“We Cannot Hide These Things from the World”
The lost history of a heterodox rabbi who struggled to remake Judaism — and remade religion instead
When I was growing up as a teenager on Long Island, I once heard a young rabbi tell a religiously and politically conservative congregation that when we suffer inside we can also become deeper human beings. The formula for self-growth, he said, is “to turn your pain into a painting.” Some may have found it corny, though judging from the silence in the room his remarks made an impact. I never forgot them.
Those words were a distant ripple from a Jewish spiritual-therapeutic movement that began in 1916 in response to the popularity of mind-power metaphysics and Mary Baker Eddy’s healing faith of Christian Science among American Jews. In an echo of Mrs. Eddy’s phrasing, it was called “Jewish Science.” One of the motivational movement’s most eloquent exponents was a St. Louis, Missouri, rabbi named Louis Witt (1878–1950). Though Witt disliked the term Jewish Science for its derivativeness, he energetically spread the movement’s metaphysical and therapeutic values into Judaism and other American faiths.
The Jewish Science movement was rooted in the early twentieth century, when American Jewish leaders worried over a steady in flow of Jewish converts into…
