Cedars of Lebanon: Can Judaism Survive in Free America?
Instead of reverting to the trodden roads of the past, I find sufficient courage in my heart to venture upon the slippery paths of the present and to take up a subject which is, or ought to be, uppermost in the mind of every thinking Jew: the problem of Judaism in America. . . . In considering the problem of Judaism, I am probably expected to set out with an exact definition of what I understand by the term “Judaism.” But . . . definitions are irksome in general, because they represent the delicate attempt to reduce the phenomena of living, palpitating reality to a dead, stationary formula, and doubly irksome when applied to phenomena which bear the stamp of spirituality on their “ism.” . . .
