Synagog is being developed in life and in character; he is a religious man, is going to be a bigger, stronger, better man than he was yesterday. The recent revival of revivalism in this country, usually a sad travesty on religion, often a most disgusting exhibition of profanity and indecency, is simply the death-throe of the superstitions of an older age. We are passing through a transition period. The reactionary movement in Protestantism, attempting to make men orthodox by resolutions, signing creeds in order to save servile souls, is only the death struggle of a decadent faith. The older type of church finds it difficult to prove that it has any worth-while function in society. On the other hand, there is the modern type, conscious of a definite function in society, recognizing its duty to take the youth-life of today and carry it into the new type of the social life of tomorrow.

Out of the new conception of religion in terms of life come new factors in the development of character. The child looms up in new importance, for life's beginnings and its trend are with him. The day is coming when the child will take his true place in the life of the church or congregation. I doubt if any religious organization anywhere can discharge its function and make itself felt in the life of today, that does not put the child first in all its considerations and build its whole life about the child, and determine that it will shape the character of the coming generation, and so determine the destiny of tomorrow. The society of tomorrow is in the school of today, the boys and girls that are now entering our congregations. They are the minds we can mould. And the day is coming when in our budgets we shall appropriate funds for the child before we purchase pleasures for the adult.

The new sense of character responsibilities in churches, synagogs, homes and schools, is leading to a clarification of public opinion on public education. Doubtless there are very few things concerning the Religious Education Association more commonly misunderstood by the people outside, and more clearly understood by the people inside, than the general attitude of the Association on public education. There is today a serious attempt on the part of the National Reform Association, and particu

larly of one gentleman, who is trying to give "absent treatment" by staying in New Zealand and prescribing for the United States, to introduce the Bible into the schools. Recently we were offered a prize of two thousand dollars for a book which would teach religion in the public schools. Our official board unanimously voted against placing the Association in the position of even seeming to favor teaching religion under the auspices of the state. It seems to me quite clear that it is a violation of the religious rights of the individual, for the state to use the peculiar power committed to it in the public schools in order to propagate any private views of religion. Some would contend, "We can agree on a common creedal statement". I answer, "A creed on which we can all agree, and which the public schools can adopt officially as the public school creed, becomes necessarily a state creed". So you say that this would mean that logically we should have no chaplains in the army or navy and no prayers in Congress. I accept the situation. I rather think that would be a good move. If the churches are responsible for the young men in the navy and army, let the churches take care of them and not lay the responsibility upon the national government.

There are those who say, "If the parents and homes can not teach religion, why not let the state do it?" When you throw up your hands at teaching religion to your own children, you throw away your greatest opportunity, the greatest privilege of the home and the church. You give up to the state the entire life of your own children; you give them away; you lose them. We say you can not teach religion in the public schools, and therefore you can not read the Bible in the public schools, for you can not read the Bible without teaching religion, without being sectarian. If you would read only the Old Testament, there are other people besides the Jews; and Catholics, too, have equal rights. They believe that none except those fully ordained in the church may read the Scriptures publicly. And if that be an article of their faith, we must respect it.

Yet the child should grow up with a sense of the unity between his teaching in religion and his everyday teaching. Some of you are familiar with the North Dakota idea; the

youth earns one credit in his high school course as a result of a four years' course of religious instruction, which may be given in a church by priest, rabbi or pastor. The state merely agrees on a syllabus which he must follow, and to give him an examination on the questions prepared, and grade him accordingly. In other words, the state recognizes the educational work of the church.

I look forward to such an emphasis on the unity of our American life, that you and I, though holding different faiths, can come together on a common platform and say we believe we are in this world for the primary value of human lives; that no man can worship the God he professes to serve, unless first of all he serves the God who made these men; that no man can serve God and Mammon. You can not serve the God-ideal in human likeness and serve the ends of Mammon at the same time. That is the crux of the eternal social struggle. And we shall see in time that religious education means the interpretation of all living in religious terms for educational purposes, a program of the development of all into the fullness of the divine likeness, to make men like God in this world, and this world like the heavenly world. We can stand together on that platform, and somehow work out on that platform a new religion which will have all the elements of the old.

Here is the central problem of religious education: How can we take the churches, the homes, the factories, the city life, the colleges, the high schools, and make them efficient to produce men and women of high spiritual ideals and character standards? That is the problem that confronts us.

II.

RABBI J. L. MAGNES,

REPRESENTING

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF NEW YORK CITY

I thank you heartily for your cordial greetings and assure you of my pleasure at being among you. I was particularly eager to accept the invitation to speak here this morning in

order to show that the Kehillah of New York City is desirous of cooperating with all parties and sections of modern-day Judaism.

Our general problem is nothing short of this, the organization of the Jews of New York City into a conscious, disciplined, orderly community. New York City has now a million and a quarter Jews, the largest Jewish city the world has known. Unfortunately it is split up into innumerable factions, one working against the other, ignorant perhaps of what the other is doing. It is our endeavor to establish a kind of authoritative machinery that shall guide the various sections of the Jewish community in the work each is trying to do. We want to organize a conscious, disciplined Jewish community, in order to increase Jewish power in the world. And we want to do this because we believe that the Jews, fully organized, conscious of themselves and their cultural treasures, have something to contribute to humankind.

Ours is practically a problem of government, of working out forms of democratic control, ways and means whereby the Jews in this vast community may themselves, in democratic, representative fashion, determine what their fate shall be. As a Kehillah we are above parties in Judaism, although as individuals and individual organizations we have our positive views, as we should and must. But as a democratic government, such as we are striving to become, we want to put into the way of each group better ways of saving themselves. We want to help the Orthodox become stronger; we want to help the Reform Jew become stronger; we want to help the Conservative Jew become stronger; we want to help all those who believe in Judaism, whatever be their individual interpretation of this term, to become stronger. We believe in the conflict of opinions, in the sparks generated through friction; we believe that warmth and controversy can generate life. We believe in the Achduth Yisrael, in the unity, but not in the uniformity, of Israel. In the admirable words of the President of this Conference, we believe that there is a place for a federation of all forces of each Jewish community in the land.

Now, we believe that the Jewish education of our children

is fundamental to the accomplishment of our great task. We believe in Jewish education for the Jews in just some such way that Dr. Cope believes in education for all the people of the land. He makes education fundamental to the great structure of liberty which we are rearing in this land of freedom. So, too, do we make the Jewish education of Jewish children fundamental to the structure of Jewish liberty which we are endeavoring to rear in New York City and throughout the country. Jewish education, then, for us has this twofold significance. It is in the first place valuable in itself; it extends into the next generation; it purifies character; it preserves Jewish tradition; it keeps the Jewish people alive for its work in the world. And in the second place Jewish education is for us the chief means of organizing the Jews into a conscious, disciplined, orderly Jewish community.

Before passing over to a very fragmentary description of our educational work, I wish to observe that the very fact that we have been able to secure the confidence of large and different sections of the Jews in New York City, primarily through our educational machinery, has brought to us for study and adjudication a large number of other problems concerning various phases of the life of the community. In these respects also we hope to work out kinds of machinery, forms through which the whole complex Jewish life of the community may express itself.

Our Bureau of Education opened on October 1, 1910. Its Director is Dr. S. Benderly, a native of Palestine, a graduate of the medical department of Johns Hopkins University, a man who has given the last sixteen years to the study of Jewish educational problems. Whatever our Bureau of Education has contributed to the solution of these problems is due almost entirely to the organizing genius and large Jewish vision of this one man. The first task of the Bureau of Education was a study of existing conditions. The results of this study are published in a booklet available to everyone. In fact, all of our publications are at the disposal of every member of this Conference. This booklet gives an account of the buildings, equipment, organization, teachers, text-books, class-room management, method and hours of instruction, and the results in each of the existing