The Chosen Wars

by Steven R Weisman

  Echoing the plea for science to inform religious faith, Henry Jones, a founder of B’nai B’rith, called on Jews to recognize “the mighty levers which move mankind in the onward march of events of development and progress.” Julius Bien, a German emigrant who established a lithographic business that published many scientific works in the mid-nineteenth century, declared: “Science is the Messiah of the human race, leads to human happiness and leads toward the realization of the brotherhood of man.”14

  Against this backdrop came Felix Adler, who argued that if the goal of religion was universal brotherhood, why was it necessary to embrace any particular religion at all?

  Felix Adler was in many ways destined to become the beau ideal of Reform Jews. He certainly had the lineage. His father, Rabbi Samuel Adler, was a prominent champion of reform and an ally of Abraham Geiger in Germany. When Samuel Adler moved with his family to America in 1857 to take up duties as rabbi at Temple Emanu-El, the most elite reform synagogue in America, Felix was only five years old.15

  Succeeding Merzbacher at the synagogue, the elder Rabbi Adler revised his predecessor’s prayer book, shortened the Sabbath service, removed a partition separating men and women, and made it mandatory for men to keep their heads uncovered during the service. In 1869, Adler had helped convene the conference of reformist rabbis in Philadelphia, where they adopted basic reforms intended to discard Jewish identity as a separate nation. Still, the atmosphere in which Felix grew up was decidedly traditional, at least in terms of his education. As a teenager, Felix had already imbibed the writings of Jewish sages as well as an array of German enlightenment thinkers. The elder rabbi fully expected his son to succeed him at Temple Emanu-El.

  For all that, Felix’s home life was lonely and unhappy; he very likely found it difficult to move out of his father’s shadow. At the age of fifteen, he attended Columbia College, probably as the only Jew in his class, and had trouble making friends because of his young age, shy manner, and ostentatious display of learning. At the same time, Felix was drawn to sympathy for the slums, poverty, and disease of the surrounding city, where full-scale rioting to protest the draft had erupted during the Civil War. “I think I was always sensitive to suffering,” Felix later wrote.16 (Whereas Felix was sympathetic to the African American victims of the Civil War draft riots, his father was careful not to oppose slavery, in keeping with the conservative leanings and Southern sympathies of many Temple Emanu-El congregants.)

  Samuel Adler remained deeply devoted to his belief in God, even though he contended that contemporary rabbis with whom he studied in Germany had as much right as the ancient sages of the Talmud to reinterpret Jewish law. Felix embraced the idea of God through most of his teenage years. He also accepted what historians, including his biographer, have called the “mission theory” of Judaism—the concept that the Jewish people, far from being punished for their sins as exiles, possessed a mission handed down by God to use their dispersal to espouse the universal truth of God’s existence and to pray for the eventual establishment of a just world. Felix revealed his embrace of a distinctive Jewish identity when he wrote a scathing essay at the age of eighteen denouncing the practice of some Jews to put up Christmas trees in their homes.

  Still, he was plagued in this period by doubts over many matters. He questioned why Jews had to fast on Yom Kippur and expressed revulsion over the stories of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac, or God “hardening the heart” of the pharaoh in order to perpetuate his lethal miracles. His doubts mounted as a result of his growing indignation over conditions of the poor in New York and his own interest in science. Reading Alexander von Humboldt’s Cosmos, with its accounts of the origins of the universe and various aspects of geology and astronomy, Felix increasingly questioned the authenticity of Scripture while proclaiming his awe at the inability of humans to fully understand the universe.

  Troubled by doubts, Felix headed off to Europe in 1870 after graduating from Columbia. He intended to pursue rabbinic studies in Berlin and Heidelberg, but he grew increasingly lonely and put off by the doctrinaire teachings of Protestant and Jewish theologians, especially by the continued insistence of Jewish teachers that Jews had a special mission given to them by God. He was also revolted by what he felt was the sexual depravity and excesses he found in Germany and developed what his biographer calls an “excessive zeal for sexual purity” that later became a dominant theme of his philosophical pronouncements.

  Influenced by his studies of science, history, and philosophy, especially Darwin and his followers, and also by the school of German biblical criticism, young Adler finally made a clean break. “I look back with dread to that time when everything seemed sinking around me,” he later wrote, “when the cherished faith which seemed at one time dearer than life itself was going to pieces under me, and it seemed to me that I could save nothing out of the wreck of all that seemed holiest to me.” As much as he wanted, Adler could not accept Geiger’s theory that the Jews had evolved into a special people with a mission for humankind.

  Samuel Adler was overjoyed when Felix got his doctorate in Heidelberg but soon learned that his son was determined to effectively reject Judaism in favor of universal principles, based on Kant, that morality could be discerned through reason apart from belief in the divine. These beliefs joined with his passion for social justice, even socialism, as a cure for human debasement in a modern capitalist society.

  Alarmed by Felix’s messages home about his new leanings, Adler family members beseeched him to give them up. “Take my advice,” his mother wrote. “Leave Berlin, its philosophy, and prepare yourself for life with good practical knowledge and common sense. That will be of more use to you in our calling than all the philosophy in the world.” The advice went unheeded.

  Upon his return to New York in 1873, Felix went on to deliver a sermon at Temple Emanu-El that was to be his big tryout for serving as rabbi there. Instead, the sermon ensured that it would be his last at the synagogue. Speaking on “The Judaism of the Future,” Adler outlined a series of principles of importance to religion but never once mentioned believing in God. “We discard the narrow spirits of exclusion, and loudly proclaim that Judaism was not given to the Jews alone,” he declared. Many in the congregation welcomed his comments, but the leadership found them unacceptable and even insulting, especially to the prosperous listeners alarmed by his talk of social revolution. Adler immediately withdrew as a candidate to serve as rabbi and developed a new interest in the proceedings of the Free Religious Association and its president, O. B. Frothingham. At that time, the association was primarily preoccupied with issues of religious freedom, and only later—when Adler became the association president in 1878—did it adopt a social and economic agenda.

  As for Felix’s father, Samuel, he was “almost heartbroken,” writes Adler’s biographer, Benny Kraut. “The long-standing rabbinic tradition in the Adler family was broken,” he writes. “Three years of preparatory education seemed to have been wasted.” But the elder rabbi continued to support his son’s journey and never fully severed his relationship with him. Felix responded with reverence and loyalty to his father throughout his life.17

  To promote his ideas outside Temple Emanu-El, Felix embarked on a series of Sunday lectures laying out a social reform agenda based on moral principles that were religious in their fervor if not in name. These upset his Jewish colleagues all the more. Many saw his talks as an attempt to supplant both Jewish and church services on a day set aside for worship. But some in the Jewish community found his talks informative and provocative, according to accounts in the Jewish press. For a few years, Adler also took up teaching duties at Cornell, where his controversial views did not sit well among anti-Semites in upstate New York. His contract in Ithaca was not renewed. Back in New York, he turned to his associates and friends at the Free Religion Association and became acquainted with Emerson and others in the Transcendental circle. Increasingly, commentators in the Jewish press grew uncomfortable with his pr
eaching and began suggesting that he was a traitor, heretic, and apostate.

  In 1876, Adler built on the success of his lectures to establish the New York Society for Ethical Culture, aimed at advancing the cause of social justice through moral actions detached from religious belief. The society was incorporated the following year and in later years established a nursing service, a kindergarten, and a school that eventually became the Fieldston School.

  It was obviously painful for Felix to assert that Reform Jews were no longer really Jews anyway, even though they did not recognize it. Reform Jews felt threatened by his teachings, but most sought to ignore him. Once he founded the Ethical Culture organization, many Jews were happy that he was no longer trying to redefine Judaism itself. Among those who sought to ignore him was Isaac Mayer Wise, who nonetheless derided the movement with a mocking disdain: “There is no God and Felix Adler is his prophet,” Wise declared sarcastically.18 Wise, however, resigned from the Free Religious Association after Adler became its president.

  Hoping to rid his brand of Judaism from the taint of atheism, Wise prepared to expand his scope of influence by doing battle with both traditionalists and reformers. He ended up having to rush to the front of the parade in order to lead it.

  Twelve

  THE TREFA BANQUET

  Ten years after the founding of Hebrew Union College, which had established itself in a three-story building in downtown Cincinnati, a historic moment arrived for the seminary to hold what was proclaimed to be the first ordination of rabbis on American soil. Furious planning went into what Wise and others hoped and expected would be a landmark event to take place in Cincinnati on July 11, 1883. More than a hundred leaders from seventy-six congregations around the country descended on the city to see four young men installed as rabbis. Also attending were Jews in town to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, and members of the Rabbinical Literary Association, a forerunner of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR).

  The ceremony began at 2:30 p.m. at the Plum Street Synagogue and featured a choir of five women and three men singing Jewish hymns, as well as speeches by two of the graduating students. Guests, also including Christian clergy and professors at the University of Cincinnati, rode cable cars to the top of Mt. Adams, where they gathered at Highland House, a banquet and entertainment hall, and were greeted by a full orchestra and elegant menus laying out nine courses and various alcoholic drinks. The official banquet host was Julius Freiberg, who had made his fortune producing bourbon whiskey and was active in a multitude of civic organizations in the Queen City.

  The banquet reflected a growing comfort level among American Jews to celebrate milestones at festive occasions, but it was hardly unique in that respect. Many other groups held banquets featuring music, decorations, toasts, and elaborate displays of food.1

  But the disastrous decision of the caterer to provide crabs, shrimp, clams, and frogs legs—prohibited by kosher dietary laws—to Jews of all persuasions, including Orthodox rabbis in attendance, provoked a backlash. At least two of the observant clerics stormed out of the event, according to an eyewitness. Articles in Jewish journals around the country gleefully condemned Wise’s beloved seminary for colossal insensitivity.

  How could such a thing have happened?

  Historians note that the caterer did not serve pork at the banquet, which might have been an even graver provocation, even though pork was a popular food in a city with a large non-Jewish German population. The absence of pork demonstrates that at least someone was sensitive to Jewish dietary practices. (Pork has always had a special status as a nonkosher food, perhaps because pork played an especially pernicious role during the Spanish Inquisition, when Jews were forced to eat it as a test of their conversions.) But in fact, though the reform movement itself had generally not broken with kosher laws in its early years, dietary restrictions were fraying by the 1880s.

  As to the explanation for the faux pas, the question was whether it was carelessness rather than a deliberate provocation. Much of the evidence suggests that it was at least not an accident. A caterer, Gus Lindeman, was accustomed to reform practices that had begun to loosen the dietary laws, and the record shows that banquets held by B’nai B’rith and other secular Jewish organizations were accustomed to eating certain forbidden delicacies. But whatever the motives, Wise was in no mood to apologize. Instead, he derided the critics as adherents to “stomach Judaism” or “kitchen Judaism,” adding that kosher practices of Judaism were clearly out of date. In his callous dismissal of the dissenters, Wise seemed unworried that his attitude might weaken his cause of a universal “union” of American Judaism.

  The practical result of the controversy was to accelerate, at least on a symbolic level, the division of Jews into two warring camps that could not, so to speak, even break bread together. Several congregations resigned from the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Some years later, they and their supporters called for the establishment of a new seminary along traditional lines, though the banquet was only one of many reasons behind their determination to break away. Why the mistake, if it was a mistake, actually took place is a matter of dispute. It may not matter much in the larger context of historical schism among Jews. But the mystery of the event sheds light on the chaotic but also intricate state of play within American Judaism at the time.

  Not everyone agrees that the uproar was that major. The historian and Isaac Leeser biographer Lance Sussman asserts that an account by one eyewitness, David Philipson, a member of the first ordination class, contained many inaccuracies. Philipson had written that “terrific excitement ensued when two rabbis rose from their seats and rushed from the room.” In fact, writes Sussman, the dinner may not have been that dramatically disrupted. A separate history of the Trefa Banquet by John J. Appel, a scholar at Michigan State University, concluded that the serving of shellfish reflected the “ambivalent, sometimes contradictory attitude” of Rabbi Wise and “was deliberately arranged by some Cincinnati businessmen.”2

  The central figure in the drama, of course, was Lindeman, the caterer and food manager of a local Jewish club. Years after the banquet, Lindeman’s granddaughter wrote that “my grandfather, though Jewish, had no knowledge of whom the guests were to be and had merely followed instructions to provide ‘an elegant and sumptuous meal.’ ” Wise’s own accounts varied. At first, he claimed that he assumed the caterer, being Jewish, would know not to violate Jewish norms and that “we do not know why he diversified his menu with multipeds and bivalves.” Later, Wise changed his account, saying that the banquet committee had explicitly allowed “a few dishes” forbidden for Jews.

  The food elements of the banquet have been examined carefully by scholars. According to surviving texts of the menu, the first course was indeed littleneck clams, followed by a consommé, beef tenderloin with mushrooms, soft-shell crabs, a shrimp salad, and potatoes in a lobster bisque sauce. The entrée was sweetbreads, and the fifth course featured frogs legs, breaded chicken, and asparagus, and then pigeon and squab embedded in pastry. There were also desserts and rivers of French wines and other drinks. As Sussman points out, it was not just the shellfish that violated dietary laws. The meat (including the sweetbreads) was also non-kosher, and the dinner promiscuously mixed dairy and meat. It seems possible that by omitting pork, the hosts thought they had at least not gone overboard.

  As for how big a fiasco the banquet really was, a Jewish reporter writing in the New York Herald noted the presence of forbidden dishes but said everyone sat down at the table in acceptance of them. Another writer, Henrietta Szold, who had accompanied her father, Rabbi Benjamin Szold, to Cincinnati, wrote differently in a Jewish journal. Szold was only twenty-three at the time, but she later rose to become a prominent educator, essayist, social activist, and founder of Hadassah (the women’s Zionist organization) revered for her philanthropic work in Israel. “I would be outraging my own feelings were I to omit recording the indignation which was fe
lt by a surprisingly small minority at the manner in which the banquet was served,” Szold wrote. “There was no regard paid to our dietary laws, and consequently two rabbis left the table without having touched the dishes, and I am happy to state that I know of at least three more who ate nothing and were indignant but signified their disapproval in a less demonstrative manner.”

  As word of the banquet spread in Jewish circles, Wise turned from being defensive to firing back with charges that his critics were hypocrites who themselves were less than observant on dietary matters. But the board of Rodeph Shalom Congregation in Philadelphia censured Wise in April 1884. After an investigation, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations exonerated Wise of charges of improprieties, prompting some traditionalist Jewish writers in the east to declare that the inquiry had been a whitewash. The banquet did appear to strike a blow at Hebrew Union College, where attendance dropped off for a time after the fiasco.

  Sussman’s scholarship on the Trefa Banquet included a thorough examination of the history of dietary laws in a broad range of religious traditions, not simply among Jews, who, archeological records show, had avoided pork at least since ancient times. Among American Jews in the nineteenth century, it was hardly uncommon to not eat pork (many Jews understood that pork was especially susceptible to contamination and disease) yet eat other forbidden foods, in much the same way that they had become accustomed to eating meat that had not been slaughtered in strictly kosher fashion. Jewish skepticism about keeping kosher was underscored by the many disputes among kosher butchers over whose practices were the most stringent.