Slightly edited in - some wording for current relevance without changing the meaning of the essay; the intent of the writer remains intact as if he had written this today.....
"What, then, is the cause of this evil?
Doubtless that to ordinary people,the Jewish religion
has consisted, in regarding the clergy as a
position worthy of respect, its offices as sources of income,
and its rabbis as deserving the highest honor.
For as soon as this abuse of all forms began
in the synagogues, yeshivas and kashruth organizations,
the worst men acquired a great desire
to administer the sacred offices;
the love of propagating divine religion
degenerated into sordid greed and ambition,
and the house of worship itself into a theater,
where one hears not learned ecclesiastics,
but orators, each possessed by a longing,
not to teach the people, but to carry them away
with admiration for himself,
to censure publicly those who disagree,
and to teach only those new and unfamiliar doctrines
which the people most admire.
From this, of course, there had to come great quarrels,
envy, and hate, whose violence no passage of time could lessen.
It is no wonder, then, that nothing worthy has remained of the Jewish religion that used to be, beyond its external ceremony, by which the people seem more to flatter God than to worship Him, no wonder that the Jewish faith is nothing now but credulity and prejudices.
And what prejudices!
They turn men from rational beings into beasts,
since they completely prevent everyone from using
his free judgment and from distinguishing
the true from the false,
and seem deliberately designed to put out the light
of the intellect entirely.
Piety—good heavens!—
And the Jewish religion now consists in absurd mysteries, and those who scorn reason completely, and reject the intellect as corrupt by nature, they are the ones who are most undeservedly thought to have the divine light - Of course if they only had even the least spark of divine light, they would not rave so proudly, but would learn to worship God more wisely, and would surpass others in love, not, as now, in hate.
Instead of persecuting with such a hostile spirit those who disagree with them, they would pity them — if, indeed, they feared for the salvation of the others, and not for their own position".
Written by B.S. - Edited by P.M.
The above is the intellectual version of "UOJ is The Roto Rooter Guy"; Read after breakfast!
