Hebrew Literature

Hebrew literature contains some of the most profound and most influential productions of the human spirit. It constitutes a potent factor in modern civilization, and possesses merits which place it far above most other literatures of the world. The common salutation of the Hebrew is “Peace,” while that of the Greeks is “Grace,” and that of the Romans, “Safety.” The Greek sought after grace, or intellectual and bodily perfection, and the power of artistic accomplishment. The Roman's ideal was strength and security of life and property. The Hebrew sought after peace, peace in the heart, as founded on a sense of Jehovah's good providence, and a moral conformity in conduct to His revealed will. While the Greek in art, literature, and even in morals, made beauty his standard, the Roman stood for power, domination and law, and the Hebrew for religion. The Hebrew, indeed, introduced into Europe the first clear conception of religion, as implied in monotheism, and a rigidly defined moral law, founded upon the will of Jehovah. The basis of morals among the Latins was political, among the Greeks Æsthetic, and among the Hebrews it was the revealed will of Jehovah.

While the most important remains of Hebrew literature are comprised in the Scriptures known to us as the Bible, there exists also a voluminous mass of Hebrew writings which are not included in the sacred canon. These writings are of supreme importance and value, and the selections which we have made from them in the present volume give a good idea of their interest, beauty, and subtlety of thought.

From the very beginning of their history the Hebrews were a deeply poetic race. They were fully alive to the beauties of external nature, and no national poetry contains more vivid descriptions of the sea, sky, and the panorama of forest, stream and mountain, peopled by the varied activities of animated [pg iv] nature. The songs of Zion glow with poetic enthusiasm, but their principal characteristic is their intense earnestness. They are no idle lays of love and wine or warlike triumph. They depict the joy of existence as dependent upon the smile and favor of Jehovah, and all the happiness, plenty, victory and success of life are attributed, without hesitation, to nothing else but “the loving-kindness of the Lord.” Yet this religious fervor becomes the basis of sublimity, pathos, and picturesqueness, such as can seldom be approached even by the finest productions of the Attic muse.

But the Hebrews were also philosophers, and if they never attained to what we may call the nettetÉ et clartÉ of the Greek metaphysician, they excelled all other thinkers in the boldness and profound spirituality of their philosophical mysticism. In proof of this assertion we may point to that body of writings known as the Kabbalah.

The word “Kabbalah” means “doctrine received by oral tradition,” and is applied to these remains to distinguish them from the canonical Hebrew Scriptures, which were written by “the Finger of Jehovah.” Hebrew speculation attempts in the Kabbalah to give a philosophical or theosophistic basis to Hebrew belief, while at the same time it supplements the doctrines of the Old Testament. For instance, it is a disputed point whether the immortality of the soul is taught in the Hebrew canon, but in the Kabbalah it is taken for granted, and a complete and consistent psychology is propounded, in which is included the Oriental theory of metempsychosis. This account of the human soul, as distinct from the human body, treats of the origin and eternal destiny of man's immortal part. On the other hand God and Nature, and the connection between the Creator and the creation, are most exactly treated of in detail. God is the The rise of Kabbalism is not very clearly known as regards authorship and date; it is in turn, by different Jewish writers, ascribed to Adam, Abraham, Moses and Ezra; but doubtless the work is an aggregation of successive writings, and some critics believe that it was not compiled before the Middle Ages, i.e., in the centuries between the conquest of Gaul by the Franks and the period following the death of Dante.

There can be no doubt that the Kabbalah contains the ripest fruit of spiritual and mystical speculation which the Jewish world produced on subjects which had hitherto been obscured by the gross anthropomorphism of such men as Maimonides and his school. We can understand the revolt of the devout Hebrew mind from traditions like those which represented Jehovah as wearing a phylactery, and as descending to earth for the purpose of taking a razor and shaving the head and beard of Sennacherib. The theory of the We are therefore led to the conclusion that the Kabbalah is by far the most exalted, the most profound and the most interesting of all that mass of traditional literature which comprises, among other writings, such remains as the Targums and the Talmud.

A study of Hebrew literature would indeed be incomplete unless it included the Talmud.

“Talmud” in Hebrew means “Doctrine,” and this strange work must be looked upon as a practical handbook, intended for the Jews who, after the downfall of Jerusalem and the Dispersion, found that most of the Law had to be adjusted to new circumstances, in which the institution of sacrifices and propitiatory offerings had been practically abolished. The Talmud [pg vi] contains the decisions of Jewish doctors of many generations on almost every single question which might puzzle the conscience of a punctilious Jew in keeping the Law under the altered conditions of the nation. The basis of the Talmud is the Mishna, i.e., an explanation of the text of the Mosaic laws, and their application to new cases and circumstances. The Mishna has been well described by the illustrious Spanish Jew, Maimonides, who in the twelfth century published it at Cordova, with a preface, in which he says: “From Moses, our teacher, to our holy rabbi, no one has united in a single body of doctrine what was publicly taught as the oral law; but in every generation, the chief of the tribunal, or the prophet of his day, made memoranda of what he had heard from his predecessors and instructors, and communicated it orally to the people. In like manner each individual committed to writing, for his own use and according to the degree of his ability, the oral laws and the information he had received respecting the interpretation of the Bible, with the various decisions that had been pronounced in every age and sanctified by the authority of the great tribunal. Such was the form of proceeding until the coming of our Rabbi the Holy, who first collected all the traditions, the judgments, the sentences, and the expositions of the law, heard by Moses, our master, and taught in each generation.”

The Mishna itself in turn became the subject of a series of comments and elucidations, which formed what was called the Gemara. The text of the original Hebrew scripture was abandoned, and a new crop of casuistical quibbles, opinions and decisions rose like mushrooms upon the text of the Mishna, and from the combination of text and Gemaraic commentary was formed that odd, rambling, and sometimes perplexing work, “wonderful monument of human industry, human wisdom and human folly,” which we know as the Talmud. The book is compounded of all materials, an encyclopÆdia of history, antiquities and chronology, a story book, a code of laws and conduct, a manual of ethics, a treatise on astronomy, and a medical handbook; sometimes indelicate, sometimes irreverent, but always completely and persistently in earnest. Its trifling frivolity, its curious prying into topics which were better left alone, the occasional beauty of its spiritual and imaginative fancies, make it one of the most remarkable books that human wit and human industry have ever compiled.

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The selections which we print in this volume are from the Mishna, and form part of the Sedarim, or orders; in them are given minute directions as to the ceremonial practice of the Jewish religion.

The treatise on “Blessings” speaks of daily prayers and thanksgiving. It is most minute in prescribing the position of the body, and how the voice is to be used in prayer. It specifies the prayers to be said on seeing signs and wonders, on building a house, on entering or leaving a city; and how to speak the name of God in social salutations. That on the “Sabbatical Year” is a discourse on agriculture from a religious point of view. The Sabbatical year among the Hebrews was every seventh year, in which the land was to be left fallow and uncultivated, and all debts were to be remitted or outlawed. Provision is made in this section for doing certain necessary work, such as picking and using fruits which may have grown without cultivation during the Sabbatical year, with some notes on manuring the fields, pruning trees and pulling down walls. Very interesting is the section which deals with “The Sabbath Day.” The most minute and exhaustive account is given of what may and what may not be done on the seventh day.

The treatise on “The Day of Atonement” deals with the preparation and deportment of the high-priest on that day. That on “The Passover” treats of the Lamb to be sacrificed, of the search for leaven, so that none be found in the house, and of all the details of the festival. “Measurements” is an interesting and valuable account of the dimensions of the Temple at Jerusalem. “The Tabernacle” deals with the ritual worship of the Jews under the new conditions of their exile from Palestine.

All of these treatises show the vitality of Jewish religion in Europe, under the most adverse circumstances, and illustrate the place which the Talmud must have occupied in Jewish history, as supplying a religious literature and a code of ritual and worship which kept Judaism united, even when it had become banished and dissociated from Palestine, Jerusalem, and the Temple.

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