Sir Richard Francis Burton

CHAPTER I
GENERAL OPINION OF THE JEW

The history of the Jew as well as his physiological aspect are subjects which still remain to be considered and carefully to be worked out from an Aryan point of view. We have of late years seen books in plenty upon points of detail: let us particularize The Physical History of the Jewish Race, by Dr. Josiah Clark Nott[5] (Charleston, 1850); Le Juif, par le Chevalier Geargenot des Monceseaux (Paris: Henri Plon, 1871); and Notices of the Jews and their Country by the Classic Writers of Antiquity: being a Collection of Statements and Opinions translated from the Works of Greek and Latin Heathen Authors previous to a.d. 500, by John Gill (London: Longmans, 1872). But in these, as in other works, we find wanting a practical and personal familiarity with the subject, nor can we be surprised at its absence. It is generally assumed that at the present moment there are six millions of Jews scattered over the face of the earth. Some have exaggerated the total to nine millions and a half; but even the former figure is a greater number, says M. CrÉmieux, than the nation could boast of at any other period of its history, ancient or modern.[6] Throughout the world also the race increases with such marvellous rapidity as a rule, which admits of few exceptions, that philosophical inquirers are beginning to ask whether this immense fecundity, taken in connexion with the exceptionally healthy and vigorous physique of the race, its ubiquity and its cosmopolitanism, does not point to a remarkable career in times to come.

The ethnologist and the student of general history are urgently invited to consider the annals and the physical and intellectual aspects of the children of Israel, perhaps the most interesting subject that can occupy their attention. The Jew, like the Gypsy, stands alone, isolated by character, if not by blessing. Traditionally, or rather according to its own tradition, the oldest family on earth, it is at the same time that which possesses the most abundant vitality. Its indestructible and irrepressible life-power enables this nation without a country to maintain an undying nationality and to nourish a sentiment of caste with a strength and a pertinacity unparalleled in the annals of patriotism. The people that drove the Jews from JudÆa, the empires which effaced the kingdoms of Israel and Judah from the map of the world, have utterly perished. The descendants of the conquering Romans are undistinguishable from the rest of mankind. But, eighteen hundred years after the Fall of Jerusalem, the dispersed Jewish people have a distinct existence, are a power in every European capital, conduct the financial operations of nations and governments, and are to be found wherever civilization has extended and commerce has penetrated; in fact, it has made all the world its home.

One obstacle to a matured and detailed ethnological study of the Jew is the difficulty of becoming familiar with a people scattered over the two hemispheres. Though the race is one, the two great factors blood and climate have shown it to be anything but immutable, either in physique or in character. Compare, for instance, the two extremes—the Tatar-faced KaraÏte of the Crimea with the Semitic features of Morocco, the blond lovelocks of Aden and the fiery ringlets of Germany with the greasy, black hair of Houndsditch. And as bodily form differs greatly, there is perhaps a still greater distinction in mental characteristics: we can hardly believe the peaceful and industrious Dutch Jew a brother of the fanatic and ferocious Hebrew who haunts the rugged Highlands of Safed in the Holy Land. Yet though these differences constitute almost a series of sub-races, there is one essentially great quality which cements and combines the whole house of Israel.

The vigour, the vital force, and the mental capacity of other peoples are found to improve by intermixture; the more composite their character, the greater their strength and energy. But for generation after generation the Jews have preserved, in marriage at least, the purity of their blood. In countries where they form but a small percentage of the population the range of choice must necessarily be very limited, and from the very beginning of his history the Jew, like his half-brother the Arab, always married, or was expected to marry, his first cousin. A well-known traveller of the present day has proved that this can be done with impunity only by unmixed races of men, and that the larger the amount of mixture in blood the greater will be the amount of deformity in physique and morale to be expected from the offspring. Consanguineous marriages are dangerous in England, and far more dangerous, as De Hone has proved, in Massachusetts. Yet the kings of Persia intermarried with their sisters, and the Samaritan branch of the Jews is so closely connected that first cousins are almost sisters.

Physically and mentally the Jewish man and woman are equal in all respects to their Gentile neighbours, and in some particulars are superior to them. The women of the better class are strongly and symmetrically shaped; and although their beauty of feature is not that admired by the Christian eye, debility and deformity are exceptionally rare. In grace of form and in charm of manner they are far superior to their husbands and brothers, and indeed this everywhere appears to be a sub-characteristic racial feature. They are nowhere remarkably distinguished for chastity, and in some places, Morocco for instance, their immorality is proverbial. Their grand physique does not age like that of the natives of the strange countries which they colonize and where Europeans readily degenerate, they preserve youth for ten years longer than their rivals, they become mothers immediately after puberty, and they bear children to a far later age. Their customs allow them to limit the family, not by deleterious drugs and dangerous operations, but by the simple process of prolonging the period of lactation, and barrenness is rare amongst them as in the days when it was looked upon as a curse. There is scarcely any part of the habitable globe, from the Highlands of Abyssinia to the Lowlands of Jamaica, in which the Jewish people cannot be acclimatized more readily and more rapidly than the other races of Europe—also the result of blood comparatively free from that intermixture which brings forward the inherent defects of both parents.

The Jews also enjoy a comparative immunity from various forms of disease which are the scourge of other races. Pulmonary and scrofulous complaints are rare amongst them; leprosy and elephantiasis are almost extinct; and despite their impurity in person and the exceptional filth of their dwelling-places, they are less liable to be swept away by cholera and plague than the natives of the countries which are habitually ravaged by those epidemics. They seldom suffer from the usual infectious results, even where the women are so unchaste that honour seems as unknown to them as honesty to the men.

Physiologists have asked, How is this phenomenon to be accounted for? Why is the duration of life greater among the Jews than among the other races of Europe? Is it the result of superior organization or of obedience to the ceremonial law? The researches of those who have made these questions their special study supply but one satisfactory or sufficient answer, and it may be summed up in six words—a prodigious superiority of vital power. And all the laws attributed to the theistic secularism of Moses were issued with one object—namely, that of hardening and tempering the race to an extent which even Sparta ignored. The ancient Jew was more than half a Bedawin, and not being an equestrian race his annual journeys to and from Jerusalem were mostly made on foot. His diet was carefully regulated, and his year was a succession of fasts and feasts, as indeed it is now, but not to such an extent as formerly. The results were simply the destruction of all the weaklings and the survival of the fittest.

Thrice during the year, by order of the Torah (Deut. xvi. 16)—namely (1) in the Passover, or feast of unleavened bread during the first ecclesiastical and the seventh civil month; (2) at Pentecost, or Shebaoth (weeks), the feast of the wheat harvest in the third or the ninth month; and (3) at the Feast of Tabernacles, or the ingathering of the harvest in the seventh or the first month—the Jew of old was religiously commanded to appear before the Lord. He was bound to leave his home, which might be distant a hundred and fifty miles, and travel up to Jerusalem, where he led a camp life like his half-brothers in the Desert. This semi-nomad life was combined with a quasi-ascetic condition produced by the frequency and the severity of his fasts and by the austerities attending upon making ready for the Sabbath, that is to say, the preparations of Friday evening—some religious men even in the present age suffer nothing to pass their lips for seven consecutive days and nights.[7] This afflicting the soul, as it is called, served to breed a race equally hard and hardy in frame and mind. It embodied to perfection the idea of the sacrifice of personal will. Add to this the barbarous and ferocious nature of their punishments, amongst which stoning by the congregation is perhaps the most classical, and the perpetual bloodshed in the Temple, which must have suggested a butcher’s shambles.

Again, the history and traditions, the faith and practice of the Jew ever placed before his eyes the absolute and immeasurable superiority of his own caste, the “Peculiar People, the Kingdom of Priests, the Holy Nation.” This exaltation justified the Hebrew in treating his brother-men as heathens barely worthy of the title of human. “Lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations”—an unfriendly separation and an estrangement between man and man equally injurious to the welfare of Jew and Gentile. It grew a rank crop of hideous crimes committed in the fair name of religion—what nation but the Hebrew could exult over a Jephthah who “did with his daughter according to his own,” that is, burnt her to death before the Lord? At the same time it inculcated a rare humanity amongst its own members unknown to all other peoples of antiquity: for instance, it allowed the coward to retire from the field before battle, and, strange to say, it inculcated the very highest of moral dogmas. In 250 b.c. SochÆus, and after him the Pharisees, according to Josephus, taught that God should be served, not for gain, but for love and gratitude: hence his follower SadÍk forbade the looking forward to futurity, even as Moses had neglected the doctrine with studious care. Even in the present age of the world such denegation of egotism would be a higher law.

All these specialities in combination urged the Jews to dare and to do everything against all who were not of their own blood. The inevitable conclusion of such a policy was that eventually they came into collision with all around them; that they failed in the unequal combat with pagan Rome and early Christianity; that they lost the birthplace of their nationality, and were scattered far and wide over the surface of the earth. And what has happened once may happen again.

The Greeks of earlier days, who like the Hebrews had but one faith and one tongue, also met periodically as a single family at Delphi, the centre of their racial area. Thus that gifted people without any inspiration effectually combined with grandeur in the worship of the gods the law of harmony which should preside over human society. But the Greeks were a sensuous and a joyous race, walking under the free heavens in the glorious lights of poetry, of art, and of beauty, and could not fail to realize the truth that society based upon reciprocal benevolence means civilization and the highest stage of human society—communion with the world.

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Dr. Boudin, the eminent physiologist and medical writer, remarks that the Jew is governed by statistical laws of birth, sickness, and mortality completely different from those which rule the peoples amongst whom he lives. This assertion is confirmed by the testimony of history. During the Middle Ages, when the unclean capitals of Europe and Asia were periodically devastated by the plague, the angel of death passed by the houses of the oppressed and despised Jews, although they were condemned by local regulations to occupy the worst quarters of the cities. In speaking of the pestilence of a.d. 1345, Tschudi says that it nowhere attacked the Jews. Frascator mentions that they completely escaped the typhus epidemic in a.d. 1505; they were untouched by the intermittent fevers which reigned in Rome in a.d. 1691; they were not subject to the dysentery which was so fatal at Nimeguen in a.d. 1736; and both in 1832 and 1849 it is stated upon excellent authority that they enjoyed comparative exemption from the cholera in London, although during the last-named year the city numbered nearly thirteen thousand victims.[8]

Not less curious are the statistics showing the natural aptitude of the Jewish people, at once so national in their sentiments and so cosmopolitan in their tendencies, for universal acclimatization. The Jew and the Christian will emigrate to a British or a French colony from the same birthplace; and while, owing to the uncongenial climate, the Christian settler with his family eventually dies out, the Jewish settler increases and multiplies. In Algeria, for example, the French colonies would become extinct in a very short process of time were it not for the steady influx of immigrants, whereas the Jew takes deep root and throws out vigorous branches.

With respect to the superior longevity of the Jews, German sources supply some interesting particulars. Dr. W. C. de Neufville,[9] of Frankfort, by the collection and collation of an immense mass of statistics, has demonstrated the following facts:

1. One-fourth of Christian populations dies at the mean age of 6 years 11 months.

2. One-fourth of Jewish populations dies at the mean age of 28 years 3 months.

3. One-half of Christian populations dies at the mean age of 36 years 6 months.

4. One-half of Jewish populations dies at the mean age of 53 years 1 month.

5. Three-fourths of Christian populations die at the mean age of 59 years 10 months.

6. Three-fourths of Jewish populations die at the mean age of 71 years.

It is found that in Prussia the annual mortality among the Jews is 1·61 per cent, to 2·00 among the rest of the population. The annual rate of increase with the former is 1·73 per cent.; with the latter only 1·36.[10] In Frankfort the mean duration of human life is 36 years 11 months among the Christian population, and 46 years 9 months among the Jewish.

I will now quote at full length the favourable verdict usually offered in the case of the Hebrews by the writers of Europe:

“If we trace the history of the Israelitish race from the destruction of Jerusalem to the time at which the prevalence of a more enlightened public opinion caused to be effaced from the Statute Books of European nations the barbarous and cruel enactments against the Jews, adopted in an epoch when bigotry, brutality, and persecution were rampant, we shall be constrained to admit that there has been something little less than miraculous in the preservation of this people from utter extermination. Basnage[11] (Histoire des Juifs) calculates that 1,338,460 Jews perished by fire and sword, famine and sickness, at and after the siege of the Holy City. Subsequently a host of unfortunate exiles became the objects of bitter and unrelenting persecution, fanaticism, and tyranny in every country throughout Christendom. During the two years which preceded their final expulsion from JudÆa, 580,000 Jews were slaughtered by the Romans; and the gradual dispersion of the rest over the face of Europe was the prelude for the perpetration upon them by ‘Christians’ of a series of atrocities almost unequalled for merciless savagery. The functions they discharged in mediÆval society were, in reality, of the most valuable kind; but so dense was the ignorance, and so inveterate were the prejudices of the age, that towards the close of the thirteenth century upwards of 13,000 Israelites were banished from England in one day; just as two hundred years later 500,000 were expelled from Spain, 150,000 from Portugal, and an indefinite number were cast out of France. For a period of three centuries successive sovereigns refused to accord permission to the Jews to worship Almighty God within the English realm; nor was it until the Protectorate of Cromwell that a synagogue was allowed to be erected in London.

“In works of fiction, in the drama, and in daily life the name of Jew has become a byword and a reproach, and an explanation of this is to be sought for rather in the malignity of religious prejudice than in the actual conduct of the people who have been visited with so much opprobrium. Their virtues are their own, but their faults are the fruit of eighteen centuries of outlawry and oppression. Under such treatment archangels would have become depraved. In the history of the whole world there is nothing which in any degree resembles the systematic persecutions, the barbarous cruelties, the cowardly insults, the debasing tyranny to which the Jewish race has been exposed. That it was not degraded to the level of the African negroes, or absolutely obliterated from the face of the earth, is only another proof of its wonderful vitality and of the indestructible elasticity of the national character.[12] In spite of all these centuries of oppression and repression, its representatives are still found, not merely among the monarchs of finance, but among the royalties and aristocracies of genius. Every one must remember the passage in Coningsby in which Mr. Disraeli enumerates the illustrious Jews who are occupying, or have occupied, the foremost rank in arts, letters, statesmanship, and military science—Count Cantemir in Russia, Senor Mendizelal in Spain, and Count Arnim in Prussia; Marshals Soult and Massena, Professors Neander, Regius, Bearnary, and Wohl; the composers Rossini, Mendelssohn, and Meyerbeer (not to mention Offenbach); Rachel the actress; Pasta, Grisi, and Braham the vocalists, Spinoza the philosopher, and Heine the poet; to which list he might have added the names of some of the most distinguished of living French and English celebrities.[13] And though we have forgotten Xapol and Gondomar, Yahuda Halevi, and Aviabron, alias Solomon ben Gabriel, few of us can ignore the Rothschilds and Goldsmids, the Ricardos, Rouhers, and Torlonias, now become household words in Europe.

“That in all countries the Jews, on the other hand, should evince a preference for sordid pursuits, and follow them with an eagerness and tenacity worthy of employment in more generous and elevated callings, must also be admitted. William Abbott, in his outspoken and earnest but narrow-minded way, advanced this plea upon one occasion in the House of Commons, in resistance to a motion to relieve all persons professing the Jewish religion in England from the civil disabilities under which they then laboured. He was replied to by Macaulay in a speech as eloquent in terms as it was irresistible in logic.

“‘Such, sir,’ said he, ‘has in every age been the reasoning of bigots. They never fail to plead, in justification of persecution, the vices which persecution has engendered. England has been to the Jews less than half a country, and we revile them because they do not feel for England more than a half patriotism. We treat them as slaves, and wonder that they do not regard us as brethren. We drive them to mean occupations, and then reproach them for not embracing honourable professions. We long forbade them to possess land, and we complain that they chiefly occupy themselves in trade. We shut them out from all the paths of ambition, and then we despise them for taking refuge in avarice. During many ages we have in all our dealings with them abused our immense superiority of force, and then we are disgusted because they have recourse to that cunning which is the natural and universal defence of the weak against the violence of the strong. But were they always a mere money-changing, money-getting, money-hoarding race? Nobody knows better than my honourable friend, the member for the University of Oxford, that there is nothing in their national character which unfits them for the highest duties of citizens. He knows that in the infancy of civilization, when our island was as savage as New Guinea, when letters and arts were still unknown to Athens, when scarcely a thatched hut stood on what was afterwards the site of Rome, this contemned people had their fenced cities and cedar palaces, their splendid Temple, their fleets of merchant ships, their schools of sacred learning, their great statesmen and soldiers, their natural philosophers, their historians and poets. What nation ever contended more manfully against overwhelming odds for its independence and religion? And if, in the course of many centuries, the oppressed descendants of warriors and sages have degenerated from the qualities of their fathers—if while excluded from the blessings of law and bound down under the yoke of slavery they have contracted some of the vices of outlaws and slaves, shall we consider this a matter of reproach to them? Shall we not rather consider it a matter of shame and remorse to ourselves? Let us do justice to them. Let us open to them every career in which ability and energy can be displayed. Till we have done this, let us not presume to say that there is no genius among the countrymen of Isaiah, no heroism amongst the descendants of the Maccabees.’”

We have “done this,” and the results have stultified all this nicely balanced rhetoric. And the following pages may suggest that our European ancestors had other reasons for expelling the Jews than the mere “bigotry” and “brutality” so unphilosophically ascribed to them by Lord Macaulay.

[5] [Dr. J. C. Nott, the well-known ethnologist.]

[6] The two great centres of Jewish population are, first, the northern part of Africa between Morocco and Egypt, especially the Barbary States, where they form the chief element of the town population, and where a census is at present mere guesswork; they spread gradually southwards, and since 1858 a trading colony has occupied Timbuctoo on the Niger. The other families in Africa are the Falashas, or Black Jews of Abyssinia, mere proselytes like those of Malabar, and a few Europeans at the Cape of Good Hope. The second great centre is that region of Europe which extends from the Lower Danube to the Baltic; and here there are about four millions who occupy the middle class among the Sclavonic nationalities, while in the whole of Western Europe there are not a hundred and twenty thousand. Their descendants have followed the path of European migrations to America, North and South, and to Australia, where the large commercial towns enable them to multiply as in the Old World, and much more rapidly than the Christian population. The other outlying colonies are in Turkey, European as well as Asiatic, although the Holy Land now contains but a small proportion of their former numbers; in Yemen, especially at SanaÁ and Aden, in NejerÁn, and other parts of Arabia; along the whole course of the Euphrates, in Kurdistan, Persia, and India, especially in Malabar, where there are white and black Jews; in China and in Cochin China, both colonies being also found; and in the Turkoman countries. Here they inhabit the four fortresses of Shahr-i-sabz, Kulab, Shamatan, and Urta Kurgan, with about thirty small villages; they live in their own quarters, and, except having to pay higher taxes, they are treated on an equal footing with the other inhabitants.

[7] This terrible fast is called Ha-frakÁ. Old men have been known in Syria and Palestine to endure it twice a year, in summer and in winter. They sup on Saturday evening, and till the sunset of the next Saturday they do not allow themselves to swallow even a drop of water or to touch a pinch of snuff. The state of prostration towards the end of the term is extreme, and the first thing done, when the time has passed, is to place the patient in a warm bath. This is probably the severest fast known to the world, unless it be rivalled by certain Hindu ascetics: the Greek and Coptic Christians and the Muhammadans have nothing to compare with it.

[8] This we gather from the reports of the General Board of Health on the epidemic cholera. In 1832 only 4 deaths were recorded out of the 3,000 Portuguese Jews, and in 1849 amongst the 20,000 then inhabiting London there were no more than 13, although the loss from cholera amounted to 12,837. This gives a proportion of 0·6 per 1,000, whilst the superintendent registrar assigns 1: 1,000 to Hampstead, 6: 1,000 to Whitechapel, 7: 1,000 to the City of London, 19: 1,000 to Shoreditch, and 29: 1,000 to Rotherhithe. [These figures are for the special cholera year 1832. Since then the visitations have been much less severe.]

[9] [The work referred to is Lebensdauer und Todesursachen 22 verschiedener StÄnde. Frankfort, 1855.]

[10] [These figures are for average years, and hence hold good now as then.]

[11] [Author of the large history of the Jews in 5 vols. Rotterdam, 1707.]

[12] There is another parasitic race, also of pure blood, but Indo-European, not Semitic, whose preservation appears almost as “providential” as that of the Jews, and whose union is even more exceptional because it is not bound either by revelation or indeed by any form of faith—the Gypsy.

[13] Not to mention Wolff and Palgrave the travellers, and Monseigneur Bauer, PÈre Hermann, and PÈre Marie de Ratisbonne, the converts.

CHAPTER III
THE JEW OF THE HOLY LAND AND HIS DESTINY

In dealing with the Jews of the Holy Land, it is well to remember that the two great branches of the Hebrew race are the SephardÍm and the AshkenazÍm. They are both equally orthodox, and may intermarry when they please. It is advisable to offer a few words concerning these great branches first.

“Sepharad,” pronounced throughout “the East” Safard, a word occurring only once in the Old Testament (“and the captivity of Jerusalem, which is in Sepharad,” Obad. ver. 20), has been subjected to various interpretations. Enough to say the majority of Jews following the Targum Jonathan and the Peshito, or Syriac version, identify it with Iberia, modern Spain and Portugal. The SephardÍm claim descent from the royal tribe of Judah, which, like the children of Benjamin, was the last to disperse. It contains the usual three orders: (1) The Cohen (in Arabic KÁhin), the priest or Levite of the house of Aaron—a numerous body, as the Cohens of England show. Though born an ecclesiastic, he may now, since the rite of ordination has become extinct, pursue a purely laical trade. Whenever a Jew slaughters an animal, the Cohen claims the tongue, one side of the face, and one shoulder.[25] So in the days of Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews, IV. iv. 4) the priest took the maw, the cheek (or breast), and the right shoulder of the sacrifice privately killed for a festival. (2) The Levite or descendant of Levi, but not through the house of Aaron; like the Cohen, to whom he should pay the tithe of his tithes, he must prove his genealogy, which is often doubtful, and he is known by taking the name of Levi after his own and before that of his birthplace—e.g. Simeon Levi Salonikli. (3) “The circumcision” or Ammon Israelite.

Since the final destruction of the Temple there are no Gentile Proselytes of the Covenant, that is, circumcised strangers admitted to all the privileges of the children of Abraham; nor are there Proselytes of the Gate, uncircumcised worshippers of Jehovah who keep the moral law. The Ger, or stranger, may be received into the Church under certain circumstances by purification and circumcision, which latter, unlike the law of Muhammad, is absolutely necessary. Judaism, however, like Hinduism and Guebrism, is essentially one of the old congenital creeds; it never has been, it is not, and it never will be a system of proselytizing. As regards the tribes, Judah and Levi are everywhere known. Benjamin, Ephraim, and Half Manasseh are spoken of, and tradition declares that Asher exists in Abyssinia with KaraÏte peculiarities. Finally, many Jews do not believe that the Ten Tribes were ever lost. They say that, during the Great Captivity, when the faith became all but extinct, they were mixed to such an extent that it was afterwards impossible to separate them.

The SephardÍm, or Southern Jews, are mostly the descendants of Spanish and Portuguese ancestry, and throughout the Levant and the North African coast they speak Spanish and read and write it in their own character. Those of the Moroccan interior use Arabic. The dress is Oriental, and in the Holy Land they still wear the black turban ordained by the sumptuary laws of El Hakim (circa a.d. 1000). In physical appearance they are somewhat more prepossessing than the AshkenazÍm, who are outnumbering them in Syria and Palestine, and are gradually ousting them. Officially they retain their position; the HakhÁm BashÍ, or chief doctor, is the only Jewish official recognized by the Turkish Government and representing the community in the Majlis, or town council. In all matters which come before the tribunals the AshkenazÍm must be supported by the HakhÁm BashÍ, while the doctors hear and decide all cases relating to the internal affairs of the community. Many of the SephardÍm are shopkeepers, trading chiefly in stuffs and hardwares. There are many minor differences between them and the AshkenazÍm, such as the contents and the arrangement of their ritual, the constitution of their meetings, the mode of reading the service, their music, and even their cursive form of the square Hebrew character. The Maghrabis, or Western Jews, chiefly living in North-western Africa, rank elsewhere as SephardÍm; at Jerusalem, however, they are considered a separate sect, and have their own chief doctor.

Thus the SephardÍm are the Southern, opposed to the Northern Jews, or AshkenazÍm. These derive their name from Ashkenaz, son of Gomer, and grandson of Japhet (Gen. x. 3), who is supposed to have peopled, in ethnologic succession, Armenia (Jer. li. 27), Poland, Germany, and Scandinavia—the latter according to some derives from him its name. The AshkenazÍm claim descent from Benjamin, and are generally supposed not to have been present at the second building of the Temple by Zorobabel (b.c. 520), as described in the Book of Ezra.

The AshkenazÍm of the Holy Land are chiefly Germans, Poles, Muscovites, and other Northerners. On January 26, 1849, an order from the Russian Consulate-General of Beyrut obliged them either to return home biennially in order to renew their passports or to give up their nationality. They were then taken under the protecting wing of Great Britain by the immense exertions of their co-religionists in the “City of Refuge” (London) and of other Western powers. This step can hardly be looked upon with satisfaction. Relying upon their new nationality, they addict themselves openly to usury and to other transactions of a doubtful and often of a dishonourable character. A determination to protect the whole community from religious persecution, allowing the Sultan to treat their commercial and civic affairs on the same footing as all the rest of his subjects, would be much more just, and would probably remedy not a few evils. In the year 1840 the Northern Jews mustered few at Damascus, and even now they are not numerous; among them may be mentioned old AbÚ BrahÍm, a well-known cicerone at Demitri Cara’s Hotel, who usually passed for a Cohen.

The AshkenazÍm speak a kind of Jew-German, garbled with Hebrew and other foreign words. Their dress is a long robe like a dressing-gown, and a low-crowned hat of felt or beaver; the lank love-lock hanging down either cheek, and the eccentrically clipped fur caps, which, despite the burning sun, they everywhere don for the Sabbath and for feast-days, make their appearance not a little comical. In the Holy Land they are mostly petty traders and craftsmen, supported in part by the Hallorkah, or alms. Many Jews who have neither the time nor the will to visit Jerusalem pay considerable sums for vicarious prayers there offered by their co-religionists, and the contributions are collected throughout Europe by appointed emissaries like the begging friars of the Catholic world. This dole, distributed alike and indiscriminately to all who occupy the four Holy Cities, brings many idle and worthless persons together, and promotes early and improvident marriages, every child being a source of additional increase. Some steps should be taken to obviate the scandals of the Hallorkah. Much vice, misery, and ill-feeling are engendered by the present system of bounty, which leaves much behind when passing through the hands of doctors responsible to no one for the money they receive. These men live in comfort and even luxury; the terrorism, physical as well as spiritual, with which they inspire their congregations, renders them absolutely unassailable. Knowing that his doctor can excommunicate him, and, what is more to the purpose, starve him and his family, not a Jew dare object to, though he will loudly complain of, a system of hypocrisy and peculation. And as a rule the almsgiving of the Israelite, so exceptionally liberal throughout Western Europe, becomes mean and niggardly throughout the Holy Land. In the absence of coin sufficiently small, the wealthy Hebrews of Jerusalem have invented a system of tin bits, which the mendicant must collect till sufficiently numerous to be changed for currency. Whenever there is a famine in the country, pauper Jews receive probably the least assistance from their fellows dwelling within the same walls.

The AshkenazÍm are divided into religious sects and social communities. The former are three in number—viz. ParushÍm, KhasidÍm, and Khabad. The ParushÍm, Pharisees or Separatists, follow the law as laid down in the commentary of the late R. Gaon[26] of Wilna. They consider the diligent study of the Talmud an essential for every religious Jew, and they conduct their liturgy according to it, respecting, however, the sense attached to various rites by the Cabalistic teachers. They strictly observe the appointed times for prayer, but they do not consider it necessary to dip the body in water before ablution. They neglect the second pair of phylacteries prescribed by Rabbenu Tam.[27] They do not hold it unlawful to slaughter animals for food with a knife which is not very sharp, provided that the edge has no notches. They regard a Passover cake as lawful, even though it be made of any kind of wheat or flour.

The KhasidÍm (Cabalists), that most fanatical of Jewish sects, are here for the most part unlearned. Their liturgy is according to RambÁni or Maimonides (Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon), a Spaniard who flourished in the twelfth century, and of whom it is said, “From Moses to Moses there was none like Moses”; they interpret it, however, in the Cabalistic sense. Their favourite book is the Holy Ri; they pray whenever they feel bound to do so, no matter whether the prescribed time has passed or not. Unlike the ParushÍm, they believe in certain SadikÍm, or righteous men, popularly called Gute Yaden (Juden), and regard them with a superstitious veneration which borders upon worship, attributing to them supernatural powers, and attaching some spiritual and symbolic meanings to their most trivial and insignificant actions. Whilst professing to be guided only by the Talmud, they in reality follow the teaching of some chosen Guter Jude. The KhasidÍm are particular in the observance of Jewish customs, especially such as relate to the Sabbath. They shake themselves violently and cry aloud during prayers; at other times they are much addicted to dancing, singing, and deep drinking. They dip themselves in water before devotions, and use the second pair of phylacteries. They deem it unlawful to slaughter animals with a knife which is not very sharp, or to use any but a particular kind of wheat for the Passover cakes. Much importance is attached by this sect to works of charity; in this way they are guided by the Yad ha-Khazakah, or “strong hand” of Maimonides, who assigns eight steps or grades to the golden ladder of charity. The ParushÍm and KhasidÍm combine in various proportions; for instance, in Tiberias all are KhasidÍm except the doctor, who is a Parushi.

The Khabad, or third sect, suggests in name the Ebionites, or Jewish Nazarenes, who hold the “great teacher of Nazareth” to be the Messiah, but merely human; this sect, however, has apparently died out. The modern Khabad have a liturgy arranged from their old Rabbi ZelmÍna. They resemble the KhasidÍm, having their own Gute Juden, but they are usually more learned and pious. They are given to hospitality and charity, and attach much importance to visiting the sick. They dip themselves before prayers, read and study much, and meet together on Sabbath evenings to hear the Law expounded by their principal teacher. They keep as a feast the 19th day of Kislef, the third civil and ninth ecclesiastical month (about December); on that day R. Shalomon, the founder of the sect, was liberated from prison.

The AshkenazÍm are divided into social communities according to the European district or city whence they came, and each section is presided over by a scribe or a layman of respectability and good standing. The chief communities of ParushÍm are the Wilna, Grainer, Grodno, Minsk, Nassen, Warsaw, Zuolik, and German. Those of the KhasidÍm are the Volhynian, the Hungaro-Austrian, and the Galician. The Khabad are a community by themselves.

The AshkenazÍm, who are wrongly represented to be considered pariahs by the SephardÍm, have brought from Northern climates a manliness of bearing, a stoutness of spirit, and a physical hardness strongly contrasting with the cowardly and effeminate, the despised and despicable SephardÍm “Jew of Israel’s land.” If spoken to fiercely, they will reply in kind; if struck, they will return the blow; and they do not fear to mount a horse, unlike their Southern brethren, who prefer an ass, or at most an ambling pony, to the best of Arab blood. They will travel by night over difficult and dangerous paths, whereas their congeners tremble to quit the city walls; and they can endure extremes of heat and cold, of hunger and thirst, which might be fatal to any soft Syrian who would imitate them. The AshkenazÍm of the Holy Land are in a word “men”; the SephardÍm are not. “The Spanish and Portuguese Jews are of far higher and more intellectual type than the English and German,” says Dr. Linsdale. Possibly; but in the matter of manliness there is no comparison. And, as has been remarked, the Ashkenazi is “eating up” the Sephardi wherever they meet.

Concerning the so-called unorthodox sects in the Holy Land a few brief details may be given.

The KaraÏtes (CaraÏtes), translated “Readers,” that is “textualists,” assign a literal sense to all Holy Writ, and reject every book posterior to the Law and the Prophets; they are therefore considered pestilent heretics. These Puritans, claiming descent from the Ten Tribes who took no part in the Crucifixion, are scattered throughout Arabia, with Bagdad for a centre; and they are most numerous in Russia and Poland, where they could boast that for four centuries none of their number had ever been found guilty of a serious crime. Henderson the traveller numbers some four thousand of them in the Crimea with their Cohens, or priests. At Pentecost, they read, we are told, as Ha-phatorah, or conclusions of the day, Joel ii. 28-32, whereas other Jews stop at ver. 27. There is still a large colony at Aden, where the English authorities have found nothing to complain of them. Formerly there were many at Damascus; now they have left it en masse: the Protestant cemetery occupies part of their old burial-ground, whose gravestones are distinguished from those of the Jews. In Syria they are mostly confined to Jerusalem, where till lately they numbered seven families (thirty-five souls). Their single, poor synagogue, a small cellar-like chamber, which dates back, they say, for many centuries, lies opposite the big new building of the orthodox. Its sole object of attraction is one old manuscript of the Pentateuch, and the other Jews so hate them that the stranger will not readily find his way to their place of worship. In early 1872 they were reinforced by an emigration from Bagdad numbering forty souls, who reported that many more were on the way. These men all wore Bedawin dresses, which, however, they changed for the usual Jewish garb when once settled in the city.

The Samaritans are now found only at NablÚs, the classical Neapolis, or new town. They claim descent from Ephraim and Manasseh, whilst their Cohens are of course Levites; the orthodox opprobriously call them KÚthÍm, or Babylonians, and despite physical evidence utterly deny their Jewish consanguinity. All contact with them is defiling, as though they were Gentiles. The total is now forty families, or a hundred and thirty-five souls; they will not intermarry with any but their own people; the birth of males, contrary to what might be expected, outnumbers that of females in the proportion of eighty to fifty-five, and consequently the “undying dogmatism” is threatened with dying out. The little sect owes its fame in Europe to the three well-known codices which every stranger hastens to inspect. According to their HakhÁms, whilst repeating the Talmud they study the Targum of R. Levi. They keep their Passover by solar computation, not lunar, like the Hebrews; for instance, in 1871 the former held the feast on May 3, and the latter on April 5. Moreover, they still sacrifice and eat their Paschal Lamb upon Mount Gerizim.

Jerusalem is sometimes visited by some of the “Black Jews” of Malabar and Western India, concerning whom so much absurdity has been written. The “White Jews” of India have a tradition according to which their ancestors, numbering ten thousand souls, emigrated Eastward about a.d. 70, and settled about Cranganore on the Malabar coast. Here they remained till a.d. 1565, when they were driven into the interior by the Portuguese. As no synagogue can be founded without a minimum congregation of ten free and adult males, the white Jews when necessary simply bought back their nine Hindu slaves, manumitted them, circumcised and bathed them, and thus obtained their wishes. The “Reformed British Jews,” mostly AshkenazÍm, who date from the 7th of EllÚl, a.m. 5601 (August 24, 1841), and whose prayer-book is edited by their minister, the Rev. Mr. Marks, are hardly likely to make way in “the East” with such ultra-KaraÏte doctrine as “the sufficiency of the Law of Moses for the guidance of Israel,” and with their opposition to the divinity of the traditions contained in the Mishnah; and in the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds they would only be included in the host

There is little to say concerning the physical peculiarities of the Eastern Jew, who in all the salient points of form and feature remarkably resembles his brother of Houndsditch and the Minories. Here and there the lines are less curved, the profile is straight and high, whilst there are a few local varieties like the fair hair and olive-coloured eyes of Dalmatia. The highest type contains a certain softness of expression, with that decisive cast of mouth and chin which may be seen in the London policeman and in the backwoodsman of the Far West. Although centuries of oppression have necessarily given to the many that cringing, deprecating glance, that shifting look which painfully suggests a tame beast expecting a blow, yet we still find both amongst the AshkenazÍm and the SephardÍm red Jews and black Jews; fierce-eyed, dark-browed, and hollow-cheeked, with piercing acuteness of glance, and an almost reckless look of purpose. Greed and craft, and even ferocity, are to be read in such faces, but rarely weakness, and never imbecility; roughness, unculture, and coarseness are there, not vulgarity, nor want of energy; and the Christian physiognomy by their side looks commonplace when contrasted with those features so full of concentration and vigorous meaning.

These are the same men as those who under happier auspices organize such worldwide institutions as the Alliance IsraËlite Universelle, with its heart in Paris and its limbs extending far and wide on the earth, whilst increasing organization proposes to extend them farther and wider. Its object is simply to promote concerted action amongst the Jews scattered about both hemispheres; to effect unity and community in all matters interesting to the Jewish body politic; to forward the interest of its friends, and to effect the ruin of its enemies. Thus it will eventually absorb by taking under its charge such detached institutions as the Khagal, or Communal Government of the Hebrews in Russia. It is the fashion to praise the organization of the Jesuits, the Freemasons, the Carbonari, the Mormons, and other bodies, who have an esoteric system underlying the exoteric form. As far as my knowledge goes, none can be compared with that of the Jews, because those are local and partial, whereas these are all but universal.

Such men easily become the warriors of commerce, bringing to the battle of interests, the campaign of life, all that boldness and resolution, that persistence and heroism, that subtlety and unscrupulousness which the Patriarchs and the Maccabees carried out into the personal conflict of sword and spear. They become the great potentates of finance and capital, who have agents and reporters in every chief centre of the world; who know every project, what is to flourish and what is to founder; what enterprise is to be effectual, and what is to fail. If a seaport want a dock, a city require a bulwark, or a country demand a railway or a loan, they are ever ready to furnish each and all. And as a rule they are not unfair, they are not mean; indeed there is often a certain generosity in their conditions. But they always bargain for something besides money. They stipulate, for instance, that this man should be allowed to participate in these profits, that another should be excluded from those advantages; their interests are so various and so widespread that they need political power everywhere, and as they must have it so they will have it. One offence, one deadly sin, never forgiven, never forgotten, is insubordination in the ranks, however trifling. Let a secondary firm attempt to throw off the yoke by launching out, for instance, into an enterprise unauthorized by the Great House; straightway its credit is assailed, its acceptances are dishonoured, its ruin is assured. Such are the arts which have enabled the Jew to arrive at his present position. And he may confidently look forward to the time when the whole financial system, not only of Europe from one end to the other, but of the whole world, will be in the hands of a few crafty capitalists, whose immense wealth shall, with a few pulsations of the telegraph, unthrone dynasties and determine the destinies of nations.

It remains now only to touch upon the future prospects of the Jewish race. This important consideration is still subject to two widely different opinions.

The first, which may be called the vapid utterance of the so-called Liberal School, speaks as follows: “In this century we are battering down the ponderous walls of prejudice which nations and sects have erected in past times, for the separation of themselves from their neighbours, or as a coign of vantage from which to hurl offensive weapons at them. Roman Catholic and Jewish emancipation have been conceded, though tardily, and we may fairly hope that in the next generation our political, social, and commercial relations with our fellow-men will be conducted without regard to their religious belief or their ethnological origin.” The trifling objection to this “harmonious and tolerant state of things” is that, though the Christian may give up his faith and race, the Jew, however readily he may throw overboard the former, will cling to the latter with greater tenacity, as it will be the very root and main foundation of his power.

The second is the Judophobic or Roman Catholic view of the supremacy of Jewish influence in the governments and the diplomacy of Europe. It openly confesses its dread of Judaic encroachments, and it goes the full length of declaring that, unless the course of events be changed by some quasi-miraculous agency, the triumph of the Israelite over Christian civilization is inevitable—in fact, that Judaism, the oldest and exclusive form of the great Semitic faith, will at least outlive, if it does not subdue and survive, Christianity, whose triumph has been over an alien race of Aryans. “Gold,” it argues, “is the master of the world, and the Jewish people are becoming masters of the gold. By means of gold they can spread corruption far and wide, and thus control the destinies of Europe and of the world.” For the last quarter of a century the dominant Church in France seems to have occupied itself in disseminating these ideas, and the number of books published by the alarmists and replied to by Jewish authors is far from inconsiderable. Witness the names of MM. Tousseuel, BÉdarride, Th. Halliz, Rev. P. Ratisbonne, and A. C. de Medelsheim, without specifying the contributors to the Union IsraËlite and the Archives IsraËlites of Paris—a sufficient proof of the interest which this question has excited, and of the ability with which it has been discussed in France.

But these are generalisms which require the specification of particulars. Where, however, the field is so extensive, we must limit ourselves to the most running survey of Europe and the Holy Land. Throughout this continent the career of the Jew is at once thriving and promising. The removal of Jewish disabilities in England and the almost universal spread of constitutionalism throughout Europe have told mightily in favour of the Jews. An essential condition of all reform is that the reformer never can say, “Thus far will I go, and no farther.” In sporting parlance, he took off the weight from a dark horse, and the latter is everywhere winning in a canter. The father kept a little shop in the Ghetto; the son has palaces and villas, buys titles, crosses, and other graven images utterly unknown to the Mosaic Law, and intermarries with the historic Christian families of the land. The great, if not the only, danger is that in the outlying parts of Europe, where men are not thoroughly tamed, and where the sword is still familiar to the hand, the Jew advances far too fast; nor is it easy to see how his career can be arrested before it hurries him over the precipice. At this moment Hungary is a case in point. The Magnate, profuse in hospitality, delighting in display, careless of expenditure, and contemptuous of economy, sees all his rich estates, with their flocks and herds, their crops and mines, passing out of his own hands, and contributing to swell the bottomless pocket of the Jewish usurer. But the Magyar is a fiery race; and if this system of legal robbery be allowed to pass a certain point, which, by-the-bye, is not far distant, the Jews must prepare themselves for another disaster right worthy of the Middle Ages. And they will have deserved it.

As regards the restoration of Israel to the Holy Land, that favourite theme of prophecy and poetry, that day-dream of the Jew, at least until he found a country and a home in the far happier regions beyond his ancient seats, no supernatural gift is required to point out the natural course of events. Though the recovery of Jerusalem is the subject of eternal supplication throughout the Jewish world, wealthy and prosperous Jews openly declare that they take no personal interest in the matter. The prayer, in fact, has become a mere formula.[28] Still, with six millions of souls, which will presently become nine, there can be no difficulty in finding volunteers like those who now garrison the four Holy Cities—Jerusalem and Hebron, Tiberias and Safed. A single million of souls would give the Israelite complete command over the Land of Promise in the widest acceptation of the term, and it will not be long before this number can be contributed.

The Jews might readily return to JudÆa; but there is a lion in the path. Russia cares little for Constantinople, which will fall to her in the fulness of time when the fruit is ripe. But she will brook no interference with the Holy Land, except for her own benefit. This power, half European and half Asiatic, greatly indebted withal for her success in life to the mixture which she despises, has the immense advantage of a peculiar and homogeneous creed, in which she believes with childish ardour and which she preaches with virile energy. To her, conquest is not mere increase of area, of physical growth. It is extending the field of proselytism, of religion; and this view of national progress and of racial duty is at once her strength and her weakness, her glory and her shame. She finds the headquarters of Christianity necessary to the full development of her religious superiority, and in the ever-increasing weakness of the Latin Church she descries her best opportunity.

Thus, as modern travellers assure us, Russia is quietly absorbing the Holy Places in Syria and Palestine. A bran-new Jerusalem of church, convent, and hospice, which a few days’ work would convert into forts and barracks, has lately risen outside the grey old walls and towers of Jebus, concealing them from the ardent gaze of the pilgrim as he tops the last hill leading to the Jaffa Gate. At Hebron the Muscovite was not allowed to buy building-ground within the settlement; he bought the oak which passes itself off for Abraham’s terebinth, and here again will be a church, convent, and hospice. Jacob’s Well at Shechem has shared the same fate, and even Tiberias is threatened with a fourth church, convent, and hospice. The so-called Greeks,[29] whose Muscovite sympathies are well known, were granted such boons as the monopoly of Mount Tabor, whose classic and Saracenic ruins were ruthlessly pulled down to build a cockney church and convent. This usurpation became so intolerable, that in the summer of 1872 the Latin monks attacked the intruders, seized vi et armis a part of the mountain to which they laid claim, and enclosed their conquest with a wall. On the other hand, when the Latins proved an undoubted right to their ancestral chapel at Kefr Kenna (Cana in Galilee), the Greeks were instructed to set up a rival claim, and both were formally dismissed with the oyster shell, the oyster having been pronounced WukÚf, or mosque endowment.

This Russian pre-emption of the Holy Land is a benefit to the Jew, although the latter may not recognize it. But for this he would hasten to fulfil the prophecy; he would buy up the country, as indeed he is now doing at Jerusalem;[30] he would conquer the people by capital, and he would once more form a nation.

But here the question obtrudes itself: “If Judaism should again prevail—indeed its advocates say it shall prevail universally—how long could it endure?”

Those who know the codes of the Talmud and of the Safed School, which are still, despite certain petty struggles, the life-light of Judaism, will have no trouble in replying. A people whose highest ideas of religious existence are the superstitious sanctification of Sabbath, the washing of hands, the blowing of ram’s horns, the saving rite of circumcision, and the thousand external functions compensating for moral delinquencies, with Abraham sitting at the gate of Hell to keep it closed for Jews; a community which would declare marriage impossible to some twelve millions of Gentiles, forbid them the Sabbath, and sentence to death every “stranger” reading an Old Testament; which would have all the Ger who are not idolaters without religion, whilst forbidding those whom it calls “idolaters” (the Christians) to exercise the commonest feelings of humanity; which would degrade and insult one-half of humanity, the weaker sex, and which would sanction slavery, and at the same time oppress and vilify its slaves by placing them on a level with oxen and asses; a faith which, abounding in heathen practices, would encourage the study of the Black Art, would loosen every moral obligation, would grant dispensations to men’s oaths, and would sanction the murder of the unlearned; a system of injustice, whose Sanhedrins, at once heathenish and unlawful, have distinguished themselves only for force and fraud, for superabundant self-conceit, for cold-blooded cruelty, and for unrelenting enmity to all human nature,—such conditions, it is evident, are not calculated to create or to preserve national life. The civilized world would never endure the presence of a creed which says to man, “Hate thy neighbour unless he be one of ye,” or of a code written in blood, not in ink, which visits the least infractions of the Rabbinical laws with exorcism and excommunication, with stoning and flogging to death.[31] A year of such spectacles would more than suffice to excite the wrath and revenge of outraged humanity; the race, cruel, fierce, dogged, and desperate as in the days of Titus and Hadrian, would defend itself to the last; the result would be another siege and capture of Jerusalem, and the “Chosen People” would once more lie prostrate in their blood and be stamped out of the Holy Land.

Briefly, it is evident that nothing but Russian preponderance in Syria and Palestine prevents its being reoccupied by its old intolerant and persecuting owners,[32] and that to these the greatest possible misfortune would be the granting of their daily, weekly, and yearly prayer—

Next year may we meet at Jerusalem.

CHAPTER IV
THE JEW AND THE TALMUD

The present chapter contains many an assertion which will make the expert Talmudist smile. It will, however, serve one most useful purpose—namely, to show what the Christians and Muslims of the East hold to be the belief of the Hebrew race and the practices of men dwelling within the same walls as themselves. That this hostility to the Eastern Jews is no mere unreasoning prejudice, but is founded in some sort on fact, the following brief survey of the Rabbinical and Talmudic writings will show. A people which has such a vindictive Oral Law is sure to excite the spirit of retaliation, for obviously the Law exists not merely in letter, but in the spirit.

In a notorious trial in Damascus within living memory, which roused the anti-Jewish feeling in that city and indeed throughout Syria to a frenzy, certain learned doctors brought into court as evidence a number of manuscripts and printed books. It was remarked that the texts were full of lacunÆ. This was explained by the fact that they are so written, since Europe began to read the Rabbinical and Talmudic writings, for the purpose of concealing what might excite odium. The divines supply the omissions by inserting them in writing, or preferably by committing them to memory. Thus they suppress offensive sectarian words, such as Goi (plural GoyÍm), the wicked, the forgetful of God—that is to say, Gentiles in general, including Christians and Muslims; MinÍm, or KaraÏte Jews; Kuthim, Samaritans; NakhrÍm, strangers or infidels, corresponding with the Arabic KÁfirin, or the Turkish Giaour; and NdoyyÍm, or MesÚmedÍm, in Arabic MahrÚmÍn or MurtaddÍn, the excommunicated. And it is evident that they had good reasons for this prudence; the Seder Adarhout, for instance, enumerates with the object of refuting them many foul crimes attributed to the Jews.

The most important and pregnant tenet of modern Jewish belief is that the Ger, or stranger, in fact all those who do not belong to their religion, are brute beasts, having no more rights than the fauna of the field. Thus in Lucio Ferraris (Prompta Bibliotheca, Vol. III., sub lit. E and H, Order 4, Tract 8) we read: “PrÆcipitur omnibus JudÆis ut Christianes omnes loco brutorum habeant, nec aliter eos tractent quam bruta animalia.” The argument from which this abominable belief is derived appears to be as follows: “When Abraham was ordered to offer up Isaac (Gen. xxii.), he saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him. But when he saw the place of sacrifice,[34] he said unto his young men, ‘Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.’” The Talmud declares that Abraham, who had seen God, asked his servants if they had likewise done so; and on their replying in the negative, he said to them, “Abide ye here with the ass,” meaning that they were animals like the ass. But this is by no means contrary to Scripture doctrine; for instance, Jeremiah (x. 8) calls the votaries of false religion “altogether brutish and foolish.” Thus the Law and the Prophets belong exclusively to the Jews; the Gentile reading or even buying a copy should be put to death. All the books of other faiths must be burnt, even though they contain the name of Jehovah; and if any but a Hebrew write the name of God in a Bible which is not a Jewish manuscript, the volume must also be burnt.

The Jew who does not keep the Sabbath (Saturday)[35] according to Rabbinical Law must suffer excision, be stoned to death, or incur the flogging of rebellion, that is, he must be “beaten until his soul go out,” like all those who transgress affirmative commandments. Some Rabbis hold that a Hebrew, hearing the sound of the trumpet, should stand or sit in the same position until the evening of the Holy Day. All manner of work is absolutely forbidden to the Jew: he is guilty of capital crime if he carry a snuff-box or a pocket-handkerchief; he may not light a fire to cook his meals, nor extinguish it to prevent his house being burnt down. Until the days of the Maccabees he could not defend his life against an enemy; and when Strabo informs us that Pompey (b.c. 63) stormed Jerusalem “by waiting for the day of fast, on which the Jews were in the habit of abstaining from all work,” he evidently alludes to the Saturday. The modern Jew in Syria and Palestine can walk only two thousand paces upon the Sabbath, except when travelling through the dangerous desert.[36] He will not receive money on that day, or transact any business, however profitable; it is moreover the fashion to keep a grave face, and to speak as little as possible. Yet he is not the strictest of Sabbatarians, and his women rather enjoy being called upon between the services[37] in order to display their dresses and jewellery. Of course there are many “guiles,” technically so called, in order to elude restrictions which savour of the degrading spirit peculiar to the Oral Law, which is little more than the Rabbinical Criminal Code intended to raise and provide for an aristocracy of savants. For instance, most wealthy families, forgetting that he who hires a man to murder a third person is really the murderer, habitually keep Muslim servants, who can boil coffee and serve pipes to Gentile friends. And the latter must by no means join in honouring the day. According to the Talmud (chap, iv., Sanhedrin, of the fourth Mishnic Section, or order Seder Nezikin), the Gentile sanctifying the Sabbath must be put to death without asking questions, even as the Lord said to him, “Thou shalt not rest day nor night.”[38]

The Oral Law is superior in dignity to all others.[39] In the Prompta Bibliotheca we find (p. 297, Order 4, Tract 4, Dist. 10): “Gravius plectendos esse qui contradicunt verbis Scribarum quam verbis MosaicÆ Legis, quibus qui contradixerit, morte moriatur.” And he must die by the flogging of rebellion, a Rabbinical practice utterly unknown to the Pentateuch, which ordered forty stripes, whereas in the New Dispensation the offender must be flogged without intermission till he expires. Thus the Scribes and Pharisees still sit in Moses’ seat. The modern Jew follows the creed of Maimonides (twelfth century), which contains thirteen fundamental articles, the last being the resurrection of the dead. The ancient Jew obeyed the Twelve Commandments without a word about the resurrection. The sojourning proselyte who would be saved must become a Noahite, and obey the Seven Commandments assured to the NoachidÆ; the HakhÁm AbÚ'l AfÍya gave them as follows:

1. Thou shalt not worship planets, stars, or idols.

2. Thou shalt not fornicate nor commit adultery.

3. Thou shalt not slay (man).

4. Thou shalt not steal.[40]

5. Thou shalt not eat in the street the flesh of a lamb.

6. Thou shalt not castrate the sons of Abraham, mankind, or any other animal.

7. Thou shalt not join the several races of animals.[41]

More correctly speaking, this code given to the NoachidÆ, or Noahites, commands them to abstain from the Seven Deadly Sins: (1) idolatry; (2) irreverence to God; (3) homicide; (4) robbery, fraud, and plunder—generally, not only of a co-religionist; (5) adultery; (6) disobedience and misrule; and (7) eating part of an animal still living, or the blood of the dead. The latter was added (Gen. ix. 4) to the Six Sins forbidden to Adam—namely, idolatry, blasphemy, shedding of blood, incest, robbery, and injustice.

But the sojourning proselyte[42] receives scant consolation, as he may not be received when the Jubilee cannot be observed (Hilchoth Issure Biah, xiv. 7, 8); and this ceased after Reuben, Gad, and half Manasseh were led away captive, or in b.c. 884, according to common chronology. Add to this 1,873, and we have 2,757 years since the last feast of the kind, and we have twenty-seven centuries and a half since any Gentiles were converted from the errors of idolatry to the religion of the sons of Noah.

Those who transgress any of the Commandments transgress them all.[43] The goods of Gentiles who have not conformed to the Noahite code, that is to say, all now living, are lawful to the Hebrews. This right was first conferred by Jehovah during the Exodus from Egypt, and it was confirmed to the descendants of the wanderers by the Talmud (Baba Masiaah, or Middle Gate, second of the fourth order, and Abodah Zarah, eighth of the same).

Rabbinical religion is rampant in the kitchen. Blood first forbidden to Noah (Gen. ix. 4), and afterwards to all the sons of Abraham (Lev. iii. 17 and vi. 30)—because it was supposed to contain the vital principle which it does not—must be drained out of the meat before this can be eaten. The usual practice is by macerating it in water for thirty minutes, and leaving it in salt for an hour. It is then taken out and washed again, a peculiar wooden tub and sieve being used for the purpose. In Morocco the Jews also pound the flesh till the fibre is broken, and thus it becomes more tender and less able to be kept—this, however, is a local practice unknown to the Jews elsewhere. The Talmud declares that there are two kinds of blood pleasing to the Lord—viz. (1) that of the Paschal holocaust; (2) that of circumcision. In the books of Moses we find that blood is used as a purifier. For instance, the Lawgiver (Exod. xxiv. 6-8) took half of the blood drained from victims and put it in basins, with which he sprinkled the people to cleanse them from the abominations of the Egyptians, and the other half he sprinkled upon the altar. Human blood is not used by us in its pure state; nor can we[44] call it human, for the Gentiles are mere vermin, and of their daughters it is said, “Cursed be he that lieth with any beast.” It must also mostly undergo through manipulation a change of essence.[45] Nor is it administered indiscriminately, but only to the most zealous. On the eve of the Passover the chief Scribe attends the oven, and mixes what he pleases with the cakes, which are then sent round to the congregation.

A Jew abandoning the faith of Israel must die the death; also he should be surely slain for all such breaches of the Law as committing adultery. All who admit the doctrine of the Trinity, whether they be Jewish perverts, Christians, Muslims, or Pagans; all Hebrews who have violated the secrets of the Synagogue;[46] and all those especially who speak against or who injure a co-religionist, have forfeited their lives. In these days minor offenders are usually excommunicated;[47] but those who have been informers or who proved themselves hostile to Israel must be killed at all risks, either by the Jews themselves, or, better still, through the local authorities. This is an invariable rule.[48]

We read in the tract Sanhedrin (fourth of fourth order, p. 58) that the Gentile who strikes a Jew has committed a capital offence; this ordinance is as old as the sojourn of Moses in Egypt. He who strikes a Jew strikes the Deity. The “sons of Noah” may be slain by the sentence of a single Rabbi, or upon the testimony of a solitary witness, although the latter be a relation. A descendant of the Hebrews who, learning the true God in the days of Abraham, thereby separated themselves from and exalted themselves above the rest of humanity, may not be put to death but by the decision of twenty Rabbis and on the testimony of two witnesses. A Gentile forfeits life if he cause a pregnant Jewess or her fruit to perish; a Jew is not to be punished capitally for such crime, but he must pay for the loss of the child (p. 57). The “son of Noah” who blasphemes the Holy Name, who has committed adultery with or who has slain a co-religionist, ceases to merit death by becoming a sojourning proselyte; but he must not be suffered to escape if he has slain a Jew, or if he has committed adultery with a Jewess (p. 71). The Jew must not contract friendship with Gentiles, lest, an oath being necessary, he be compelled to swear by an idol (p. 63). He may not eat bread prepared by the heathen, for fear of undue intimacy being the result. Market bread may be bought and eaten, but on condition that it was made for sale, not for private use and then sold—it is usual to burn a bit of such bread before using it. A Jew may not eat victuals cooked by Gentiles, although vessels from a Jewish house were used in the presence of Jews—this extends even to a roasted egg.

The tract Abodah Zarah, before alluded to, asserts (p. 4) that all the commandments kept by Jews[49] shall bear friendly and favourable witness in heaven before all the assembled souls of men, and to the confusion of every other faith. Hebrews dwelling out of the four Holy Cities are as idol-worshippers, but without blame. A Jew going to a Gentile marriage feast eats impure food, although the meats be cooked by Jews and served by Jews in the presence of Jews; he even commits a sin if he enters the house within thirty days of the coming ceremony (p. 8). Gentiles should be prevented as much as possible purchasing immovable property. It is not allowed to speak well of a Gentile, man or woman, and it is a sin to make a present to them (p. 20), to greet or to approach them; and the Jew becomes as ceremonially impure by handling anything touched by them, by drinking out of the same cup, or by sleeping under the same roof, as if eating with them. Hebrews should never tether their beasts in places not belonging to them, at least without locking them up, lest the heathen plunder or pollute them. Gentiles preferred the Jews’ beasts to their own women, because evil entered into Eve on the day when the serpent (demon) committed adultery with her. A Jewess may not live amongst the heathen, because possibly the latter do not hold adultery to be a sin; a Jew should also beware for fear of their killing him, as they probably will do. Israel was purified of every sin upon Mount Sinai; but the descendants of the peoples not present there preserve their perversity (p. 22). If a Hebrew wayfarer meet a Gentile armed with a sword (worn on the left), he should pass on the other’s right side, and vice versa if the stranger has only a staff, so that the arm can be seized before the weapon can be used; he must also name a distant place when asked his journey’s end, in order that the Gentile may defer slaying him till too late (p. 25).[50] The better to prevent all intimacy, the Jew must not buy wine or vinegar from a Gentile, who also may perhaps have used it in pagan rites. If a Christian, a Muslim, or an idolater touch a cup containing wine, the Jewish owner must throw away the wine or sell it to the heathen, and cleanse the cup. The same is the case with grapes. The Law forbids the Israelites to marry the daughters of the Seven Tribes that held the land before the conquest—namely, the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. This, say the writers of and commentators on the Talmud, arose from the fact of these women being impure from their childhood upwards. Others, however, whilst including all Gentiles in these Seven Tribes, assert that the prohibition was not on account of any special impurity, such women being vermin or brute beasts not subject to the normal feminine infirmities. Thus the learned restrain their weaker brethren who might suppose that an impure Gentile woman is pure to them, and who might even extend it to the case of a Jewess. Hence again the deduction that only the Hebrews are human beings (p. 35).[51]

Tract Arubim (second of the second order, Seder Moed, Of Appointed Seasons) declares (p. 62) that if a Jew live under the same roof with a Gentile who breaks the Sabbath (Saturday),[52] the former, lest he be robbed, should drive out the latter by hiring the whole house. But he may expel the heathen as he can or as he pleases; all tenements inhabited by others than Jews are dens of beasts which cannot become householders. The “son of Noah” who steals even a farthing should be put to death—one of ten commandments given by God in His covenant with Noah—and he cannot be pardoned unless he restore the stolen goods. But God enjoined this restitution only upon Gentiles becoming Israelites (i.e. sojourning proselytes); all other thieves must be instantly and pitilessly slain.

In tract Ohaleth (second of the sixth order, called Seder Taharoth, or Of Purification) we read (§ 6) that the graves of Gentiles cannot be held impure because they are not tenanted by human beings, and that when the law declares sitting upon tombs a cause of defilement it alludes only to those of Jews. Chapter Baba Bathra (third tract of the fourth order) declares (§ i, p. 10, also repeated in another part of the same tract) that all alms given by Jews are acceptable to God, whereas those of the Gentiles are so many sins because their objects are ostentation and the preservation of their children. If, however, the Jew declare that his alms-deeds are meant to save his family and to win Paradise, still they are grateful to Jehovah—a privilege allowed only to the children of Israel. In the same tract we are also informed that Esau, the son of Isaac, sinned five times in one day, by committing adultery with a heathen, by slaying his neighbour, by profaning the name of his God, by insulting the resurrection of the dead at the coming of the Messiah, and by degrading the rights of primogeniture.[53] Rabbi Shalomon argues, from the fact of Ishmael laughing when his brother Isaac was born, that Sarah concluded therefrom, either that he held her to be an adulteress, or that she saw him commit a murder; thus he draws the deduction that Ishmael had broken the Seven Commandments, and that consequently his descendants cannot bear witness against Jews (p. 16).

Tract Bechoroth (on Primogeniture, fourth of the fifth order, Seder Kodashim, Of Holy Things) gives (i. 17) the formula of the Scribes’ prayers, and tells us that there are two things which hinder men from keeping the law of God—the action of demons and dependence upon Gentiles. The Lord explains to the angels that usury is permitted only to the Hebrews, who, being ordered to give thanks after food, praise their Creator even when they have eaten only an egg or an olive (p. 20). A Jew may not pray before a naked Gentile, though the latter be in the category of a wild beast (p. 25). This tract relates that a Jew, beaten by a Scribe when detected in adultery with an Egyptian woman, complained to a Gentile ruler that the law had been taken into private hands. The Scribe pleaded that he had surprised the criminal with a she-ass, and called the prophet Elijah to bear witness. “Why didst thou not slay him?” asked the magistrate. The reply was that, since the children of Israel had been driven from their own country, such a punishment could not be inflicted by them, but that the judge could do as he pleased. When both left the court, the Jew charged the Scribe with having called Elijah as a witness to a lie. “Wretch!” exclaimed the learned man, “and are they not the same as she-asses?” But as the Jew was about to return and report this explanation, the Scribe slew him with his staff (i., p. 58). Hence it appears that this tenet is a religious secret whose violation merits death. When a Jew looks upon the grave of a brother Jew, he must say: “Blessed is He who hath created us by law, who has promised to raise us again by law, and who knoweth our number; blessed is He who revives the dead.” But if the tomb be that of a Gentile, he must say: “Shame upon thy mother, cursed be she that bare thee; for the end of the heathen shall be dry and desolate as the soil of the desert” (p. 58). It also explains earthquakes by the lamentations of the Lord, who bewails the miseries of the Jews (p. 59). If a Jew find an object lost, we will say, by a Muslim, he must not restore it, even though he knew the proprietor. Also, if a Gentile make any mistake in accounting with the Jew, or leave property in his house, the latter, when not in fear of the authorities, must rob him. At all times, in fact, the Jew should spoil the Gentile as much as possible. If one Jew injure another, though even his personal enemy and the greatest villain in the world, especially if such injury be to the advantage of a Gentile, the Jew shall surely die (chap. 388 of the Khalehah Orah HaÍm Meshat, one of the most accredited parts of the Oral Law). All those present are bound to put the denouncer to death before he can do the deed; and if he has done it, they must remove him from this world, every Israelite in the place contributing to pay the assassin. The oath of a Gentile or a Samaritan cannot be taken in evidence against a Jew. If a dispute occurs between two Israelites, they must go before their own judge.[54] It is sinful to have recourse to foreign tribunals, and all the decisions of the latter, when adverse to Jews, must be quashed. Although the heathen court pass sentence according to Hebrew Law, the plaintiff or denouncer becomes impious, sacrilegious, and religiously excommunicated, whilst the Rabbi is bound to make him lose his cause by every possible contrivance, even by suborning false witnesses against him. And at last due punishment must be dealt out. The latter is not a Biblical command, but it results from the commentaries on the Talmuds. When these works were written Muhammadanism did not exist; Muslims therefore are now included amongst the Gentiles. They are not, however, like the Christian idolaters.

In tract Keritoth (or Excision, the seventh of the fifth order, Kodashim) the learned R. Moshe Meimunah, after describing a fight between two bulls,[55] the one belonging to a Jew, the other to an Egyptian, declares (p. 36) that, in case of a dispute between men of these different races, the Hebrew, if in the right, should go to the local authority and say, “See, such is the Law!” But he must not do so if he prefer the Jewish tribunal. The Rabbi adds that no one should be astonished at such a condition, for all who do not keep the revealed commandments are not men, but beings whose sole purpose upon earth is to serve men. Tract Muad Katon (Little Feast, eleventh of the second order) forbids Jews to salute Gentiles unless in fear of them, and even then never twice. When it was observed to the author that many Scribes had so done, he replied that doubtless it was with some such mental reservation as this, “I salute thee, A., son of B.,” meaning the Rabbi who had taught the speaker to read the Scriptures (p. 62). El Ruzich, in his commentaries on the Talmudic tract Abodah Zarah, speaking of Hebrew accusers of Hebrews and eaters of flesh not ceremonially killed, declares their death to be a necessity.

At this point it may be advisable to offer a short view of the two Great Schools of the Holy Land which have influenced Jewish thought in Christian times. These are, first, that of Tiberias, whence issued the Talmud of Jerusalem, followed by the Talmud of Babylon; and, second, the School of Safed, which rendered itself remarkable by the extreme opinions of its commentaries and glossaries.[56]

We read in a Jewish writer (M. J. Cohen on the authority of the Talmud, Archives IsraËlites, 1841)[57]: “When after two hundred years of energetic struggles against an empire which was fated to be universal the Hebrew race found its political nationality in peril, the first want felt was to lighten, as much as possible, the bonds of personality, so as morally to preserve by identity of belief that unity which dispersion was about to dissolve. And the plan which at once suggested itself was to determine, by an invariable method, the principles of the Mosaic Law, to develop their sense, and to fix their interpretation.

“But in those times, if I may so speak, the lights of Israel were eclipsed; ages had elapsed since the voices of the prophets had delivered to this people the Oracles of God; and divine inspiration, the heightening of the national faculties by supernatural means, seemed to have returned to its home in heaven. Moreover, after the destruction of Jerusalem and the expulsion of the Jews, all authority had disappeared with national power, and, social organization no longer existing, man could not magisterially impose his opinion upon others. The only rational step in this state of things was to assemble all the Israelites, or those who represented them, and to form a sovereign synod.”

The Jewish Senate, Sanhedrin ([Greek: S??ed????: Synedrion]),[58] or national council, was first transferred from the ruins of the Holy City to Javneh, and after many removes to SaffÚrÍah,[59] the Sephores which in the days of Josephus was ever faithful to the Romans. Finally, about the middle of the second century, during the reign of Antoninus Pius (a.d. 138-161), it was transferred to Tiberias, another city of Galilee. Rabbi YahÚda, universally known as ha-Kodesh, or the saint, was the Nashi (Prince) of his nation and the President of the Sanhedrin. He lived at SaffÚrÍah, where there is a cave through which the Roman Emperor, whose reign in history is almost a blank, used to visit him from Tiberias; this tunnel is now blocked up. The modern Jews residing in Galilee are not agreed whether the Great Rabbi died at SaffÚrÍah, or at TÚrean, a neighbouring village, where two large caves exist; but neither of them shows traces of a tomb. When this Prince of Israel died, it was Friday evening, and the sun stood still whilst his corpse was carried to its distant grave, lest even the body might break the Sabbath.[60]

“The work of this Sanhedrin consisted in committing to paper that which had before been entrusted to memory and had perpetuated itself by tradition—the jurisprudence of the Jews, the various interpretations of the Law by the principal doctors, and the rules of man’s duty; in other words, all that was called the Oral Law. Thus the Synod began by transgressing a principle of Israelitism, which until those days had decreed that the supplementary code should never be written, and hence indeed its vulgar name. In this point the Œcumenical Council followed the example of Hadrian (a.d. 117-138), the adopted father of Antoninus Pius, who also commanded the jurist Salvius Julianus to draw up the Edictum Perpetuum, or fixed code, and the Responsa Prudentium, which before his time formed an unwritten corps of doctrine embodying legal decisions and precedents. The book, which was compiled by R. YahÚda, with the adhesion of the Jewish majority, received the name of Mishnah, ‘doubling,’ or repetition of the Law, and its principles became obligatory upon all men.” The great work was completed, according to some, about a.d. 119; David Ganz prefers a.d. 219, or a short time before the compiler’s death; whilst others contend that R. YahÚda collected the principles of the code, and that the nation accepted it by order of Gamaliel, his son, and successor in the princely dignity of Nashi and presidency of the Sanhedrin;[61] “and others again make it of still later date. At all events, it is the most ancient composition known to the Jews after the Law and the Prophets.”

By almost imperceptible degrees the notes and commentaries upon this text grew to formidable proportions, and became a special science, whose technical name, found in the Book of Chronicles (2 xiii. 22 and xxiv. 27), is Midrash, from darash; in Arabic, dars, a lesson. Of the innumerable methods of studying these Holy Writs, the three principal are embodied in the Persian ParadÍs, the Arabic Firdaus, and the Greek [Greek: ?a?ade?s??: Paradeisos], written Semitically without vowels PRDS, and the mysterious letters were assumed mneumonically as the initial of a technical word. Thus P (Peshat, the simple rendering of words) recorded the elementary law of Talmudic exegesis, “No verse of Scripture practically admits any sense but the literal sense,”[62] although in a different or familiar signification it may be explained in a host of ways. R (Remiz, the Arabic Ramz, a secret, intimation, insinuation, or suggestion of meaning) illustrates certain letters and signs apparently superfluous and explained only by tradition; in a more general manner, it gave rise to a memoria technica and a stenography resembling the Roman Notaricon. Points and notes were added to the margins of manuscripts, and thus was founded the Massorah (tradition), or diplomatic conservation of the text, intended to preserve its purity. D (Derush, illustration) was the familiar application of historical, traditional, anecdotical, allegorical, and prophetical sayings to the actual state of events; it was a sermon aided by ethics, logic, poetry, parable, proverb, apologue, and the vast mass of legendary lore known as the Hagadah (plural Hagadoth), as opposed to the Halakah,[63] or dogmatic part—perhaps it was suggested by the New Testament. Finally, the fourth and last, S (Sod, secret, mystery), included the mystical and esoterical sciences of theosophy, metaphysics, angelology, and a host of supernatural visions, brilliant and fantastic. It borrowed with impartial hand from the magic of Egypt, the myths of Hermes Trismegistos, the works of the Platonists and Neo-Platonists, and the labours of the Christian Gnostics. Few were initiated into “the Creation,” or “the Chariot,” as it was called, alluding to the vision of Ezekiel; yet its attractions were such that at last “Paradise” was confined to this special branch of esoteric science, even as later in Gnosticism it came to signify the Spiritual Christ.

Yet the Talmudic authors lay down the principle that their decisions are in no wise absolute, but can always be modified by a power equal to that which lay them down.[64] Their sole object was to fix the sense and the rules of Written Law; for as MoÏse de Coucy says in his S'mag, or Great Book of Precepts: “If the interpretation of the Oral Law had not been added to the Written Law, the whole code would have been obscure and unintelligible, because Holy Writ is full of passages which seem to oppose and contradict one another.” RambÁni Maimonides of Cordova declares (Introduction to his Guide, Vol. I., p. 29): “Thus we find continually written in the Talmud, ‘The beginning of the chapter differs from the end’; and the explanation is given, ‘Because the first part emanates from such-and-such a doctor, and the last from another.’ Furthermore, we read, ‘Rabbi YahÚda the Holy approved the opinion of that doctor in that case, and merely records the opinions of this doctor in this case, without even naming him.’” The following formulas are also frequent: “To whom belongs this anonymous assertion?” R. “To A. B., the doctor!” and, “To whom belongs our paragraph of the Mishnah?” R. “To such-and-such a person!”

To resume the history of the Talmud.

Some years after the publication of the Mishnah in the third century (a.d. 230-270), R. Yochanan, who for eighty years had been President of the Sanhedrin, undertook a commentary on the text like the Sharh, which accompanies the Arabic Matu. Aided, it is said, by Rab and Samuel, the disciples of Gamaliel, son of R. YahÚda, he produced about a.d. 390 a book which, united with the Mishnayoth, received the title Talmud (doctrine or learning) of Jerusalem, though written at Tiberias. The product of the Schools of Palestine, it was composed in the West AramÆan tongue; and it calls the Mishnic text by the simple name of Halakah (rule), or dogmatic part. The School of Tiberias flourished apparently in the days of St. Jerome, and passed into oblivion during the fourth and early fifth centuries.

In a.d. 367 Askhi, President of the Babylonian Sanhedrin, whilst teaching the Mishnah, annually commented upon two tracts of that work, which, being concise, and as it were axiomatic, like all books that announce legislative principles, required explanation of the author’s exact intention. He was aided by the opinions of many doctors omitted in the Mishnah, either those who died before R. YahÚda the Holy had finished his labours, or the many who followed during the ensuing years. In order that his learning might not be lost to the world, he compiled and transcribed thirty-five tracts, and died a.d. 427. His son Mar and Marimon his disciple continued the work, and after seventy-three years appeared the Gemara, complement or conclusion. It was written in the Eastern AramÆan tongue, and it corresponds with the Hasheyah of Arabic standard works.

The Mishnah and the Gemara, now forming a single code, became known to history as the Talmud Babli (of Babylon); and when the Talmud is mentioned, the second work, being the fuller and the more minute, is always meant.[65] Presently the Talmudists separated into two great and rival schools in ante-Christian times: that of Hillel,[66] remarkable for his learning, his humility, and his charity, extending even so far as to forbid usury (Tract Baba Metzin, folio 17^b); and that of Shammai, inflexible in principles and often inclining to severity.

Both of these voluminous compositions are essentially a corpus juris, to be compared with the Edictum Perpetuum and Responsa Prudentium, with the Pandects, the NovellÆ,[67] and the Institutes. They form an encyclopÆdia of JudÆan Law, divine and human, national and international, laical and ecclesiastic, civil and criminal; a doctrinal, judicial, and sentential digest, dealing in exegesis and hermeneutics; a huge compilation of what Muslim divines call FatwÁ, or decisions upon legal subjects; and a thesaurus of ceremonial observances borrowed from the Oral Law and the traditions of the heads of schools from Rabbi Gamaliel downwards.[68] Composed in the East, that classic land of the supernatural, they abound in Hagadistic matter, wild and picturesque legends sometimes inculcating moral lessons, like the four nocturnal spectres LilÍth, Naama, Aguerith, and Mahala,[69] at other times puerile tales of the great angels Patspatsiah, Tashbach, Hadarniel, Enkatham, Pastam, Sandalphon, Shamsiel, and Prasta. Its historical, topographical, ethnographical, and geographical information must be received with the greatest reserve, coming from authors of different ages and of several values. For instance, the Gemara (Sanhedrin, vi. 2) informs us that our Lord, having vainly endeavoured during forty days to find an advocate, was sentenced, and on the 14th of Nisan was stoned and afterwards hanged. It is a storehouse of curious allusions to the products of various countries, the occupations of races, agriculture, gardening, professions and trades, arts and sciences, connubial relations, manners and customs, the interiors of houses, and even dress. It portrays the cosmopolitanism and the luxury of Rome in her later days, thereby filling up the somewhat meagre sketches of the post-classical school. We find in the Mishnah allusions to the fish of Spain, the apples of Crete, the cheese of Bithynia, the zythus,[70] lentils, and beans of Egypt, the citrons of Greece, the wines of Italy, the beer of Media, the garments of India and Pelusium, the shirts of Cilicia, and the veils of Arabia.

“At five years of age,” says the Mishnah, “let the child begin to study the Scriptures; let him continue so doing till the age of ten, when he may begin to study the Mishnah; at the age of fifteen let him begin the Gemara” (T. Aboth, chap. v.). This passage in the “vast work or ocean of learning,” as some call it, could not but be distasteful to Christianity. The tone adopted in speaking of the Almighty is anthropomorphic and anthropocentric in the extreme.[71] God spends a fourth part of the day in studying the Law. At every watch of the night He sits and roars like a lion, saying, “Woe is Me that I have laid desolate My house and burned My sanctuary, and sent My children into captivity among the nations of the world” (Berachoth). He plays for three hours every day with the leviathan. And bear in mind there are far more objectionable representations than these in the writings of the Rabbis. It revels more than any known faith in the degradation of women; the Rabbinic court declares women “disqualified by the Law from giving testimony”; the Talmud excludes them from the public worship of God, and teaches that they are under no obligation to learn the revealed will of their Creator,—peculiarly antipathetic doctrines to those who believe in an Immaculate Virgin and in a St. Mary Magdalen. Moreover, the large space given to cursing the Jew and the non-Jew, and to the unhallowed practices of magic and necromancy, the summoning and conversing with devils and spirits, the advocacy of astrology, charms, and philters, served as a pretext for Pope and Inquisition to attack it. In a.d. 553 Justinian proscribed it by Novella 146 as a “tissue of puerilities, of fables, of iniquities, of insults, of imprecations, of heresies, and of blasphemies”; it was destroyed by Gregory IX. in a.d. 1230; it was burnt in Paris by Innocent IV. (a.d. 1244); and it was proscribed by Clement IV., by Honorius[72] IV., and by John XXII. The first printed edition (Venice, 1520) saved it, and not until the third had appeared (Basle, 1578) did it come under the eye of the censor.

In 1553 and 1555 Julius III. promulgated a proclamation against what he called grotesquely the Talmud Gulnaroth; and this proceeding was repeated by Paul IV. in 1559, by Pius V. in 1566, and by Clement VIII. in 1592 and 1599.

A well-known anti-Talmudical writer remarked in 1836: “The promised German translation of the Talmud, if ever completed, must without any discussion overthrow Talmudism. Its exhibition in any European language is the most fatal attack that can be made on its authority.” This is utterly unphilosophical; the Book of Mormon, with all its Americanisms and its internal evidences of futile forgery, confirmed instead of destroying Mormonism. The Mishnah was translated into Latin by Surenhusius (Amsterdam, three vols. 4^o) as early as 1698-1703, and into German by the Chaplain J. J. Rabi (Onolzbach & Ansbach, first to sixth part, 4^o) in 1760-1763. Without any knowledge of Hebrew or AramÆan, those who read Latin, French and Italian, German and English, will find in any great library—that of the British Museum for instance—a translation of almost every part, and they may be assured that the small remnant still untranslated contains nothing of importance. The modern verdict is that the Talmuds are a “spotted orb,” and that they contain two distinct elements—the sacred light in the true interpretation of the word of God, and the purely human darkness in its folly and infirmity. But it does not confirm the following assertion of the Initiation of Youth (Rabbi Ascher): “The Talmudical writers enjoin upon us to treat Christians as our own brethren in every social matter.”[73]

The second great Rabbinical School arose at Safed, also a city of Galilee, and rising within sight of Tiberias. Benjamin of Tudela (a.d. 1163) visited the tombs of Hillel and Shammai, “near MerÚn, which is Maron,” supposed to be the Beth-maron of the Talmud; but he says nothing about Jews being in Safed, then a fortress held by the Templars. “The city set upon a hill” is also ignored by travellers of the next three hundred years, and appears in history only about the sixteenth century.[74] It then became the great centre of Jewish learning—in fact, another Jerusalem. The children of Israel dwelt there in great numbers, and had a vast Khan, a square lead-roofed fortress, where many of them lived, and which contained a fine synagogue. Besides the schools in which the sciences were taught, they counted eighteen synagogues, distinguished by the names of the several nations which possessed them, as the Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and others. The printing-press, of which there are remnants at the north-eastern village Ein el ZeitÚn, issued many volumes, now becoming exceedingly rare because so much in request amongst European bibliophiles. The College (MadrÁsh) of the Rabbis still remains, a two-arched hall, of which no part is ancient except the eastern side. All the rest has been shaken down by earthquakes, which are supposed to destroy the city as each Sabbatical year comes round. In the cemetery below the settlement are the whitewashed graves of Joseph Caro, of Shalomon Alkabez, and of other notables.

The peculiar ferocity of the Safed School resulted partly from the domination of the sons of Ishmael, which, however mild, is everywhere distasteful to the children of Israel.[75] If “Esau hateth Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him,” Jacob returns the hate with at least equal heat, adding fear and contempt—he would willingly, to use the words of Rashi, “blot out Esau and his seed.” But doubtless the harshness and cruelty which distinguished its doctors must be explained by the nature of the place and its surroundings. Situated in the bleak and windswept, the stony and barren highlands of Upper Galilee, shaken by earthquakes, and exposed to terrible storms, Safed is one of the least amene sites in the whole of Syria. The climate is ever in extremes, the water is hard and full of constipating lime, the earth is cold and fruitless, and the people are crafty and cruel as Simeon and Levi. After a few days’ residence, strangers complain of sickness, cramps, and malaise, and their only desire is to escape from the gloom and seclusion of this town upon the hillside. Even the Muhammadans contrast the facile manners of their own women at soft and low-lying Tiberias with the asperity and the violence of those who inhabit the upland settlement. “Safad fasad” (Safed ever giveth trouble) is the jingling saw of the neighbourhood, and it contains abundant truth. The amount of intrigue and plotting is excessive even in a Syrian settlement, the charges bandied about by men against one another are atrocious—this doctor is a murderer, that scribe is an adulterer, and the third is a swindler and a thief. If the visitor were to believe half what he hears, he would find himself in a den of brigands. That not a few of these charges are founded on fact may be gathered from what travellers have printed concerning certain sons of this Holy City, some of which are too revolting for publication. The rich divines are accused of shamelessly embezzling the HalÚkah, large sums sent from Europe for the maintenance of the community; and the poor are ready with complaints upon the most trivial occasions—the breaking of a hen’s leg sends them on a hurried official visit to their Vice-Consuls. It is not too much to say that if Safed again produced a theological school, it would rival in its narrow bigotry and peculiar ferocity that which disgraced the sixteenth century.

The Talmud had spoken its last upon the interpretation of the Torah, it had closed the discussions which arose from the sacred text, and it had exhausted the traditional lore and the rules established by the Rabbis of Palestine and Babylon till the fifth century after the Christian era. Still, the Talmud itself required after the course of ages to be interpreted, and this gave rise to a variety of mediÆval abridgments and to a vast series of glosses and commentaries. The more modern Rabbis especially resolved that no uncertainty should rest upon the Halakah, or doctrinal part of the work, and they strictly applied themselves to codify the whole body of the Talmud.

To cite only the best-known names. We have to begin with Rabbi Ishaz al Fasi, who first resumed the Talmud, and who had the boldness to expel from the text everything not strictly bearing upon the discussion. Then came the celebrated Maimonides of Cordova (a.d. 1150), whose Yad ha-Hazaka (Hand of Power) is a compendium of Talmudic lore valued almost as highly as the original. He was followed by Ascheri, a powerful dialectician, who knew how to conciliate with the Talmudic argument the observations of the Tossaphists, or Glossarians, represented before and after him by Rashi, Rabbenu Tam, Coucy, and a host of others. His son succeeded him, and made a new attempt at a codification, in which the opinions of Ascheri naturally occupied the place of honour.

About this time rose the Safed School. The first and greatest commentator was the Rabbi by some called Rabanu Jacob Be-Rab, an exile from Spain, and subsequently Chief Rabbi of Fez and Safed, where, after long teaching, he died in a.d. 1541. This Baal ha-Turim (Lord of the Books), as he is called, wrote four works, which, being considered in the light of “religious laws,” were known as the DinÍm. The first of the Arbah Turim, Orach ChaÜin (Urah ha-Yiim, the Way of Life), treats of observances enjoined upon the Jews. The second is JorÉ DÉah (Yurah daah, the Teacher of Knowledge); it describes the ceremonious observances of butchering, eating, making vows, circumcising, and so forth. The third is Eben ha-Azar, the Stone of Assistance (to mankind). And in the fourth, Hoshen Mishpat (Breastplate of Judgment), law, civil and criminal, is discussed.

The School of this commentator was kept up by Moses of Trani in Apulia, who lectured during fifty-four years to a.d. 1580, the year of his death. The next name of repute was R. Joseph Karo, or Caro, a Jew of Spanish descent, born at Constantinople, who died in a.d. 1575. He was a voluminous writer. In the Shoulkhan Aroukh, a code of religion adopted universally by the Israelites, he analyzed and resumed the opinions of his predecessors. His magnum opus is the Beth YÚsÚf (House of Joseph), in four folios, first printed at Venice, and repeatedly republished; it consists of commentaries upon the four DinÍm of Rabanu Jacob, on the Talmudic writings of the R. Ishaz al Fasi, and on the labours of Rabbino YakÚb ben Rosh, not to be confounded with Rashi the glossarian. The fourth great name is R. Shalomon Alkabez, also of Constantinople, who wrote in a.d. 1529, and who was still living in a.d. 1561. This theologian has left the worst name amongst the Christians, whom he seems to have hated from his very heart. A pupil and colleague of Caro and Alkabez was Moses of Cordova, the most famous Cabalist since the days of Simeon ben Jochai; he died Chief Rabbi of Safed in a.d. 1570. Moses GalantÉ, a native of Rome, was somewhat later, dying in a.d. 1618. But the academy was not indebted for its fame to strangers alone; Samuel Oseida and Moses Alsheikh, both natives of Safed, contributed to its celebrity during the sixteenth century. The latter died between a.d. 1592 and 1601.

Of the mediÆval Rabbis and their successors generally, it may be observed that the later the school the more prominent became its bigotry and violence. This is easily explained. Anna Comnena[76] describes the Crusades, which were guided by a giant and a goose, with truly Eastern relish, as having left a “very admirable mound of bones, high, deep, and broad.” But they left something more—a tradition which presently enabled the Christians to recover power in the Holy Land, and their abomination of the Jew inspired him with kindred sentiments. Nor can we wonder that the later and more fanatical writings are preferred by the Israelites to those of the earlier schools. Religious exclusiveness and the ambition of being a peculiar people, set apart from and raised above the rest of humanity, appeal to the heart of every man through the sure channel of his passions. And thus in the youngest faith of the world we find the same phenomenon as in one of the most ancient—the Book of Doctrines and Covenants is read at Salt Lake City whilst the Book of Mormon is neglected.

R. Jacob Be-Rab, in the second part of his JorÉ DÉah (Yurah daah), asserts that it is unlawful to draw a Gentile out of a well into which he may have descended or fallen. He also declares that the scrupulous Jewish physician who thoroughly conforms to Talmudic Law will not attend a Gentile without honorarium, because this will be his sole reward. He may do so gratuitously, if he wishes to study medicine by that means; but he should usually kill such patients whilst pretending to cure them. This, however, must be attempted only when there is no chance of detection. R. Joseph Caro of Safed, one of the most pestilent of that School, in his commentary upon the Way of Knowledge, enables the doctor to do additional harm by calling Gentile fees Kashmad, that is to say, the wages of sin—a term applied to the price of a woman’s honour; and in speaking especially of Christians, he declares that if the Jewish physician takes his fee without poisoning them it is as the gift to the wicked woman. On the other hand, should the mediciner be unwilling to be paid, he must absolutely poison his patient. He also forbids the doctor who has not thoroughly studied the healing art to attend one of his own faith, lest his ignorance cause death;[77] but he may practise amongst all others, because if he kill them it is lawful and no matter (commentary of Gittin, the sixth tract of the third order). Others declare that the Hebrew physician must not treat a stranger even for fees; but if he fear the Gentile, and the latter know him to be a Jew, he may do so for money. Rubbi argues the question by reference to the Gittin, in which it is related that R. Richmi bin Askhi had prepared a dose for a stranger; he explains that the drug may have been given by way of experiment, or for the purpose of study.

The Safed School continued its labours into the seventeenth century, and Quasimus (writing about a.d. 1625) speaks of it [Safed] as inhabited chiefly by Hebrews, who had their synagogues and schools, and for whose sustenance contributions were made by the Jews in other parts of the world. After that it gradually sank under the oppression of the Muhammadans, who probably took the place by degrees.

[34] Mount Moriah (of appearance), afterwards the site of Solomon’s Temple. Certain modern writers, especially Mr. Mills (Nablous and the Samaritans), would identify Mount GerizÍm of Shechem with Moriah; but the most superficial consideration of the distance to be marched and the time required proves the theory to be absurd.

[80] The passage is from the Pugio Fidei (Part III., c. xxii., § 22) of the learned Raymund Martin (a.d. 1284), quoted in a pamphlet, of which more presently.