
to which Jews are religiously obligated to adhere? All kinds of
synagogued Jews of all nationalities declare that Judaism, as
a religion, demands expressed belief in the Sh’ma, “Hear O
Israel, the Lord thy God, the Lord is One.” Is that not a
dogma? Is it not an unchangeable dogma, which, in the words
of the B’nai B’rith Messenger, is “frozen,” being “static”? Is
it not a Jewish “spiritual truth” dogmatically set forth?
If Judaism is entirely devoid of “frozen dogmas, static re­
ligion,” then why does the marked article you sent me con­
tain “Maimonides 13 Articles of Faith”? Are they not Jewish
"spiritual truths,” “static” principles, dogmatically declared,
and “embodied (as such) in the daily prayer book,” as your

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Jewish paper says? All the Brickner rabbis in the world tod···
dwarf into intellectual insignificance when compared to
Maimonides, the “Jewish Aristotle” of the thirteenth cen­
tury, who dogmatically asserts in his 12th Article—

"I believe with perfect faith
in the coming of the Messiah.”
The term “Messiah” is used by Maimonides as a personal
noun, as it was used by our ancient fathers in Israel It re­
ferred to the Anointed One, whom Hannah said would be
exalted (z K.—1 Sam.—2:10), and not merely to a timed
peace and plenty. The Messiah was expected by the Jews ot
old to usher in the Messianic Age when He came; the aged
“peace, brotherhood and righteousness” for those persons
who would use the instrumental means of His making to that
end.
The mistake of those Jews w’ho rejected Jesus as their Mes
siah, when He was among them in Palestine; the mistake d
the Jews of today who “believe—in the coming of the Mes­
siah,” is that their hearts were and are centered on a worldh
instead of a spiritual Messiah, a King who would bend the
Caesars to their Hebraic will. The Messiah prophesied to
come came in the time, place and manner that the prophets
of Israel foretold. His name is Jesus. He laid down the prin­
ciples. set forth the practices, lived the life, and instituted the
means that alone would have brought “peace, brotherhood
and righteousness” into being twenty centuries ago, would
bring it into existence today, or in the future, were man to
will to obey the will of Jesus the Messiah. Just as God’s love
can only be properly appreciated and enjoyed by man when
he loves God and keeps His commandments; so does the reali­
zation of the joy of the promised Messianic peace depend
upon man. Man’s power to obey or disobey the God who
made him, or the Son of God who redeemed him. was never
expected to be taken from him by the Messiah. The Messiah
was never expected by the prophets of Israel, to take man bv
the nape of the neck and force him into an earthly paradise

ISRAEL AND A PERSONAL MESSIAH

49

where “peace, brotherhood and righteousness” would reign
until the end of time.
The evidence to show that the hope of Israel centered in
a personal Messiah will be presented to you in my next letter,
I hope to your satisfaction.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D....G..............

15.

Israel and a Personal Messiah

My dear Mr. Isaacs:
My task, today is to present you with some evidence and
arguments to prove that the hope of Israel centered in the
coming of a personal Messiah, as it does among the Orthodox
Jews of today.
There was a time, not very many centuries ago, when such
a task was unnecessary. Everybody believed that the line of
detnarkation between rabbis and priests was that rabbis
prayed for the promised personal Messiah to come, whereas
priests prayed to Him as having come in the person of Jesus
twenty centuries ago, believing Him to be at the right hand
of His Father, whose mission He carried out among the chil­
dren of Israel in Palestine. But that clearcut dividing line
is no more, having been obscured by America’s most popular
rabbis, who declare that “by the Messiah Jews do not mean a
person.” Therefore no petitions for the Messiah to come are
printed in the prayerbooks of “Liberal,” Reform synagogues.
Belief in a personal Messiah is so plainly set forth in the

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LETTERS TO MR. ISAAC

biblical and traditional writings of Jewry, that Rabbi Solo­
mon Schecter, formerly president of the Jewish Theologia
Seminary (whom I referred to in one of my letters), dismiss*·:
such “moderns” with the remark, that “it is unscientific ir.c
needs no refutation of those who are acquainted with the
literature of Judaism.” Those Reform rabbis do not lad
acquaintance with Jewish literature on the question oi i
Messiah. They are intellectually afflicted with a debunking
spirit, which causes them to read out of Jewish literature the
age-old Hebraic belief in a personal Messiah, revelation, mir­
acles, resurrection of the body, yes, even the divine character
of Holy Writ. The trouble with these “Reform Jews” is. a
Louis Minsky, editor of the Jewish Religious News Service
said they had been told, that they “were more concerned with
being liberal than with being religious” ("Commonweal,
Dec. 31, 1930}.
The question of a personal Messiah is of religious import,
as in it centers all that is basically both Jewish and Christian
in principle, worship and hope. It is second only in im­
port to their belief in the God of Abraham, Isaac anû
Jacob, in fact it is part of that belief. If the Messiah be not »
person, then have the truly great, both in Jewry and Christi
anity, been grossly deluded.
An amazing reason for the rejection of belief in a personal
Messiah is given in “The Jew and His Religion: A Guide for
Confirmation and High School Classes,” written by Rabbi
Leon Fener of Cleveland, and Rabbi B. Benedict Glaser oi
Pittsburgh. It is that the task of usheringin the Messianic .Age
is too big for one man. Let the Rabbis tell it—
“Our people used to believe that the Messianic Age would
be ushered in suddenly, with the coming of a Messiah in
the person of a descendant of the ancient house of David.
We have been forced to revise the idea. The wOrld is too
vast, humanity so large and the problems of modem life so
many and so complicated that it is impossible for one man
to accomplish so tremendous a task during the course of a
single lifetime” (N. Y., 1931, p. 128).

ISRAEL AND A PERSONAL MESSIAH

This modem rabbinical assumption, that has long been
instilled into the minds of those Jewish youths who go to
modem American Rabbis for instruction, makes one wonder,
to paraphrase the words of Cassius, upon what meat these
rabbis feed, that they think themselves clothed with au­
thority to revise the promise of God expressed through Moses
and the prophets? Why, they do certainly bestride the part of
the religious world in which they function like a Colossus.
If such rabbinical views be your view, my dear Mr. Isaacs,
and they must be if your Judaism is of the Reform variety,
then would you have to reject them, by becoming Orthodox
in your Messianic concept, before any priest would hold you
intellectually competent to be regenerated through the holy
waters of baptism. For keep this fact in mind, which I am
continually calling to your attention, that no Jew who denies
the basic teachings of his fathers of old in Israel can become a
Catholic And one of those teachings is that the Messiah is a
person. Is God's world too big and complicated for God to
deal with its many problems of life through the leadership
of His Messianic Agent? Not if He is what David and Isaiah
said He would be, and what the Catholic Church believes
Him to be, the Only Begotten Son of the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob.
Jesus, the Messiah, did not think it too big a job to under­
take. for He is the “Emmanuel, the God with us,” “God the
mighty,” whom Isaiah foretold to come (7:14; 9’-6).
He came out of one of die most obscure cities in the world;
carried on a public mission within territorial limits that did
not exceed the size of the State of Delaware, for a period of
only thirty-six months, during which time He revolutionized
the whole wide world of His day, our day, and all the days to
come. During these three dozen months, He, the Messiah, out­
lined principles, set the example, and instituted the means,
that alone can solve the grave individual, domestic, economic,
social, and international problems of humanity in our exten­
sive, complicated, wicked world. The non-existence of peace,
righteousness and plenty in the Messianic Age, Jesus, the

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Prince of Peace, inaugurated, is no more the fault of this Ont
Man than is God to blame for the wars going on in the hearts,
homes, industrial, commercial and financial relations of mtn
and between nations.
The Messiah came. He is the “Prophet” Moses said God
would “raise up” whom “you” shall hear (Deut. 18:15). He
said that “without Me you can do nothing,” that is nothing
of permanent value to solve the problems of life; nothing to
gain salvation. God made man; God gave man dominion
over the whole of creation, and endowed man with the power
to properly use, or to abuse the use of the forces and sub­
stances of nature. God gave man die standards to follow in
his relationship with Him and his fellowman, through Mows,
and then more perfectly through the Messiah, the Mightr
Man of men. Hence, if the peace of the Messiah does not ob­
tain in the hearts of men, it is not due to the task being too
great for a personal Messiah to accomplish. Rather is it due
to wilful disregard of the will of that One Man, the Son
of God.
The proof that the Messiah promised to Israel was to be a
person is so numerous in Holy Writ that only some of the
main texts can be presented in this letter. Immediately after
the fall of man, due to the sin of our first parents, God prom­
ised, as Moses tells us, that the “seed” of a woman, not a man.
would crush the head of the serpent. That woman was the
Second Eve, the Lily of Israel, who brought forth the Second
Adam, the Messiah, a person (Gen. 3:15). Then came the
promise to Abraham (Gen. 22:18), that through his descend­
ants all nations would be blessed. He was called “The desired
of all nations” by Aggeus (2:8). Isaiah referred to Him when
he said, “There shall come forth a rod (a particular line of
family descent) out of the root of Jesse (father of David,
/z:x).” Zacharius (p:p) cried out to Israel—“O daughter of
Jerusalem. Behold thy king will come to thee, the just and
saviour; he is poor and riding on an ass.” Surely it must have
been a person and not an era that was to ride upon an animal.
It was Jesus, riding into Jerusalem on an ass: “Hosanna to

ISRAEL AND A PERSONAL MESSIAH

JJ

the Son of David. Blessed is He who cometh in the name of
the Lord” (St. Matt. 21:9).
The description of this personal Messiah in the Old Testa­
ment fits Jesus so truly, that only pride, ignorance or wilful
blindness can account for not accepting Him as the High
Priest (Ps. 109) of the Jews; their Prophet (Deut.2:if): and
the Prince of Peace (Is. 9).
Jesus was bom in the house of David, of the tribe of Judah,
as foretold in Genesis 49.
Jesus was bom in Bethlehem, under the star of Jacob,
after the sceptre, the political independence of Judah, wras
taken away, as foretold in Michaes 5:2; Numbers 24:17; Gene­
sis 49:10.
Jesus was born of a virgin mother, as foretold by Isaiah
T.14.
Jesus was bom in the time foretold by Daniel, nearly five
centuries before His mother brought Him forth in the City
of David (Dan. 9:24-26).
Jesus was called ‘‘God the Mighty,” the “Prince of Peace,”
was adored by kings, as foretold in Isaiah (9:6).
Jesus was conspired against; betrayed, sold for thirty pieces
of silver; led like a sheep to slaughter; suffered His hands
and feet to be pierced; and withal arose from the dead, as
foretold in Psalm 40:10; Zacharias it; 12-17; Isaiah 79:7;
Psalm 21; and Isaiah 11:10. All of these Messianic prophesies
refer to a person and not an era.
While nearly all of the Jews rejected Jesus as the Messiah,
they never lost sight of the fact that He was to be a person,
until the Made-in-Germany brand of Judaism entered the
Judaic world. The expectation of a personal Messiah was
more prominently in the minds and hearts of Jews during
times of affliction than during days of peace.
The length of this letter compels me to wait until next
week before taking up the subject from the standpoint of
Jesus designating Himself as the Messiah.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G..............

i6.

True and False Messiahs

My dear Mr. Isaacs·.
It is simply amazing for descendants of Abraham to claim
to be Jews, in the religious sense of the term, while dogmat­
ically asserting that the Messiah is not a person. Yet that ab­
surd claim is made by the most prominent rabbis in America.
Surely they will not deny that Jesus was a person, even if thev
refuse to acknowledge Him to be the Messiah. Speaking of
Himself, this is what Jesus said to the Jews—
“You search the scriptures, because in them you think you
have life everlasting. And it is they that bear witness of Me,
yet you are not willing to come to Me that you may have
life” (St. John y:ygi).

Jesus, claiming to be the Messiah sent by God, quoted Isaiah
61, while in the Synagogue at Nazareth, saying,
“The Lord—hath anointed Me to preach the gospel . . .
to heal the contrite of heart.” "Today this scripture is ful­
filled in your hearing.”
Jesus talked to the Samaritan woman at the well, who said—
“I know that the Messiah is coming, and when He comes
He will tell all things.” Jesus replied, “I who speak with
thee am He” (St. John 4:26).

While on the road to Emmaus with His disciples, who failed
to recognize Jesus as the Risen Messiah, St. Luke says—
“Beginning then with Moses and with all the prophets. He
interpreted to them in all the scriptures, the things re­
ferring to Him,” as the Messiah. (24 -.27.)

TRUE AND FALSE MESSIAHS

55

Professor Joseph Klausner, of the Hebrew University, Jeru­
salem, in repudiating some rabbis who held that it w’as the
followers of Jesus, and not Jesus Himself, Who declared,
after His crucifixion, that Jesus is the Messiah, said—
"A theory has been put forward that Jesus never regarded
Himself as the Messiah and only after His death was He
acclaimed as Messiah by His disciples. But had this been
true it would never have occurred to His disciples (simpleminded Jews) that one who had suffered crucifixion (‘a
curse of God is he that is hanged’) could be the Messiah;
and the messianic idea meant nothing whatever to Gentile
converts. Ex nihilio nihil fit: when we see that Jesus mes­
sianic claims became fundamental principles of Christian­
ity soon after His crucifixion this is standing proof that
even in His lifetime Jesus regarded Himself as the Messiah’’
("Jesus of Nazareth" N. Y., 1929, p. 255).
These four quotations, sustained by the declaration of a
Jewish professor, the first Jewish writer of a book in Hebrew
on the life of Jesus, ought to make you realize how distorted
is the interpretation of Moses and the prophets by the Re­
form Rabbis, who deny that the Messiah is a person; and the
Orthodox Rabbis, who reject Jesus as the Messiah foretold in
Holy Scripture. Jesus reprimands them today, as He did the
Jews in Jerusalem—
“If you believed Moses you would believe Me also, for he
wrote of Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how
will you believe My words” (St. John 5:46-47).
If the Messiah expected to come be not a person, then how
do you account for the Jews rallying to the call of about
twenty false Messiahs, who have appeared in JewTy since the
completion of the Messianic mission of Jesus? Jesus foretold
that the Jews who rejected Him would follow a pretender
when he made his appearance, viz,—

“I have come in the name of My Father, and you do not
receive Me. If another come in his ‘own name, him you
will receive’ ” (St. John 5:45-44).

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The "first false Messiah of prominence in Jewish histon
(after the coming of Jesus) was Bar Cochba” (“Sallentinis
Jewish Encyclopedia,” p. 242), who “claimed to be divine!·,
appointed redeemer of Israel.” He was supported by almost
the whole of Jewry. Foremost among those supporters was
“Akiba Ben Joseph, the great Palestinian Tanna (authoritv
on the oral law), founder of the rabbinical system; organizer
of the material in the Mishnah (the digest of Jewish ritual
jurisprudence, w'hich forms the text upon which the Talmud
comments); who is responsible for the canon of the Old
Testament” “He accepted Bar Cochba as the Messiah.” ("En­
cyclopedia of Jewish Knowledge,” p. ar).
Instead of following the true Messiah, the most prominent
persons in Jewry followed this pretender, Bar Cochba (whose
name means “Son of the Star,” real name Simeon, afterwards
called Bar Kozeba, which means “Son of Lies”), with the
result that batdes ensued, lasting for nearly four yean (131135 a.d.), in which 580,000 Jews are said to have been killed,
and hundreds of thousands of other misled unfortunates per­
ished through sickness, starvation, etc. Besides, Jerusalem was
razed to the ground, as Daniel predicted would happen in the
very text wherein the Jews were told of the coming of the
true Messiah, who would be slain. (Dan. 9:26).
False calculators, as well as false Messiahs, presented them­
selves by the dozens since the Jews were dispersed by Titus.
They afflicted the Jews, as William Miller, the father of the
Adventist Church, afflicted those dupes who sold their prop­
erty, and hysterically prayed on mountain tops, while await­
ing his falsely calculated second coming of the Messiah. At
least there was some truth in the prediction of William
Miller, in that there is to be a second coming of the Lord. But
there never will be a first coming of the Messiah, as the first
coming of Him took place in Bethlehem in the year One of
the present calendar.
Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver told of these false Messiahs in
“The Messianic Speculation in Israel,” a thesis written for
his doctorate in the Union Hebrew College. He tells of—

TRUE AND FALSE MESSIAHS

57

“All the ingenuity of a rabbinic method in hermeneutics
and homiletics was therefore brought into play and words,
phrases and letters, vowels, accents and tropes, and all the
mystic science of letter and numeral were marshalled into
service” to prove that the Messiah would come on this,
that, and the other date.

Such calculations offended Maimonides, who said in his Com­
ment on the Sanhedrin—
“It is a fundamental dogma to believe in the coming of the
Messiah; even if he is delayed long, wait for him. But no
one should attempt to fix the time, nor find Biblical texts
to deduce the time of his coming.”
It is a pitiable thing for thousands of persons to be praying in
the synagogues of the Orthodox Jews, and at the Wailing
Wall, for the coming of the Messiah, who has already come.
It is an offense to them, and to Christians as well, to be told,
by persons who claim to be Jews, that the Messiah is not a
person. Also to declare, as does the Universal Jewish Encyclo­
pedia, now in the making, that the hope for a Messiah, on the
part of our fathers in Israel of old, arose with the loss of the
kingship of the Jewish nation, when the promise, and the
hope, of the Messiah dates back to the fall of our first parents.
The hearts of all true Christians are sympathetically with
the Jews of today in their affliction, who are cryingout, as did
Ephriain ben Jacob of Bon, the thirteenth century Talmudist
and liturgical poet.

"And I, how long shall I hope for Redemption at the hands
of the son of David and the prophet Elijah?”

The answer is, until you recognize Him in Jesus of Nazareth,
and submit to His will·
These substantial facts ought to convince you, Mr. Isaacs,
that the hope of Israel centered in a personal Messiah, and
that He came in the person of Jesus. If they do not convince
you, then in the class of the unconvincibles you belong. Yet
I will continue to write. Perhaps my next letter will convince

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LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS

your Orthodox friends, who believe in a personal Messiah,
that such a thing as the coming of a Messiah from the house
of David, and the reinstitution of an Aaronic priesthood in
the future, is an impossibility.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G.......

Genealogical Status of Jews

My dear Mr. Isaacs·.
I ardently hope my last two letters convinced you that
belief in a Messianic kingdom, or era, minus a personal Mes­
siah, has no warrant in the Judaism of the Old Testament, or
the traditions of ancient Israel.
I purpose today to fulfill my promise to prove the impossi­
bility of ever reinstituting an Aaronic priesthood, or of a
future Messiah being bom in the House of David. In so
doing, I am addressing your Orthodox friends rather than
you. That is because your Reform Judaism must be dropped
out of consideration at present, as it expresses no desire for
an Aaronic priesthood; and its concept of a Messianic age,
minus a personal Messiah, is like looking forward to a wed­
ding minus a bridegroom.
The Orthodox Jews, true to historic Judaism, believe the
Messiah to be a person. Though the Messiah prayed for
“tarries,” as they say, they pray daily for Him to come from
the house of David, for their Talmud tells them, that “all the
prophets prophesied only until the days of the Messiah”

GENEALOGICAL STATUS OF JEWS

59

(Berachdoth, 34 b). These Orthodox Jews also pray for the
"Lord our God to restore the priests (of Aaron) to their
service and the Levites to their song and psalmody."
Your Orthodox friends believe, and I assume you also, that
if there are no houses of Aaron and David existent, there is
no possibility of reinstituting the priesthood of ancient Israel;
nor of a Messiah being born of the family of David, as the
"prophets prophesied.”
To begin with, it may be positively declared, that there
are no known Jews in the world today who can begin the
story of their lives, as Flavius Josephus began his life story,
by saying—

“I will set down my progenitors in order,” I have descended
all along from priests of “the first of the twenty four
courses.”
“I have set down the genealogy of my family, as I have
found it described in the public records.”

Here Josephus gives us an eminent historic example of the
care with which Jews, especially the priests, kept their pedi­
grees, safeguarding them in “public records.” This was neces­
sary to protect the purity of descent of the Aaronic priests;
and the Davidic ancestral hope of being the mother of the
Messiah. "The Jewish Encyclopedia” says—
“The very division of Israel into ‘houses’ presupposes the
existence among them of well-authenticated genealogies”
(Vol. v, p. 597).
“The Jewish Encyclopedia” proceeds,
“The genealogies (of priests) were scrupulously kept and,
when necessary, they were minutely investigated.—A spe­
cial officer seems to have been entrusted with these records,
and a court of inquiry is mentioned as having been insti­
tuted in Jerusalem.”
“A priest was bound to demonstrate the (Aaronic) purity
of the priestly maiden he desired to marry, even as far back
as her great-great-grandfather and great-great-grand­
mother” (Vol. v, p. 587).

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These genealogical records seem to have been kept in the
Temple in Jerusalem. The destruction of these records began
when Herod desired to hide his origin; and those that re­
mained entirely disappeared with the destruction of the Tem­
ple in the year 70 a.d. The Jewish Encyclopedia says, that "the
loss of official genealogies was deeply deplored as a calam­
ity—” for many reasons (Vol. v, p. 597). The dispersion of the
Jews, after the rebellion of the spurious Messiah, Bar Cochba.
the end having come to the priesthood and sacrifices, entire!'
obliterated the distinctive connection of Jews with the
priestly and kingly houses of the tribes of Levi and Judah.
There are Cohens (Hebrew Kahan, which literally means,
one dedicated to the altar, priest) who are given special
honors in synagogues today, as claimants of male descent from
Aaron. There are so many of them, that a stock joke in jewn.
which you no doubt have heard, is that if you want to know
how many Jews there are in the city, find out how man'
Cohens are listed in the directory, and figure accordingly.
These Cohens have a sentimental, but not any known
genealogical connection with the family of Aaron. The Jew
ish Encyclopedia says that the claim of this large contingent
of Cohens “is a matter of dispute” (Vol. 4, p. 144). Again,
under the headline “Pedigree,” this statement is made—
“Jews have always carefully recorded their genealogies, but
owing to their wide and frequent dispersions, very few can
trace their descent further back than a couple of hundred
years. All persons by the name of Cohen claim descent from
Aaron the high priest, but no attempt has even been made
by any Cohen actually to trace his descent through wellauthenticated sources" (Vol. 9, p. 577).

While these Jews, whose family names are Cohen, Kahn,
Cahanowitsch, and a dozen other derivatives of the Hebrew
priestly name Kahan, bear witness of the once existing priest­
hood in Jewry, their lack of genealogical evidence enables
none of them to meet the requirements of purity of descent
that the Torah calls for. This being so, the 1941 Hebraic
authority, the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, takes a sort of

GENEALOGICAL STATUS OF JEWS

61

a "I should worry” attitude towards the ending of the Aaronic
blood line, as the “aristocracy of the intellect” has taken its
place. Let’s quote—
“After the Second Temple was destroyed and the priest­
hood lost its paramount position, however, there was a
complete decline of interest in genealogy. The aristocracy
of the blood was replaced by the aristocracy of the intel­
lect” (Vol. 4, p. 526, N. Y. C.).

Indeed, it was quite natural that Jewish interest in geneal­
ogy should decline when the Aaronic priesthood was no more;
for the priesthood ended with Samuel B. Phineas (a.d. 68)
holding the office of High Priest, who was not of “Aaronic
lineage,” having obtained office by “political intrigue, being
in no way worthy of the office," as the “Encyclopedia of Jew­
ish Knowledge” informs us (p. 426). It is a far stretch of wish­
ful imagination that prompts the Universal Jewish Encyclo­
pedia to assume that God’s priesthood in Jewry can be
"replaced” by an “aristocracy of the intellect,” for instance,
America's popular Rabbis. If such an “aristocracy” were to be
of a Maimonides-Spinoza-Einsteinian intellectual order, it
could never take the place of an Aaronic blood aristocracy of
God's selection, which was divinely authorized to render re­
ligious sacrificial service such as all the Rabbis in the world
today, individually or collectively, cannot render.
The non-existence of genealogical records, etc., not only
eliminates the claim of the Cohens that they are of Aaronic
priestly stock; but it also throws out of court any claim of
Jews that they are of Davidic kingly stock. Jewish claims of
blood relationship with David have been very few, save
among the false Messiahs, when compared with the Cohens
who claim to have priestly blood coursing through their
arteries. That may be partly due to the name David (beloved)
not signifying Messiah, whereas the name Cohen signifies
priest. Yet the same evidence and arguments I have presented,
regarding the missing genealogical records, apply to Jews who
may claim to be of the house of David. All that I have said

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goes to show that Israel was divided into houses, descendais
of distinctive families, those of Aaron and David being fore­
most; that the Judaic worship centered in sacrifices offered to
God through priests, and that its hope centered in the comin?
of a personal Messiah.
Looked at negatively, one must conclude from the non­
existence of these families, that if no priesthood has displaced
the Aaronic priests, then has God left man without anv
priestly guidance; and if Jesus is not the Messiah, then is
there no hope whatsoever of a Messiah coming from the
house of David in the future. Then are the Reform Jew
logical in eliminating from their books the Orthodox Jewish
prayers for the coming of the Messiah, and the reinstitution
of a priesthood, sacrifices and Temple. If Jesus be not the
Messiah, why expect the unrealizable? Then may the Reform
synagogues, the Unitarian, Adventist, Holy Roller, and even
other religious group claim to speak with equal authorin 1$
no church would be able to claim to be God-instituted, as did
the Church of our fathers of old in Israel. The logic of such
an unsound premise would warrant substituting the “Origin
of Species” for the Bible as man’s authority as to his origin
and destiny. An absurd result of an absurd notion.
I submit, it were well for Jews to ponder the question
whether the disappearance of the priestly and kingly houses,
of the tribes of Levi and Judah, is merely accidental or provi­
dential. Again, was it merely accidental that the priestly and
Messianic houses of Aaron and Davud were preserved, that
they were not among the houses that disappeared, until after
Jesus was born and the Temple destroyed? If so, then must
you be prone to disbelieve that there is a Divinity that shapes
things of spiritual import to His designs, things that God told
man of through the prophets in Israel. Longfellow knew
better. He said that “It is a thing fundamental, that with God
nothing is accidental.”
Catholics believe, and with good reason, that the end of
the Aaronic priesthood meant that the priesthood foretold,
“according to the order of Melchisedec” (Ps. 109), had taken

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6J

its place; partly in order to fulfill God’s promise made
through the Jewish prophet Malachi, that a "clean oblation"
would take the place of the bloody oblation offered in the
Temple; that it would be offered to God in all parts of the
world, instead of a central place; and that the Gentiles would
share in it, instead of being a sacrifice for Jews only.
Catholics hold the genealogy of the house of David to be
of great spiritual import, as Jesus, the Messiah, came from
that house, seventy years before the records were destroyed.
Therefore, when the Catholic Church made the Christian
Bible, she gave the Book of St. Matthew first place in her New
Testament. That Gospel was written by a convert from Juda­
ism for Jews, in the language of Jews, primarily to prove that
Jesus is the Messiah. The Book begins with a prelude, an­
nouncing that this "is the Book of the origin of Jesus Christ,
the son of David.” Then comes the rise of God’s chosen chil­
dren in Abraham, through forty generations, including
"David the king,” ending with “Joseph, the husband of Mary,
and of her was born Jesus who is called Messiah.”
This letter is further evidence that converts from the Syna­
gogue to the Church do not deny the faith of their fathers of
old in Israel, a faith that exists no more. What they do is to
pass, as would the prophets of Israel were they in the world
today, from the seed of Judaism, planted in Old Testament
inspired writings, to the faith of Israel full-grown in the
inspired writings of the New Testament.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G..............

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Jews Uninterested in Genealogies

My dear Mr. Isaacs:
No one can successfully dispute your statement, that “the
Jews of today are not interested in genealogies as were then
forefathers.” That is true, but may it not be due to their de­
clining interest in the faith of their forefathers? Judaisn:
today is a community of fate rather than of faith, due parti·
to the persecutions to which they have been and still art
subject, which have driven them together as a means of de­
fense. It is also due to rationalism having displaced super
naturalism in Judaism.
There is no disputing your further statement, that, “assum
ing there are no Davidic and Aaronic genealogical tables
Jews can go ahead without them, as they have been doing.
The Reform Jews can “go ahead, as they have been doing,
but with religious principles and practices that are as foreign
to the faith of their forefathers as Unitarianism is to the faith
of the early Christians.
Both the Reform and Orthodox Jews can “go ahead, as
they have been doing,” but without worshipping according to
the Torah, which their forefathers believed “contains abso­
lute truth,” being “not the work of Moses, but the Word of
God.”
The Orthodox Jews can “go ahead, as they have been
doing,” but w ithout priests, or the possibility of the birth of
the Messiah in Bethlehem, for which they pray.
If the Jews of today are not interested in the genealogies of
the houses in the tribes of Judah and Levi, the Jews were
greatly interested in them during the days when Judaism was

JEWS UNINTERESTED IN GENEALOGIES

65

the religion of Almighty God. Josephus, whose history of
Judaism has won the commendation of learned Jews, deemed
the "annals," the genealogies of the Jews, to be of vital
import.
In “Contra Apion,” the Alexandrian anti-semite, Josephus
wrote as follows about the “annals” of the priests, being him­
self of the House of Aaron—
“Our forefathers provided for the order and regulation of
the annals (genealogies).—These records have been handed
down to our times with the utmost accuracy; and I dare
pronounce that the future annals will bear the same stamp
of authority. Care was taken from the beginning—to make
provision for preserving the sacerdotal race pure and un­
tainted, as no man is qualified for the office of priest, whose
mother was not of priestly extraction; and therefore with­
out regard to wealth and honor, whoever pretends to the
priesthood, must prove his descent in the right line by a
multitude of witnesses. This is the practice not only in
Judea, but wherever our people are dispersed—, for our
priests make it a kind of conscience only to intermarry with
their own tribes. In this case, they send from the father to
Jerusalem the name of the woman they intend to marry,
with her pedigree well duly attested.
“In time of war,—the surviving priests compose new tables
of genealogy out of all records,—As an incontrovertible
proof of their purity, the names of all our priests, in an
uninterrupted succession, have stood upon record through
a space of two thousand years. If any of them prevaricate,
they are forbidden the altar, and deposed from the exercise
of the sacred function.”

If the genealogical tables are not of interest to the Jews of
our day, as they were in the days of Josephus, they are of
interest to the Catholic Church insofar as the claim that Jesus
is the Son of David is concerned, as I said in a former letter.
That is why the Church arranged the Books in the New Testa­
ment to begin with the genealogy' of the Messiah. The open­
ing words are, to repeat—

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LETTERS TO MR. ISAAC

“THE BOOK OF THE ORIGIN OF JESUS CHRIST, THE SON OF

DAVID.”

It is certainly in order to ask, “What evidence is there to
prove that Jesus came from the house of David?” The same
question came to my mind at one time, knowing that the
prophets of Israel declared that the Messiah had to be bom
in the house of David. The Christian claim that Jesus is the
Son of David, recorded on the first and the last pages of the
New Testament, and on many pages between them, im­
pressed me favorably after discovering that the claim had not
been questioned until the fourth century of the Christian
era. It was then that the bitter hostility towards Jesus on the
part of the Roman Emperor Julian, who had apostasized
from Christianity to Paganism, prompted, not only his denial
that Jesus was the Son of David, but also his attempt to set
at naught the prophesy of Jesus that the Temple would be
destroyed, by attempting to rebuild it. His work was frus­
trated by the miraculous burst of flames that destroyed the
foundation that had been built.
Tradition, including the writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch
(67-107 A.D.), St. Justin (103-167 aj>.) and other fathers of
the church, attests to an unbroken record of claims that Jesus
is the Son of David. In the Dialogue of St. Justin, the great
Christian apologist, with Tryphon, one of the leading author­
ities on the oral law of the Jews, contains strong evidence,
though of a negative character. Therein, St. Justin speaks of
Mary, mother of Jesus, as “of the race of David” (za:z). This
was not questioned by Tryphon, who denied that Jesus is the
Messiah.
The positive, and most convincing evidence, that Jesus
came from the house of David, is in the New Testament,
which would have been questioned by the Jews of the first
century, who were keen and skeptical, if it were not true.
Here are some texts, which cannot be reasonably questioned.
Zachary, in his canticle, thanks the God of Israel for having
“raised up a horn (symbol of power and strength) of salvation
for us in the house of David” (St. Luke 1:68-69). St. Luke

JEWS UNINTERESTED IN GENEALOGIES

67

tells of Joseph going “to the town of David, which is Bethle­
hem—because he was of the house and family of David—to
register, together with Mary his espoused wife, who was with
child,” Jesus (a:r-^). St. Paul told Timothy to “Remember
that Jesus Christ—was descended from David” (2 Tim. 2:8).
In the Acts of the Apostles, we read that “God according
to the promise brought Israel a Saviour, Jesus, from the off­
spring of David” (/5:25-2^).
St. John exclaims, “Behold the lion (symbol of the house of
David) of the tribe of Judah, the root of David" (Apoc. 5:5).
The Canaanite women (St. Matt, 17:22)·, the blind men
(St. Matt. 9:27—28') cried out “Jesus Son of David”; “have pity
on us Son of David.”
All four Evangelists record the great multitude of Jews
who joyously hailed Jesus as the “Son of David,” as He drove
through the streets of Jerusalem, the royal city of Jewry, with
these Messianic words:
Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest! (St. Matt. 21:9.)

The acceptation of this royal greeting on the part of Jesus
is evidence that He considered Himself to be the Son of
David. When questioning the Pharisees, Jesus laid claim to
being the “Lord” David called “my Lord,” his Son (St. Matt.
22:41-44)·
The claim that He is of David was revealed by Jesus to
St. John in these words:
“I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you—I am the
root and offspring of David” (Apoc. 22:16).
If this evidence does not convince you that Jesus is the Son
of David, then are you left to continue in that spiritual dark­
ness that denies belief in a personal Messiah. Then has God
made a promise that has not been fulfilled, and that cannot
be fulfilled, as no house of David exists in which a Messiah
can be bom. As for your Orthodox friends, this evidence
proves that they must either accept Jesus as the Messianic

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oa

Son of David, or like the child running after the pot of gold
at the end of the rainbow, keep on looking for the impossible,
the coming of the Son of David from a non-existing house of
David.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G........

zp.

Do ]etvs Proselytize?

My dear Mr. Isaacs:
I am in agreement with you, “Opposition to Judaism will
never convince a Jew that he should become a Christian.”
Especially so, when the opposition is bad-spirited, based, as
much opposition is, upon unwarranted charges, such as the
“blood ritual,” the Protocols of the Elders of Zion etc. It
naturally arouses resentment, and closes the Jewish mind to
arguments favorable to Christianity, however sound they may
be. Jews can no more be brow-beaten into hailing Jesus as
their Messiah, than they can be brow beaten into sincerely
Heil-Hitlering Hitler in Nazi controlled territory.
I do not think your Orthodox friends suggested your dec­
laration, for they know I have not been attacking the Judaism
of our forefathers in Israel. While history compelled me to
declare that your brand of Judaism came from Germany, in­
stead of Sinai, and therefore is not Jewish in principle, judged
from the standpoint of the Old Testament, my pen was not
guided by bitterness of spirit, as bitterness towards my fellow­
man, thanks be to God, is not one of the many weaknesses in

DO JEWS PROSELYTIZE?

6p

my makeup. I am conscious of the fact that “he who hates his
brother is in darkness,” and therefore lacks the light that love
generates, as St. John, the Jew who became the Apostle closest
to the heart of the Messiah, said in his first Epistle.
My contention has been that knowledge and love of Juda­
ism of old are the basis for a sound understanding and appre­
ciation of things Catholic. Surely that is favoring, and not
opposing Judaism. No Catholic can rightly hate the Judaism
from which his religion originated, any more than he can hate
the seed from which he came into being.
Your comeback to my last letter, I cannot say answer
thereto, is so far removed from what I said that it is not even
of secondary import. While I will digress from the issue dis­
cussed to answer your protest against "trying to convert Jews
to Catholicism,” and the assertion that “Jews never prosely­
tize,” please do not let the points I made in my last letter slip
out of your memory. They are, first: that the Mosaic Law
calls for a priesthood from the house of Aaron, and the com­
ing of the Messiah from the house of David; Second: that all
divisions in Jewry agree that the priesthood of Aaron ceased
to function with the destruction of the Temple in the first
century after the coming of the Messiah; that the last priest
of Jewry was Phineas, who had no Torah right to that office;
Third: that there is no possibility of an Aaronic priesthood
being reinstituted; nor a Messiah being bom in the future, as
there are no known houses of Aaron and David in existence
from which such personages can come; Fourth: the termina­
tion of these houses was no doubt providential, as the Messiah
came in the person of Jesus, Who instituted the new, uni­
versal, prophesied priesthood.
Evidently you must have found the data and arguments in
my letter too positive, clear, and well authenticated by quota­
tions taken from Jewish sources, to try and refute them. If
not, what made you switch to a question entirely foreign to
the issue? Jews have been, but are not now, more intense in
their effort to circumcise non-Jews than Catholics are to
baptize Jews. In fact, judging by the activities of Catholics

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during the thirty-six years that I have been in the Church,
there has been less work done by the Catholic Church to con­
vert Jews than has been done to convert any other group of
non-Catholics.
In the first place, please to bear in mind the fact that only
a very small percentage of Jews have any affiliation with syna­
gogues; that three-quarters of them, if not more, do not even
utter the Sh'ma—“Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One
God.’’ Many of them say, what Walter Lipmann says in the
opening words of his “Preface to Morals,” that "there is a
vacancy in the lives—of those who no longer believe in the
religion of their fathers.” As for Liberal Judaism, it is so far
from Judaism of old, and so near Unitarianism, that Prof.
A. A. Roback said, in his “Weekly Survey of People and
Ideas,” that appeared in the Jewish press of our country, on
the last week of January, 1940.
"Shortsighted people (referring to some Jewish leaden) do
not realize that many of the grandchildren of the so-called
liberal Jews today will become Unitarians or Christian
Scientists fifty years hence, for the reason that there is only
a hairbreadth’s difference between the credo of the ‘liberal’
Jew and the liberal Christian.”

To win such persons to the Catholic Church is to win them
back to the faith of their Mosaic Law-loving fathers of old in
Israel, to the Judaism full-blossomed that the prophets they
honored foretold. My letters aim to get such Jews, as well as
those in synagogues, to see the soundness of Catholic claims,
hoping that once they know them as they really are, they will
be blest with the courage equal to their understanding, and
thus influence the Holy Spirit to bestow upon them the gift
of regeneration at the baptismal font of the Church of the
Messiah. That is a perfectly legitimate ambition, so long as
proper means are used to bring the result desired, your pro­
test to the contrary notwithstanding.
Surely it is not a virtue to know and enjoy the benefit of
truth without regard for your brother who is in error, espe-

DO JEWS PROSELYTIZE?

’JI

cially when it involves his spiritual well-being. Knowledge is
responsibility. It obligates us to endeavor, by example first,
and then by word of mouth or pen, to lead our fellowman
from error to truth, from evil to good, from indifference to
spiritual insight, from a false to a true means of obeying the
will of God, for we are our brother’s keeper. That is why the
Midrash (study and exegesis of Jewish scripture) says, “He
who brings a heathen next to God is as though he had created
him anew.”
It was the laudable desire to serve God, and to bring non­
Jews to the knowledge of the one True God, to obedience to
God’s Commandments, and to living according to the Mosaic
Law, that prompted the faithful Jews of old to proelytize.
You, like most of the Jews of our day, seem to lack the knowl­
edge that Judaism was a missionary religion in pre-Christian
days, and rightly so, though its methods at times were repre­
hensible. A study of Jewish histories would cause you to
change your assertion that “Jews never proelytize” to read,
that “Jews do not do any public proselytizing work today.”
Provisions are made for proselytes in the Shulchan Aruch
(code of Jewish law) which guides Orthodox Jews, a special
division therein being devoted to the subject. Proselytes of
different grades are defined in the Jewish codes. The Gere
Tzedek, for instance, are proselytes of righteousness, because
“they are sincere,” that is, they are not prompted to be cir­
cumcised by marriage, desire to gain popularity, or fear of
persecution. They are given an equal status with persons of
Jewish parentage, therefore it is forbidden “to annoy them”
by saying, for instance,
“Yesterday you were a worshipper of vanity,” or “Pig’s
flesh is still between your teeth.”
Evidence of the intense endeavor to convert heathens to
Judaism is found in the writings of Cicero, Dio Cassius,
Horace, Juvenal, Senaca, Tacitus, Josephus, and the New
Testament.
The ire of the authorities in Alexandria and Rome was

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aroused by the proselytizing activities of the Jews. Poppaca,
the wife of Nero; Aquila of Pontus; Consul Flavius Clemens,
nephew of Roman Emperor Vespasion and his wife, Domitilla, the cousin of Titus; King Monobaz of Abiabene, his
wife, Helena, and many nobles of his court; King Dhu Nuwas
of Yemen, are but a few of the prominent proselytes. Some
rabbis claimed that Nero and Marcus Aurelius were converts
to Judaism, though other Jews deny that it is so. If Jews did
not proselytize, then how account for the black Jews (Falashas) of Ethiopia, who have congregations in our country?
It was proselytizing work that encouraged the conversion of
the Chazars, the Turkish tribe, and its King Bulan. It is an
indisputable fact that converts were made by force on the
part of officials of the highest standing in Jewry, especially
during the days of the Maccabean warrior kings. These lead­
ers of Jewry gave the Idumeans they subdued, the choice
of becoming Jews or getting out of the land in which they
lived.
Josephus, who believed in the worship of God according
to the dictates of conscience, condemned Jewish forced cir­
cumcision. Writing in his “Life," of men who surrendered in
battle, he said:
“When the Jews would force them to be circumcised, if
they would stay among them, I would not permit any force
put upon them, but said, ‘Every one ought to worship
according to his own inclination, and not be constrained
by force.’ ’’

The common practice of circumcising slaves, caused legis­
lation to be enacted against Jews owning slaves who were
Christians. On the other hand, Jews who became Christians
were so severely dealt with, by their former religionists, that
one of the first edicts dealing with religion, issued by Con­
stantine the Great (Oct. 18, 315, a.d.) was as follows:
“We wish to make known to Jews and their elders and
their patriarchs that if, after the enactment of this law, any

DO JEWS PROSELYTIZE?

7J

one of them dares to attack with stones or some other
manifestation of anger another who has fled their danger­
ous sect and attached himself to the worship of God (re­
ferring to Christianity), he must be speedily given to the
flames and burnt together with all his accomplices.”
It was “the missionary spirit of the Jews,” which the "En­
cyclopedia of Jewish Knowledge” says, “was often fanatical”
(p. 358), and the hypocrisy of the leaders of the Jews the Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ met in Jerusalem, that brought from
His sacred lips one of the severest indictments He uttered:
“Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because
you traverse sea and land to make one convert; and when
he has become one, you make him twofold more a son of
Hell than yourselves” (St. Matt. 23 : ry).

This letter ought to convince any one, who will read it
dispassionately, that Judaism was a proselytizing religion;
that it was within its province, aye, it was its duty, to convert
non-Jews to belief in and worship of the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, to the Mosaic way of life, in the days when
Judaism alone was the divinely instituted religion in the
world.
With the coming of the Messiah; with the institution of
the Messianic priesthood and Sacrifice, that took the place of
the priesthood and sacrifices of the old covenant, the author­
ity to represent God in the world was transferred to the
Apostles selected by the Messiah and their successors.
Their universal commission was given by Jesus in these
words:
“All power in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have com­
manded you; and behold, I am with you all davs, even to
the consummation of the world” (St. Matt. 28:18-20).

This was a commission to make converts of all peoples,
Jews included. To ask Christians to cease “trying to convert

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Jews to Catholicism,” is equivalent to asking them to stop
doing what Jesus Christ did and instituted His Church to
continue.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G......

20.

His “Anointed of the Lord”

My dear Mr. Isaacs:
You ask my opinion of the following quotation, taken from
“What We Jews Believe,” in which Samuel S. Cohon, pro­
fessor of theology in the Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati,
declares that the term anointed referred not, in the Hebrew
Bible, to a “unique and mysterious personage,” like Jesus
Christ:
. The title M’shiah Adonai—the anointed of the Lord
—is used in no supernatural sense throughout the Hebrew
Bible. It is applied to Saul, to David, and to other kings of
Israel, in the same sense in which we speak of a king as
‘crowned.* The term referred to no unique and mysterious
personage of the perfected kingdom of the future may be
seen from the application by the prophet to the gentile
king like Cyrus” (Is. 45:1).
It is an indisputable fact that the kings of Israel, and Cyrus
were referred to as anointed; so were the priests of the
Hebrew Bible (Lev. 4:3)—“Moses poured oil on Aaron's
head, and anointed him” (Lev. 8:12). But the term applied in
a unique way to the M’shiah, called the Anointed One.

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“anointed of the lord’

75
The claim that the term referred not to the M’shiah, the
Christ, in a unique way, because it was applied to others,
Cyrus for instance, is refuted in Psalm 2:2 and Psalm 109:4
(Hebrew Bible, 110:4), æ which a “unique” priest, the
Christ, is referred to, who was to be “begotten,” instead of
being made in the natural way as were the members of the
house of Aaron, who were priests. Instead of being a figura­
tive, successive, transitory priest, as were those of Aaron, He
was referred to as an eternal, unchangeable “priest according
to the order of Melchesidec.” He was not to be anointed in an
external way, with oil, as was Saul, David and Solomon; His
anointing being an internal unction of the Holy Spirit, being
the High Priest of heaven. Hannah, the mother of Samuel,
alludes to a “unique” personage (z Kings 2:10; Hebrew Bible,
i Sam. 2:10), in her canticle, at the time when there was no
king of the Jews, as the “horn of His (God’s) anointed,” who
is the M’shiah.
Cyrus, though referred to as anointed, was never conse­
crated with oil by the Jews, as were their kings. He was hon­
ored as a saviour of the Jews, having issued the edict that
enabled them to return to Judea to rebuild the Temple. He
prefigured the M’shiah, the Anointed One, whom Isaiah said
(45) would bud forth from Israel as the Saviour of mankind.
The understanding of Jews, who look objectively at Chris­
tian truth, would be greatly furthered by a comprehension of
the plainly evident fact that present-day Judaism is a mass
of negatives; a denial of this, that, and everything else that
is basically Christian. Its mind is set upon denying Jesus to
be the Anointed One, the M’shiah, terms rightly used inter­
changeably.
The holy Jews of the days when Jesus “came unto His
own” in Palestine, who were not swayed by the worldly
priests who disgraced Israel, recognized Jesus as their
M’shiah, the Anointed of God. Simon-Peter spoke for them,
when in answer to the question, "Whom do men say the Son
of man is?” (using the title, Son of man, which Daniel used
to designate the M’shiah, Dan. 7:17), replied, “Thou art the

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76

M’shiah, the Anointed One (Matt. 16; Luke 9:20-21'). Jesus,
the M’shiah, is the Prophet King and Priest of Israel, accord­
ing to the Hebrew Bible. He is the Prophet Moses said God
would raise up for Israel, whom “thou shalt hear” (Deut.
18: r5). He is the King prophesied by David to be the Only
Begotten Son of God (Ps. 2). He is “the Priest forever” who,
as prophesied in Psalm 109 (Hebrew Bible, no), would make
His enemies His footstool, be the Judge of nations, etc. I
would recommend a study of the seventh chapter of St. Paul’s
Epistle to the Hebrews for a profound, yet clear understand­
ing of the uniqueness of Jesus the Anointed, the “M’shiah
Adonai,” the non-genealogical, eternal, Messianic Priest, in
contrast to the anointed priests of the house of Aaron, whose
transitory nature is shown, as is those of Israel’s kings, by
their being personages of the historic ages long gone by.
Sincerely in the M’shiah
D.... G............

2.1,

Was Jesus a Jew?

My dear Mr. Isaacs:
I find it incumbent upon myself to say at this point, while
the doctrine in my letters is Catholic, that I do not assume to
speak for the Catholic Church, as you imagine. I merely
“echo,” as a layman, those doctrines I understand the Church
of my adoption to teach. In the w’ords of Pope Leo XIII
(changed to the singular), I have taken upon myself “the task
of communicating to you what I have myself received (thanks

WAS JESUS A JEW?

77

be to God), being, as it were, a living echo of my masters (the
bishops and priests) in the faith.”
The question of Jewish genealogical records, save those in
the Bible, is not a matter upon which the Catholic Church
has expressed an opinion. Hence I merely presented my per­
sonal study, backed by Jewish authorities, which warrant
the conclusion that there are no genealogical records known
to exist with which to prove any ancestral connection of
present-day Jews with the houses of David and Aaron, due
to the destruction of the Temple in which they were pre­
served. These ancestral lines were obliterated through inter­
marriage of the existing tribes, mixed marriages, as well as
outright rejection of all religion by many Jews. Hence those
Jews whose sentimental regard for ancient Jewish tribal re­
lation prompts them to declare, as do the Cohens, that they
are of the blue blood of Israel, lack any evidence to substan­
tiate their claim.
History warrants the assertion that the kingly and priestly
sutus of those children of Israel, who were privileged to be­
long to the houses of honor in the tribes of Judah and Levi,
which began with David and Aaron ended with Jesus as the
Messiah, as King of the Jews and as “priest according to the
order of Melchisedec.”
But, assuming for the nonce, that there are Jews living
today who trace their lineage to the houses of David and
Aaron, the historic fact remains that the Judaism of yore is
no more. This the Catholic Church teaches, as the Messiah,
in the person of Jesus, came to fulfill the mission of Israel
that God foretold the Son of David would fulfill. He insti­
tuted a new, a universal priesthood, as a continuation of Him­
self in the world; and established a Church, which took the
place of the Temple that was destroyed, and the Aaronic
priesthood that ceased to function in the first century of the
Christian era.
You say that “Jesus was a Jew, and not a Christian,” to
which Catholics say, “that is undoubtedly true." That has
been affirmed by Catholics the world over millions of times.

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LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS

Yet every now and then some prominent Jew will proclaim it
in words that assume it to be unknown and unappreciated by
Christians in general, and Catholics in particular. I have had
occasion to discuss it years ago in an open letter to Rabbi
Stephen S. Wise, and more extensively recently in the “Jewish
Panorama.”
Jesus held, as the Catholic Church holds today, that the
Jewish religion was the one and the only religion of Almightv
God during the thirty-three years of His earthly life. Jesus
was born of a Jewish Mother, whom Catholics designate the
Lily of Israel. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the City of King
David. Jesus was circumcised, an event the Catholic Church
celebrates in all parts of the world every single New Year
Day. Upon arriving at religious age, Jesus went up to Jeru­
salem to read the Torah in the Temple, for He was Bar
Mitzvah, called “confirmed” by Reform Jews. Jesus took part
in the Passover and other Jewish services. He prayed daily in
the Temple, and did every other thing a truly faithful Jew
was obligated to do according to the Mosaic Law, for He was
the Jew of Jews. Jesus, the Jew, being Obedience Personified,
willingly submitted to the requirements of the Mosaic Law
which, by the will of our Father in heaven, was in full force
during the lifetime of Jesus, up to the time when He on the
Cross, and the Veil in the Temple, were rent. Jesus not only
obeyed the Jewish Law, but He counselled others to be obedi­
ent to it, even when commanded to do so by the scribes and
Pharisees, who placed burdens upon the people from which
they exempted themselves, saying:
They “have sat in the chair of Moses all things therefore,
that they command you, observe and do. But do not act
according to their works; for they talk but do nothing”
(St. Matt, ay.r-j).

How could Jesus be called the Son of David if He were not
a Jew? Every year Catholics hear the story read of the Magi
who went from the East to Jerusalem to see “the newly bom
King of the Jews” (St. Matt. 2:2). Jesus was hailed as “King

WAS JESUS A JEW?

79

of the Jews” while riding through Jerusalem, at the time the
multitude sang out, ‘‘Hosanna to the Son of David." Would
it not be gross ignorance to claim that Jesus was not a Jew,
when he acknowledged before Pilate that he was the King
of the Jews (St. Matt. 27:11)? This was appreciated by the
Jews themselves, for when Pilate, passing sentence upon
Jesus, ordered the inscription, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of
the Jews,” to be placed upon the Cross in Hebrew, Greek and
Latin, the Jews cried out, “Do not write ‘King of the Jews,’
but ‘He said, I am the King of the Jews.’ ” (St. John 19:21).
You say correctly, “Jesus was not a Christian.” Being a
practicing Jew, He could not be a practicing Christian at the
same time, as the religious worship and ceremonial require­
ments of Jews differ from those of Christians. The designa­
tion “Jewish-Christian,” used at times by undiscriminating
persons, is a contradiction, if the terms are used, as they
should be used, to signify religious beliefs and practices.
Considering that a Christian is a believer in, and follower
of Christ, to call Jesus a Christian would be calling Him a
believer in and follower of Himself. Besides, a Christian is a
person who is Christlike to some degree; hence to call Christ
Christlike w’ould be calling God Godlike.
No one is known to have been called a Christian during the
years that Christ lived in Palestine. The followers of Christ
are recorded to have been called “Christians” for the first
time while in Antioch (Acts 11:26), the city in which the first
Catholic Church was planted among the Gentiles. The fol­
lowers of Christ designated themselves “brethren” (Acts 15:1,
23), “disciples” (Acts 9, 26), “believers” (Acts 5:14), "saints”
(Rom. 8:27).
Those Jews who rejected Jesus as their Messiah would
surely not call His followers Christians, as the term Christ is
the Greek (Christos) form of the Hebrew term Mashiach
(Messiah). Hence calling persons Christians would be calling
them followers of the Messiah, whom Jews claimed not to
have made his appearance upon earth.
Jesus belonged to the Synagogue, for, as I said in the be-

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ginning of this letter, the Jewish Church was the only exist­
ing spiritual society then functioning by the will of God.
The Catholic Church did not come into existence as a dis­
tinctive spiritual community until the First Pentecost Day,
fifty days after the Passover service, the last religious cere­
mony in which Jesus participated. Yes, Jesus was a Jew, the
King of the Jews. He is your Messiah. Therefore let it not
continue to be said of you, what St. John said of the great
majority of our forebears in Jerusalem, “He came unto His
own, and His own received Him not.” Line up with the holy
minority in Israel, of whom St. John could say, “But as many
as received Him He gave the power of becoming sons of God”
(Chap. i).
Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G........

2.2.

The Trinity

My dear Mr. Isaacs·.
I am glad that your Orthodox friends are this time to the
fore. The issue they raise is apropos. The gist of it is this—
“The Messiah is a man in the eyes of Judaism and not God.
Jesus never called himself God. In the eyes of Jews, God is
One, and not divided into three Gods, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit. We Jews hold God to be a transcendant, infinite,
personal being; the Creator, Author, and Supreme Lord of
the Universe.”
Those primary' characteristics of God named in the last

THE TRINITY

Sr

sentence, above quoted, are entirely in accord with the Catho­
lic concept of God. Especially pleased am I to have you desig­
nate God as “a personal being,” as did the great in Israel.
This is noted because there is a tendency among prominent
persons in Jewry, some of them rabbis, towards a pantheistic
concept of God. Their use of biblical terminology often be­
clouds the fact that they lean theologically and philosophi­
cally more towards Spinoza than Moses. Einstein, who ranks
high in mathematics, but low in theology, leads in that mis­
conception in Jewry today. He denies belief in a personal
God, substituting a “cosmic God” for the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob. If the God of Israel is not a Personal Being,
then have the learned in the Jewish and Christian tvorld
throughout the ages been grossly in error when they declared
that God created and rules the universe; God loves; God
made the moral law that we are obligated to obey; God re­
wards; God punishes. Surely no “cosmic God" could do such
things, as it has no intelligence, no self-consciousness, no will,
no personality. Besides, without the existence of a personal
God, there is no way of accounting for the origin of human
personality.
In order properly to understand Catholic belief, it is neces­
sary to dismiss from your thought the notion that Catholics
believe in the existence of three Gods, because they pay hom­
age to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is as incorrect as
saying that the Jewish homage paid to the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob means that Jews worship three Gods. Your
definition of God is in agreement with Catholic teaching,
that God is Infinite Being, who embodies within Himself
all perfections in the absolute sense of the term. Hence the
existence of three such Infinite Beings—one in the Father,
one in the Son, and still another in the Holy Spirit—, is an in­
tellectual and spiritual impossibility. For the three to be
Infinite each would have to possess all perfections. Therefore
each would be independent of the others, hence none of them
would be Infinite, as only one Being can possibly be ab­
solutely all-inclusive.

LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS
98
the Life of the soul. Cry out, as did I, in the concluding words
of one of the meditations in “Our Divine Friend”—
“Jesus! Divine Jesus, I love you; I will never cease to repeat
my act of love. Penetrate all my powers, fascinate all my
senses, captivate my mind, and enchain my heart to Thine
forever!”

Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G.............

25.

The People of the Bool{

My dear Mr. Isaacs·.
You have no doubt noted that I have been stressing those
principles I believe to be of basic religious import, and in so
doing have had to revert back to things already dealt with,
though from a different angle. I insist that a Judaism which
exists without divine authority; a Judaism of descendants of
a people who have already fulfilled their mission, is not the
Judaism of God as outlined in the Old Testament, and there­
fore has no moral right to command man’s obedience. The
dignity of man permits of, in fact demands obedience to the
authority of a God-made religion, if such exists. Prior to the
First Pentecost Day, the one and the only religion that could
command obedience, in the name of God, was the Judaism
under the God-given authority of the High Priests and the
Sanhedrin. Since that historic ecclesiastical dividing day, the
one religion that could rightly exercise authority in the name
of God, and demand obedience thereto, centered in the
Church under the supreme guidance of the Vicar of the High

THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK

P9

Priest of the New Covenant, St, Peter, and those who were to
succeed him, as Bishop of Rome.
To synagogians this is tabooed. This is not surprising, for
they know not the Judaism of the Old Testament as an or­
ganic, unchangeable doctrinal belief that was to culminate in
a Messiah, who, by His atonement, would open heaven’s gate
for man, which was closed by the sin of Adam. .4 realization
of this comes like a revelation to Jews who pass from the
Synagogue to the Church. They have to unlearn nine-tenths
of the historical and doctrinal notions in which present-day
Jewry is intellectually submerged.
Repeating what Mohammed said, Jews pridefully declare
themselves to be the “people of the Book.” Yet that “Book,”
the First Volume of God’s Library, indicts the Judaism of
today with being unauthoritative, as it lacks the credentials to
enable it to function as a God-made religion, being devoid of
a priesthood with sacrificial, interpretative and judicial
power.
The Book, like our American Constitution, is of no use, as
far as carrying out its purpose is concerned, unless there are
legitimate authorities functioning, designated in the Book,
who conduct, define and enforce its mandates.
God wants His will obeyed; therefore it is reasonable to
expect God to make provision for man to be guided, and to
be furnished with the means by which His will can be carried
out. What it is reasonable for man to expect God to do, God
has done. God inspired the Book. In it are the provisions made
for the priesthood of Aaron to interpret His will, to offer
sacrifices, with authority to enforce penalties for disobedi­
ence thereto. The Book commands absolute obedience to the
decrees of the priests and judges under the severest penalties
(Deut. 17:12).
Here are some of the death penalties, by stoning or burn­
ing that are recorded in the Book. Adultery (Lev. 20:10),
(Deut. 22:18-21): blasphemy (Lev. 24:14): habitual drunken­
ness (Deut. 18:21): false testimony (Deut. 19:16, 19)·, harlotry
(Gen. 28:24): idolatry (Lev. 20:2): incestuousness (Lev.

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20:11); man-stealing (Ex. 21:16; Deut. 24:7); rape (Deut.
22:25); sabbath-breaking (Ex. 31.4; 35:2); striking parent
(Ex. 21:15, 17); unchastity (Lev. 21:9; Deut. 22·.21, 23);
witchcraft, false prophesy (Ex. 22:18; Lev. 20:27; Deut. 13:5;
18:20).
The sins just enumerated, like the crimes named in civil
statutes, evidence the existence of an authority to enforce
them. Where is that authority in Jewry today? Nowhere,
having been superseded by the authority instituted by the
Messiah, the King of the Jews, who imposed spiritual in place
of physical punishments for disobedience. The story of it is
told in the Second Volume of God’s Book, which is an ex­
tension, elevation, and fulfillment of the things basic to
Christianity to be found prefigured in Volume One. No one
can properly understand what is in Book One without study­
ing Book Two; nor can he properly understand Book Two
unless he studies Book One. An intelligent, prayerful study
of them leads from the Synagogue to the Church; from the
High Priest who once reigned in Jerusalem to the Pope in
the Vatican City.
To assert that God, who provided man with priestly guides,
from the days of Moses and Aaron until the last high priest
of Israel, left man to wander spiritually without any priestly
aid since then, seems to border on blasphemy. Such a notion
inferentially charges God with being unmerciful; with hav­
ing abandoned man to his capricious tendency, by leaving
him without priestly guidance. If that were true there would
be no remedy for the doctrinal chaos seen in present-day
Jewry, and in Protestantism as well. No, God is not unmerci­
ful, He fully provided for the spiritual guidance of man. God
gave man the two volume Book of Books. But before so doing
God provided the means by which its contents could be
known in an intelligent and orderly manner including the
carrying out of His will which is expressed therein. Immedi­
ately after God gave Israel the Lawr, she was given her priest­
hood of Aaron. Immediately after mankind was given the
Gospel, the Law in its fulness, the Son of God instituted His

“my parents’ religion is good enough for me”

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universal priesthood, without genealogy, for guidance of man
through life to salvation. I regret to say that the Jews of our
day are not the “people of the Book.” If they were, they
would accept the proffered outstretched arms of Jesus as their
Messiah, for He is what the Book said the Son of David
would be.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D... G..

20.

“My Parents Religion Is Good
Enough for Me”

My dear Mr. Isaacs:
Knowing the Jewish mind, it did not surprise me to be
told that:
“The religion good enough for my parents is good enough
for me. Even if I were convinced of the correctness of what
you say, which I am not, I would rather remain a Jew than
break the hearts of my parents by becoming a Christian.”
I can well appreciate the sentiment you express, as that
sentiment was once mine. I, like other converts from the
Svnagogue to the Church, have suffered the soul-racking ex­
perience of bringing sorrow to the hearts of my father and
mother on account of entering the Catholic Church. It was
not so much a matter of religious belief on their part, as the
know’ledge that the son they loved would be looked down
upon with contempt by their Jewish relatives and friends.
Even when convinced that Jesus is the Messiah; that Chris­
tianity is not a denial of Old Testament Judaism, but rather

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its full-blossoming; that the Catholic Church speaks with
God’s authority, as does no other church or synagogue, I en­
deavored to smother my favorableness towards the Church by
trying to dismiss it as a delusion. The emotional conflict con­
tinued within me, even though I kept from reading and
speaking of things Catholic, until the desire for peace of soul
aroused in me a determination to follow the dictates of con­
science to the baptismal font. A period of deep sorrow fol­
lowed for me as well as for my parents, as I had to leave their
home to which I was devoted. Thanks be to God, the hostility
of my parents changed to admiration for their son long before
they died. Their sympathetic regard for me, caused them to
see in the Christian way of life I followed something to which
they had never before paid any serious attention. They be­
came interested in Catholics in general, though their ac­
quaintances were nearly all Jewish. They saw in them an
adherence to religious principles and practices such as is seen
only incidentally among present-day Jews, and then invari­
ably among the Orthodox division of Jewry. They contrasted
the regular church attendance of Catholics with the indifferentism of their Jewish relatives and friends. It was a common
thing for them to hear Jews who attended synagogue services,
usually twice a year, on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kipper,
say, apologetically, that they went “to shule for the children’s
sake,” instead of for their own soul’s satisfaction as well.
Love of parents is a commendable thing, and, thank God,
it abides to a great degree among Jews, even among those who
do not go to synagogues. We are all obligated to love and obey
our parents, and that includes refraining from things that
will disturb their peace of heart. There is but one considera­
tion that takes precedence to parents, that is God, the Author
of the Commandment to “honor your father and your
mother.” God has the first claim to our affection. We belong
to Him more than to our parents. We owe our lives primarily
to God, who brought us into the world through our parents;
and we are here on earth for one great purpose, to return to
God for eternity. Therefore, God’s will must be our will,

“my parents’ religion is good enough for me”

zoj

even at the cost of unhappiness on the part of our parents,
due to our determination to do the will of God as He makes
it known to us.
Both the Jewish and the Christian religions teach that God
comes first in all things. That is why the first three of the Ten
Commandments deal with the love and worship of God. This
principle is announced by Moses in Deuteronomy 33:9,
wherein the duty of the priest is declared to precede all con­
sideration of flesh and blood. If interfered with, the priest
is told to say to “his father and to his mother: I do not know
you; and to his brethren: I know you not—.”
Our own fathers and mothers become our enemies, as well
as God’s enemies, when they protest against our following
the will of God as God makes it known to us through the
voice of conscience. “A man’s enemies will be those of his
own household” (St. Matt. 10:36) said Jesus, who fully re­
alized that fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, would
be obstacles at times to Jews following Him as the Messiah.
Jesus, the Prince of Peace, brought a “sword,” a spiritual
sword, to man which is “keener than any two-edged sword,”
when He commanded man to follow Him as their Messiah:
“Do not think that I have come to send peace upon the
earth; I have come to bring a sword, not peace. For I have
come to set a man at variance with his father, and a daugh­
ter with her mother, and a daughter-in-law with her
mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be those of his
own household.”
This is the cross, the affliction, the price, Jews would some­
times have to pay for love of Him, said the Son of God, if they
remain true to conscience. Continuing, Jesus said:
“He who loves father and mother more than Me is not
worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than
Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take up his
cross and follow Me, is not worthy of Me” (St. Matt.
10-33-39}·
Jesus, being true God as well as true man. has a right to
command supreme obedience. That it did not conflict with

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the love due to parents, was shown by Jesus when He took
the “hypocrites” to task for making void the Commandment
to “honor thy father and thy mother” (Si. Matt. ly.^-q).
When Jews become Catholics, they take up the sword of
truth to cut themselves away from the error of present-day
Judaism. It often makes life hard for them among the people
they love, especially when their motives are questioned, as
they invariably are, often by “Jews” who are Jews in name
only. It sometimes causes the tenderest of human relations to
be severed, yet it must be bravely met to be true to one’s self
and to God.
The Catholic Church is a Church of converts and descend­
ants of converts. Jesus, His Blessed Mother, and St. Joseph
were Jews. So were the Twelve Apostles; so were thousands
of converts from Judaism who made up the first members of
the Catholic Church; as well as Saul of Tarsus, and a host of
others, some of them sons and daughters of parents who were
hostile to Christianity. Being convinced that Jesus is the
Messiah, the expected of Israel for whom their forefathers
prayed and suffered, these converts held themselves conscience-bound not to permit any misunderstanding on the
part of their parents to prevent them from following the
light with which God had blest them. In many instances
determination to be true to principle finally brought their
hostile parents to the peace of heart that comes with being
one with the Messiah in His Church.
You cannot rightly claim to believe in God, and in religion
which binds you morally to listen to and obey God, and say
at the same time that even “if convinced” that the Church has
by God's will displaced the Synagogue, you would not enter
the Church because it would grieve your parents. That is a
false concept of duty, according to Jewrish as well as Christian
principles. Both religions hold that the voice of conscience
is the voice of God speaking through the soul of man:

"Whatever creed be taught or land be trod.
Man s conscience is the oracle of God”
(Byron, “The Island”).

“my parents’ religion is good enough for me”

J05

Just think what would have happened if our great patriarchial ancestor, Abraham, had refused to follow his con­
science, to the extent of leaving his country and the house of
his idolatrous father Thare (Gen. 12:1), saying, as you say,
“the religion good enough for my parents is good enough for
me”? All that was great and glorious in Israel would have
been lost to humanity.
Thank God Abraham followed the voice of his conscience.
Conscience confirms what is right and wrong. Conscience
commands you and me, individually, to do right and to avoid
evil. Conscience is retributive, punishing failure to adhere to
its commands, while it rewards obedience. God guides the
soul of man through his individual conscience, His priestly
agents safeguarding man against the danger of a false or
erroneous conscience which is likely to lead to a false or im­
moral action. “Labor” therefore, as George Washington said,
“to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire,
conscience.” If ever it tells you that the Catholic Church is
the only Church instituted by God, remember that your duty
is to fan that spark into the heavenly flame that regenerates.
Remember that in things human, your first duty, unless mar­
ried, is to your parents.
In things spiritual, love of God, expressed through obe­
dience to the voice of conscience, comes first.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G..............

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Converts'. “Jews” Who Are Not Jews

My dear Mr. Isaacs·.
The more I think of your last letter, the more do I appre­
ciate your frankness in setting down, in a word, the thought
in all too many Jewish hearts, that even if convinced of the
correctness of Catholic claims you would not become a
Catholic.
I have found that sentiment in Jewry to be due not merely
to fear of offending parents, but largely due to fear of the
intense hostility of nearly all Jews towards converts from the
Synagogue to the Church. That does not mean that Jews are
hostile towards “bom Catholics.” On the contrary, they are
friendly towards them nowadays, especially towards priests.
They are flattered by the attendance of prominent Catholics
at their banquets and public gatherings. It furthers the stand­
ing of the Rabbis who get them to attend; and, inferentially,
it salves their Jewish inferiority complex, with which you
know Jews are badly afflicted.
Unfortunately, the Jews of our country are generally Jews
by force of hostility towards them, rather than by belief in the
Mosaic Law. Of course, you know that this is an accepted fact
appreciated by America’s foremost Jews. Albert Levitan ex­
pressed it as follows in the Christian Century.

"The vast majority of Jews do not remain Jews by choice.
Basically, the Jew hates his Jewishness, and bewails his fate.
The only force that stiffens his neck—is the opposition of
the outside world. Anti-Semitism is what keeps Judaism
alive—.”

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207

The claim often made, that “religion is the bond that keeps
Jews Jews” has no foundation in fact in this country, within
the borders of which nearly one-third of the world’s Jewry
reside. In fact over three-quarters of the Jews do not know
what Judaism is, save that it calls for worship on Saturday
instead of Sunday, and that they are not allowed to include
pork in their menu. Rabbi Solomon Goldman, Chicago,
noted this recently. In answering the question, “What is
wrong with the Jew?” he replied.
"Nothing but his ignorance.” “Jewishly, the Jewish adult
is uneducated. He may be, and he often is, a skilled lawyer,
a celebrated physician, a talented journalist, a far-seeing
social worker, a benign philanthropist, an astute politician,
a gifted artist, and in every way a gentleman, but he is
unfamiliar with his people’s past, its current history in
literature, its religion or philosophy” Ç‘The Sentinel,”
Jewish weekly, Jan. 1, 1942).
It is this lack of knowledge of Judaism, that compels priests
to teach prospective converts from Jewry some of the basic
principles of Judaism before baptising them. Without that
knowledge, such prospective converts cannot properly appre­
ciate who Jesus is, and the historic part the Church plays as
the divine successor of the Aaronic priesthood, sacrifices, and
Jewish ceremonialism.
I have found that though American-born “Jews” are gen­
erally rationalists, they are not devoid of interest in religion.
They are ever ready to talk religion, but it is generally merely
talk, talk, talk, and it invariably includes saying something
disparagingly about rabbis who are in the front pages of the
public press, as no persons have less regard for their ministers
than Jews have for rabbis.
I regret to say that whether Jews are inside or outside the
synagogues; whether they be Orthodox, Reform, Conserva­
tive, or Rationalist; they are unified in their prejudicial atti­
tude towards converts from the Synagogue to the Church.
This prejudicial trait in the Jewish make up, which is a
factor in preventing conversions, is reprehensible, as no

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LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS

persons have suffered more from prejudicial judgments than
have Jews themselves.
The impression is deliberately fostered in Jewry that con­
versions are rarely, if ever, sincere. In Charles H. Joseph’s
“Random Thoughts,” published in the Jewish weekly press
throughout our country, this commonplace affrontery ap­
peared—
“When a Jew says he is converted, he has been converted
for money.”
If an attempt is made to refute such an insult, by giving
reasons for sincerely believing that Jesus is the Messiah, and
the Catholic Church tire Messianic kingdom prophesied by
the prophets of Israel, the Jewish satirical response is likely to
be—“Sag das dem Goy” (Tell that to the Gentiles). This
would be equivalent to saying, “Tell that to the marines,”
were it not generally said with a shrug that dismisses the
convert as unprincipled. I dealt with this question of “money,
money, money” as the motive of conversion somewhat in de­
tail in my Autobiography, and I have been sorry every since
for dignifying it with an answer.
No such hostility is manifested in Jewry nowadays towards
persons who break away from Judaism as a religion. For
instance, to deal with but three out of a hundred of the
world’s most prominent “Jews,” as they are called in Jewish
books. In a review of “Faithful Rebels,” Isaac Levine, the
author, informs us that the “participation of Jews in philos­
ophy” is said to have begun “with Spinoza”; and, that “with
the emancipation from the Ghetto, the Jew contributes
bountifully to the universal stock of culture.” As evidence of
this cultural work, there is presented the “19th and 20th
century remarkable succession of Jewish thinkers, some of
whom like Marx, Freud, and Einstein, were seminal pioneer­
ing minds.”
Let us look at these three men of world-wide fame, who
are hailed as Jews, with encomiums of delight, by the very
persons who condemn converts from Judaism to the Church.
It is enough to say of Marx, that he is the author of the phrase

converts:

“jews” who are not jews

zop

—“Religion is the opium of the people”—which visitors to
Moscow saw prominently displayed in Red Square. Socialists
the world over, whatever their party affiliation may be, though
bitterly opposed to the tactics of the Soviet Union, are one
in approving of the application of the principles of Marx
to religion in the Soviet Union. Lenin could say, without a
word being uttered to the contrary in any Socialist publica­
tion, that “Atheism is an integral part of Marxism” (“Re­
ligion,” Lenin, International Publishers, Inc., N. Y., 1933).
Next comes Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. In “Moses
and Monotheism” (N. Y., 1939) we find him one with Marx
in hostility towards religion. He declares therein that Moses
was the bastard son of an Egyptian princess; that the “God
of Moses” was a “volcanic God”; that the “Jews depend upon
the myths of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” for
their belief in Jahve, their God; that the Jews took their
form of worship from the Arabic tribe of Midianites.”
Marx held the capitalist class to have fostered religion for
its doping effect upon the working class, whereas Freud at­
tributes religion to nervous disorder. He says, still quoting
from his latest book, “Moses and Monotheism,” “I have never
doubted that religious phenomena are to be understood only
as a model of neurotic symptoms of the individual.” He
praises the Soviet Union for its war against religion, saying
that “The authorities were bold enough to deprive a hundred
million people of the anodyne of religion and wise enough
to grant them a reasonable measure of sexual freedom." Mis­
taking atheism and sexual license for freedom, it was no sur­
prise to find Freud writing disparagingly of the Catholic
Church as an implacable enemy of all freedom of thought.”
Freud proceeds to say,
“Psychoanalytic research is in any case the subject of sus­
picious attention from Catholicism. I do not maintain that
this suspicion is unmerited. If our research leads to a result
that reduces religion to the status of a neurosis of mankind
and explains the grandiose powers in the same way as we
should neurotic obsession in our individual patients, then

JIO

LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS

we may be sure we shall incur in this country (Austria) the
greatest resentment of the powers that be.”

The third in this triad of the great “Jews” in modem
Jewry is Einstein, who has been hailed, like Spinoza, as ‘‘Godintoxicated.” In answer to Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein, Ein­
stein cabled from Germany—
“I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the
harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself
with fates and actions of human beings.”
Such a concept of God is in line with Marx, Lenin, Freud,
and every other enemy of the God of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob. Some of the Reform Rabbis came to the support of
Einstein’s God of Spinoza, whose pantheistic, anti-Jewish con­
cept of God caused him to be excommunicated from the
Synagogue in Amsterdam in 1656 a.d. Rabbi Abba I. Krim of
Newark, N. J., is an exception. He said, in taking the editor
of the American Israelite to task—
“In your opinion, then, every Reform Jew has the right to
believe in God or disbelieve. For to deny God’s providen­
tial care of individuals, as Einstein and Spinoza do, is the
same as Atheism. If you approve of Einstein’s view of God,
you must abolish the religious services in Reform temples.
To whom does the Reform Jew pray? Does he pray to the
heavenly harmony merely? Does he not come to the
Temple because he believes that God listens to his prayer
and takes care of him and every action? This is what the
Union Prayer Book maintains. To pray to Spinoza’s God
would be absurd” (“Am. Israelite," July 5, 1929).

The “first and foremost Jew” brazenly called upon the
people of this, his adopted country to discard "the concept of
a personal God” in a religious Conference at the Jewish
Theological Seminary in which Christians participated. Ein­
stein’s denial was defended here in Boston by Rabbi
Joshua L. Liebman. whom I heard say in Temple Israel,
that “Traditionalists in religion (which means Orthodox Jews
and Catholics) might not agree with Einstein’s idea of God

RESPONSIBILITY TO PARENTS AND TO GOD

III

(he did). But this is a democracy and people have a right to
express their opinion.” It is not a question of expressing an
opinion, it is a matter of principle. Is a man a Jew who denies
belief in a personal God? Surely not from an Old Testament
point of view.
The very title of the book—‘‘Faithful Rebels”—in which
these three “Jews” are praised for their contributions towards
“the universal stock of culture,” infers that sons of Jewish
parents can rebel against Judaism in principle and yet remain
faithful Jews. The B’nai B’rith Magazine declared this book
to be “popular in the best sense of the word and ought to
meet with acclaim.”
If “Jews” may repudiate belief in the God of Israel without
losing favor among Jews, your parents no doubt included,
what, save ignorance and prejudice, can account for the bitter
hostility towards converts from the Synagogue to the Church,
who love and worship the God of Israel?
The length of this letter, prompts me to put off until next
week a few more pages regarding this matter.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G..............

28.

Responsibility to Parents and to God

Aly dear Mr. Isaacs:
My last letter ought to have convinced you of the incon­
sistency of Jews. They look down with contempt upon the
convert from the Synagogue to the Church, who continues to
cry out, as did his forebears—

112

LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS

“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, is one God”;

while they admiringly clasp to their bosoms a Spinoza, Marx,
Freud, and Einstein, who hold the God of Israel to be a myth,
and that revealed religion, as set forth in the Bible, is a men­
tal aberration, and so teach the world.
How can Jews consistently call themselves “the people of
the Book,” when they repudiate Hebrew Christians who look
upon that Book as the Word of God, while lauding in terms
of the highest “Jews” who publicly discredit the origin and
content of the Book? Converts do not pass from a God-made
to a man-made religion; from a religion that was true in prin­
ciple, to a religion that is basically false. What they do is to
pass from a religion that was of God, a religion that had ful­
filled its mission, to a religion that goes forth from where
Judaism left off, to a higher spiritual height, by the will of
God. What converts do, is to pass from Judaism in its cater­
pillar state, to Judaism metamorphosed into its butterfly
stage.
To hold, that if you were convinced of the fact just men­
tioned, you would refuse to be true to your understanding,
on account of your parents, is unethical, to designate it
mildly for which you deserve to be deprived of God’s favor.
On the other hand, your parents may not be culpable for
opposing your entrance into the Catholic Church, on account
of ignorance of that truth with which we are assuming that
God has illumined your mind, as no one is responsible for
actions due to involuntary misunderstanding.
Assume that your parents are Christian Scientists, instead
of Jews, whose God concept is a denial of the teachings of
Moses and Jesus; who deny the reality of matter, and the
actuality of sin. .Assume that after an unbiased study and
prayerful consideration, you are firmly convinced of the fal­
sity of these teachings of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, the
founder of Christian Science. Suppose you found that the
teachings of Judaism or Christianity alone are the teachings
of God, could you justify remaining a Christian Scientist

RESPONSIBILITY TO PARENTS AND TO GOD

11J

because entering the Synagogue or the Church would offend
your misunderstanding parents? Certainly not.
Again, is not a Jew more justified in going back to things
basic to the Judaism of his forebears, and then on to their
fulfillment in Christianity, than going from Orthodox Juda­
ism to the Reform sect that is Jewish in name, but anti-Jewish
in principle from the standard of Orthodoxy? Certainly he is,
if he so believes.
Does not love of parents include leading them from dark­
ness into light, from error to truth? If they are looking for
the Messiah to come, and you know, as do converts from the
Synagogue to the Church, that He came over nineteen cen­
turies ago in the person of Jesus, are you justified in letting
your parents continue their unanswerable prayers, and tear­
ful presence at the Wailing Wall of Orthodox Judaism for
His coming? Certainly not.
What conscience dictates to be done, that are we morally
bound to do. Strange, indeed, is it, in these times when the
battle is on for the maintenance of the right to worship ac­
cording to the dictates of conscience, instead of according
to the will of dictators, to claim if convinced of Catholic
truth, you would not become a Catholic. Remember, please,
that there is no such a thing as a right without a correla­
tive duty. The right of conscience, properly understood, is
something more than a right, it is an obligation to follow
that light of conscience in the direction it logically points.
I am assuming, of course, that everything within reason has
been done to make sure that you are not inwardly being
prompted to obey an erroneous concept.
Let me draw to a close, by saying that love of parents is a
most commendable thing, which obedience to both Judaism
and Christianity commands. Yet both Judaism and Christi­
anity teaches, that when human love conflicts with divine
love, God calls upon us, not to love our parents less, but to
love God more. You and I are responsible to our parents for
but a little while; whereas we are responsible to God for
eternity.

IIf

LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS

As for the bitter hatred of Jews towards converts from the
Synagogue to the Church, only a craven person would permit
such an unholy spirit to keep him from going into the out­
stretched arms of Israel’s Messianic King.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G............

29.

Why Did the Jews Reject Jesus?

My dear Air. Isaacs:
It is interesting to note, that nearly all the questions you
put up to me, are questions I have asked myself while study­
ing, doubting, and fighting off Catholic claims. One of them,
taken from your first letter, is—
“If Jesus is the Messiah, as Christians claim him to be. do
you think the Jews of his time would have rejected him?”
Yes, is the answer. The Jewish leaders of those days, and
not the Jewish populace, were the cause. That was partly due
to the desire for a monarchial personage, if any, to free Jewry
from the tyranny of Caesar, rather than an humble, spiritual
personage, an advocate of a kingdom that is not of this world.
Annas and Caiaphas, the high priests, and the controlling
members of the Sanhedrin, who were mainly Sadducees, the
Pharisees (also enemies of Jesus) being in the minority, were
the cause. These Sadducees were the Protestants of Jewry.
The leading authoritative Jewish writings inform us, as you
very likely know, that they opposed many of the primary Old
Testament teachings that Jesus advocated. They denied be­
lief in spiritual beings, the immortality of the human soul,

WHY DID THE JEWS REJECT JESUS?

ZZJ

a future life of rewards and punishments, and the resurrec­
tion of the body. They ignored the Messianic teachings of
Moses and the prophets, and looked forward for freedom
from Rome rather than emancipation from the affliction of
original sin. The Sadducees were a wealthy, arrogant class,
who were hated by the Jewish populace. Jesus openly warned
the people to “beware” of them (St. Matt. 16:6).
The Talmud says that the benedictions in the Temple used
to end with “blessed be the lord God of Israel unto eternity,”
but when the Sadducees corrupted the Jewish faith by deny­
ing the immortality of the soul, it was enacted that the bene­
dictions should end with, “from eternity to eternity” (Berachotd, fol. 29, col. r). In Derech eretz Zuta, chapter 1, the
Jews were cautioned to “Learn or inquire nothing of the
Sadducees, lest they be drawn into hell.”
In these times, when one man in Germany, who is not a
German, could plunge the world into a total war, the evil
result of which cannot be estimated at present, it is easy to
realize how the populace could be misled by the leaders of
first century Judaism. And remember that we Israelites have
inherited a false concept of the character of Jesus, which has
been intensified by the injustices suffered during the cen­
turies that have sometimes been Christian in name rather
than in fact.
The hope of Israel then, as it is among the Orthodox Jews
of our day, was for a Messianic temporal ruler or emanci­
pator. Jesus to such people was a disappointment. He was the
opposite of their cherished worldly expectation, for
“He came not in regal splendor drest,
The haughty diadem, the Tyrian vest;
Not armed in flame all glorious from afar,
Of hosts the Captain, the Lord of war.”
The power of Jesus aroused the envy of the rulers of Israel,
for the common people loved Him. They flocked around
Jesus by the thousands. The most dramatic occasion was on
the Sunday before His crucifixion, which we call Palm Sun­

116

LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS

day. The “common people” gathered with palms, which they
waved with joy at the coming of their Messianic King. They
took off their garments and laid them on the dusty road, for
Jesus to ride over them in His triumphal procession through
Jerusalem on an ass. They hailed Him as their Messiah, with
words that have rung down through the Christian centuries,
royal words that will be heard until the end of the world—
“Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is He that cometh
in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the highest.”
So great was the enthusiasm for Jesus that fear entered
the hearts of the leaders. The Pharisees pleaded with Jesus to
check the populace, to “rebuke” His disciples. Jesus replied—
“I say to you that if these (people) keep silence, the stones
will cry out” (St. Luke 19.40).

In other words, no power on earth can smother the fact that
I am the Messiah. If the enthusiasm for Me is repressed, the
very stones will make known that I am your King.
The Sadducees and Pharisees in power would have hailed
Jesus on His triumphal journey through Jerusalem, if He had
come as a warrior seated on a horse, instead of as the King
of Peace, meekly on an ass.
It is well to digress here for a moment, to say that the ass,
which in our country is known to be stupid and stubborn, was
known in the East for his patience, gentleness, submission,
and great power of endurance. The animal Jesus rode, on
that historic occasion, was the fulfillment of one of the in­
cidental Messianic prophesies. The Midrash (explanation of
biblical tests) says that just as Abraham and Moses rode on
asses, so “the Son of David also shall ride” (Pirke de R.
Eliezar, Chap. 31).
Abraham saddled his ass and rode with Isaac, carrying
wood along with them for the holocaust which God had com­
manded (Gen. 22:5). This prefigured Jesus carrying His cross
to the holocaust on Mount Calvary.
Moses took his wife and sons, set them on an ass, and drove
back to Egypt, “for they (his enemies) are dead who sought

WHY DID THE JEWS REJECT JESUS?

II'J

his life” (Exod. 4.19—20). Herod also was dead, who sought
the life of Jesus. Hence, Joseph could take Mary and her
Son Jesus, on an ass, back from Egypt to Nazareth.
Thus it is plain that the “common people,” not the leaders
of Jewry, saw in Jesus mounted on the ass, in the City of
Peace, the fulfillment of the prophesy of Zacharias (9:9)—
“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion, shout for joy, O
daughter of Jerusalem: Behold thy King will come to thee,
the just and saviour: he is poor, and riding upon an ass—.”
To come back directly once more to your question, please
to see that the Jewish populace did not reject Jesus. You
need but to recall Anthony’s famous oration over Caesar’s
body to realize how easily the honest sentiment of the popu­
lace can be changed to the very opposite. It was the clever
and powerful influence of the rulers in Jewry that caused
the Hosanna’s to the Son of David to be changed to "Crucify
him. Crucify him,” for “both the Pharisees and Sadducees
tried (with success) to weaken the influence of Jesus with
the populace,” as the Jewish author, Prof. Solomon Grayzell,
tells us in Vallentine’s Jewish Encyclopedia. If the minds of
the Jews had not been beclouded, and their hearts hardened,
by spiritual darkness engendered by the unworthy leaders of
Israel, the principles, life and miracles of Jesus, as well as
what He said of Himself, would have convinced them that
He is their Messiah.
The day will no doubt come, please God it will be soon,
when the hearts of the remnant of Israel, who believe in the
God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, will turn from their mis­
guided forebears, who rejected Jesus, to those who accepted
Him as their Messiah. Then will their hearts leap with joy
because from the Jews came the King of Kings, the Apostolic
Band, the teaching Church, the first thousands that were
incorporated into the Mystical Body of the Messiah. Then
will their song be changed from the mournful melody of the
Koi Nedri to the joyful “Hosanna to the Son of David.”
Sincerely in the Messiah
D ... G..............

L

]etus Have Moses: Christians Jesus

My dear Mr. Isaacs:
If proposals for settling the differences between Jews and
Christians were as flawless as their sponsors are earnest, the
issues that divide Jews and Christians would long ago have
been settled. This declaration came to mind upon reading
your statement, that:
“The Jews have Moses, the Christians have Jesus. Then
why does not your Church let it drop at that and give up
the idea of bringing ‘the lost sheep of the house of Israel’
into their fold?”
"Why?” Because your proposal has a flaw in it that makes it
untenable. It is the assumption that Moses is on one side of
the religious dividing-line, and Jesus on the other side. That
is not so, and was never so, even before the religious line of
demarcation between Jews and Christians began to exist.
Jesus was always in Moses, potentially, in prophecy; while
Moses abides in Jesus the "Prophet,” Messiah and High
Priest. That may be the reason why Moses is the only char­
acter in the Old Testament whom Jesus likens to Himself.
(St. John 5:46-47.)
The Jews of today do claim Moses, but they have him only
in part, sentimentally. That is because Moses was, above all
else, the high priest of Israel, who functioned sacerdotally at
the altar through Aaron and his successors, who are no more.
On the other hand, Jesus is the High Priest forever, pre­
sented in type in Genesis 14:18, He continues to function in
the priests of His Church. That is why they are called, alter
Christi, other Christs.

fa

JEWS HAVE MOSES: CHRISTIANS JESUS

Z2£

Christians have not Jesus to the exclusion of Moses. They
have both, for Jesus is the “Prophet of thy nation and thy
brethren like unto me,” said Moses, whom “thou,” that is
you and me, and every other Israelite, “shalt hear” (Deut.
18:15). That is why Jesus could say, “Moses wrote of Me”
(St. John 5:46). Moses was the first prophet; Jesus was the
last and the greatest Prophet of Israel. Jesus carried to per­
fection the principles Moses proclaimed.
Your proposal embodies a failure to realize that you can
no more separate Moses from the man-God Jesus than Solo­
mon could divide the child between the women who claimed
it and leave each with the child as a living organism. You can
no more separate Moses from Jesus than the Ten Command­
ments can be denied the followers of the Messiah, and leave
a moral organism of God’s making in the world intact. Moses
may be said to represent the negative, and Jesus the positive
side of God’s law. The two make the whole moral code, as
seen in the “Thou shalt nots” of the Commandments, and
the "Blessed be they” of the Beatitudes.
The doctrine of Judaism of old was personified in Moses.
The doctrine of Christianity is personified in Moses plus
Jesus, for while the Mosaic sacrificial worship ended, the
moral law lives on forever, though elevated by Jesus.
Moses was the first to proclaim the nature of God, His
Oneness. Jesus was the first to proclaim the triadic charac­
teristic of that same God, whose Oneness manifests as the
Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sanctifier.
Moses was the Law-giver, whereas Jesus, in His prehuman
existence, made the Law that Moses expounded to the chil­
dren of Israel. St. John tells us that “the Law was given by
Moses, but grace (the supernatural favor) and truth (com­
plete knowledge of God) came by Jesus Christ” (zzzy).
Moses said to the murmuring Jews, “this is what the Lord
hath spoken" (Exod. /6:23); whereas Jesus commanded in
His own name, “I say—” (St. Matt. 5; 6).
Moses permitted divorce followed by remarriage (Deut.
24:1-2); “but I say to you,” said Jesus, that is adultery.

I^o

LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS

Moses proclaimed the sacrificial worship of the Old Law.
Jesus instituted the sacrificial worship of the New Law.
Moses used the blood of beasts for sacrifice; whereas Jesus
gave His own blood, being the last lamb to be offered, “the
Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (St. John
z:2p).
Moses declared the terror of sin; Jesus forgave sin.
Moses was a sinner, “I have sinned against the Lord”
(Deut. X‘41)·, whereas Jesus never sinned, “which of you
can convince (that is convict, prove me guilty) of sin?” (St.
John 8:46).
Moses called upon the Lord to show him the way (Exod.
33:12-13)· whereas Jesus said, “I am the way” (St. John 14:6}
God spoke through Moses; whereas God spoke in Jesus.
Moses, great though he was, was only a man; whereas Jesus
was more than human, He is the “I Am,” “He Who Is.”
Moses foregleamed Jesus, being the Light that Moses
foreshadowed.
The doctrine of Judaism is personified in Moses; whereas
the doctrine of Christianity is personified in both Moses and
Jesus. That is the basis for maintaining that conversion from
the Synagogue to the Church is an affirmation, and not a
denial of the faith of our fathers in Israel.
The Catholic Church could no more “drop” the thought
of bringing Jew’s into the Church than she could give up her
claim that Jesus is the promise of Moses fulfilled. Jews, and
not Christians, must make a choice. They may remain minus
Moses as he is in the Torah, or come to him in his fulness in
the fold of the Good Shepherd. The unity of the two was
seen in the Transfiguration. It was the triumphal occasion
when Moses came from his spiritual Jerusalem to appear
face to face, in his glorified body, with the "Prophet” he said
“thou shalt hear.” No separate tabernacle was ever to be
erected for Moses, as the voice from heaven said of Jesus,
“This is My Beloved Son, hear ye Him,” words identical with
those uttered by Moses fourteen centuries before, “him thou
shalt hear.”

FAITH AND REASON

ZJZ

The Catholic Church pays great honor to Moses. Her
Roman Martyrology lists him as one of the great saints of the
Old Law, paying reverence to him especially on the sixth of
each August. His figure, chiseled by Michael Angelo in mas­
sive proportions, stands in the Church of San Pietro in
Vincoli, on the Esquiline Hill, Rome, commanding, by his
expression of intellectual and moral strength, an apprecia­
tion of the high regard with which Catholics honor the great
leader of Israel.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G..............

jj.

Faith and Reason

My dear Mr. Isaacs·.
You charge Catholics with “abrogating reason .... sub­
stituting faith in its place," holding Judaism to be “based
upon knowledge, and not faith.”
Your charge is based upon a misapprehension as to what
faith really is, and the assumption that faith excludes reason,
and reason excludes faith. What is faith? My dictionary
definition will suffice for the present—
“Faith is a firm conviction of the truth of what is declared
by another, simply on the ground of his truthfulness or
faithfulness.”

That is human faith, whereas divine faith is the accepta­
tion of truth on the authority of God. instead of man. .Are
you not guided in your action by faith when ill? or in a legal
entanglement? Or do you study the materia medica to find out

752

LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS

the nature of medicinal substances before taking what the
doctor prescribes? Do you set faith aside and take to the study
of Blackstone’s Commentaries, the statutes, and court deci­
sions, as well as legal procedure, before submitting to the
judgment of your lawyer for guidance? If so, you would be
either unable to write to me, or have to address your letters
from some penal institution.
Do not scientists depend upon faith, as well as reason, in
their investigations and the formation of their conclusions?
They speak of the “law of gravitation,” which you and I ac­
cept as a scientific fact upon their authority. Yet no one ever
saw that “law,” for it is a mere hypothesis, a thing assumed to
exist, as a basis of reasoning regarding the attraction of
bodies. Yet it does not explain how it anchors this revolving
earth upon which we live to a central sun ninety-five million
miles away, or even how it causes an apple gently to fall to
the earth. All that the scientists know is that there is some­
thing, called a force, that attracts bodies towards each other.
But that does not tell us what it is in itself; or why it does not
repel instead of attract bodies. What, but faith, causes us to
assent to the existence of such a “law”? Would it be a sign of
intelligence or ignorance to refuse to believe in the existence
of the law of gravitation upon faith in the knowledge and
integrity of the scientists?
If it is wise to accept upon faith the knowledge and guid­
ance of experts in medical, legal and scientific matters, who
are fallible, why does not the same principle hold good in
matters of a religious and moral nature, which deeply affect
our human relationship and eternal well-being? Catholics
hold such faith to be wisdom of the highest possible order,
as it is submission to divine, infallible authority, to God who
never deceives nor can be deceived.
You may rightly ask, “Where does intelligence come in.
when guidance in matters of faith and morals is accepted
upon authority?” The answer is, in determining the knowl­
edge, truthfulness and faithfulness of the authority to whom
the mind says it is wise to submit for guidance, and assenting

FAITH AND REASON

/33

thereto, which is the rational mental process man follows.
‘Oh, but you do not see God,” was the response once made
to me when discussing this question. My reply is neither
have you seen, or do you know what the soul looks like. Did
you ever see a soul? Did you ever see ether? or love? or de­
mocracy? yet you believe they exist. What you have seen are
manifestations that postulate their existence. You do not
need to see God to know He exists. Manifestations are seen
continually about us that make denial of His existence a sign
of ignorance. David says, in Psalm 18:1.
"The heavens show forth the glory of God, and the firma­
ment declareth the work of his hands.”
We accept belief in the existence of God upon faith, yet it
is not against reason so to do. Our intelligence, that is our
mental comprehensive ability, informs us that just as an
effect must have a cause, so must the universe as a whole,
man included, be an effect, due to a great first cause, which
in religion we designate as God. There is design and order
manifesting in the universe, which postulates the existence of
a great designer whom we call God. It is a self-evident fact
that there is a moral law to which we are subject. It postu­
lates the existence of a Law-maker, called God. Hence it is
reasonable to expect God to make known to man what that
law is, otherwise man could not know the divinely prescribed
line of conduct he must adhere to or avoid. What it is reason­
able for man to expect, that God has done. When that knowl­
edge is made known in an extraordinary, a supernatural way,
it is called divine revelation. It is the basis of supernatural
religions, Judaism and Christianity.
Reason tells us that God made man, and in so doing en­
dowed him with the power of communicating his thought to
his fellowman. If God could, and did give such a communi­
cative power to finite beings, no rational person will question
the ability of God to exercise that power Himself. That God
has done, therefore the Encyclopedia of Jewish Knowledge
could say.

134

LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS

“Scripture teaches, and Orthodox Judaism postulates that
the Jews received the words of the living God and Ruler
of the universe as a revelation for all time and all genera­
tions” (p. 461).

The greatest divine revelation that Jews cherish is the
Law, given by God to Israel on Mount Sinai through Moses,
upon which their knowledge of God is based. Part of that
revelation is the Ten Commandments, which are binding
upon all mankind for all time. Do Jews, or Christians abro­
gate reason for faith when they accept the Ten Command­
ments on the word of Moses, whose truthfulness and author­
ity cannot be reasonably questioned? Certainly not. They
accept those Ten Commandments upon faith, and use the
knowledge of their origin and binding force to determine the
reasonableness of them, and the degree of their obligation
to obey them.
While God revealed the Ten Commandments to fortify
the consciences of mankind, nine of them could be known
without God giving them in a special way to Moses. They
may be known through the light of reason, as God has en­
graven them on the hearts of men. One of them, “Thou shalt
keep the Sabbath holy,” could only be known by divine
revelation.
Faith does not reject reason, though it is superior to it,
neither does reason contradict faith; they are co-relative.
That is why the Vatican Council of the Catholic Church de­
clared in 1870:

“Although faith is above reason, there never can be a dis­
agreement between faith and reason, because the same
God who has revealed the mysteries and communicated
faith, has also given to the human mind the natural light
of reason, and wre know that God cannot contradict Him­
self, nor can truth ever be in contradiction with truth.”
Not only can faith and reason never be in discord, but they
lend each other mutual help; right reason demonstrates
the foundation of faith, and enlightened by the light of

FAITH AND REASON

ZJ5

faith, it developes the science of divine things; faith, on
the other hand, frees and protects reason from error and
enriches it with knowledge of many kinds. The Church,
therefore, far from being opposed to the study of the arts
and sciences, favors these studies and propagates them in a
thousand ways.”
I would not go into this matter at length were not your
charge a common thing in Jewry that darkens the Jewish in­
tellectual mind. For instance, the intense Jewish intellectualist, Dr. True Weiss Rosmarin, says—

“Judaism is a religion of reason. . . . Christianity, on the
other hand, exalts belief and makes light of reason and
knowledge.’’
A simple test, that will prove the falsity of the assumption
of the intellectual superiority of Judaism to Christianity, is
a study of the articles in the Catholic Encyclopedia in con­
trast to the articles in the Jewish Encyclopedia, the old one
as well as the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, now in the
making, six volumes of which have thus far been published.
No impartial student, who studies Catholic books on the­
ology, the science of God and things related to God of a re­
ligious and moral nature, would conclude, if capable and
honest, that Christianity “makes light of reason and knowl­
edge.”
I doubt if many Jews realize that the theology, which is the
reasoning side of religion and morals, in the Jewish world is
due largely to Christian contact, as is the music and art in
Jewry. Rabbi Lee J. Levinger, Ph.D., of Columbus, Ohio,
said,

“There is a peculiar contradiction in Judaism, that the
people who laid greatest stress on religion has contributed
little to the development of theology, the science of reli­
gion.—Theology as a science grew among the Jews chiefly
by contact with Christian and Moslem theologians who con­
stituted a challenge to Jewish thinkers" (“Ency. of Jewish
Knowledge," p. 55S).

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LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS

Whenever an intellectual Jew has the good fortune, by
God’s grace, to become a Catholic, the light of faith invariably
causes him to marvel at the profundity of Catholic teachings
as set forth by Catholic theologians, and the unity of them in
principles that are of basic import to religion. One need not
study the “Summa Theologica” of St. Thomas Aquinas to
learn that the Catholic Church appeals to the highest faculty
in man, his intellect, in matters of faith and morals. All he
needs to do is to study the catechisms that Catholic youth
study in kindergartens, high schools and colleges, and to
compare them with Jewish catechisms, or that conglomera­
tion of wit, fantasy, nonsense, and wisdom, called the Tal­
mud, to realize the unsoundness of the claim of Jewish in­
tellectual superiority to Christianity in religion.
Faith is the chain that binds man to God, it is intelligence
at its apex. The Catholic Church calls faith a theological vir­
tue infused by God into the soul. It is an illumination that
causes revealed truths to be seen and believed without doubt­
ing. It causes the intellect to assent on account of the abso­
lute reliability of the source from which it comes, God.
Catholics accept those revealed teachings as taught by their
Church, and recorded in the Bible, because the Church is
the “pillar and ground of truth,” as St. Paul called her. They
accept those truths from the Church, because she is infallible,
being protected from error in matters of faith and morals by
the Holy Spirit.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D ... G..............

The Sabbath

My dear Mr. Isaacs:
Following the practice quite common among persons un­
favorable to things Catholic, you utterly disregard the answer
I made to your assumption, that the mentality of Catholics
is submerged by the acceptance of Catholic belief upon au­
thority, and launch forth on some incidental point that is
entirely off the compass.
The subject of my last letter was faith. I tried to get you to
realize how natural and necessary it is to have faith, even in
purely human affairs; how impossible it is to go through life
without depending upon authority for knowledge and guid­
ance; how the principle applies to affairs of a supernatural
character; how Catholic faith, resting, as it does upon in­
fallible truth, cannot conflict with reason. This is your re­
sponse,
"You said that ‘Jesus came to fulfil the Law, and not to
destroy it.’ How can you reconcile that with changing the
Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday? I am prompted to ask
this by your statement, just received, that the Command­
ment to ‘Keep the Sabbath holy’ came by revelation from
God, and that it is ‘binding upon mankind for all time.’
To me that is a contradiction.”

Perhaps my dissertation upon faith was not entirely in
vain, even though you side-stepped the issue. It may have
brought you to the realization that there is no use arguing
against the inevitable, the use of faith as a guide through life,
and to an eternity with God as well. That may be the reason

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LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS

“O day of rest! How beautiful and fair
How welcome to the weary and the old!
Day of the Lord! and truce to earthly care!
Day of the Lord, as all our days should be!'’

Sincerely in the Messiah
D... G.............

35.

The Latu Fulfilled

My dear Mr. Isaacs:
My attention will be given this day, as promised, to the
declaration of Jesus, the Messiah, that He came to fulfill and
not to destroy the Law and the Prophets.
I will proceed on the assumption that the letter I sent you
a few weeks ago proved conclusively, even to your satisfac­
tion. that the change of the Sabbath Day from Saturday to
Sunday did not violate the Commandment; nor did the dec­
laration of Jesus that He came not to destroy the Law do so.
You no doubt noted that the point made was that the vital
principle in the Commandment, to “keep the seventh day
holy,” was not changed. The change made was in the point
of beginning the reckoning of the seven day week. Christians,
believing Jesus to be true God as well as true man; believing
Him to be “Lord even of the Sabbath,” as He claimed to be
(St. Mark 2:27), hold that He could have changed the Com­
mandment, if He so walled to do, directly or through His
Church.
To get directly to the question, I herewith present, with

THE LAW FULFILLED

I4J

comment, the words of Jesus, which appear in the Sermon on
the Mount (St. Matt, y.ij-iy)—
“Do not think that I have come to destroy the Law or the
Prophets.”

This is held to refer to the Old Testament, its principles
and prophesies, and not merely to the five books of Moses.
"I have come not to destroy, but to fulfill them.”

This fulfillment came in the perfection of the Law, in the
sense that the acorn unfolding its design, which God had im­
planted in it, lives on in perfection in the beautiful spreading
oak, “the patriarch of trees.” What we see in the oak tree
existed potentially in the acorn, as what we see in the teach­
ings of Jesus existed potentially in the Law and the Prophets,
whose prophesies He fulfilled. The same thing is evidenced
in the caterpillar metamorphosed into a beautiful butterfly.
The passing of the caterpillar does not really mean destruc­
tion, as does the death of an ordinary worm, for, like the
acorn, the caterpillar passes into a higher form of life. So
with many of the teachings in the Old Testament, they live
on in New Testament teachings and practices, but in a
higfu r state.
“Amen I say to you”
Jesus was speaking to the Pharisees, who charged Him with
breaking the Sabbath by healing on that day; by permitting
His disciples to pluck corn while in the cornfield, in order to
satisfy their hunger, etc. The petty, unreasonable restrictions
placed upon the Jews by the Pharisees were a burden to
them, as are the Orthodox Jewish restrictions of today, due to
trivial interpretation of God’s Law to such an extent that the
Ten Commandments were extended to 365 prohibitions.
Then, as now, they lost sight of the fundamental teachings of
the Old Testament by stressing incidentals to their breaking
point.

A·-

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LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS

"Till heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or tittle shall
be lost of the Law ’til all things are accomplished.”

This Hebraism means that the Law was to end, but only
after its purpose was accomplished, when the “new covenant”
that God promised had come into being, for, as St. Paul says,
after quoting the prophesy of Jeremiah 31:31-34, that
“. . . in saying ‘a new covenant’ he has made obsolete the
former one; and that which is obsolete and has grown old
is near its end” (Heb. 8:rj).
Please note that Jesus spoke in the first person. The “I
say” this, and “I say” that, shows that He spoke as one having
authority such as no other prophet ever could or did assume
to speak including Moses the Law-giver. Only a God-man
could legirimately use this form of address in proclaiming
divine Law. You know the warranted contempt with which
Louis XIV of France is spoken of for the arrogant declara­
tion, “I am the State,” attributed to this enemy of the Catho­
lic Church. He was not the State, though he did usurp its
powers. But Jesus could claim universal, supernatural au­
thority, laying down the Law, for He is the Law in its per­
fection. It was therefore entirely within His province to de­
clare, “I have come to fulfill” the Law. Come from whence?
From the place where the Law originated, heaven. Come to
destroy? No, to fulfill, to bring out in its fulness the princi­
ples and prophesies actually and potentially in the Old
Testament. The Law, the expressed will of God, was vir­
tually the law of expectation; it was what was to be. Jesus,
the Messiah, is the realization, the fulfillment of that ex­
pectation.
Before citing instances of Jesus having fulfilled, and not
destroyed the Law and the Prophets, I want to forestall the
possibility of your coming back at me with the commonplace
Jewish claim, that the teachings of Jesus were not new; that
they were not fulfilment of Old Testament teachings; that
they were but a repetition of teachings taught by the Rabbis
of Israel. I refer, for instance, to the Golden Rule—

THE LAW FULFILLED

14$

“Therefore all things whatever you would that men should
do to you, even so do you also to them” (St. Matt. 7:12).
The saying of Rabbi Hillel, in a controversy with Rabbi
Shammai (leaders of two opposing schools of thought and
controversy that flourished at the time of the coming of
Jesus), is usually presented to try and prove that Jesus taught
nothing new in ethics or morality. Let Dr. Maurice Simon,
Editor of Zangwill’s Speeches; joint translator of the Zohar
and Babylonian Talmud, tell it—
"Once a heathen came to Shammai and mockingly asked
him to teach him the Torah while he stood on one leg.
Shammai drove him away with his measuring-rod. He then
went to Hillel, who said to him ‘what is hateful to thy­
self DO NOT TO ANOTHER. THIS IS THE WHOLE TORAH; GO
and study it: the rest is commentary.’ ”

It is strange that Jewish university men, intellectually keen
in things that are other than Christian, should fail to see,
what any unbiased beginner in the study of logic can ob­
serve, that the negative pronouncement of Hillel differs as
greatly from the positive pronouncement of Jesus as the
Christian religion differs from Judaism. Hillel’s Rule is
purely naturalistic. Self-love, self-protection, not love of fel­
lowman, not self-sacrifice, is the basis of counselling not to do
what you hate to have done to yourself. It ought to be called
the Leaden Rule instead of assuming to be the Golden Rule,
as it only keeps a man from blackjacking his neighbor with
a lead pipe because he does not want to be blackjacked him­
self. The Golden Rule of Jesus is based on the principle of
love, and not hate. It is spiritual in its nature, and therefore
requires the aid of God, God’s grace in one’s heart, to obey it.
The difference between the Golden Rule and this Leaden
Rule is plainly seen when applied to the question of democ­
racy, which is uppermost in the minds of the citizens of the
“United Nations” at war to safeguard the exercise of the
rights it embodies. Following the Golden Rule, the Christian
demands freedom of worship, of balloting for public officials,

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LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS

of speaking, printing, being educated, and equality before
the law, on the ground that he is a person; because he is a
human entity who has unalienable rights with which God
had endowed him. He wants others to be permitted to exer­
cise those same rights, because they also are persons made in
the image of God, and endowed with the same unalienable
rights. Following the Leaden Rule, the Jew would demand
those freedoms for the other fellow because he hates to be de­
prived of those freedoms himself. One might logically stretch
such an irreligious principle to the point of saying, that if
depriving the other fellow of the exercise of those rights
were not likely to cause him also to be tyrannized, he would
not bother about the other fellow’s rights at all.
There has come a frank acknowledgment in Jewry that the
ethical code of Jesus is of a distinctively higher order than
the “Hebrew ethical code,” which is further evidence of the
elevation and perfection of the Mosaic code. It refutes the
assumption that Hillel’s standard is the same as the standards
of Jesus, and preceded it. The teachings of Jesus are so far
above those heretofore taught, that Prof. Joseph Klausner,
of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who rejects the Messiahship. miracles, mysticism, and other things that prove
Jesus to be the God-man, ends his 414 page “Jesus of Naza­
reth," with this statement,
“But in his ethical code there is a sublimity, distinctiveness
and originality in form unparalleled in any other Hebrew
ethical code; neither is there any parallel to the remark­
able art of his parables. The shrewdness and sharpness of
his proverbs and his forceful epigrams serve, in an excep­
tional degree, to make ethical ideas a popular possession.
If ever the day should come that this ethical code be
stripped of its wrappings of miracles and mysticism, the
Book of Ethics of Jesus will be one of the choicest treasures
in the literature of Israel for all time."
The more one studies the Christian contrast to the Jewish
religion, the clearer is seen that one is the positive, while the
other is the negative of God's Law. This fact so deeply im­

THE LAW FULFILLED

I47

presses converts from the Synagogue to the Church, whose
spiritual life is nourished regularly with the Bread of Life,
Jesus Himself, that they can never again return to the Juda­
ism of our day with any religious satisfaction. Those Israel­
ites who do “back-slide” are usually from Protestantism,
where baptism is generally conferred upon the mere request
for it. Yet there are exceptions, such as Dr. Alfred Edersheim
of Oxford University, a learned Hebrew Protestant Minister.
In his informing work, “The Life And Times Of Jesus The
Messiah,” after telling of the sublimity of the teachings of
the Sermon on the Mount, including the text which is the
subject of this letter, in contrast to the teachings of Judaism,
even in the use of similar terms, says—
“He who has thirsted and quenched his thirst at the living
fount of Christ’s Teaching, can never stop to seek drink at
the broken cistems of Rabbinism.”

Having forestalled your possible comeback, it is in order
to return once more directly to the text of this letter. I have
endeavored to prove that Jesus fulfilled the Law and the
Prophets, being tire realization of them; having elevated the
Law to spiritual heights never before attained. This is seen
in the Eight Beatitudes, the counterpart of the Ten Com­
mandments, which bestow blessings upon the poor, the meek,
the mournful, those who seek justice, are merciful, clean of
heart, peacemakers, and the persecuted. They taught man
that he is subject not merely to the Law written on tablets of
stone, but also to the spirit of God that is written on the
fleshly tablets of the heart.
The fulfillment of the Law by Jesus is seen in the declara­
tion that set the standard of marital relation back to the de­
sign of God, when man and wife were made two in one flesh.
Perfection is seen in the pronouncement, that “what God
hath joined together” no man has a legitimate right to “put
asunder”; by declaring that the remarriage of either sepa­
rated party to a marital union is adultery.

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LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS

The fulfillment of the Law is seen in the spiritual food
given to man by Jesus, the Blessed Sacrament, the Bread of
Eternal Life, in contrast to the Manna that typified it, upon
which our fathers in Israel lived in the wilderness (St. John
6-.48-52).
The fulfillment of the Law is seen in the Messiah as High
Priest, promised in Genesis 14:18-20 and Psalm 109 to be
“According to the order of Melchisedec, that is, without
genealogy, not of the Levitical order, not local or national,
but universal, catholic.
The fulfillment of the Law is seen in the Sacrifice Jesus
instituted at the last Passover gathering of the Old Law,
called the Last Supper. It is the “clean oblation,” which
Malachi (z;zz) said would supersede the bloody sacrifices of
Israel. It was to be for “the Gentiles,” as well as the Jews,
whereas the Mosaic sacrifices were exclusively for Jews. It was
to be offered on altars all over the world, instead of the obla­
tions offered from one altar, in the Temple in Jerusalem,
which is no more.
In the Church established by the Messiah (St. Matt. 16)
is seen the fulfillment of the promised kingdom of the seed
of David, that was to last “forever” (2 Kings J'-i}). Thus the
Kingdom of Israel lives on in the Kingdom of God, as the
Church is called.
If the fulfillment of the law is not seen in the institution
of a new priesthood and Sacrifice, then how account for the
end having come to the Mosaic priesthood and its sacrifices,
as well as the Temple? If that convinces you not, then there
is Jesus, who, in Himself, is the Law fulfilled. He is the pre-I
dieted Messiah, who was bom in the time, place and manner;
lived, suffered and died, as foretold in about a half a hundred
texts in the Old Testament. If all the evidence presented in
this letter is not sufficient to get you to realize that Christian­
ity has displaced Judaism by its fulfillment, then there re­
mains but one thing more the claim of Jesus on the Cross
that He had fulfilled His Messianic mission, to bring the Old
Law to fruition, St. John says—(19:28)

149

THE JEWISH NAME

“Afterwards Jesus knowing that all things were now ac­
complished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, ‘I
thirst.’ ”
This thirst was not for drink, as the Roman soldiers imag­
ined when they put a sponge soaked with gall and vinegar
into his mouth. It was the eagerness, the longing in the heart
of Jesus for your soul and mine, and every other soul, for
His mission was to bring man to the Eternal Jerusalem. That
thirst you refuse to satiate with your love, for which your
Messiah yearns today, as He did nineteen hundred years ago
on the Cross. The very last word that Jesus uttered, while in
agony on the Cross, was—“It is consummated.” This means
that Jesus had completed, had brought to perfection, had ful­
filled the mission that the law and the Prophets said the Mes­
siah would fulfill.
If, after all that is related in this letter you are not con­
vinced that Jesus did not destroy but fulfilled the Law, my
only satisfaction is that I sincerely tried to dispel the cloud
that keeps you from realizing the glorious inheritance that
awaits Jews in Jesus as their Lord and their God.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D... G..............

The Jetvish Name

My dear Mr. Isaacs:
You amuse me by asking, “Why, so long as you denied
Judaism, didn't you also deny your Jewish name?” conclud­
ing that “If it were not that your name’s Goldstein, I would

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judge by your extreme Catholicism that you were to the
Catholic manor born.”
The answer to your query is very simple, I am proud of
my Jewish name, and not ashamed of it as are some of the
Goldsteins who have changed their family name to Goldin,
Gerard, Giddings, and Gould, and their given names from
Isaac to William, Israel to Percival, Rebecca to Rosalind, and
Rachel to Phyllis, to mention only a few of the hundreds of
Jewish name-dodgers read about in the Jewish press. They
are like an occasional half-baked Catholic who names his
children after nuts—Hazel and Hickory—instead of saints.
You bring to mind a conversation regarding ancestors, that
took place during a dinner at which a friend and I were
being entertained. The honors seemed to go to the lady who
proved to be of real New England “blue-blood” stock, as she
could trace her family tree back to the Cabin of the May­
flower. Noticing that I kept on silently eating while that part
of the conversation was going on, the host good-naturedly
asked, “How far back do you go?” My instant proud response,
“I date back to Abraham,” caused the descendant from the
first Cape Codders to be laughed into the discard.
While an entire change of name on the part of persons
who enter the religious life is obligatory in some religious
orders, being an act of severance from all worldly relation­
ship. no such an obligation is imposed as a condition of
baptism. Hence, while Jews in growing numbers have been
trying to dodge their Jewish origin, long before the Jewhater Hitler had afflicted the world, I took great satisfaction
in parading a name that is as Jewish as Murphy is Irish. It
made me feel closer in human relationship with Jesus, Mary,
Joseph, the Apostles, and St. Paul than are Catholics to the
manor born.
Besides, a Catholic with a Jewish name,—Goldstine, not
Goldsteen—emphasizes the fallacy' of the notion from which
I have been endeavoring to wean you, that the acceptance of
God’s New Testament principles is a denial of God’s Old
Testament principles. What you call “extreme Catholicism”

jyj

ADAMS FALL

is no more a denial of Judaism of old than the majestic oak
is a repudiation of the acorn from which it came forth. One
is the full-blossoming of what existed potentially in the
other.

Sincerely in the Messiah
D . ... G..............

J7-

Adam’s Fall

My dear Mr. Isaacs:
It is interesting to learn that you discussed my recent letter
with Rabbi S........ I would like to have listened-in on the dis­
cussion, even though it was very likely one-sided.
One part of the Rabbi’s statement is correct, “The starting
point of Christian belief is the fall of man, ‘original sin.’
Jesus is supposed to have come to atone for the sin of Adam
by suffering, and dying on the cross.” But when he says that
"Jewish writings repudiate belief in ‘original sin,’ and vicari­
ous atonement,” then must he exclude the Old Testament,
which Rabbi S.... knows to be a library of Jewish writings
of the highest order.
I will deal largely with the last statement first, and devote
the following two letters to a more complete answer to the
question of why, and how
“In Adam’s fall—
We sinned all.”
Rabbi S.... would not deny the fall of Adam through sin,
as Jewish theologians are agreed on that point. What he, and
other Rabbis deny is the real seriousness of it; the result at-

LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS

tributed by Christians to that first sin of humanity. He would
deny that the sin of Adam affected the nature, the spiritual
status of man; that it required a Second Adam to restore man
to the favor of God, through sacrifice, such as the Messiah
made on the Cross. I assume we are all agreed that the Old
Testament is the best authority on the subject. Yet what ap­
pears therein is but the fore-shadowing of what is seen in the
New Testament, as the content of the seed is not seen in its
fulness until it blossoms forth.
Yet the evidence in the Old Testament is sufficient to show
that the Jewish repudiation of original sin, in the Christian
sense of the term, is unsound. David says of himself,
“Behold, in iniquity was I brought forth; and in sin did
my mother conceive me” {Psalm 50:7).

What other than original sin can here be referred to? It could
not refer to the moral conduct of his parents, as David is
declared to have been the offspring of a marriage that was
“honorable and undefiled.”
In the Wisdom of Solomon, we have more definite evi­
dence, as one of the results of original sin, death, is men­
tioned,
“God created man incorruptible, and to the image of his
own likeness he made him.
"But by the envy of the devil, death came into the world"
(3:15-04).
The "devil,” referred to in the Wisdom of Solomon, came
in the form of a serpent, as Moses tells us in Genesis 3:1. This
vile creature lured Eve, who in turn ensnared Adam into
doing what God forbad, eating of “the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil” (Gen. 2:9). Adam as head of the human
family, the source of the nature of man. Eve included, is the
responsible cause of the affliction called the sin of our first
parents, but more correctly the sin of Adam. We are, in our
humanity, the inheritors of the condition that existed at the
point of origin of humanity, Adam. Therefore what Adam

adam’s fall

lost we are deprived of, such as freedom from the drudgery
of toil, pain, death, etc. This is not a personal sin on our
part, as it was on the part of Adam, it is a condition of
deprivation called original sin. We suffer from the war of
our first parents against god, just as coming generations are
going to suffer financially for the expenditures of the present
war of nations, a war that was not of their making, an in­
debtedness they had no part in determining.
When discussing questions of this kind, it is necessary to
go back at times to some things of simple, yet basic import,
upon which, fortunately, there is an agreement, even though
we disagree when drawing conclusions therefrom. One of
these things is the principle of holding man, not God, re­
sponsible for the transgressions of man. God made every­
thing “good,” Adam included, that is perfect of its kind, as
Moses said,
"God beheld everything he had created, and it was very
good” (Gen. 2:37).
While Adam was made perfect, as were all animals, he
differed from other creatures in that he was endowed with
free will. That means he had the faculty of choosing good or
evil; the power of obeying or disobeying God’s will, as have
you and I. Animals below man, being devoid of that faculty,
can neither do a moral nor an immoral act, for they are nonmoral beings. Only Adam and his descendants were subject
to dishonorable thoughts, false hopes, pride, lust, in a word,
sin. Though Adam was made perfect; though he had the in­
nocence of a child, he had the powers of a man. Those powers
permitted him, if he so willed, as they permit us, to defy the
very God that made him. As a result of the abuse of those
powers he lost his innocence, the Garden of Paradise, and
other things that will be mentioned in my next letter, not
only for himself but for his descendants. It will be sufficient
to name two of those things that are plainly evident. Adam
was punished with hard labor, and death, that man has since
suffered,

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“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou re­
turn unto the earth,—for dust thou art and unto dust thou
shalt return” (Gen. y.17, 19).
Adam’s rebellion against God, caused him to be punished.
He and his descendants had to earn their bread by the sweat
of their brow. The things that God made to serve man with­
out hardships, such as the land, man had to till and to strug­
gle to bring forth its fruits. That original sin of Adam was
the sin of humanity, for Adam was humanity in the begin­
ning. He was punished by bringing death to himself and
thus to all humankind, for he was condemned to return to
the dust from which he came. That is, the basis for St. Paul’s
statement,
“Therefore as through one man sin entered into the world
and through sin death, and thus death has passed unto all
men—” (Rom. y 12).

The same principle St. Paul set forth in his Epistle to the
Romans was enunciated by the Son of Sirach, known in the
Talmud as Ben Sira, in the Book of Ecclesiasticus, about 250
years before the Apostle to the Gentiles, viz.,
“By the disobedience of one man, many were constituted
sinners” (y.rp).

Enough has been said to settle one point in particular, that
is that there is warrant in Jewish writings, in the Old Testa­
ment, for belief in original sin, which has wounded human
nature. More will follow, as promised.
Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G..............

j8.

Effects of Original Sin

My dear Mr. Isaacs:
In considering the question of original sin, I naturally look
back to my own experience, having taken to things Catholic
in my manhood after studying the teachings of the Church.
Having arrived, step by step, to belief in God, in revelation,
in Judaism fulfilled in Christianity, in the Catholic Church
being the Church of the living God, and her being pro­
tected from error in matters of faith and morals, some of her
teachings, such as the Trinity, the immaculate conception,
the assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, were accepted by
me on her infallible say so. This seemed quite reasonable to
me, for if God speaks through His Church, as I believe He
does, then can she no more be in error than could God be in
error, in such a thing as original sin.
Yet I had to be convinced that what the Church taught on
the subject is not contrary to right-reasoning. Believing that
God made all things “good,” including man, I began to ask
some searching questions: “Why are we living in a valley of
tears, instead of a terrestrial paradise such as was the abode of
our first parents during their days of obedience to God’s
will?” “Why do women suffer the pangs of childbirth,
whereas animals bring forth their young unaided, without
suffering?” “Why does man, and not animals, suffer the af­
fliction of concupiscence?” “Why, like a furnace from which
all sinful notions as so many sparks continually arise, is man
kept struggling against the rebellion of his passions?” They
are physical afflictions which must arise from the soul, which
is the vital, the animating principle in man. The soul must

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is most likely to be, “If the Catholic Church is a miracle,
then are the Jews a greater miracle, for they have existed
long before Christianity and its Catholic Church.”
The Jews are an enigma rather than a miracle, for while
the Jewish Church existed before the Christian era, the Jews
have not existed as an organic religious, authoritative group
since the end of their priesthood, sacrifices and Temple. The
Jews live on as a people, just as the Egyptians, Greeks and
Chinese live on, though they seem to have a providential rea­
son for their existence that the other people have not. They
are held together by persecution, not by religious principles.
That alone accounts for many among them being called
“Jews” by Jews, even when they go so far as to utterly re­
pudiate belief in God.
Jews seem destined to live on all over the world as wit­
nesses of the Law fulfilled in Christ that they as God’s chosen
people had in their keeping. They seem destined to live on,
as a persecuted people, until their minds are illumined and
their hearts mellowed by the recognition that their inher­
itance is Jesus as the Son of David. The Catholic Church
holds with St. Paul (Romans 2), that “God has not cast off
His people”; that the day will come when there w ill be a
general conversion of the Jews, which will mark the time
of a final triumph of Christ and His Church throughout the
world.
Doctrinal unity, which does not exist in Jewry, is one of
the marks by which the Church God established is identi­
fied, be it Jewish or Christian, a question that was dealt with
in a former letter. Only by the miraculous power of God is
it possible for a spiritual society, such as the Catholic
Church, to maintain its doctrinal integrity, to exist for over
nineteen centuries, holding strictly to every' article in the
Creed of the Apostles. I refer to oneness in faith and in
moral standards, and not to political oneness, economic one­
ness, oneness of judgment as to howr the present world con­
flict will end, or whether the "new world order” contem­
plated on both sides of the firing line will stabilize interna-

GENTILES AND JEWS

2^J

tional relations any better than did the Versailles Treaty
that was “to make the world safe for democracy.” The mir­
aculous nature of the Catholic Church was noted by St.
Thomas of Aquin in the following words,
“It would indeed have been the most amazing of miracles
if, without any miraculous prodigy, a few simple, un­
known men had persuaded the world to embrace a Faith
containing mysteries so far beyond man’s comprehension,
which entailed obligations so onerous, and anticipated a
future so sublime” (Contra. Gent., i, 6).
Sincerely in the Messiah
D ... G..............

55.

Gentiles and Jews

My dear Mr. Isaacs·.
If it were not that inexact terminology leads to false con­
cepts, I would laugh and pass by your references to me as a
Jew, and then as a Gentile, when, as a Christian, I am
neither.
It is all too common a practice to call Christians Gentiles,
just as the Mormons classify all non-Monnons. It caused
Simon Bamberger (Jewish), the Governor of Utah (1917—
1921), jokingly to say, “in my State I am both a Jew and a
Gentile." I also find it all too common for editors, and Chris­
tian speakers (when addressing Jewish groups) to write and
talk of “Jews and Gentiles.” To me it is hiding, if not deny­
ing their Christian faith. Gentile is a term of Latin origin
that has no equivalent in the Hebrew language. The exprès-

LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS
244
sion nearest to it is “Goy" (pl. Goyim), a national designa­
tion that means a “stranger,” a person belonging to a nonJewish nation, a “heathen.” Hence the term “Goyim,” gen­
erally used contemptuously, means heathens. The Pharisee
drew back, the hem of his garment when he passed a “Goy,”
as the Pharisee’s concept of God was a “respecter of per­
sons.” No doubt it was this contempt for the "Goyim” that
caused Shakespeare to make Shylock say,

“I will buy with you, sell with you, walk with you, talk
with you; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor
pray with you.”
This contempt for the Gentiles did not die out immedi­
ately in apostolic time with the conversion of the Jews to the
Catholic Church, which was made up in the first years en­
tirely of converts from Israel, hence they demanded that the
Gentiles be made Jews by circumcision before being bap­
tised. This question had to be settled at the Council of Jeru­
salem, sixteen years after Christ ascended into heaven.
In pre-Christian times, it was both proper and compre­
hensive to speak of society being divided between Jews and
Gentiles, as Jews were then God’s chosen children, the keep­
ers of God’s Law, worshippers of the one true God, in con
trast to the Gentiles, who were idolators, who worshipped
many gods. But with the coming of the Christ, with the be­
ginning of the Messianic Age, a new religious division of so­
ciety took place, henceforth only those who were neither
Jews nor Christians could be properly designated as Gen­
tiles. St. Paul referred to the Gentiles as Greeks (Rom. 1:16;
2:9, 10; 10:12), perhaps because they spoke the Greek lan­
guage, or perhaps because he did not want to refer to them
in a term that had on odious significance, as “with God there
is no respect of person.”
When it comes to the term Jew, the mind halts, as such a
thing as a clear-cut meaning of it is not in the lexicon of
Jewry today, the place where it ought to be found. As Jews,
so-called, do not agree on this point of beginning an évalua-

GENTILES AND JEWS

245

tion of themselves, Judaism has logically become what it is
intellectually, religious confusion.
This is very much of a surprise to prospective converts
from the Synagogue to the Church. They seriously study
the Old Testament to find out if the Catholic claim is true,
that its principles and prophesies are fulfilled and perfected
in the New Testament. They find Old Testament Judaism
to be organic, it being more of a text book of Judaism than
the New Testament is of Christianity, though the teachings
of Christ are therein set forth. They conclude that Judaism
is the religion of the children of Israel as set forth in the
Old Testament, especially in the Torah, the five Books of
Moses. That is as our Fathers of old in Israel define a Jew, for

“Curseth is he that abideth not in the words of this Law,
and fulfilled! them not in work,” said Moses (Deut. 27:26).
Even since the destruction of the Temple, up to about a
couple of hundred years ago, a Jew who repudiated belief
in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (even for lesser of­
fenses) was “cut off” from Israel. That is why Spinoza was
excommunicated, cursed and driven out of Amsterdam by
the Synagogue of that city (1656), for expressing belief in a
pantheistic concept of God. But not so today, leading “Jews"
have publicly repudiated belief in a personal God, yet they
are classified as Jews in Jewish encyclopedias and the Jewish
Who’s Who. One leader said, “We Jews need not believe
in our religion—, the Jew needs believe nothing” to be a
Jew (Ludwig Lewisohn, quoted in “From Pharaoh to Hit­
ler," p. 42).
I do not mean to infer that Israelites are of the non-believ­
ing type. There are a multitude of them, Orthodox Jews,
though they are a dwindling group, who cry out to God in
their suffering, as did Job, “Behold though He slay me, yet
will I trust in Him” (zjizjr).
Jews are not a distinctive race, as they rightly say; and
only a minority· look upon themselves as belonging to a
• World War II has greatlv increased their number.

Compressée HU
246

LETTERS TO MR. ISAACS

Jewish nation, something that they were unitedly at one
time in the history of Israel. Their desire for a Jewish State in
Palestine is largely as a place of refuge for persecuted Jews.
Of course, as a whole, persons called Jews may be called
Israelites irrespective of their beliefs, as they are descendants
of Jacob (Israel). But that does not tell us what the distin­
guishing characteristic is that determines a Jew. When re­
ligion, the raison d’etre for being a Jew, is eliminated, what
remains? The answer is, made by some Rabbis, the “Zionist
Jew,” the “B’nai B’rith Jew,” the “philanthropic Jew,” the
“social-climbing Jew',” the “Christian-Jew'ish good will Jew,”
who is usually ignorant of what Old Testament Judaism is,
never utters a prayer, and generally sticks to association with
Jewry because he has a kinship of suffering or defense with
it, as well as family association, to state it at its best. Some
one has said, I do not recall his name, that “a Jew is a person
who calls himself a Jew.” On the other hand, there are Chris­
tians w ho call everybody a Jew who is born of Jewish parents
be he an Atheist or a Catholic.
What is a Jew? The answer of the Israelites of today is like
the answer of the Yankee farmer, who was asked the price of
land in his community, “Good high land is worth consider­
able; low boggy land ain’t worth quite so much.” While it is
not within my right to define the term Jew for “Jews,” to me
the only correct definition is, one who believes in the Mosaic
religion. I cannot let this opportunity go by without calling
your attention to the fact that the convert from the Syna­
gogue to the Church is more of an Old Testament Jew, in
the sense of believing and worshipping the God of Israel
than are three quarters of the nearly five million “Jews” in
our country. It was perfectly proper to speak of “Jews and
Gentiles” in pre-Christian but not in Christian times. Hence
it is an offense (though not so intended) for Jews and others
to designate an analysis of the Jewish question, “Jews In a
Gentile World” (1942).
Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G..............

56.

Infallibility of the Pope

My dear Mr. Isaacs:
A request came to me two weeks ago to dine and sit in
with a group of Jews, Harvard students, who were to discuss
religion, to which I responded.
They, all strangers to me, were moved by a discussion of
my “Jewish Panorama” to have me “add spice to the con­
fab.” All eyes were centered upon me, often more than their
ears, as never before had they met such a strange thing as a
"Goldstein-Catholic,” to quote one of them. They knew not
that there was a family of eight Baltimore Goldsteins and a
New Hampshire Goldstein of artistic musical skill in the
Church, and that a lady who had that precious name is do­
ing service as a Dominican Nun. It was a hard night’s work,
as their questions and objections seemed to cover almost the
whole gamut of things Catholic. While some of them were
sceptical about this, and others about that, they all seemed
to scorn belief in the infallibility of the pope, as do you.
Keen though these young men were, they had a doctrinal
concept of infallibility that was as far from the Catholic con­
cept of it as was that of the youngster I heard of recently,
though not as humorous.
Youngster: “Mother, I wouldn’t be a Catholic for any­
thing.”
.Mother: "Why, my dear?”
Youngster: “I don’t believe the pope is God.”
Mother: “Why, my boy, I do not think Catholics believe
that.”