clear and inspiring. It shone through the Roman Diaspora as it afterwards
illuminated the Roman Ghetto, making the present tolerable by the memory
of the past and the hope of the future.



CHAPTER II

RELIGION AS LAW


The feature of Judaism which first attracts an outsider's attention, and
which claims a front place in this survey, is its 'Nomism' or 'Legalism.'
Life was placed under the control of Law. Not only morality, but religion
also, was codified. 'Nomism,' it has been truly said, 'has always
formed a fundamental trait of Judaism, one of whose chief aims has ever
been to mould life in all its varying relations according to the Law,
and to make obedience to the commandments a necessity and a custom'
(Lauterbach, _Jewish Encyclopedia_, ix. 326). Only the latest
development of Judaism is away from this direction. Individualism is
nowadays replacing the olden solidarity. Thus, at the Central Conference
of American Rabbis, held in July 1906 at Indianapolis, a project to
formulate a system of laws for modern use was promptly rejected. The
chief modern problem in Jewish life is just this: To what extent, and
in what manner, can Judaism still place itself under the reign of Law?

But for many centuries, certainly up to the French Revolution, Religion
as Law was the dominant conception in Judaism. Before examining the
validity of this conception a word is necessary as to the mode in which
it expressed itself. Conduct, social and individual, moral and ritual,