Max Beer

“ To him Yahve was the father of mankind, and the Jew a son of man, and the man an individual responsible to his maker. He was the first Jewish teacher who consciously did away with the old tribal tradition of collective responsibility, collective sin, and collective punishment. He taught man to be a moral individual. “Behold,” he teaches in the name of Yahve, “all souls are mine, as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die. But if a man be just, and do which is lawful and right .... he shall surely live.” ”

“ Not sacrifice of animals, but self-sacrifice for the good of mankind; not prayers and fasting, but social service and the readiness to die for the salvation of man. “Yahve God hath given me the tongue of the learned that I should know how to speak a word in season for him that is weary .... Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet and show my people their transgression. Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways .... Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? Wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? ”

“ Is not this the fast that I have chosen - to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?” And the purer his ethics, the more universal and sublime is his idea of God. ”