It is impossible to give a single description of the Jewish rites and ceremonies of to-day, because of the diversity which exists. Nominally, the seventh day is the day of the Jewish Sabbath; the demands made by modern commercial life render an observance of the day extremely difficult, and. except a small number of the orthodox, most Jews to-day keep their places of business open on the Sabbath. The festival of the New Year and the Fast of the Day of Atonement, both of which occur in the months of September and October, are perhaps the two festivals which are most rigidly observed. The Passover festival, which falls usually in the month of March or April. is still observed by most Jews, who abstain for a week from eating leaven. The celebration of tha Pentecost festival (end of May or beginning of .June). which commemorates the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai. has been made more solemn by the Reform Jews. among whom it is the day of confirmation. Formerly (and this is the rule to-day in orthodox Jewish congregations) boys were confirmed at the age of thirteen. in whatever month they reached that period of life. Reform Judaism has substituted for this the annual day of confirmation, in which the girls participate tcgether with the boys. The Feast of Tabernacles (celebrated in the autumn). which commemo rates the dwelling of the Israelites in booths during the passage through the wilderness, is still universally observed in some manner or other. The minor festivals. such as the Ninth of Ab, the day upon which the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed; Purim. the commemoration of the deeds of Esther and Mordecai; as well as other minor festivals, are to-day observed only by the orthodox; though there is a tendency, even among reform Jews, to lay more than ordinary weight upon the celebration of the (`Hanukkah, which re calls the national regeneration under the Alacca bean heroes. The dietary laws, as laid down in the I;ible and interpreted by the rabbinical authorities, are universally held to be binding among the orthodox Jews, while only a few of (lie retorm Jews observe them through ancient habit or through veneration of the past.
The use of the Hebrew language among the Jews has generally given way to the vernacular of the countries in which they live. Of late, however, tlwre has been a certain revival in the use of IlebrCW, due to the more national Jewish sentiments which have inspired large numbers of the Jews. In the Jewish colonies in Palestine, Hebrew is the vernacular. and a number of Jew ish journals and reviews are published in Hebrew, not only in the East. but in various parts of Europe. The Judeo-German. or Yiddish, also experienced a revival. This language, which has as its base it dialect of German spoken in t ha Rhine regions during the Aliddle Ages, has become through the expansion of the German Jews east ward the common tongue of several millions of Jews living in Russia. Austria. and the Balkan Peninsula. When these .Taws were again driven westward, during the closing quarter of the nineteenth century, they carried this Yiddish with them into the new ghettoes of Western Europe and Northern America. In the large cities of these countries many Yiddish daily and weekly papers are published. Because of con tact, with many other languages and civiliza tions, this Yiddish has become variously modified by the introduction of Russian. Polish, High German, or English expressions and grammatical forms.
The training of men for the Jewish ministry was in former limes peculiarly one-sided. The seminaries. or yeshibas, devoted their time exclu sively to rabbinical jurisprudence and Talmudic law; secular learning was looked at askance, as the rabbi was not a minister in the modern sense of the word. but a legal adviser and a judge in matters
of religious dispute. Very early in the nineteenth century the need for sonic more modern course of instruction was felt. A seminary for the training of teachers was founded as early as 1809 in Cassel, Germany. The first regular seminary for the training of rabbis, however, was founded in Padua in 1S29. In 1854 the conservative semi nary was established in Breslau; this was fol lowed by similar institutions in Berlin, London, Paris, Budapest and Vienna. In the United States, after some abortive attempts in the sixties and seventies of the nineteenth century, the Hebrew Union College was founded in 1875 at Cincinnati. by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. under the presidency of Isaac Al. Wise. Dr. K. Kohler was elected its president in 1903. This Union, founded in 1873. comprised all the important congregations of the United States which had a leaning toward reform, and the college is therefore generally recognized as the training-place of ministers for this wing of the synagogue. It attempts to give its students an historical knowledge of the development of Jewish history and the Jewish religion, and to fit them for active preachers and communal workers. As its graduates cannot serve in orthodox con gregations, the Jewish Theological Seminary was established in 1SSfi in the city of New York for the purpose of training rabbis who shall under stand the principles of Jewish law and be able to interpret it practically to the congregations whom they are to serve. In the year 1902 the Jewish Theological Seminary of America was enlarged, and Prof. S. Schechter, of Cambridge, England, was called to be the president of its fac ulty. In the year 1893 a training-school for religious school-teachers was founded at Philadel phia, with the money left to the Alickwe Israel Congregation. of that city, by Hyman Gratz. It is called Gratz College. In the same year the Jewish Chautauqua Society (q.v.) was founded by Dr. Henry Berkowitz, of Philadelphia, which carries on a sort, of •Iewish university exten sion work, by means of Chautauqua!' circles in various States, and a summer meeting at At lantic City.. This gave rise in 1899 to the Jewish Study Society in London. Work on these lines is also done by the Young Alen's Hebrew Associations, the first of which was founded in New York in 1874, and which are now to be found in nearly all the larger cities in the United States. A Jewish publication society was founded in Philadelphia in 1845,and a second one in New York in 1873, but both of these were short-lived. In '1888 the Jewish Publication Society of America urn`; organized. in Phila delphia, and has since then published a number of works dealing with Jewish history and Jewish life. 'The only Jewish learned society in the United Slates is the American Jewish Historical Society, founded in 1892. in 1893 the ;Jewish historical Society of England was founded. A similar society (Socil't(' des Etudes Juifs) exists in France, and its interests cover the whole of Jewish history; while in Germany there are over a hundred Jewish literary societies which give courses of lectures on Jewish subjects and publish a year-book. The National Council of Jewish Women. an American organization estab lished in 1893, has endeavored to foster the re ligious spirit in the home by the personal influ ence of its members and by organized philan thropic effort.