The conclusion to be drawn from our analysis in the previous chapters is that modern man has decided that he can make it on his own. Believing that he can be sufficient unto himself, he now lives like a stranger in a cosmos that is anchorless; his life is rootless, he drifts aimlessly in an ocean of meaninglessness.
Jews in the Western world were deeply involved in a culture and a civilization to which they made significant contributions, but which in its essentials was not of their own making. As long as the culture of the West itself was a going concern, one could have thought that it embodied modern man’s march onward toward a brighter future. But this civilization has sickened manifestly and its sickness has invaded the life of the Jewish people. It is eroding the traditional values of Judaism; it is undermining the moral fibre of wide sections of the Jewish communities; it is eroding the strength of the Jewish family; it confuses Jewish youth. I do not know how other sections of the general community will cope with the moral and spiritual sickness of our time. I do know, however, that we Jews have to turn inward, to our own resources of the soul and of the spirit.
In former times, Judaism had an authentic competitor, a strong, self-assured civilization that was not Jewish and exerted overwhelming influence. It shaped and formed Western Jews more than did Judaism. Today, the situation is fundamentally different. The competitor is itself on the run, in a state of disintegration. It has lost its seductive charm. What we have to contend with now is a spiritual vacuum-the loss of vision, the loss of faith, the loss of trust. The West itself is overwhelmed by a chaos of the spirit and moral helplessness. Perhaps now, in this hour of crisis of Western civilization, we might be induced to let our own roots down in the authentic soil of Judaism. Seldom before did we have as much reason to turn inward, to seek strength, inspiration, vision, in our own spiritual resources than in this hour of mankind’s religious, spiritual and ethical exhaustion. This is no longer a religious demand of preserving Judaism, but it is a matter of preserving life in human dignity and meaningfulness by the only means available to us. It is also the best service we can render to mankind at large.
In order to develop a Jewish position in relationship to the main issues that were raised above, we shall have to analyze the source of meaning and value in Judaism, and to show how man’s cosmic alienation is healed in the context of a philosophy of cosmic interrelatedness. We shall indicate the place man holds within the Jewish world-view and determine how Judaism sees human nature, answering the question: what is man? We shall do this with the help of the presentation of what we consider to be Jewish sexual ethics, for it is in its sexual ethics that a society’s concept of what a human being is finds its clearest expression.