December 1, 1929

How Moral Then are We?

Having concluded his sermon last week with an assertion that Divine Revelation is a continuing process and that our understanding of morality is ever-growing, Rabbi Eisendrath begins his next sermon, the last of a trilogy, with the question “How moral then are we?” Rabbi Eisendrath limits his discussion to an examination of two moral concerns facing contemporary society, war, and economic justice. (Sexual morality, the topic with which the rabbi began this trilogy of sermons, is not given further consideration.)

Concepts of morality evolve, but, Rabbi Eisendrath says, there has been revealed to us a certain standard, a “plumb line of moral measurement,” by which we might answer this question. He mentions “the Ten Commandments of Israel, … the Sermon on the Mount of Christendom, … the ethics of Confucius, the Koran of Mohammed and the lofty Vedantas of the East” as sources of this moral truth has been embodied. This acknowledgement of the wisdom of many religions is frequently found in Rabbi Eisendrath’s sermons.

To Rabbi Eisendrath the clearest test of our morality is whether we are willing or not to go to war.

And the first absolute requisite for human well being and joy I find to be sure in the stubborn insistence on the part of every moral teacher of the past, the adamant, unwavering, ever uncompromising insistence upon peace. From the ancient texts of the Taoist maintaining that "there is no calamity greater than engaging in war,” [1] through the lovely dream of Isaiah of "the day when swords would be beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks," [2] down to one of the few austere commands of the Nazarene to "Resist not evil," [3] man has been warned by every prophet and seer, every dreamer and idealist, every champion and lover of humanity of the horrors and evils of war …

Rabbi Eisendrath’s proof-texts for the proposition that every moral teacher of the past has had “an uncompromising insistence on peace” are open to question. Regarding the Taoist quotation (from Lao Tzu), there is a question as to the accuracy of the translation the rabbi has given. He may have been quoting from a translation by James Legge (1891), “There is no greater calamity than lightly engaging in war.” If so, the omission of the word “lightly” changes the meaning significantly. Another translation, more contemporary to the date of Rabbi Eisendrath’s sermon, conveys a different meaning:       

There is no error so great as to engage in battle without sufficient force. (Aleister Crowley,1923)

Either translation leads to a quite different understanding of the text than the unequivocally pacifist one that Rabbi Eisendrath gives it.

Our understanding of Isaiah’s “lovely dream” of swords being beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks is that it is just that: a dream of a messianic era in which wars will no longer be fought. Isaiah did not issue an injunction against going to war.

The quotation “Resist not evil” is taken from the following passage:

Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. (Matthew 5:38-40)

Jesus’s command, read in context, seems more for individuals in the face of personal injury, physical or economic, than for a nation facing an enemy, or, in the Palestine of Jesus’s own time, occupation by a foreign power. We might question also how many in the congregation hearing the sermon understood that the quotation “Resist not evil” was a reference to turning the other cheek.

An ardent pacifist, Rabbi Eisendrath is creatively using his chosen texts however he can to buttress his case that all moral religions share his view. He had earlier in this sermon acknowledged Islam as one of the moral religions. It would be interesting for us today if he had chosen a proof-text from Islam.

Rabbi Eisendrath acknowledges that he has already addressed the question of war and pacifism in previous sermons. [4]

But this morning I shall treat this subject purely from its moral angle. I shall measure it not merely by the preachment of these prophets of the past, but rather by the standard of human happiness which we posited at the outset, and so I would ask the question this morning: Is war of any kind morally defensible; will it ever be right, that is will it ever contribute to the larger good of humankind, ever again to fare forth to battle.

Wars of the past, he says, have seemingly benefited humanity.

If the Maccabees of old had not rallied to Israel's standard, the idealism of the Hebrew prophets might have been lost to mankind and a decadent Greek paganism may have become the dominant philosophy and cult of the civilized world. Just what would have been the stage of democracy today had there been no American or French revolution I am not prepared to say, but this much we know: that when the Athenians held back the Persian hordes at Marathon and when Charles Martel defeated the Saracens at Tours, when the invasion of the savage and barbaric Huns from the East was put to flight by spear and battle axe -- seemingly the world was benefitted thereby.

Of course, who we consider civilized and who barbaric is a matter of interpretation and point of view (often the point of view of the victor). The Jewish Hellenists may have looked upon the Maccabees as uncultured barbarians, and Muslims today may look upon the Saracens as more cultured than Charles Martel and the Christians. (Curiously, Rabbi Eisendrath makes no mention of the American Civil War, which, we presume, he would look upon as one in which humanity benefitted by the defeat of slavery.)

But today, the rabbi says, circumstances have changed.

For we live in an altogether different world from that in which civilization lived in tiny oases of culture and humanity, oases completely surrounded by unnumbered packs of barbarians … Today there is no need to defend civilization against savagery … The need today is the very opposite, the only need now is to protect uncivilized and backward people from the greed and the insolence of the civilized -- or the so-called civilized.

While insisting that he has no time to speak of such things, Rabbi Eisendrath offers this vision of future wars:

I will not this morning describe for you the possible unimaginable consequences of those poison gases of incredible malignity and insidious power, gases to the further discovery and manufacture of which every civilized nation on the face of the earth is now devoting its most frantic efforts, not gases alone, but blights to poison crops, anthrax to slay horses and cattle, and finally, oh the wondrous ingenuity of man, oh the beneficent benediction of scientific advance -- disease germs, man is today carefully and remorselessly devising to plague not armies but whole communities -- nay I need not remind you of how man today holds in his hands the tools and instruments of his own destruction, how eagerly Death stands at attention obedient, expectant, ready to leap to battle and to sheer away, to exterminate the whole of humanity, ready if called upon, to pulverize without hope of repair what little might then be left of civilization.

Rabbi Eisendrath denounces contemporary rationalizations for waging war. “The futile and feeble claims of national expansion, of colonization or dollar diplomacy [5] -- all these aggressive wars which we veil and camouflage with the blessed plea of patriotism I shall dismiss as unworthy even of rational discussion.”

Even self-defence as a justification for war Rabbi Eisendrath does not accept. He advocates non-resistance as a more powerful and effective response to aggression.

Now it is urged that armed resistance is necessary to protect defenceless men from slaughter or slavery, our women from abduction and rape, but what is far more important in our present society our property from destruction and theft. But may I contrast for you the probable results of non-resistance with the inevitable effects of war. It is inconceivable to me that any great power on the face of the earth could compel its common folk, who are usually kindly and sympathetic at heart, to plunder and murder a people who failed to resist its attack. Such cold-blooded brutality is impossible unless their fears and passions are aroused by war – and by war I mean the actual resistance of a foe and the fighting that it evokes. It is war that makes atrocities and if any nation would save its inhabitants from physical suffering and death, its cities and its countryside from destruction and exploitation -- they must train their citizens however provoked or ill-treated they might be, never to go to war.

It is startling in light of events that would follow that Rabbi Eisendrath would put such faith in absolute pacifism, or that he would really believe that the “common folk” are “usually kindly and sympathetic at heart.” He would later acknowledge his failing, and offer as an explanation (but not an apology) that his pacifist preaching (not referring to this sermon specifically) was given in a different time, “before Hitler … before the State of Israel arose from the ashes of destruction and faced the alternative of fighting for its life or dying still-born, before Korea, before Cuba, before Algeria, before Laos, before Viet-Nam; before the United Nations and before the H-bomb and the test ban.” [6]

At this point in the sermon Rabbi Eisendrath transitions from issues of war and pacifism to issues of economic justice. He sees a connection between the two. War, he says, “is … a symptom of man's profound discontent with peace and the kind of life which it vouchsafes him. The surest means of ending war, therefore is inescapably bound up with the whole economic and social structure of our time.”

Our economic system, Rabbi Eisendrath says, does not match our religious ideals.

… [B]ehold a civilization which calls itself Christian and a people which designated itself as Jewish permits in this Western World of ours as iniquitous and as utterly disgraceful a distribution of wealth as the world has ever witnessed. These two so called religious groups professing in their churches and synagogues an allegiance to the sublime traditions of saviour and prophets have founded an economic system not on the principle of service and mutual sharing and sacrifice and brotherhood which their mutual past has sanctioned, but upon a motive which is quite frankly and universally and in diametric opposition to their theoretic ideals based solely upon private profit and private gain, on power and privilege rather than on public good and human weal. The savage law of the jungle, the bitter competitive strife of the most primitive peoples with its exaltation of self-interest alone, the barbaric law of each for himself and the devil take the hindmost is the foundation upon which our economic structure has today been builded… our whole social system is rotten to the core.

Rabbi Eisendrath’s view of modern economic behaviour as “savage” and “barbaric” parallels his view of modern nations that are striving to develop the most destructive weapons as being the “so-called civilized.”

Material goods that many households possess are not evidence of economic well-being.

[W]hile it may be contended that there is a radio in every home and that nearly every laborer owns a car, still it must not be forgotten that most of these radios and motor cars are eternally mortgaged and have been cleverly sold to penniless workers to create a never satiated market for superfluous wares, they represent the acquisition solely of debts, they represent something owed rather than owned.

Citing economic data from the U.S., which he believes is applicable also to Canada, he notes that “two percent [of the population] owns sixty percent of the entire national wealth and on the other side of the scale sixty-five percent of these people, these toiling classes, are revelling in five percent of the countries’ fortune.”

The popular belief in upward mobility, of Canada and the U.S. as places of unlimited opportunity, Rabbi Eisendrath considers to be a myth.

When I was a child I believed firmly and implicitly that every boy had an equal chance to become President of the U.S. provided of course that he was not a Roman Catholic or a Jew. And today we feed our children [a] similar saccharine falsehood by telling them that every boy has a chance to become a millionaire -- the highest goal in life that we may dangle before our young by the way. These stories with which we still lure our youth, stories of golden opportunities which exist for all were quite consistent with the rare opportunities of pioneer days but they are hopelessly false and hypocritical in our modern financial world. … for today; it is not industry, it is not toil, it is not labor, it is not primarily even intelligence that wins for some huge fortunes and destines others for grinding poverty. …[I]t is unearned increment gained through real estate, through chance inheritance of a property that has, through no effort of the individual who profits thereby. but through increase in population, through the building of streets and sewers and schools, all socially created values, and yet this publicly created wealth flows unprotected into private pockets, enhanced immeasurably in value through lucky investment or protective tariffs or the wasteful exploitation of natural resources all deserving of no special reward whatsoever.

Rabbi Eisendrath is attacking our economic behaviour on both an individual and political level. On the individual level, he is criticizing us for our materialism. On the political level, he is decrying how publicly financed infrastructure (“streets, sewers and schools”) and public policy (“protective tariffs” and “wasteful exploitation of natural resources”) serve only to create private wealth for an undeserving few.

Rabbi Eisendrath is clearly no fan of capitalism, which he sees as “rotten to the core.” We don’t recall the rabbi ever describing himself as a socialist or a social democrat, but this sermon clearly puts him into that camp. We suspect that not too many of his congregants, many of whom were merchants, would follow him there.

Rabbi Eisendrath also attacks the stock market, which he sees as nothing but a gambling parlour, “a monstrous Monte Carlo … in which frenzied men and women likewise drive by the lust for greed and gold have been seeking these many years to amass fortunes to which they have no moral right and to get moneys which they have not in any way earned.”

I need but remind my brethren of the prophets' denunciation of the ever widening gap between rich and poor, and my Christian friends of that vivid scene in which Jesus so ruthlessly overturned the tables of the money lenders in the Temple of Jerusalem [8], to suggest the attitude of true religion toward such debauchery as today exists in our world of commerce and finance. Imagine, my fellow Jews and Christian friends, imagine Jeremiah or Jesus, imagine either one of these gentle prophets comfortably ensconced in a million dollar seat upon the Stock Exchange.

And there in this graphic suggestion lies the whole crux of the matter for behind it all is the ludicrous inconsistency, the ironic incompatibility between a people that vents its religious spleen and prostitutes its religious power in vice crusades and sporadic raids on comparatively harmless pool rooms and gambling houses here and there to rid society of the disgraceful spectacle of a few innocent Orientals risking a few coppers on their native game of fan tan … [9]

Rabbi Eisendrath foresees such economic and social behaviours, and the ever-increasing concentration of wealth as leading potentially to a societal collapse.

[Continuing] until in crash after crash wealth become ever more concentrated, … until the humble merchant and the exploited laborer will realize that he and he alone has paid the piper too long for this mad dance, until the whole cursed and corrupt economic system of our day which by its distorted moral code silently condones the living death of this ruthlessly acquisitive society of our, until in one hysteric outburst of revenge it be forever destroyed.

Repressive actions by the courts and police will not prevent such an outcome:

If we were to avoid such an uprising, such a class revolution toward which Western Civilization is rapidly tending, we cannot do it by suppressing the speeches of communists upon our streets and parks, we cannot do it by stifling radical opinion or by jailing strikers or by bribing the courts to exercise the might of injunction against the right of the masses …

Speeches of communists were indeed being suppressed in Toronto. Speakers were arrested and literature confiscated. Toronto newspapers debated whether such measures were justified.

An attempted gathering of communists and communist sympathisers at Queen’s Park (site of the Ontario Legislature) on August 13, 1929 was forcibly disrupted by the Toronto Police. The front page headline in the Mail and Empire the next day read “Batons and Feet Used Freely as City Police Rout Reds.” Mounted police and motorcycles were used to charge the crowd. In interviews with the press Toronto Mayor Sam McBride and Police Chief Dennis Draper supported the police conduct.

Rabbi Eisendrath urges a return to moral economic behavior and our religious values:

[W]e can perhaps prevent such a clash of the classes, as devastating any war might be, only by seeking the moral guidance of the just, by practicing as vigorously as we fervidly profess the principles of our respective faiths, the principles primarily of justice and equity for all, the principle of a just reward for honest toil and compensation for creative labour alone.

This task of remedying the manifold maladjustments which exist in our world today will be tedious and long, but stupendous as the task may be it is imperative that we cease not to bend every effort step by step to make some amelioration, some approach, however piecemeal, toward a fairer distribution of the world's wealth and goods by which the greed of man are covetously owned by the few but which by the grace of god rightfully belong to all children of men.

At this point we encounter difficulties with the surviving manuscript. There is a page in the middle of the above-quoted extract which is clearly out of place, apparently misplaced from another sermon. The final page of the manuscript (as it was found, the pages are not numbered) is an alternate version of the sermon’s opening words. We do not know if the manuscript originally had additional pages. While we may not have the complete text of the sermon, we see certainly that Rabbi Eisendrath views economic issues as moral issues, and urges us to address them by being true to our religious beliefs.

The two issues addressed in this sermon, war and economic injustice, were major concerns of a Christian movement known as Social Gospel. Rabbi Eisendrath, almost from the moment he arrived in Toronto, interacted with Social Gospel ministers. Salem Bland, a United Church minister and leading proponent of the movement in Canada attended Rabbi Eisendrath’s installation service at Holy Blossom. Writing on the editorial page of The Toronto Daily Star (under the pseudonym The Observer) Reverend Bland offered praise for the unqualified freedom that was granted by the congregation to Rabbi Eisendrath to express whatever opinions his convictions may lead him to assert. [10]

By 1930 Rabbi Eisendrath was the President of the Toronto Council of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation. The F.O.R. was a group of loosely affiliated pacifist organizations in Europe and North America, created mostly under the leadership of Christian clergy. Other members of the Toronto Council were Dr. George T. Webb (Baptist Board of Sunday Schools), J.F. White (editor of the Canadian Forum), Margaret Gould (Child Welfare Council), G. Raymond Booth (Friends' Society), Professor H. Lasserre (Victoria College), Dr. T. Albert Moore, (United Church of Canada), and Rev. W.A. Cameron (Yorkminster Baptist Church). [11]

Poster - 1930 All Day Peace Conference
(Source: Socknat, note 12)

The F.O.R. convened an All Day Peace Conference in Toronto on November 10, 1930.  J.S. Woodsworth, a Member of Parliament for Winnipeg, and former Methodist minister, spoke twice at the conference. His evening address was broadcast over Toronto radio station CFRB. The evening program was held in co-operation with the Women's International League with Salem Bland presiding. [12]

In 1932 the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) Party would come into being in Canada, under the leadership of J. S. Woodsworth. The CCF, and its later incarnation, the New Democratic Party (NDP), was social democratic in orientation.

These relations between Rabbi Eisendrath and Christian ministers in Canada with like social justice ideals show how quickly upon his arrival in Canada he acquainted himself with the Canadian religious and political environment and became a significant participant in it.

HR/MC

1. Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, from Chapter 69.

2. Isaiah 2:4: “And He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

3. Matthew 5:39.

4. Referring to his sermon delivered at Holy Blossom, Sunday, November 10, 1929, the day before Armistice Day, “All Quiet on the Western Front.”

5. “Dollar diplomacy” – originally a policy of President Taft (1909-1913) of using economic investment to further American influence in the Caribbean, Central America and China. Rabbi Eisendrath is associating the term with the use, or threatened use, in later years, of American military power to protect those investments.

6. Rabbi Eisendrath, Can Faith Survive?, p. 73, commenting in 1964 on a pacifist sermon he delivered in 1931. As is often his custom, Rabbi Eisendrath submits a list of events, not all of which would support his premise in this case as a justification for war. He was a bitter opponent of the Vietnam war. In fact, he might have used Vietnam as an example of the need to protect the “uncivilized” from the “greed and insolence of the civilized …”

8. “The money lenders in the Temple of Jerusalem.” Usually translated as “money changers” (Matthew 21:12), people making it possible for pilgrims coming to the Temple from outlying areas to purchase, with whatever currency they had, animals (mostly birds) to sacrifice on the altar.

9. On September 22, 1929, Toronto police raided a downtown premise and arrested 53 persons engaged in a game of fan tan, charging them with keeping a common gaming house or as found ins. Toronto Daily Star, November 5, 1929, “Denies any rake-off in game of Fan Tan; Chinese Witness Insists He Was Dealer and Took No Percentages.”

10. Toronto Daily Star, November 6, 1929, “The Freedom of the Pulpit – by The Observer.”

11. Suzanne Michelle Skebo, “Liberty and Authority: Civil Liberties in Toronto, 1929-1945,” M.A. Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1968, p. 122.

12. Information about the Conference and copy of the poster for the event is from Thomas Paul Socknat, “‘Witness Against War’: Pacifism in Canada, 1900-1945,”  Ph.D, Thesis, McMaster University, 1981, p. 244-5, 584.