modern christianity is ancient judaism'': rabbi gustav gottheil and the jewish-american religious...

7/29/2019 ''Modern Christianity Is Ancient Judaism'': Rabbi Gustav Gottheil and the Jewish-American Religious Future, 18731

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Modern Christianity Is Ancient Judaism:

Rabbi Gustav Gottheil and the Jewish-AmericanReligious Future, 18731903

Caleb J. D. Maskell

On April 17, 1903, the American Hebrew, the pre-eminent NewYork Jewish weekly newspaper, printed a soaring obituary for Rabbi

Gustav Gottheil. With the removal by death from our midst of thepersonality of Rev. Dr. Gustav Gottheil, New York Judaism loses itsmost prominent official figure. For thirty yearsa whole generationthe Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El has been a striking and dominatingfigure in metropolitan Judaism, and by consequence, in AmericanJudaism at large.1 Kaufmann Kohler, president of the Central Con-ference of American Rabbis and primary author of the foundationalstatement of American Reform theology, the Pittsburgh Platform,placed Gottheil at the head of the New York rabbinate, the hakham2

par excellence among the rabbis, the wise, thoughtful, circumspect, anddignified leader.3 Noted Jewish intellectual Jacob Voorsanger com-mented that, by the 1880s, Gottheil was easily the best known Jewishminister in America.4

It was to just this type of public presence in American culturethat Gustav Gottheil aspired. An American Reform rabbi, Gottheilwrote, should be a public teacher whose discourse did not confineitself to religious topics, strictly speaking, but [drew] into the sphereof its discussions every vital topic that occupies the public mind.5 He

regularly and self-consciously addressed matters of national politicalsignificance, both in print articles and in his spoken sermons, whichwere reported weekly in the New York Herald and often syndicated toother newspapers around the country. He was also concerned aboutthe climate of piety in America, composing or translating distinctivelyJewish devotional materials for private use by Americans of all faiths,as well as a variety of hymns, prayers, and other liturgical materialsdesigned for public use in Reform Jewish services. His most famous

Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation, Vol. 23, Issue 2, pp. 139184, ISSN:

1052-1151, electronic ISSN: 1533-8568. 2013 by The Center for the Study of Religion and

American Culture. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy

or reproduce article content through the University of California Presss Rights and Permissions

website at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/rac.2013.23.2.139.


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hymn setting, Rock of Ages, Let Our Song, is a classic of AmericanJewish liturgy that positions its singers as at once quintessentially

Jewish and quintessentially American.6 Both in politics and in piety,Gottheil deliberately intended not just to speak to Jews but, rather, tooffer a Jewish interpretation of American life to the widest possibleAmerican audience.

Locating Gottheil among his peers in the leadership of Amer-ican Reform Judaism in the late nineteenth century is not a simplematter. In many ways, his theological and political sensibilities occu-pied typical, even archetypal, Reform positions.7 His goal, as I willargue at length below, was to represent the wholeto act as an

ambassador for Reform Judaism in the American context. NaomiWiener Cohen observes that Gottheil was a stand-out among the pan-theon of Reform leaders at the 1893 Worlds Parliament of Religions,noting that his theological lecture played up the principles andagenda of Reform Judaism more than any other paper.8 He arguedfor Reforms status as the modern American consensus Judaismunifying, wise, and future-oriented. His archived correspondence andhis published obituaries attest that Gottheil was not only one of themost well-connected and well-respected leaders in national Jewish life

but also an important community leader among the local New Yorkrabbinate as well.9 He was a founder and board president of the NewYork-based Board of Jewish Ministers, and he spoke and wrote regu-larly about issues concerning Jewish congregational leadership.10

Acknowledgment of the value of his work in this arena transgressedthe boundaries of the Reform community, drawing support and appre-ciation from local Orthodox leaders as well.11

Gottheil also proved to be a strong advocate for the impor-tance of historic Jewish religious distinctiveness in the face of both the

marginalization of Jews by Christians and their abandonment by rad-ical Jewish liberals. One of the most dramatic examples of this advo-cacy took place within months of his arrival in New York City. WhenFelix Adler gave his incendiary address, The Judaism of the Future,at Temple Emanu-El in 1873, Gottheil had just been hired as a juniorrabbi and was seated on the platform with Samuel Adler, Felixsfather and Gottheils head rabbi.12 Gottheil was horrified by FelixAdlers willingness to proclaim that Judaism had functionally cometo an end, rejecting Jewish theology in favor of what amounted to

a universal religion of ethics. Assuming that, as the son of the headrabbi, Felix Adler would be hired, Gottheil immediately tendered hisresignation to Temple Emanu-Els Board of Trustees, explaining thathe and Adler were preaching different religions.13 As it happened, theboard had similar concernsGottheil kept his job as junior rabbi and

140 Religion and American Culture


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rebuffed Adler, who went on to found the Society for Ethical Culturein 1877. This memorable episode marked the very beginning of Gott-

heils career as an American rabbi and set the course for his future asan apologist for the significance of historic Judaism to the Americanreligious future.

Despite his popularity and influence, however, Gottheil wasalso a controversial figure, heavily criticized by some in the Reformmovement because of his perceived openness to the ideals, institu-tions, and elites of American liberal Christianity. He was frequentlyaccused, wrote one editorialist in the American Hebrew, of oglingwith Christianity, of servilely fawning upon it.14 For example, Emil

Hirsch, rabbi of the Reform Chicago Sinai Congregation, attackedGottheils 1896 devotional book, Sun and Shield, calling it a a Chris-tian Unitarian spiritual apothecary that had abandoned Jewish dis-tinctiveness.15 Jacob Voorsanger predicted that, when the history ofReform Judaism was written, ill-disposed critics will deny Gottheilhis legitimate place in the narrative, based on their judgment thatGottheil was dragging the congregation into unwonted, hence un-Jewish paths having to do with Gottheils broad liberality in hisrelations with non-Jews, especially Unitarians.16 Even members of

Gottheils inner circle occasionally objected; an 1882 letter to Gottheilfrom his friend and pupil, Emma Lazarus, includes an indignantpostscript: P.S. Did you really say as you were reported in yester-days Times that the Christian Church in America is a noble and vitalinstitution? I hope not!17

This essay is a study of the complex dynamics of GustavGottheils relationship to Christianity in the United States. Gottheilbelieved that the nation to which he immigrated in 1873 was caught inthe throes of a profound religious tension. On the one hand, he

thought the structure of American society was the most advancedand progressive in the worlddemocratic, liberative, redolent of thespirit of the God of Abraham and Moses. On the other hand, Americawas also a nation whose identity was fundamentally conditioned bya phenomenon I will call normative nationalist Christianity.18 By this,I mean that Christianity was, in Gottheils view, the de facto publicreligion of the nation; its morality, language, and customs thoroughlyinformed the practices, habits, and norms of public life, political rhet-oric, racial discourse, and popular self-interpretation. It was not

something that could be avoided.19 While Gottheil registered discom-fort with this phenomenon, given the way that it located Jews, bydefinition, at the margins of American national life, he did not pros-ecute a public fight against it as many of his peers and predecessorsin the leadership of American Judaism did. Instead, to some peoples

Modern Christianity Is Ancient Judaism 141


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dismay, he became a messenger of peace to the representatives ofother creeds and churches, reaching out to scores of liberal American

Christians during his thirty years in New York City with personalfriendship, private correspondence, and publication in journals thatthey read.20 He positioned himself to them both as a Jewish dialoguepartner and as a co-laborer in the development of the religious futureof American civilization.

Gottheils engagement with these liberal Christians wasrooted neither in a vision of democratic religious pluralism nor a newcosmopolitan universal religion with the gospel of fellowship as itsmessage and religious sympathy at its heart.21 On the contrary, he

referred to himself as a religious exclusivist, arguing that Judaism wasthe only possible religion of the [American] future.22 Instead, Gott-heil engaged this wide swath of liberal Christians because he believedthat they were, quite literally, becoming Reform Jews. Under the cri-tiques of modernity, they were abandoning traditional Christiandoctrines that no longer seemed rational and simultaneously turningtoward a biblically rooted, nondogmatic religion of divine Father-hood and universal brotherhood with a strong emphasis on justice,ethics, civilization, and the importance of religious feeling.23 As they

discarded the doctrinal accretions of their institutionalized Christianfaith, they were discovering that at the heart of what they alreadybelieved was Judaism. Modern Christianity, he said in 1885, isancient Judaism.24

Gottheil was convinced that all of American Christianity wasin a world-historical process that would carry it in this direction: thewider culture of American Christianity would eventually be caughtup in the ideological trajectory of the liberal drift, and, when it was,Judaism would become the foundational religion that would under-

gird Americas divinely inspired political structures in the modernage. It was in an attempt to advance this messianic end that Gottheilestablished a broad network of friendships with liberal Christianministers, each an occasion for dialogue about the true nature ofreligion.25 Whenever he believed that a representative of normativenationalist Christianity might be listening, he was prone to adopt thesignature rhetoric of normative nationalist Christianity, speaking ofpopular theopolitical conceptsthe Kingdom of God, the Prince ofPeace, the millennium, and so onin ways that affirmed their support

for American national priorities, praised their universal ethical objec-tives, and reinterpreted them on Jewish foundations. Always self-consciously a public teacher, Gottheil engaged liberal Christians ontheir own terms, meeting their desire for an optimistic, softly messianicreligion of divinely ordered civilizational advancement with a narrative



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of hopeful yet acutely critical countersupersessionism.26 He sought torelocate Jewish ethics and spirituality at the religious heart of the civ-

ilization of the American future in a manner not only that liberal Chris-tians could understand from a distance but that they also wouldeventually, he believed, recognize as their own.

The Kingdom of God, In Spite of Christianitys

Practical Dominance

Gottheil was an immigrant patriot; when he arrived in New

York City in 1873 from a sojourn in Manchester, England, after emi-grating from his native Prussia, he fully embraced the United States ofAmerica as his home, both physically and spiritually.27 He consciouslyopted into the American project, believing in earnest that there was anexceptional phenomenon working out in American civilization thatbore within it the future of global culture. In a strong but not atypicalstatement, he concluded a Sunday lecture at Temple Emanu-El onNovember 4, 1888, with a rousing flourish: We have the Kingdomof God in the spirit of the American government, and when other

nations come to our way of thinking the dreams of the prophet willbe realized.28 America was not neutral groundit was playing hostto the divinely ordered emergence of the spiritual and political cultureof the future. Americas free air . . .buoyant, hopeful spirit, and . . .sense of security enabled the best, most civilized ideaswhich, forGottheil, were captured by the intellectual rigor and the propheticethics of the German Jewish Reformationto come to fruition withoutthe hindrance and persecution that they experienced in the Europeancultures where they emerged.29 In this land, modern Jews could do

what they were called by God to do, namely win the war . . . of ideasand live as apostles of freedom, and advocates of an unfettered reasonand unobstructed science.30 This was the mission of Israel in themodern age, promoting freedom, righteousness, charity, compassion,equality of all men, and the Kingdom of God on earth. . . . Shall we notthen preach this God to the world?31 America was fertile ground forthe birth of a universal Judaic spiritual culture for the modern age.Once America had achieved it, world evangelism was the next step.

Gottheil was also keenly awarefrom his very earliest days in the

United States thatChristianity,althoughnot legally dominant [inAmer-ica]isyetpractically so. [Popular religious] dogmas . . . the laws of moral-ity, the motives of kindness, and the graces of conduct are also markedwith the device of the Church.32 Gottheil explicitly acknowledged thegood outcomesof this ecclesialmarking of American societyhisgoal



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was not to demonize Christianity wholesale. Nonetheless, the effect ofthis ecclesial influence on the norms of American society, even unto

what he took to be good social ends, was, he argued, the cause of muchalienation and isolation among Jews in America. Because of it, agen-cies of public social improvementi.e., agencies that expressed theaspirations of American societyhad become indelibly associated inthe American imagination with Christianity, a common ground thatJews could not share. Jews, therefore, created a variety of privately runsocial institutionsreligious relief agencies, social agencies, labororganizations, fraternal societies, and so onto sustain their distinc-tiveness in the face of latent cultural chauvinism. Gottheil argued that

this move toward self-preservation in turn made the Jewish commu-nity seem more insular and marginal, and so the cycle of Jewish alien-ation and majority American bigotry proceeded.33

In light of this, it was ironic, Gottheil noted, that AmericanJews were, statistically speaking, better Americans than their Christiancounterparts. In one essay, he offered a vast flotilla of quotations andstatistics about American Jewish benevolent societies, which he dis-tilled with a quote from New York City mayor Smith Ely, Jr., who saidthat the Jews form ten percent of our population and contribute less

than one percent to our criminal classes.34 The heart of Gottheilsclaim here, a claim to which he would return numerous times over theyears, was that there was a correlation between Judaism and goodcitizenshipAmerican Jews were, from a New York mayors statisti-cal point of view, far better Americans, on average, than their Chris-tian compatriots. In an age of religious desire for objective truth, thiswas rhetorical gold.35 Something about Judaism, he averred, is bothdeeply consonant with the desires and goals of normatively ChristianAmerica and more effective at achieving those goals. It was most

unfortunate, then, that Jews found themselves in a cycle of alienationfrom the mainstream of American culture, as it seemed that the main-stream might have been able to learn something from Judaism as eachadvanced toward shared goals. Something ought to change for thegood of the whole, but the burden of redressing this cultural stalematelay with the majority culture: It certainly is for the dominant religion,rather than for that of a small minority, to lead the way in this verydesirable reform.36

Isaac Leeser and the Road Gottheil Did Not Take

The question of the right approach to the dominant religionhad long been a major priority for American Jewish leadership. Tomany, the normative nationalist Christianity that haunted the culture



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of the United States, ostensibly a land of religious freedom, was noth-ing less than a dangerous threatsomething to be attacked head on.

The great pioneer of this mode of engagement was Isaac Leeser, a pre-eminent figure in antebellum American Judaism and a formativeinfluence on Isaac Mayer Wise, Gottheils peer and correspondentnot to mention the most widely read voice of Reform Judaism inGottheils day.37 A brief look at the dynamics and legacy of Leesersapproach will helpfully characterize an approach that Gottheil didnot take but against the backdrop of which he continually acted.

Isaac Leeser frequently inveighed in his newspaper, the Occi-dent, against American laws and customs that revealed obvious dis-

crimination and preference by government officials for Christianbelievers.38 For Leeser, the issue was one of civil rights. As early as1845, he regularly sounded the alarm about numerous manifestationsof normative nationalist Christian hegemony, such as Sabbath legis-lation that prohibited businesses from being open on Sundays, publicfast days called in the name of Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of theworld, the infamous proposed Christian nation amendment to theConstitution of 1864, legal opinions that referred to a normativeChristian us versus a minority Jewish them, and enforced read-

ings in public schools of the theologically Christian King James Ver-sion of the Bible, to name a few of the more prominent examples.39 Ineach of these instances, Leeser was factually accurateProtestanthegemony was the order of the day. He critiqued these events withfiery rhetoric coupled with common sense arguments from the logicof the Constitution that clarified the limits of the will of the majority.For example, he wrote in 1845 that

a majority cannot do every thing; and among the prohibited

things is the abridgement of any ones rights for opinionssake. It matters not in this respect whether the majority beChristian or Jewish; the constitution knows nothing ofeither . . .both therefore were placed upon such an equalitythat a preference was given to neither.40

Leeser was bold for his time in his assertion of the constitutionalrights of American Jews. He even encouraged civil disobedience ifand when these rights were overridden, exhorting his Jewish readersto remember that no special privileges should be asked, no special

disqualifications should be voluntarily submitted to.41 Such persecu-tions were illegal, andat least as importantun-American. Libertyof conscience was, for Leeser, at the heart of the promise of Americanpolitical life and needed to be actively protected against the encroach-ments of the Christian majority who found it inconvenient.



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This vigorous resistance to Protestant legal hegemony was,for Leeser, part and parcel of a resistance to Christianity on religious

grounds as wellhe took the two to be fundamentally intertwined. Inhis theological writings, Leeser often used Hebrew scripture and Jew-ish tradition in an attempt to show the fanciful falsehood of Christianbiblical interpretationsparticularly those associated with the KingJames Version that found Christ hidden in the pages of Hebrewprophecy.42 Beginning in the mid-1830s, in direct response to aggres-sive evangelizing of his Philadelphia congregation by representativesof the American Tract Society, he began to preach and write earnestlyagainst the Christian doctrine of the Messiah, assessing the entirety of

the Christian project as a theological house of cards.43 This is just oneexample of many occasions in which Leeser portrayed popular Amer-ican Christianity as an irrational misappropriation of Jewish religionthat traded heavily on intellectual laxity, groupthink, and an acquiredsocial power that enabled Christians to behave with an enervatingcruelty toward Jews, towards our bodies and spirits both.44 Hege-monic Christianityboth political and religiouswas, for Leeser,a major cultural enemy, requiring active resistance. Under its influ-ence, Judaism would always be under attack, and America could

never make good on its political promises of religious pluralism with-out discrimination.

In the postbellum period, as the numbers of Jewish Ameri-cans rose exponentially, Leesers tenacious brand of theopoliticsbecame an inspirational model for major leaders of the Reform move-ment for how to engage normative nationalist Christianity. LanceSussman, Leesers biographer, characterizes Leeser as a pioneer inchoosing boldness over timidity, outrage over silence, in the face ofAmerican cultural chauvinism.45 Isaac Mayer Wise, rabbi, prolific

author, and editor of the influential Reform newspaper The AmericanIsraelite, expressed his debt to Leeser and followed his lead in thesematters.46 Historian Benny Kraut writes that Wise countered[American] Christian triumphalism with a Jewish triumphalism ofhis own. . . . He never failed to underscore the irrationality of Christiantheological dogmas, the lack of any novel contributions on Christian-itys part, and its historic opposition to reason, human freedom, andscientific progress.47 This posture was a direct retort to Christianeschatological expectations, especially as concerned the entanglement

of Christian narratives with American national narratives. Any Chris-tian critique of Wises positions was met with ferocious attackhisoutrage knew no bounds.48 By the end of his life, Wise had becomefamous for his declamations about the imminent evaporation of Amer-ican Christian faith and its certain replacement with rational Judaism.49



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In a more rhetorically moderate but nonetheless certainmode, Reform theologian Kaufman Kohler undertook what Arnold

Eisen calls a pronounced . . . anti-Christian crusade throughout hiscareer as an interpreter of American Judaism.50 Kohler vehementlyrejected the theological claims of Christianity, embarking in the yearsafter Gottheils death on a vigorous program of missionary Judaismthat sought to export progressive Jewish doctrinal claims to the out-side world.51 America could never become what it promised untilthe giant of normative nationalist Christianity had been slain, and theway to do thataccording to Leeser, Wise, and Kohlerwas at onceto vigilantly expose the un-Americanness of political anti-Judaism

wherever it was found and also to intellectually cudgel Christian faithon its weaknesses as a religious system until it shrank back in embar-rassment. This approach would, in the long run, strengthen the posi-tion of Judaism in American culture, not only silenc[ing] Judaismsperceived foes, but also . . . instill[ing] pride and self-respect amongJews as well as a renewed respect for their Judaism.52

While Gustav Gottheil was not content to be living in a nor-matively Christian America, he declined to attack it as an ideologicalenemy. To him, Americas normative nationalist Christianity was an

ambivalent fact. Though its effect was often unfairly marginalizing toJews, Gottheil acknowledged that the same Christianity that claimedit had superseded Judaism as Gods chosen religion ironically sus-tained the memory of Moses and a national covenant relationshipwith God in the American imagination.53 In spite of Christianityslatent supersessionism, its normative status meant that many of thecore ideas of Judaism were fundamentally enshrined in the habits ofAmericas Christian heart. What was necessary, thought Gottheil, wasnot the destruction of Christianity but, rather, its progressive trans-

formation from a dogmatic, doctrinal religion to a modern, rationalone in the model of Reform Judaism. As Gottheil saw it, the relation-ship between the two religions was familial, based on a shared inher-itance of history, narratives, and ideasthe chief distinction he wishedto make was that Judaism was the older, wiser sibling, the more matureone who had blazed the developmental trail for Christianity to follow.The highly liberal Unitarian Christians to whom he was most drawnhad advanced furthest in this direction, but, over time, the rest ofChristianity would eventually follow suit. As a public teacher, Gott-

heil was driven by his teleological imagination of what America wasbecomingAmericas future required a religious tradition to sustain it.He believed that his brand of Reform Judaism offered the most intel-lectually reasonable and theologically universal tradition that Americacould hope for. The heart of Gottheils approach to the question of the



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dominant religion, then, was to expose the ideological debt that nor-mative nationalist Christianity owed to Judaism while simultaneously

provoking, through every available venue, liberal Christian develop-ment toward the ethics and spirituality of Reform Judaism.

The American Exception Is Not Christian but Mosaic

Considering Gottheils approach first through his religiousinterpretation of American politics, one can put his position suc-cinctly: the American exception was not Christian but Mosaic.54Jews,he had argued, were instinctively better American citizens than Chris-

tians, and, thus, at the level of metanarrative, Judaism had a betterreligious interpretation of American national aspirations than Chris-tians did. Gottheil believed that what he perceived as a fertile climatefor freedom in the United States owed its existence primarily to thepolitical system, which depended on popular sovereignty and therule of law as opposed to the will of a sovereign monarch. This, heargued, was an inheritance from Judaism, filtered through the polit-ical theology of the Christians and deists who established the nation.Where a noted Christian commentator like Lyman Abbott would

argue that America was a new experiment in government . . . tryingto realize the ideal which Christ held before the world eighteen cen-turies ago, Gottheil framed the experiment as fundamentally tied tothe values of ancient Judaism.55

The lecture in which Gottheil located the Kingdom of God inthe spirit of the American government was entitled Government bythe People and What It Owes to Judaism. It is a prime example ofGottheils dual rhetoric that at once praised virtues that all Americanpatriots would recognize as their own and framed them exclusively in

the context of Judaic valuesrendering them irreconcilable with thelogic of Christianity. Preached almost literally on the eve of the presi-dential election of 1888, Gottheil argued that government by the con-sent of the governed was a fundamentally Jewish principle. Theframers, he argued, decided to put manhood on the throne in Amer-ica, a liberating move that aligned them with the spirit of the kingdomof Godpopular sovereignty was the form of government most in linewith the will of God and the advancement of spiritual freedom andspiritual responsibility that the Hebrew prophets had advocated.56 In

a particularly astonishing passage, Gottheil argued that, when theJews in the old days rejected the republic of Moses and asked Samuelto put a king at their head so that they would be like other nations,Jehovah recognized the sovereignty of the popular will and said toSamuel, Listen to the people. Me they have rejected.57 For Gottheil,



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not only is the Jewish God Jehovah the author of the political doc-trine of popular sovereignty, but he is subject to it as well! What is

moreand this should not be passed over quicklyto reject thedoctrine of popular sovereignty is to be like other nations, but toembrace it is to be nothing less than Gods exceptional nation. Got-theils strong Americanism is rooted in a Jewish biblical argumentfor American exceptionalism, based on popular sovereignty. Full-throated American patriotism was, for Gottheil, best aligned withserious, faithful Judaismfar more naturally so, in fact, than a seri-ous, faithful Christianity. In advancing self-government, the founderswere inspired by the Old Testament accounts of the one God, not the

Trinitarian New Testament accounts of Christ the King. It is a fact,he averred, that kings have always pointed to the New [Testament]and the people and liberty to the Old Testament for justification fortheir deeds.58 While Gottheils rhetorical momentum may have got-ten the better of his facts in this particular instance, his point is clear.

In his second lecture at the Worlds Parliament of Religions in1893, he adopted a similar rhetorical strategy. First, he praised thedivine destiny of America in patriotic biblical language that both Jewsand Christians would recognizeto this free country it was given to

show that the word of God is true, and that not one of his promisesshall fall to the ground.59 Then, he went on to speak of Moses asAmericas unacknowledged political saint and suggest everyChristian church on earth . . . is his monument. There was deliberateambiguity in Gottheils treatment of this matterhe sincerely com-plimented the greatness of the churches but nonetheless renderedthem as a monument to Moses, the great legislator who made thempossible. The Christianity dominant on the American national scenewas, he implied, totally contingent on the genius of the originary

Judaism of Moses. Here again, Judaism, with compliments to regnantnormative national Christianity, took its place as the most fundamen-tal American religious ideology.60 For Gottheil, the emergence of theAmerican system of government was the ultimate triumph of a longlegacy of Jewish influence in Western culture.

Belief in the influence of Moses over American ideology wasnot unique to Gottheilin fact, versions of it were common amongAmerican Jews for whom American belonging was both a contestedissue and a desirable outcome. In his article The Cult of Synthesis in

American Jewish Culture, Jonathan Sarna shows a plethora of evi-dence, starting in the mid-nineteenth century, of both popular andintellectual Jewish texts that affirmed that being a good Jew and a patri-otic American were not only compatible but also mutually reinfor-cing.61 Michael Meyer, a pre-eminent historian of Reform Judaism,



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suggests that the significance of this affirmation for Reform Jews wastwofold: first, that Judaism was a universal religion unconstrained by

transient, time-bound forms, a spiritual engine for the advance ofmodernity, and, second, that ideal Jewish identity fully realizedbrooked no tension with ideal American identity fully realized.62

Gottheil goes further than this, however, arguing that American iden-tity is best undergirded by Jewish identityas noted above, he was nota pluralist but a Jewish exclusivist who saw his brand of Judaism as theonly possible religion of the American future. That said, he does notrail against the weaknesses of the positions of those normative Chris-tian nationalists who would argue positions different from his. Rather,

he irenically inhabits their vocabulary, using the rhetoric of the norma-tive Christian culture to offer a distinctively Jewish interpretation of theadvancement of American culture that at once affirms the basic impe-tus of the Christian nationalist vision and then attempts to outnarrate it.

A Case in Point: Gottheil and the Millennium

One of the richest examples of Gottheils rhetorical strategy inthe renarration of American identity involves his striking interpreta-

tion of the doctrine of the millenniumlong a favorite of normativenationalist Christians. In a Sunday morning lecture on December 4,1898, originally reported by the New York Herald and reprinted ina wide variety of secular and Jewish newspapers, Gottheil posed thefollowing question about the recently prosecuted Spanish-AmericanWar: Why is the war to be considered only as a weapon in the handsof a tyrant; and why cannot war be considered as a firebrand ofcivilization, as it has proven in this instance?63

With this question, Gottheil was revealing his position as

a centrist and a patriot, aligning himself with the majority of Amer-icans who were pro-war, believing that it was advancing the cause ofcivilization worldwide.64 Jackson Lears drily remarks that war wasa popular idea in 1898,65 and it was so not because of a utilitarianRealpolitik calculus about American national interests. Rather, a major-ity of Americans had great enthusiasm for the war because they saw itas a kind of humanitarian interventionit provided an opportunityfor the export of Americas priceless principles on an internationalstage.66 Put bluntly, it was an occasion for chest-thumping, Ameri-

canist self-congratulation. On the individual level, the war affordedthe opportunity for vigorous demonstrations of what many saw as thebest of American characterdisciplined courage, pioneering manli-ness, and individual responsibility.67 What was more, manifestationsof this character were contagiousthey would result, through the



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irresistible force of their compelling example, in the widespreadembrace of American social, political, and religious values among the

nations and, ultimately, to the regeneration of the world.68 The impe-rial war was, thus, justified as being of world-historical importance;the battleships in the bay were to be widely understood to be the mosteffective means of delivering the American gospel of individual lib-erty and social hope for future progress. Given these winds of pre-vailing cultural opinion, Gottheil was uniting his readers, notdividing them, with his opening question.

Gottheil went on, offering another uncontroversial, pro-American opinion that the spreading out of American territory is

the spreading out of the true American policy guaranteeing the rightof all religions under the law. He followed it up with a story explain-ing that Spanish policies had excluded Jews, infidels, and unmarriedwomen from legal protection in the Philippines, but now that Amer-icans had taken power, this had all changed.69 As Gottheil proceeded,it became clear that, for him, the expansion of religious liberty in thePhilippines was not just a positive effect circumscribed by an other-wise agnostic shift toward American political cultureto the con-trary, it had important implications for the religious interpretation

of his contemporary cultural moment. He illustrated this to his con-gregation with another anecdote from Manila:

During the holidays of our faith which we have just passedthrough, Father Doherty, chaplain on the staff of GeneralMerritt, Roman Catholic priest of the Paulist order, preacheda sermon to the Jewish soldiers in Manila. That is good news,and is alike creditable to the young priest who thus recog-nizes the catholicity of creed and the democracy of sects.Such as Father Doherty bring the millennium, or the king-dom of God.70

This last statement would have raised eyebrows among his readers.The millennium and the Kingdom of God were two of the mostfreighted concepts for normative Christian nationalismtheologicalrubrics under which many Christians in America believed that theycould see the hand of God moving in history, usually with some aspectof American cultural life playing a starring role.71 The concept of themillennium was a particularly Christian ideaand more resonant

with the theologically conservative wing of Christianity at that. Tobring the millennium, as Gottheil averred that one Father Dohertywas doing, was to advance the reformation of society in such a waythat good has triumphed over evil enough to make way for what manyconsidered to be the literal thousand-year reign of Christ on earth.



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Even among those nineteenth-century Republican boosters who sec-ularized the discourse of the millennium as a program for American

social improvement, Jesus Christ remained the ethical reference pointof the metaphor.72 Yet Gottheil chose this language to describe theoccasion of a Catholic priest preaching to Jewish soldiers in the Amer-ican service over the Hanukkah holiday.

Gottheil no doubt relished the cognitive dissonance createdby his choice of theological metaphor. He certainly intended to beasked for an explanation; in an article commissioned by the SundayWorld, Rabbi Gottheil Discusses Jewish Faith in the Millennium, onegets the sense that Gottheil was positioning himself somewhere

between prophet and provocateur as he explained what he meantby its usage.73 He began his explanation with an historical argument.The millennium, he said, captures the goal that was the dearest hopeof the Israelite following the exile, namely,

the coming of the Messiah . . . who would rebuild the fallentemple of David and restore his throne to greater than itspristine glory! This was the same throne on which the Chris-tian expected Jesus to sit. . . .Jew and Christian hoped that

Jerusalem would rise from her ruins and . . .become thedesire of all nations.74

In the early days of Christianity, he claimed that the conditions for thefulfillment of the millennium would have been equally pleasing toChristians and to Jews, namely the restoration of Jerusalem as the cityfrom which right worship of God was understood by all the nations toemanate. The cityand the religious civilization that would emanatefrom itwere at least as important as the identity of the divine kingwho presided over it.

The question of who that chosen vessel of God would be,whether the one who in his own person shared the fate of

Jerusalem, or one who had not yet been seen on the earthcould that be of greater weight than the common belief thathe would unfailingly appear? A scion of the house of Davidhe would be, an Israelite after the flesh, a ruler of his ownpeople. If he should reveal himself as the man of sorrow whowas nailed to the cross, the Jews would be the first to do himhomage. Here was a clear point of contact, strong enough to

keep the two faiths together until the day of his coming.

75

Alas, it was not to be. According to Gottheil, the early Christiansbecame obsessed with the second advent of Christas time woreon without bringing the looked-for appearance of the Messiah, impa-tient, triumphalist Christians inscribed the literal second coming of



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Christ as a chief aspect of the first dogma of the Church and, in sodoing, seriously damaged their natural affinity for their Jewish breth-

ren. No longer could Christianity be viewed merely as a reformedJudaism; the desire for dogmatic certainty had caused the earlyChristians inexorably and uniquely to deify Christ. Thus, Trinitarianreligion was born, the unity of the One God that was the clarion call ofJudaic monotheism was theologically fractured, and, most ironicallyof all, amid these ever-growing conflicts, Christianity was lost.76

Christs living words had congealed into creeds and systems, repla-cing the spiritual impulses of a great Jewish Reformer with a morassof divisive, dogmatic religion.77 Among the greatest tragedies to come

out of this religious fracturing was forgetfulness of the fact that Jewishpeople were also waiting for the final redemption of the world in theconsummation of the messianic age.78

Of course Gottheils historical analysis is utterly laden withthe kind of presentism that makes his rhetoric so vibrant and soimportant to understand as an American religious phenomenon. Hisideological and theological target is dogmatism. Apart from it, therewould be a clear and present sense of fellow-feeling among Christiansand Jewsor, perhaps more precisely, both religions would have

understood themselves as proceeding from the same spirit that ani-mated ancient Judaism and, by extension, the temple worship in Jer-usalem. This bond was wrecked by nervous Christians who neededcertainty in the wake of the non-return of Christ (who can but think ofthe Millerites here!) and so developed dogmas like the Trinity, theecclesiology of the new covenant, salvation by grace through faith inChrist, and so on to provide that certainty for them. This dogma, hecontends, is, in fact, epiphenomenal to the religious feeling and reli-gious ethics modeled by Christ and, thus, should be radically ques-

tioned not only by Jews but also by Christians. In one rather ingenious bitof sweeping rhetorical reinterpretation, he has validated the Christiandesire for the millennium, located it as a shared desire with Judaism,and called into doubt the necessity of the ugly division between the tworeligions on this point.

Gottheils unusual invocation of the language of the millen-nium was not coincidental. It did not merely function as a proxy forideas of the Kingdom of God. Rather, he called on a theopoliticaltrope that has deep resonance in the normative nationalist Christian

imaginary and deployed it to demonstrate a distinctively Jewish,distinctively American solution. He argued that the resolution tothe problem of the age-old division between Christians and Jewswas presenting itself to Americans in precisely their blessed, crucialpresent historical moment. The unity of purpose that was lost to the



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ages because of vain disputes over dogma had now come around asa possibility once again.

The idea of a millennium has not been lost to usnay . . . itskernel of truth is better understood now than ever before.For what it has failed to do in olden times, and must fail todo as long as it remains covered with dogmatic shells, it has

begun to achieve in its liberated state. There is abroad nowa new spirit of fraternity and community of sacred interestsamong the various religions; a desire for cooperation inthese things good and true and helpful which are the very

beginning of the Kingdom of God on earth. If the Christian

thinks he must do that service in the name of his redeemer,that need not hinder his neighbor of a different belief fromgrasping his hand and becoming his fellow-laborer. If the

Jew is seen to do millennial work why should the Christiankeep aloof?79

Gottheil here aligned the coming of the millennium with ethicalachievementsthings good, true, and helpfulin a manner very sim-ilar to the way that normative nationalist Christian social reformersdid in their narration of American millennial goals. For Gottheil,

however, this was a Jewish logic that Christians had impeded withexclusionary doctrinal disputes. Jews have always been ready, hecontended, to co-labor for the good with Christians based upon theirshared desire for the fulfillment of millennial goals. But heretoforethey have been hindered by Christians who wanted to keep them atthe margins, insisting that millennial advancement was contingentupon Christianizing the social order. If American Christians are nowready, in their present historical moment, to lay aside these differ-ences of doctrinal disputeparticularly those relating to the unique

divinity of Christand embrace the universal ethical possibilities oftheir faith, Gottheil suggested, they will immediately find themselvesundertaking the labor warranted by the Jewish millennial hope. SuchChristians, freed from divisive dogma, would return to their mostfundamental religious roots and discover that Reform Jews werewaiting there for them. The Jew, he said stands at his post anddefends his old flag. . . . Firm in his old-time tried and fireproof faith inthe coming of the millennial Messiah, he labors on; where that is madeimpossible by the iron hand of the oppressor, he practices the art no

one has learned better than heto stand and wait.80Thus, Gottheil achieved his rhetorical objective; he took all

of the social momentum surrounding the Christian doctrine of themillennium and framed it as a cherished value of Judaism fromwhich Christians had sadly strayed. All that remained for him to



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do was fill out his picture of the substance of millennial work, i.e.,what must be done to turn the wheels of Gods providential and

redemptive purposes for the world.

It is not in the will of man to direct his steps, says Scripture;nor in that of mankind either. Civilization, and it alone, issoughtand behold millennial fulfillment comes with it,unsought and inevitably. The spirit cannot be restrained norput behind prison doors; it moves where it listeth.81

In language laden with allusion to the King James Version of the NewTestament, Gottheil proceeded to describe a variety of ways that

American civilization was being pursued, linking them to millen-nial progress. Of course, he spoke of civilization in the manner thatadvocates of the Spanish-American War liked to understand itnamely, as the cultivation of favorite aspects of American characterand culture by the amplification of national political values. Fromfreedom of speech to an untrammeled press to scientific devel-opments such as electricity [which] quickens thought as well asmuscle and the telephone [which] sharpens the mental as well asthe bodily ear to manhood resulting from manual labor to public

schools to organized labor and, finally, to pulpits on all sides inwhich the religion of truth is taught, the America of his present daywas carrying forth a millennial mission that had been at the heart ofJewish hope since ancient times.

Returning at last to the millennium-bringing chaplain inManila, Father Francis B. Doherty, Gottheil read the fact that hepreached to the Jewish troops during Hanukkah as a recognition fromone of the most active agents of American civilization, the UnitedStates military, of the catholicity of creed and the democracy of

sects.82 Under American rule, Jews were not only afforded freedomof religion but, in fact, were also included once again in the spiritualcommunity that Christians share. Thus, the disunity between Jewsand Christians born out of angst over the return of Christ that wasreified into doctrine by the early church was being overcome by regularAmericans on the battlefields of the Pacific theater. The splendid littlewar that was ostensibly being waged for the sake of the civilization ofthe world was, in fact, accomplishing religious ends of world-historicalscope. The advancement of American civilization was facilitating the

healing of ancient divisions between Christianity and Judaismthemillennial destiny of America was coming to pass, a destiny that was,at base, Judaic. Here, again, the American exception was not Christianbut Mosaic, and the ones with eyes to see it were those whose religiousperspective did not drag them into the morass of dogmatic division but



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rather filled them with ethical sentiment perfectly aligned with thehighest hopes of American civilization.

The Drift of Modern Christian Thought

It should be clear by now that Gottheil in no sense desireda hard distinction between political and religious matters in modernAmerican life. Thus, he rejected the strict constitutionalism of IsaacLeeser and, instead, followed the lead of the very normative nation-alist Christianity whose influence he intended to subvert. His was

a project of the renarration of American identity in toto through thelens of a normative nationalist Judaism. Having said that, the politicalrenarration for which he argued would have been sorely lacking hadhe not believed it to be underwritten by concrete transitions in thepractice of American Christianity.

On January 19, 1885, in his address to the inaugural confer-ence of the New York Area Jewish Ministers Association, Gottheil laidout an interpretation of the trajectory of New York liberal Christianityin relation to Reform Judaism. After acknowledging the great influ-

ence of Christian thought on New York Reform Jews, mediated tothem weekly as news in the religion pages of the New York Herald, heargued that American Christianity had been, for some time, in thethroes of a radical ideological transition, a disintegration in the areaof doctrine that was attacking the vitals of her faith.83 He believedthat doctrinal Christianity, as he and his peers had known it, wasdying.

Who now contends for the trinityfor the pre-existence ofthe founder of Christianity,for original sin,for salvation

by faith,for predestination,for everlasting punishment,and so forth? If they are mentioned at all, it is either to denythem outright, or to polish and grind them down into mereconceptions at which no one can take serious offence.84

Gottheil named prominent New York ministers Henry Ward Beecherand R. Heber Newton, both of whom he counted as personal friends, ashaving recently embodied this decline from their pulpits, calling themheretics and theologically wayward.85 This accusation was tongue-in-cheek, but it was dead serious. Their Christianity, he thought, was

adrift on the tides of modernity and was dismantling that which haddistinguished it, piece by piece. As we shall see below, dialogue aboutthe disintegration of historic Christian orthodoxies, particularly thoseconcerning the divinity and uniquely salvific mission of Jesus Christ,was precisely the ground upon which his relationship with such liberal



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Christian ministers began. In such conversations, Reform Jewishthought had something important to offer; pedagogically, it could help

liberalizing Christians to reimagine their theological dogmatics ina modern, post-trinitarian context. Gottheil interpreted this as nothingless than the gradual vindication of the primacy of the religious claimsof his Judaism in the American context, coming to pass in real timebefore his very eyes.

[These days] I find nothing to say against the Christians;they have become such good Jews. . . . [Christian thought]is turning back to its source, back to the simpler and purerfaith underlying our Bible; back through the mists andclouds and darknesses and upward to the clearer light! Whatdrove the formers of the Christian creed away from theirkinship . . . is now crumbling away under the influence ofmodern thought. We may sum it up in the sentence: Mod-ern Christianity is ancient Judaism.86

Traditional Christian theological self-definition, which used to under-gird normative Christian nationalism, was quickly decaying underthe refining pressures of modern life and being replaced by the pri-

orities of ancient Judaism, by which he meant the Judaism that theReform movement intended to hold upspirit over formalism, freethought over dogma, reason over tradition, prophecy over priestlyritual.87 Lest his hearers think that he drew these parallels betweenreligious development in form only, he closed his speech by plainlystating that the particularity of Reform Judaism was the telos of mod-ern Christianity.

[Scholars] whose opinions carry the greatest weight haveopenly declared that the foundation truths of our Bible con-

tain the elements of all religionsof the only possible reli-gion of the future. . . . The drift of Christian thought hascarried Jewish thought into the foreground, and thus givenus a glimpse of that time which we call by the Hebreworiginal of the Christian nameMessianic.88

Here we see clearly, through Gottheils heady rhetoric, that, for him,this drift was part of a world-historical process, a religious transi-tion in which the fundamental primacy of Jewish particularity, albeitin its modernized Reform mode, was taking its place as the only

possible religion of the future. He did not elaborate on the concreteform that this Judaism would takeperhaps he did not feel sure,given his conviction that this transition was, at base, evolutionary.What is critically important to see is that he identified Judaism as theend point of the religious and cultural future of American Christianity



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and, thus, of the nation as a whole. This, he said, is characteristic of themessianic age, which, as we have seen above, was not, for him, about

being rescued by a messiah but, rather, about the full flourishing ofhumanity as it was meant to be. Just as Judaism offered a better accountof American political priorities, and better examples of American citi-zens, so also did Judaism offer a better religious account of the natureof human beings than Christianity did. As Christian dogma passedgradually from the scene, Christians were becoming consonant,whether they knew it or not, with the Jewish account of humanness.The fundamental future trajectory of normative nationalist ChristianAmerica was characterized by its theological drift backward toward its

Jewish past.

Citizenship, Christology, Conversionism, Civilization

Gottheils unusual version of religious triumphalism encour-aged him to establish an extensive network of friendships with NewYork liberal Christian clergy. He counted such prominent Unitariansas Robert Collyer, John Chadwick, and Stephen H. Camp among hisclosest intimates.89 He preached in Henry Ward Beechers pulpit at

Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, and, in turn, Beecher feted him atTemple Emanu-El on the occasion of his twenty-fifth anniversary inministry there.90 He was invited to collaborate with the Episcopalpriest R. Heber Newton, another close friend, on A Book of CommonWorship, a prayerbook developed by the New York State Conferenceon Religion in the aftermath of the Worlds Parliament of Religions.91

He also carried on an extensive correspondence with scores of Chris-tian ministers, mostly liberals, from all over the United States. In lightof this plethora of high-profile relations, one can understand the

critics who doubted his allegiance to Judaism. However, these rela-tionships were crucial sites that allowed Gottheil, first, to establishthat he shared many instincts and concerns with liberal Christianclergy and, subsequently, to advance his claims that Judaism offereda better way forward for America than its normative nationalist Chris-tianity. Where he perceived that some of these men were alreadydisposing of their distinctive Christian dogma and drifting towardthe clearer light of Judaism, these relationships allowed him theopportunity to encourage them to continue to move in that direction.

The foundation of these relationships, the reason so manyministers responded to his advances, was rooted in a shared desireto describe the religious identity of American citizens. Many of hiscorrespondents expressed heartfelt concern to develop their religionso that it would most suitably address the promises and perils that



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American civilization faced in the modern age, appealing to the com-mon concerns of American citizens as the foundation of their dialogue.92

This rings out in an 1876 letter from Henry Whitney Bellows, famedUnitarian minister, intellectual liberal, and booster of Americascivilizing mission. Gottheil had initiated correspondence (as healmost always did with prominent Christian figures), sending Bel-lows a manuscript of his poetic translations of psalms, hymns, andprayers for review. Bellows responded with a cordial and extensiveengagement with Gottheils work, at the end of which he signed offas an open-hearted friend, who has no Christian arrogance and noanti-Jewish prejudice; as long as I am your fellow citizen [I am] ready

to interchange at all times, intellectual, social, and religious experi-ences and affections.93 No doubt, Bellows believed that his heartwas free of Christian arrogance and anti-Jewish prejudice (and,perhaps, it was), but the naming of these dynamics as being insubjection to the higher call of citizenship speaks volumes aboutthe ground on which their relationship stood. Bellows spoke self-consciously as a representative of Americas dominant religiousculture, and he sought to extend the reach of that religious cultureby offering a hand to Gottheil on the basis of shared experiences

and affections. Difference in doctrine, he believed, could be de-emphasized in light of a sense of common religious feeling, sharedethical interests, and a mutual desire as citizens to advance thedevelopment of American civilization. From Bellowss point ofview, the goal was a pluralistic future in which dominant Chris-tianity and minority Judaism worked side by side for the advance-ment of American civilization. Though Gottheil did not have thisprecise end in mind, attention to the religious nature of citizenshipwas close to his heart as well.

Alongside these shared interests in the ethics of citizenship, itwas also increasingly the case that Gottheil and his liberal Christianfriends were drawing closer to a common understanding of the per-son of Jesus. As we have already seen, Gottheil was keenly attuned tothe significance of the liberal Christian drift away from belief in theunique divinity of Christ and the justifying power of faith in Christ forthe advancement of Reform Judaism in American culture. Gottheilwas by no means alone in his attention to these matters. George L.Berlin has shown that, in the late nineteenth century, there was wide-

spread interest in the historical and theological reinterpretation ofJesus as a Palestinian Jew among American Reform leaders. Thethrust of much of their scholarship was to argue that Jesus was a prod-uct of his Palestinian religious contexthis ethical teaching may havebeen exceptionally wise, but it was basically an appropriation of



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Jewish prophetic and pharisaic traditions. Thus, Jesus was neitherdivine nor even spiritually unique but, rather, a great Jewish religious

teacher.94 The emergence of belief in divinity and salvific uniqueness ofJesus was by and large ascribed to Paul the apostle, who they read asa misguided Jew influenced by pagan religions. Emil Hirsch arguedthat Pauls theology of the vicarious atonement of Christ was not Jew-ish but Semitica spurious interpolation that disrupted the continuityof Jesus-followers with Judaism.95 Kaufmann Kohler suggested thatPaul was a hellenized Jewish Gnostic whose writing contained notrace of rabbinic teaching.96 Isaac Mayer Wise contended that Paulwas an Orthodox Pharisee who, in attempting to create a means for

Gentiles to enter into Jewish faith, made up a noble lie, a salvationmyth that he himself did not believe about the triunity of God and thedivine nature of Jesus. Wise admired Paul for this universalist impulsebut blamed Pauls followers for reifying these mythic fictions intotheology, creating a massive rift between Judaism and Christianity.97

These were just three prominent readings among many others.In step with his broader strategy for engaging normative

nationalist Christianity, Gottheil was characteristically modest andgenerous in his claims about these matters. He said little about Paul,

the great organizer, though he did believe that Paul had codifiedChristianity and intentionally repudiated . . . communion with hisJewish brethren.98 He spoke of Jesusand, generally, of the religionof those who followed himin glowing terms. He believed thateveryone, Jews and Gentiles alike, had much to learn from Jesus.He left open the possibility that the Master of Nazareth had embod-ied and taught new religious truths, which, though emergent froma Judaic context, were truths that the Jews of Jesus day had notproperly understood.99 Unlike many of his Reform contemporaries,

he was willing to bracket the controversial question of whether Jesuswas killed by Jewish authorities solely for his new teachings, argu-ing that the more important thing was that Jews and Christians todayemulate Christ by identifying with the persecutedand, thus,avoid being persecutors.100 While he categorically refused thenotion that Christians were ethically superior to other religiousgroups, he did not spend any time arguing from Christian ethicalinferiority, as some of his Reform contemporaries did. On rare occa-sions, as we shall see below, he did directly attack Christian theology,

but he generally remained quiet in public about his belief that Trin-itarian Christology was intellectually incoherent. Rather than makingbold arguments against Trinitarians, as Isaac Mayer Wise and othersdid, he instead invested in relationships with Unitarians and otherliberal Christians, who he believed were the vanguard of the coming



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transformation of modern American religion. Furthermore, he did notpress these friends to articulate the precise nature of their lowering

Christologieshe knew that altering tradition was often a slow andambivalent process. Rather, he engaged in dialogue while seeking toamplify the already existing religious common purpose betweenthem, believing that engagement in shared purposes would revealthat their common ground as religious citizens had an essentiallyJudaic nature.

One important, practical location of such common groundbetween Gottheil and his liberal Christian friends was found in theirshared opposition to Christian conversionism. Like many of his peers

in the rabbinate, Gottheil wrote openly and angrily against Christianevangelism of Jewish people.101 In 1876, in response to the establish-ment of an Episcopal Society for Promoting Christianity among theJews, Gottheil challenged conversionists to prove to him that Chris-tianity offered religious and ethical possibilities not already present inJudaism: Are [Christianitys] morals purer, its doctrines clearer, itsadherents more honest, truthful, and consistent livers? This was sopatently false, he believed, that he offered a reward of twenty-fivedollars to any conversionist who could bring him a rabbi that con-

verted to Christian faith!102 In 1893, the subject came up again, thistime in response to evangelistic campaigns purporting to explain thetrue (i.e., Christian) significance of Passover to Jews, suggesting thatunconverted Jewish souls were lost . . . cursed of God.103 In thiscase, Gottheil took particular exception to the fact that these cam-paigns were targeted at poor and uneducated Jewish people byunscrupulous, uncultured Christians.

I have met many Christian clergymen, and enjoy their

friendship. They are broad-minded, cultured, refined men.Not one of them ever tried to convert me. If the conversion ofthe Jews is so important that collections are taken up to carryon the work, why is it not tried on us? Why is it that only thepoor are approached?104

Gottheil here used his friendship with liberal, nonconversionist min-isters to imply a link between being broad-minded, cultured, andrefined and rejecting the religious claims of conversionism. Echoingearlier themes, he framed the issue as a matter of religious bigotry and

uncultured cruelty that ignored the obligations incumbent upon allparticipants in American civilization.

We must insist that our Christian neighbors treat us withequality. We must insist that they cease to treat us as if wewere African barbarians. We must insist that they treat us as



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if we were their fellow citizens. We ask simply that they treatus with such dignity as we are entitled to.105

To be a conversionist was, to some extent, to be undemocratic, deny-ing the cultural and religious equality of ones fellow citizens. Gottheilaverred that traditional, Trinitarian, conversionist Christianityrequired an inherently deficient account of the responsibilities ofAmerican citizenship. Here again, in a subtle but deliberate way,Gottheil deployed arguments that suggested universalist instinctsinstincts that he took to be Judaicas the best, if not, indeed, the only,suitable foundation for American life.

By and large, Gottheils liberal Christian friends shared hisantipathy for the style and substance of Christian conversionism. Thisseems to have been especially true of his Unitarian correspondents. Inresponse to Gottheils article about the 1893 campaign, the ReverendStephen H. Camp immediately wrote him a letter of support on theletterhead of the national Unitarian conference, inviting him to comeand take a stand in our sacred place against this miserable businessof Christian proselytizing among the Jews at a timely and sacredservice.106 Other the years, Gottheil received several other letters that

more or less directly repudiated conversionist efforts, affirminginstead a commitment to the religious sufficiency of Judaism in andof itself. This often seemed to emerge not only out of an expression oftheological conviction but also from a desire to disclaim what theytook to be the small-mindedness and antiliberality of their more tra-ditional coreligionists. One senses a measure of shame among themabout Christian conversionism and an eager desire to distance them-selves from such practices.

For example, in an 1887 letter to Gottheil, Massachusetts Uni-

tarian minister Nathan Seaver wrote a long, impassioned letter eluci-dating his conviction, established by reading one of Gottheils articlesabout Judaism in the Unitarian Review, that Jewish stability was nota rejection of Christianity but, rather, a necessary element for religiousprogress in the modern age: The very stability of Jewish feelingwhich we [Christians] have been too ready to call obstinacy was andis a necessary factor to all progress. Fortunate indeed that the Welt-geschichte is slow in its verdicts.107 An intact Judaism was necessary,in Seavers view, for the world-historical development of progressive

religion. On this, he and Gottheil could completely agree. Gottheilstargeted advocacy for Judaism in Christian contexts had hit its mark.

What Seaver grandly framed in world-historical terms,Nathan S. Hill, the pastor of Third Universalist Church of Brooklyn,New York, framed theologically. He wrote to Gottheil in 1879:



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I am very glad that the old partition walls are growing thin-ner and thinner. It is an indication of true progress when

ecclesial comity is fostered. The longer I study Christiantheology (trinitarianism excluded) the more I am led to con-template the position and influence of Judaism on the lifeand thought of the world.108

Hills insider assessment of Christian theological progress, marked asit was by a freewheeling bracketing of Trinitarianism, as well as hiscorrelation of the erasure of division between the two religions withtrue progress, strongly suggests his conviction that there was more

that united Reform Jews and liberal Christians than divided them.Where progress was being made, where American civilization wasadvancing, Judaism and Christianity would work hand in hand.

Both of these men, typical of Gottheils Christian correspon-dents, envisioned a pluralistic future in which Christianity and Judaismwould work side by side for the advancement of American civilizationagainst the uncivilized, regressive forces of conversionist Christianitythat saw Judaism as incomplete without Christ. For his part, Gottheilenvisioned a very similar future, but one in which the religious devel-

opment of these liberalChristians advanced to the point that they wouldrun forward into the welcoming embrace of ancient Judaism.

It is legitimate to ask, given his enthusiastic proclamationsabout the drift of modern Christian thought, whether Gottheil him-self might not be read as a sort of conversionist. Though he wouldnever have seen himself as such, the suggestion is not unreasonable.He was no pluralist, committed as he was to the particularity of Juda-ism, believing firmly in the importance of its being an exclusivechurch, and convinced, as we have seen, that it would rise to domi-

nance as dogmatic Christianity declined.109

Gottheils posture in thelast quarter of the nineteenth century certainly prefigured the mis-sional, even conversionist, priority that Lila Corwin Berman showsReform Jews like Kaufmann Kohler taking up in the first quarter ofthe twentieth century.110 However, Gottheil understood himself morethan anything as an educator, who, as one of his ministry associates putit, did not wish to convert [Gentiles] to Judaism but to instruct [them]in the higher ideals of religion.111 This is a helpful way to understandhis complicated posture toward his liberal Christian friends. He saw

himself as a public teacher who would teach the particularity of Juda-ism as he understood it, regularly offer an interpretation and a vision ofAmerican civilization through its lens, and leave the conversion to theWeltgeschichte. History, he wrote in 1887, is the great revealer oftruth . . . [and] Israel is master in the art of waiting and patience.112



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Jewish Liturgy, American Liturgy

One of the most interesting ways that Gottheil engaged withthe concrete religious claims of normative nationalist Christianity wasthrough his liturgical works. Gottheil warmly embraced versifiedhymnody as an expression of modern Jewish worshiphe was a pro-lific hymn writer and translator in his own right. He enthusiasticallytook up a form that had been classically shaped by Protestant Chris-tianity and rendered it in a Jewish mode. Sometimes, he drew explicitconnections between Christian and Jewish hymnody, taking theopportunity to assert Jewish particularity and anteriority to Christian

religion. One of the best examples of this is found in his most famoustranslation, the Chanukah hymn Rock of Ages, Let Our Song. Writ-ing in the first person plural, Gottheil highlighted Gods salvation ofhis chosen Jewish people over many generations. This is a song aboutgroup identity and the purposes of God:

Rock of Ages, let our song / Praise Thy saving power;Thou, amidst the raging foes, / Wast our sheltering tower.Furious they assailed us, / But Thine arm availed us,And Thy Word / Broke (stayd) the sword

When our own strength failed us.

Under Gods protection, the priests of Israel kindl[ed] new the holylamps and purified the nations shrine amid happy throngssinging Zions songs. In the context of an American Reform service,Gottheil was inviting the singers in the temple to imagine themselves inthis scenewith the further implication that the purifying priestsshould be analogized with their Reform religious leaders. While itinvoked the history of Jerusalem temple, this song was intended to

invoke the American Jewish present.113

Gottheils lyrics also resonate deeply with American politicalvalues, overlaying purified Jewish identity onto the deep-seatedAmerican antipathy to tyranny.

Children of the martyr race, / Whether free or fettered,Wake the echoes of those songs / Whither ye are scattered.Yours be gospel cheering / That the day is nearingWhich will see / All men free,Tyrants disappearing.114

Here is a classic distillation of Gottheils strategy of inhabiting therhetoric and then shifting the religious foundation of normativeChristian nationalism. The end of tyranny, a vaunted American value,is here presented by Gottheil as the gospel of Judaism, nothing less than



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an echo of ancient Jewish worship. Ancient Judaism, he tells us,named the agenda for the modern future, one free of tyranny.

While Gottheils hymn does not share the melody or meter ofRock of Ages, Cleft for Me, the famous Christian hymn by Augus-tus Toplady, its invocation of Topladys canonical phrase is an appro-priation of Christianitys liturgical rhetoric and a repurposing of it totell a Jewish story. As if to drive the point home, in the draft manu-script version of Rock of Ages, Let Our Song, Gottheil toyed withthe idea of setting his words to the famous Lutheran tune, Eine FesteBurg ist unser Gott. He settled instead on the more traditional Mor-decai, noting in the margin, it strikes me Luther had our old tune in

mind.115 Even here, Judaism had prefigured the best of Christianity.The most imaginative and most popular liturgical project that

Gottheil undertook was his book Sun and Shield: A Book of DevoutThoughts for Every-day Use. It was designed as a devotional reader forthe modern personan aid to devotional self-exercise that wouldoffer a few moments of daily introspection, of retirement from theexhausting din and rush around us, so that we may listen to the still,small voice within us . . . a way of religious and ethical self-culture. . . congenial to the taste and temper of our time.116 The book con-

sisted of brief daily readings, framed by Jewish scripture, from a widevariety of religious and philosophical traditions, Christian, Jewish,Muslim, Greco-Roman, Romantic, Hindu, Buddhist, and beyond.Jewish writers featured most prominently, followed by liberal Chris-tians, many of them Gottheils correspondents.117 Also, Gottheil him-self wrote a great deal of the material in the book; in the tradition ofthe biblical Hebrew scribes whose work he loved so much, his author-ship involved more than compilation.118 The whole book was orga-nized as an introduction to the Jewish liturgical calendar and Jewish

ways of worship; Gottheil intended, through its choice of subjectmatter, to present to the reader a concise, yet comprehensive, viewof modern Judaism which, I trust, will be as welcome to the Jewish asthe non-Jewish reader.119 Here was a deliberately Jewish interven-tion into the spiritual self-improvement literature of the late nine-teenth centurya public liturgical text predicated on the notionthat Judaism had solutions to the turbulent spiritual condition ofGottheils modern citizen. The preface said that the book wasintended for Jews, and it remained unabashedly Jewish. However,

Gottheil was careful to note that the book contained nothing at whichany candid reader of another creed could justly take umbrage. . . . Theyonly who look for offense may discover such.120 In Sun and Shield, heself-consciously marshaled representatives of all of the great worldreligions to provide a coherent, modern, useful, attractive apologia for



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modern Judaism. Gottheil was neither trying to explain Religion-in-general nor offering a pluralistic pastiche of world religions. Rather,

he was presenting Reform Judaism as both inclusive of all the greattraditions and providing a coherent form to contain them all. GottheilsJudaism was the ur-religious rubric that could make sense of the wholeof modern spiritual striving.

Gottheil was very proud of this work and understood itspotential to advance the cause of Judaism among liberal Christians.More than with any of his other works, he sent scores of inscribedcopies ofSun and Shield to friends in Christian ministry.121John WhiteChadwick, a Unitarian minister and friend of Gottheil, called the book

superb and suggested that the quotations from such a diversity oftraditions all blend together in a harmony of ethical and spiritualideas, and show how much more we all have in common than wehave in distinction from one another.122 The Reverend J. H. Mitchell,a Catholic priest in Brooklyn, wrote to thank Gottheil, saying that,since receiving the book, he had often lingered in [its] little sanctu-ary and while there . . .breathed with grateful recognition its soothingatmosphere of piety and peace.123 Such responses are representativeand typical of the liberal Christian response.

Far more interesting is the cooler response of the ReverendRobert Stuart MacArthur. The pastor of Calvary Baptist Church inmidtown Manhattan and vigorous booster for American civilizationalprogress, MacArthur wrote a fascinating letteraffirming yet ambiv-alent and even slightly defensive.

Accept my warmest thanks for this rare gift. Mrs.MacArthur and I have examined it with special interest.We appreciate it much for its own sake, and because it so

admirably reflects your own literary taste and religious feel-ing. It introduces to our notice quotations from some wri-ters with whom comparatively few Christians are familiar.I greatly esteem our friendship, and I hope and pray thatthe spiritual comfort which this book will give to manyreaders will be richly enjoyed in your own personalexperience.124

While MacArthur appreciated the book, he located all of its good ina camp distinctly other than his own. He did not speak of the effect it

had on him but, rather, the effect that it would have on others whoread it, presumably those who were more open to what amounts toa program for Jewish spiritual life. The texts contained in it wereunusual; he appreciated them, but he could not own them. Instead,they belong to Gottheils literary taste and religious feeling. This is



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a very different letter from those Gottheil typically received from hisliberal Christian correspondents. It reads as if MacArthur has seen the

writing on the wallGottheil is not advancing universal, genericspiritual resources but distinctively Jewish ones, packaged for generalconsumption by American spiritual seekers. MacArthur seems eagerto contain the effectiveness of this package to those who share Gott-heils religious beliefs. It is a book to be enjoyed for its own sake, butnot, he implies, for the sake of the normatively Christian civilizationto which it is directed.

MacArthurs guarded praise was, of course, quite perceptive.His letter points up the fundamental tension that lay below the sur-

face in many of Gottheils relationships with liberal Christian min-isters. There was a tacit assumption, present even among pluralistUnitarians like Henry Bellows, that normative nationalist Christian-ity would necessarily be the dominant religion of the Americanfuture with other religions making a significant but lesser contribu-tion. A text like Sun and Shield, in contrast, deliberately sought toposition Reform Judaism as a viable, attractive alternative to thispluralist Christian vision.

All Real Christianity Dead

On some occasions, though they were rare, Gottheilemployed the rhetoric of normative nationalist Christianity to attackChristianity in a fairly transparent fashion, underscoring his convic-tion of the need for an alternative religious foundation of Americanlife. This was as close as he ever came to adopting the rhetoricalstrategies of Leeser and Wise. One of the best examples of this,notable for its unguardedness, was a sermon delivered just after

Christmas entitled The Prince of Peace, reported with the sub-heading, Dr. Gottheil Says the Title Belongs to All Who DoGood.125 It was a deliberate engagement with Christian theologicalclaims about the nature of Jesus Christ. He invoked the recent pass-ing of the Christmas season in which Jesus Christ had been persis-tently liturgically heralded as the Prince of Peace but then stated, onthe contrary, that the Prince of Peace was not a living mortal or aninfinite person. Rather, he was the embodiment of such virtues asmorality, charity, and godliness. . . . Who is that being? . . . We cannot

believe that the title of Prince of Peace belongs to any one [indi-vidual]. I say the Jewish Messiah is the Prince of Peace. To us theMessiah means humanity.126 He went on to suggest a variety ofpeople who deserved such a title: godly schoolteachers, those whoministered to the poor, industrious servantsin short, anyone who



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tends to uplift [humanity] with his or her actions. Gottheils beliefthat this was so was not remarkable.

What was remarkable, however, was the way in which headopted Christian language to make a point that fundamentally cutagainst the claims of Christian particularity by arguing that theweight of the messianic traditions of Judaism had both prefigured itand outreasoned it. Here, Gottheil was doing on the foundationaltheological level what he did on the political level with his analysisof Jewish millennialism. He was using Christian rhetoric to under-mine the fundamental Christian belief in the uniqueness of JesusChrist, especially claims about his divinity. As his coup de grace, Gott-

heil turned his congregations attention to the violence in the head-lines, stating with no small irony that the Christmas message ofpeace on earth and goodwill to men had quickly passed away,judging by current events.127 It was a pleasant sentiment but nothingmore. As a doctrine, it was irrational and powerless, even an evasionof the need for concrete peacemaking action.

In a similar vein, on February 19, 1899, just weeks after flag-ging the Spanish-American War as a millennial event, Gottheilpreached a sermon entitled Was Christ a Christian? which was

given an attention-grabbing headline in the New York Times: All RealChristianity Dead.128 In it, Gottheil argued for the inspired status ofJesus Christ as one who had profound religious feeling and the high-est ethical standardshe was after all a Jewish religious genius. How-ever, he went on to argue that it would be an impossible task to range[Christ] among the Christians, except those few who belong to Godsinvisible church, and who are not separated by any conventionalname. Jesus Christs Jewish religious genius was in no way commen-surable with the religion that Christianity became as soon as it began

to establish itself through dogma and doctrine. What followed thisdevelopment was not Christianity but denominationalism and thetyranny that attends it. So-called Christian churches, he argued,had, thus, made themselves inhospitable to their founder, most espe-cially through historical Christian antisemitism. In the context of Got-theils whole oeuvre, this might resonate as a familiar argument, butas a sermon report in the newspaper, it has the ring of an Emersonianattack on Christianity. Perhaps it is not coincidental that this sermonwas delivered at the end of his career, on the eve of his retirement

from public ministry. Perhaps, after years of diplomacy, Gottheil wasbeginning, on occasion, to show his hand.

As ever with Gottheil, though, all was not lost; hope remainedin the possibility of a reconciliation between those whom God joinedtogether originallythe final reconciliation of the church then



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properly called Christian and the synagogue.129 This turn distillsprecisely the intention of Gottheils theological engagement with lib-

eral Christians about Christianity, namely, the transmutation of JesusChrist into a hero of Jewish godliness. Were he still on the earth,Gottheil argued, Christ would align himself with his persecuted peo-plethe Jewsrather than with the dominant, violent Christianswho have used his name virtually since his death. What was requiredfor Christianity to become hospitable to the spirit of Christ again wasfor it to reject its dogmas and return to the foundational Judaic sym-pathies of its founder. This was, in the long run, the only possiblefuture for American religion.

Conclusion

For all of Gottheils various modes of engagement with nor-mative nationalist Christianity, one thing was abundantly clear. Therewas a long distance between where things stood in his present andwhere he believed they were going. The wheels of messianic historyhad further to turn, and, for that reason, he spent much of his public

life engaging liberal Christians with rhetorical visions of Americanpolitical and religious identity, friendly engagement on shared socialpriorities, substantive dialogue about theological issues, and vigorouspushback when the significance of Jewish particularity was calledinto question. In his article The Social Gospel and the Jews, histo-rian Egal Feldman argued that the determining reason liberal Chris-tians and Reform Jews did not merge into a universal

modern christianity is ancient judaism'': rabbi gustav gottheil and the jewish-american religious...

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