SOCIAL PROGRESS THROUGH SO- AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BY RABBI BARNETT Before the Empire Club of Canada, Toronto, PRESIDENT HEWITT in introducing Rabbi Brickner, said, -I want to say how a kindly Providence has favoured this Club in the circumstances under which Rabbi Brickner is appearing before the club to-day. The day was fixed for Dr. Brickner and his family, but the arrangement did not work out, and the little girl arrived just a week earlier than was expected. (Laughter and applause) You all remember I know, with a great deal of pleasure, the Rev. Solomon Jacobs, who was the Rabbi of the Holy Blossom Synagogue in Toronto for so many years. Rabbi Jacobs occupied a very high place in the esteem and respect of our community because of his unselfish work, his general interest in all the affairs that concerned the welfare of our city, and he had become a prominent and well-known figure, highly respected among all classes of the community. We were sorry when death called him away from us. I feel very glad to-day to have the opportunity of being the first to introduce to an audience of Toronto citizens the new Rabbi who succeeds Dr. Jacobs. (Applause) Dr. Brickner comes to Toronto with a record of attainments as a scholar, while his experience in social service work especially fits him to speak to us to-day on the subject which he has chosen. We feel sure that Rabbi Brickner will prove a source of strength to the religious, moral and social life of the city, and we hope that he will find a very warm welcome on the part of the citizens that will make him feel thoroughly at home in our midst from the very beginning of his entrance into his work. (Applause) We welcome with a great deal of pleasure Rabbi Brickner, and I have much pleasure in introducing him. RABBI BRICKNER Mr. President and Gentlemen, Your President has already referred to the ominous conditions under which I come to your city; but I am happy. (Laughter, and a voice, "Boy or girl, Sir?") It is a girl, Sir, and I am thoroughly happy. I always told my wife-and you will excuse me if I get just a bit personal and reminiscent, because I might as well be out with it now as carry it with me-I always told my wife, as we quarrelled about whether it was to be a boy or a girl, that I preferred to have it a girl. You see the Almighty was good to me. I preferred to have it a girl because I wanted again to see her live, and I wanted to see her grow up; we met at college, and we were chums first and sweet-hearts later, and we have remained such. (Applause) I am sure that this great event will tie closer the filial bonds which have bound us so closely. She is particularly happy that I am here this morning, and just before coming here I had a wire from her in which she said, "Go about your business and try to be a big boy." (Laughter) I am very happy to be in Toronto, my friends, because Toronto is a city of great promise, and it seems to me a city of young men and young women-young in spirit, young in its outlook and its hopefulness. Oh, I have detected that spirit. I detected it when I first came here a few weeks ago to be the guest of the congregation that I have the privilege to represent. I love to come to a city that has so many banks and so many churches. (Applause) I wonder, often times, whether you citizens of Toronto are struck by that phenomenon as one is driving through your streets-to see at almost every corner so many banks where, in our cities, unfortunately, we have so many saloons-or used to have them. (Applause and laughter) As I crossed the frontier line and was taken off at Bridgeburg because I told your immigration officer that I expected to make my home in Toronto-and saw that little bridge and that little stream, it dawned on me for the first time that you and I, that your country and the States, were bound by ties that were not of steel, that you and I were unified because in the back of both of us is a great democratic tradition-a tradition that goes back to the mother country, to Great Britain. (Great applause) I felt as I never realized before, that no matter what is said about the relationships of peoples, of governments, here was a great big boundary-line fully 4000 miles long, and never a gun or soldier or a fort on that line. Friends, that has meaning, much meaning, and the time is, or soon will be, when the boundary-lines between, peoples, between societies of peoples, will be as harmonious and as peaceful as that. (Applause) I come here, and I am grateful for the privilege of coming here because I realize also the honour done me as a silent tribute to my deceased and honoured predecessor, and that is also a tribute to the community that I have the honour to represent. We fellow-Jews have much to be thankful for to your flag, to the English people, to the British Empire. If we may be called the people of the Book, England may be termed the people of the Bible. (Applause) We have much in common. Your great mother-country was the first among modern European nations to stretch a welcoming hand of fellowship and invite into citizenship our distressed and persecuted brethren; and we have endeavoured to be loyal to the flag, we have endeavoured to be citizens of the land, placing God first and king and country next. Friends, the last work of friendship that the Mother Country showed to our people was the great Balfour declaration that said that the persecuted of our race in Poland, in the Ukrainia and in Russia should come to the cradle-land and there build the foundation of a democratic commonwealth in Palestine. (Hear, hear) So my friends, if words could but describe the feeling of gladness that surges through me as I stand before you, if I could but show you how I appreciate your remarkable hospitality, I would be doubly glad. The subject that I have chosen for this afternoon's discussion seemed to me, when I chose it, a bit abstruse, and possibly it sounded that way to you. I did it very largely because I was reminded in a way, of the story that was told of the two Irishmen who were walking down the street one day, and saw at the corner a great big cathedral, and Pat said to Mike, "Let us go in and hear the Holy Father." Mike was married, and happily so, I presume, and it was difficult to persuade him, but finally Pat persuaded him, and they walked in just in time for the sermon. The Holy Father was discussing the question of matrimony and its bliss, and he went on and on but it finally ended, and Pat and Mike walked out. Pat said to Mike, "Well, Mike, aren't you glad you came? Aren't you really, really happy that you came?" And Mike replied, "Yes, I am happy, in a way, but really Pat, I only wish that I knew as much about the bliss of matrimony as the Holy Father does." (Laughter) Friends, coming to your city, a city reputed for its social conscience, to speak of social service was difficult, for I knew almost nothing of your work. I was almost in the same position as Mike, and possibly the Holy Father, about your social work. Oh, I have heard, and all of us have heard, of your wonderful health work, and of Dr. Hastings-I have never met him personallybut would like to meet him some day; I have read of the wonderful things he has done as a health officer with a social conscience in Toronto (applause) and I am glad I can be in such a city. "Social Progress through Social Service" that really raises the question, what do we mean by social progress? I recollect a very remarkable figure of speech-a picture if you please-that my former professor, James Hardy Robinson, used when he talked of social progress. He said to us, "Students, imagine a great big face of a clock. Imagine that the face of that clock represented in figures, 240,000 years; each hour representing 20,000 years each minute 333-1/3 years." Then he would say, "About the first eleven hours and forty minutes we know very little or nothing. We do know that about twenty minutes of twelve, Babylonian and Egyptian civilization commenced. Then about seven minutes of twelve the Greeks and the Romans started to flourish. When Bacon, your countryman, in the broader sense, wrote his 'Advancement of Learning' it was about a minute of twelve. And here we are at twelve o'clock. Really you know, Plato and Aristotle, Isaiah and Jeremiah are our contemporaries, Shakespeare is our playmate, and Francis Bacon our dinner guest." Friends, Social Progress is a very, very recent thing: it is almost contemporary with us. The very word progress is a new word; it is a new idea; it dates back really from the time when we commenced to understand that we were social rather than individual beings. Progress is different from change. The French philosopher Bergson is supposed to be responsible for the formula, "Life equals change; Change equals Progress," but I think there is a fallacy in that formula. Life equals change, development, evolution, but change, development, evolution, is not synonymous with progress. Progress is a human concept that spells "Power." Progress spells a setting up of a goal and an ideal which we wish to achieve. Progress conceives and implies that there is a great force in the world that is governing the world, that is ruling it, that is pushing it foward, and that we humans, though but mortal, are imbued with a tiny spark of His nature, of that Divine Spirit, and that it is our duty as men to so develop that spark that it shall go in the direction in which He dictates. When we become social-minded, then we become truly divine. That is my conception of social progress; and as I can see men such as you, and other groups of men and women here and there, separated all over the democratic lands, banded together in organic groups with a view of further |