.JUDAISM
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BM 45 .S342 1908 c.l
Schechter, S. 1847-1915.
Studies in Judaism
Clj^e SettJis;}) Publication ^ocietp of america
608 CJjestnut ^t., Pfjilabelpfjia, Pa.
ANNUAL MEETING.
The Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Society
will be held on Sunday, May 24th, 1908, at 3 P. M.,
in the Assembly Hall of the Keneseth Israel
Temple, Broad Street, above Columbia Avenue,
Philadelphia, Pa.
Successors to the officers whose terms expire,
will be chosen.
AMENDMENTS.
In accordance with Article X of the By-Laws,
notice is hereby given that at the coming annual
meeting the following amendments to the By-Laws
will be presented:
1. Amend Article III, Section I, by inserting
the word "twenty-one" in place of "fifteen",
the object being to increase the number of Di-
rectors to twenty-one.
Strike out the second paragraph and add to said
section: — "At the annual meeting to be held
in May, 1908, there shall be elected eleven
directors, seven to serve for one year, two to
serve for two years, and two to serve for three
years; and at every subsequent annual meeting,
seven directors shall be elected for three years".
2. Amend Article III, Section II, by substi-
tuting the word "twenty-one" for the word
"fifteen".
The Board of Directors will present its annual
report. Other business will be transacted. Mem-
bers are invited to be present.
By order of the Board of Directors,
EDWIN WOLF, President.
L GEORGE DOBSEVAGE
Assistant Secretary.
DUES. — Members who have not paid their dues
for the year ending May 1st, 1908, are respect-
fully requested to remit immediately.
Kiadly send notice of any change of address.
STUDIES IN JUDAISM
SECOND SERIES
STUDIES IN JUDAISM
SECOND SERIES
BY
S. SCHECHTER, M.A., Litt. D.
Philadelphia
The Jewish Publication Society of America
1908
Copyright, 1908, by
The Jewish Publication Society of America
TO MY WIFE
IN DEVOTION AND GRATITUDE
PREFACE
The volume presented herewith to the pubhc,
under the title, "Studies in Judaism, Second Series,"
forms, like the preceding series published some ten
years ago, a collection of detached essays and articles
written at long intervals and called forth by various
occasions.
The first two essays, *' A Hoard of Hebrew Manu-
scripts," were written shortly after my return from
Egypt, when the examination of the contents of the
Genizah was still in its initial stage. Since then, the
Genizah has been constantly revealing treasures to
the world, to which only volumes of description could
do justice. The publications containing matter com-
ing from this treasure-trove would by this time make
a little library, whilst the editions of Sirach fragments
and the literature of controversies provoked by the
pubhcation of the original of this Apocryphal book
might fill a fair-sized shelf in themselves. But the
work is only just beginning ; and as the field is so large
and the workers so few, I confess that I look with envy
upon the younger students who may one day, at least
in their old age, enjoy the full and ripe fruit of these
discoveries in all their various branches and wide
ramifications.
PREFACE
The third and fifth essays, "The Study of the
Bible" and " On the Study of the Talmud," were called
forth by my appointment as Professor of Hebrew in
the University College, London. The one on "The
Study of the Bible" was intended to explain my atti-
tude toward a problem closely connected with a sub-
ject I was called upon to expound to my class. The
views I expressed on that occasion were described by
a friend as " rank scepticism," doubting an interpreta-
tion of Jewish history now generally accepted as the
final truth, and by men of a younger generation
looked upon even as an ancient tradition. To this
accusation I must plead guilty, and even confess that
my scepticism has kept pace with the advance of
years. The one " On the Study of the Talmud " was
meant to give some directions to theologians attend-
ing my class, as to the way they might best profit by
their Rabbinic studies. The essay being practically
a plea for a scientific study of the Talmud, it was
thought that it might be profitably read by wider
circles.
The fourth essay, " A Glimpse of the Social Life
of the Jews in the Age of Jesus the Son of Sirach,"
was suggested by my work, "The Wisdom of Ben
Sira," when preparing the finds of the Hebrew origi-
nals of Ecclesiasticus for the press. It assumes,
PREFACE
with many writers, that the Synagogue in the time
of Sirach was, in most of its important features,
ah'eady fairly developed, and that as a consequence
the religious life, at 200 b. c. e. or thereabouts, did
not greatly differ from what we know it to have
been at 60 b. c. e.; though, of course, the Hellenistic
persecutions must have greatly contributed toward
emphasizing and intensifying it in various respects.
The essay in question is, however, mostly devoted to
the social life of the Jews, and tries to show how little
such generalities as the common conception of the
conversion of a Nation into a Church, answer the real
facts. The Synagogue became a part of the Nation,
not the Nation a part of the Synagogue.
The sixth essay, **The Memoirs of a Jewess of the
Seventeenth Century," forms a review of the well-
known diary of the Jewess Gliickel von Hameln
(1645- 1 7 19). I found much pleasure in writing it, as
the diary is quite unique as a piece of literature, and
bears additional testimony to the fact that our grand-
mothers were not devoid of religion, though they
prayed in galleries, and did not determine the lan-
guage of the ritual. Theirs was a real, living re-
ligion, which found expression in action and in a sweet
serenity.
PREFACE
The eighth essay, ''Four Epistles to the Jews of
England," was published as a protest against the ap-
pearance on English soil of certain theological catch-
words, which struck me as both misleading and
obsolete. It is only fair to state that the writer's
opinions did not pass unchallenged, and provoked
much controversy at the time.
The seventh and ninth essays are closely con-
nected ; but while "Saints and Saintliness" deals
more with the thing "saintliness," " Safed " treats
more of saints, and the two are intended to comple-
ment each other in various ways.
A prominent English writer in a moody moment
remarked, that one would love to be a saint for at
least six months. I do not think that there are many
who cherish a similar desire, but there may be some
few who would not object to an opportunity of ob-
serving or dwelling with a saint for a few moments.
They may perhaps learn that there is something
better even than "modernity" — which is, eternity.
For the rest, these essays written in a popular
style, all technicalities being strictly excluded, need no
further comment. The authorities for my statements
in the text are given at the end of the book in a series
of notes, while the essay on Safed is accompanied by
two appendixes, giving, especially in Appendix A, new
PREFACE
matter from manuscripts upon which I have largely
drawn in the text.
My thanks are due to the editors of The London
Times, The Sunday School Times (Philadelphia), The
Jewish Quarterly Review, and The Jewish Chronicle
(London), in which periodicals some of these essays
appeared for the first time. I am also indebted to
Mr. I. George Dobsevage, of New York, who was
always at my call during the progress of the work.
My thanks are furthermore due to Rabbi Charles
Isaiah Hoffman, of Newark, N. J., and Dr. Alexander
Marx, Professor of History in The Jewish Theological
Seminary of America, who helped me in various ways
in the revision of the proofs. But I am under
special obligations to my friend Miss Henrietta Szold,
the able Secretary of The Jewish Publication Society
of America, not only for the Index, but also for her
painstaking reading of the proofs, and for ever so
many helpful suggestions by which this volume has
profited.
S. S.
January, 1908.
CONTENTS
Page
A Hoard of Hebrew Manuscripts I . . i
A Hoard of Hebrew Manuscripts II 12
TheStudy of the Bible 3^
A Glimpse of the Social Life of the Jews in the Age of
Jesus the Son of Sirach . 55
On the Study of the Talmud . 102
The Memoirs of a Jewess of the Seventeenth Century . . 126
Saints and Saintliness 148
Four Epistles to the Jews of England ,182
Safed in the Sixteenth Centur>^— A City of Legists and
Mystics 202
Appendixes 289
Appendix A 292
Appendix B 302
Notes 309
Index . , o ... o ... 331
A HOARD OF HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS^
I
The Genizah, to explore which was the object of
my travels in the East (i 896-1 897), is an old Jewish
institution. The word is derived from the Hebrew
verb ganaz, and signifies treasure-house, or hiding-
place. When applied to books, it means much the
same thing as burial means in the case of men.
When the spirit is gone, we put the corpse out of
sight to protect it from abuse. In like manner, when
the writing is worn out, we hide the book to pre-
serve it from profanation. The contents of the book
go up to heaven like the soul. *' I see the parchment
burning, and the letters flying up in the air," were the
last words of the martyr R. Chanina ben Teradyon,
when he went to the stake wrapped in the scrolls of
the Law. The analogy of books with men was so
strongly felt that sometimes the term *'hide" was
used even in epitaphs : " Here was hidden {iiignaz or
nitman) this man." When R. Eliezer the Great was
buried, they said, "a scroll of the Law was hidden."
It was probably this feeling that suggested the in-
junction to hide worn-out copies of the Pentateuch in
the grave of a scholar. More often, however, they
dug a grave for the dead books themselves in the
STUDIES IN JUDAISM
cemetery, or hid them in some sort of shed adjoining
the synagogue.
Happily for us, this process of ''hiding" was not
confined to dead or worn-out books alone. In the
course of time the Genizah extended its protection to
what we may call (to carry on the simile) invalid
books J that is, to books which by long use or want
of care came to be in a defective state, sheets being
missing at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end,
and which were thus disqualified for the common pur-
poses of study. Another class of works consigned to
the Genizah were what we may call disgraced books,
books which once pretended to the rank of Scriptures,
but were found by the authorities to be wanting in
the qualification of being dictated by the Holy Spirit.
They were ''hidden." Hence our term "Apocrypha"
for writings excluded from, or never admitted into,
the Canon. Of course, such books came into the
Genizah in a sound condition ; but the period at
which synods and councils were able to test the
somewhat indefinable quality of inspiration is now so
remote that these "external works" have met, by
reason of long neglect, with the same fate of decom-
position that awaited sacred books, by reason of long
and constant use.
Besides these sacred and semi-sacred books the
Genizah proved a refuge for a class of writings that
never aspired to the dignity of real books, but are
none the less of the greatest importance for Jewish
history. As we know, the use of the sacred language
A HOARD OF HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 3
was, among the Jews, not confined to the sacred Hter-
ature. With them it was a Hving language. They
wrote in it their letters, kept in it their accounts, and
composed in it their love-songs and wine-songs. All
legal documents, such as leases, contracts, marriage
settlements, and letters of divorce, and the proceed-
ings as well as the decisions of the courts of justice,
were drawn up in Hebrew, or, at least, written in
Hebrew letters. As the Jews attached a certain
sacredness to everything resembling the Scriptures,
either in matter or in form, they were loth to treat
even these secular documents as mere refuse, and
when they were overtaken by old age, they disposed
of them by ordering them to the Genizah, in which
they found a resting-place for centuries. The Geni-
zah of the old Jewish community thus represents a
combination of sacred lumber-room and secular record
office.
It was such a Genizah that I set out to visit in the
middle of December, 1896. My destination was Cairo.
The conviction of the importance of its Genizah had
grown upon me as I examined the various manuscripts
which had found their way from it into English pri-
vate and public libraries, and which had already led
to important discoveries. I therefore determined to
make a pilgrimage to the source whence they had
come. My plan recommended itself to the authori-
ties of the University of Cambridge, and found warm
supporters in Professor Sidgwick, Dr. Donald Mac-
Alister, and especially Dr. Taylor, the Master of St.
STUDIES IN JUDAISM
John's College. To the enlightened generosity of this
great student and patron of Hebrew literature it is due
that my pilgrimage became a regular pleasure trip to
Egypt, and extended into the Holy Land.
Now that the sources of the Nile are being visited
by bicycles, there is little fresh to be said about Cairo
and Alexandria. The latter, at which I landed, is
particularly disappointing to the Jewish student.
There is nothing in it to remind one of Philo, whose
vague speculations were converted into saving dogmas,
or of the men of the Septuagint, whose very blunders
now threaten to become Scripture. Nor is any trace
left of the principal synagogue, in whose magnificent
architecture and tasteful arrangements the old Rabbis
saw a reflex of ** the glory of Israel." Cairo is not
more promising at the first glance that one gets on
the way from the station to the hotel. Everything in
it calculated to satisfy the needs of the European
tourist is sadly modern, and my heart sank within me
when I reflected that this was the place whence I was
expected to return laden with spoils, the age of which
would command respect even in our ancient seats of
learning. However, I felt reassured after a brief inter-
view with the Reverend Aaron Bensimon, the Grand
Rabbi of Cairo, to whom I had an introduction from
the Chief Rabbi, the Very Reverend Doctor Herman
Adler. From him I soon learnt that Old Cairo would
be the proper field for my activity, a place old enough
to enjoy the respect even of a resident of Cambridge.
I must remark here that the Genizah, like the rest
A HOARD OF HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 5
of the property of the synagogue in Cairo, is vested
in the Rabbi and the wardens for the time being. To
this reverend gentleman and to Mr. Youssef M. Cat-
taui, the President of the Jewish Community, my best
thanks are due for the Hberality with which they put
their treasures at my disposal, and for the interest
they showed, and the assistance they gave me in my
work.
I drove to this ancient Genizah accompanied by
the Rabbi. We left our carriage somewhere in the
neighbourhood of the " Fortress of Babylon," whence
the Rabbi directed his steps to the so-called Synagogue
of Ezra the Scribe. This synagogue, which in some
writings bears also the names of the prophets Elijah
and Jeremiah, is well known to old chroniclers and
travellers, such as Makreese, Sambari, and Benjamin
of Tudela. I cannot here attempt to reproduce the
legends which have grown up around it in the course
of time. Suffice it to say that it has an authentic
record extending over more than a thousand years,
having served originally as a Coptic Church (St. Mi-
chael's), and been thereafter converted into a syna-
gogue soon after the Mohammedan conquest of
Egypt. Ever since that time it has remained in the
uninterrupted possession of the Jews. The Genizah,
which probably always formed an integral part of the
synagogue, is now situated at the end of the gallery,
presenting the appearance of a sort of windowless and
doorless room of fair dimensions. The entrance is on
the west side, through a big, shapeless hole reached
STUDIES IN JUDAISM
by a ladder. After showing me over the place and
the neighbouring buildings, or rather ruins, the Rabbi
introduced me to the beadles of the synagogue, who
are at the same time the keepers of the Genizah, and
authorised me to take from it what, and as much as,
I liked.
Now, as a matter of fact, I liked all. Still, some
discretion was necessary. I have already indicated
the mixed nature of the Genizah. But one can hardly
realise the confusion in a genuine, old Genizah until
one has seen it. It is a battlefield of books, and the
literary productions of many centuries had their share
in the battle, and their disjecta uicinbra are now
strewn over its area. Some of the belligerents have
perished outright, and are literally ground to dust in
the terrible struggle for space, whilst others, as if
overtaken by a general crush, are squeezed into big,
unshapely lumps, which even with the aid of chemical
appliances can no longer be separated without serious
damage to their constituents. In their present condi-
tion these lumps sometimes afford curiously sugges-
tive combinations ; as, for instance, when you find a
piece of some rationalistic work, in which the ver}^
existence of either angels or devils is denied, clinging
for its very life to an amulet in which these same
beings (mostly the latter) are bound over to be on
their good behaviour and not interfere with Miss Jair's
love for somebody. The development of the romance
is obscured by the fact that the last lines of the amulet
are mounted on some I. O. U., or lease, and this in
A HOARD OF HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS
turn is squeezed between the sheets of an old moraHst,
who treats all attention to money affairs with scorn
and indignation. Again, all these contradictory mat-
ters cleave tightly to some sheets from a very old
Bible. This, Indeed, ought to be the last umpire be-
tween them, but it Is hardly legible without peeling off
from its surface the fragments of some printed work,
which clings to old nobility with all the obstinacy and
obtrusiveness of the parvcmi.
Such printed matter proved a source of great
trouble. It is true that It occasionally supplied us
with loose sheets of lost editions, and is thus of con-
siderable interest to the bibliographer. But consider-
ing that the Genizah has survived Gutenberg for nearly
five centuries, the great bulk of it is bound to be com-
paratively modern, and so Is absolutely useless to the
student of palaeography. I had, therefore, to confine
my likings to the manuscripts. But the amount of
the printed fragments is very large, constituting as
they do nearly all the contributions to the Genizah of
the last four hundred years. Most of my time in
Cairo was spent In getting rid of these parvenus, while
every piece of paper or parchment that had any claim
to respectable age was packed in bags and conveyed
to the forwarding agent to be shipped to England.
The task was by no means easy, the Genizah be-
ing very dark, and emitting clouds of dust when its
contents were stirred, as if protesting against the dis-
turbance of Its Inmates. The protest is the less
to be Ignored as the dust settles In one's throat,
5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
and threatens suffocation. I was thus compelled to
accept the aid offered me by the keepers of the place,
who had some experience in such work from their
connexion with former acquisitions (perhaps they
were rather depredations) from the Genizah. Of
course, they declined to be paid for their services in
hard cash of so many piastres per dicui. This was a
vulgar way of doing business to which no self-re-
specting keeper of a real Genizah would degrade him-
self The keepers insisted the more on bakhshish,
which, besides being a more dignified kind of remu-
neration, has the advantage of being expected also for
ser\ices not rendered. In fact, the whole population
within the precincts of the synagogue were constantly
coming forward with claims on my liberality — the
men as worthy colleagues employed in the same
work (of selection) as myself, or, at least, in watching
us at our work ; the women for greeting me respect-
fully when I entered the place, or for showing me
their deep sympathy in my fits of coughing caused by
the dust. If it was difete day, such as the New Moon
or the eve of the Sabbath, the amount expected from
me for all these kind attentions was much larsrer. it
being only proper that the Western millionaire should
contribute from his fortune to the glory of the next
meal.
All this naturally led to a great deal of haggling
and bargaining, for which I was sadly unprepared by
my former course of life, and which involved a great
loss both of money and time. But what was worse,
A HOARD OF HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 9
was, as I soon found out, that a certain dealer in an-
tiquities, who shall be nameless here, had some mys-
terious relations with the Genizah, which enabled him
to offer me a fair number of fragments for sale. My
complaints to the authorities of the Jewish community
brought this plundering to a speedy end, but not be-
fore I had parted with certain guineas by way of pay-
ment to this worthy for a number of selected frag-
ments, which were mine by right and on which he put
exorbitant prices.
The number of fragments procured by me amounts,
I think, to about a hundred thousand. The closer
examination of them has begun since my return to
England, but it will take a long time before an ade-
quate account of them is possible. Here I can offer
only a few brief remarks about their general character,
which, of course, must be taken with due reserve.
The study of the Torah, w^hich means the revela-
tion of God to man, and the cultivation of prayer,
which means the revelation of man to God, were the
grand passion of old Judaism ; hence the Bible (Old
Testament) and the liturgy constitute the larger part
of the contents of the Genizah. The manuscripts of
the Bible, though offering no textual variations of
consequence, are nevertheless not devoid of points of
interest ; for some fragments go back as far as the
tenth century, and are thus of great value, if only as
specimens of writings others are furnished with mar-
ginal glosses, or are interspersed with Chaldaic and
Arabic versions ; whilst some are provided with quite
STUDIES IN JUDAISM
a new system of punctuation, differing both from the
Eastern and the Western. Regarding the Apocry-
pha, I will here refer only to the fragment of the orig-
inal of Ecclesiasticus, which it was my good fortune
to discover on May 13, 1896, in the Lewis-Gibson
collection of fragments. The communications which
were then made by Mrs. Lewis to the press led to the
discovery of further fragments at Oxford. All these
undoubtedly come from a Genizah, and justify the
hope that our recent acquisitions will yield more
remains of these semi-sacred volumes. As to liturgy,
the Genizah offers the remains of the oldest forms of
the worship of the synagogue, and these throw much
light on the history of the Jewish prayer-book. The
number of hymns found in the Genizah is also very
great, and they reveal to us a whole series of latter-
day psalmists hitherto unknown.
Next to these main classes come the fragments of
the two Talmuds (the Talmud of Babylon and the
Talmud of Jerusalem) and Midrashim (old Rabbinic
homilies). They are of the utmost importance to the
student of Jewish tradition, giving not only quite a
new class of manuscripts unknown to the author of
the Variae Lcctioncs, but also restoring to us parts of
old Rabbinic works long ago given up as lost for-
ever. It is hardly necessary to say that both Bible
and Talmud are accompanied by a long train of com-
mentaries and super-commentaries in Hebrew as well
as in Arabic. It is the penalty of greatness to be in
need of interpretation, and Jewish authoritative works
have not escaped this fate.
A HOARD OF HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS ii
The number of autograph documents brought to
Hght from the Genizah is equally large. They ex-
tend over nearly seven hundred years (eighth century
to the fourteenth). What a rich life these long rolls
unfold to us ! All sorts and conditions of men and
situations are represented in them : the happy young
married couple by their marriage contract ; the mar-
riage that failed by its letter of divorce ; the slave by
his deed of emancipation ; the court of justice by its
legal decisions ; the heads of the schools by their
learned epistles ; the newly-appointed " Prince of the
Exile" by the description of his installation ; the rich
trader by his correspondence with his agents in Mala-
bar ; the gentleman-beggar by his letters of recom-
mendation to the great ones in Israel ; the fanatics by
their thundering excommunications ; the meek man
by his mild apologies ; the fool by his amulet ,- the
medical man by his prescriptions ; and the patient by
his will. To these may be added a vast amount of
miscellaneous matter, philosophical and mystical as
well as controversial, which is the more difficult to
identify as almost every fragment bears witness to the
existence of a separate work.
All these treasures are now stored up in the Libra-
ry of the University of Cambridge, where they are
undergoing the slow process of a thorough examina-
tion. The results of this examination will certainly
prove interesting alike to the theologian and the his-
torian.
A HOARD OF HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS^
n
The examination of the contents of the Genizah is
not yet concluded. " The day is short and the work-
is great," and the workman, if not actually "lazy,"
as the Fathers of the Synagogue put it, is subject to
all sorts of diversions and avocations, such as lectur-
ing, manuscript-copying, proof-correcting, and — novel
reading. The numberless volumes of "fresh divinity"
which an indefatigable press throws on the market
daily take up also a good deal of one's time, if one
would be "up to date," though many of them, I am
sorry to say, prove, at best, very bad novels.
As stated in the previous article ^ on the same sub-
ject, there is not a single department of Jewish litera-
ture — Bible, Liturgy, Talmud, Midrashim, Philoso-
phy, Apologetics, or History — which is not illustrated
by the Genizah discoveries. Naturally, not all the
discoveries are of equal importance, but there are very
few that will not yield essential contributions to the
department to which they belong. How a Weiss or
a Friedmann would rejoice in his heart at the sight of
these Talmudical fragments ! And what raptures of
delight are there in store for the student when sifting
and reducing to order the historical documents which
the Genizah has furnished in abundance, including even
A HOARD OF HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 13
the remains of the sacred writings of strange Jewish
sects that have long since vanished. Considerations
of space, however, forbid me to enter into detailed de-
scriptions ; these would require a whole series of
essays. I shall confine myself in this place to general
remarks upon the fragments in their various branches,
the trials and the surprises awaiting one in the course
of their examination, and some of the results they
have yielded up to the present.
The process of examining such a collection is
necessarily a very slow one. In the ordinary course
of cataloguing manuscripts, you have to deal with
entire volumes, where the study of a single leaf tells
you at once the tale of hundreds and hundreds of its
neighbours and kindred. The collections from the
Genizah, however, consist, not of volumes, but of
separate loose sheets, each of them with a history of
its own, which you can learn only by subjecting it to
examination by itself. The identification of Biblical
fragments gives the least trouble, as they are mostly
written in large, square characters, whilst their matter
is so familiar that you can take in their contents at a
glance. Still, a glance will not always suffice, for
these fragments are not only written in different
hands, testifying to various palaeographic ages, but
many of them are also provided with Massoretic
notes, or with an unfamiliar system of punctuation.
Others are interspersed with portions of the Chaldaic
or Arabic versions. They all have to be arranged
"after their kind," whilst as specimens of writing they
14 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
have to be sorted into some kind of chronological
order. To judge by the writing — which is, I admit,
not a very trustworthy test — the Genizah furnishes us
with the oldest known manuscripts of any part of the
Bible, older even than the Pentateuch manuscript of
the British Museum (Oriental 4445), described as
dating ''probably" from the ninth century. On one
Biblical fragment I found some gilt letters. Gold ink
was well known to the Jews of antiquity. Some
scholars even claim it as an invention of the People
of the Book. But its use in the writing of the Scrip-
tures was early forbidden by the Rabbis. The pro-
hibition was meant to apply only to copies intended
for public reading in the synagogue. But, as a fact,
all manuscripts of the Bible are singularly free from
such ''ornamental aids." The fragment in question
forms a rare exception, and must, therefore, date from
an age when simplicity and uniformity in the materials
used for writing the Bible had not yet become the
rule.
Of great rarity, again, are the fragments in which
all the words (except those at the beginning of the
verses) are represented by a peculiar system of
initials only, as, for instance, " In the beginning
G. c. the h. a. the e." (Gen. i : i). That such ab-
breviations should be employed even in copies of
Holy Writ was only natural in an age when the
chisel and the pen were the only means of making
thought visible. On the strength of the few ab-
breviations they met with in Bible manuscripts, Ken-
A HOARD OF HEBRFAV MANUSCRIPTS 15
nicott and other scholars tried to account for cer-
tain misreadings of the Septuagint. Take your Web-
ster's Dictionary, and look up how many hundreds of
words begin, for instance, with the letter B^ and think,
on the other hand, that in the sentence before you
there is room for one ^-headed word only, and you
will form some idea what a dangerous pitfall lay in
every initial for the Greek translator, or even for the
Jewish scribe. The Genizah has for the first time
supplied us with samples proving that the abbrevia-
tion system was not limited to certain isolated words,
but extended to the whole contents of the Bible.
The particular system represented in the Genizah
seems to have been known to the old Rabbis under
the name of Trellis-writing. Dr. Felix Perles, from
his acquaintance with the few specimens acquired by
the Bodleian Library, at once recognised their signi-
ficance for the verbal criticism of the Bible, and made
them the subject of some apt remarks in a recent essay
(Analccten zur Tcxtkritik, etc., Munich, 1895). The
Cambridge collections include such examples in far
greater number, and many more may still be found.
They will probably be edited in a volume by them-
selves, and will, I have no doubt, after careful study
throw fresh light on many an obscure passage in the
different versions.
While the Trellis-written Bible was undoubtedly
intended for the use of the grown-up scholar, in
whose case a fair acquaintance with the sacred volume
could be assumed, we have another species of Bibli-
i6 STUDIES n\ JUDAISM
cal fragments, representing the " Reader without
Tears" of the Old World. They are written in large,
distinct letters, and contain, as a rule, the first verses
of the Book of Leviticus, accompanied or preceded
by various combinations of the letters of the alphabet,
which the child had to practise upon. The modern
educationalist, with his low notions of the '* priestly
legislation," — harsh, unsympathetic words, indeed —
would probably regard this part of the Scriptures as
the last thing in the world fit to be put into the hands
of children. We must not forget, however, that the
Jew of ancient times was not given to analysis. Seiz-
ing upon its bold features, he saw in the Book of
Leviticus only the good message of God's reconcilia-
tion with man, by means of sacrifice and of purity in
soul and body. Perceiving, on the other hand, in
every babe the budding minister '* without taint of sin
and falsehood," the Rabbi could certainly render no
higher homage to childhood than when he said, *' Let
the pure come and busy themselves with purity. "
Every school thus assumed in his eyes the aspect of
a holy temple, in which the child by his reading per-
formed the service of an officiating priest.
Sometimes it is the fragments forming the conclu-
sions of books, or, more correctly, of whole groups
of books, such as the end of the Pentateuch, the end
of the Prophets, and the end of the Hagiographa,
that yield us important information ; for in some cases
they possess appendixes or colophons that give the
date of the manuscript, as well as the name of the
A HOARD OF HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 17
owner and of the scribe. Occasionally we come upon
a good scolding, as when the colophon runs: **This
Pentateuch [or Psalter] was dedicated by N. N., in
the year , to the synagogue . It shall not
be sold, it shall not be removed, it shall not be
pawned ; cursed be he who sells it, cursed be he who
removes it," etc. So far "the pious founder." It is
rather disconcerting to read these curses when you
happen to know something about the person who
removed the manuscript, but you have to make the
best of such kind wishes if you want to get at its
history. Perhaps my researches may, after all, prove
helpful to the feeble efforts made by the pious donor
to achieve immortality, inasmuch as his name will
again be given to the world in the catalogue which
will one day be prepared. His chances in the dust-
heap of the Genizah were certainly much poorer.
The foregoing remarks will suffice to show that
even the Biblical fragments, though naturally adding
to our knowledge little that is fresh in matter, are not
without their points of interest, and must by no means
be lightly esteemed. But this is not all. Ancient
manuscripts are not to be judged by mere outward
appearances; they have depths and under-currents of
their own. And, after you have taken in the text,
marginal notes, versions, curses, and all, there flashes
upon you, from between the lines or the words, a
faint yellow mark differently shaped from those in the
rest of the fragment, and you discover that it is a
palimpsest you have in hand. Your purely Hebrew
i8 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
studies are then at an end, and you find yourself drift-
ing suddenly into Greek, Palestinian Syriac, Coptic,
or Georgian, as the case may be. Only in two cases
have the palimpsests turned out to be Hebrew upon
Hebrew. A new examination then begins, and to
this you have to apply yourself the more strenuously
as the under writing is usually of more importance
than the later surface writing.
This has proved to be especially the case with the
liturgical fragments, among which the earliest, and
perhaps the most important, palimpsests have been
found. Personally, I am quite satisfied with their
appearance. If they restore to us the older forms of
the ''original prayers," as some of them indeed do,
they need, of course, no further raison d'etre for the
Jewish student, this being the only means of supply-
ing us with that history of our ancient liturgy which
is still a dcsidcratuin. But even if they represent only
some hymn of the later Psalmists of the synagogue
(Paitanhii), I am not, on closer acquaintance, particu-
larly anxious to see them improved upon. One likes
to think of the old days when devotion was not yet
procurable ready-made from hymn-books run by theo-
logical syndicates ; and many a fragment in the Genizah
headed "In thy name. Merciful One," and followed
by some artless religious lyric or simple prayer, is full
of suggestion regarding by-gone times. You can see
by their abruptness and their unfinished state that
they were not the product of elaborate literary art,
but were penned down in the excitement of the
A HOARD OF HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 19
moment, in a **fit of love," so to speak, to express the
religious aspirations of the writer. Their metre may
be faulty, their diction crude, and their grammar ques-
tionable, but love letters are not, as a rule, distinguished
by perfection of style. They are sublime stammering at
best, though they are intelligible enough to two souls
absorbed in each other. I am particularly fond of
looking at the remnants of a Piyutim collection, writ-
ten on papyrus leaves, with their rough edges and very
ancient writing. In turning those leaves, with which
time has dealt so harshly, one almost imagines one
sees again the ''gods ascending out of the earth,"
transporting us, as they do, to the Kaliric period, and
perhaps even earlier, when synagogues were set on
fire by the angels who came to listen to the service of
the holy singers, and mortals stormed Heaven with
their prayers. How one would like to catch a glimpse
of that early hymnologist to whom we owe the well-
known Piyut, vriK^I, which, in its iconoclastic victory
of monotheism over all kinds of idolatries, ancient
as well as modern, might be best described as the
Marseillaise of the people of the Lord of Hosts —
a Marseillaise which is not followed by a Reign of
Terror, but by the Kingdom of God on earth, when
the upright shall exult, and the saints trium-
phantly rejoice.
These are, however, merely my personal senti-
ments. The majority of students would look rather
askance upon the contents of the Sabbatical hymn
under which the remains of Aquila were buried for
S TCDIES IN J I 'DA ISM
nearly nine centuries. The story of Aquila, or
Akylas, the name under which he passes in Rabbinic
Hterature, is not a very famihar one to the pubHc, and it
offers so many points of interest that it is worth dweUing
upon it for a while. He flourished in the first decades of
the second century of the Christian Era, was a Graeco-
Roman by birth, and was brought up in the pagan
religion of his native place, Sinope, a town in the
Pontos, in Asia Minor, which acquired fresh fame as
the opening scene of the Crimean War. Both Jewish
and Christian legends report him to have been a kins-
man of the Emperor Hadrian, but there is no histori-
cal evidence for it. It is, however, not unlikely that
he had some relation with the court, as we know that
Hadrian entrusted him with the restoration of Jeru-
salem, which he was planning at that time. Of his
father we know only that he was well-off and a good
orthodox heathen ; for it is recorded that Aquila, who
was already professing Judaism when his father died,
had great difficulties with his share in the inheritance,
which included idols. In accordance with his inter-
pretation of the Jewish law (Deut. 13 .- 17), he refused
to derive any profit from them, even indirectly, and
threw their equivalent in money into the Dead Sea.
His early training must have been that of the regular
Greek gentleman, sufficiently known from Plutarch's
Lives. According to one report he began life as
priest in the pagan temple of his native place, in which,
considering his high connexions, he probably held
some rich benefice.
A HOARD OF HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS
According to some writers Christianity formed the
intermediary stage by which Aquila passed from
paganism to Judaism. This would be a very natural
process. But the matter, as represented by some
Fathers of the Church, is not very flattering to
Judaism. Their story is somewhat as follows:
Aquila, abiding in Jerusalem, by the order of the
Emperor, and seeing there the disciples of the Apostles
flourishing in the faith, and doing great signs in heal-
ing and other wonders, became so deeply impressed
therewith that he soon embraced the Christian faith.
After some time he claimed the "seal in Christ," and
obtained it. But he did not turn away from his former
habit of believing, — to wit, in vain astronomy, of which
he was an expert, — but would be casting the horo-
scope of his nativity every day, wherefore he was re-
proved and upbraided by the disciples. However, he
would not mend, but would obstinately oppose to them
false and incoherent arguments, such as fate and
matters therewith connected; so he was expelled
from the Church as one unfit for salvation. Sorely
vexed at being dishonoured in this way, his mind was
goaded by wanton pride, and he abjured Christianity
and Christian life, became a Jewish proselyte, and was
circumcised.
The best historians, however, give preference to
the Jewish account, which tells us nothing about
Aquila's Christian days. In this he figures as Akylas
the proselyte, the disciple of R. Eliezer and R. Joshua.
With the former he is said to have had a rather bad
STUDIES IN JUDAISM
encounter. Perusing the passage in the Scripture,
" For the Lord your God ... he does execute the
judgment of the fatherless and the widow, and loveth
the stranger (6^£7') in giving him food and raiment"
(Deut. lo : 17-18), Aquila exclaimed: ''So, that is all
which God has in store for the Gct} How many
pheasants and peacocks have I which even my slaves
refuse to taste " (so satiated are they with delicacies)?
To be sure, modest wants and frugal habits are no
great recommendation for a religion. At least, it can-
not under such circumstances aspire to the dignity of
the church of a gentleman. R. Eliezer resented this
worldliness in his pupil, and rebuked him with the
words: *' Dost thou, Ger, speak so slightingly of the
things for which the patriarch (Jacob) prayed so
fervently?" (Gen. 33: 20). This harshness of R.
Eliezer, we are told, nearly led to a relapse of the
proselyte. He found, however, a more patient listen-
er in the meek and gentle R. Joshua, who by his
sympathetic answer reconciled him to his new faith.
The work which brought Aquila's name to pos-
terity is his Greek version of the Old Testament,
which he undertook because he found the text of the
Septuagint greatly disfigured, both by wilful inter-
polations and by blundering ignorance. It was pre-
pared under the direction of the two Rabbis just men-
tioned (R. Eliezer and R. Joshua) and their fellow-
disciple R. Akiba. The main feature of Aquila's ver-
sion is an exaggerated literalism, which, as one may
imagine, often does violence to the Greek. It is
A HOARD OF HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 23
such awkward Greek that, as somebody has said, it
is almost good Hebrew. The alternative which lay
before Aquila was, as it seems, between awkward
Greek and bad and false renderings, and he decided
for the former. One of the Church Fathers, when
alluding to this version, says : "Thereupon (after his
conversion to Judaism) he devoted himself most
assiduously to the study of the Hebrew tongue and
the elements thereof, and, when he had completely
mastered the same, he set to interpreting (the Scrip-
tures), not of honest purpose, but in order to pervert
certain sayings of Scriptures, hurling his attacks against
the version of the seventy- two interpreters, with a
view to giving a different rendering to those things
which are testified of Christ in the Scriptures."
Now, so far as one can judge from the little
retained to us of his version, Aquila' s perverting
activity did not go much farther than that which
engaged the Revision Committee for many years, who
also gave different renderings, at least in the margin,
to the so-called Christological passages. It is true
that Jews preferred his version to the Septuagint,
which at that time became the playground of theolo-
gians, who deduced from it all sorts of possible and
impossible doctrines, not only by means of interpreta-
tion, but also by actual meddling with the text. One
has only to read with some attention the Pauline
Epistles to see with what excessive freedom Scriptural
texts were handled when the severest rules of exegesis
were abandoned. Some modern divines even exalt
24 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
these misquotations and wrong translations as the
highest goal of Christian liberty, which is above such
paltr)', slavish considerations as exactness and accu-
racy. Aquila's version may thus have interfered with
theological liberty. But there is no real evidence that
he entered upon his work in a controversial spirit.
His undertaking was probably actuated, by purely
scholarly motives. As a fact, the most learned of the
Church Fathers (e, g. St. Jerome) praise it often as a
thorough and exact piece of work. As to the Rabbis,
tradition records, that when Aquila put his version
before his Jewish masters, they were so delighted with
it that they applied to it the verse in Psalms : '' Thou
art fairer than the children of men, grace is poured in
thy lips (45 : 3)." The Rabbis were, indeed, not
entirely insensible to the grace of the Greek language,
and they interpreted the verse in Genesis 9:27, to
mean that the beauty of Japheth (the type of Greece),
which is so much displayed in his language, shall, by
the fact that the Torah will be rendered into the Greek
tongue, find access to the tents (or synagogues) of
Shem (represented by Israel.) In the case of Aquila,
however, the grace admired in his version was, one
must assume, the grace of truth. To the grace of an
elegant style and fluent diction, as we have seen, it
can lay no claim.
For most of our knowledge of Aquila we are
indebted to Origen. We know his amiable weakness
for universal salvation. He thought not even the
devil beyond the possibility of repentance. Accord-
A HOARD OF HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 25
ingly, he saved the "Jewish proselyte" from obHvion
by inserting several of his renderings in his famous
Hexapla^ which, however, has come down to us in a
wrecked and fragmentary state. The Aquila frag-
ments discovered in the Genizah represent, in some
cases, Piyutim, in others, the Talmud of Jerusalem,
and the Greek under them is written in uncials, stated
by specialists to date from the beginning of the sixth
century. They are the first continuous pieces coming,
not through the medium of quotations, but directly
from Aquila's work, and must once have formed a
portion of a Bible used in some Hellenistic Jewish
synagogue for the purpose of public reading. The
Tetragrammaton is neither translated nor transcribed,
but written in the archaic Hebrew characters found in
the Siloam inscription. Considering that Aquila's
version is so literal that the original is always trans-
parently visible through it, these fragments will prove
an important contribution to our knowledge of the
state of the Hebrew text during the first centuries of
our era, and of the mode of its interpretation. A part
of these fragments have been already edited in various
publications, by Dr C. Taylor, the Master of St.
John's College, and Mr. Burkitt, the fortunate dis-
coverer of the first Aquila leaf. But more leaves
have since come to light, which will be edited in course
of time.
To return to the liturgical fragments found in the
Genizah. Under this head may be included the di-
dactic poetry of the synagogue. It is a peculiar mix-
26 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
ture of devotional passages and short epigrammatic
sentences, representing, to a certain extent, the Wis-
dom hterature of the Synagogue in the Middle Ages.
Sometimes they are written, not unlike the Book of
Proverbs in the old Bible manuscripts, in two columns,
each column giving a hemistich. The examination of
this class of fragments requires great caution and close
attention, not so much on account of their own merits
as because of their strong resemblance to Ecclesias-
ticus both in form and in matter. You dare not neg-
lect the former lest some piece of the latter escape
you. The identification of the Ecclesiasticus frag-
ments is, indeed, a very arduous task, since our knowl-
edge of this apocryphon has been till now attainable
only through its Greek or Syriac disguise, which
amounts sometimes to a mere defaced caricature of
the real work of Sirach. But I hardly need to point
out that the recovery of even the smallest scrap of
the original Hebrew compensates richly for all the
labor spent on it. Apart from its semi-sacred charac-
ter, these Sirach discoveries restore to us the only
genuine document dating from the Persian-Greek
period (from about 450 till about 160 B. c. E.), the
most obscure in the whole of Jewish history. And I
am strongly convinced that with all his "Jewish
prejudices" he will prove a safer guide in this laby-
rinth of guesses and counter-guesses than the liberal-
minded "backward prophet" of the Nineteenth Cen-
tury, whose source of inspiration is not always above
doubt. 3 I am happy to state that my kibours in this
A HOARD OF HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS 27
department were rewarded with several discoveries of
fragments from Sirach's ** Wisdom Book." They will
soon be submitted to the necessary study preceding
their preparation for the press, when they will appear
in a separate volume.
The Rabbinic productions of the earlier sages,
teachers, and interpreters, as they are embodied in the
Mishnah, the Additions, and the Talmud of Jerusalem
and the Talmud of Babylon, formed the main subjects
of study in the mediaeval schools of the Jews. It is
thus only natural that the Genizah should yield a
large number of fragments of the works mentioned,
and they do, indeed, amount to many hundreds.
Some of these are provided with vowel-points, and
occasionally also with accents, and thus represent a
family of manuscripts hitherto known only through
the evidence of certain authorities testifying to the fact
that there existed copies of early Rabbinic works
prepared in the way indicated. But what the student
is especially looking out for is for remainders of the
Talmud of Jerusalem, which, though in some respects
more important for the knowledge of Jewish history
and the intelligent conception of the minds of
the Rabbis than the ** twin-Talmud of the East,"
has been, by certain untoward circumstances, badly
neglected in the schools, and thus very little copied
by the scribes. Its real importance and superi-
ority above similar contemporary productions was
only recognised in the comparatively modern centu-
ries, when the manuscripts, as just indicated never
5 TUDIES IN JUDAISM
very ample, had long disappeared. The Genizah opens
a new mine in this direction, too, and the number of
fragments of the Jerusalem Talmud increasing daily,
also amounting to a goodly volume, will doubtless
be published by some student in due time.
Where the Genizah promises the largest output is
in the department of history, especially the period
intervening between the birth of Saadya (892) and
the death of Maimonides (1205). This period, which
gave birth to the greatest of the Eminences (Gaonim),
Rabbi Saadya, Rabbi Sherira, and Rabbi Hai, which
witnessed the hottest controversies between the Rab-
binites and the Karaites and other schismatics, and
which saw the disintegration of the great old schools
in Babylon, and the creation of new centres for the
study of the Torah in Europe and in Northern Africa,
forms, as is well known, one of the most important
chapters in Jewish history. But this chapter will now
have to be re-written ; any number of conveyances,
leases, bills, and private letters are constantly turning
up, thus affording us a better insight into the social
life of the Jews during those remote centuries. New
letters from the Eminences addressed to their contem-
poraries, scattered over various countries, are daily
coming to light, and will form an important addition
to the Responsa literature of the Gaonim. Even entire
new books or fragments of such, composed by the
Gaonim, and only known by references have been
discovered. Of more significance are such documents
A HOARD OF HEBREir 3rANUSCRIPTS 29
as those bearing on the controversy between Rabbi
Saadya and his contemporary Ben Meir, the head of
the Jews in Palestine, which prove that even at
that time the question of authority over the whole of
Jewry, and of the prerogative of fixing the calendar,
was still a contested point between the Jews of Pales-
tine and their brethren in the dispersion. The con-
troversy was a bitter one and of long duration, as
may be seen from another document dating from the
Eleventh Century, the Scroll of Abiathar, which, at
the same time, reveals the significant fact that the
antagonism between the Priestly and the Kingly, or
the Aaronide and Davidic families, had not quite died
down even at this late period. Some of the docu-
ments are autograph. It is enough to mention here
the letter of Chushiel ben Elhanan (or Hananel)
of Kairowan, addressed to Shemariah ben Elhanan
of Egypt, written about the year 1000. To these two
Rabbis, legend attributes a large share in the trans-
plantmg of the Torah in Northern Africa, so that our
document will prove an important contribution to
the history of the rise of the Yeshiboth outside of
Babylon.
Looking over this enormous mass of fragments
about me, in the sifting and examination of which I
am now occupied, I cannot overcome a sad feeling steal-
ing over me, that I shall hardly be worthy to see all the
results which the Genizah will add to our knowledge
of Jews and Judaism. The work is not for one man
30 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
and not for one generation. It will occupy many a
specialist, and much longer than a lifetime. How-
ever, to use an old adage, ''It is not thy duty to com-
plete the work, but neither art thou free to desist
from it."
THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE^
There is a saying of an old Hebrew sage, *'In a
place where one is unknown, one is permitted to say,
I am a scholar." Now I am, I fear, neither so hum-
ble as to think myself quite a persona ignota, nor am
I, I trust, so arrogant as to claim, in the presence of
so learned an audience, a title to deserve which I
have still to do my life's work. But being about to
express opinions not quite in harmony with current
views, I shall avail myself of this license so far as to
say what I am not : I am no partisan, I hold no brief
for a particular school, and I have no cause to
defend. Such a declaration, which would be entirely
out of place in any other branch of human knowl-
edge, is unfortunately still necessary in view of the
particular nature of the subject which, by the courtesy
of the Council and the Senate of the college, it will
be my privilege to expound. My subject is the
Hebrew language ; and the means of acquiring it are the
same as make for proficiency in any other language —
sound knowledge of its grammar, wide acquaintance
with its vocabulary, and, above all, real familiarity
with its literature ; for it is in the literature that the
spirit still surviveth, even in the so-called dead lan-
guages. But the literature by which the Hebrew
language is represented is a sacred literature; a litera-
ture which by common consent of the civilised world
32 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
bears the name of a Testament. As such, every Hne
in it claims to bear testimony to some eternal truth,
to convey some moral lesson, and reveal some awful
mystery. The very first text (Genesis) on which I
shall have to lecture gives us an account of the Crea-
tion, whilst the verse, ''And God created man in his
own image," has kept busy pulpit and brush for
nearly twenty centuries, and another twenty centuries
may pass before humanity gets into possession of its
sacred and secret dossier. However, this is the
province of the artist and the preacher. But even in
the region of mere exegesis we are confronted with
two important theological schools — I say advisedly,
theological schools.
For, in spite of all professions of impartiality and
freedom from prejudice, each school has its own theo-
logical standpoint which greatly affects even its ety-
mology. To give one instance : According to Well-
hausen, the word Torah (niin) meant originally the
thing thrown or cast, a term borrowed from the lots or
stones cast by the priests for the purpose of deciding
difficult cases. On the other hand, the pure philolo-
gist Barth derives it in his Etymologischc Stndicn from
a root still extant in Arabic, denoting "the thing re-
ported," or ''come down by tradition," and proceeds
to say, "Thus Wellhausen's hypothesis is not con-
firmed."^ But Wellhausen's hypothesis is somehow
strangely in harmony with Wellhausen's conception
of the law, which thus would originate in a sort of
priestly fetich.
THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE 33
However, this is a minor point. More serious is
the question as to the dates at which the various
books and documents of which the Old Testament is
made up, were composed. When I speak of the old
school, I do not refer to the class of commentators
represented by Doctor Pusey in England and Profes-
sor Hengstenberg in Germany. I am rather thinking
of the school led by Ewald, Bleek, Dillmann, Strack,
Kittel, and many other men of prominence, none of
whom could be suspected of being blind followers of
tradition. They all accepted the heterogeneous com-
position of the Pentateuch, and cheerfully took part
in the difficult task of its proper analysis. In fact,
few scholars have contributed more toward this analy-
sis than Dillmann. And even a superficial acquaint-
ance with their works shows that not a single
tradition was allowed by them to stand, in which
anything that might be construed as an anachronism
could be detected. When we consider that this
school has furnished us with grammarians, lexico-
graphers, and general Semitic scholars at least as
eminent as those of the new school, we shall at once
perceive that the arguments for settling the dates of
the various documents cannot possibly have been
evolved on merely philological lines. Theological
considerations as to the nature of inspiration and the
real functions of religion, metaphysical speculations
as to the meaning and the laws of progression and
development in history, and, above all, the question
as to the compatibility of a real living faith with a
34 -S- TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
hearty devotion to the ceremonial law, play at least
an equal part therein. To a certain extent it was the
supposed antagonism between religion as a social
institution, and religion as a matter personal and
inward, which, on the one hand, turned post-exilic
Judaism into a sort of " revival camp" with the whole
of the community on the mourners' bench, and, on
the other hand, converted the greatest collection of
religious lyrics into a mere hymn-book, reflecting, not
the aspirations and longings of the individual, but the
corporate utterances of the community.
Having to lecture on these sacred documents, I
may perhaps be expected to take part in this contro-
versy. In fact, I have already been asked the old
question, "Art thou for us or for our adversaries?"
I will, therefore, declare beforehand that, far from
being the mouthpiece of a single school, I shall,
when necessary, try to do justice to both, so far as I
understand them. At the same time, however, I
shall beg leave to maintain a sceptical attitude toward
both schools, which will enable me to preserve my
freedom of judgment. I say, when necessary, for, as
a rule, literary criticism will be my province, and I
shall not easily be drawn into the discussion of ques-
tions in the settling of which theology and metaphys-
ics occupy a more prominent part than philology and
exegesis.
In adopting this course, I am guided by the follow-
ing reasons : First, as I understand, the traditions of
the University College of London have always tended
THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE 35
to exclude all controversial matter which cannot well
be discussed without a certain theological bias. The
fact that we now conjure with the names of the neo-
Platonist Schleiermacher and the Hegelian Watke, in-
stead of appealing to the authority of Thomas Aquinas
and Albertus Magnus, has by no means cooled down
our theological temperature. As in days of old, theolo-
gical controversies are still wanting in "sweet reason-
ableness," and should, therefore, receive no encourage-
ment from a teacher.
Another reason for reducing these discussions to a
minimum is economy. The old saying, "Art is long,
and Life is short," is to no subject more applicable
than to the study of Hebrew. It is a strange world,
both in language and in thought, quite bewildering for
the beginner. It has practically no vowel-system ; at
least, not one which is perceivable to the European
eye. The tiny little signs above and below the line
proved a stumbling-block to a Goethe, and he
gave up the study of Hebrew in despair. Yet how
much depends on correct vocalisation. To give an
example of a somewhat general character, I will only
mention here two combinations of the letters Yod^
Zadiy and Rcsh. Read Yozcr, it means " he who forms,
who fashions, who creates," hence "creator." Read
Ycser^ it denotes "frame, formation, imagination, de-
sire, evil desire," developing gradually, in the later
Hebrew literature, into the mysterious, unspeakable
angel we know so well from Milton's "Paradise Lost."
Hence the exclamation of a Rabbi in referring to the
36 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
great dualism of flesh and spirit under which man is
constantly labouring: *' Woe unto me of my Yczcr, and
woe unto me of my F^-crr."3 On the other hand, the
normal span of our academic life extends over the
short period of nine terms, some eighteen months in
all. Considering now how little preparation the stu-
dent receives for this branch of study in the schools
leading up to the University, it is evident that there is
no time to spare for discussions lying beyond the
sphere of grammar and literary criticism. The temp-
tation to indulge in theology and metaphysical recon-
structions of history is very great, indeed, but it must
be resisted at this stage of the student's new life.
It may, perhaps, be objected, that in the majority of
cases the student of Hebrew is less intent upon ac-
quiring the knowledge of a Semitic language than
upon gaining a fair acquaintance with the contents of
the sacred volume. But I am inclined to think that
even with this purpose in view I shall be more helpful
to the student by lecturing on the Bible than by lec-
turing about the Bible. For the great fact remains
that the best commentary on the Bible is the Bible it-
self. I remember to have read somewhere that the
best commentary on the Sermon on the Mount is
Lord Tennyson's ** In Memoriam." This is, I am
afraid, a pompous platitude. But I think that every
student will agree with me that, for instance, the best
exposition of the "Priestly Code" is to be found in
Ezekiel, that the most lucid interpretation of Isaiah is
to be sought in certain portions of the Psalms, and that.
THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE 37
if we were to look for an illustration of the ideals of
the Book of Deuteronomy, we could do no better than
study the Books of Chronicles and certain groups of
the Psalms. To use a quaint old expression applied
to Scripture: "Turn it and turn it over again, for the
All is therein," both its criticism and its history.
Introductions to the Old Testament, Lives and Times
of the various prophets, and histories of the Canon, are
excellent things in their own way ; but unless we are
prepared to exchange the older blind faith for the newer
parrot-like repetitions of obscure critical terms, they
should not be read, and, indeed, cannot be read with
profit, before we have made ourselves masters of the
twenty-four books of the Old Testament in the original.
This, I should think, is an obvious truth, nay, a
truism. Still, I am glad to have the opportunity to
utter it for once. The dread of partiality for the
Massoretic text is so great in certain circles that the
notion seems to gain ground that the best quahfication
for writing on the Old Testament is ignorance of He-
brew. Thus we are brought face to face with the
multitude of books, essays, and articles on Biblical sub-
jects by authors who freely confess, if not boast of, the
fact that they know the Old Testament only through
the medium of versions, but still insist on their ability to
judge upon the gravest questions of dates and author-
ship. Translations, some author has remarked, are
the structures with which a kind Providence has over-
bridged the deeps of human thought caused by the
division of tongues at the Tower of Babel. The re-
STUDIES IN JUDAISM
mark is as humble in spirit as it is prudent in practice.
It is certainly safer to walk over the bridge than to
swim the flood. But in this case we must be satisfied
not to express opinions about the nature of the river,
its various currents and under-currents, its depths and
shallows, and the original formation of its bed. To
form a judgment on these and similar points, one must
learn to swim and dive, nay, one must immerse him-
self in the very element against whose touch the bridge
was meant to protect him. To use a New Testament
proverb, ** Wisdom is justified of her children," or, as
the Rabbis would have put it, "the sons of the Torah."
But the first duty which the loyal son performs to-
ward his mother, is to make her language his own,
so that he may dispense with interpreter and dictionary,
and patiently hsten to her tale from her own lips, told
in her own way. She may not be always inclined to-
ward humiliating confessions ; but a single gesture, a
single turn of phrase, a sudden stammering where flow
of speech is expected, and a certain awkwardness of
expression, will at once reveal the critical points in her
story. To learn her story through the medium of
versions and introductions, means at best to rely on
neighbourly gossip, which, however interesting and
friendly, is never free from exaggerations and conven-
tional phrases. It is only the knowledge of the
original mother-story which enables us to detect the
elements of truth this gossip may contain.
I will, however, confess that it was neither mere
deference to the liberal traditions of this learned Soci-
THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE 39
ety, nor even considerations of economy, which were
decisive with me in adopting the course I have just
pointed out. These reasons are weighty enough, but
they would hardly justify me in assuming the scepti-
cal position I intend to maintain. In fact, nothing is
more distressing to my mind than that mental squint-
ing which finds permanent doubt the only point on
which it can rest. The force of circumstances is,
however, too strong for me. For I am convinced
that, at present at least, there is little positive truth to
state on the great questions at issue between the vari-
ous schools of Bible criticism.
That tradition cannot be maintained in all its state-
ments need not be denied. The Second Isaiah, for
instance, is a fact; not less a fact is it that Solomon
cannot be held responsible for the scepticism of the
Book of Ecclesiastes, nor can David claim the author-
ship of the whole of the Psalms for himself. The
question at present, however, is not as it was with the
older schools, whether tradition was not possibly mis-
taken in this or that respect, but whether it contains
elements of truth at all. For instance, had Moses,
if ever there existed such a person, any connexion
with that series of books known as "the Torah of
Moses?" The existence of King David is still un-
challenged, but did he write or, considering the pecu-
liar religious circumstances of the age, could he, or
even his contemporaries and successors for the next
four centuries, have written a single hymn of the col-
lection which tradition attributes to him ? The
40 STUDIES IX JUDAISM
answers given by the modern school to these and
similar questions are mostly in the negative. But it
may be doubted whether its reconstruction of the his-
tory of Israel, as well as its re-arrangement of the
documents included in the Canon of the Old Testa-
ment have obtained that degree of certainty which
would justify a teacher in communicating them to his
pupils without constantly accompanying his remarks
by a note of interrogation.
In questioning the results of this school, I may
premise that I am in no way opposed to criticism.
Criticism is nothing more than the expression of con-
science on the part of the student, and we can as little
dispense with it in literature as with common honesty
in our dealings with our fellow-men. Nor, I trust,
have I ever given way to anybody in my respect for
most of the leaders of the various schools of Bible
criticism. Lower as well as Higher. The attempt at
an analysis of the Bible into component elements,
whether one agrees with its results or assumes
a sceptical attitude towards them, is one of the
finest intellectual feats of this century ; though a good
deal of brutal vivisection is daily done by restless
spirits whose sole ambition is to outdo their masters.
This, however, is not the fault of the masters. No
student can read a page of Kuenen's Historisch-
Kritischc Eiiileitwig, to the Old Testament, without
doing homage to his genius as a critic and admiring
his patient research and single-hearted devotion to
what he considered to be the truth. But, as some-
THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE 41
body has remarked, if tradition is not infallible, neither
are any of its critics.
The difficulties presenting themselves on both sides
may perhaps be summed up thus : Whilst Tradition
knows too much of the earlier and earliest history of
Israel, our modern schools are too prolific of their
information as to the later history of Israel, that is, the
greater part of what is known as the Persian- Greek
period. You will at once realise this peculiar distri-
bution of knowledge and ignorance, if you compare
two chronological tables, the one appended to a Bible
which appeared in 1866, and the other incorporated
in the second volume of Kautzsch's Die Jieiligc ScJirift,
published in 1894. The former is most complete in
its record of events said to have taken place before
1088 B. c. E., and is almost one large blank after 450
B. c. E. In the latter the very opposite is the case,
the blank being transferred to the first thousand years
of Israel's history, whilst the Persian- Greek period
teems with historical events and, in particular, with
the chronology of the composition of various canonical
writings. In the Rabbinic literature, as is well known,
the whole duration of the Persian empire as contem-
porary with the Second Temple shrank to some fifty-
two years. This, as I hardly need say, is question-
able chronology. But it is wise scepticism worthy of
recommendation, implying, as it does, a confession of
ignorance about a period of which we know so little.
Modern learning has thus, with its characteristic
horror vacui, peopled these very centuries with
STUDIES IN JUDAISM
lawgivers, prophets, psalmists, and apocalypse writers ;
but every student will, I think, readily admit that
there is still many an obscure point to be cleared up.
For instance, the exact number of the Maccabsean
Psalms, which is constantly shifting ; the exact date
of the composition of the Book of Ecclesiastes, which
is still a mere guess j the causes leading to the con-
clusion of the so-called second canon ; the precise
nature of the work of creating new canons and some
clear definition of the authority of the men who pre-
sumed to execute this delicate task. Again, most of the
theories advanced as to the date and the authorship of
the group of Psalms assigned to the third century, of
the Song of Songs, and of the Book of Ruth, are, to
use a Talmudic expression, ** mountains suspended on
a hair," and are in no way better than those they are
meant to replace. Altogether, the period looks to me
rather over-populated, and I begin to get anxious about
the accommodations of the Synagogue, or, rather, the
'' House of Interpretation" {Beth ha-Midrash), which
was not a mere Bamah, but a thing of moment in the
religious life of those times. In its service were enlisted
whole assemblies of men, whom neither the apcr^ns of
a Wellhausen, nor the really learned researches of a
Kuenen, can argue out of existence, and whose humble
activity consisted in interpreting the law, raising up
many disciples, and making "fences " round the Torah.
But there is scarcely breathing-space left for such men
as these in an ambitious age that was absolutely bent
on smuggling its own productions into the Scriptures.
777^ STUDY OF THE BIBLE 43
Now, neither hypothesis of the rise of the Canon
— that given by tradition and that afforded by the
new school — is quite free from difficulties and improb-
able assumptions. I cannot here enter into details,
and must refer you to Kittel's *' Introduction," which
seems to me to be a fair exposition of the question
on both sides. But I may be allowed to make one
general remark, and that is, that there is no period in
Jewish history which is so entirely obscure as the
period extending from about 450 to 150 b. c. e. All
that is left us from those ages are a few meagre notices
by Josephus, which do not seem to be above doubt,
and a few bare names in the Books of Chronicles of
persons who hardly left any mark on the history of
the times. One gets rather suspicious of a hypothe-
sis with powers of vision which seem to grow in pro-
portion to the increasing darkness surrounding an
age. More light is wanted.
This light promises now to come from the dis-
coveries made within the last few years. I am refer-
ring to the discovery of the original Hebrew of the
apocryphal work, *'The Wisdom of Ben Sira," or, as
it is commonly called, " Ecclesiasticus," in contradis-
tinction to Ecclesiastes.
There is no need to enlarge on the importance
of this work for the Biblical student. It is sufficient
to remind you of two facts : first, that it is the only
Jewish literary production that has come down to us
from those '' dark ages " which can boast of something
like a date. As you can see in the various Introduc-
44 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
tions to the Apocrypha, scholars are not quite unani-
mous as to this date. But it is certain that it cannot
be placed before about 280 B. c. e., nor much later than
200 B. c. E. The second fact which I wish to recall
to your minds is that the modern school has placed
the greatest part of the KetJmbim, or the Hagiographa,
at just about those dates. A great part, again, of the
Psalms has been placed after those dates, namely, in the
Maccabaean age. The Wisdom of Ben Sira was writ-
ten in Hebrew, and would thus have furnished us with
an excellent test of the mode of thinking as well as of
the language and style of the period in question. But
the original unfortunately disappeared for many centu-
ries. To my knowledge, Samuel David Luzzatto was
the first to enlist the Wisdom of Ben Sira in the service
of Bible criticism. Judging from the few quotations
from Ben Sira given in the Talmud, he was led to the
belief that this apocryphal work was written in New-
Hebrew, the dialect in which the Mishnah and cognate
Rabbinic works were compiled. This being the stage
of the language about 200 b. c. e., it follows that the
Maccabaean age could not have produced Psalms com-
posed in the best classical style of an earlier age.
Even more cogent was the argument of Professor Ehrt,
who undertook to prove that Ben Sira had made use
of Psalms supposed by the modern school to date from
the Maccabaean age. He was silenced by the strange
answer that his evidence had to be sifted. Perhaps
what was meant was, that only the original of a work
could enable us to see how far and how much the
THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE 45
author copied from other works. But the original
was then considered as lost for ever. The last Chris-
tian who made mention of it was St. Jerome in the
fourth century. One of the last Jews who stated that
he had seen it was the Gaon R. Saadya, who died in 942.
The unexpected, however, came to pass on May 13,
1896, when it was my good fortune to discover,
among the Hebrew and Arabic fragments which Mrs.
Lewis and Mrs. Gibson acquired on their travels through
the East, a leaf of the original Hebrew of Ecclesiasticus.
Subsequently more discoveries suggested by my de-
scription of the discovered leaf were made, in Oxford,
in Cambridge, and elsewhere. Of the Lewis-Gibson
Fragment, together with the fragments deposited now
in the Bodleian Library, there exist at present six
editions : one by English scholars, two by German
professors, two more by French savants, and one by a
Russian student. The editio prince ps of the first find
was published in the July number of "The Expositor,"
in 1896. Of the Cambridge Fragments, covering a
much larger ground than the fragments already made
known, one leaf only was edited in ** The Jewish
Quarterly Review" of January, 1898, under the
heading of "Genizah Specimens." The remaining
leaves will shortly be published by the University
Press of Cambridge.'^
These discoveries when put together restore to us
about twenty-five chapters of the original Hebrew of
the Wisdom of Ben Sira, or about half of the whole
book, consisting of fifty-one chapters. We are thus
46 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
in a position now to form a fair judgment of the state
of the Hebrew language about 200 b. c. e., or, it may
be, 280 B. c. E., as well as of the standard of author-
ship in that age. I am bound to say that this judg-
ment is not flattering to our omniscience. I say it
with a certain amount of regret, as for a goodly num-
ber of years I was an ardent believer in the possibility
of Maccabsean Psalms, an hypothesis on which I built
great hopes. This is a great disappointment to me.
Alas, there is no insurance office in which students
can insure theories against the dangers resulting from
unexpected discoveries and fresh excavations. I must
reluctantly submit to a ''total loss" of my hypothesis.
As regards the Ben Sira discoveries, to begin with
a concrete example, I will mention the case of the Book
of Job. The theories regarding the age in which this
book was composed range at present from about 1320
to about 200 B. c. E. With that singular capacity
for blundering which distinguishes the Greek trans-
lators, the name of Job was omitted from the list of
the heroes of Israel's past whom Ben Sira praises in
his Hymmis Patrwn, and some bolder spirits conse-
quently felt themselves at liberty to make the writer
of Job nearly a contemporary of Ben Sira. The re-
stored original Hebrew proves that the Greek trans-
lator mistook lyob, the name of the hero of the Book
of Job, for Oyeb^ meaning enemy. The Greek runs
thus : *' For, verily, he remembered the enemies in the
storm," whilst the Hebrew reads, "Also he made men-
tion of Job," a point to which several scholars, among
THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE 47
them Joseph Halevy, have drawn the attention of stu-
dents. But Ben Sira knew more; he was, in fact,
thoroughly famihar with the contents of the Book of
Job. His whole cosmography is based on the last
chapters of the Book of Job, from which he copied
various passages.
As to the language and the style of Ben Sira, it is
true that certain portions of the book, especially the
just mentioned Hyninus Patj'iini, are written mostly in
classical Hebrew. A careful analysis, however, will
show that they are at best nothing more than a series
of quotations from the canonical writings, joining verse
to verse and phrase to phrase, all alike copied from
the Bible. In other words Ben Sira was, like so
many post-Biblical writers, an imitator of the Old
Testament both in form and m matter ; his model for
the former being the whole of the Old Testament,
whilst the matter is, as far as the gnomic part is con-
cerned, generally borrowed from the Book of Proverbs.
But like all imitators he was not always on his
guard, and, in careless moments, terms, expressions,
and idioms escaped him which make it sufficiently
clear that in his time the New-Hebrew dialect, both
in respect of grammar and of phraseology, had reached
its highest development. What is even more to our
present purpose, is the fact, rendered certain by the
original Hebrew, that Ben Sira was acquainted with
the Psalter in all its parts, those ascribed to the Per-
sian period as well as those ascribed to the Macca-
baean and post-Maccabaean ages. He copies freely
48 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
from them, in some cases he borrows whole verses,
though, quite in the fashion of the Rabbis, he is rather
too Hberal in their appHcation.
It would prove tedious to enter into an analysis of
the Book of Ben Sira. This could not be done with-
out giving complete lists of words, phrases, and
idioms, amounting to many hundreds, but absolutely
meaningless when disjoined from their context. I
may, however, be permitted to reproduce a few verses
from a hymn of Ben Sira which, echoing as it does
the time in which it was written, lends itself best to
consideration.
They are thus :
1. O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good ;
For his mercy endureth for ever.
2. O give thanks unto the God of praises ;
For his mercy endureth for ever.
3. O give thanks unto him that is the guardian of Israel ;
For his mercy endureth for ever.
4. O give thanks unto him that created all ;
For his mercy endureth for ever.
5. O give thanks unto him that redeemeth Israel ;
For his mercy endureth for ever.
6. O give thanks unto him that gathereth the outcasts of
Israel ;
For his mercy endureth for ever.
7. O give thanks unto him that buildeth his city and his
sanctuary ;
For his mercy endureth for ever.
8. O give thanks unto him that maketh a horn to bud to
the house of David ;
For his mercy endureth for ever.
THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE 49
9, O give thanks unto him that chose the sons of Zadok
to be priests ;
For his mercy endureth for ever.
10. O give thanks unto the Shield of Abraham ;
For his mercy endureth for ever.
11. O give thanks unto the Rock of Isaac ;
For his mercy endureth for ever.
12. O give thanks unto the Mighty One of Jacob ;
For his mercy endureth for ever.
13. O give thanks unto him that chose Zion ;
For his mercy endureth for ever.
14. O give thanks unto the King of kings of kings ;
For his mercy endureth for ever.
15. And also exalteth the horn for his people, a praise for
all his saints ;
Even to the children of Israel, a people near unto him.
Praise ye the Lord. (51:121-1215).
It is important to notice that the hymn is omitted
in all the versions. The reason for its omission by
the Greek translator can be easily found. Living at
a time when the house of Zadok was already super-
seded by the Maccabaean line, the grandson of Ben
Sira recoiled from publishing a hymn which claimed
that the pnv ^n (Sons of Zadok) were specially se-
lected for the priesthood. But it is this very promi-
nence given to the house of Zadok which establishes
its authenticity. For, after the unworthy part played
by the high priests of the house of Zadok during the
Hellenistic troubles, it is highly improbable that any
pious Jew — as the author of this hymn evidently was —
would feel so enthusiastic about this family, that their
continuation in the sacred office would form the
special topic of his thanksgiving to God. Such
50 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
enthusiasm could have been displayed only by one
who knew the best of the Zadokides, namely Simon
the Just, and who prayed so fervently for the perpetu-
ation of God's grace upon the high priest and his
children, that is, Ben Sira himself
The model on which this hymn is formed is, as I
hardly need say, Psalm 136. It is strongly reminis-
cent of certain passages in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and
Zechariah. The last verse is directly copied from
Psalm 148: 14. But though Psalm-hke in form, it is
liturgical in spirit. And students of the Jewish
prayer-book will at once recognise its influence on
the so-called Eighteen Benedictions with their intro-
ductory Blessings. The hymn is at present, I am
inclined to think, in a defective state, for its model,
the 136th Psalm, suggests to us that originally it con-
sisted of twenty-six verses, of which twelve are now
missing. But these might easily be supplied by the
original prayers of the Synagogue, which in their turn
were, as already hinted, modelled after Ben Sira.
Enough, however, remains of this hymn to give us
some insight into the state of religious thought in the
times of Ben Sira. We learn first from it that the
theocratic tendency of those ages has been unduly em-
phasised by modern critics. At least, it never went
so far as to suppress devotion to the house of David.
P^ven with so strong a partisan of the High Priest
Simon as Ben Sira was, loyalty to the descendants of
Zadok went hand in hand with the hope for the
restoration of the Davidic family, in which the Mes-
THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE 51
sianic belief was embodied. If the first was com-
manded by the Torah, the second was guaranteed by
the Prophets, the fulfilment of whose words is a sub-
ject of prayer for Ben Sira. To the harmony of these
two beliefs, antagonistic as they may appear to the
modern eye, all subsequent Jewish literature bears
witness, in which the restoration of the priestly order
to the service in the Temple and the advent of the
Messiah ben David form so prominent a part, and are
equally prayed for.
We learn further from this hymn that what occu-
pied the mind of this latter-day psalmist was the his-
tory of his own times, not the events of the remote
past. Living, as it would seem, in comparatively
peaceful times, which, however, were preceded by a
great crisis in the history of the nation, he gives
thanks for the rebuilding of the city and the Temple
and for the gathering of the outcast of Israel. What
he further praises God for are the two great religious
institutions of his age : the priesthood as represented
by the house of Zadok, and **the house of David,"
which, embodying the hope of Israel in the future,
passed with Ben Sira for a living reality. The invo-
cation of the God of the Fathers, though Biblical in
its origin, is at the same time a characteristic feature
of the Jewish liturgy. In fact, the first of the Eigh-
teen Benedictions is called "Fathers." The expres-
sion "King of kings of kings" shows also the
marked Persian influence to which Ben Sira was
as much subject as any later Rabbi who uses the
52 5 TUDIES 7/V JUDA ISM
same appellation for God. We thus see clearly that
what inspired Ben Sira was the present and the future
of his people. To these he refers in plain language,
and in the language of his time. Is it possible, I ask,
that Psalms written about the same age or even later
should have so little distinct reference to the events of
their own time, that we have the greatest difficulty in
recognising their allusions ? Is it conceivable, I ask
again, that Ben Sira, writing in comparatively unevent-
ful times, should be entirely given over to the present,
and yet the author of the 136th Psalm, writing as is
alleged some fifty years later, should not have a single
reference to the great events of his generation ? In-
stead of making the Maccabsean victories the subject
of his thanksgivings, he praises God for the Exodus
from Egypt. Is it possible that Ben Sira should
make the selection of the house of Zadok the theme
of his thanks to God, and no Maccabaean writer
should thank God in plain language for replacing it
by the new dynasty? And quite apart from this new
hymn, is there any adequate reason why Ben Sira, in
celebrating his hero, should give us his name, Simon
ben Johanan, whilst the Maccabsean heroes should be
typified by Joshua, David, Solomon, Saul, and alluded
to in all possible obscure ways, but never called by
their right names? Again, is it possible that Ben Sira,
with all his care as an imitator, and writing only two
or three hymns, should forget himself so as to use an
appellation of God in which the Persian influence is
so manifest, whilst all the hosts of poets of the Per-
THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE 53
sian and the Greek period, of whom the Psalter is
supposed to be the work, should succeed in divest-
ing themselves of every trace of the influences of
their times?
All these considerations added to others of not
less weight, which would, however, lead us too far
were I to produce them here, make it clear to me that
we have been taking too many liberties with tradition.
Least of all were we justified in undertaking the recon-
struction of a period in Israel's history of which
scarcely a single historical record was left to us.
Tradition had at least at its disposal legends and
myths, if you prefer to call them so. We have nothing
but a series of hypotheses which, in many respects, are
more improbable than those they were meant to dis-
place. It is, therefore, only with the utmost caution,
doubting doubt itself, that we can at present express
any positive opinions on such obscure points.
I say, at present — for a single new discovery of a
book like Ben Hagla, mentioned in the Talmud in
connexion with Ben Sira, but lost to us, or a single
fresh excavation in the field of Egyptology and Assyri-
ology, may settle all these questions for us. I am
thinking of another possibility. '* I have," once said
a sage of by-gone times, *' learned much from my
teachers, more from my colleagues, but most from my
pupils." I am quite prepared to follow this wise ex-
ample. And none would be more happy than I,
should I succeed in forming in this place a school of
Biblical students whose zeal and devotion to Semitic
54 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
studies should surpass mine, whose penetrating vision
might remove all obscurities before them, so that they
might disperse all doubts, allay all suspicions, and
convert my cautious utterances into positive dogmatic
statements. 5
A GLIMPSE OF THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE
JEWS IN THE AGE OF JESUS THE
SON OF SIRACH^
My object in heading this paper '*A GHmpse of
the Life of the Jews in the Age of Jesus, the Son of
Sirach," or, as I shall call him, Ben Sira, was to indi-
cate at once its limits and its limitations. Thus, it will
be observed that I did not circumscribe the age which
will occupy our attention by any exact date, and this
for the simple reason that the age in which Ben Sira
lived is still a controverted point amongst students,
some fixing it at 280 b. c. e., others some two gene-
rations later, about 200 B. c. E. Considering, how-
ever, that in either case Ben Sira must have belong-ed
to a generation which had already come under the
Hellenistic influence under which Asia fell by the con-
quests of Alexander the Great, but, on the other hand,
never saw the reaction brought about against it by
the Maccabaean rise, the question of precise date does
not seriously affect the solution of our problem.
Of more importance is the question as to the
sources which should legitimately be made use of in
this study. This is a case of advanced Bible Criticism
versus Tradition. If we accede to the former, Ben
Sira must have lived in an age when the Psalms were
still in the process of composition, when ** sceptical
56 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
books " could still be smuggled into the Canon under
an ancient, revered name, when certain Bedouins in
some obscure corner of "Arabia had just left off dis-
cussing the most solemn mysteries of our being, when
Shulamith and her Beloved were about to set out on
their symbolic career. The Bible, then, should fur-
nish us with the material, particularly the Hagi-
ographa, or Kcthubiin. If we accept Tradition as our
guide. Biblical authorship would be, in the age of Ben
Sira, a matter of a remote past, and we should have
to turn to the pages of the Talmud for information
bearing on our subject, especially to those portions
of it recording the activity of the Great Synagogue
{^Knicscth Jia-GedolaJi) and the Ordinances of Ezra.
I have my serious doubts as to the soundness of
the hypothesis of Maccabaean Psalms and similar
theories that tend to fill the void in our knowledge of
the period in question with shreds from the Bible.'
But this scepticism by no means entirely removes our
doubts in the trustworthiness of the Rabbinic records
that were not reduced to writing for centuries after
Ben Sira, and can thus hardly be considered as real
contemporary evidence. To this description the Wis-
dom of Ben Sira alone can lay claim. All other
works, as the Talmud, the "Chronicle of the World,"
and similar documents, can be regarded only as
secondary sources, to be used as supplementary
evidence, provided there is nothing incongruous in
the nature of their statements with the times they
profess to describe.
JEWISH LIFE IN THE TIME OF BEN SIR A
57
But even the use of Ben Sira is not quite free from
obstacles and pitfalls. There is a passage in the
''Chronicle of the World" to the effect that Elijah's
occupation since his translation consists in "writing
the history of all generations." I never realised the
force of this legend so much as when studying Ben
Sira's Wisdom. For, apart from the difficulties in-
herent in every author coming down to us from an-
tiquity, such as additions, omissions, and textual cor-
ruptions, there is always with Ben Sira the question
whether he really meant what he said. We have no
reason to question his veracity. ''Gainsay not the
truth, and humble thyself before God," was an axiom
of his. What impairs the value of his statements is
the consideration that Ben Sira was, as proved else-
where,3 rather too much addicted to quoting from the
Canonical Writings and giving ample extracts from
them. It is, therefore, hard to decide whether his
words can always be taken as stating a fact to which
he was witness, or conveying a sentiment which he
felt, or whether they are to be taken as mere repeti-
tions of Scriptural phrases intended as ornamental
flourishes. Thus, for instance, when we read in Ben
Sira the various passages about the strange woman,
we may reasonably ask, Do they describe the low state
of morality in Jerusalem, or are they not bad exaggera-
tions due to the author's thinking of similar passages
in the Book of Proverbs ? Again, when he devotes
almost a whole chapter to a prayer for the deliverance
of his people from the hands of the oppressor, does it
58 5 TUDIES IN JUDAISM
indicate the actual hostile relations between Israel and
the surrounding nations, or has it to be looked upon
as being, in part at least, a mere exercise in a species
of lyrics for which certain elegiac Psalms served him
as models ?
Only an Elijah with his angelic gift of omniscience,
and his advantage of being the contemporary of almost
all times and ages, could know whether Ben Sira was
in the mood for writing history or "doing composi-
tion." We poor mortals have to be on our guard not
to know too much, and be satisfied with guesses and
hypotheses. All that we can aspire to are mere
glimpses.
Life with the Jew meant religion, and it is impos-
sible to get a glimpse of his social life without at
least throwing a glance at his spiritual life. This, in-
deed, was even at those remote times fully developed.
For not only was the Law in full operation, but Juda-
ism had already entered upon its course of Rabbinism,
the main function of which was to bring man with
all his various faculties and aspirations under the sway
of the Torah. The Canon of the Prophets is also an
accomplished fact, and the words of Ben Sira regard-
ing Isaiah,
By a spirit of might he saw the end,
And comforted the mourners of Sion (48 : 24),
thus attributing the ''comfort portions" to the same
author to whom the first forty chapters are ascribed,
are a guarantee also for the formation of tradition as
JEWISH LIFE IN THE TIME OF BEN SIR A 59
to the rise and history of the books included in that
portion of the Bible long before 200 b. c. e.
Beside these two Canons there existed also " the
other Books of the Fathers," as Ben Sira's grandson
expresses himself, which probably represented all the
writings included in the Hagiographa (A"t^//;?/^/;;/), with
the single exception, perhaps, of certain portions in
the Book of Daniel.
The discontinuance of prophecy, however, must
not be taken as proof of spiritual sterility. Prophecy
might have been sorely missed by Ben Sira, but only
as a means of prediction, not as a source of religious
inspiration. This latter they had '' in the book of the
Covenant of the Most High God," or the Torah,
which, In the words of Ben Sira (?), with whom she is
identical with Wisdom, is '* the mother of fair love,
and fear, and knowledge, and holy hope." Far from
causing sterility or stagnation. Wisdom, or the Torah,
says of herself:
.... I will water my garden,
And will water abundantly my garden bed ;
And, lo, my stream became a river.
And my river became a sea.
I will yet bring instruction to light as the morning,
And will make these things to shine forth afar off.
I will yet pour out doctrine as prophecy.
And leave it unto generations of ages (24 : 3[).
With such a Torah Ben Sira felt but little need for
a new revelation. With the Psalmist he would pray,
" Open thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous
things out of thy Tprah," which wondrous things
6o STUDIES IN JUDAISM
consist mainly in divining God's will so far as it has
any bearing upon life and conduct. This brings us
to the Synagogue, or the House of Interpretation (of
the Torah), which forms so prominent a feature in the
religious life of post-exilic Judaism. With the
scanty materials at our disposal it is difficult to define
its exact position as a religious factor in those early
times. First, however, we must cast a glance at least
at the Holy Temple, which, by reason of its long his-
torical prestige, its glorious ritual, performed by a
hereditary priesthood and presided over by a pontiff,
wdio not only had a seat in the councils of the nation,
but practically represented in his person the whole
legislature, must have almost monopolised the affec-
tion and the devotion the people bestowed upon their
religious institutions. The contents of Chapter 50 of
the Wisdom of Ben Sira convey to us a fair idea of
what the best of the nation felt when in the presence
of their priestly rulers, and what impression the service
in the Temple made on them.
The central figure in that chapter is Simon the son
of Johanan, ''the great one of his brethren and the
glory of his people," the patriot and the leader,
Who took thought for his people against the spoiler,
And fortified his city against the besieger (50: 4),
whose personal appearance was so striking that Ben
Sira enthusiastically exclaims :
How glorious was he when he looked forth from the tent ;
At his coming forth out of the Sanctuary !
As the morning star in the midst of a cloud.
JEWISH LIFE IN THE TIME OF BEN SIR A 6i
As the moon at the full in the days of the solemn fast :
As the sun dawning upon the temple of the King,
And as the rainbow seen in the cloud (50 : 5-7).
It should, however, be noticed that a good deal of
this enthusiasm may have been due as much to the
gorgeous attire of the pontiff as to any personal charm
Simon may have possessed. At least, this is the im-
pression we receive from a similar description of a
high priest left to us by the anonymous author of the
Aristeas Letter, who rather revels in the minute de-
scription of the various vestments the high priest
wore, the robes, the diamonds, the bells, and the
pomegranates, and he tells us that the effect produced
on him by the sight of the high priest in full canoni-
cals as required by the service, was to feel himself
transferred to another world.
In a similar strain are the lines of Ben Sira pictur-
ing his hero at the moment when he was performing
the service in the Temple :
When he ascended the altar of majesty,
And made glorious the precinct of the Sanctuary,
When he received the pieces out of the hand of his brethren,
While himself standing by the altar fires :
Round him a crown of sons
Like cedar plants in Lebanon.
And they compassed him about like willows of the brook :
All the sons of Aaron in their glory
With the fire-offerings of the Lord in their hand (50 : 12-13).
The culminating point of Ben Sira's enthusiasm is
reached with the choral part of the service, in which
the laity had its due share in the responses :
Then sounded the sons of Aaron, the priests,
With trumpets of beaten work.
62 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
And they sounded, and made their glorious voice heard
To bring to remembrance before the Most High.
All flesh together hasted,
And fell down upon their faces to the earth,
To worship before the Most High,
Before the Holy One of Israel
And all the people of the land chanted
In prayer before the Merciful
Then he came down and lifted up his hands
Over all the congregation of Israel,
And the blessing of the Lord was on his lips
And in the name of the Lord he gloried.
And they bowed again a second time,
The people all of them before him (50 : 16-22).
Thus Ben Sira. The author of the Aristeas Letter,
who writes for Gentiles, and dwells at great length
on the sacrificial service, remarks that it was carried
out in such deep silence as to make one think that not
a single human being was to be found anywhere in
the place. And yet, he proceeds to say, there were
present, as a rule, about seven hundred ministering
priests, in addition to the great crowds of the laity
who brought the sacrifices. But all this was per-
formed in solemnity and in a manner worthy of the
great Deity.
It will, however, be noticed that neither Simon nor
the high functionaries surrounding him appear in the
capacity of teachers or instructors of the people. The
office of teaching was left, as already indicated, to the
Synagogue, represented by the Scribes, or Sages, who
were recruited from all classes of the people. It
JEWISH LIFE IN THE TIME OF BEN SIR A 63
is impossible to define the exact relation of the
Synagogue to the Temple. Some writers describe
the Synagogue as the altars on the high places
of post-exilic Judaism ; others, again, fond of
modern theological slang, as the Procathedrals
of the provinces. All these names, however, are
to some extent misleading, implying, as they do,
a certain conscious, antagonistic attitude in the Syna-
gogue toward the Temple, for which there is no real
evidence. We know fairly that there was a synagogue
within the precincts of the Temple. Had there been
room for the least suspicion of schismatic tendencies,
the priests would as little have allowed it accommo-
dation within the sphere of their jurisdiction as, for
instance, the dignitaries of the Vatican could be ex-
pected to grant a site for a Protestant chapel in the
court of St. Peter's. Nor, indeed, is there known
any conscious opposition to the Temple on the
part of the Rabbis. Simon ben Shetach, Hillel, and
all the other leaders of the Synagogue, were as zealous
for the maintenance of the priestly order and the
sacrificial worship as ever any high priest was. Some
of these leaders were even priests themselves, and
served in the Temple in such capacities. More
appropriate, therefore, is the traditional designa-
tion BctJi lia-KcncsctJi (House of Assembly), or the
even more ancient and more classic name, Bctli
ha-Midrash (House of Interpretation)^, thus con-
fining the activity of the Synagogue mainly to instruc-
tion. Worship was only a secondary matter with it.
64 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
and stood in no competitive relation to that performed
in the Temple, since no amount of prayer ever so
sublime could relieve the Jew from the bringing of
a meal-offering or a sin-offering when such was his
duty in accordance with the injunctions of the Leviti-
cal Code. The office of the Synagogue must, there-
fore, have been looked upon as supplementary or aux-
iliary to that of the Temple, which in the age of Ben
Sira was generally limited to the functions of worship.
If there was any element in the Synagogue which
might have led to a rupture with the sister institution,
it was not its teaching, but its democratic constitution,
which, to some minds, must have contrasted favour-
ably with the hierarchic government of the Temple.
" Three crowns there are," said a Rabbi : " the crown of
royalty, the crown of priesthood, and the crown of the
Torah. The first two are in the exclusive possession
of two families, the lineage of David and the descend-
ants of Aaron. But the crown of the Torah is free to
all, and can be acquired only by labour. He who
wants to take it, let him come and take it, as it
is said : * Ho ! every one that thirsteth, come ye to
the waters.* "^ Only a few generations after Ben Sira
we find Shemaiah and Abtalyon, descendants of
proselytes, holding, according to tradition, the high
offices of '* President " and " Father of the Court of
Justice " in the Sanhedrin.
But in spite of its humble claims, and notwith-
standing the lowly origin of those who served in it,
there can be little doubt that the influence of the
JEWISH LIFE IN THE TIME OF BEN SIR A 65
Synagogue as a religious factor even in the times of
Ben Sira was more deeply felt than the scarcity of
references to it in the contemporary literature would
lead us to believe. For, judged in the light of subse-
quent events, it is not impossible that the very darling
priests whom Ben Sira admired as the " crown of
sons" developed in later life into the class of trai-
torous prelates who headed the paganising movement
preceding the Maccabaean rise, among whom Jason and
the Tobiades were only the more notorious specimens.
But whilst the priests, according to the Second Book
of Maccabees, had no inclination to serve at the altar,
but, despising the Temple and neglecting the sacri-
fices, hastened to be partakers of the unlawful allow-
ance in the " place of exercise,"^ there were, as we
know from the same source, mighty men in Israel,
every one who offered himself willingly for the Law.
By those mighty men are meant the Scribes and the
Assidaeans, but they had a large following, as is clear
from another passage, ''in the many in Israel who chose
to die that they might not profane the Holy Covenant. "^
Now, in pre-exilic times, the backslidings of the kings
and the nobles as a rule involved the apostasy of the
whole nation, and if the king **did that which was evil
in the sight of the Lord," the people were sure to do
what was worse. But, in the age occupying our
attention, we find the strange phenomenon that the
bulk of the nation, far from being affected by the
apostasy of their political leaders, arrayed themselves
in organised resistance, determined to defend their
66 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
religion against all attacks from within and without.
Considering that these political leaders came mostly
from the ranks of the priestly aristocracy, we must
assume that there were spiritual forces at Avork other
than the Temple, which prepared the nation for the
crisis. This force was the Synagogue, Avhich, by reason
of its less elaborate service and its ofiBce of instruction,
was admirably fitted to place religion within the reach
of the people at large, and to teach them to consider
man's relations to God as his own personal affair, not
to be regulated by the conscience or caprice of either
prince or priest.
This instruction was given free, without any expec-
tation of reward, and ungrudgingly. For, as Ben Sira
expresses it :
All wisdom cometh from the Lord, ....
She is with all flesh according to his gift ;
And he gave her freely to them that love him (i : i-io),
and as a Rabbi remarked : Man should in this respect
imitate the Holy One, blessed be he. As with God
it is a gift of free grace, so should man make it a
free gift.^
Next to the function of teaching came that of prayer.
Prayer is, of course, not the invention of the Syna-
gogue. It is, to use the words of an old mystic, as
natural an expression of the intimate relations be-
tween heaven and earth as courtship between the
sexes. Inarticulate whisperings, however, and raptur-
ous effusions at far intervals are sometimes apt to de-
generate into mere passing flirtations. The Syna-
JEWISH LIFE IN THE TIME OF BEN SIR A 67
gogue, by creating something like a liturgy, appoint-
ing times for prayer, and erecting places of worship,
gave steadiness and duration to these fitful and uncon-
trolled emotions, and raised them to the dignity of a
proper institution.
Of the contents of this early liturgy little more is
known than the pregnant headings of the Benedic-
tions. They are Fathers (nn^), Strengths (nnUJ),
and Holinesses (nit^np), said to have been introduced
by the men of the Great Synagogue, and are thus of
pre-Maccabaean origin. The first three blessings of
''the original prayers" (sometimes called the Eighteen
Benedictions), still in use in the Synagogue, are known
under the same headings. The burden of the first
(mnN) is the proclaiming of God as the God of the
Fathers, and "possessing heaven and earth." It has
a striking parallel in Ben Sira's hymn, where thanks
are given to the Shield of Abraham, the Rock of
Isaac, and the Mighty One of Jacob (51: 12, j, k, 1.),
whilst the heading ''Fathers" strongly reminds one of
Ben Sira's similar superscription on Chapter 44, "The
Praise of the Fathers of the World" (q^ii; nns* ny^).
The burden of the third is the praise of God in his
attribute of holiness, and has probably its origin in the
theophany of Isaiah, " Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of
hosts." It is remarkable that the passage commen-
cing, "Now, therefore, O Lord, impose thine awe upon
all thy work" (inna |n pai), which is inserted in this
Benediction on the New Year's Day, contains many
phrases and expressions to be found in the thirty-sixth
68 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
chapter of Ben Sira. There is thus no objection to
assuming that the contents of the Fathers and the
Hohnesses Benedictions of the age of Ben Sira were
almost identical with those recited by the Jews of the
present day. It is more difficult to say what the exact
wording of the Strengths Benediction was. The term
itself, nnui, seems to have been suggested by Job 26 :
14, "But the thunder of his strength (or power), who
can understand?*' The Rabbis also speak often of
the D^DC'J nnin:i, the power of God as shown by his
bringing rain. The Strengths Benediction would
thus mean the praise of God in his manifestation
through nature. The text, however, of the Blessing
of the same name in the Jewish Common Prayer-Book
is, *'Thou, O Lord, art mighty forever, thou quick-
enest the dead," etc.
This is practically less of a Benediction than the
promulgation of a doctrine that the dead will rise one
day. And here the question presents itself whether
the belief in resurrection was a universally accepted
dogma in the days of Ben Sira. I think this question
must be answered in the negative. It is true that
there is no real evidence that Ben Sira was opposed to
this dogma. For such desponding passages as are
reproduced by Dr. Edersheim and other writers,
tending to show Ben Sira's despair of man's condition
after death, may be mere repetitions of the corres-
ponding verses in Ecclesiastes, Job, and Psalms,
and need not thus express the author's own views.
Yet it must be admitted that there is some truth in
JEWISH LIFE IN THE TIME OF BEN SIR A 69
Dr. Edersheim's exclamation: *' What becomes of the
spirit in Hades is scarcely clear to our writer, as there
is no distinct reference to the doctrine of immortality
or resurrection in Ben Sira." Dr. Edersheim also
complains that Ben Sira is reluctant to enlarge upon
the subject of angels, as well as that he is still more
chary in his references to Satan. He also suspects
that Ben Sira's creed did not include the doctrine of
"original sin in the New Testament sense."9 I am not
responsible for the heterodoxies of Ben Sira, and am in
no way anxious to convert him to a scheme of salvation
of a much later period. But I may say in his defence,
that with Ben Sira all those metaphysical hypotheses
and theological certainties probably belonged to those
"conceits of men and imagination of thoughts leading
them astray," against which he warns us with the words:
Search not the things that are too wonderful for thee,
And seek not that which is hid from thee.
What thou art permitted, think thereupon,
But thou hast no business with the secret things (3 : 21-22).
As Ben Sira lived in an age sadly deficient in all
theological enterprise, but great in its admiration of
the prophets, we can even imagine him replying to an
intrusive inquirer: "Hadst thou the same belief in
God's just government of the world as an Isaiah had,
thou wouldst speak less about man's condition after
death, and more about the rights and duties of life, less
about angels and more about men, less of Satan and
more of God;" and if
The life of man is numbered by days,
The days of Israel are innumerable {t;] : 25).
70 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
The great principle which he would impress upon
mortals would be
Prosperity and adversity, life and death,
Poverty and riches come of the Lord ( 1 1 : 14).
But as to the mysterious workings of Providence
in apportioning his lot to each man, nothing remains
but to pray.
For great is the mercy of God,
And he revealeth his secret to the meek (3 : 20).
I need hardly say that in the days of Hillel and
Shammai, the doctrine of immortality was fully devel-
oped, and universally accepted by all the Pharisaic
Schools.
The Synagogue found a powerful auxiliary in the
home. The Sabbath was then more strictly observed
than in later ages. The dietary laws, forming a part of
the holiness code, and probably kept originally only by
the priests, now helped to hallow every Jewish home
which came under the influence of the Synagogue.
The "Words of the Scribes," as well as most of the
other ordinances and laws whose origin can no longer
be traced, probably arose about this time. These
tended to give distinction and character to the nation
at large. The Synagogue became a Temple on a small
scale, and the Jewish home a Synagogue in miniature.
When speaking of the artisan, Ben Sira says .-
But they will maintain the fabric of the world ;
And in the handiwork of their craft is their prayer (38 : 34)'°.
JE WISH LIFE IN THE TIME OF BEN SIR A 71
Let US now consider prayer outside of the appointed
place of worship. I therefore propose that we quit
Temple and Synagogue, and betake ourselves to
more secular surroundings, to learn something of the
social life of the Jew. I am the more anxious for
this shifting of scenes, since there is some notion
abroad that one of the evil effects of the introduc-
tion of the ** Priestly Code" was to convert a Nation
into a Church, thus leading to the impression that a
religious life, in the sense of the Torah, was incom-
patible with what we understand by a civilised polity.
The glimpses which the market-place and the Jewish
home will now afford us will show how erroneous
this conception is. Here we find the Jew occupied
as farmer and cattle-breeder, or active as carpenter,
builder, iron-smith, potter, and in similar trades. Ben
Sira, a savant of the most approved type, has no
particular sympathy with such vocations, thinking that
conversation with animals and the noise of the hammer
and the anvil are not conducive to wisdom (38: 33
ct seq.). He admits, however, that ''without these
cannot a city be inhabited, and that every one is wise
in his works" (38: 32). Hence his injunction.
Hate not appointed service of laborious work,
For it has been apportioned of God " (7 : 15).
Ben Sira was less tolerant of the commercial classes,
of whom he says :
A merchant shall hardly keep himself from wrong-doing.
And a huckster shall not be acquitted from sin.
For if he stumbles not in this, he stumbles in that (26 : 29)."
72 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
This is quite in harmony with the Rabbinic senti-
ment, which, though having a higher opinion of the
dignity of labour than Ben Sira, declares the hawker
and the shop-keeper to be engaged in trades of **bad
odour," whilst the latter is said to practise the " handi-
craft of robbery." '^ These are harsh words, and I can
say nothing in mitigation of them, except that they
were not actuated by the kindly feelings which the
gentleman presiding in his office on the first floor
entertains for his dear neighbour behind the counter on
the ground floor. It was not a question of wholesale
or retail with Ben Sira.
"Offend not " he says, "with a word him who labours truly,
Nor even the hired man who gives his soul " (7 : 20). ^3
His aversion was certainly not social. It was
founded on his impression, rightly or wrongly con-
ceived, that
As a nail sticketh fast between the joinings of the stone,
So doth sin stick close between buying and selling (27 : 2).
Of professions we have to record four : the military,
the clerical, the scholastic, and the medical. As to
the first, we have evidence in contemporary docu-
ments that Jews served as soldiers in the Ptolemaic
armies. The chivalrous injunction of Ben Sira,
Forget not a companion in the battle,
And forsake him not in thy booty (37 : 6),
also points to the existence of such a class in the age
of Ben Sira. But it does not seem that the position
of the Tommy Atkins of antiquity was much better
than that of his modern brother-in-arms.
JEWISH LIFE IN THE TIME OF BEN SIR A 73
"Who will trust" says Ben Sira "a troop of warriors skipping
from city to city?" (36 : 31),
whilst in times of peace he was utterly neglected, so
that Ben Sira exclaims :
There be two things that grieve my heart,
And the third that makes me angry :
A man of war that suffers poverty (26 -. 28).
The story of the Absent-minded Beggar all over
again !
The clerical and the scholastic can hardly be
called professions in the sense we attach to the word,
since the former was not a matter of choice or of
special training, but a mere accident of birth, whilst
the latter, as indicated above, did not carry any
pecuniary compensation with it. Ben Sira's invita-
tion to those he wishes to instruct runs thus :
Turn unto me, O ye fools,
And lodge in my house of learning.
I opened my mouth and spake of her,
Get ye wisdom in your possession without money (51 : 23,25).
With regard to the priests, the Rabbis speg-k of the
twenty-four Gifts, or sources of revenue, of the priest-
hood. ^^ Still, I am inclined to think that it may seri-
ously be doubted whether the common priest, ]y\'^iT\ \r\2,
at least, found himself in much better circumstances
than the general scribe. Of the twenty-four gifts, the
Terumah (heave-offering) was the one on which the
priest mostly depended, since it provided him with the
products of the soil of which bread was made. This
Terumah revenue, however, consisted, as later sources
74 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
report, only of a tax of two per cent of the harvest in
kind, and was hardly commensurate with the numbers
of the priests, who must have constituted a much
larger proportion of the population than one in fifty.
Moreover, there were various subterfuges makingit pos-
sible for the people to evade the whole law, of which
probably many availed themselves. Nehemiah's sur-
prise expressed in the words, ''And I perceived that
the portions of the Levites had not been given to them"
(13 : 10), must have been experienced by many a
Jewish authority during the Second Temple. The
daily press of those ages does not record any cases
of "conscience-money." But even when the ** por-
tions" were punctually delivered, there were so many
physical and other causes putting the priest into a
state of Levitical impurity, and thus excluding him
from every contact with "holy things," that the en-
joyment of the Terumah and similar gifts was limited
to the short intervals when he and his family and their
dependents were "painfully clean." In seasons of
"defilement" all that he could do with his Terumah
was to use it as fuel. Again, on the gifts due him
from the various sacrifices, consisting of meats, oils,
and cakes, he could depend only for the time he was
in active service in the Temple, and this did not ex-
tend over two weeks in the year according to the
arrangement of "the twenty-four priestly districts."
There must have been, of course, some offices in
the Temple worth having, especially those connected
with the superintendence of the finances. But it
would seem that such sinecures were kept for the
JEWISH LIFE IN THE TIME OF BEN SIR A 75
Special benefit of *'the younger sons and older daugh-
ters of the high priests," and were not within the reach
of the lower clergy. "Woe unto us," exclaimed an
old Rabbi, ''because of the House of Ishmael ben
Piabi. Woe unto us because of their fist (violence).
They themselves are high priests, their sons mana-
gers, and their sons-in-law treasurers, whilst their
slaves tyrannise over the people with sticks." ^^ The
common priests without family patronage had thus
little hope of advancement. Indeed, their position
was sometimes so desperate that some used to hire
themselves out as hands on the threshing-floor, with
the purpose of engaging the good-will of the owner
of the harvest, who could patronise with his gifts any
priest he liked. The Rabbis stigmatise such a pro-
cedure as a degradation of the priesthood and as a
''pollution of the holy things." ^^ But we who know
so much of the story of the perpetual curate with the
large family and the small stipend will be inclined
rather to pity than to anger. It must probably have
been with an eye to this neglect of the priest and his
abject poverty that Ben Sira wrote the following lines :
Fear the Lord with all thy soul,
And reverence his priests.
With all thy strength love him that made thee,
And forsake not his ministers.
Honour the Lord and glorify the priest.
And give him his portion even as it is commanded thee
(7: 29,31).
More of a profession in our sense of the word was
the medical one. Ben Sira devotes a whole chapter
to it, and we learn from it that
76 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
The knowledge of the physician shall lift his head,
He shall stand before the nobles,
And from the king he shall receive gifts (38 : 3, 2).
He was thus, like the modern physician, a student of
some sort, and Hkewise expected to be compensated
for his services. Anatomy, physiology, etc., are not
likely to have formed a part of his knowledge, though
there is evidence from the second century that some
Rabbis tried their hands at dissecting dead bodies. '7
As it would seem, it consisted mainly in knowing
the virtues of various herbs, for, as Ben Sira says,
God bringeth out medicines from the earth;
And let a prudent man not refuse them
By them doth the physician assuage pain (38 : 4, 7).
Ben Sira's pleading,
Was not water made sweet with wood
To acquaint every man with his [God's] power? (38 : 5),
seems to have been directed against a sort of Jewish
scientists who saw in the physician a man counteract-
ing the designs of God. The Rabbinic remark on
Exodus 21 : 19, ''that the Law gave permission to the
physician to practise his art," ^^ points also to the exis-
tence of such objections on the part of some ** pecu-
liar" Jews. "Nothing is new under the sun," not
even folly.
Of course, as a pious Jew, Ben Sira perceived in
the physician an instrument of Providence, or, as he
expresses it.
From God a physician getteth wisdom (38 : 2).
Hence his advice to the patient:
Pray unto the Lord, for he will heal (38 : 9).
JEWISH LIFE IN THE TIME OF BEN SIR A 77
Ben Sira likewise assumes of the physician that
He, too, will supplicate unto God,
That he will prosper to him the mixture (38 : 14).
But he distinctly warns the people not to neglect the
physician. ''Honour the physician," Ben Sira says,
"before thou hast need of him" {^'^ -. i), and con-
cludes the chapter with the words .
He that simieth against his Maker,
Will behave himself proudly against a physician (38 : 15).
In consequence of a misreading of the Hebrew by the
Greek translator, the versions g-ive
He that sinneth before his Maker,
Let him fall into the hands of the physician.
Now, a community which has artisans and traders,
hired men and employers, professionals and privi-
leged classes, could hardly be expected to be free
from social inequalities and even social injustices.
Ben Sira touches in many a place on these social evils
of his time. It was on the basis of such passages that
a German Social Democrat, Herr Pfarrer Naumann,
declared Ben Sira to have been a prototype of Karl
Marx and Lassalle. I know the Pfarrer' s article only
from quotations given by Pastor Wohlenberg in an
Essay headed Jcsiis SiracJi tmd die socialc Fragc, in the
Neiie Kirchliche Zeitschrift. To judge from these
quotations Pfarrer Naumann's main argument is based
on the contents of Ben Sira's Wisdom, Chapter 13, in
which such lines as the following occur :
Wild asses are the prey of lions in the wilderness;
So poor men are pasture for the rich
78 5 TUDIES IN JUDAISM
A rich man speaketh and all keep silence;
And what he saith they extol to the clouds.
A poor man speaketh, and they say, who is this ?
And if he stumble, they will help to overthrow him (13:
19-23)-
These, and other verses like these, testify to the
existence of a class rapacious, perfidious, and unscru-
pulous. Still they must not be interpreted as if they
were meant to set up a conflagration to consume the
foundations of an old world, replacing it by a state
composed of communistic societies and socialistic
brotherhoods. Nothing could be further from the
thoughts of Ben Sira. The social problem in Israel is
old, and is in no way characteristic of the age of Ben
Sira. Those interested in the subject will find a fair
account of it, and the way prophets and lawgivers
tried to deal with it, in Professor Nowack's and Pro-
fessor Buhl's pamphlets on the social problems in
Israel. For our present purpose it will suffice to
refer to such passages as the one in Isaiah, **Woe
unto them who join house to house and lay field to
field, till there is no place" (5: 8), or the one in
Amos, ** Hear this, ye who swallow up the needy,
even to make the poor of the land to fail, saying,
when will the new moon be gone, that we may sell
the corn .... that we may buy the poor for silver
and the needy for a pair of shoes?" (8:5, 6). Nor
did the suffering of the exile greatly contribute toward
lessening covetousness. For we find, that one of the
evils with which Nehemiah had to deal was the rapa-
JEWISH LIFE IN THE TIME OF BEN SIR A 79
city of the nobles and princes, who kept in bondage
the sons and the daughters of the people, who were
compelled to sell them for the purpose of obtaining
the barest necessaries of life, or to pay the King's
tribute (Nehemiah 5 : 1-3). The only new feature in
Ben Sira is possibly the fact that with him the Hebrew
word *T»tri;, usually meaning ''the rich," **the opu-
lent," becomes a sort of equivalent to our word
"plutocrat," with this difference, that the I'tJ'i; em-
ploys his powers for his own unrighteous purposes,
and hence is a synonym with V^^, ''the wicked."
Says Ben Sira :
What fellowship shall wolf have with lamb ?
Such is the wicked unto the righteous :
And so is the rich unto a man that is destitute (13 : 17-18). ^9
And the fact might be easily explained by the
aggravating turn matters took under Hellenistic in-
fluence, when priests of aristocratic descent became
tax-farmers, and the wealthy classes in their train,
aping the nobility, probably abandoned themselves to
outlandish and ungodly fashions and luxury, so that
the rich could be easily described as " the children of
the violent among thy people, who do wickedly against
the covenant."
In spite, however, of these passionate outbursts of
indignation, we must not infer that Ben Sira in any
way aspired to the role of social reformer. In the first
place, Ben Sira was, as already hinted at, a savant and
a man of the world. Unlike the later Rabbis, who
taught that the study of the Torah without a handicraft
8o STUDIES IN JUDAISM
must fail in the end, and become the cause of sin, and
were even proud of the fact that Hillel, the President
of the Sanhedrin, began hfe as a wood-chopper, Ben
Sira beheved leisure to be indispensable for the acqui-
sition of wisdom. For it is only '' the man devoid of
occupation who shall become wise." He will
Seek out the wisdom of all the ancients ;
And will be occupied in prophecies.
He will serve among great men,
And appear before him that ruleth.
He will travel through the land of strange nations
(39:3-4).
But serving among the great and mixing with
courtiers and travelling require leisure and freedom
from what Ben Sira would have called ''the sordid
cares of existence." He could thus hardly have dis-
owned a class which by means of its wealth enjoyed
the privileges so dear to his heart.
In the second place, Ben Sira was a highly con-
servative gentleman, and entertained little doubt of
the dogma of "the sacredness of property." It is
true that he had a strong suspicion that large fortunes
are not always made in the most desirable way.
He that pursues after gold shall not be innocent . . .
For it is a stumbling block to a fool (31 ; 5, 7).
Still his doctrine was:
Good things and evil, life and death,
Poverty and riches, are from the Lord (11 : 14).
Riches and poverty being thus alike meted out by
Heaven, every human effort toward bringing about a
JEWISH LIFE IN THE TIME OF BEN SIR A
8i
radical reform in this respect must prove idle and vain.
With many a Jewish philosopher he probably thought
that every society has the rich it deserves.
''When the Lord", says Alcharizi, *'is wroth
against a community, he gives wealth to the wicked
and those who shut their hands ; when he loves them,
he bestows it on the best and most noble-minded."
The only remedies which Ben Sira offers against
the evils bound to come with such a state of society, are
charity and liberality on the side of the rich, and
modesty and resignation on the side of the poor. To
the former (the rich man) he says :
He that gives to the poor lendeth to the Lord,
And who rewardeth but he? (35 : 11— gloss).
Or:
Be as a father to the orphans,
And instead of a husband to the widows.
And God shall call thee son,
And shall be gracious to thee (4: 10).
But almsgiving alone is not sufficient, for
The gift of a fool shall not profit thee.
He will give little and upbraid much,
And he will open his mouth Hke a crier (20 : 14, 15).
In accordance with the Rabbinic sentiment, that
charity is rewarded only in proportion to the gracious-
ness which accompanies it,^° Ben Sira gives the in-
struction :
My son, to thy good deeds add no blemish,
And no grief of words in any way of giving.
Shall not the dew assuage the scorching heat ?
So is a word better than a gift (18: 15-16).
The rich man also receives the solemn warning.
82 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
that accumulation of wealth by means of oppressing
the poor will be speedily avenged by a righteous God.
For
He that buildeth his house with other men's money,
Is like one that gathereth himself stones for the tomb
of his burial (21 : 8).
Nor will church windows or any other donations
atone for his iniquities, for
Whoso bringeth an offering of the goods of the poor,
Doeth as one that killeth the son before his father's
eyes (34 : 18).
To the latter (the poor) Ben Sira gives the counsel :
With little or much be well satisfied (29 : 23),
since
Better is the life of a poor man under shelter of logs,
Than sumptuous fare in another man's house (29 : 22).
And far from considering poverty a vice, — as Renan
somewhere imputes to Judaism, — Ben Sira perceives
in it, as in all manner of suffering, a discipline .-
For gold is tried in the fire,
And acceptable men in the furnace of adversity (2 : 5).
Hence, as in other cases of suffering, the only safe-
guards against it are patience and confidence in God,
or, as Ben Sira expresses it,
Accept whatsoever is brought upon thee ;
And be long-suffering in the changes of thy humiHation.
Put thy trust in him and he will help thee (2: 4, 6).
I described Ben Sira as "a man of the world."
But no reproach was meant by it. All that this
epithet implies is, that Ben Sira represented a type
of mind which, lacking both ignorance and en-
JEWISH LIFE IN THE TIME OF BEN SIR A 83
thusiasm, made him sadly unfit for the role of
social reformer. He may perhaps be best described
as a gentleman of the old school. In religion the
doctrines of the Prophets were good enough for him,
and he would, as we have seen, discourage every theo-
logical speculation on "things hidden," as imperti-
nent inquisitiveness. In politics the only principle
he would urge was strict honesty and forbearance, for,
as he says,
Sovereignty is transferred from nation to nation
Because of iniquities, pride, and greed of money (10 : 8).
Otherwise, as we can see from his panegyrics, he
revered "the powers that be," and as a good conser-
vative probably believed them to be meek and honest.
Whether Ben Sira would have been quite welcome
in the circles of those known to history by the name
of Chasidim, or Saints, is rather doubtful. They
certainly need not have been ashamed of the man
whose maxim was
Flee from sin as from the face of a serpent (21 : 2).
But if it be true, as some historians maintain, that
the saints of that period were given to an ascetic life,
they could not have been very eager for the com-
pany of one who, as we shall see presently, mani-
fested a great predilection for the good things of this
world. If this was the case, I can only be sorry for
them. But their loss is our gain. For it is precisely
5 Tl ^DIES IN JUDA ISM
this touch of worldhness in Ben Sira which affords us
that ghmpse of the social hfe of his time for which
there is very httle room in the work of a mere saint.
The diary of the somewhat profane Pepys — to
give an instance near at hand — is both amusing and
instructive, whilst the jottings of the godly Nehemiah
Wallington are certainly more edifying, but withal
dull and unprofitable reading for the historian.
Ben Sira was not profane, but he had a special
weakness for a good dinner, declaring that
Him that is liberal of his meats the lips shall bless,
And the testimony of his excellence shall be believed
(31: 23).
With our present object in hand we cannot do bet-
ter than accompany him to this important social func-
tion. I call it a function, for a dinner in Jerusalem to
which guests were invited was quite a solemn affair,
though it never assumed the sad and sacramental
character which distinguishes our banquets. The
first duty to be performed would be to appoint by lot
or election a chairman, or ''head of the banquet
house."
The election to this office carried with it, as it
seems, a certain dignity, of which vain men were not
a little proud. For, among the petty conceits of which
a man should not, according to the advice of an old
Rabbi, boast to his wife, lest she despise him in her
heart, is also this, that he should not go home and
say unto his wife, " I have been made the ruler of the
feast. "^' The injunction of Ben Sira,
JEWISH LIFE IN THE TIME OF BEN SIR A 85
Have they made thee ruler of a feast ?
Be not lifted up (32 : i),
points to the same fact.
What the particular function of this ruler was is
not clearly stated, but, as far as we can gather from
Ben Sira and succeeding Rabbinic sources, it con-
sisted in arranging the seats, or rather couches, super-
intending all the preparations, and doing the honours
of the occasion :
Take thought for them and then lie down,
Supply their wants and afterwards recline,
That thou mayest rejoice in their honour (32 : i, 2).^'^
It is not impossible that he had also to draw up a
list of the guests to be invited, since we know from a
later source that **the men of a refined mind" in
Jerusalem never accepted an invitation, unless they
knew beforehand the names of those who were to be
their fellow-guests. ^3 The hour for dining seems to
coincide, in the Rabbinic age at least, with that of the
Romans, namely eleven o'clock in the morning. ^^ Xhe
guests were expected to appear some time before,
when they were taken to the vestibule, to wait there
for their friends, and be treated to refreshments. In
Jerusalem the fashion was to pass round three courses
of refreshments, during which time a flag was hoisted
on the front of the house, as a signal for the guests to
appear. With the removal of the flag after the third
course of refreshments, the *'ten minutes of grace"
were over, and the assembled guests entered the din-
ing- hall. This was furnished with couches and small
STUDIES IN JUDAISM
tables, in the arrangement of which more heed was
paid, I beheve, to the rules of precedence than to
those of comfort. The Talmud has a reo-ular " order
of the table," which is exceedingly interesting, ^s and
should be studied in connexion with corresponding
matter in Marquardt's Privatlcbcn dcr Romer. Here
we must confine ourselves chiefly to Ben Sira.
As to the menu, Ben Sira tells us ** the chief thing
for life is water and bread " (29:2 1). This is rather too
frugal. More satisfactory is another passage, in which
among "the things necessary for life" are given ''salt
and flour of wheat and honey and milk and the blood
of grapes and oil" (39: 26). One would not starve
on this, but, as a fact, the Jews were not limited to a
vegetarian diet on ''good days." The general rule
was "no festive dinner without meat." In Jerusalem
in particular the butchers were also employed as
caterers, and heavily fined if the bill of fare did not
answer the conditions under which the banquet was
entrusted to them.^^ Nor was quantity a sole condi-
tion; for, as Ben Sira shrewdly remarks,
The throat devours every meat,
Yet one meat is more pleasant than another (36 : 23),
whilst in another place he tells us :
Not all is good for all,
Not every soul chooses every kind (37 : 28).
Quality and variety apparently are also insisted
upon. We even have it on record that a grateful
guest was expected to admire the various kinds of
wine which were placed before him, and the different
JEWISH LIFE IN THE TIME OF BEN SIR A 87
sorts of pastry and meats of which he had a choice,"7
and it is to be assumed that the host on his part was
expected to do his best to deserve the compHment.
A feast thus meant by no means a fast. What Ben
Sira would urge would be gentlemanly behaviour and
temperance. Here are a few of his injunctions :
Sittest thou at the table of the great, be not greedy upon it,
And say not, many are the things upon it.
Stretch not thine hand whithersoever it [the eye] looketh,
And thrust not thyself with it into the dish,
Consider thy neighbour's liking by thine own ;
And be discreet in every point.
Eat as becometh a man those things which are set before
thee ;
And eat not greedily, lest thou be hated.
Be first to leave off for manners' sake.
And be not insatiable, lest thou offend.
And if thou sittest among many,
Reach not out thy hand before them (31 : 12, 14-18).
Be not insatiable for every luxury
And be not effuse in all dainties.
For in much luxury resteth sickness;
By intemperance many perish utterly.
But he that taketh heed shall add to life (37 : 29-31).
Another rule of Ben Sira's is : ''At the time of
the table multiply not words," "^ which the Talmud
paraphrases: *' They talk not during meals." It is
thus to be supposed that the gaieties did not begin
till the actual eating was over. First, however, the
toasts had to be given in honour of the host and the
more important guests. A good number of these
have come down to us from Jewish antiquity. They
are mostly of a homiletic nature, but they all have the
virtue of brevity. ^9
STUDIES IN JUDAISM
The obscure lines in Ben Sira addressed to the
''ruler of the feast," "for good manners thou shalt
receive favour" (32: 2), may perhaps be construed to
mean something similar to our vote of thanks to the
chairman. More probably, however, the Hebrew
text in this place is corrupt, and should read, as
partly suggested by the Greek,
That thou mayest receive a croivn for thy well-ordering
(32: 2).
Some of the sources seem to hint at a custom,
that the man honoured with saying the grace crowned
himself with a wreath for this function. The Hebrew
formula picturing the saints in the world to come as
sitting with wreaths on their heads and feasting on
the glory of the Divine Presence, also points to the
popularity of this adornment among the Jews.
Should the custom just mentioned date back as far as
200 B. c. E., we might perceive in the crown of Ben
Sira a preparation for reading the grace after the
meal, which also fell within the duties of the ruler of
the feast. 3°
When toasts and grace were over, the gaieties
began. These consisted in the joys of the cup and
in listening to music. The Biblical term nriD'D, liter-
ally, drinking, for feast or banquet, shows the import-
ant part wine played on such occasions. Ben Sira
and his generation must have had a special fondness
for "the blood of the grape," which he defines, as we
have seen, as one of "the necessaries of life." Thus
Ben Sira exclaims :
JEWISH LIFE IN THE TIME OF BEN SIR A 89
What life is there to him who is without wine ?
It was from the beginning created for joy (31 : 27).
And again he says :
Joy of heart, gladness, and an ornament
Is wine in its time ajid proper season (31 : 28).
Indeed, it would seem that Ben Sira was so eager for
the full enjoyment of the liquid ''that gladdens God and
men," that he would advise men to avoid anything
which might prove a disturbing element. His words
are:
Rebuke not thy neighbour at a banquet of wine,
Neither set him at naught in his mirth :
Speak not unto him a word of reproach,
And press not upon him by asking him back a debt (31: 31).
But please notice the qualification of time and season,
whilst in another place Ben Sira also insists on meas-
ure. For the abuse of wine, as for the abuse of food,
Ben Sira has only words of condemnation :
A workman that is a drunkard shall not become rich.
He that loveth flesh shall inherit poverty (19 : i),
whilst in another passage he says
Show not thyself valiant in wine ;
For wine hath destroyed many (31 : 25).
Drunkenness increaseth the rage of a fool unto his hurt ;
It diminisheth strength and addeth wounds (31 : 30).
Indeed, next to sexual immorality, there is noth-
ing which Ben Sira abhors more than drunkenness.
For
Wine and vice will make a man of understanding fall away
(19: 2)
(namely, from God).
Yet Ben Sira advocated only temperance and mod-
go STUDIES IN JUDAISM
eration, not total abstinence. With his hero, Simon
the Just, he might in exceptional cases approve per-
haps of a man taking the vows of the Nazarite, who
had to refrain from all intoxicating drinks. 3^ But he
would certainly never have allowed the constitution
of an ascetic order to become the rule of the nation
at large. As of iron, salt, and other useful and indis-
pensable articles, he says also of wine :
All these things for good to the godly,
So to the sinner they shall be turned into evil (39 : 27).
The wine was accompanied by music. The enjoy-
ment of a concert on festive occasions was not a post-
exihc invention. "Woe unto those," we read in
Isaiah, ''that continue until night till wine inflame
them. And the harp and the viol, the tabret and the
pipe, and wine are in their feasts" (5: 12). But
whilst the prophet protested, as they were probably
then a source of abuse, Ben Sira thoroughly relished
such performances, for
As a signet of carbuncle in a setting of gold,
So is a concert of music in a banquet of wine.
As a signet of emerald in a work of gold,
So is a strain of music with pleasant wine (32 : 5-6).
There is a story in the Talmud of a Rabbi who
gave a dinner to his pupils, and who felt rather un-
comfortable because of their shyness. Whereupon
he said to his servant, ''Give wine to the young men,
that they may break their silence." 3^ We may thus
imagine that also in the times of Ben Sira the wine
served as a signal for the opening of the conversation.
JEWISH LIFE IN THE TIME OF BEN SIR A 91
His remarks in this respect are not uninteresting.
There is first the venerable, serene, and sedate elder,
but liable to become serious and heavy. To him Ben
Sira says :
Speak, O elder, for it becometh thee.
And be modestly wise and hinder not song.
In a place for wine pour not forth talk.
Wherefore shouldst thou be overwise out of season? (32 :
3-4).
These lines recall strongly a saying in later Rab-
binic literature to the following effect : ** Three things
make man popular with his fellow-creatures — an open
hand, a free table, and a little gaiety." 33
There is also the assertive youth attending, per-
haps, his first banquet, and rather inclined to monopo-
lise the conversation. To him Ben Sira's counsel is :
Speak, young man, if thou must,
With an effort, if he asks thee twice or thrice.
Compress the word and diminish it exceedingly (32 : 7-8).
He also gives him the gentle hint, that it is modesty
and blushing which will endear him to his elders for
Before hail spreadeth lightning,
And before one that is shamefaced favour (32 : 10).
On the other hand, there is the bore of superior
airs, who is constantly in fear of committing himself,
and tries to impose by his silence. Him Ben Sira
would address with the words :
Refrain not from speech in season,
And hide not thy wisdom for the sake of fair-seeming
(4: 23).
The most unbearable bore is he who never sees a
point :
STUDIES IN J I 'DAISM
He that telleth a tale to a fool, speaketh to one in slumber,
When he hath told his tale, he will say, what is it? (22 : 8).
Yet it must not be thought that Ben Sira was blind
to the evils of the tongue. None perhaps warned
against them more emphatically than he. To be
saved from them man requires special assistance from
Heaven, for which Ben Sira prays in the following
' words :
Who shall set a watch over my mouth,
And a seal of shrewdness upon my lips,
That I fall not suddenly by them, and that my tongue de-
stroy me not? (22: 27).
O Lord, Father and Master of my life,
Abandon me not to their counsel :
Suffer me not to fall by them (23 : i).
The pitfalls set by the tongue are slandering, lying,
perjuring, backbiting, betraying a friend's secret, and
the uttering of obscene words. Nay, the very thought
of things impure is sinful and defiling. Hence Ben
Sira's exclamation :
Who will set scourges over my thought ;
And a discipline of wisdom over mine heart ?
That they spare me not for mine ignorances,
And my heart pass not by their sins (23 : 2).
But even In the speech without sin Ben Sira is con-
stantly recommending caution, discretion, and reti-
cence :
Lo, thou surround thy vineyard with a hedge.
And make a door and bar for thy mouth (28 : 24).
Hast thou heard a word, let it die with thee.
Take courage, it will not burst thee (19 : 10).
Indeed, the difference between the fool and the wise
man is :
JEWISH LIFE IN THE TIME OF BEN SIR A 93
The heart of fools is in their mouth ;
But the mouth of wise men is in their heart (21 : 26).
The effusive gentleman would thus have been out of
place at a banquet in Jerusalem. But
Wine and music rejoice the heart,
But the love of friends is above them both (40 : 20),
** Friendship or death" was an old Jewish proverb,
and no sacrifice was considered too great to obtain
friendship,34 "Acquire for thyself a friend or a com-
panion" is the injunction of Joshua ben Perachyah,
who hved before our era, but the comment given on
it by the Rabbis of later generations is : Let a man
buy himself a friend who will eat and drink with him,
who will study with him the written and the oral law,
and to whom he will entrust all his secrets both of a
spiritual and a secular nature. ^s Ben Sira, however,
the man of the world, and apparently of much experi-
ence, which alone, as he maintains, saved him from
'* danger even unto death," brought about "by cun-
ning lips and weavers of lies," is less effusive, and
even inclined to suspicion. His counsel is:
Separate thyself from thy enemies,
And beware of thy friends (6 : 13).
Still he in no way undervalued the blessing of true
friendship, and he tells us,
A faithful friend is balm of life.
He that feareth God shall obtain him (6 : 16),
only he would advise to caution, till the friend is tried
and found not wanting :
94 5" TV DIES IN JUDAISM
As new wine so is a new friend.
If it becomes thee, thou shalt drink it with gladness (9 : 10).
What one has mainly to guard against in the acquir-
ing of new friends is the tendency toward selfishness,
sacrificing all to its own ends. Hence
Let thyself beware of a counsellor,
And know before what is his interest (37 : 8).
Very interesting is Ben Sira's counsel as to those
from whom we should not take advice .-
Take not counsel with a woman about her rival ;
Neither with a coward about war ;
Nor with a merchant about exchange ;
Nor with a buyer about selling ;
Nor with an envious man about thankfulness ;
Nor with an unmerciful man about kindliness ;
Nor with a sluggard about any kind of work ;
Nor with a hireling in thy house about finishing his work ;
Nor with an idle servant about much business (37 : 1 1 etseq.).
Prudence and foresight do not exclude charita-
bleness and kindness toward the bulk of mankind.
At least they were compatible enough in the view of
Ben Sira, who teaches :
Forgive thy neighbour the hurt that he has done thee,
And then thy sins shall be pardoned when thou prayest.
Man cherishes anger against man,
And does he seek healing from the Lord ?
Upon a man like himself he hath no mercy,
And does he make supplication for his sins? (28 : 2-3).
The same thought is expressed in Rabbinic literature
by the words : He only who is merciful with man-
kind may expect mercy from Heaven. 3^ Such senti-
ments alone should suffice to discharge Ben Sira from
JEWISH LIFE IN THE TIME OF BEN SIR A 95
the guilt of selfishness and cynicism brought against
him by a certain school.
But a friend and partner behave as occasion requires,
And a prudent wife is above them (40 : 25).
The prudent woman or the good woman is the con-
stant theme of Ben Sira's praises, as he never gets
tired of enlarging upon the evils of the bad woman or
the foolish woman.
The fraternity of bachelors was not popular with
the Jews, the Talmud speaking of the wifeless man
as deficient in humanity, whilst Ben Sira stigmatises
him as a vagabond, wandering up and down. One of
the two types of women a man was thus bound to
have. The latter (the bad woman) was considered a
punishment of God, "■ which shall fall to the lot of the
sinner," the former (the good wife) was looked upon
as a blessing- from Heaven and the reward of " such
as fear the Lord."
How far heiresses were fashionable in ancient Jeru-
salem it is difficult to say. At present I can recall
one case, of Joshua ben Gamala, whose fiancee^ the
millionairess Maratta bath Boethus, bought for him,
from Agrippa H, the commission of high priest. But
it must be owned that he made good use of his oppor-
tunities, for it was this Joshua who introduced com-
pulsory education for children from the age of six and
upward.37 Still, both the Rabbis and Ben Sira con-
g6 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
demned such marriages as unworthy and degrading.
The words of the latter are :
There is anger and impudence and great reproach
If a woman maintains her husband (25 : 22)
The considerations whicli should weigh with a man in
the choice of a wife are, according to Ben Sira, noble
descent, beauty, modesty, thrift, and faithfulness. For
A silent and loving woman is a gift from the Lord,
And there is nothing so much worth as a well-instructed
soul.
As the sun when it arises in the highest places of the Lord,
So is the beauty of a good wife in the ordering of a man's
house (26 : 14, 16),
whilst her devotion to religion is described as follows :
Eternal foundations on solid rock,
And the laws of God in the heart of a saintly woman. 38
Another consideration with Ben Sira, as with the
later Rabbis, is Din^, or noble pedigree, for
So thy race which thou lovest shall be magnified,
Having the confidence of their good descent (26 : 21).
Good descent, however, is not everything, as chil-
dren given to haughtiness and extravagance "do
stain the nobility of their kindred." To insure ''the
goodness of the stock" a sound education is indis-
pensable. In the times of Ben Sira this was still left
entirely to the father. According to the Rabbis the
main duties of a father toward his son consisted in
instructing him in the Torah, bringing him into wed-
lock, and teaching him a trade, or, to be more accu-
rate, teaching him a handicraft.39 Ben Sira, in accord-
JEWISH LIFE IN THE TIME OF BEN SIR A 97
ance with his low opinion of labour omits the third
duty, and says :
Hast thou sons, instruct them,
And marry wives to them in their youth (7 : 23).
But instruction was a serious business, and could
not, in the view of Ben Sira, be successfully carried
out without the aid of cane and rod :
Bow down his neck in his youth,
And smite his loins, when he is a little one (30 : 12).
He that loveth his son causeth him oft to feel the rod (30:1).
This is, of course, in accordance with the sentiment
expressed so often in the Book' of Proverbs and in
other parts of the Old Testament. But this fact in
no way relieves the severity of such a passage as
Play with him and he will grieve thee ;
Laugh not with him, lest thou have sorrow with him
(30:9, 10).
With Ben Sira, as it would seem, the child is neither
an angel nor a devil, but a mere mischievous animal.
Hence his simile :
An unbroken horse becomes stubborn.
And a son left at large becometh headstrong (30 : 8).
Not less severe was the education of girls, though
they are never mentioned in connexion with the in-
fliction of corporal punishment. This decency prob-
ably forbade. The more strict was the watch kept
over them. Ben Sira's maxim was:
Hast thou daughters, guard them (7 : 24).
The education of a girl tended mainly, to judge
98 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
from various Rabbinic sources, toward making a good
housewife of her; and consisted in enabling her to
attain such accompHshments as weaving, spinning,
cooking, baking, nursing, and arranging the furniture. 4°
These were, indeed, the services a woman had to do
for her husband. Of course, it was a question of
means, and the abihty to keep servants might re-
Heve her from some of the more onerous duties.
But work of the hghter kind was insisted on even
with the richest, as the best remedy against whims
and morbidness. The choice of a husband was
entirely in the hands of the parents, and success in
obtaining good matches for one's offspring was a
source of congratulation.
Give away a daughter, and thou shalt have accomplished
a great work,
But join her to a man of understanding (7 : 25).
In later Jewish literature daughters are spoken of
as the winged birds taking flight after their husbands
when married. 4' The hope of the family thus reposed
in the male line. The filial duties were many and
arduous, the son being bound to maintain his parents
in their old age and to serve them. But he was also
expected to continue the traditions of the family, be-
coming heir to its feuds and its alliances. It was a
special comfort when a father
Left behind him an avenger against his enemies,
And one to requite kindness to his friends (30: 6).
In fact the immortality of whole chains of progenitors
was invested in the dear boy, for
JEWISH LIFE IN THE TIME OF BEN SIR A 99
His father dieth and is as though he has not died,
For he has left behind him one Hke himself (30: 4).
In the map of life with its diversity of colours mark-
ing the high-roads of our earthly career with their
innumerable by-ways and cross-ways, there is ever
facing us in the distance a little dark spot to which all
roads and ways converge. The distance Is entirely a
relative one, varying with our state of health, our
sweetness of temper, and the disposition of our mind,
morbid or cheerful. But there It remains ever con-
fronting us, and not to be removed out of sight by
any variety of euphemism, such as ** haven of rest,"
"land of peace," or *'a better world." Its real name
is Death.
Our sketch of life In ancient Jerusalem will be
more than incomplete, unless we throw a glance, at
least, at Its decline toward the great borderland.
Death, as a rule, Is preceded by illness, and we
have already seen the important part assigned to the
physician. But he was assisted In his duties by
nearly the whole of the community. Ben SIra's
injunction Is:
Be not slow to visit the sick,
For through this thou shalt be beloved (7 : 35)-
This duty is known in Rabbinic literature under the
term Bikkur Cholim, visiting the sick, which, as Is
clear from certain injunctions in the Talmud In con-
nexion with this duty,^^ included in the case of need
STUDIES IN JUDAISM
also nursing and sweeping the room. His friends
also prayed for the patient, and it was a part of their
duty to remind him to make a will and confess
his sins, "for all those who were about to die
had to confess their sins." They had also the belief
that a confession which concluded with a prayer for
forgiveness of sins might bring about his recovery.
This is, as is clear from the whole context, the con-
fession to which the Apostle James refers at the end
of his Epistle. Ben Sira's counsel to the sick man is :
And from all transgressions cleanse thy heart (38 : 10).
Ben Sira, whatever his shortcomings may have been,
— indeed, he was hardly what we would call a sound
theologian, — was not given to platitudes. He freely
admits that death is a very ''bitter remembrance"
to the prosperous man of great possessions and a
capacity for pleasure (31 : i). Yet it had no terrors
for him, for he regarded it not in the light of a pun-
ishment, but in that of a Divine law, which has to be
obeyed and fulfilled with the same submission and
devotion as any law in the Torah, and thus he says :
Be not afraid of death, thy covenant.
Remember that those who went before, and they which
come after will be with thee.
This is the portion of all flesh from the Lord,
And why dost thou refuse the Torah of the Most High ?
(41 : 3-4)-
When death entered, the funeral ceremonies began,
which, at a later period, before the reform of Rabban
Gamaliel, were costly and rather showy. They
became so heavy a tax, that sometimes the near-
JEWISH LIFE IN THE TIME OF BEN SIR A loi
est relatives would take to flight, leaving the corpora-
tion to take care of the dead body. Hence Ben Sira's
injunction :
According to the custom bury his flesh,
And hide not thyself when they die (38 : 16).
The mourning lasted seven days, in which friends
and acquaintances were expected to join :
Be not wanting to them that weep,
And mourn with them that mourn (7 : 34).
In the time of the Rabbis the mourning in the case
of parents extended over twelve months. But neither
the Rabbis nor Ben Sira approved of prolonged
mourning for an indefinite period. The Rabbis per-
ceived in it a presumption on the part of man to be
more merciful than God,43 whilst Ben Sira thought that
we ought to save our tears for greater calamities :
Weep for the dead, for light hath failed him ;
And weep for a fool, for understanding hath failed him.
Weep more softly for the dead, because he hath found
rest (22 : 11).
Looking back at this life, we feel that for the most
part we have been moving in a world very much like
ours, guided by the same motives, moved by the same
passions, and on the whole striving after the same
ideals. The " Sacred Volume " tells us : *'Say not
that the days of yore were better than these," for it is
unwisdom to say so. The lesson to be derived from
Ben Sira is, say not that our days are better than the
days of yore, for it is ignorance to say so.
ON THE STUDY OF THE TALMUD^
It is now more than half a century since Renan
put the question, '* Has Jewish tradition anything to
teach us concerning Jesus?" This question must be
answered in the negative. As far as the contem-
poraneous Jewish Hterature goes, it does not contain
a single reference to the founder of Christianity. All
the so-called Anti-Christiana collected by mediaeval
fanatics, and freshened up again by modern igno-
ramuses, belong to the later centuries, when history
and biography had given way to myth and speculation.
Almost every Christian sect, every Christian com-
munity, created a Christ after its own image or dogma.
The Jewish legend — a growth of those later centuries
— gave him an aspect of its own, purely apocryphal in
its character, neither meant nor ever taken by the
Jews as real history.
But if the Rabbis have nothing to tell us about the
personality of Jesus, Rabbinic literature has a good
deal to teach us about the times in which he lived and
laboured. And what is more important is that a
thorough study of this literature might, with due dis-
cretion, help us to a better understanding of the writings
attributed to Jesus and his disciples. To prove this
by a few instances will be the aim of my present
lecture. It is intended as an invitation to fellow-
ON THE STUDY OF THE TALMUD 103
students to devote more attention to a branch of litera-
ture, from the study of which the Christian divine
might derive as much profit as the Jewish Rabbi.
In justice to by-gone times, it should be pointed
out that this fact had by no means escaped the search-
ing eyes of Christian scholars of previous generations.
They both recognised the importance of the Talmud for
a better knowledge of the two Testaments, and applied
themselves to an honest study of its contents. As
the fruits of these studies, it is sufficient to mention
here the Porta Mosis of Pocock, the De Synedriis of
Selden, the Horae Rabbinicae of Lightfoot. The Cam-
bridge Platonists also deserve honourable mention.
o
These great and hospitable minds extended the range
of their literary acquaintances also to the Rabbis, and
the Select Discourses of John Smith, and the Discourse
on the Lord's Supper by Cudworth,^ show that this
acquaintance was by no means a passing one.
All the names just given belong to England, but
the Continent in no way remained behind. The names
of the Continental students of Rabbinism are duly re-
corded in Zunz's Ziir Liter atur und Geschichte^ and in
other bibliographical works. It is sufficient to mention
the name of Reuchlin, who saved the Talmud from the
torch which a converted Jew was about to apply to it ;
the two Buxtorfs, whose works bearing on Rabbinic
literature fill pages in the catalogues of the British
Museum; and Vitringa, whose books on Rabbinic
topics are considered by the best scholars as classical
pieces of work.
I04 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
However, these good things are (as ah-eady indi-
cated) a matter of the past. The present shows a
decided deterioration. Not only has the number of
students devoting themselves to Rabbinic literature
shrunk to a miserable minimum, but the quality of the
work produced by these latter-day students is such as
to show a distinct decay, among the very few praise-
worthy exceptions being, for instance, the theological
works of Dr. C. Taylor. No student who is interested
in the constitution of the ancient Synagogue dare
neglect Vitringa's De Syiiagoga vctcrc, which appeared
in the year 1696; but he would certainly lose nothing
by omitting to read most of the productions of our
own century on the same subject.
The causes of this decay are not to be sought for
far off. There was first the influence of Schleier-
macher, whose interpretation of Christianity formed,
as far as its negative side is concerned, one long
strained effort to divorce it from Judaism. '*I hate
historic relations of this sort," he exclaims in one
place; and proceeds to say, ** every religion is con-
ditioned by itself, and forms an eternal necessity."
Schleiermacher's theory of the origin of Christianity
was, as is well known, mainly based on the Johannine
Gospel, to the disparagement of the Synoptics. The
German Marcion had thus every reason to hate his-
tory. But as the Talmud still reminded the world of
these historical relations, Schleiermacher and his school
adopted the course of vulgar parvcmis, and cut the
Rabbis and their literary remains. The second cause
ON THE STUDY OF THE TALMUD 105
of this decay is the suspicion thrown on all Jewish
tradition by the higher criticism. Anybody who has
ever read any modern Introductions to the Old Testa-
ment will remember, that as a rule they open with a
reference to the Rabbinic account of the rise of the
Canon, followed by a lengthy exposition showing its
utter untrustworthiness. To make matters more
complete, efforts were made to disqualify the Rabbis
from bearing witness even to events which took place
when the Synagogue was a fully-established institu-
tion, administered by the ancestors of the Rabbis in
their capacity as scribes and saints, or Chasidim. I
am referring to the controversy as to the existence of
the so-called Great Synagogue, commencing, accord-
ing to tradition, with Ezra the Scribe, and succeeded
by a permanent court, consisting of seventy-one mem-
bers, called Sanhedrin; which court again was, ac-
cording to tradition, presided over by two members,
the one called Nasi, or Prince-President, whilst the
other bore the title of Ab-Beth-Din, Father of the
Court of Justice, or Vice-President, both of whom
were recruited for the most part from Pharisaic circles.
Modern criticism, mainly on the strength of certain
passages in Josephus and in the New Testament,
maintains a negative attitude toward these accounts.
The questions involved are too important and too
complicated to be entered upon in a casual way. We
need notice only the following fact. This is, that the
doubts regarding the traditional account of the consti-
tution of the Sanhedrin were first raised in this century
io6 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
by Krochmal in the "forties," taken up again by
Kuenen in the "sixties," to be followed by Well-
hausen in the "eighties." But when reading their
works you will observe that, whilst Krochmal respect-
fully questions tradition, and Kuenen enters into elab-
orate examination of the documents, Wellhausen sum-
marily dismisses them. ]\Iatters have now, indeed,
come to such a pass that the principle has been laid
down, that it is not necessary to have a thorough
knowledge of Rabbinic literature in order to express
an opinion about its merits or demerits. It is prob-
ably thought that we may condemn it by mere intui-
tion It is impossible to argue with transcendental
ignorance.
Trusting that none of those present have any rea-
son to hate history, or to believe in the superior virtue
of ignorance, I will now proceed to the subject of my
lecture.
Let me first state the fact that the impression con-
veyed to the Rabbinic student by the perusal of the
New Testament is in parts like that gained by reading
certain Rabbinic homilies. On the very threshold
of the New Testament he is confronted by a gene-
alogical table,3 a feature not uncommon in the later
Rabbinic versions of the Old Testament, which are
rather fond of providing Biblical heroes with long pedi-
grees. They are not always accurate, but have as a
rule some edifying purpose in view. The Rabbis even
declare that the Book of Chronicles, with its long
series of names, has no other purpose than that of
ON- THE STUDY OF THE TALMUD 107
being interpreted/ that is to say, of enabling us to
derive some lesson from them. In the fifth chapter
of the Sayings of the Jewish Fathers, dealing mostly
with round numbers, we read : ** There were ten gen-
erations from Noah to Abraham to make known how
long-suffering God is."
In the second chapter of Matthew the Rabbinic
student meets with many features known to him from
the Rabbinic narratives about the birth of Abraham ;
the story of the Magi in particular impresses him as a
homiletical illustration of Num. 24: 17, ''There shall
come a star out of Jacob," which star the interpreta-
tion of the Synagogue referred to the star of the
Messiah. 5 This impression grows stronger the more
we advance with the reading of the Apostle's writings.
Take, for instance. Matt. 3: 9, "Bring forth fruit
worthy of repentance." This verse, like so many
others in the New Testament in which fruits or har-
vest are used as metaphors or similes in parables, gains
both in intensity and in freshness when studied in con-
nexion with many allegorical interpretations of the
Rabbis in which the produce of the field and the
vineyard play a similar part. One or two instances
will not be uninteresting. Thus, with reference to
Song of Songs 2 : 2, "As the lily among the thorns,
so is my love among the daughters," a famous Rabbi
says : There was a king who had a paradise (or gar-
den), which he had laid out with rows of fig-trees,
rows of vines, and rows of pomegranates. He put
the paradise in the hands of a tenant, and left. In
io8 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
after days the king came to see what his tenant had
accomplished. He found the garden neglected, and
full of thorns and thistles. He then brousfht wood-
cutters to cut it down. Suddenly he perceived a lily.
The king plucked it, and smelled it, and his soul re-
turned upon him. He turned and said, *'For the
sake of the lily the garden shall be saved." The lily
is the Congregation of Israel ; intent on the strength
of its devotion to the Torah, it saved the world from
the destruction to which the generation of the deluge
had condemned it by their wicked deeds.^
In another place, however, it is the individual who
is compared to the lily. Thus, Song of Songs 6 .- 2,
*' My beloved went down to his garden to gather the
lilies," is applied to the death of the righteous, whose
departure from this world is a gathering of flowers
undertaken by God himself, who is the beloved one.'
In connexion with this we may mention another
Rabbinic parable, in which the wheat takes the place
of the lily. It is given as an illustration of Song of
Songs /: 3, and Psalm 2 : I2, The Scriptural words
in the latter place are "la IpETJ, which the Rabbis ex-
plain to mean "kiss the wheat," illustrating it by the
following parable : The straw and the chaff were argu-
ing together. The straw maintained that it was for
its sake that the field was sown and ploughed, whilst
the stem insisted that it was on its account that the
work was undertaken. Thereupon the wheat said,
"Wait until the harvest comes, and we shall know with
what purpose the field was sown." When the harvest
ON THE STUDY OF THE TALMUD 109
came, and the work of threshing began, the chaff was
scattered to the wind, the stem was given to the
flames, whilst the wheat was carefully gathered on the
floor. In a similar way the heathens say, ''Itisfor
our sake that the world was created," whilst Israel
makes the same claim for itself But wait for the Day
of Judgment, when the chaff will be eliminated, and
the wheat will be kissed. I need hardly remind you
of the parable in Matt. 13.^
To return to Chapter 3. I will quote verse 1 1, in
which the Baptist in his testimony to Jesus says, *' I,
indeed, baptised you with water unto repentance, but
he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose
shoes I am not worthy to bear ; he shall baptise you
with the Holy Ghost and with fire." The baptism, of
course, represents the n^^lD, or immersion, of the Bible,
enforced by the Rabbis in the case of proselytes. Ac-
cording to some authorities it was also customary with
people entering on a course of repentance. 9 The ex-
pression, ''whose shoes I am not worthy to bear," re-
minds one of the similar Talmudic phrase, running,
"he who will explain to me a certain word, I will
carry his cloth after him to the bath,"'° that is to say,
he will show submission to his authority by performing
menial work for him. As to the term, "baptism by
the Holy Ghost and fire," the latter has a parallel in
the Talmudic dictum, that the main n^^2D, immersion,
as a means of purification, is by fire." The former
term, " baptism by the Holy Ghost," is certainly ob-
scure, and has given a good deal of trouble to the
STUDIES IN JUDAISM
commentators ; but it must have been readily under-
stood by the Jews, who even spoke of drawing the
Holy Spirit, t^Tlpn nn foV^i^, a term applied only to
liquids.'^ Note also the following passage from a ser-
mon by R. Akiba: ''Blessed are ye Israelites. Before
whom are ye purified, and who is he who purifies you ?
Ye are purified before your Father in Heaven, and it
is he who purifies you," as it is said, "The Lord is
the Mikiveh of Israel." ^3 The word mpD is taken in
the sense in which it occurs several times in the Pen-
tateuch, meaning ''a gathering of waters," or a ritual
bath, taken after various kinds of uncleanness. The
Rabbi then derives from the words of Jeremiah ( 1 7 :
13) the lesson, that as the Mikzueh is the means of
purification for defilement (in the sense of the Levitical
legislation), so God is the source of purity for Israel.
It should be borne in mind, that according to the
Rabbinic interpretation, the term nXDID, ** defilement,"
applies to all kinds of sins, ritual as well as moral,
especially the latter, whilst the process of purifying
mostly concerns the heart. '* Purify our hearts, that
we serve thee in truth," is the constant prayer of the
Synagogue.
^'n'9, or ''purification," is, according to the mystic
R. Phinehas ben Jair, of the second century, one of the
higher rungs on the ladder leading to the attainment
of the holy spirit.'^ I do not know how far this con-
ception may be connected with the gospel narrative,
according to which the baptism of Jesus (or the
Taharah of Jesus) was followed by the descent of the
ON THE STUDY OF THE TALMUD
holy spirit. If R. Phinehas ben Jair could be taken, as
some maintain, as one of the last representatives of
the Essenes, there would, indeed, be no objection to
see in the synoptic account an illustration of the prin-
ciple laid down by these mystics. At any rate, it
may serve as a transition to the verses I am about to
quote from Matt. 3 (16, 17), running thus: *'And
Jesus, when he was baptised, went up straightway
from the water : and, lo, the heavens were opened
unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending
as a dove, and coming upon him : and, lo, a voice out
of the heavens saying. This is my beloved son in
whom I am well pleased." The symbolism of the
Holy Ghost by a dove is a common notion in Rab-
binic literature. The dove is considered as the most
chaste among the birds, never forsaking her mate.
The congregation of Israel, which never betrays its
God, is therefore compared to the dove.'^ "Once
upon a time," so runs a Rabbinic legend, which I
give herein substance, **King David went out on a
hawking expedition. Whereupon Satan came and
turned himself into a deer, which David tried to hit,
but could not reach. Constantly pursuing the animal,
David was thus carried from his suite, owine to the
machinations of Satan, into the land of the Philistines,
where he was suddenly confronted by the relatives of
Goliath, who were all thirsting for his blood. There-
upon a dove descended before Abishai, who had re-
mained behind in the king's camp, and began to emit
wailing tones. Abishai at once understood its mean-
STUDIES IN JUDAISM
ing, saying, 'The congregation of Israel is compared
to a dove, as it is said, Wings of a dove covered
with silver' (Ps. 6^-. 14), and thus interpreted the
appearance of the dove as a sign that King David, the
hope of Israel, was in danger of his life, and he set
out to his rescue." ^^
A closer parallel, however, is the following pas-
sage attributed to the well-known mystic, Ben Soma, a
younger contemporary of the Apostles. The passage
runs thus : R. Joshua ben Kananiah was standing
upon the terrace of the Temple mountain. Ben Soma
saw him, but did not rise up before him (as he ought
to have done, seeing that R. Joshua was his master).
R. Joshua asked him, ''Whence and whither, Ben
Soma?" The answer Ben Soma gave him was, "I
was looking at (or rather meditating upon) the upper
waters (above the firmament) and the under waters
(under the firmament). The space between the two
waters is not broader than three fingers j as it is said,
*the Spirit of God was brooding upon the face of the
waters,' like a dove brooding over her young, partly
touching them and partly not touching them." '7
I need hardly say that we have here to deal with
a fragment of a Jewish Gnosis, and I must refer the
reader to the works of Joel, Graetz, and Freudenthal, for
more information upon this point, but it must be noted
that some parallel passages read "eagle" instead of
"dove." Deut. 32: 11 lends some countenance to
this reading, but the parallels just quoted from the
New Testament as well as the famous vision of R.
ON THE STUDY OF THE TALMUD 113
Jose, in which the daughter-voice is complaining in a
tender voice hke a dove, saying *' Woe unto the father,
whose children were expelled from his table," ^^ speak
for the reading given first.
After the appearance of the Holy Ghost, Jesus is
greeted, as we have seen, by a voice from the heavens,
saying, "This is my beloved son, in whom I am well
pleased." These words represent, as rightly remarked
by the commentators, a combined paraphrase of Ps.
2: 7 and Isa. 41 : i. The voice from heaven, as is
well known, corresponds with the Rabbinic ** daughter
of a voice" (^1p nn), or daughter-voice, occupying the
third place in the scale of revelation. I cannot enter
here into the various aspects and functions of the
daughter-voice, about which a good deal has been
written, but I should like to note two peculiar features. ^9
The first is, that in many cases the daughter-voice,
when employed as a means of revelation, finds its ex-
pression, not in a fresh message, but in reproducing
some verse or sentence from the Hebrew Bible. Thus
it is recorded by the Rabbis that when they (the au-
thorities) intended to include King Solomon in the
number of those who forfeited their salvation, the
daughter-voice put in the protest of heaven, in the
words of Job (34: 33), ''Shall his recompense be as
thou wilt, that thou refusest it?"^° The great recon-
ciliation, again, of God with the house of David, as
represented by the exiled king Jeconiah, when the
Babylonian captivity was nearing its end, was an-
nounced by the daughter-voice in the words of Jere-
1 14 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
miah, "Return, ye backsliding children, and I will
heal your backslidings. Behold, we come unto thee;
for thou art the Lord our God" (3 : 22).^' It should
be noted, however, that the daughter-voice is not con-
fined in its quotations to the Canonical Scriptures.
Sometimes the daughter-voice even quotes sentences
from the Apocrypha. This was the case in Jabneh,
where the Sanhedrin met after the destruction of the
Temple. There a voice from heaven was heard repro-
ducing a verse from the Wisdom of Ben Sira (3 : 22),
'' Ye have no need of the things that are secret. " ^^ It is
true that Ben Sira has **thou hast no need" (in the
singular), but it would seem as if the voice from heaven
is not always very exact in its quotations, adapting
them in its own way to the message to be announced.
Thus, for instance, on the occasion of Saul's dis-
obeying the commandment of God regarding the exter-
mination of the Amalekites, there came the daughter-
voice and said unto him, ''Be not more righteous
than thy Maker," -|3ipD -in> pl^'n bx."3 We will easily
recognise in this warning the words of Ecclesiastes
(7: 16), ''Be not righteous overmuch," nnnn pl^'n Sn,
only that nain was altered into "in^ required by the
prefix of "jDlpO, which word was apparently added by
the voice from heaven.
Another important feature of the daughter-voice
is, that m some cases it is audible only to those who
are prepared to hear it. ''Every day," says the
rather mystically inclined R. Joshua ben Levi, "goes
forth a voice from Mount Sinai, and makes proclama-
ON THE STUDY OF THE TALMUD 115
tion and says, * Woe to the creatures for their con-
tempt of the Torah.' " As rightly pointed out by the
commentators, this voice is heard only by fine, sensi-
tive natures that are susceptible to Divine messages
even after the discontinuance of prophecy. ^^ In this
case the daughter-voice becomes something quite sub-
jective, and loses a great deal of its authoritative char-
acter. The renegade Elisha ben Abuyah, or, as he is
commonly called, "inx, the "other one," in his despair
of ''doing repentance", heard a voice coming straight
from behind the throne of God, saying unto him,
''Come back, ye backsliding children, except thou
'other one,'" and thus he abandoned himself to an
immoral life.^s Contrast this story with that of Ma-
nasseh, the worst sinner among the kings of Judah.
It is to this effect. When the captains of the King of
Assyria defeated Manasseh and put him among thorns,
and inflicted upon him the most cruel tortures, he
invoked all the strange gods he was in the habit of
worshipping, but no relief came. Suddenly he said,
"I remember my father once made me read the fol-
lowing verses (Deut. 4: 30, 31), 'When thou art in
tribulation, and all these things are come upon thee,
. . . return thou to the Lord thy God. For the Lord
thy God is a merciful God; he will not forsake thee
nor destroy thee.'" He then began to address his
prayers to God. The angels — in a most unangelic
way, I am sorry to say — shut up the gates of heaven
against his prayer, but the Holy One, blessed be he,
said, "If I do not receive him, I shut the gate in the
1 16 5 TUDIES IN JUDAISM
face of repentance.' And thus he was entreated of
him and heard his suppHcation.' " ^^ The moral of the
two stories is, that the ** other one" trusted to fresh
messages, and went to perdition, while Manasseh fell
back upon the family Bible and was saved. It is
probable that it Avas such moral catastrophes as re-
corded in the case of the "other one" which brou"-ht
the voice of heaven into disrepute. The verdict of
the Rabbis in the second century was, that no atten-
tion is to be paid to it when it presumes to decide
against the moral conviction of the majority. The
Torah is not in heaven. =7 its interpretation is left to
the conscience of catholic Israel.
Now it is this conscience of Israel which is not
satisfied with the lesson to be derived from the Scrip-
tures at the first glance, or rather the first hearing,
but insists upon its expansion. Thus when interpret-
ing Lev. 19: 36, the Rabbis somehow managed to
derive from it the law of ** let your speech be yea,
yea; nay, nay." ^^ Again, when commenting upon
the seventh commandment, they interpreted it in such
a way as to include the prohibition of even an un-
chaste look or immoral thought. ^9 Xhe rules of inter-
pretation by which such maxims were derived from
the Scriptures would perhaps not satisfy the modern
philologian. They, indeed, belong to the ''second
sense " of the Scriptures, the sense which is the heart
and soul of all history and development. *'God hath
spoken once, twice I have heard this" (Ps. 62: 12),
which verse is interpreted by the Rabbis to mean that
ON THE STUDY OF THE TALMUD 117
Scripture is capable of many interpretations or hear-
ings. 3° But it is interesting to find that these interpre-
tations of the Scriptures tending to improve upon the
** first sense" are sometimes introduced by the formula:
'' I might hear so-and-so, therefore there is a teaching
to say that," etc. noiS mo^n . • . ^:« i;tDiSJ^.3' Put into
modern language the formula means this : The words
of the Scriptures might be at the first glance (or first
hearing) conceived to have this or that meaning, but
if we consider the context or the way in which the
sentences are worded, we must arrive at a different
conclusion. This parallel may perhaps throw some
light on the expression ^Kouorare, "you have heard that
it was said . . . but I say unto you," a phrase fre-
quent in the Sermon on the Mount. After the
declaration made by Jesus of his attachment to the
Torah, it is not likely that he would quote passages
from it showing its inferiority. The only way to get
over the difficulty is to assume that Jesus used some
such phrase as the one just quoted, ^JS TDiE^, '*I might
hear," or '*one might hear," that is to say, ** one
might be mistaken in pressing the literal sense of the
verses in question too closely." Against such a nar-
row way of dealing with Scripture he warned his dis-
ciples by some formula, as "iDlij mo'pn, ''there is a
teaching to say that the words must not be taken in
such a sense." But the formula being a strictly Rab-
binic idiom, it was not rendered quite accurately by
the Greek translator. Hence the apparent contradic-
tion between Matt. 3 : 17, 20, and the matter follow-
ii8 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
ing upon these verses. I only wish to add that in
Rabbinic Hterature it is sometimes God himself who
undertakes such rectifications. Thus we read in an
ancient Midrash with reference to Jer. 4: 2, "And
thou shalt swear as the Lord liveth, in truth and in
judgment": ''The Holy One, blessed be he, said
unto Israel, 'Think not that you may swear by my
name, even in truth. You may not do so unless you
have obtained that high degree of sanctity by which
Abraham, Joseph, and Job were distinguished, who
were called God-fearing men (d\1^X ^t^n^).'" This limi-
tation of swearing, even in truth, is indicated accord-
ing to the Rabbis in Deut. 20 .- 10, which verse is in-
terpreted to mean, "If thou fearest thy God, and art
exclusively in his service, thou mayest swear by his
name," not otherwise. 3^
Having mentioned the name of the patriarch, I
may perhaps state the fact that, beside the epithets
"the God-fearing" Abraham, or Abraham "the friend
of God," Abraham also bears in Rabbinic literature
the title of Rock. The wording of the Rabbinical
passage and the terms used in it will not be uninter-
esting to the student of the New Testament. In
Matt. 16: 18 we read: "And I also say unto thee,
that thou art Pctros, and upon this pctra I will build
my church." The Rabbinic passage forms an illus-
tration of Num. 23: 9, "For from the top of the
rocks I see him," and runs thus: There was a kine
who desired to build, and to lay foundations he dug
constantly deeper, but found only a swamp. At last
ON THE STUDY OF THE TALMUD 119
he dug- and found a petra (this is the very word the
Rabbi uses). He said, "On this spot I shall build
and lay the foundations." So the Holy One, blessed
be he, desired to create the world, but meditating
upon the generations of Enoch and the deluge, he
said, "How shall I create the world seeing that those
wicked men will only provoke me?" But as soon as
God perceived that there would rise an Abraham, he
said, "Behold, I have found the pctra upon which to
build and to lay foundations." Therefore he called
Abraham Rock, as it is said, ""Look unto the rock
whence ye are hewn. Look unto Abraham, your
father" (Isa. 51: i, 2). 33
The parallels given so far have been more accord-
ing to the letter. I will now give one or two parallels
according to the spirit.
I have already referred to the attempts made by
various authors to describe the life and times of Jesus
Christ. The best book of this class is undoubtedly
Schiirer's History of the JcivisJi People in the Age of
Jesus Christ. It is a very learned work, particularly
as far as the Greek and Roman documents are con-
cerned. Its treatment of such topics as the geography
of Palestine, the topography of Jerusalem, the plan of
the Temple, and kindred subjects, is almost perfect.
A most excellent feature in it is the completeness of
its bibliography, there being hardly any dissertation
or article in any of the learned periodicals which is
not duly registered by the author. But all these fine
things are, to use a quaint Rabbinic phrase, only
STUDIES IN JUDAISM
"after-courses of wisdom." Bibliography in particu-
lar is not even an after-course. It partakes more of
the nature of the menu served sometimes by very
ignorant waiters, possessing neither judgment nor
discretion. The general vice attaching to this whole
class of works is, that no attempt is made in them to
gain acquaintance with the inner life of the Jewish
nation at the period about which they write. Take,
for instance, the subject of prayer. Considering that
pre-Christian Judaism gave to the world the Psalms,
and that post-Christian Judaism produced one of the
richest liturgies; considering again that among the
various prayers which have come down to us through
the medium of the Talmud, there is also one that
forms a close parallel to the ''Lord's Prayer/' con-
sidering all this, one might expect that also in the
times of Jesus the Jews were able to pray, and in fact
did pray. The contents of their prayers might be of the
greatest importance for the student, expressing as they
probably did the religious sentiments of the age and
the ideal aspirations of the nation. But what our
theological waiters dish up is a minimum of prayer
dressed up in a quantity of rubrics, in such a fashion
as to stigmatise their authors as miserable pedants.
And no attempt is made to enter into the spirit of even
this minimum. No explanation is given, for instance,
of the meaning of the terms "the kingdom of heaven,"
the yoke of which the Rabbi was supposed to receive
upon himself, the " Hear, O Israel," etc. The terms
"sanctification of the name of God," "Father in
ON THE STUDY OF THE TALMUD 121
heaven," and ** renewed world," are also frequent in
Jewish literature and in the Jewish prayer-book, but
no sufficient attention is given to them. To my knowl-
edge Dalman is the only modern Christian scholar who
recognises the importance of these terms, and similar
ones, in their bearing upon a clearer understanding of
the New Testament, and has at least made an attempt
at their analysis in his book, Die Worte Jcsu.
Another important point, which has never been
properly examined, is the unique position which the
Keiieseth Israel, the congregation of Israel, or ideal
Israel, occupies in Rabbinic theology. Yet it forms
a striking parallel to that held by Jesus in Christian
theology. The Keneseth Israel was, like the Spirit of
the Messiah, created before the world was called into
existence. ** She is the beloved of God, in whom he
rejoices ; " and there is no endearing epithet in the
language, such as son, daughter, brother, sister, bride,
mother, lamb, or eye, which is not, according to the
Rabbis, applied by the Scriptures to express the inti-
mate relation between God and the Keneseth Israel.
Not even the title of ''god," of which God is other-
wise so jealous, is denied to Israel, as it is written,
" I have said. Ye are gods." Nay, God even says to
Moses, '' Exalt Israel as much as thou canst, for it is
as if thou wert exalting me ; " whilst he who denies
Israel or rises against Israel denies God. In fact, it is
only through the witness of Israel that God is God,
and he would cease to be so were Israel to disappear,
as it is written, " Ye are my witnesses, . . . and I am
STUDIES IN JUDAISM
God." 34 But there is no fear of such a calamity.
Israel is as eternal as the universe, and forms the
rock on which the world was built. As a rock tower-
ing up in the sea, so the Keneseth Israel stands out in
history, defying all tempests and temptations,- for
*'many waters cannot quench the love" between God
and the Keneseth Israel. 35 She is, indeed, approached
by Satan and the nations of the world with the sedu-
cing words, '* What is thy beloved more than another?
Beautiful and lovely thou art, if thou wilt mingle
among us. Why dost thou permit thyself to go
through fire for his sake, to be crucified for his
name ? Come unto us, where all the dignities in our
power await thee." But Israel resists all tempta-
tions ; they point to their connexion with God
throughout their history, to his love unto them, shown
by conferring upon them the gift of holiness, which
even a Balaam envied, and to the promise held out to
them of the Messianic times, when suffering will cease
and Israel will revel in the glory of God." 3^ These
few quotations suffice to show what an interesting
chapter might be added to our knowledge of com-
parative theology.
Again, our knowledge of the spiritual history of
the Jews during the first centuries of our era might be
enriched by a chapter on miracles. Starting from the
principle that miracles can be explained only by more
miracles, an attempt was made some years ago by a
student to draw up a list of the wonder-workings of
the Rabbis recorded in the Talmud and the Midra-
ON THE STUDY OF THE TALMUD 123
shim. He applied himself to the reading of these
works, but his reading was only cursory. The list
therefore is not complete. Still it yielded a harvest
of not less than two hundred and fifty miracles.
They cover all classes of supernatural workings
recorded in the Bible, but occur Avith much greater
frequency.
A repetition of these miracles would be tiresome.
I will content myself with reproducing a story from
Tractate Chagigah, which will illustrate to you how
much even the individual Jew shared in the glories
conferred upon the Keneseth Israel. I am speaking,
of course, of that individual who is described by the
Rabbis as one *' who labours in the Torah for its own
sake, who is called a lover of God and a lover of
humanity. Unto him kingdom and authority are
given. Unto him the secrets of the Torah are re-
vealed." The term "authority," by the way, is
given with the word n^K^DD, suggested probably by
Ben Sira 45: 17, DSEJ^Dl pinn inS^::^D''1, "and he made
him have authority over statute and judgment;"
whilst Matt. /: 29, "and he taught them as one hav-
ing authority," was probably suggested by Ben Sira
3: 10, nnD^^ nn 'p'L^n?^1, "and he who has authority
over it shall teach it." As a man of such authority
we may consider R. Johanan ben Zakkai, the hero of
the story I am about to relate. He was the younger
member of the " Eighty Club " of the school of Hillel,
and thus a contemporary of the Apostles, though he
survived them. He was an eye-witness of the terrible
124 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
catastrophe of the destruction of the Temple by the
Romans, an event which he prophesied forty years
before it took place. He is best known by the school
he established in Jabneh, whither the Sanhedrin, and
with them the Divine Presence presiding over this
assembly, emigrated after the fall of Jerusalem. There
(in Jabneh) he died about 1 08 c. e.
It is related that Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai was
riding upon his ass on the road, while his pupil, R.
Eleazar ben Arach, was walking behind him. Said R.
Eleazar to him, "■ Master, teach me a chapter about
the matter relating to the chariot," that is, the vision
in the first chapter of Ezekiel. The master declined,
preferring to hear the pupil. R. Eleazar said again,
*' Wilt thou permit me to repeat in thy presence one
thing which thou hast taught me ? " to which he gave
his assent. R. Johanan then dismounted from his
ass, and wrapped himself in his gown, and seated him-
self upon a stone under an olive-tree. He said it was
disrespectful that he should be riding on his beast,
whilst his pupil was lecturing on such awful mysteries,
and the ShcchinaJi (the Divine Presence) and the
MalacJie Jia-SJiarcth (the angels-in- waiting) were ac-
companying them. Immediately R. Eleazar began his
exposition. And there came down fire from heaven
and encircled them and the whole field. And the
angels assembled and came to hearken, as the sons of
men assemble and come to look on at the festivities
of bride and bridegroom. And the terebinth-trees in
the field opened their mouths and uttered a song,
ON THE STUDY OF THE TALMUD 125
** Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons and all
deeps. . . . Fruitful trees and all cedars, , . . praise ye
the Lord." And an angel answered from the fire
and said, **This is the matter of the chariot." When
he had finished, R. Johanan ben Zakkai stood up and
kissed him on his head, saying, '' Praised be the God
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who has given our
father Abraham a wise son, who knows how to discourse
on the glory of our Father in heaven." So much for
the story. I need hardly recall to your mind the
parallels in the Book of Enoch and in the New Testa-
ment.37
My lecture is at an end, not so the subject it treats.
To accomplish the latter in a properly critical and
scientific manner the aid of fellow-workers is neces-
sary. I have often heard the wish expressed that a
history of the rise of Christianity might be written by
a Jew who could bring Rabbinic learning to bear upon
the subject. I do not think that the time is as yet
ripe for such an experiment. The best thing to be
done at present is, that Christians devote themselves
to the study of Rabbinic literature. The history
which would be written after such study would cer-
tainly be more scientific and more critical, though per-
haps less edifying.
THE MEMOIRS OF A JEWESS OF THE
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY^
Professor Doctor Kaufmann has, by his edition of
the Mcmoiren dcr Gluckcl von Hameln, earned the
thanks of all Jewish students as well as of the Jewish
public at large. It is hardly necessary to say that
these Memoirs are well edited. ''With the great
o
nothing is small." And everyone who has the good
fortune to be acquainted with Dr. Kaufmann's works,
knows that whatever he did— -whether he wrote on
the history of the attributes of God in Jewish phil-
osophy, or pointed out the greatness of George Eliot
to his countrymen, or described for us the im-
portance of the Anglo-Jewish ritual, or edited the
registers of some obscure Jewish community — he did
it well, in a thorough, scientific, and scholarly man-
ner. And so these Memoirs, too, are provided with
an excellent introduction, in which he not only gives
an account of the manuscript from which his edition
was prepared, but brings to bear upon his subject all
the cognate contemporary literature both in print and
in manuscript, whilst the footnotes giving explana-
tions of many strange words and odd observations in
the text prove greatly helpful to the reader.
But it must not be inferred from this that the
Memoirs belong to Dr. Kaufmann's minor work.
Only to those to whom Jewish literature is a mere
MEMOIRS OF A JEWESS 127
exhibition of so many Books of the Dead — to be
relegated to their dusty shelves after a brief study of
the title-page — will the contents of these Memoirs
appear trifling and unimportant. Those, however, to
whom literature means life, with all its varying phases
of folly and wisdom, of grief and joy, happiness and
misery, will find in these Memoirs a source of infinite
delight and instruction, revealing the history of a life
extending over nearly three-quarters of a century.
But what is more important is that these revelations
come from the heart of a woman. Jewish literature
on the whole is not rich in '* Lives," but an autobio-
graphy written by a woman is an almost unique phe-
nomenon in it.
Frau Gliickel Hameln, the author of these
Memoirs, was the daughter of Lob Pinkerle, the Par-
nas or president of the Jewish community in Ham-
burg. He was a man of great influence among his
Jewish fellow-citizens, and is described by his daugh-
ter as the means of procuring for his brethren the
permission to re-settle in that city after their temporary
expulsion from it about this period. Gliickel, who
was born in 1647, was a child of three years when
this expulsion took place.
By this date the reader will at once be prepared
not to expect from her a description or a diary in the
modern sense of the word. In the seventeenth century
people were not yet inclined to undergo the process
of self-vivisection, constantly registering their moods
and humours and parading them before the world.
128 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
Self-torture was not yet considered bliss, and to go
down on one's knees and pray to God for a handsome
lord was not looked upon as a special act of intel-
lectual spirituality. Matrimonial arrangements were
quietly left to the parents. Our Gliickel, in particu-
lar, with the many vicissitudes and cares which life
brought to her, had hardly time for introspection.
She was a simple-minded woman, a mere *' mother in
Israel " and as foolish as all mothers, hence doomed
to many a disappointment with her children ; idolising
her husband and in consequence almost broken-heart-
ed after his death, and so proud of her own and her
husband's family, which she probably overrated, that
her own individuality was sunk in theirs. All the
more do we hear from her about her connexions and
relatives, who were mostly prominent members of the
Jewish congregations scattered over a great part of
Germany. Her Memoirs thus gain a particular inter-
est, giving us as they do an insight into the social life
of the important Jewish communities of Hamburg,
Metz, and Altona, such as no other source affords.
Her first recollections date from Altona, to which
place (only about a mile from Hamburg) her family
removed after the expulsion already mentioned. Al-
tona, in which they found a Jewish community con-
sisting of about twenty-five families, formed at that time
a part of the dominions of the " righteous and pious
King Frederick HI of Denmark." ^ The Jews were,
it would seem, permitted to carry on business in their
old home during the daytime, after procuring from
MEMOIRS OF A JEWESS 129
the Mayor of Hamburg a special passport, for which
they had to pay a tax of a ducat, and which had to be
renewed every month. If the Jew was so fortunate
as to have acquaintances among the poHticians, the
month was extended to eight weeks. But neither
taxes nor the authority of the chief magistrate could '
protect them against the insolence of the Hamburg
mob, so *' that every woman thanked the Lord when
she saw her husband in peace" back in Altona as
the evening approached. 3
Her family was the first to return to Hamburg.
But Gluckel had little confidence in the Senate, who
were instigated by the clergy not to suffer the Jews to
take possession of their old places of worship. As
we know from another account, the Lutheran minis-
ters advised the Senate not to grant this privilege to
the Jews unless they agreed to the appointment of a
*' Christian Rabbi " to preach the Gospel in their syna-
gogues. '' It lasted a long while," Gliickel says, " till
we crept back (that is, returned slowly) to our syna-
gogues. May the Lord, in the abundance of his
mercy and lovingkindness, have compassion with us
and send us our righteous Messiah, when we shall
serve him in the integrity of our hearts and shall
offer our prayers in the holy Temple in the holy city
of Jerusalem. Amen." ^
With Gluckel these words were not a mere phrase.
She had cause enough to be eagerly expectant of a
redeemer. She was a child of three or four when
the Cossack leader, Bogdan Chmielnicki, let loose his
I30 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
savage hordes against the defenceless Jews of Poland.
Tens of thousands were massacred, many more per-
ished by famine and exposure to cold and all sorts of
disease. Some, however, managed to escape " the
sword of the hero of holy Orthodox Russia," and
fled to Germany. Of these many found their way
to Hamburg and Altona, which were overcrowded
with the refugees. Old Lob Pinkerle, as the Parnas
of the Jewish community, had a hard time of it in
providing these unfortunates with subsistence and
employment. " It was after this event," Gliickel
writes, ** that the Wilna Jews ran away from Poland.
Many came to Hamburg. They were afflicted with
a contagious disease, but we had then no hospital in
Hamburg .... and my father, of blessed memory,
accommodated ten of them in the upper floor of the
house." Her grandmother, who, in spite of all the
remonstrances of her children, insisted on visiting
them four times a day and took care that they should
be wanting in nothing, caught the malady and died
after a few days. Gliickel also caught the contagion.
This was the first severe illness through which she
passed. 5
The office of Parnas was thus in those troubled
times not very pleasant. But even this doubtful privi-
lege — of converting his house into a hospital and
endangering the lives of its inmates — poor Pinkerle
was not allowed to enjoy in peace. As GKickel tells
us, his high dignity was contested by certain malicious
people, who, playing the part of informers to the
MEMOIRS OF A JEWESS 131
Danish Government, tried by these slanderous means
to replace him in the office of Parnas. Pinkerle and
his colleagues had to repair at once to Copenhagen ;
but the court was convinced of their innocence, and
matters were soon settled to the satisfaction of the old
Parnas.^
All this occurred before our Gliickel reached the
age of twelve, with which year her childhood was
brought to an end. Through the age of girlhood —
the age of lofty dreams and low realities — she never
passed. For her twelfth birthday finds her engaged
to Chayim Hameln, and at fourteen she is married
to him. 7
The town to which Gliickel was transplanted
through her marriage was Hameln, an out-of-the-
way place in the northwest of Germany, better
known to legend than to history. She tells us of the
annoyance caused to her mother by the impossibility
to procure respectable coaches for the journey. They
had to make their way from Hanover to Hameln with
all the wedding train on mean peasant-carts. Her
father-in-law, Joseph Hameln, comforts them with the
fact, that many years back, when he set out to marry,
no vehicles at all were to be found, and, though the
son of the Parnas of all Hessen, he had to make his
entry on foot into Stadthagen, where his dear Freud-
chen lived, whilst his companion Fisch carried the
dowry on his shoulders.^
Gliickel dwells with evident delight on everything
relating to her new home. The first who won her
132 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
heart was, as it would seem, her father-in-law, the
amiable and venerable Joseph Hameln, who, together
with his wife, gave her much ''calmness of spirit."
''Who can describe," she exclaims, "their charity
and piety, and with what kindness and consideration
they treated me; far better than I deserved." She is
not quite insensible to the dulness and dreariness of
Hameln, which was a petty village in comparison
with her native place, only two Jewish families living
there. But she quite forgets Hamburg when she
thinks of her saintly and energetic father-in-law He
got up every morning at three o'clock, dressed him-
self in his synagogue suit (^Sclmh^ock^, and read aloud
his prayer or other religious book. Her room ad-
joined his, and the opportunity of observing him and
listening to him when he prays or studies fully com-
pensates her for all the delights of the Hanseatic city.
And what pious and noble children his were ! What
a sage her brother-in-law, Reb Abraham ! He spoke
little, but every word that escaped his mouth "was
sheer ClwcJuna'' (wisdom). As a youth he was sent
to Poland, which was then a great centre of Talmudi-
cal learning, and he " was full of Torah as a pome-
granate is full of seed." Her other brother-in-law,
Reb Shmuel, also went to Poland for the purpose of
studying. The two brothers there made excellent
matches, especially the latter (Shmuel), who married
a woman of " a very noble family," the daughter of
the great Reb Shulem, the Chief Rabbi of Lemberg.9
The Chmielnicki persecution, already referred to.
MEMOIRS OF A JEWESS 133
brought both brothers back to Germany with their
famiHes, and they had to commence Hfe over again.
Shmuel was soon elected Chief Rabbi of Hildes-
heim, where he Hved and died as a saint. Another
of her numerous brothers-in-law was Reb Lob
Bon, a fine character, who, though not a student,
was still "■ a beautiful knower of books " (/. e.^ fairly
read in lighter Hebrew literature), who was for a long
time Parnas in the Cologne province. And what a
noble and modest woman her sister-in-law Esther — a
great sufferer, one who bore her affliction with
patience and submission to God ! '°
The most important of the Hamelns — to Gliackel
at least — was her husband, Chayim Hameln, the
eighth son of Joseph Hameln. Though she proba-
bly never saw him before her wedding, she very soon
finds that the "great, dear God" has ''brought them
together and guided them well." She hardly ever
mentions him without the endearing epithet of *'the
crown of my head." He is her saint, who, though
in very delicate health and working himself half dead
to earn a living for his family, never omits to go
through his fixed readings in the Torah and to fast on
Mondays and Thursdays. She knew few Rabbis,
Gluckel maintains, who read their prayers with so
much devotion (Kawond) as her husband did, and he
would not interrupt them even at the risk of losing
great opportunities. To her he is " the consumma-
tion of a good Jew," patient and forgiving, modest to
a fault, never putting up as a candidate for any honor-
134 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
ary office In the community and exceedingly honest
in money transactions." Gliickel is not a httle proud
of the fact that such a saint and good Jew held her
in high esteem and kept her " like the apple of his
eye," ^^ and never consulted anybody but her, though
she was so young. ^3
The newly-married couple found Hameln, as it
seems, too small a place for their commercial enter-
prises, and moved soon to Hamburg, where they set-
tled as dealers in jewelry. There they lived in a fair
state of prosperity for thirty-eight years, Chayim
travelling far and wide, carrying his trade to Leipzig,
Frankfort, and Amsterdam, and Gliickel attending to
her household and nursing the children. Anxious
for his health, she prevailed upon him to take a part-
ner, and she sits up the whole night drawing up the
contracts. I am sorry to say that the partnership did
not prove a success, and she gets a mild scolding for
all her kindness. ^4 Jhe occasional losses of money,
death of relatives, illness of children (who came in
rapid succession to the number of twelve), belong to
the regular programme of life, and the Hamelns had
their share of sorrow as any other mortals. ** The
Almighty is just," Gluckel comforts herself "We
sinful creatures know not what is good. What we
look upon as the greatest evil, turns out to be the best
fortune which has ever befallen us." "s
The affairs of the Jewish community, of which
the younger Hamelns are now prominent members,
are also conducted wisely and soberly by the sage
MEMOIRS OF A JEWESS 135
Parnasim, the congregation incurring no new debts,
so that there is very httle reason for excitement. ^^ The
spiritual hfe is, as everywhere, concentrated in the
synagogue. The Clialphanim (money-brokers), who
apparently constituted a large part of the Hamburg-
congregation, Gliickel tells us, go, after the day's
work is over, to the synagogue, where they read
Minchah. Thence they proceed to their various CJicb-
raJis (a sort of religious club), to study Torah there.^^
The only great public event during Gliickel's resi-
dence in her native place worth recording, was the
rise of the Pseudo-Messiah Sabbatai Zebi. The Mes-
sianic fever which spread from the East was soon
caught by almost the whole of European Jewry, and
raged most violently in Hamburg.
" About this time " (1665 ?), Gliickel reports, ''peo-
ple began to talk of Sabbatai Zebi. Woe unto us,
for we have sinned. . . When I think of the ' repent-
ance done' by young and old I despair of describing
it. . . And what joy when there arrived letters from
Smyrna ! Most of these were addressed to the
Sephardim. To their synagogue the Germans, too,
betook themselves to hear the letters read. The
Sephardic youth attending the meetings appeared in
their best dress, and wore the colours (green) of Sab-
batai Zebi. Many sold their houses and farms, and
thus prepared for early emigration. My father-in-law
left his house and furniture in Hameln and moved to
Hildesheim (to join the Jewish community there in
the new exodus), and even sent us to Hamburg two
1 36 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
boxes full of good things as provisions for the way"
(to Palestine). . . All proved an illusion after nearly
three years of excitement. *' O my God and Lord,
still thy people Israel despair not, but trust to thy
mercy that thou wilt redeem them whenever it will
be thy holy pleasure to do so. . . I am certain that
thou wouldst long before have had mercy with us,
were we but to fulfil the commandment, ' Thou shalt
love thy neighbour as thyself " ^^
The marriage of their daughter Zipporah with
Kossman Gomperz, the son of Elia Gomperz, of
Emmerich, was the great event in the Hameln family.
For Elia was the most prominent Jew in the Prus-
sian provinces, and was held in much esteem by the
Court of the great Elector Frederick William, of
Brandenburg, who employed him in various political
missions to the Dutch Republic. In fact, people were
not willing to believe that the match would ever come
off, considering that Gomperz was a regular German
Kazin (Prince in Israel), whilst the Hamelns had no
claim to such distinction. The wedding, which took
place in Cleves, where they went with a suite oi
twenty people, accompanied, as it seems, by a band of
musicians, was the triumph of Gliickel's life. The
house in which the guests were lodged resembled a
regular palace, magnificently furnished, and they were
constantly receiving visits from the local aristocracy,
who came to see the bride. " And," fond and foolish
a mother as Gliickel was, she adds, " for a truth, my
daughter looked so beautiful that nothing ever seen
MEMOIRS OF A JEWESS 137
could be compared with her." At the ceremony itself,
there were present, besides so many people of noble
birth, Frederick III, the future king of Prussia, and
Prince Maurice of Nassau, holding all the time the
hand of her dear Mordecai, a boy of five years, who,
attired in his best frock, was declared to be ** the pret-
tiest child in the world." There came also to the
wedding many influential members of the Jewish-
Sephardic community (in Amsterdam). " One
among them was named Mocatti, who traded in dia-
monds. They were all so much occupied in prepar-
ing a proper reception for those high personages that
they even forgot to write the Kethubah, so that the
officiating Rabbi had to read it from a book." ^9 The
festivities concluded with the appearance of masks,
who performed the death dance. Mrs. Lily Grove,
in her charming and learned book, ''Dancing," says
that it is still customary in some parts of Germany to
perform it at weddings. *' The name sounds grue-
some, but it is a merry sport, in which kissing is not
forgotten."
The Memoirs, besides their bearing upon the social
history of our ancestors in ages gone by, of which
illustrations have been given above, have also a cer-
tain theological interest, which must not be left un-
noticed. The interest will perhaps be the greater
since we live in a time in which ignorance has almost
succeeded in making the world believe that it was
only with the introducing of the holy rite of confirma-
tion that Jewish women were brought under the influ-
ence of the synagogue.
1 38 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
The reader hardly expects to meet with a Jewish
St. Theresa. Gliickel was not a I'eligicusc. Piety was
not her profession. " I do not consider my^^Xi fronivi "
(pious), she says, 'T am actually a sinful woman exempt
from very few transgressions. O that I might be worthy
to supplicate (for mercy) and to be really repentant."
The call she received — which, let us hope, was not less
Divine than that ever heard by any Abbess in the Middle
Ages, or any lady settlement worker about to devote her
life to the cause of Humanity in modern times — was to
be a mother, and as such she was soon absorbed by her
household duties, nursing her darlings, and assisting
her husband in various ways. After his death (1689),
the whole burden of the family fell on her ; she
had both to carry on his business and to attend to
the bringing up of her eight orphans. She had thus
little time left for performing real or apparent devotions.
Nor do we think that she could lay any claim to a " su-
perior education. ' ' Her Memoirs are written in Hebrew
letters, but the language is the current Jiidisch-Deutsch
of the time. Her father, she tells us, had his children
instructed both in things heavenly and things worldly. ^°
By the latter she probably understood some know-
ledge of French and playing on the *' Klaffenzimmer "
(Clavier), in which art her half-sister was highly
accomplished.^' We may also assume that she knew
sufficient Hebrew to read her daily prayers and to
understand various familiar phrases and terms, which
became almost a part of the language of the Juden-
gasse. But we doubt whether she was ever able to
MEMOIRS OF A JEWESS 139
read a Hebrew book with ease. At least we know
that when she wished to make herself acquainted with
the contents of R. Abraham Hurwitz's Ethical Will,
she had to have it read to her in an extempore German
translation.- The store from which she drew her
spiritual nourishment was, apart from the Bible, that
edifying literature written in Judisch-Deutsch so
admirably described in an essay by the late Dr. P. F.
Frankl on the Erbauungslecture wiser er Altvorderen.^^
But such books could be and were probably read by
all who were educated at the Cheder in their youth,
as Gliickel had been.^4 Her views about God and the
world offer thus nothing exceptional, but just on that
account they are the more interesting to us as repre-
senting the general way of thinking by Jewish women
of that aee.
She opens her Memoirs with the words : '' What-
soever the Holy One, blessed be he, created, he
created but for his glory. The world is built up by
mercy. We know that God, praised be he and
praised be his name, does not require us ... . but
created everything out of sheer lovingkindness and
mercy. ' ' -s This is followed by a long theodicy explain-
ing and justifying the ways of Providence. Her rea-
soning is just as little cogent as that of all other
theodicies. The real point is that, she herself being
convinced of the soundness of her argument, hers
was a just God, and she had not to face the' taunt
hurled against those who, carrying the doctrine of
necessity to its utmost consequences, were told that
I40 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
they ought to add to their creed : ''I beheve in God
because he is unjust."
The conception of God's mercy and love pervades
all of Gliickel's thoughts. She expresses herself in
the following way : '' The great good God is merciful.
We are his children. His mercy upon us surpasses
that of a father (of flesh and blood). For this latter
may sometimes lose patience with his wicked son and
disown him at last; but we poor children are con-
stantly sinning against God. Still the great, good
Heavenly Father, in spite of the impurity attaching to
us through our transgressions, tells us that we have
only to repent of our sins, and he will again receive
us as his children. Hence, my heartily beloved
children, despair not The Lord is merciful
and gracious, long-suffering, to righteous and to
sinners alike." ^^ Even suffering and pain are only an
effluence of God's goodness. The sinful creatures are
mischievous children in whose education the ereat
gracious God takes a pleasure, so that we may be
worthy children and servants of our Father and
Lord.^7 ** I implore you," she says to her children,
*' to accept everything that God sends (suffering
and pain) in a humble and submissive spirit, and never
cease to pray to him. We sinful creatures know not
what is really good for us." ^^ We ought to rejoice in
suffering and thank God for it. And on a certain
occasion of great grief and loss which she could not
help feeling deeply, she reproached herself with the
words : *' I know that this complaining and mourning
MEMOIRS OF A JEWESS 141
is a weakness of mine. It would be much better for
me to praise and thank the great and gracious God for
all his mercy toward such an unworthy woman as I
am. How many better and worthier people are there
who have not the means of defraying even a single
meal." ^9 On another similar sad occasion she says :
''And for all this I thank and praise thee, my Creator,
who, even in thy chastisement, showest to me, an
unworthy, sinful woman, more grace and mercy than
I deserve, and teachest me through these troubles
patience and humility. ... I do pray thee. Almighty
good God, for thy grace, which will give me the
strength to serve thee, so that I may not appear in a
state of impurity before thee." 3°
The appearance before God takes place after death
when man has '' to give account and reckoning before
the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be he."
This belief in immortality, which permeates all her
thoughts, forms a part of Gliickel's theodicy; for it is
in the next world that man has to pay his real debts
or has to expect his real reward, wherefore he should
submit to suffering in meekness and joy as a means
of salvation. 3^ The terror of sin consists partly in this,
that in some mystical way it takes possession of man's
soul, so that not even death can relieve him, and it
accompanies him to the next world.^^ In brief, the
soul is given in trust to man only for a certain time,
returning unto him who has given it to us. 33 And
when the "crown of her head" was so roughly removed
by the premature death of her husband, her comfort
142 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
was that he was transplanted to a better and eternal
world. ''It is for us," she continues, "to pray that our
end should be in accordance with his will and plea-
sure, and that it should please the Most High to bring
us to the Gan Eden^ 34 Xhe world is a stormy sea
full of dangerous temptations, in which man is easily
drowned. But the Torah is the life-belt which the
great, gracious God has thrown out in these bottom-
less depths that man may get hold of it and be saved.
This is the meaning of the words in the Scripture,
** Therefore choose life." 35
This was the belief of Jewish men and Jewish
women for thousands of years, and we would hardly
dwell on it but for the fact that a certain class of
amateur theologians, who supply our periodical liter-
ature with divinity and morality, show a strong bias
to make the doctrine of immortality an exclusive
monopoly of Christianity. Whatever may have been
the attitude of ancient Judaism towards this doctrine,
there can be little doubt that belief in reward and
punishment after death has been an essential dogma
of the Synagogue for more than two thousand years.
" The way to eternal life or salvation is given in the
holy beloved Torah."
The term Heavenly Father is with Gliickel, as with
many Jewish moralists, a favourite expression. And,
she argues, if we are commanded in the Torah to
honour our parents, how much more careful must we
be to honour our Father in heaven, and not do any-
thing that might call forth the anger of the great,
MEMOIRS OF A JEWESS 143
kindly God.s^ '' The readiness of our ancestor Abra-
ham to sacrifice his only son Isaac at the command of
God — and I, as a mother, know that parents suffer
more at seeing their children in affliction than when
they are themselves in pain — should alone suffice as
an example how to serve God, and to give up for
his sake all worldly considerations and joys." 37
Another main point is, Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself, which, she says, "is so little
observed in our generation." "We know," she
says, " that it is the Most High who said it, and if we
were truly pious from the bottom of our hearts and
not so bad as we are, I am certain that God would
have mercy with us, if we would only keep the said
law." 38 It is interesting to notice how like a child
Gliickel speaks of the law and its commandments.
When reading of the crime of certain of her co-religion-
ists, who tried to hide it afterwards, she says, " But it is
written in our Ten Words, 'Thou shalt not steal,' and
therefore the Omnipresent, blessed be he, did not help
them." 39 But with wives and mothers the first lessons
in altruism are given in the family circle, and charity
begins with them at home; "for the great Heavenly
Father and only God has estabhshed in his wisdom"
that we first love our children, then our near relatives ;
otherwise the world could not exist. 4° There is,
indeed, a certain practical vein running through the
whole of these Memoirs, showing that she well knew
how to take care of herself But even in her harsh
moments, which are usually when she thinks that
144 -S" TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
the offspring of Chayim and Gliickel Hameln are
not so well treated by the world as they deserve,
she is always under the control of religion, and
reproaches herself for her complaints. " Great, Only
God, I implore thee from the depth of my heart to
forgive me, because it is possible that I have wronged
him (the enemy of her son). Perhaps he acted as he
did (with the best intentions) for God's sake." ^^ On
another similar occasion she prays that the Name,
blessed be he, should forgive those who enticed a
relative of hers to live in Hameln, which was the
cause of great misfortune and misery to him. Lastly,
we give here her injunctions to her children for whose
benefit these Memoirs were composed, and whom she
entreats to be indulgent with her as she was in great
distress when she wrote them. "Serve God," she
says, '* my dear children, with all your hearts, with-
out hypocrisy and falsehood. . . Say your prayers
with devotion and awe. . . . and do not interrupt
them by talk, which you must consider as a great
sin. . . . But have a fixed time for the study of the
Torah every day. Attend diligently to your business,
for the providing a livelihood for one's wife and chil-
dren is a great religious work {MitzzvaJi). In particular,
be honest in your money dealings, both with Jews
and non-Jews, so that the name of Heaven be not
profaned through you. If you have in hand money
or wares of other people, then be more anxious about
them than if they were your own ; so that you, God
forbid, wrong nobody. The first question put to man
MEMOIRS OF A JEWESS 145
in the next world is, whether he was faithful in his
money transactions." ^^ "I give thanks and praise
to God," she says somewhere, *'who enabled me to
leave Hamburg without owing a farthing to Jew or
Christian." ^3
Gliickel survived her husband for nearly thirty-five
years. It is a gloomy, hard life which she leads, full
of care, anxiety, and trouble. She travels far and
wide to the great fairs, which expose her to the most
unbearable heat in summer and bitterest cold in win-
ter, and spends the days in her warehouse.^^ As it
would seem, her plans were, after settling her chil-
dren in life, ''to give up the vanities of the world, and,
as every pious and good Jewess ought to do, emigrate
to Palestine to serve there the Lord with all her soul
and all her might." ^s But this was not to be. For her
children, aware of her intentions, are naturally anxious
to retain her near them ,• and it is at their urging that,
after having refused many proposals, she allows her-
self to be persuaded to enter wedlock for a second
time with Cerf Levy of Metz, where her daughter
Esther Schwab lived. The wedding with Cerf Levy,
the Parnas of the Jewish community and the greatest
banker in Lorraine, took place in Metz in 1 700 ; and
with it begins a new series of misery and distress in
Gliickel's life. For Levy, after two years (1702), fails
in his business, the firm is ruined, and Gluckel, who
is so proud of her good name in the commercial
world, has the mortification to see her husband un-
able to fulfil his obligations toward his creditors. The
146 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
little fortune she brought to him was also lost, and
they had to live on a grant from his children. Levy
dies a broken-hearted man in 1712. Gliickel, who
always dreaded the thought of becoming a burden to
her children, lived for three years longer in great
isolation and privation, till at last (171 5) starvation
compelled her to yield to the entreaties of her good
daughter Esther, who was the support and the con-
solation of her old age. Gliickel despairs of doing
justice to Esther's virtues. She is modest, saving,
and an excellent housekeeper, and her mother-in-law,
Frau Jachet-Agathe Schwab, bears witness to the
superiority of Esther to herself in the great art of pre-
paring nice dishes. She is very regular in her attend-
ance at the synagogue, never absenting herself from
any Divine service. Her house is open wide to the
poor, and her table is always adorned by the presence
of her Rabbi (a sort of domestic chaplain) and that of
an alumnus of the Talmudical College.^^ She and her
husband, who is now Parnas of the community, are
popular with poor and rich, all enjoying their hospi-
tality. As to Gliickel herself, they are exceedingly
kind to her, ** showing her all the honours in the world"
and treating her with great consideration and regard.
** May Heaven reward them" for all their goodness.^7
Gliickel, who continued her Memoirs to 17 19,
died on the 19th of September, 1724. She departed
from this world ''with a good name." The Memoirs
were copied out by her grandson, Moses Hameln,
Chief Rabbi of Baiersdorf. After a hundred and
MEMOIRS OF A JE WESS HT
seventy-two years of dead silence Gluckel speaks to
us again. And her words are well worth listening
to.
SAINTS AND SAINTLINESS^
Some two years ago, in a conversation with a lady
of the Jewish persuasion, of high culture and wide
reading, she made the remark to me that, as far as she
knows, Judaism is the only one among the great reli-
gions which has never produced a saint, and that there
is, indeed, no room in it for that element of saintliness
which, in other creeds, forms the goal the true be-
liever endeavors to reach. The conclusion which she
drew from this alleged fact was, that good enough as
Judaism may prove for the daily wear and tear of life,
men and women of finer texture of soul than the com-
mon run of humanity must look to other religions for
higher aspirations than to that which had come down
to her from her ancestors.
Strange as such an assertion must appear to the
student of Hebrew literature, I was not altogether
surprised at her statements, considering the religious
environment in which she had been brought up.
Carlyle said of Voltaire that " he dearly loved truth,
but of the triumphant kind." My lady-friend loved
Judaism fairly in her own patronising way, but her
Judaism was of the sane and plausible kind. It made no
demand on faith. It was devoid of dogma, and shunned
everything in the nature of a doctrine. Its great
virtue consisted in its elasticity, in being adaptable to
the latest result of the latest reconstruction of the Bible,
SAIiYTS AND SAINTLINESS 149
and in being compatible with any system of philosophy
ever advanced, — provided, of course, that the system
in question was still a subject of languid conversation
in fashionable drawing-rooms. Above all, Judaism
was with her a sober religion, hostile to all excesses
of mysticism and enthusiasm, all prudence and com-
mon sense, but little of wisdom and less of soul and
emotion. But enthusiasm and mysticism are the very
soil upon which saintliness thrives best. It is, there-
fore, not to be wondered at if Saints and Saintliness
were excluded from Judaism as conceived by her and
her teachers.
It is not my intention to enter into a controversy
as to such a conception of Judaism. Starting afresh
in the world as we did, to a certain extent, at the end
of the eighteenth century, it was only natural that
with the zeal of new converts we should be eager to
assimilate all sorts of ideas ; and whilst w^e have learned
a good deal of Latin, a good deal of Greek, a good
deal of history, and also acquired some methodical
habits in our scientific work, — for all of which benefits
we ought to feel truly grateful, — we have been at the
same time too much accessible to all kinds of rational-
istic platitudes, and to a sort of free-thinking and
materialistic dogmatism long ago obsolete among the
great majority of thinkers. It is ample time that
we become free men, and begin to use our powers of
discretion. We ought to remember that we live now
in the twentieth century, not at the end of the eigh-
teenth. True, the twentieth century is still in its in-
I50 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
fancy, and has hardly had time to develop a line of
thought of its own. But as it is the heir of the past,
we know that among the ideals bequeathed to it by
the last decades of the nineteenth century which it
cherishes most, are the following : That in religion
catholicity is good, sectarianism is bad; that great
religions can live only on ideas and ideals, not on
mere organisation; that plausibility is more often a
sign of mediocrity than a test of truth ; that soberness
is good, but that inspiration and enthusiasm are better,
and that every religion wanting in the necessary sprink-
ling of Saints and Saintliness is doomed in the end
to degenerate into commonplace virtues in action, and
Philistinism in thought, certain to disappear at the first
contact with higher life and higher thought.
It will readily be perceived that under these altered
conditions of thought there must be much in the
scheme of salvation drawn up some seventy or eighty
years ago that is badly in need of revision. And this
revision does take place, in spite of all the frenzied
attacks upon romanticism, mysticism, and Orientalism.
The only section of humanity never afflicted with
this last vice were, as far as I know, the Red Indians.
They were good Western gentlemen sans rcproche^
without a taint of Orientalism and all its terrible con-
sequences. However, I do not wish to argue this
point just now. Here we shall confine ourselves to
the subject of Saints and Saintliness in Judaism, an
aspect of Judaism almost entirely neglected by our
"theologians."
SAINTS AND SAINTLINESS i5t
The best Hebrew equivalent for the term saint is
the adjective T'On, commonly used in the sense of
pious, devout, reverend, godly ; but the noun non is
found together with \n and D^Dm, thus implying the
qualities of grace, graciousness, gracefulness, and
kindness. Thus we read of Esther, "And the King
loved Esther above all the women, and she obtained |n
and non in his sight" (Esther 2 : 17); that is to say,
she found grace and kindness in his sight. Of the
virtuous woman it is said, "She opens her mouth with
wisdom, and in her tongue is non miD, the law of
kindness (or graciousness)" (Prov. 31: 26). When
God reminds Israel of the honeymoon at the outset
of her spiritual career, when she was wedded to the
Torah, he says, " I remember thee the grace (iDn) of
thy youth," etc. (Jer. 2: 2). When an ancient
Rabbi wanted to be polite to a newly-married couple,
he would compHment the bride with the words, nsj
miDHl (beautiful and graceful).^ Applied to matters
spiritual, the best equivalent for on'^on or nn^DR would
be "beautiful souls."
Closely connected with the terms Chasiduth and
Chasid are the terms Kedushah (holiness) and
Kadosh (holy). The two ideas are so naturally
allied with each other that they are interchangeably
used in Rabbinic texts. But it must be remarked
that the term Kedushah does not entirely cover the
English word holiness, the mystical and higher aspect
of it being better represented by the term Chasiduth
(saintliness). Whilst I shall thus consider myself at
152 5 TUDIES IN JUDAISM
liberty to utilise freely such Biblical and Rabbinic mat-
ter as gives evidence of the existence and nature of
Kedushah in Judaism, I shall, on the other hand, try
to sift the material in such a way as to give promi-
nence to the element of Chasiduth, and all that this
term implies.
The notion of Chasiduth, or saintliness, is variously
described by different Jewish writers. The only
point about which they fairly agree is the feature of
individualism that distinguishes the Chasid, or saint,
from other religionists. 3 The golden mean, so much
praised by philosophers and teachers of ethics, has
no existence for him, and he is rather inclined to ex-
cesses. Nor can he be measured by the standard of
the Law, for it is one of the characteristics of the
saint that he never waits for a distinctive command-
ment. The various precepts of the Bible are for him
so many memoranda, or head-lines, each leading to
new trains of thought and suggestive of any number
of inferences. But inferences are subject to different
interpretations.^ Hence the fact that each writer
emphasises the special feature in the saint with which
he was most in sympathy by reason of his own bent
of mind or particular religious passion. The saint
thus belonging to the subjective species, our theme
would be best treated by a series of monographs, or
lives of the various saints. But those could hardly
be brought within the compass of an essay. It will
therefore be best for our purpose to combine the
various features characteristic of the saint into a gen-
SA/JVTS AND SAINTLINESS 153
eral sketch, though such a mode of treatment will
necessarily bring more into prominence the thing
saintliness, than the person practising it.
In speaking of saints it should be premised that I
am not referring to organisations or societies bearing
this name. The references in Jewish literature to such
organisations are few and of a doubtful nature, and
will certainly not stand the test of any scientific
criticism. Besides, one does not become a saint
by reason of a corporate act, or by subscribing to a
certain set of rules, though a man may be a saint
despite his being a member of a society or community
composed of professional saints. Saintliness is essen-
tially a subjective quality. An ancient Rabbi put the
matter well when he said, *'As often as Israel per-
ceived the Holy One, blessed be he, they became
saints." 5 Put in a modern equivalent, we should say
that saintliness is the effect of a personal religious ex-
perience when man enters into close communion with
the Divine. Some New England mystic describes such
communion as the mingling of the individual soul with
the universal soul. This is just as obscure as any other
term the new or the old world may choose to de-
scribe old ideas. When the Rabbis spoke of per-
ceiving God, they probably thought of Psalm 17 : 15,
"I will behold thy face in righteousness; I will be
satisfied when I awake with thine imag-e." ^ Some
versions paraphrase the second half of the just quoted
verse: **I will be satisfied by gazing on thy like-
ness," an expression denoting the highest fellowship
154 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
with God, almost, as it were, a fellowship of the
senses.
As to the way in which these blissful moments of
close communion with the Divine might be made last-
ing and effective, the Rabbis give us a hint when they
say that Israel, when they became saints, sang a song.^
The same thought may also perhaps be divined ' in
the words of another Rabbi, who maintained that
saintliness consists in man's zealous compliance with
the prescriptions in Berachoth, the Talmudic tractate
dealing mostly with matter appertaining to benediction
and prayer.^ Under song and prayer we have to
understand all those manifestations of the soul in
which the individual attempts to reciprocate his
revelation of the Divine. As was pointed out in
another place 9 with regard to the Bible, its unique
character consists in furnishing us with both the reve-
lation of God to man, as given in the Pentateuch and
in the Prophets, and the revelation of man to God, as
contained in the Psalms and in other portions of the
Scriptures of a liturgical nature. '° Hence the value
the saint attached to prayer. He longs for the
moments when he can pour out his soul before his
God in adoration and supplication. The hours of the
day appointed for the three prayers, evening, morning,
and noon, are for him, a Jewish saint expresses it, the
very heart of the day." Apparently, however, the
saint is not satisfied with these appointed times. He
is so full of expectation of the time of prayer, that he
devotes a whole hour of preparation to put himself in
SAINTS AND SAINTLINESS 155
the proper frame of mind for it, and he is so reluctant
to sever himself from such blissful moments that he
lingers for a whole hour after the prayer, in "after-
meditation." It was in this way that the ancient saints
spent nine hours of the day in meditation and suppli-
cation." The ancient Rabbis had a special formula of
thanksgiving for the privilege of prayer, and the saints
availed themselves of this privilege to its full extent, '3
Besides the obligatory prayers, the Jewish saint had his
own individual prayers, some of which have come
down to us. The burden of these is mostly an appeal
to God's mercy for help, that he may find him worthy
to do his will. "May it be thy will," runs one of
these prayers, "that we be single-hearted in the fear
of thy name; that thou remove us from all thou
hatest ; that thou bring us near to all thou lovest,
and that thou deal with us graciously for thy name's
sake." '4 Another Rabbi prayed, " It is revealed before
thee, God, that we have not the power to resist the
evil inclination. May it be thy will to remove it from
us, so that we may accomplish thy will with a perfect
heart." '^ In such prayer God and man meet, for, as an
old Agadist expressed it, in a rather hyperbolic way,
"From the beginning of the world, the Holy One,
blessed be he, established a tent for himself in Jeru-
salem, in which, if one may say so, he prayed, 'May
it be my will that my children accomplish my will.' " ^^
Midnight, with its awe-inspiring silence and the
feeling of utter isolation which comes upon man, was
considered by the saints as another favourable moment
156 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
for prayer. In allusion to Psalm 119: 62, the Rabbis
report that above the couch of David there hung a
harp.^7 "The midnight breeze, as it rippled over the
strings, made such music that the poet-king was con-
strained to rise from his bed, and, till the dawn flushed
the Eastern skies, he wedded words to the strains."
The music was not silenced with the disappearance of
the harp of David. It kept awake many a Jewish
saint even during the Middle Ages. Of one of these
saints the record is that he used to rise up in the
depths of the night and pray : "My God, thou hast
brought upon me starvation and penury. Into the
depths of darkness thou hast driven me, and thy
might and strength hast thou taught me. But even
if they burn me in fire, only the more will I love thee
and rejoice in thee, for so said the Prophet, 'And
thou shalt love thy God with all thy heart.' " ^^ In the
later Middle Ages, a whole liturgy was developed,
known under the name of ni:;n pp^n, or "The Order
of Prayers for Midnight." It is composed of a collec-
tion of Psalms and Biblical verses, mostly of a mourn-
ful nature, expressing Israel's grief over the destruc-
tion of the Holy Temple and the suffering of God's
children in the dispersion. It is accompanied by a
number of soul-stirring hymns, composed by the poets
of the Synagogue. They are mostly of a deep, spirit-
ual nature, of matchless beauty, infinitely superior to
any we have acquired lately in our modern hymn
books. '9 It is one of the great tragedies of modern
Judaism that it knows itself so little. A people that
SAINTS AND SAINTLINESS 157
has produced the Psalmists, a R. Judah Halevi, a R.
Israel Nagara, and other hymnologists and liturgists
counted by hundreds, has no need to pass round the
hat to all possible denominations begging for a prayer
or a hymn. It contains further a confession of sins
which are the cause of deferring the manifestation of
the glory of God and the establishing of the kingdom
of heaven on earth. Perhaps I may remark that con-
fession of sin is an especial feature of the Jewish liturgy,
which the Jew is eager to repeat as often as the op-
portunity offers itself The Occidental man, in his
self-complacency, thinks this a mark of Oriental crin-
ging, unworthy of a citizen who believes himself good,
and is prosperous. Perhaps the reader will be more
reconciled to this feature in our liturgy if I quote the
following from a letter of Lincoln to Thurlow Weed.
It probably refers to a passage in his second inau-
gural, in which, if I am not mistaken, he makes the
whole nation a participant in the sin of slavery. He
writes: *'I believe it is not immediately popular.
Men are not flattered by being shown that there has
been a difference of purpose between them and the
Almighty. To deny it, however, in this case, is to
deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a
truth which I thought needed to be told, and, as
whatever of humiliation there is in it falls most directly
on myself, I thought others might afford for me to
tell it." ^° When the Jewish saint said, '* We have
sinned, we have betrayed," and so on, he meant
chiefly himself, and others might at least afford for
him to tell it.
158 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
The Sabbath, with its opportunities for rest and
devotion, is described as the harvest of the week/^ the
advent of which is impatiently awaited by the saint.
It is a gift of the Lord, and the saint shows his grati-
tude by the preparations he makes to accept it. In-
deed, he would avoid anything which in some cir-
cuitous way might lead to the breaking of the Sab-
bath, even in such cases where breaking it would be
permitted by the Law. Queen Sabbath is met by
him on her way with song and praise, and greeted
royally ; and when she has arrived, he experiences
that sense of the plus-soul, or over-soul, ^^ which im-
parts to his devotion and his rest a foretaste of the
bliss to come. Other nations, it is pointed out, have
also days of rest, but they stand in the same relation
to the Jewish Sabbath as a copy to the original —
wanting in life and soul. ^3 Xhe Sabbath is mystically
described as the mate of Israel. ^"^ Hence, with the
saint, every profane or secular thought would be con-
sidered as a breach of connubial duty. And when,
against his will, his thoughts were directed to money
transactions, or improvement in his estate, the saint
would decline to profit by them.^5 gyt, as a rule, his
very thoughts rest on that day. Even in the prayers
nothing concerning mundane affairs is allowed to come
in.^^ It is all joy and no contrition. It is entirely the
day of the Lord.
The same may be applied to the festivals, which
the saint observes with similar strictness ; for they are
so many occasions of enjoying fellowship with the
SA/.YTS AND SAINTLINESS 159
Divine. The Penitential Days, extending from the
first to the tenth of the month of Tishri, with the
opportunity they afford for reconcihation with God,
are the subject of his special solicitude. A well-
known saint expressed himself, that all the year he
does nothing but listen impatiently to catch the sound
of the hammer, knocking at the doors in the early
hours of the morning, calling the faithful to the syna-
gogue, when the Penitential Days are about to arrive.^^
The saint is further described as a regent,^^ having
absolute control over all his organs. Of these the
mouth is one of the most important. The maxim of
Judaism, as conceived by the great moralists, is that
the things which enter the mouth as well as those
which proceed from the mouth may be unclean. Ac-
cordingly the Jewish saint would constantly watch
both the imports and the exports of his mouth. With
regard to the former it is hardly necessary to say that
the saint would refrain from all those various forbid-
den foods which the Bible describes as *' unclean, an
abomination," and fetid. These have, according to
the general Jewish opinion, the effect of polluting the
soul, and there is no difference upon this point between
the teachings of the Pentateuch and those of the
Prophets, unless we choose to interpret these latter in
the spirit of Paul and Marcion, and their modern suc-
cessors. The saint, with his abhorrence of anything
impure, would avoid the least contact with them.
True, the saint is an individualist, but an extensive
menu and the indulgence of other appetites forbidden
i6o STUDIES IN JUDAISM
by the Scriptures, are no mark of a strong person-
ality. We Occidentals are greatly proud and jealous
of our right of private judgment. But the first con-
dition for private judgment is that the judge should
not be bribed by considerations of comfort and con-
venience. The great majority of Jewish saints had
no difficulty in reconciling themselves to any ob-
servance or ceremony. Speech about the Divine
has to be in metaphors, and action corresponding
to such speech can be only in signs and symbols.
Those mystically inclined perceived in them the
reflex of things unseen, assuming proportions in
the regions above never dreamt of by the vulgar.
Certainly, there were a few, especially among the
mystics, who had antinominian tendencies, but they
never stopped at the ritual part. They equally
resented the moral restraint imposed upon them by
the Torah. They all became notorious profligates,
and terminated in apostasy.
The individualism of the saint found expres-
sion in the following principle : *' Sanctify thyself
even in that which is permitted to thee." ^9 As
Nachmanides points out, the Torah has forbidden
us certain kinds of food, but allowed the eating
of meat and the drinking of wine, but even within
these limits can the man of impure appetite be-
come a drunkard and a glutton. From doing this,
man is warded off by the general commandment of
holiness, which keeps him aloof from all animal de-
sires, s'^ R. Joseph Caro had his menu regulated by
SA/JVTS AND SAINTLINESS i6i
his angel, or the spirit of the Mishnah, created by his
devotion to that part of the oral law, who, again and
again, impresses upon him the fact that every morsel
of food and drop of drink not absolutely necessary to
support life is a sacrifice to the strange god. Even
the luxury of drinking too much water is considered
by him a concession to the Evil One. 3'
On the whole, the saint would be rather inclined
to asceticism. His inference from such command-
ments as, for instance, that regarding the Nazarite
who had to abstain from wine, or that concerning the
refraining from food altogether on the Day of Atone-
ment, would be, that restraint and discipline in every
respect are pleasing to his Father in Heaven. The
statement is often made that Judaism is not an ascetic
religion, and, indeed, there are passages in Jewish
literature which might be cited in corroboration of
this view. But the saint, by reason of his aspirations
to superior holiness, will never insist on privileges and
concessions. His models will be the heroic Elijah,
with his rough mantle of camel's hair, his dwelling in
the cherit, and sleeping under a desert-broom, and
preparing himself for a revelation on Mount Horeb
by a fast of forty days ; or the Psalmist, who says,
*'My knees are weak from fasting, and my flesh faileth
of fatness"; or the laymen of the Second Temple,
called ** Men of the Station," representing the Third
Estate in the Holy Temple, where they fasted four
days a week, and spent their time in meditation and
prayer. 3" And thus we find any number of saints in
i62 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
Jewish history, as notorious for their asceticism with
all its extravagances as those of any other religion.
Long lists might be drawn up of Jewish saints who
fasted, as the phrase is, from the beginning of the
week to the end, except the Sabbath ; or, at least,
Monday and Thursday of every week. Others again,
confined themselves to vegetable food and plain water;
whilst others inflicted upon themselves all sorts of
torture, taking snow baths in winter and exposing
themselves to the heat in summer. 33 The remarkable
thing about these saints is, that many among them
warned their disciples against asceticism. Of the
Gaon of Wilna, the story is, that when he remon-
strated with his disciple R. Zalman against wasting
himself by frequent fasts and keeping vigils through
the night, he answered him, **But I understand the
master himself lived such an ascetic life in his younger
days." **Yes," answered the Rabbi, ''I did; but I
regret it deeply now." The rejoinder of Rabbi Zal-
man was, ''I also wish to have something; to reeret." 34
The reader will probably have noticed that even
the modern man, notwithstanding all his ad-
miration for flesh and muscle, speaks of a fine
ascetic face, which he usually identifies with spir-
ituality and inner worth. Even the community
at large, which could not afford to spend itself
in fasts and vigils, never doubted that self-denial is
better than self-indulgence. They were all strongly
impressed with the truth that the man insisting upon
his three square meals a day, and eveiy thing else in
SAINTS A. YD SAINTLINESS 163
correspondence, is less accessible to discipline and
self-sacrifice than the man who follows the rule of the
sages : "A morsel of bread with salt thou must eat,
and water by measure thou must drink, thou must
sleep upon the ground, and live a life of trouble the
while thou toilest in the Torah." 3s The toiler in
the Torah is hardly conscious of the trouble. The
story is of a famous Jewish saint who indulged in
the luxury of fasting the first six days in the week ;
when asked how he accomplished this feat, he an-
swered that he never meant to fast : he simply forgot
to eat.
Even more stringent was the watch which the
saint would keep over the things which proceed from
the mouth. '*Be careful not to utter an untruth,"
says an old Jewish saint, even in the way of a joke, or
in the way of over-emphasis, **for," an old Jewish
moralist tells us, "against the most weighty sins we are
warned in the Bible with only one prohibitive command,
whilst the law forbidding the speaking of untruth is
ever so many times repeated in the Scriptures." ^6 in-
deed, truth is one of the specialties of the Jewish saint.
"The soul," the moralist remarks, "is extracted from
the place of the holy spirit, hewn out from a place all
purity. She is created of the superior splendour, the
throne of glory. In the Holy of Holies, there is
no falsehood j all is truth ; as it is said : * God —
truth.'. . . He who will meditate over these things, that
his soul is extracted from the very source of truth,
will do truth ; never allow a lie an inlet into the place
i64 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
of the holiness of truth." 37 ''Truth," again the ancient
Rabbis said, ** is the seal of the Holy One, blessed be
he," and everything proceeding from the saint, either
in thought, or in word, or in deed, would bear this
impress. He speaks the truth in his very heart.
Untruth has no existence for him, and he would,
under no consideration, agree to any concession or
compromise in this direction. Thus, one of the saints
prescribes, ** Guard thyself against anger, flattery, and
falsehood. If untruth has become a matter of habit
with thee, make it a rule to tell people, ' I lied,' and
thus thou wilt accustom thyself that no falsehood
escape thy mouth." 3^ ''The Messiah will come,"
a Jewish saint said, ''only when the w^orld will have
realised that to speak an untruth is as heinous a
crime as adultery." 39 The same saint was wont to say
to his disciples, ''Rather allow your soul to expire
than that an untruth should proceed from your
mouth," and considered this prohibitive commandment
among the precepts of the Torah for which man is
bound to undergo martyrdom. 4° It is of this saint, or
a pupil of his, that the story is recorded that the
Russian Government, suspecting the Jews of his town
of smuggling, consented to withdraw the charge if he
declared his brethren innocent. Having no alternative
but either to bring misfortune on his brethren or to tell
an untruth, he prayed to God to save him from this
dilemma by sending death upon him. And, lo, a
miracle happened! When the officials came to fetch
him before the law court, they found him dead.
SAINTS AND SAINTLINESS 165
The last paragraph brings us to that part in the
programme of the saint which the Talmud calls "laws
regulating the relations between man and man," and
which we would classify under the general heading of
conduct. "Ke who is desirous of being a saint," one
Rabbi remarked, "let him fulfil the precepts of that
part of the law which deals with 'damages.' " ^i in
observing these, he avoids everything that might result
in an injury to his fellow-man. We need not enlarge
here upon matters of commonplace integrity, ''which
it is no honour to have, but simply a disgrace to want."
Lying, backbiting, slandering, and the acquisition of
wealth by dishonest means come under the prohibitive
laws, the transgression of which has, according to the
Rabbis, a defiling effect, and they are put into the same
category as murder and idolatry. ^^ It is thus no
special mark of saintliness to avoid these deadly sins.
But the saint would go further : he would speak the
truth in his very heart. He would, for instance, con-
sider himself bound to a money transaction even when
the promise made never assumed the shape of a com-
mittal by word of mouth, having been only a deter-
mination of the heart.43 As to avoiding injury, he
would do this at the very risk of his life, though not
bound to do so by the letter of the law. Thus, when
the Roman Government once besieged the town of
Lydda, and insisted upon the extradition of a certain
Ula bar Koseheb, threatening the defenders with the
destruction of the place and the massacre of its in-
habitants in the case of further resistance, R. Joshua
i66 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
ben Levi exerted his influence with Ula, that he would
voluntarily deliver himself to the Romans, so that the
place might be saved. Thereupon, the Prophet Elijah,
who ofl;en had communion with R. Joshua ben Levi,
stopped his visits. After a great deal of penance,
which the Rabbi imposed upon himself, Elijah came
back and said, ''Am I expected to reveal myself
to informers?" Whereupon the Rabbi asked, " Have
I not acted in accordance with the strict letter of the
law?" "But," retorted Elijah, "this is not the
law of the saints." ^4
By injury is also understood anything which
might cause one's fellow-man the feeling of nausea or
disgust. As it would seem, these were cases which
the court could not well reach. They fell under the
class of secret things, but the rabbis applied to them
the verse in Ecclesiastes (12 : 14), "God shall bring
every work into judgment with every secret thing."
But we have on record that there were saints who
made it a specialty to go about cleaning such public
places as by the carelessness of passers-by might
have proved offensive to the public. ^5
Altogether, there is no room in the soul of the
saint for those ugly qualities which, in one way or
another, are bound to impair the proper relations
between man and his fellow-man. These are, accord-
ing to one authority, "pride, anger, petulance, des-
pair, hatred, jealousy, dissipation, covetousness, desire
for power, and self-assertion." They all belong to the
ugly qualities of man, making man's communion with
SAINTS AND SAINTLINESS 167
God impossible, and hence are incompatible with saintli-
ness."^^ "Pride," or vanity, it is pointed out, "is at
the root of all evils," man setting up himself as an
idol, worshipping his own self, and thus bound to
come into collision with both God and fellow-man/7
Hence, the prayer at the conclusion of the Eighteen
Benedictions : "O my God ! Guard my tongue from
evil and my lips from speaking guile ; and to such as
curse me let my soul be dumb, yea, let my soul be
unto all as the dust." ^^ Man's love o( self is, how-
ever, too deeply rooted to be overcome by these
reminders, few and too far between. We therefore
read of a saint who was overheard constantly whis-
pering the prayer: ''May the Merciful save me from
pride." "The man who has a taint of pride or inso-
lence, though he be righteous and upright in all other
respects, is worth nothing. Indeed, a man may fulfil
ever so many laws and fast six days in the week, and
be nevertheless a disciple of the wicked Balaam," who
though a prophet was of a haughty spirit and a
swelled soul, and thus destined to perdition. 49
The same saint was in the habit of saying, " The
devil will make man all possible concessions, if he
can only succeed in impressing upon him the fact of
his prominence and his greatness. He will show him
what a great scholar he is, what a pious man he is,
what a great orator he is, what a clear fine hand he
writes, what a fine figure he makes when dancing,
and so on." 5° Should a man happen to be devoid of
all accomplishments, and a fool in the bargain, he
i68 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
will compliment him on his sagacity and wisdom.
Should he be lacking in all sympathy with religion,
especially of the practical and living kind, he will con-
gratulate him on his deep spirituality. Infatuated
with his own importance, man before long will be in
opposition to man and God, w^ho keep his due from
him. The best remedy against this ugly quality is
love. Hence the warning of the saint : * He who
hates an Israelite, hates Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
the grandsires of Israel' " Again, he who hates man,
hates the Holy One, blessed be he, who created man.
We are all children unto the Lord our God, all souls
rooting in him.s^ The injunction of the saint is, there-
fore, **Let man love all creatures, including Gentiles,
and let him envy none." s^ This, by the way, is the
distinct precept of the Jewish saint of the sixteenth
century. It is not known to me that any Christian
saint of the same period made the love of the Jew a
condition of saintliness. This is a love which leaves
no room for self Man will not succeed in attaining
to this love until he has acquired the virtues of humil-
ity and meekness. There is hardly any Jewish moral-
ist who does not enlarge upon the significance of
humility, and the references to it would easily fill a
volume. One of the most emphatic is, " Be exceed-
ingly lowly of spirit, since the hope of man is but the
worm." 53
Man must be so thoroughly convinced of his own
unworthiness, that he is even bidden to love those
who rebuke him and hate those who praise him. 54
SAINTS AND SAINTLINESS 169
Nay, he should feel under torture when he hears his
own praise, as it is sure to be undeserved.ss In addi-
tion to this, there is with the saint the conception
of the superiority of his fellow-man, which proves
another stimulus toward the cultivation of meekness
and humbleness. When man quits the world, he
is asked, according to an ancient Midrash, "Hast
thou been busy in the study of the Torah, and in
works of lovingkindness? Hast thou declared thy
Maker as King morning and evening? Hast thou
acknowledged thy fellow-man as king over thee
in meekness of spirit?" ^^ Man should accordingly
perceive in his fellow-man not only an equal whose
rights he is bound to respect, but a superior whom he
is obliged to revere and love. In every person, it is
pointed out by these saints, precious and noble ele-
ments are latent, not to be found with anybody else.
In fact, every human being is a servant of God in
posse. One of these saints declined to be considered
as one of the righteous of his generation, saying he
had no right to this distinction so long as he felt
that he loved his children better than the rest of man-
kind. ^7 Whenever the saint heard of a birth in the
community, he used to break out in wild joy, wel-
coming the new-born child as a future volunteer in
the service of God, taking his or her place in the rank
and file of militant Judaism. Hence, the prayer of
certain of these saints : '* May it be thy will that we
shall not sin either against thee or against thy crea-
tures /'^s whilst another saint used to add to his morn-
I70 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
ing prayer, the short prayer, "O God, estabHsh in my
heart faith, humiHty, and meekness," and his favourite
saying was, '*As a man is anxious for his very hfe, so
should he be anxious to be permeated by the thought
that he is less important than anybody else." 59 He
used especially to be very severe with his family when
they dared be unkind to his domestics. Another of
the saints expresses it, '* Let each man be considered
in thy eyes as better than thou, even the servant in
thy house." ^° Of one of these godly men legend re-
ports that he was in the habit of addressing all the
people with whom he came in contact as ''saints," or
''righteous ones," and, indeed, believing them to be
so. One day, the story is, when walking in the street,
he saw two cabmen fighting over the right of way,
giving force to their arguments with the whips which
they applied to each other. The godly man was
embarrassed, and he prayed, "Lord of the universe, it
is my duty to separate them, but who dares interfere
between two saints?"
Another consequence of this love is that men
should never break out in anger against any one.
This is a precept to be found in all the moralist litera-
ture of the different ages, but R. Joseph Caro, even
the author of the SJmlchan Anich, in the special manual
for his own guidance adds, that anger should be
avoided even in the cause of religion, where zeal
for the glory of God might give some justification for
it.^^ Indeed, we should love all, including those who
have gone astray, this being the only means of bring-
SALVTS AND SAINTLINESS 171
ing them back into the fold. When a certain pious
man came to the saint, asking his advice as to what
he should do with his son who had left the faith of
his ancestors, the answer was, *'Love him. The in-
fluence of thy love will be his salvation." And so it
came to pass. Of another saint, the story is that he
used to make special journeys to places settled by
converts to the dominant religion. To these converts
he made a gift of his share of the bliss awaiting the
pious in the world to come, at the same time eliciting
the promise that they would read every day the verse,
i?XiK^^ TDE^, *' Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the
Lord is One." This proved a link between them and
the faith they had left, to which, in time, many of
them returned. ^^ Indeed, prayer must be universal.
He who prays shall not direct his attention to him-
self Any prayer in which the whole of Israel is
not included, is no prayer. Nay, one must pray
even for the wicked among the Gentiles. ^3 Of
course, there were other saints who were distin-
guished more by their zeal than by their powers
of persuasion. They were good haters, and Elijah
was their model, but it may be said in their
favour, that so far as Judaism is concerned their
motives were pure; their zeal was never dictated by
consideration of self or by ambition. Sometimes I
am inclined to think that the haters and the lovers
were both right.
In matters of philanthropy, the saint would be
inclined to extravagance. *'It is a strange though
172 STUDIES IN JUDA ISM
true thing," some philosopher has remarked, ''that
virtue itself has need of limits." At a certain epoch
in history, when mendicancy was made a special sign
of holiness, the Rabbis drew the limit when they said,
**He who wishes to be lavish in his philanthropic
work, let him not spend more than twenty per cent of
his income." ^^ The saint transgresses this limit,
taking as his norm, "What is mine is thine, and what
is thine is thine." ^^ He would also remove any barrier
or obstacle preventing the poor from reaching him
personally, whilst he would, at the same time, save
no effort to make others do their duty to the poor.^^
And this duty practically means to make the poor
equal partners in one's property. Thus, in the sacred
letter of R. Shneor (Senior) Zalman, a well-known
saint of Russia, he writes to his adherents to the
following effect :
" My beloved ones, my brethren and my friends : — I have no
doubt about the distress of the time. The means of getting a
hvehhood have become very small, and certain acquaintances
of mine, whom I knew to have been in prosperous circum-
stances, are now compelled to borrow in order to maintain their
families. May the Lord have mercy upon them. Nevertheless,
they do not act properly when they shut their hands and refuse
to supply the poor with their needs. If we have no mercy with
them, who will ? It is true that the law teaches that man's own
life comes first, but this is to be applied only to things on which
life depends, as, for instance, when men are in a desert, and there
is sufficient water to quench the thirst of only one person, and
save him from death. Jn this case we say that the owner has
first right upon it. But if it is a question of bread and clothes
and wood on one side, and dinners with fish and meat and fruit
on the other side, the latter have to be given up as things super-
SAINTS AND SAINTLINESS I73
fluous. First the poor must be provided with the necessaries
of Hfe. This is the real meaning of the law, but it is indeed
not worthy of a man to insist upon the law in such cases. He
ought not to think of his life. We are all in need of the mercy
of heaven, and those who have no mercy on earth, be their
reason what it may, can never hope for God's mercy." 67
He then proceeds, In a long, mystical discourse, to
show how this grace of heaven can be encouraged to
flow into the proper channels, as the term is, only by
manifestations of grace on earth, heaven and earth
acting In harmony to reveal the great attribute of love.
The literature and stories bearing on charity and
the saint's share in it are too extensive to be entered
upon here, even in a casual way. The greatest sacri-
fice is told of a certain Rabbi who used to save the
whole of the year enough money to enable him to
buy an Ethrog for the Feast of Tabernacles (Lev. 23:
40). When he was in possession of six rubles
he made a special journey from his village to Brody,
to buy the Ethrog, But on the way he met a poor
man who made a livelihood by means of his horse-cart,
on which he carried water for the neighbourhood. Un-
fortunately, the horse died on the way. Thereupon
the Rabbi gave him his six rubles to buy another
beast, saying, *' What is the difference ? To buy an
Ethrog is a command of God, and to help this poor
man is also a command of God." Naturally, a mir-
acle happened afterwards. The Rabbi was presented
by some rich man with a fine EtJirog for the feast.^^
I will only remark that charity belongs, according to
the mystics, to the commandments that work a certain
174 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
re-birth in man, or rather give a new soul to those
who make strenuous efforts to fulfil them. ^9
It will, perhaps, be interesting to hear, that these
saints were by no means so unpractical as their mys-
tical discourses would lead us to imagine. The suc-
cessor of this R. Shneor Zalman, Rabbi Beer, in an
epistle written in a time of great distress and perse-
cution, writes to his followers not to engage so much
in commerce.
*'The best for you," he says, '* is to learn proper
trades, in factories, under the superintendence of prac-
tical men." He also gives them counsel to take up
agricultural pursuits, buy land either from the great
landlords, or from the Government, and employ for
the first two or three years non-Jews who will teach
them this new vocation. " Did we not," he says, "in
Palestine derive all our livelihood from our labour in
field and in vineyard? It is only in this way," he
says, *' that we can hope to find favour with the Gov-
ernment. Who knows what will be our end ? They
may, God forbid, expel us to some far-away coun-
try." 7°
Sympathy and tenderness are by the saint not con-
fined to the human species. They extend also to
dumb creation. Thus we read in the ''Little Book of
Saints," "Refrain thy kindness and thy mercy from
nothing which the Holy One, blessed be he, created
in this world. Never beat nor inflict pain on any ani-
mal, beast, bird, or insect; nor throw stones at a dog
or a cat; nor kill flies or wasps." 7^ Indeed, man will
SAINTS AND SAINTLINESS 175
be punished who will make his animal carry larger
burdens than it is able to bear. In connexion with
this, we read the story of a man who was cruel to his
dog. The dog, however, sought refuge under the
robes of a sage. When the man approached the
dog with the purpose of beating him, the sage pro-
tested with the words, "Since this dog sought my
protection, you shall not touch it," and applied to him
the verse in Genesis (19: 8), ''Only unto these do
nothing, for they came under the shadow of my roof" ^^
Another story illustrating the same trait in the saint is
the following : R. Isaac Loria was once the guest of
a good and upright man. Before he left, the saint
said to his host, "How can I compensate you for
your kind hospitality?" The master of the house
then answered that his only grief was that God had
not given him the blessing of children. Whereupon
Loria, who knew everything going on in heaven and
earth, said to him, " The cause of your misfortune is,
that you were not kind to animals." After making
inquiries it turned out that the man had poultry in his
yard, with a cistern in it. In this cistern there was a
ladder by means of which the water at the bottom
could be reached by the young chickens as yet unable
to use their wings. Once his wife inadvertently
had the ladder removed, which fact was the cause of
great suffering to the animals. The man replaced the
ladder, and the children came in due time. 73
The relations between the sexes are regulated by
the law. Judaism, as we know, not only did not
C76 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
encourage, but distinctly objected to celibacy. Only
one or two instances are recorded of Jewish saints
who remained single all their lives. But, on the
other hand, if marriage was not made a sacrament
in the Roman Catholic sense, it was a thing holy.
Maimonides, with that fine tact so characteristic of
him, grouped the marriage laws under the general
heading of '' Kedushah" (Hohness); whilst Nachman-
ides wrote a whole treatise called the '' Sacred Letter,"
dealing exclusively with the most intimate moments
in the lives of the sexes, and showing how even such
functions as were declared by other religions as dis-
tinctly animalic, can with the saint be elevated into
moments of worship and religious exaltation. It is,
in fact, a vindication of the flesh from a religious point
of view. All the more strongly did the Jewish saint
insist upon making these relations pure and chaste,
stigmatising even an impure thought as being as bad
as an impure action, if not worse. It was only by
reason of the purification of these relations and their
thorough sanctification, that the whole vocabulary of
love could afterwards, in moments of rapture and
ecstasy, be used by the saints In their prayers and
hymns, to symbolise the relation between the human
and the Divine, and the longing of man for the
moment of total absorption in the Deity. The Song
of Songs became the great allegory, picturing the
connexion between God and Israel. The act of rev-
elation is described as the wedding between heaven
and earth. The death of the righteous, when the
SAINTS AND SAINTLINESS 177
soul returns unto God, is described as a kiss ; whilst
each individual mystic considered his particular action
of losing himself in the Divine as a new matrimo-
nial act.
I have referred once or twice to saints who were
visited by angels, who had peculiar visions, and who
even wrought miracles. Writing for a modern
public, I consider it due to these true saints that the
reader should not suspect them of untruth, because of
failure to reconcile these happenings with his own
experiences. Things absolutely impossible to us
may have been, and, indeed, were, an actual reality
with them. Ruskin, in his lecture, "Pleasures of
Faith," given in a not less sceptical age than ours,
thus said to his hearers :
"You have all been taught by Lord Macaulay and his school
that because you have carpets instead of rushes for your feet ;
and feather-beds instead of fern for your backs ; and kickshaws
instead of beef for your eating ; and drains instead of holy
wells for your drinking ; — that, therefore, you are the cream of
creation, and every one of you a seven-headed Solomon. Stay
in those pleasant circumstances and convictions, if you please ;
but don't accuse your roughly-bred and fed fathers of telling
lies about the aspect the earth and sky bore to them, — till you
have trodden the earth as they, barefoot, and seen the heavens
as they, face to face."
I grudge no one his Persian rugs or his mineral-
waters. I have even personally a sneaking desire
for such things, and do prefer the electric light to
the tallow-candle with which I was brought up.
But one has a right to resent the superior smile which
one meets when speaking of those times and those
1 78 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
men. I find that the terms saints, mystics, and
Cabbahsts, are used as terms of reproach nowadays.
This attitude is quite inconceivable to me. Has the
German nation ever disowned its Master Ekkehart,
or its Boehme? Has the French nation ever looked
with contempt on the School of the Jansenists, or is
it not even more proud of Pascal's Pcnsccs than of his
scientific discoveries? If one will attempt to live
like these saints, he will have the same experiences.
Let him try only to spend nine hours a day in prayer,
and the rest in the study of the Law, and in the relief
of suffering ; to fast six days out of seven, and break
the fast on bread and water; to give to sleep three
hours out of twenty-four, and these on a stone instead
of a feather-bed. Let him make martyrdom the
dwelling-point of his thoughts for a time, and the death
of a martyr the goal of his ambitions and achievements.
Let him make this experiment for half a year only,
and see whether the experiences which he will have
to relate will not be the same as those of a Loria, a
Caro, and other saints.
The saint must not be judged by the common
standard of humanity. Consciousness of sin and
the assurance of grace are the two great motive
powers in the working of religion. Without them,
religion sinks to the level of a mere cult, or a
kind of ethico-aesthetico-spiritual sport in which
there is no room for devotion and submission ; but
what is with the common religionist a mere dogma,
is with the saint an awful reality, dominating all
SAINTS AND SAINTLINESS 179
his actions and pervading all his being. Under these
two realities — the reality of sin and the reality of
grace — the saint is constantly labouring. " My sin is
ever before me," is the cry of the Psalmist, and it is
echoed by every Jewish saint. Hence the tendency
toward self-accusation so manifest in many a compo-
sition by the Jewish saints. Sometimes it is the sin
of his fellow-man for which he holds himself fully
responsible. We possess formulas of confessions writ-
ten and read by Jewish saints, in which they arraign
themselves for the most heinous offences, and which
it would take a dozen lifetimes to commit. This is
rightly explained on the ground that the sense of
solidarity and responsibility was so keen with the
Jewish saint that he saw nothing incongruous in plead-
ing guilty to the sum total of iniquities committed by his
contemporaries. 74 But, with the Psalmist, he is equally
certain of the assurance expressed in the passage, " I
have set God before me continually : for with him at
my right hand I cannot be moved. Therefore my
heart is glad and my glory exults, my flesh also
dwells in safety." ^s One of our higher critics thinks
that these verses may, without effort, be called Chris-
tian. I am proud to call them Jewish. The notion
of the permanency of the Divine Presence is the great
safeguard against sin. The exhortation to feel shame
before the Holy One, blessed be he, who is present
everywhere and witnesses man's deeds, is a favourite
appeal with all the Jewish moralists. The saint, how-
ever, is so strongly overawed by the shame before
i8o STUDIES IN JUDAISM
God, that he said : **A sinful thoucrht should brino: a
blush to man's face, and make him experience the
same sensation of confusion and shame, as he would
at the sudden appearance of an intimate friend at the
moment when he is about to engage in some dis-
graceful action." Thus the saint ''cannot be moved,"
but when a slip happens, there is the Divine grace
surviving sin, which latter is only an outcome of
human frailty. The very realisation on the part of
man of his loss through his departure from God has
brought him back to God ; or, as a Jewish liturgical
poet expressed it, *'And where shall I f^ee, if not from
thee to thee?" Hence the despondency bordering
on despair which you will find in the composition of
many a saint, but which suddenly passes into exalta-
tion and joy. For, indeed, for him the world is God-
full, though disfigured by sin and misery; but, even
in the depths of this misery and sin, the saint divines
those ''inshinings of the pure rays of holy celestial
light," which, in God's own time, will lift and purify
fallen creation. The Devil himself is an angel of
God, though a fallen angel, and he has to be prayed
for, whilst the hope is expressed that Hell itself will,
with the disappearance of sin, be converted into a
Paradise. 7^
The period of struggle in the life of the saint, and
the stage of serenity and peace following upon it, are
described by one of the saints in the following words :
"And when the soul has realised God's omnipotence and
his greatness, she prostrates herself in dread before his great-
SAINTS AND SAINTLINESS i8i
ness and glory, and remains in this state till she receives his
assurance, when her fear and anxiety cease. Then she drinks of
the cup of love to God. She has no other occupation than his
service, no other thought than of him, no other intent than the
accomplishment of his will, and no other utterance than his
praise." ^^
But even during his struggle the fear of the saint is
not of punishment, for suffering is looked upon by him
as another token of God's love, indeed, as a gift of
heaven ; nor is his hope connected with reward, which
he would consider unworthy and mercenary. Death
has no terrors for him. "When I am afar from
thee," prayed an ancient Jewish saint, *'my death is
in my life ; when I cleave to thee, my life is in my
death." 78 What he dreads is separation from God,
what he longs for is fellowship with God.
Some mystics defined the saint, or the Chasid, as
one who acts Chasid-like with his Maker , which
may be interpreted to mean that not only does he
not insist upon the letter of the Law, but all his
worship is an act of grace without any hope of reward
or fear of punishment. ^9
One of the saints expressed this thought in the
following rather bold words :
"I have no wish for thy Paradise, nor any desire
for the bliss in the world to come. I want thee and
thee alone." ^°
FOUR EPISTLES TO THE JEWS OF
ENGLAND ^
Jews and Anglo-Saxons
I beg to submit to your readers the following pas-
sage taken from "The Letters of Robert Louis
Stevenson":
What a strange idea to think me a Jew-hater ! Isaiah and
David and Heine are good enough for me, and I leave more
unsaid. . . . The ascendant hand is what I feel most strongly ;
I am bound in and with my forbears ; were he one of mine I
should not be struck at all by Mr. Moss, of Bevis Marks, I
should still see behind him Moses of the Mount and the Tables,
and the shining face. We are nobly born ; fortunate those who
know it ; blessed those who remember.
I quote Stevenson as an author familiar to your
readers. The same sentiment, however, is expressed,
if less forcibly, by hundreds of Jewish writers in an-
cient and modern times, all of which goes to show that
the now fashionable cry (among the Little-Israelites),
of our being Anglo-Saxons or Englishmen of the
Jewish persuasion, is but a sickly platitude.
Those familiar with Judaica know that the cry was
raised in Germany some generations ago, many Rab-
bis and many more laymen shouting it with the whole
power of their lungs: '*We are Gcnnmicn of the
Mosaic persuasion!" The theory is now exploded in
Germany, and our repeating such platitudes after the
terrible experience of the hist decades can only be
EPISTLES TO THE JEWS 183
explained on the principle of Martineau, who remarks
somewhere that in matters intellectual the English are
sometimes apt to act as the younger brothers of the
Germans, putting on the trousers which their elder
brothers left off wearing years ago.
The doctrine professed now by those who are not
carried away by the new-fangled ''yellow" theology
is, there is no Judaism without Jews, and there are no
Jews without Judaism. We can thus only be Jews of the
Jewish persuasion. "Blessed those who remember!"
Jews as Missionaries
I offer for the consideration of your readers another
quotation. It is taken from a correspondence, still in
manuscript, between two scholars of my acquaint-
ance: "Can you imagine the ancient chosen people
of God going about begging for a nationality — clamor-
ing everywhere, 'We are you ! ' — joining the Boxers of
every nation on earth, and using the last crumbs of
the sacred language in which God-Shalom addressed
his children to invoke his blessing upon the ' Mitrail-
leuse,' the 'Kruppgun,' 'Dum-dum'and *Long-tom,'
and other anti-Messianic contrivances?"
The terrible irony of the situation becomes ap-
parent when we remember that while millions of
Aryans lay eager claim to the name and heritage of
Israel, Israel, ashamed of its Semitic origin, seeks
to disavow itself and to ape the Occident in all things
except its admiration for Israel, It has become for it
almost a sacred duty to occidentalise its religion. It
i84 5 TUDIES IN JUDAISM
forgets all the while that, however richly endowed the
European genius may be, religion is not one of its
gifts. Not a single European god has survived the
awakening of mankind from savagery and barbarism.
Nor has Europe produced a single great religious
founder. St. Francis of Assisi, the hero of modern
sentimentalism, remains, despite all decoration in the
latest French style, a crude imitation of the Semitic
original.
But perhaps the saddest feature amid so much that
is farcical is that we still profess to have a mission to
the world. The idea of this mission is certainly an
old one. A community forming a Kingdom of Priests
must have the whole world for its parish. But is the
constant endeavour to level down the intellectual and
spiritual standard to that of our surroundings com-
patible with the missionary ideal? Missionaries are
only Ti'///? the people, but not of the people. They
share their griefs, but hold aloof from their orgies.
They convert the world, but do not allow the world
to convert them. They neither court popularity nor
pander to prejudice. They must destroy the idol be-
fore they can proclaim the God. Abraham, the first
missionary, the ''Friend of God," had to stand alone
contra iminduiii, and in this his real greatness is said
to have consisted. Such passive virtues as we may
possess are somewhat too common to be very im-
posing, while our success in the various callings of life
is of too material a nature to be used as a spiritual
weapon. In the realms of pure thought we remain in
EPISTLES TO THE JEWS 185
spite of all our boasting only second-rate, not posses-
sing a single man who might be called a leader of
thought. It is more than passing strange that under
the screw of the Inquisition and the Chcrem we could
produce a Spinoza, while to-day, with all our pros-
perity, we cannot show even a commentator on
Spinoza. But the world will never be conquered by
mediocrities. If, then, our endless talk about a reli-
gious mission is not to degenerate into mere cant, a
religious atmosphere will have to be created quite
different to that in which we have lived hitherto.
This atmosphere will, in the first place, have to be
thoroughly and intensely Jewish. The centre of
gravity of all our thought and sympathies will have
to be placed, irrespective of country, among Jews.
Whatever our political destiny may be, our religious
destiny can never be worked out by the West in isola-
tion. The religious energies of all our brethren of
the West and of the East, in closest communion, will
be required for its consummation. We have got the
men, we have got the money, and a good deal of sys-
tem, too, but they have the simple faith, they have the
knowledge of Jewish lore, and they have the will and
the strength, inured as they are to suffering, to live
and to die for their conception of Judaism. They
permit no "free love" in religion. Universality means
with them what it meant with the prophets and their
Jezuish successors — that the whole world should be-
come Jews, not that Judaism should fade out into the
world. We have the method and they have the mad-
i86 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
ness; only if we combine can the victory be ours. A
closer communion of sympathies will probably be facil-
itated by our devoting some more time to the Hebrew
language, which is still the depository of all that is
sacred to the Eastern Jew. From this literature we
shall obtain the revelation of his standard of religious
fervour and real spirituality, the height of which re-
mains unsuspected and undreamt of by the Occi-
dentals.
Above all, religious enthusiasm and zeal, if they
are to be effective, will have to be brought to the boil-
ing point. It is only that zeal which will consume all
worldliness, which will suffer no rival, and which will
not falter in its devotion because of any dread of one-
sidedness that can be of any use to the missionary.
Now Judaism has often been accused of being defi-
cient in enthusiasm, the great mysterious power of
spiritual propagation. It was always inconceivable to
me how such an accusation could be brought ap;ainst
a people which has produced the Psalms, or, in a
later period, the great allegorical commentaries on the
Song of Songs. But in view of the constant boast of
our common sense, and the pains we take to avoid
anything which might be suspected of eccentricity or
even idealism, our morbid craving for the applause of
the majority, and our eager desire to lose ourselves
in the majority, our deification of the balance-sheet
and the cold, stiff", business-hke spirit in which our
institutions are conducted, we cannot deny all justifi-
cation for these attacks. I shall probably be told that
EPISTLES TO THE JEWS 187
we are acting thus as practical Englishmen. But
where are then our John Wesleys, our Newmans, or
even our Liddons ? Surely, they, too, were eminently
English !
Spiritual Religion versus Spiritual Men
I had occasion in my last letter to use the word
"spirituality." The term is obscure, and it has
caused a good deal of confusion. A few explanatory
remarks, therefore, may perhaps prove instructive to
your readers.
Some, indeed, identify the term with "morality."
There is some truth in this, inasmuch as nothing im-
moral can possibly be spiritual. But, unfortunately,
people are too eager to be guided by the principle of
Becky Sharp, according to which your chances of
heaven increase with the number of the ciphers in your
banking account, and they are thus inclined to think
spirituality the exclusive privilege of wealth. Some
witty Bishop is recorded to have said of his worldly
brethren of the dissenting camp, "that their second
horse stops at the church door of its own accord."
Our smart carriages do not stop at the synagogue or
at any place of worship, but they are too often the
symptoms of a spirituality betokened by a strong
antipathy to the religion of the humbler classes, and
an insatiable appetite for new prayers — chiefly written
for the benefit of the poor.
Others, again, believe spirituality to be opposed to
the Law, and especially the ceremonial part of it.
i88 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
Their religious superiority can, therefore, only be
shown by the rejection of both. For instance, if you
refrain from food and drink on the Kippur, walk to
the Synagogue, and spend the day there reading your
ancient liturgy, and listen to an exposition by your
preacher of the lesson from the Scriptures, then you
are a worshipper of the common' type, a slave labour-
ing under the yoke of the letter. But if you ride up
to the Temple after an ordinary breakfast, pass an
hour or two there listening to an oratorio and in fol-
lowing a sermon on the merits of the last novel of
Hall Caine, or on the more subtle subject of the in-
tellectual relations between Master David Grieve and
the Reverend Robert Elsmere, and employ the rest
of the day in looking after your affairs and taking
your other two meals, as a rational being should, then
you have acted as a spiritual Jew, and have worship-
ped your God in spirit and in truth. This may seem
a caricature, but signs are not wanting that matters
are drifting that way.
Now, I do not intend to give a new definition of
"spirituality." It is as indefinable as the spirit itself,
and its meaning can be as little conveyed in words as
a soul can be painted. But I may be permitted to
reproduce here the substance of a conversation
between a foreign gentleman and myself bearing upon
our subject, which conversation, though rambling in
part and largely coloured by prejudice and partiality,
is not without the merit of freshness. I must only
premise that my benighted foreigner hailed from a
EPISTLES TO THE JEWS 189
certain town in Russia where he lived as a mere lay-
man, occupied with his trade ; which circumstance,
however, did not prevent him from being an excel-
lent Talmudist and well-versed in other branches of
Jewish literature.
Our acquaintance is of comparatively recent date,
and was made in a German watering place. Our con-
versations were long and many, on all possible sub-
jects, English Jews and English Judaism among
them. And then there happened a strange thing.
Whilst he spoke with the utmost deference of our
great philanthropists and the enduring merit of their
labours on behalf of Israel, he fairly staggered at our
claims to the religious leadership of Judaism. On
my representing to him that there was probably no
Jewish community in the world in which the subject
of religion occupies the mind of the people so much
as in ours, and this, too, as I added with some em-
phasis, spiritual religion, he answered, "That is exactly
where we differ. You incessantly prate about a
spiritual religion, whilst we insist upon spiritual men'''
When I asked for further explanation, he replied
vehemently : "■ It is your Western arrogance with your
pretensions to perfection — your theologians, indeed,
have never forgiven Judaism for insisting upon man's
shortcomings — which prevents you from tracing the
evil to its real sources. It flatters your vanity to think
yourselves demi-gods, or even gods only hyphenated
with man. When you find your idols wallowing in
the mire of their appetite, like any other animal, you
igo STUDIES IN JUDAISM
proceed to blame religion for its lack of spirituality, as
not being sublime enough for your darling gods.
But did the Psalmist, whom even you consent to
patronise in your moments of condescension, plead
for new commandments, or did he pray for a new
heart and a new spirit to perceive the wonders of the
old ones? We, of the East, have a less elevated
opinion of ourselves. You reproach us with being
servile and cringing, which means, in fact, that we are
not blind to our inferiority. Instead of blaming reli-
gion, we reproach ourselves. It is not that which
comes from the Torah which defiles. It is the things
which proceed out of the mail, his mental attitude
during the performance of the Divine commandment,
his purpose in fulfilling it, which may leave a defiling
effect even on things heavenly and pure. ' Two men
may be eating the Paschal lamb,' say the ancient
Rabbis, 'the one devours it like a mere glutton, with
the intention of satisfying his appetite, and is a
stumbling sinner ; the other eats it with the purpose of
showing obedience to his Maker, and is a walker in
righteousness.' Even .more incisive are the Jewish
mystics who declare that 'Torah (or religion) per-
formed without love and awe never takes its flight
into the regions above.' Man has thus to furnish the
Law with wings of love and awe to make it return
to God who gave it, and it is his fault if, instead of
this, he becomes a dead weight to the Law, dragging
it down to the earth and to things earthly against its
real nature. But your much-glorified man is, unfortu-
EPISTLES TO THE JEWS 191
nately, an unreliable beast. ' Wherever a man is,
there shall be a lie,' was a favourite saying of a great
writer. This may be an exaggeration, but he is cer-
tainly a creature of mixed motives, full of cross-refer-
ences, which mostly point to his own dear self"
My friend continued: ''Now, having recognised
how greatly the proper performance of a Mitzwah is
dependent on the nature of the performer, and that it
is man who becomes a burden to the Law, not the
Law a burden to man, we left religion undisturbed,
and set to work upon man. Our remedy for all evil
is the principle, i'shinah, or Fsluno, which insists that
the commandments of the Torah should be carried
out with the sole purpose of pleasing God, thus rais-
ing the standard of the performer to that of the per-
formance, in the same proportion as he is able to
divest himself of worldly interests and selfish motives.
Hence the radical difference between your ideal of a
great man and ours. When you speak of your lead-
ers, you praise them as 'men of affairs,' 'great organi-
sers,' 'finished orators,' 'suave diplomatists,' 'states-
men,' and similar expressions, all of which have a cer-
tain ring of worldliness and worldly success about them,
suggesting the acting of a part, and the acting it well.
When zue get enthusiastic about our Rabbis or Zaddi-
kim, we describe them as 'sacred unto God,' 'holy and
pure,' 'contrite of spirit* {zcrbrochcncr Jild)^ or as 'men
hiding themselves in the stuff' (i Sam. 10 : 22), and by
similar phrases conveying the idea of an ascetic life, a
shrinking from publicity, — religious delicacy."
192 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
I interposed that asceticism was a monastic ideal,
and that there is no room for it in Judaism.
"Oh!'"" he exclaimed angrily, ''this is again one of
your platitudes. Who is Judaism? You and I, or is
it the prophet Elijah, Rabbi Zadok, R. Simon ben
Yochai, Bachye, and the Gaon of Wilna?"
"To be sure," he added, ''you are the people of
muscular Judaism. Of course, you are only parroting
the silly phrase prevalent some half-century ago when
it was suddenly discovered that outdoor sports and
good feeding and brutality of the martial kind were an
integral part of primitive Christianity. You at once
took up the phrase, and are now thoroughly con-
vinced that nothing is so conducive to holiness as
underdone beef and stout, bare knees and champion-
ship contests at football. It is only your ignorance of
Jewish life and Jewish thought that makes you so
susceptible to every fashionable craze of the moment,
and ready to claim it as the Jewish ideal."
In this way he went on pouring out torrents of
abuse and speech, which I dare not repeat, but I will
record here his concluding remark, which was to the
following effect: "One of your philosophers," he
said, "maintained that the world cannot be too often
reminded that there once lived such a person as So-
crates, and you cannot too often remember that Baal
Shem, R. Elijah Wilna, Krochmal, the last real great
reformers of Judaism, not mere aesthetes, were Rus-
sian or Polish Jews. As for spirituality in particular,
I will only direct your attention to a book, NcpJicsh
EPISTLES TO THE JEWS 193
ha-Chayim, written by one of the pupils of R. Elijah
Wilna with the express purpose of checking the mys-
tical tendencies represented by the Chasidim, and I
challenge you to show me, in your Anglo-Judaean
publications, a single page equalling it in spirituality
and in depth of religious feeling."
I am now reading the book, and I am compelled
to confess that our "alien" was right.
Despising a Glorious Inheritance
Some time ago, when discussing University topics
with a colleague, my friend made the remark that Jews
and women are in proportion to their lesser numbers
more strongly represented in the various branches of
natural science — to the neglect of all other subjects —
than any other section of the nation. With that in-
veterate habit of ours to interpret all facts in a way
flattering to our vanity, I at once jumped to the con-
clusion that there must be some mysterious mental
affinity between "Johanna Bull " and "Young Israel,"
making them take up the same intellectual pursuits in
life. My friend shook his head, and said: "The rea-
son is simple enough, neither Jews nor women have
any traditions oi real learning." To be a member of
a community in whose ears it is always dinned that it
represents "the people of the Book," and to be sud-
denly told that one is a mere parvenu in the world of
thought, is bad enough ; but what makes it worse is
the unfortunate circumstance that the taunt is not
entirely devoid of truth.
194 ^ TUDIES IN JUDAISM
I am only a teacher, not an educationalist, and
University statistics do not fall within the range of my
studies ; there may thus be some flaw in the figures
which were at the disposal of my friend. But his
remark was perfectly justified, if it was based on the
very insignificant part we take in the study of Semit-
ics, more particularly in that of the Hebrew language.
In this respect we resemble much more the Japanese
and the Hindus whose traditions are pagan, or the
African races who have no traditions, than the dwel-
lers of these islands with whom the original language
of the Old Testament is an object of deep love and
reverential study. Now and then a Jewish under-
graduate takes advantage of his confirmation days,
and freshening up his ParashaJi and his prayer-book,
he manages to carry off a Hebrew exhibition or sizar-
ship. On rare, very rare, occasions it even happens
that a Jewish undergraduate takes up Semitics as a
subject for honours. But there the matter ends. Un-
like the Anglo-Saxon of Christian persuasion, the
Anglo-Saxon of Jewish persuasion never becomes a
Semitic student or even a " Hebrew scholar," devoting
to the study of the sacred language all his time and
energies. All classes of the nation are engaged in
this labour of love — sons of Cabinet Ministers, sons of
generals, sons of high ecclesiastics, sons of great finan-
ciers, making theology and the study of the Hebrew
language — sometimes the study of the Hebrew lan-
guage without the theology — the sole occupation of
their lives, toiling in it enthusiastically until their dying
EPISTLES TO THE JEWS 195
day, and enriching it with their contributions. We are
the only cool-headed people who remain perfectly in-
different in the presence of all this enthusiasm. The
consequence is that with one glorious exception we
are as little represented in that gigantic literature
which centres round the Bible — commentaries, arch-
^ological researches, studies in Cuneiform and Egypt-
ology, grammatical treatises, histories of Israel, and
other helps to the "Book " — as the semi-civilised races
mentioned above. Like politics in America, theology
and all that is connected with it has become with us a
close profession of no mortal interest to those who are
not in it, which a gentleman may tolerate and even
contribute toward maintaining, but in which he must
never engage personally.
The situation becomes serious when we have to
witness that even those classes that are supposed to
constitute the close profession of theology are gradu-
ally drifting away from the study of the Torah, be-
coming strangers to any deeper knowledge of Jewish
literature. I am referring to the Jewish clergy, who,
labouring under a cruel system which reduces man to a
mere plaything of politico-economic forces, are rapidly
losing touch with the venerable Rabbi of Jewish tradi-
tion, whose chief office was to teach and to learn Torah.
With us the duty of learning (or study of the Torah)
seems to be of least moment in the life of the minister.
As long as he is /?/ statu piipillari, most of his energies
are directed toward acquiring the amount of secular
learning necessary for the obtaining of a University de-
196 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
gree, whilst in his capacity as full Reverend he is ex-
pected to divide his time between the offices of cantor,
prayer, preacher, book-keeper, debt-collector, al-
moner, and social agitator. No leisure is left to him to
enable him to increase his scanty stock of Hebrew
knowledge acquired in his undergraduate days. Oc-
casionally rumour spreads anent some minister, that he
neglects his duty to his congregation through his
being secretly addicted to Jewish learning. But such
rumours often turn out to be sheer malice, and form in
the worst case only the exception to the rule. Of
course, as in so many other respects, we are also in
this only imitating the Establishment, in which, by a
peculiar history of its own, the man of business or the
great organiser has of late years gained the ascen-
dency over the man of thought and learning.
Now, there is even in the Church a party which
resents this ascendency, rightly feeling that souls can-
not be "organised" and that the quahties which go
toward the making of a "man of God" are not ex-
actly those required of a successful manager of a
company. But this distrust of the man of affairs must
grow deeper in a community professing a religion that,
unlike Christianity, which to a certain extent began
life with defying learning and throwing down the
gauntlet to scholars, entered upon its career (of Rab-
binic Judaism) with the declaration, "On three things
the world is based : on the study of the Torah, on
worship, and on lovingkindness." Such a religion
cannot well convert itself suddenly into a large charity
EPISTLES TO THE JEWS I97
agency, without doing serious injury to one of its
most important life-springs. Nor must it be forgot-
ten that the Church is not quite dependent for its
necessary modicum of learning upon the bishops'
bench or on the rest of the active clergy. For this
ample provision is made in our great universities
where Queen Theology is still holding her own, and
where there Is hardly any branch of divinity for which
a chair was not created and endowed in such a way
as to make its occupation desirable. But there is
naturally little room in our aijna mater for that special
sort of learning of which the Synagogue Is in need
(of post-Biblical literature), whilst we can hardly hope
that the laity will devote itself to a subject holding out
little hope of success in the world and public recogni-
tion. We can, therefore, only rely upon our Rabbis,
who were always considered the depositaries of the
Torah, to remain faithful to their trust ; and unless we
choose to degenerate Into a mere ranting sect, we
shall have to give up looking upon our ministers as a
sort of superior clerks in whom the business-like ca-
pacity Is more in demand than any other virtues they
may possess.
But if there was ever a time when a revival of
Hebrew learning meant the very existence of Judaism,
it is this. It must be clear to everybody, I think,
who does not allow himself to be deceived by the few
poHtical distinctions which have fallen to our share
within the last fifty years, that the new century does
not open under very favourable auspices for Judaism.
198 S TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
Everything seems to be out of gear. Our Scriptures
are the constant object of attack, our history is ques-
tioned, and its moraHty is declared to be of an inferior
sort, our brethren are either directly persecuted, or
allowed to exist only on sufferance everywhere with
the exception of England and Italy. The number of
conversions is constantly increasing, assuming in the
less enlightened countries such frightful proportions
as are known to history only in the days of Ferdinand
the Catholic ; whilst even in the more civilised parts
of the world, where we enjoy full equality with our
fellow-citizens, some of our greatest families, forming
in the days of yore the pride and the hope of Israel,
are perpetually crumbling away through conscious
and unconscious amalgamation. It is no exaggera-
tion to say that every letter patent conferring nobility
upon a Jew contains an indirect invitation to leave the
Pale and join the majority of his new compeers.
Worst of all is the attitude of the younger generation,
who, if not directly hostile, are by dint of mere ignor-
ance sadly indifferent to everything Jewish, and thus
incapable of taking the place of their parents in the
Synagogue. Notwithstanding our self-congratulating
speeches at the annual distributions of religious prizes,
it is a fact that ignorance is on the increase among
our better situated classes. Very few are capable of
reading their prayers, and less are able to understand
what they read ; whilst the number of those who
know anything of Israel's past and share in its hopes
for Israel's future, forms almost a negligible quan-
EPISTLES TO THE JEWS 199
tity. Those who have some dim recollection of the
religious exercises practised in the houses of their
fathers, still entertain some warm regard for Jewish
life and Jewish ways of thinking; but religious warmth,
like heat in general, is apt to evaporate with the in-
creasing; distance of the conductors, and the children
or the grandchildren of these sympathetic lookers-on
are bound to end in that cold critical attitude toward
Judaism terminating in the drifting away from it al-
together.
The outlook is thus dark enough ; dark enough,
indeed, to be followed by some great revival or renais-
sance, or as the Rabbis put it : "The redemption of
Israel is preceded, like the dawn, by intense darkness,
as it is said : When I sit in darkness, the Lord shall
be a light unto me." Now the Renaissance is usually
described as the moment in history in which man dis-
covered himself In a similar way the Jew will also
have to re-discover himself This discovery, which
should be undertaken with a view to strengthening
the Jewish consciousness, can be made only by means
of Jewish literature, which retains all that is immortal
in the nation. There it will be found that we have no
need to borrow commentaries on our Scriptures from
the Christians, nor constantly to use foreign fertilisers
in our sermons. Jewish soil is rich enough for all
purposes, and those who, instead of using their dic-
tionary of quotations and other aids to pious com-
position, will courageously dig in the perennial mines
of Jewish thought, will find that there is no need to
STUDIES IN JUDAISM
go begging for an '* over-soul " from Emerson, or for
crumbs of a tame pantheism from Wordsworth, or for
a somewhat brusque immortahty from Tennyson, or
even for a Kingdom of God with something hke a
converted poHtical economy from Ruskin. I yield to
no man in respect for these writers, but unless we are
prepared to see the Synagogue lose its Jewish com-
plexion, the Jewish pulpit must be reserved for the
teaching of the Bible with such illustrative matter as
is to be found in the Mechilta, Siphre, Pesikta, and in
the writings of Ibn Gabirol, Jehudah Halevi, Maimon-
ides, Nachmanides, Luzzatto, the Gaon, the Baal
Shem, and other Jewish classics.
Above all, however, it is, as already indicated, of
supreme importance that we re-possess ourselves of
our Scriptures. The Torah is, as the Rabbis express
it, '' the bride of the congregation of Jacob," but to ac-
quire a knowledge of it through the medium of Chris-
tian commentaries means to love by proxy, and never
to gain the spiritual nearness which made it so easy
for our ancestors to die and even to live for it. I am
not unmindful of the profit which the Bibhcal student
may derive from the works of such men as Ewald,
Dillmann, Kuenen, and many others of the same
schools. But it must not be forgotten that there is
such a thing as a Christian bias, prevalent even in
works of the Higher Criticism, and to ignore Rashi,
Ibn Ezra, and Kimchi, in favor of Stade and Duhm,
means to move from the *' Judengasse " into the Chris-
tian Ghetto, With Christian commentators, whether
EPISTLES TO THE JEWS
orthodox or liberal, the Old Testament is only a pre-
amble to the New Testament, all the prophecies and
hope of salvation culminating in Jesus. Post-Biblical
Judaism is almost entirely neglected by them, in spite
of the light it may shed on many Biblical points,
insisting as they do that Jewish history terminated
about the year 30 of our era. With the Jew the Old
Testament is final, though its aspects may vary with
the interpretation given to it by an ever-changing his-
tory and differing phases of thought, whilst it is Israel,
**the servant of God," in whom all the promises and
hopes of the Prophets centre. It is in this spirit that
a Jewish commentary should be written to the zvholc
of the Bible (including the Apocrypha) for the great
majority of the Jewish public, with whom the Scrip-
tures should again become an object both of study
and of edification. This should be the next task to
which our clergy should devote themselves in the near
future. But a quite different standard of learning will
have to be created to enable them to undertake such
a task. Our ministry will surely rejoice in the op-
portunity of being translated from the noisy platform,
with its temptation of loathsome and vulgar self-adver-
tisement, to the quiet study, and the community, if it
is as much alive to the duties of the West End as it is
to its responsibilities to the East End, will have to re-
lieve the minister from many an uncongenial and un-
profitable duty, which not only makes learning among
us impossible, but deters many a noble and indepen-
dent thinker from entering the sacred profession to
which he could add only lustre.
SAFED IN THE SLXTEENTH CENTURY
A CITY OF LEGISTS AND MYSTICS
Safed is a small city in Upper Galilee situated on
a hill in a mountainous country, and forming part
of the Holy Eand assigned in the Scriptures to the
tribe of Naphtali. Of the various cities of Palestine
boasting of a large Jewish population it is relatively
the most modern. Neither the Bible nor the Talmud
has any definite reference to it, whilst the mention of
a locality Zephed, by Kalir, is obscure, and can serve
little for purposes of identification.'
Yet this was the spot of which R. Joseph Caro
wrote in the sixteenth century : * 'After nearly fifteen
hundred years of living in the exile and persecution,
he (God) remembered unto his people his covenant
with their fathers, and brought them back from their
captivity, one of a city and two of a family, from the
corners of the earth to the land of glory, and they
settled in the city of Safed, the desire of all lands." ^
The impulse under which the "one of a city and
two of a family" acted when they preferred the ''land
of glory" to the great commercial centres of Europe
was a religious one.
Samuel Usque, the famous author of the '* Con-
solacam as tnbiilacocs dc Ysracr' ( ''The Consolation and
SAFED 203
the Tribulations of Israel"), has the following passage
in praise of the country in which most of his fellow-
sufferers from the Pyrenean peninsula found an asylum :
"Great Turkey, . . . there the gates of freedom and
equal opportunity for the unhindered practice of
Jewish worship are ever open to Israel ; they are never
closed against thee. There thou canst renew thy in-
ward life, change thy condition, strip off thy habits,
cast away erroneous teachings, recover thy ancient
truths, and abandon the practices which, by the violence
of the nations among which thou wast a pilgrim, thou
wast forced to imitate. In this land thou receivest
boundless grace from the Lord, since therein he grant-
eth thee unlimited freedom to begin thy repentance." 3
The inducement thus held out to the exiled from
Spain and Portugal was not only that they would in
the new country be allowed to serve their God, with-
out let or hindrance, but also that an opportunity
would be granted them of a total regeneration and
renewal of heart.
The sense of sin apparently weighing so heavily on
Usque may be detected also in other writers, as, for
instance, Joseph Jabez, who depicted the spiritual con-
dition of the Jews in Spain in the darkest colours, and
describes the men who witnessed the expulsion as an
"evil generation, increasing rebellions and transgres-
sions without number." He declared that it was
mainly the Spanish Jewesses who remained faithful, and
who themselves suffered, and made their husbands
suffer, martyrdom for the Sanctification of the Name.^
204 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
Another instance is found in the chronicler Abraham
ben Solomon, of Torrutiel in Spain, who says, ''Our
iniquities had increased over our heads, and our
trespasses had grown up unto the heavens, seeing the
evils and the sin and the terrible pride so rampant
among the Jews in the kingdom of Spain." Jabez and
Abraham ben Solomon belonged to the anti-rationalistic
party of the Spanish Jews, and may have exaggerated
the evils of the situation in their accusations, but their
feelings were very likely shared, to some extent, by all
other exiles. 5 Nathan Nata of Hanover, the well-known
author of the Ycvcn Mczt{lah, concludes his account of
the terrible suffering of the Jews during the Chmielnicki
persecution with the words : ''What shall we speak, or
how shall we call ourselves? The Lord has found out
our sins. Does God execute judgment without justice?"^
The sufferers of Spain doubtless viewed their misfor-
tunes from the same standpoint. And since these evils
must have been in some way proportionate to the
greatness of the catastrophe which had overtaken
them, those of deeper religious sensitiveness must cer-
tainly have felt the need of a new life and a regeneration.
It is to this need that we have to attribute the fact that
large numbers of the exiles were impelled to emigrate
to the Holy Land, the country which, from the times
of the prophets down to Judah Halevi in the twelfth
century, and from the time of Judah Halevi down to
the disciples of Elijah Wilna and Israel Baal Shem in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was always
considered a country of great "spiritual opportunities."
SAFED 205
As a Spanish Jew of the thirteenth century who took
a vow to emigrate to the Holy Land expressed it,
''There (in Jerusalem, or near it) is the place for ful-
filling the commandments and receiving upon oneself
the Kingdom of Heaven. Our worship there is accept-
able, for there is the House of our God and the Gate
of Heaven." 7
Indeed, it may be stated without fear of contradic-
tion, that there never was a time in which the Holy
Land was not an object of attraction and deep longing
for the pious Jew, even though he was not always able
to gratify his longing in this respect. As we know now,
there were for centuries after the destruction of the
Holy Temple, every year during the Feast of Taber-
nacles, large meetings on the Mount of Olives con-
stituted of pilgrims from Palestine itself, Babylon,
Egypt, and perhaps also from Europe. ^
These meetings were probably brought to an end in
the eleventh century through the troubles of the Cru-
sades; but the second decade of the thirteenth century
witnessed the famous pilgrimage of three hundred
Rabbis from France, England, and Spain to the Holy
Land. 9 In the fourteenth century the well-known
traveller Pharchi explored the Holy Land, and reported
about different settlements in various localities. '°
Emio-ration to Palestine assumed, however, laro-er
dimensions in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
caused by the general distress of the Jews in almost
all parts of Christendom. The majority of the refugees
escaped to Turkey, but a considerable minority, com-
2o6 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
posed, as already indicated, of the more spiritual-minded
among them, directed their steps to the Holy Land.
As hinted before, Safed has no Biblical nor even
Talmudic record. Its first appearance in Jewish his-
tory dates from about the beginning of the thirteenth
century, when the traveller Samuel ben Shimshon re-
ports the existence of a community there of more than
fifty members. Somewhat later it is mentioned in con-
nexion with a document relating to the Maimonides con-
troversy, which bears also the signatures of R. Moses
ben Judah and his colleagues, the Rabbis of Safed. "
R. Hananel Ibn Askara and R. Shem Tob Ibn Gaon,
of Spain, migrated to Safed in the same century;^^ whilst
R. Isaac ben Joseph Chelo, of Laresa in Spain, and
Pharchi, mentioned above, visited Safed in the four-
teenth century and speak of a large Jewish community
dwelling there. ^^ Joseph Mantabia, who visited Safed
in 148 1, speaks of it as a *'fine" community, number-
ing about three hundred families, including those living
in the neighbouring villages. '^
It is, however, not until the last decade of the
fifteenth century that Safed begins to be especially
noted for the importance of its Jewish population. The
man who was the most significant factor in the develop-
ment of this Jewish settlement, which excelled Jerusalem
not only in the size of its Jewish population but also
in the number of great men it harboured, was R.
Joseph Saragossi. Saragossi, hailing perhaps originally
from Spain, was an exile from Sicily, and, after a resi-
dence in Beyrout and Sidon, finally settled in Safed,
SAFED 207
where he most Hkely estabhshed a school. He was of
humble disposition, making peace between man and
man, including non-Jews, and he probably did his best
to blend the various elements of the new settlement,
consisting of natives, of exiles from Spain, and of immi-
grants from the Barbary States, into one great com-
munity. ^5
The preference given to Safed, a non-Scriptural
town, over Jerusalem, the historical metropolis of
Palestine and the holiest city of the Holy Land, may
be accounted for by the unfavourable conditions
prevailing in Jerusalem at that time. As evidenced by
certain contemporary documents, the administration of
the Jewish community in Jerusalem was influenced by
a rather ungenerous spirit, imposing heavy taxes on new
arrivals, and making residence there a great hardship.
The Mohammedan population seems also to have been
hostile to the Jews, rapacious, and extortionate.'^
Safed, on the other hand, never having had before this
time an important Jewish population, the community
there had no occasion to make regulations calculated to
exploit the foreigner, whilst the non-Jewish population
seems to have been more kindly disposed toward the
Jews, sparing them the heavy taxation which was the
rule in Jerusalem. R. Obadiah of Bertinoro, who had
no opportunity to visit the north, writes, in his famous
letter dated 1489, that, according to report, thejews of
Safed and of other places in Galilee lived in peace and
in quiet, not being exposed to persecution on the part
of the Mohammedans. He writes, "They are mostly
2o8 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
poor, spending their time in villages, going about
peddling in houses and on farms, asking for food." '7
Another reason which may have been decisive in
favour of attracting immigrants to Safed was the simple
life led by the inhabitants of that city. The old saying,
**Love work and hate lordship" (in modern parlance,
snobbery), w^as followed by them to the letter. An
anonymous traveller who passed through Safed in the
year 1496 writes of the learned Rabbi Pharez Colobi,
the head of the community, that he kept a shop where
articles of food were sold, by which he made a living. ^^
Shlomel of Moravia, the author of one of the legendary
biographies of Loria, writing from Safed in the year
1607, says of its citizens that there were to be found
among them "great scholars, saints, and men of action,
full of Divine wisdom, so that they were worthy of the
gift of the Holy Spirit," but what he seemed to admire
most was the simplicity and the humility of spirit which
they possessed. **None among them," he writes, "is
ashamed to go to the well and draw water and
carry home the pitcher on his shoulders, or go to the
market to buy bread, oil, and vegetables. All the
work in the house is done by themselves," without
servants. Shlomel's statement may be illustrated by the
following story: Once, R. Abraham Galanti, the leading
disciple of Cordovero and the author of many works,
Avas carrying a sack of flour on his shoulders from the
market. But there came the famous scholar R. Solo-
mon Sagis (?) and snatched away the sack from the
shoulders of Galanti, and pronounced an oath, that no
SAFED 209
man should be permitted to carry this sack of flour to its
destination except himself, who was so much younger
and stronger. On another occasion, Galanti was carry-
ing a cask of water on his shoulders from a village
near Safed when the Saint R. Misod met him and said,
''Master, give me a drink, as I am very thirsty."
Whereupon Galanti offered him the cask. R. Misod
then snatched away the burden and carried it to
Galanti' s home in Safed. '9
Thus material as well as spiritual considerations
combined to make Safed the chosen city for the time
being. The rapid growth of Safed may easily be seen
by the fact that whilst, according to one account, Safed
counted three synagogues in 1522, and could point
perhaps to only one Talmudic college established by
Saragossi, it could a few years later boast of being the
centre of learning in Palestine, and, in 1603, accord-
ing to Shlomel's letter of that year, it contained not
less than eighteen Talmudic colleges and twenty-one
synagogues, besides a large school for the children
of the poor, with twenty teachers and' four hundred
pupils, maintained by wealthy Jews in Constantinople,
who also provided the latter with clothes. The Jews
in Turkey were particularly interested in maintaining
the Safed schools, and special messengers were sent
from this community to collect moneys. We even
find mention of a single bequest for the Yeshiboth of
Safed amounting to 100,000 lcbaniiu.'^°
The history of the world, some maintain, is but the
record of its great men. This is especially true of the
STUDIES IN JUDAISM
history of Safed in the sixteenth century, which is
essentially spiiitual in its character, made and developed
by men living hves purified by suffering, and hallowed
by constant struggle after purification and holiness.
The two figures standing out most prominently among
these are R. Joseph Caro, the leading legist of the time,
and his contemporary, R. Isaac Loria, the generally
recognised head of the mystical school of Safed.
It will, therefore, be advisable to group our remarks
around these two heroes. From their eminence we
shall be able to obtain a general view of the lives of
the other mighty men in Israel engaged in the same gen-
eral religious activities and pursuing the same spiritual
ends, contributing their share to the fame which Safed
has achieved in Jewish history.
R. Joseph Caro was born in the Pyrenean penin-
sula (probably Spain) in the year 1488, whence he
emigrated as a boy of four, in the year 1492, with his
father Ephraim, who was also his first teacher. After
many wanderings and great suffering, they reached Nic-
opolis, in European Turkey, in which city the son
Joseph remained until the year 1522.^' He was advised
there by his Maggid, a kind of Mentor-Angel (of whom
more presently), to leave this place, whose inhabitants
seem to have been rather close-fisted in their relations
to the poor, and lacking in devotion to the Torah,
and to move to Adrianople, in European Turkey, one
of the various gathering points of the Spanish exiles. ^^
There he remained for some years, serving in the
SAFED
capacity of the head of the Yeshibah, or Talmudic
College. It was In this town that he began the com-
position of his work Beth Joseph, which occupied him
for the next thirty years of his life (i 522-1 552).
The Beth Joseph is a gigantic work comprising four
big folio volumes, the first edition of which appeared
I 5 50- 1 5 59. It forms a sort of commentary to R.
Jacob ben Asher's ''Digest of the Law," A?^ba Tiiriin,
tracing each law to its original sources for nearly fif-
teen hundred years, pursuing it through its various
stages of different interpreters and codifiers, giving in
disputed cases the arguments on both sides, and bring-
ing it down to his own time. It is hardly necessary
to point to the tremendous learning and unsurpassed
acquaintance with the Law in all its branches and
ramifications displayed in the Beth Joseph. But what
distinguishes it above other work of its kind is not
only its comprehensiveness, covering as it does all the
contents of the Oral Law which had not become obso-
lete by the destruction of the Holy Temple, but also
the methodical treatment in which he was a master,
and which enabled him to bring system and order
into this chaos of argument, accumulated in every
department of the Law, in its passage through the dis-
cussions of the schools for many centuries. Caro was
by this work soon recognised as the greatest legist of
his time, and was appealed to in matters of law even by
his contemporaries, as the first Halachic authority.
Next to this in importance is his work Shulchaii
Aruch, which he finished in tlie year 1555. It forms
212 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
only a sort of manual intended by Caro to serve chiefly
as a repertory for his great book. The Shulchan Anich
soon proved to be the most popular code with students,
both on account of its practical qualities and its close
correspondence with the greater work of Caro, in which
the origin of each law could be easily traced. It passed
through several editions, and it is still consulted with
profit by Rabbis engaged in giving ritual decisions ac-
cording to the Law of Moses and the Talmud, even at
this day representing the great bulk of the Jews —
eleven millions and ninehundred thousand out of twelve
millions. The Shulchan Aruch is disfigured by a few
paragraphs expressing views incompatible with our
present notions of tolerance. But there the discretion
of the Rabbi comes in. By tacit consent these are con-
sidered obsolete by all Jewish students. Every Jewish
scholar well knows that the fugitive from the tyranny
of the pious royal couple, Ferdinand and Isabella of
Spain, was not the person to make an effort to suppress
intolerant matter. To meet intolerance with equal in-
tolerance was considered a sort of self-defence. Nay,
the student is even convinced that Caro himself would
have hesitated to put such laws into practice. He
would rather have followed the rule laid down by
himself for himself, which was never to be betrayed
into anger, even in matters of religion.
The other works of Caro published during his life
or after his death add little to the greatness of
Caro as a scholar, except, perhaps, certain portions of
his Keseph Mishiic/i, forming a commentary to Mai-
SAFED 213
monldes' MisJincJi Torali, and in his Kdale ha-Tabmid,
on the methodology of the Talmud, as well as certain
Responsa embodied in various collections, in which
Caro's passion for system and order and lucid and
logical thinking is displayed even more clearly than
in the works before named.
There is still one work to be considered, which
brings us closer to Caro's personality, and that is the
Maggid Mcsliarim, which appeared some thirty years
after the death of its author. ^3 The Maggid Mcsharim
is a long dream, lasting for nearly half a century.
For, remarkable enough, the great legist and logical
thinker was at the same time a dreamer of dreamers.
Caro was passionately fond of the Mishnah, to which he
is supposed to have written a commentary, lost to us,
and its contents became so identified with his own self,
that they shaped themselves into a species of Genius
taking the form of a living reality personified in the
Mentor-Angel above mentioned. This Mentor-Angel
addresses him with such expressions as, "I am the
Mishnah that speaketh through thy mouth ; I am the
soul of the Mishnah ; I and the Mishnah and thou are
united into one soul."^'^
As a rule, this I-Mishnali appeared to him in the
depths of the night, after Caro had studied for some
time one or more chapters of the Mishnah. Then the
voice of his beloved, as Caro expressed himself, would
begin to sound in his mouth, "singing of itself" ^5 The
voice was also audible to by-standers, as is clear from
the famous letter of Alkabez, of whom I shall speak
214 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
later, who was once fortunate enough to observe his
friend Caro in such a fit of ecstasy, and who has left us
a full account of the message delivered by the Mentor-
Angel on that occasion. ^^ From a description given
by Caro himself of his prospects of being worthy one
day to hold communion with the prophet Elijah, and
the manner in which this communion will take place,
we may also conclude that the listeners recognised
in the strange sounds of the Mentor- Angel Caro's
own voice, though to Caro himself these sounds
appeared something alien, not himself His other
organs seem to have been at complete rest, which fact
produced the impression in Caro that he served only as
a sort of musical instrument to the sweet melody of
the Mishnah. On the other hand, his mental faculties
remained fairly unimpaired, as he retained complete
recollection of all the Mentor-Angel revealed to him.
This recollection he wrote down in the Maggid
Mesharim, which thus forms a mystical diary, record-
ing the spiritual experience of a long lifetime. The
fact that the book containing these recollections fills
only a small volume proves nothing against this theory,
as we possess it in a very defective state, whilst we .
also know that he did not always commit to writing
the contents of his visions, for which neglect he is
reproved by the Mentor- Angel. ^7
It must, however, not be thought that it is the
explanation of obscure passages of the Mishnah that
are revealed to Caro in his Mishnah visions. In the
whole of the Maggid Mesliarini there are only a few
SAFED 215
lines of a legal nature. Caro was sober enough not
to allow his mystical proclivities to have a jnarked
influence upon his judgment in matters of law. What
occupied his thoughts in these moments of rapture was
chiefly the mysteries of the Torah, as well as matters
of conduct, falling under the heading of "superior
holiness." I say ''chiefly," for the *'I," or Self, oc-
casionally asserts itself and introduces matter which
is rather of a private nature, as, for instance, his matri-
monial affairs. From these we learn that he became
a widower twice. His third wife, who brought him a
large dowry, was the daughter of R. Zechariah Zech-
sel.^^ Caro also refers in a somewhat unkindly manner
to certain great personalities. These reflections, which
might have better been left unexpressed, were jotted
down probably in moments of depression and resent-
ment, for which we may not judge him too severely. ""^
In the great majority of cases, however, Caro's Self
was under the strict control of the Mishnah, or his ideal
Mentor-Angel.
The Mentor- Angel is very exacting in his demands.
**I am the mother that chastises her children," the
Mishnah says to him, '*be strong and cleave unto me."3o
This chastisement consisted partly in imposing upon
Caro a number of regulations of an ascetic nature.
He is bidden to fast on various occasions, and even on
ordinary days his menu is prescribed for him, reduced
to a minimum. He must not fully satisfy his desire
for food and drink, not even in the first meal after a
day of fasting. 3^ Of course, he must not indulge in
2i6 5- TUDIES IN JUDAISM
much wine, but he is at the same time rebuked by his
Mentor- Angel for having allowed himself to be filled
with water. 3^ He is likewise warned against too much
sleep, and when he married one of his daughters and,
according to custom, spent much time at the banquet,
so that he went to bed late and got up just one hour
after the breaking of dawn, he was reproved for his
slothful behaviour, and the Mentor-Angel tells him
that it would only serve him right were he to abandon
him, seeing that he separated his heart from the Torah
for so long a time. 33 On another occasion, when
Caro went to market to buy meat and poultry for
Sabbath and failed in his errand, the Mentor-Angel
declared himself responsible for this failure, proceeding
to say that he wanted to show Caro that meat and wine
are the habitation of the Evil One, that the Sabbath
can be honoured without such luxuries, and concluding
his admonition with the words, ** Think about nothing
but the Law of the Lord; thou art strictly observed
in all thy actions, hence, be careful." 34
Other instructions worth mentioning here are these :
Be exceedingly lowly in spirit. — Never be betrayed
into anger, not even in matters relating to Heaven. —
Be chaste in thy behaviour. — Have always thy sins
before thine eyes, and mourn over them. — Never
speak an idle word. — Give a mild answer to every
man. — Never indulge in laughter and in scoffing. —
When thou readest the Shnna, let thy thoughts be so
single-minded that they become the seat of the Divine
Presence. 35
SAFED 217
He is also reminded by the Mentor-Angel of the
necessity of reading devotional books; among these
the abridged version of Bachye's ** Duties of the
Heart" is especially recommended. 3^ He is further
bidden by the Mentor-Angel to devote himself
more diligently to the study of the Cabbala, which
Caro seems to have neglected for a long time. " If
thou wilt have appointed times for the acquisition of
the knowledge of the Cabbala, I will open thy heart
so that thou shalt receive the most hidden secrets
unrevealed to man for many years." 37
The Mentor-Angel, however, was not always
severe. His motherly ways are not limited to chas-
tisement. Thus he once began his address, ''Behold,
I kiss thee the kiss of love ; behold, I embrace thee." 3^
Nor does he confine himself to rebukes and strictures.
He also holds out hopes and promises. These give
us a fair insight into Caro's aspirations as a scholar
and a saint. They may, perhaps, be summed up in
the following three points.
The first aspiration was that the books with
which Caro happened to be occupied, especially the
Beth Joseph, should be free from error, and after pub-
lication accepted as standard works all over the
Dispersion, whilst he himself should be recognised as
an authority of the first rank.39 There is a human
touch in the fact, that notwithstanding this anxiety
Caro regards it as a joyful message when his Mentor-
Angel tells him that he will be blessed with a son
who, besides being one of the greatest mystics of the
2i8 5 TUDIES IN JUDAISM
time, will also write strictures on his father's works/°
Caro was especially anxious for the privilege of
spreading Torah in Israel, and had the repeated
promise from his Mentor-Angel that he would be
worthy of presiding over the greatest gathering of
disciples in Israel, and that he would also receive
sufficient material support for his college to enable
his disciples to devote themselves entirely to the study
of the Torah. 4^
As a mystic, all things on earth are to Caro only
a reflex of some original in heaven, and thus in his
capacity as the master of the greatest Torah-school
here below, he is brought into communion with its
prototype in the regions above. It is from there
that his Mentor- Angel often brings him greetings in
the typical expression, "Peace from the College of
Heaven." 42 Sometimes the greeting begins with the
words, ''Behold the Holy One, blessed be he, and all
the sons of the (heavenly) college, send unto thee
peace, and are opening unto thee the gates of light." ^'^
Occasionally these greetings drift off into a string of
solemn promises of the bliss and reward awaiting
Caro in the world to come, where he will associate
with all the heavenly hosts and the souls of the
departed saints and scholars whose interpreter he was
in this world. 4'^ It is interesting to see how the Men-
tor-Angel, with pedagogical insight, uses these very
promises for a moral lesson. For instance, in one
place where he gives him a full description of the
glorious reception with which he will meet in the
SAFED 219
circle of the righteous, headed by the Divine Presence,
and the fetes which will be given in his honour, he
winds up with the words : '' Beloved, the Holy One and
all the members of the Heavenly Academy send me to
make thee acquainted with this secret, in order that thou
mayest see thyself in this high degree, and thus thou wilt
never come into the power of sin, not even by an evil
thought. Should temptation become overpowering,
rebuke it and say, * Shall a man like me, whose future
is meant for such glories, allow himself to sin, be it
even only by an evil thought ? ' " ^s This is indeed one
of the Mentor-Angel's pedagogical tactics, to impress
Caro with his great importance, and at the same time
show what duties such importance involves. By
the very breath of his mouth when occupied with the
uttering of the Mishnah, Caro creates whole hosts of
angels, surrounding him as a suite surrounds a king.
Every word of his, every thought, creates worlds ;
but so does it destroy worlds if it is of an unworthy
and idle nature. ^^
The second aspiration of Caro was that he might
be worthy to settle in the Holy Land.'^^ This is a
thought which probably occupied his mind for many
years before he settled in Safed. The promise to
help him realise that wish turns up again and
again in the addresses of the Mentor-Angel. Solo-
mon Alkabez, in the letter referred to above, reports
how the Mentor-Angel said, ** Lose no moment to go
up to the Holy Land, for not all times are favourable.
Regard not your stuff (i. e., household things) ... I
STUDIES IN JUDAISM
will maintain thee. " It would seem that material
considerations, at least for a time, prevented Caro from
accomplishing the wish of his heart, for we find in
another place, in which the Angel promises him that
within a year he will be in Palestine, he says to him :
•' There is no need for thee to trouble thy mind; thou
hast wanted nothing these last forty years, and thou
wilt never know want. Thy income is prepared for
thee. Thou hast seen this very moment that the
Holy One, blessed be he, gave thee as much profit in
two thousand Zuz as in five thousand. "^^^ When Caro
tarries too long on his way, through war and other
causes, the Mentor-Angel tells him that he may stay
in certain cities, such as Salonica and others, for some
time, but he must never settle anywhere until he reaches
the Holy Land. Of course, with this aspiration is
also connected his hope that he will be worthy of be-
coming the head of the Yeshibah and an elder of the
Holy Land.49
His third aspiration was that he should die
the death of a martyr at the stake. This is a
wish which Caro cherished when he was still in
Nicopolis, and which mingled with his dreams
throughout his entire life.5° Caro assures us that
in visions without number he received the promise
that he would be worthy to be burned for the
sanctification of the Holy Name,^^ so that every
taint of sin which may have cleaved unto him in his
passage through this world would be removed, and his
soul cleansed, and thus reach the degree of the holy
SAFED
and pure ones. Here again the Mentor-Angel
employs this dearest wish of Caro's heart for his
pedagogical purposes, as when he tells him : "Behold,
I have singled thee out to be a burnt-offering, to be
consumed in fire for the sake of the sanctification of
the Name, but thou knowest that in the burnt-offerine
no blemish may be found, not even in thought.
Hence, take care that all thy thoughts are absorbed
by the Torah." s^ On the whole, the promises of the
Mentor-Angel were fairly kept, except this. Turkey
was perhaps at no time the country in which the
crown of martyrdom could be easily gained. For
this, one had to go to the lands of Christendom,
where love was preached and murder acted. Caro
showed no particular desire to return to Europe. In
this connexion it is rather interesting to note that
Caro was not quite free from anxiety, for he found it
worth his while to write down the following apparently
good message of his Mentor-Angel : During the
afternoon prayer, when the reader was chanting the
portion from the scroll of the Law, I was told, ''Know,
my beloved and dear Joseph, that the Sultan will win
the battle in which he is now engaged against the
King of Edom." 53
The Maggid Mcsharim occasionally contains refer-
ences to different personages mentioned in Caro's
other works. But whilst in these latter they are cited
with their proper titles, as " Rabbi," " Master," or "the
great Rabbi," in the Maggid Mcsharim, as befitting a
production of an angelic being, this official stiffness dis-
5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
appears. Titles are, for the most part, dropped, and
they are introduced with such endearing epithets
as '* my chosen Moses" (Maimonides), '* my saintly
Asher" (Rosh), ''my God-fearing Jonah" (Rabbenu
Jonah), '*my dear Jacob" (Jacob ben Asher, the author
of the Tiirim), *' my modest Jeruham " (author of a
well-known code of the Rabbinic Law). But the
name which occurs most frequently Is that of ''my
chosen Solomon." 54 This name is at most times used
for Solomon Molko, but it is not impossible that in
one or two places it refers to Solomon Alkabez, two
beautiful souls who seem to have been the especial
favourites of Caro.^s
We must digress for a moment from Caro himself
to consider the career of these two worthies. Solo-
mon Molko deserves a monograph to himself. He
would best form the subject of a great historical
novel. If our novelists were somewhat less of realists,
and would stop their eternal harping on the problem
of mixed marriages, which is certainly no problem to
those who begin to consider it in the light of a problem,
and if they further possessed something of the sympa-
thetic intuition of a Disraeli and the artistic insight into
the past of a Sir Walter Scott or Charles Reade, they
would find Molko the hero of one of the greatest
historical romances ever written. For our purpose of
presenting the friend of Caro a few data must suffice.s^
Solomon Molko was born in Portugal about the
year 1501, as a crypto-Jew, or Marrano, where he
SAFED 223
received the name Diogo Pires. He was endowed
with all the graces of Nature calculated to make his
personality both pleasing and impressive. He enjoyed
an excellent education, and at an early age he was able
to speak and write Latin, the learned language of the
time. Like so many other Marranos, he |bceived, in
secret, instruction in Hebrew subjects, such as the
Bible and the Talmud, and even the Cabbala, in which
branches of study he acquired great proficiency. His
various accomplishments secured for him rapid advance-
ment in official circles. He was very young when he
was appointed secretary at one of the high courts of
justice in Lisbon. He was also a great favourite at
the Court. But neither the duties of his office nor
the diversions of Court life were sufficient to fill the
vacuum he felt under the false life he led. His thoughts
and his heart were with Judaism, over whose destiny
and his part in it he constantly brooded. This brooding
soon resulted in all sorts of visions and wild dreams,
which visited him day and night. At the first impulse,
supposed to have been given him by the famous
adventurer David Reubeni, who was then travelling
in Europe in the questionable capacity of an ambassador
of the lost Ten Tribes, he was initiated into the
covenant of Abraham, and became a Jew. This
occurred about the year 1 523. He then entered upon
a course of ascetic practices, fasting for many days
without interruption, depriving himself of sleep, and
spending his time in prayer and meditation, which was
naturally followed by more visions of an apocalyptic
224 ^ TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
nature. The visions were manifested to him, as in the
case of Caro, by a Maggid, who communed with him
from heaven in dreams. In obedience to the command
of this heavenly messenger, he left Portugal for Turkey,
which was a safer place for men of Molko's cast
of mind. There, as it would seem, he spent the next
five or six years. The appearance of this enthusiastic,
handsome young mystic made a deep impression
upon the Jewish communities visited by him. Molko
probably visited also Jerusalem and Safed in
Palestine. There is no positive evidence for this fact,
but it is hardly possible that he should have failed to
explore the places which he saw with his spiritual eye
in his mystic moments. Legend reports also that
even after his death he would pay visits to his fiancee
in Safed on every Friday evening, reading in her
presence the Sanctification-Benediction over the cup of
wine {Kiddush) with which the Sabbath is initiated.
This would doubtless suggest that he had once been
at this place.57 The end of the year 1529 finds him at
Ancona in Italy where he preached on the advent of the
Messiah. His sermons seem to have made a great sen-
sation, and were listened to by large crowds, both Jews
and Christians, including some high dignitaries of the
church. Some time after this he repaired to Rome,
in which city he had again all sorts of visions and
dreams. He soon gained access to the Pope, Clement
VII, who felt rather attracted toward him, and together
with certain cardinals, not less favourable to Molko than
the Holy Father himself, protected him against the
SAFED 225
dangers threatening him from the Roman poHce as a
renegade from the Christian faith. He predicted to
the Pope the flood which was soon to come upon
Rome, and went to Venice for a time. He returned
to Rome and had several more conferences with the
Pope and other high personages, all the time preaching
publicly repentance as a preparation for the approaching
advent of the Messiah, in which he was to play a con-
spicuous part, either as the forerunner of the Messiah
or as the Messiah ben Joseph. But all the patronage
he had did not protect him from the intrigues of his
deadly enemy, the Jewish physician Jacob Mantino,
who is not to be held entirely guiltless of his falling
into the hands of the Emperor, Charles V. The latter,
in turn, handed him over to the Inquisition. The end
was that Molko was burned as a heretic in Mantua, in
1532. When approaching the stake, he was offered
pardon in the name of the Emperor, if he would recant.
Molko replied that he longed for the death of a martyr,
to become ''a burnt-offering of sweet savour unto the
Lord ; if he had anything to repent of, it was that he
had been a Christian in his youth."
Caro's acquaintance with Molko must have been
formed either in Adrianople or in Salonica, both of
which cities were visited by the latter during his
travels. The acquaintance grew into a strong attach-
ment, at least on the part of Caro, who thought
himself indebted to Molko for certain spiritual influ-
ences which he had on his life. Thus said the
Mentor-Angel to Caro, "God brought thee together
226 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
with my chosen Solomon to see whether thou wilt
know him, and it was a merit (or rather, good fortune)
that thou didst learn to know him and also didst learn
from him to fear me.''^^ It is, however, an exaggera-
tion to think that it was Molko who converted Caro
to his belief in the Cabbala, or that it was the m.artyr-
death of Molko that incited in Caro the desire to end
his life in a similar manner. Cabbala was in the air ;
the greatest men of Israel were committed to it, and
it required no special agencies to make Caro one of its
adherents. The fact is, that Molko was lovable, and
Caro loved him. That the tragic death of Molko made
a deep impression upon Caro, and mingled with his
dreams and visions, only proves that the legalistic
studies which formed the main occupation of Caro's
life, do not incapacitate a man for the qualities of
admiration and love. As to the longing of Caro for the
death of a martyr, we have seen that he had the privilege
of calls from the Mentor-Angel while he was still a
resident of Nicopolis, and it was there that he received
the promise of martyrdom for the first time from his
heavenly messenger. This occurred about 1522, long
before Caro even knew of the existence of such a
person as Molko. It is to be noted that martyrdom
in case of necessity is a regular command, forming one
of the six hundred and thirteen laws. According; to
some authorities, the supreme act of martyrdom, like
the fulfilment of any other command of the Law, should
be preceded by a benediction, namely, ''Blessed art
thou, O Lord our God, King of the world, who hast
SAFED 227
sanctified us with thy commandments, and hast bidden
us to hallow thy Name among the many." Now, if
we consider how anxious a legist of Caro's frame of
mind must have been to fulfil a commandment, — the
characteristic of the legalistic saints of every generation,
— no further explanation is needed for Caro's longing
for martyrdom. It was simply his desire to fulfil a
commandment of the Torah. As one of the saints
expresses it : If the Heavenly Court were to decree
hell punishment against him, he would jump into the
pit with all his might and without a moment's delay,
ernbracing with joy the opportunity to fulfil a Divine
command.59
Much less is known of the life of the second
Solomon — Solomon Halevi Alkabez. There are no
records enabling us to determine the place where he was
born, nor the dates of his birth and death. We know,
however, that he flourished about the first half of the
sixteenth century, that he was the disciple of Joseph
Taytasak, Rabbi of Salonica, and that later he became
the master and brother-in-law of the famous Cabbalist
Moses Cordovero. His acquaintance with Caro
probably dates from the third decade of that century,
he having met him in Salonica or Adrianople. Alkabez
was a scholar and a poet. Of his books it suffices to
mention here the ManotJi lia-Lcvi (Gifts of the Levite),
a homiletical commentary on the Book of Esther,
in which he showed his wide acquaintance with
Rabbinic literature, having had, as it seems, access
to manuscripts which he very judiciously used in the
228 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
said work. The story is that the title of the book was
suggested by the fact that it formed a present to his
fiancee on the occasion of the Purim festival. His
father-in-law and the girl, the tradition is, were more
pleased with this gift than with costly jewelry, which
young men were then in the habit of sending to their
sweethearts on the day of Purim. But he is best
known by his poem, Lechah Dodi, ** Come, my Be-
loved, etc.," with which he and his friends used to
receive Queen Sabbath. The Sabbath was to him a
living reality to be welcomed after a six days' ab-
sence with that expectant joy and impatient love
with which the groom meets his bride. It is perhaps
one of the finest pieces of religious poetry in existence,
and has been translated by Herder and by Heine into
German. Catholic Israel, whose love for Bride Sabbath
and whose hope for final redemption it echoed so well,
soon honoured Alkabez' poem with a prominent place
in almost all its rituals ^ and the Lechah Dodi is now
sung all over the world on Sabbath eve, when Queen
Sabbath holds her levee in the tents of Jacob.^°
To return to Caro and Safed : When Caro arrived in
Palestine, which could not well have been earlier than
after the middle of the year 1536, Safed was already
grown to the size of one thousand Jewish families.
The additions to the community were mostly made
up of Spanish and Portuguese exiles, who were
soon in a position to build a second synagogue
for the purpose of accommodating their newly-
SAFED 229
arrived countrymen. ^' Their numbers were so
increased that they considered themselves strong
enough to attempt to force their special usages
with regard to the regulating of dowries upon other
sections of the community. The Spanish language,
the vernacular of the Sephardim, became soon the
teaching medium in the schools, suppressing all other
languages.^^ They quickly won, both by their numbers
and by the distinction of their leaders, such an ex-
ceptional position that we find men of importance and
standing among the native Jewish population vain
enough to call themselves Sephardim, the name com-
mon to Jews hailing from Spain and Portugal. ^3 There
is reason to believe that at this time also a German
Jewish community was established in Safed, perhaps
presided over by the father-in-law of Caro. We have
furthermore references to a Portuguese synagogue, an
Italian synagogue, and a Greek synagogue, dating from
about the same time.^'^ The constitution of these
communities seems to have been strictly autonomous,
each community having its own synagogue, its own
preacher, and its own Yeshibah. They were even, to
a certain extent, jealous of every outside interference^
and it was expected that each new arrival would join
the congregation composed of his own fellow-country-
men. ^5 On the other hand, there is evidence that they
had a Beth ha- Wa'ad (meeting house), forming a sort
of general board consisting of the Rabbis of the
various synagogues, to which occasionally Rabbis
attached to no congregation in particular were invited.
230 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
This board probably dealt only with matters of grave
importance and of general interest. ^^
The means of gainingj a livelihood were various.
The natives, or, as they were called, the Moriscos,
were probably still engaged in peddling, as their
ancestors had been.^^ There is also evidence that they
cultivated the ground in the neighbouring villages,
producing wheat, barley, beans, cotton, oil, wine, and
figs. Those, again, who possessed some capital,
which was probably the case with many of the Spanish
immigrants, were engaged in trading, exporting grain,
wine, and oil to Damascus and other places, and import-
ing from there articles for which there was a demand in
Safed.62 There also grew up in Safed a large trade in the
weaving of wool and in the manufacturing of clothes;
these trades were entirely in the hands of the Jews.^9
Indeed, R. Levi ben Chabib, of whom I shall speak
presently, sarcastically asks whether it was because of
the large quantity of clothes manufactured there that
Safed arrogated to itself the leadership of Judaism. 7*^
Wealthy Jews in Constantinople and in Damascus
would, as it seems, send ships laden with wool to
Safed for the purpose of encouraging the wool industry
there and giving employment to those engaged in it.
About the year 1600, such a ship, containing wool to the
value of nearly 100,000 Keseph and 10,000 Kcseph in
cash for the desperate poor, was wrecked on its voyage,
which caused distress in Safed. ^^ There was also in
Safed a great demand for such artisans as weavers,
smiths, tailors, tanners, wood-workers, and builders.
SAFED 231
There was probably also some demand for men con-
nected with the printing trade, which was established
in Safed about the year 1653 by two German Jews.
The first book printed there was the commentary of
R. Moses Alsheich to Daniel, and was followed by
several other works. " The print of these books is
excellent, and testifies to the good taste and the
prosperity of the Safed community at that time. "^^
The only profession for which there was not any room
in Safed was that of teacher, since the community
was, we are told, sufficiently provided with schools
and instructors. Nor was there any place for servants,
as everybody, as we have seen, attended to his own
domestic work. 73 The prosperity was so great
that they were envied for it by their brethren abroad.
Thus a Roman Jew writes in 1543, "The good
message has come from the land of Desire (Palestine)
that the Lord remembered his people and his land
and the Children of Israel, granting to them wealth
and honour in most trades. "^^^
However, men did not settle in Palestine for the
purpose of developing the natural resources of the
country. What led them there was, as indicated
above, the spiritual wealth which the Holy Land alone
could afford. In such wealth, Safed, at this period,
was particularly rich. I have already mentioned the
letter of Shlomel, with its reference to the population
of Safed and the various Talmudical colleges main-
tained there.7s Though Shlomel writes at the
beginning of the seventeenth century, there is nothing
232 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
to indicate that the last decades of the sixteenth
century witnessed a particular increase of immigration
out of proportion to that of the preceding decades.
Indeed, we shall see later on that in his time the glory
of Safed was already on the wane. We have the right
to assume that the number of Rabbis of the sixteenth
century was at least not smaller than that of the
seventeenth. Shlomel's statistics are, of course, like
all statistics, not very reliable; indeed, the number
three hundred occurs too frequently in the letters
relating to Safed. It has also to be pointed out that
the term ** Rabbi" with Shlomel does not exactly mean
the officiating minister, but simply a man who, both on
account of his learning and his saintly life, — two indispen-
sable qualifications for a Rabbi in olden times, — might
easily perform the functions of a Rabbi. Still, there can
be little doubt that no place in Jewish history since the
destruction of the Holy Temple could point to so
brilliant a gathering of men, so great in their respective
branches, so diversified in the objects of their study,
and so united by the dominant thought of religion, as
were attracted to Safed during the greater part of the
sixteenth century.
The fame of the " saints and men of action " must
have spread *' outside of the land" early in the
sixteenth century, and it was probably the desire for
their society which determined Caro in his choice of
Safed. For such was the promise given him by
the Mentor- Angel : "I will give thee places to walk
among these that stand by" (Zech. 3:7), ''making
SAFED 233
thee worthy to go up to the land of Israel and join
there my beloved Solomon and the Associates to
learn and to teach. "^^
The most prominent among these was doubtless
R. Jacob Berab. 77 Berab, who was an emigrant
from Castile, Spain, and held the office of Rabbi in
various Jewish communities, settled in Safed about
the year 1535, where he soon became the recognised
head of the Jewish community, which consisted at that
time of at least seven congregations. It seems that
he gathered around him some of the best minds of
Safed, who acknowledged themselves as his disciples.
Caro himself recognised him as an authority, quoting
him as a rule with the epithet *' our great master."
Berab has left us a volume of Responsa, to which are
appended commentaries on certain portions of the
Talmud, but he is best known to history by his
unsuccessful efforts to re-introduce the institution of
''Ordination" {Semichali) among the Jews. This at-
tempt was made in the year 1538, and bears evidence
to the high position held in Jewry by the sages of
Safed, both by their numbers and by the weight of
their great learning: this fact alone could have em-
boldened Berab and his friends to embark upon their
daring enterprise. ^^ Ordination, as they intended it,
was not the mere ceremonious laying on of hands in
connexion with a candidate for Rabbinical office with
some solemn speech attendant thereon. What Berab
aimed at, was the re-establishment of the body of the
Sanhedrin (that could exist only in Palestine), which
234 5" TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
would wield supreme authority over the whole of
Israel in various ways, thus forming a new Jewish
spiritual centre. His great opponent in this matter
was R. Levi ben Chabib, a former resident of Safed,
living then at Jerusalem.
This is not the place to enter into the arguments of
both sides, which both parties drew from the Talmud.
There may have been also some petty personal
jealousies ; some of the arguments are certainly of a
rather petty character, particularly on Berab's side.
Berab was something of what we might call a strong
man, of strenuous tendencies, and his treatment of
Ben Chabib was by no means tender. But there is
no doubt that Berab's aspirations were of great national
importance, and if realised would have served to
strengthen the bonds of union in Israel. The scholars
of Safed worked in harmony with Berab, twenty-five
of their number signing the epistle sent to the sages
of Jerusalem that contained the resolution of the
former to re -introduce Ordination. The resolution
was soon translated into action, Berab ordaining four
elders, representing the flower of Safed's scholarship. 79
Caro, who was one of the four, and apparently figured
also among the signatories of the correspondence
with Jerusalem, is especially complimented by his Men-
tor-Angel for the zeal shown by him for the great cause.
He must also have entertained the hope that he might
succeed one day where Berab had failed ; at least, he
received the heavenly promise that he would be the
instrument through which Ordination should be
SAFED 235
restored. ^° This is another of the Mentor-Angel's
unfulfilled prophecies.
The excitement of the Ordination controversy
subsided with the death of Berab, which occurred
shortly after 1540. Caro, who devoted his time to
lecturing to his disciples, writing his books,' and
attending to social work, or, as it is usually called
in Hebrew literature, the " needs of the congregation,"
was constantly growing in influence and authority.
He apparently felt trouble in his mind about this
interference with his studies, for we find that the
Mentor- Angel has to comfort him and make it clear
that the social work in which he was engaged was also
a part of his duties, which he had no right to ignore.^'
His most formidable rival was R. Moses ben Joseph
Trani, who settled in Safed in the year 15 18, and
became Rabbi of the Spanish congregation Beth Jacob,
and the head of the Yeshibah connected with it, in
1 52 1, which offices he retained until his death in 1 580.^''
Like Caro, he was ordained by Berab, to whom he
stood in the relation of a colleague-disciple, and he
showed even more zeal for the honour of his master
than Caro. Indeed, he resents in one place the in-
difference of Caro to the attacks made on Berab in
connexion with certain legal decisions. ^3 Trani wrote
several works, one of which was of a semi-philosoph-
ical nature on doctrinal questions, but he is chiefly
famous for the collection of his Responsa, which
show him to have been a Talmudist of the first order
and regarded as such by his contemporaries. Though
236 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
generally, like all other Rabbis of the place, confined in
his jurisdiction to his own congregation, he seems to
have been regarded by the whole community as a
specialist in real estate questions. **I have," he says,
''been one of the first in everything relating to the
holiness of the land in the city of Safed since the year
5335- God put it in my heart to build up the deso-
late places thereof I have watched over them in
most of their building enterprises, that no man should
encroach upon the property of his neighbour, and
other matters relating to questions of surveying and
ancient lights, even with regard to the synagogues
which were built all these years, when (the worship-
pers) coming from Turkey and other places divided
according to their languages." ^^
Several cases occurred in which Trani had the
opportunity to clash with Caro's opinions j the most
important of these seems to have been one in connex-
ion with the observance of the Sabbatical Year, the
laws in regard to which were not considered entirely
obsolete in the Holy Land. The great majority of
scholars, however, were in favour of Caro's opinion,
to enforce it as the norm for the practice. ^^ This
case arose In the year 1 574, a year before Caro's death,
but his recognition as a master of the Holy Land or,
as he expressed it somewhere else, "the great codifier
of the Holy Land," came long before. In almost
all the Opinions of that generation, Caro's signature
appears first, and his Yeshibah had, according to tradi-
tion, a seating capacity of seven hundred students. ^^
SAFED 237
This is probably an exaggeration, but the attendance
at his Yeshibah was undoubtedly very large, and in-
cluded some of the greatest names of the time. As one
of the Safed scholars expressed it, *'We are all his dis-
ciples, drinking his waters, and bound to honour him." ^7
Among these, Cordovero and Alsheich deserve special
mention, both because of their connexion with the
history of Safed and their influence on posterity.
R. Moses Cordovero was born in 1522 and died
in 1570. Little is known about his private life except
that he married a sister of Solomon Alkabez. In
Talmud he was a disciple of Caro, who was apparently
very proud of him and applied to him the verse, *' My
son, if thy heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice, even
mine" (Prov. 23: 15). We know also that he acted as
one of the Dayanim (Judges) of Safed and had a Yeshibah
of his own. A Responsum of his incorporated in the
Responsa Collection of Caro, testifies to his ability as
a Rabbinical scholar, but his fame rests on his mystical
work, in which he by far excelled all his predecessors.^^
At the early age of twenty, the Voice warned him to
"heal the altar of the Lord which is broken down,"
under which he understood his neglect of a proper
study of the mysteries of the Torah.^9 The " heahng"
came from his brother-in-law, Alkabez, in whom he
perceived a holy angel come down from heaven, and
who apparently figured at that period as the leading
Cabbalist of Safed. Even Caro himself did not hesitate
to seek instruction from Alkabez about a certain
238 5 Tl 'DIES IN JUDA ISM
obscure passage in the Zohar.9° At the age of twenty-
six (1548), we find Cordovero in the company of the
Associates {CJiaberiiii). This was a society consisting
of mystically-inclined students of Safed, apparently
presided over by Alkabez. Very little has come
down to us relative to the activity of this society,
beyond the fact that its members used occasionally to
undertake excursions to visit the graves of the ancient
Rabbis supposed to be buried in the neighbourhood of
Safed, on which occasions they would discuss mystical
subjects. 9^ But we possess in manuscript a list of moral
precepts drawn up by Cordovero, of which there is good
reason to assume that they were not meant exclusively
for the guidance of their author, but formed a sort of
hand-book for all the Associates. The following- ex-
tracts will convey some idea of the frame of mind and
the tender conscience q{ these men.
They are bidden not to divert their thoughts from
the words of the Torah and things holy, so that their
hearts become the abode of the Slicchinah; not to be
betrayed into anger, as anger delivers man into the
power of sin ; not to speak evil of any creature,
including animals ; never to curse any being, but to
accustom oneself to bless even in moments of anger ;
never to take an oath, even on the truth ; never to
speak an untruth under any condition ; to be careful
not to be included among the four classes excluded
from the Divine Presence, namely, the hypocrites,
the liars, the scoffers, and the tale-bearers ; not to
indulge in banquets except on religious occasions.
SAFED 239
They are enjoined to mingle their minds with the
minds of their fellow-men (that is, not to stand aloof
from the world, but to share both in its joys and in its
sorrows), and to behave in a kindly spirit toward their
fellow-men, even though they be transgressors ; to meet
with one of the Associates for one or two hours every
day for the purpose of discussing matters spiritual;
to talk over with an Associate every Friday the deeds
accomplished during the week, and then set out for the
reception of Queen Sabbath; to pronounce Grace in
a loud voice, letter by letter and word by word, so
that the children at the table can repeat after the
reader; to confess their sins before every meal and
before going to sleep; to use the sacred language
when speaking with the Associates, and to let this be
always the language of conversation on Sabbath with
other scholars as well. In another set of precepts
drawn up by Alkabez, dating from this time and
probably also meant for the guidance of these Asso-
ciates, we have the ordinance that the students should
rebuke or admonish each other, but the person ad-
monished or rebuked must not make any reply in his
defence before the lapse of three days. 9^
The most prominent among those for whose bene-
fit these regulations were composed was the author
himself, Cordovero, whose interviews with Alkabez
seem to have been more frequent and of a more inti-
mate nature than those of the other Associates. At
a later period the relations of the latter to their master
appear to have been almost forgotten, and they are
240 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
quoted as the Associates of Cordovero. Indeed, it
would seem that it was the great popularity achieved
by the works of Cordovero that is responsible for the
comparative oblivion into which the mystical writings
of Alkabez fell, so that the greater part of them
remained unpublished. 93
Cordovero's niagimm opus is \\\QPardcs (the Garden),
the clearest and most rational exposition of the Cabbala
in existence, distinguished by the same qualities of
methodical thought and logical argument which dis-
tinguished Caro's works in the department of things
legal. The Pardes gave rise to a great number of
works written by various mystics in Safed, in Italy, and
in Germany. 94 The book is still considered a standard
authority, even by modern scholars who have ever
written anything worth reading about the Cabbala.
Cordovero wrote besides this many other works, some
of which are extant only in manuscript. The library of
the Jewish Theological Seminary of America possesses
a fine copy of his famous work Aliniah, known from
quotations by certain mystics. But these by no means
fully represent his literary activity. R. Menahem
Azariah, of Fano, in Italy, one of the greatest of
Cordovero's students, states that the Pai'dcs, in itself
a big folio volume, forms only a thirtieth part of the
works which Cordovero wrote, not counting many
additions, appendixes, and a number of larger and
smaller treatises which he composed. 95 His master,
Caro, who survived him, gave the funeral oration at
his death, in which he spoke of him as "the Holy Ark
SAFED 241
of the Torah, to be hidden away in the grave," whilst
Loria is said to have seen two pillars of fire attending
the hearse, a compliment shown by Heaven only to
one or two men in a generation. Loria is also
reported to have appHed to him, in allusion to his
name (Moses), the well-known phrase, "Moses is true,
and his teaching is true/'^e
The second of the disciples of Caro deserving
especial mention is R. Moses Alsheich, who sur-
vived his master for many years, being still alive in
the year 1593. The master of his early youth was
probably Joseph Taytasak. We possess from Al-
sheich a volume of Responsa in which his opinions
in matters of the law were solicited by various Rabbis
of repute. He also wrote Talmudical discourses
and a commentary to the Midrash Rabbah lost to us.
He lectured in two Yeshiboth in Safed (which Vital
attended in the capacity of a pupil), and performed
all the other functions of a Rabbi of that time.
He is, however, best known by his homiletical Com-
mentary on the Bible, which was studied both by
preachers and laymen for centuries afterward, and is
still popular with preachers in various countries.
This Commentary is usually cited under the title,
"the Holy Alsheich." Loria gave the testimony
that most of his interpretations **hit the truth,"
though in spite of the efforts of Vital he did not admit
him into his mystical circle.97
242 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
Besides these and other Rabbis known more or less
to posterity, we have in the contemporary Hterature
any number of references to sages and saints of Safed
flourishing about this time, in addition to a goodly
number of Rabbis and students whose spiritual pedi-
gree cannot be easily determined. The influence of
these scholars was not confined to the schools. A
religious atmosphere seems to have pervaded all
classes of the Jewish population, so that the impression
the Safed of the sixteenth century leaves on us is that
of a revival camp in permanence, constituted of peni-
tents gathered from all parts of the world. Life
practically meant for them an opportunity for worship,
to be only occasionally interrupted by such minor
considerations as the providing of a livelihood for their
families and the procuring of the necessary taxes for
the government. Prayer was the main and universal
occupation. For this purpose special teachers were
appointed to instruct women and children in the liturgy
and in the prescribed benedictions. 9^ But the regular
order of the service, with its fixed hours, morning,
afternoon, and evening, did not satisfy their longing
for prayer. For them the day began in the middle
of the night, when the ** learned" and the "men of
action" would repair to the synagogues dressed in
black, seating themselves upon the floor and reading a
special liturgy, the burden of which was mourning
over the destruction of the Holy Temple and the
downfall of the people of God, and which concluded with
a confession of the sins of Israel delaying the redemp-
SAP ED 243
tion.99 The example set by them seems soon to have in-
fected the general Jewish public. The man who was
especially distinguished for his religious activity among
the masses was the mystic R.Abraham Halevi Beruchim.
His main work was of a missionary nature. He was
constantly preaching to the multitudes and exhorting
Israel to repentance. In the middle of the night he
would rise and walk through the Jewish quarter,
exclaiming in tears, ** My brethren of the House of
Israel ! Is it not known to you that our Strength,
the very Divine Presence, is in exile because of our
sins ; that our Holy Temple is laid in ashes ; that
Israel is subjected to the most bitter persecutions,
saintly men and women being daily martyred by
sword and by fire. . . .? And ye, my brethren, allow
yourselves to enjoy your sleep on your beds in quiet
and rest. Come, my brethren; come, my friends!
Rise, ye holy children, blessed by the Lord, and let us
supplicate the Lord our God, the King who sitteth on
the throne of Mercy." Thus he used to walk about,
knocking on the doors, giving the inhabitants no rest
until they rose and went to their places of worship, so
that at one o'clock in the morning the voice of prayer
or of the study of the Torah could be heard from all
the synagogues. On Friday afternoon, again, he
would go about in the market-place, in the high-roads,
reminding the people to be prompt in their preparations
for the coming day, so that they might not, by being
late, become involved in the sin of the desecration of
the Sabbath. ^°° The eve of the New Moon offered
244 -S- TUDIES IN JUDAISM
another opportunity for an additional service, when all
the people fasted, and '* men, women, and students "
would spend the day in supplications, confession of
sin, and in various ascetic practices. The eve of the
seventh day of Passover, of the first day of the Feast of
Weeks, of the Day of Atonement, and of the seventh
day of the Tabernacle Feast were also distinguished by
special readings from the Scriptures and the chanting
of hymns, lasting nearly the whole of the night. '°^
R. Abraham Halevi was probably assisted in his
missionary work by certain "saints and men of action "
of whom it is reported that they used, on certain
occasions, to preach on the subjects of meekness, sin,
and repentance. Possibly they were members of the
society Tent of Peace {Sticcath Slialovi)^ mentioned
by R. Eliezer Azkari, for which he wrote his devo-
tional treatise, Scplicr Charcdini. In this he tried to
show how ** those that tremble at the commandments
of our God " (Ezra lO: 3) should consecrate the whole
of man, in his various functions and different occupa-
tions, to the service of the Lord. The thought
absorbing the minds of the ''tremblers" and forming
the object of their discussions at their meetings, was
the delay of the advent of the Messiah, and the sins
responsible for this delay, but it was also a part of
their programme to cause '* the many to turn away from
sin ' ' by lectures and exhortations. Like the Associates
of Cordovero, the members of this society were also
pledged to auricular confession, each of them giving at
their weekly meetings a full and detailed account of
SAFED 245
his actions during the preceding week. The necessity
of having to lay bare one's hfe before his fellow-men,
and the shame following upon it in the case of an
unworthy action would, so they thought, prove a
preventive against sin. It should, however, be
remarked that Vital, notwithstanding all his other
vagaries and ascetic tendencies, protested against this
institution, and declined to follow his friends in its
practice. ^°^
Besides the Tent of Peace, we have also on record
the existence of a Society of Penitents, especially dis-
tinguished for its ascetic practices, which were of a
very severe nature. Some of its members, we are
told, refrained from food and drink during the day,
performed their afternoon devotions in tears, and put
on sackcloth and ashes. Others, again, observed
every week a fast extending over two or three days
and nights in succession. '°3 R. Elijah de Vidas, in his
attempt to show how much one can accomplish in
the ascetic line, points with evident pride to these
Penitents, saying : *' I saw many of them rise in the
middle of the night, when they would commence to
study, which occupied them until the morning, and
then fast the whole of the day. All this they were
able to accomplish by special Divine aid, for man
does not live by bread alone." '°4 Of the Associates
of Cordovero we read that some among them used to
observe a fast extending over three or four days and
nights, at the change of the four seasons of the year.
It is further recorded that there were many pious
246 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
scholars who refrained from wine and meat during
week-days, whilst others observ^ed on certain days of
the year the same laws of levitical purity in respect to
their food as the priests in olden times when eating
the heave- offering and other sacrificial pieces. '°5
It should, however, be remarked that "doing pen-
ance" and chastisement of the flesh were not considered
by them as synonymous with repentance. Repentance
meant chiefly the absolute determination never to return
to sin at the very risk of one's life, which must precede
all regeneration of the heart. As Azkari himself
expresses it, " Fasts and ascetic practices are vanity
and the work of error without this preceding resolu-
tion," and he goes on to quote his contemporary,
the Saint R. Jacob Gavinezo, who communicated to
him the fact that a man committed a most atrocious
crime after a continuous fast of three days. Like the
sacrifice in the Temple, penance is only of value when
preceded by purification of the heart, humility, and
meekness. '°^
It is hardly needful to say that charity formed an
important item in the Safed scheme of salvation. The
injunction of the mystic is to give alms every day
according to one's means.'°7 This injunction, though
originally intended for a small circle, was accepted by
the general pubhc, following the example of the saints
of old, who used always to make some donation to
the poor before beginning their prayers. The custom
in Safed was to make a regular collection during the
morning prayers in the synagogues. The men, how-
SAFED 247
ever, with special aspirations to saintliness would tax
themselves to the amount of twenty per cent of their
income, and it is stated that even among the poor
there were persons known to give two tithes. Others,
again, would adopt boys and girls early orphaned,
educating them in their own families, and bringing
them into the holy state of matrimony when they
approached the marriageable age.^°^
Yet Safed shows certain characteristics of its own
which greatly redeem it from many an unpleasant
feature which we are accustomed to associate with the
modern revival camp. It is true that the strain was
great, salvation being the absorbing topic of the
community, and the terror of sin delaying this sal-
vation ever present. No opportunity was allowed to
pass for reminding men that Zion was still in ruins,
and that man is a sinful creature and in need of grace,
hence the injunction to confess sins before meals
and before retiring to sleep, whilst the 137th Psalm,
*'By the rivers of Babylon we sat, etc.," was added to
the Grace after meals. '°9
That this strain should produce certain psychologi-
cal phenomena more interesting to the pathologist
than to the theologian, is hardly necessary to state.
The literature of the time, abounding in stories of all
sorts of demoniacs, bears ample evidence to this fact."°
We also have stories of men who through their
importunate storming of Heaven for Salvation were,
for some relapse from grace, suddenly hurled down to
the very depths of hell, and doomed to perdition. The
248 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
most tragic among these is the story of Joseph de la
Reina, who flourished in Safed in the early decades of
the sixteenth century, De la Reina is a sort of Jewish
Faust, who, in his passion for salvation, did not
hesitate to employ certain exorcisms and conjurations
of a very daring nature. He succeeded in bringing
the Evil One into his power, whose destruction is
a preliminary condition to the advent of the Messiah.
But in an unfortunate moment he was persuaded to
show compassion to this fallen angel, allowing him to
smell of the frankincense. The fiend then reg-ained
his former strength, and achieved full mastery over his
captor, who, after realising his fall, abandoned himself
to the most revolting immoralities, and ended his life
by suicide.'"
In spite of this strain, however, with all its hysteria
and its dire results in some cases, it must not be
thought that the Safed community was constantly on
the mourning-bench and spent all its vitality in groaning
and lamentations. Cordovero laid down the rule not to
indulge in pretentious meals except on religious
occasions, but these religious occasions were happily
not infrequent, and the people were apparently not
slow to avail themselves of the opportunities given
to them. The Sabbath was such an opportunity,
being held as a day of joy and recreation in every
respect, physically and spiritually. Fasting was not
only strictly prohibited on the Sabbath, but it was
considered a religious work to partake of three meals,
which, Caro's Mentor-Angel to the contrary notwith-
SAFED 249
standing, had to be distinguished by certain dehcacies.
Wine also was served at these meals, which even
the Penitents would drink. The meals were further
distinguished by a special set of hymns sung or
chanted during the intervals between the various
courses."^ The prescribed ritual, again, in the
synagogue was all joy and promise, containing no
confession or the slightest reference to anything of a
despondent nature. Indeed, the Sabbath should give
man a foretaste of the blissful Messianic times when
sin and sorrow shall have disappeared from the
world. "3 Reluctant to part with these hours of serene
peace and unalloyed joy, and anxious to prolong
them as much as possible, the Sabbath received an
extension both at the beginning and at the end. Thus
they would, early Friday afternoon, dress in their best
clothes and set out in groups to receive Queen Sabbath,
with song and praise, reciting certain Psalms and
singing certain hymns composed for the occasion. In
like manner, they would refrain from work for several
hours after the Sabbath sun had set, and spend them
in chanting hymns and in feasting. They had even a
special society whose members would meet to spend
the end of the Sabbath, reaching way into the night,
with song and dance. The New Moon was also
observed as a partial holiday, affording an opportunity
for relaxation and enjoyment, not to speak of festivals
prescribed in the Bible, such as the Passover, the
Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles."^
All these things must have contributed more or
250 S TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
less toward mitigating the evil effects of an exaggerated
asceticism. Nor must it be forgotten that joy forms a
prominent feature in the programme of the mystic. His
maxim was : the Divine light reaching man through the
fulfilment of the commandment is only in proportion
to the joy expressed by him when performing a
religious action, "s
Moreover, it must be borne in mind that Safed was
just as famous for its scholarship as for its piety.
Most of the leaders of the ascetic and mystical move-
ments were at the same time distinguished scholars.
Ranting in such intellectual society was just as
much out of place as idle brooding and unprofitable
gloom. The study of the Torah, to which they were
so much devoted, was always considered a joy, and the
Safed of the sixteenth century must have been a
veritable Paradise on earth to any man with a tendency
toward intellectual pursuits. If his interests lay in
the regions of the visible, he would attend the lectures
of Caro, Trani, or Sagis, and various other Rabbis at
the head of the great Yeshiboth of the place. If he
were mystically inclined, he would attach himself to
Alkabez or Cordovero ; if he had a taste for homiletics,
he would go to listen to the Biblical expositions of
Alsheich, whilst he might also spare an hour for the
lectures of R. Samuel de Useda on the Chapters of the
Fathers {Pirke AbotJi), whose work on this ethical
tractate is still considered a standard commentary.
He might besides this pay a visit with profit to the
ancient R. David ben Zimra, who, though at the period
SAFED 251
of his second settlement in Safed, he must already have
reached the age of ninety, was still a member of the
General Board mentioned above, and interested in public
affairs. An occasional walk with Vital might also have
possessed its own attractions, for, besides being an adept
in the Cabbala, he was, like so many devotees of nature-
mysticism, likewise interested in alchemy, astronomy,
astrology, magic, and all kinds of occult sciences. In
the way of recreation one might attend recitals of the
mystical bard, R. Israel Nagara, the author of the
hymn book ZemirotJi Israel, who, though somewhat
"vividly erotic" in his metaphors, counted angels
among his auditors, and probably came often to Safed
on visits to his father, R. Joseph Nagara, a famous
scribe of that city. "^
Safed reached the zenith of its fame with the advent
of Loria."7 R. Isaac Loria was born in Jerusalem in the
year i 534. He was a descendant of the famous German
family Loria, on account of which fact he was also
called Isaac Ashkenazi. It is not impossible that his
ancestors came from the Rhine Provinces, from which
most of the earlier scions of the Loria family hailed.
Elijah Loanz (flourished about the end of the sixteenth
century), who claimed some relationship with our
Loria, was a native of Frankfort. One branch of this
family settled in Poland, whilst the other seems to
have emigrated to Palestine. The emigration of
German Jews to Mohammedan countries was by no
means confined to this case. The impulse to this
252 5 TUDIES IN JUDAISM
expatriation from a land in which they had lived
for many centuries and in which they had almost
the claim of original settlers, came from the Epistle
of a certain Joseph Zarphathi, whom fate drove from
Germany to Turkey in his early youth. In this
Epistle he described **the happy lot of the Jews under
the Crescent as compared with their hard fate under
the shadow of the Cross," and called upon them to
escape from the German house of bondage and
emigrate to Turkey. If the German Jews, he said,
could realise but a tenth part of the prosperity await-
ing them in Turkey, they would brave rain and
snow, and would rest neither by day nor by night
before reaching there. Another inducement that he
offered them was that th?re is a route to the Holy
Land lying open to thcrn through Turkey. Though
distance forbade emigration en masse from Germany,
there can be no doubt that Zarphathi's Epistle was
not quite without effect, for we soon find small con-
gregations, both in Turkey and in Palestine, composed
of Jewish emigrants from Germany. The Karaite
Elijah Bashiatsi, of Adrianople, even complained of
the bad influence of these newly-arrived Rabbinical
students from Germany, alarming the community with
their fringes and phylacteries, and their long gowns
and their hoods, makmg themselves conspicuous and
overawing the crowds."^
The birth of Loria was, as in the case of so many
wonder-men, heralded to his father by the prophet
Elijah, who said unto him : '* . . . Be it known unto
SAFED 253
thee that the Holy One, blessed be he, sent me to
bring thee the good message that thy wife will bear
thee a son. Thou shalt name him Isaac ; he will
deliver Israel from the power of the Husks (that is, the
powers of evil and contamination which are at war with
the powers of the good and the holy, and' obscure
them) ; and he will redeem many souls that are under-
going the agony of transmigration, and through him
shall be revealed the teaching of the Cabbala to the
world." He was further bidden not to begin the
initiation of his son into the covenant of Abraham
until aware of the prophet's presence in the synagogue.
The father did as he was bidden, and the boy proved
indeed a wonder-child. At the tender age of eight
he was considered to be a marvel oi Rabbinical learn-
ing, so that none of the Jerusalem scholars could
compete with him in a Talmudical discussion. Un-
fortunately, the father, Solomon, died about this time,
and left his widow in such needy circumstances that
she was not able even to procure the necessary books
which her son required for his studies. There was
nothing left for them to do but emigrate to Cairo,
where her brother, the wealthy tax-farmer Mordecai
Francis, resided. Mordecai received them kindly, and
made generous provision for his sister and those
dependent upon her. Her son Loria he adopted as
his own, and placed him under the care of R. Bezaleel
Ashkenazi, the famous author of the ShittaJi Mchibe-
zeth, under whose guidance he continued his Rabbinical
studies until he reached the age of fifteen, when he
254 5 TUDIES ly JUDA ISM
married the daughter of his benefactor. "9 His intro-
duction to the teaching of the Cabbala followed
some two years later. According to legend, it took
place in the following way: A stranger, whose
business transactions led him to Cairo, came one day
to perform his devotions at the synagogue in which
Loria was in the habit of worshipping. It so happened
that he took his seat opposite Loria and ostensibly
began to read his prayers from a written book which
he held in his hands. Loria, whose curiosity was
evidently aroused by the sight of the manuscript,
managed to take a glance at the volume, and was
surprised to see that its contents embodied the great
mysteries of the faith. Whereupon he approached
the owner of the book and questioned him as to his
person and his profession, and also demanded from him
some information as to the contents of the manu-
script. The owner, who felt embarrassed by Loria' s
importunate questioning, stated finally that he was a
mere Marrano, and even ignorant of the Hebrew
letters of the Torah, and confessed that he was
only simulating the reading of the volume in his
hands out of sheer shame before the other worship-
pers, who were all reading their prayers from the
prayer-books open before them. Loria then began to
urge him to sell him the manuscript, since it was of nc
real value to its owner. This request was at first
refused, but afterwards our Marrano agreed to pari
with his treasure on condition that Loria would
employ his good offices with his father-in-law, the
SAFED 255
tax-farmer, to have the duties upon the wares which
he was about to import to Egypt remitted for him.
The book, as it seems, proved to be the Book of
Splendour, or Sephcj^ ha-ZoJiai% ascribed to R. Simon
ben Yochai, of the second century, and being, as is
well known, the main classic of the Cabbalists. Loria
then, for eight years, abandoned himself to the study
of the Cabbala with all the energy and ''fanatical
enthusiasm" of which he was capable. The principal
subject of his devotion was the Zohar, but it would
seem that during the first six years of his study he
did not always succeed in divining the real meaning
of its supposed author, Simon ben Yochai. However,
he received indications from "heaven" that to reach
the desired end it would be necessary for him to sub-
mit to a more austere mode of living than had been
his habit until then. He thereupon retired to a certain
village, in the neighbourhood of Cairo, which belonged
to his father-in-law, where he built for himself a cot-
tage on the banks of the Nile. Here he lived during
the whole week, returning to his family in the city
only for the Sabbath. The other six days were spent
in strict solitude, and in fasting, praying, and frequent
ablutions, beside other kinds of voluntary self-chas-
tisement. This continued for two years, when Loria,
by reason of his holy life and complete absorption in
meditation upon the holy mysteries, reached the
degree of being worthy of the gift of the Holy Spirit,
as well as of having communion with the prophet Elijah.
Nothing is known of Loria's occupation during the
256 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
next eight or ten years, preceding his emigration to
Safed. We are told that this exodus was undertaken
in obedience to a distinct command from Heaven,
which announced to him that his tenure of hfe would
be a short one, and ordered him, among other things,
to leave the polluted land (Egypt) and go up to Safed
in Upper Galilee. ^^°
It will have been observed that no mention has been
made of Loria's master in the department in which he
was most to excel. Legend, which has served us
as the source for the preceding description, is quite
silent on this point. Nor was there any real need for
a master in human shape. For, according to legend,
it was the prophet Elijah himself who performed the
functions of teacher in the case of Loria. It is further
narrated that every night Loria's soul, released from
all earthly ties, would ascend to heaven in the com-
pany of the ** ministering angels," who watched over
him until he reached the abode of the Celestials.
Upon his arrival there, he would have his choice of
attending any of the super-mundane academies, in
which the souls of departed saints and great sages
continue the occupations which formed their moments
of bliss in the course of their earthly careers. But
it may be humbly suggested also that Loria had,
besides, a very fair library, in which, apart from the
Zohar, were contained the works of various mystics
who had preceded him. We know that he occasion-
ally referred to them, assigning to each his proper
place in the chain of mystical tradition. It is also
SAFED
257
possible that in the beginning he may have received
some aid from R. David ben Zimra, at that time the
Chief Rabbi of Cairo, who was also a great Cabbalist ;
as well as from his master, Bezaleel, who is recorded
as having been learned in the mysteries of the Torah.^^'
More important is the indebtedness of Loria to Cor-
dovero. This indebtedness is suggested by a passage
in the ''Writings" of Loria, in which Cordovero is
cited as "our master and teacher."'^^ The vagueness
of the plural, however, as well as the uncertainty as
to the genuineness of these *' Writings ", make it rather
hazardous to base an important biographical fact upon
them. But we are fully justified in doing so after the
evidence of Sambari, who reports that ''Cordovero
was the master of Loria for a short time," whilst Con-
forte describes him as a disciple-colleague of Cordo-
vero. '^3 This evidence gathers strength from certain
occasional remarks in a version of the life of Loria, in
which the personal relations between the two masters
are not entirely obliterated. Thus we learn that among
the " men of wisdom and understanding whom Loria
found in Safed upon his arrival there, were Caro, Cor-
dovero, and R. Joseph Ashkenazi. ' ' The fact that these
three sages were singled out by name, would suggest
that Loria came into close relationship with them.
From another place it is clear that it was practically
Cordovero himself who designated Loria as his succes-
sor. Naturally, legend accounts for it by a miracle.
Indeed, we are told that it was only to spare Cordo-
vero' s sensitiveness that Loria hesitated so long before
258 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
revealing his greatness to the world. '-^ But we may
conclude that while Cordovero lived, Loria occupied
the inferior position, — that is, that of a disciple in the
presence of his master.
I lay no claim to be initiated in the science of
the invisible, and am thus unable to determine with
any exactness how far this indebtedness of Loria to
Cordovero extended. To cite a Biblical expression
frequently used in such connexion, I am merely
" looking through the lattice." And what one can
perceive by means of such dim vision is that all
the Cabbalists laboured under an awful alternative —
the dread of confusing the creature with his Creator,
and the dread not less keenly felt of the Jiorror vaaiiy
or a God-less world , in addition to the well-known
metaphysical, or rather physical, difficulty of the
possibility of evolving a finite world from the Infinite.
This dread called into being a whole system of emana-
tions and immanations, of straight rays and reflected
lights, of radiations and beams, crossing each other
and commingling, and forming endless combinations,
creating universes. But these universes are, on the
other hand, affected by a whole seri-es of checks and
balances, or defects and faults, disabling them from
becoming identical with the life permeating them,
but (just because of these defects) giving them
tangible substance, by which process alone the
creation of the world, as we see it, becomes possible.
Still, this world, notwithstanding the endless grada-
SAFED 259
tions and disguises and husks, is not only reached
by a Divine Essence, which created it, but is per-
vaded by it and is full of it. Cordovero's expression
with regard to the first immanations, that they are
identical and not identical, may be applied also to all
other developments in the scale of the universes. '"'s
They are just effect enough not to be entirely confused
with their cause, but in such close proximity or con-
tiguity to the cause that they cannot be thought
separated from the cause. Some mystics were bold
enough to declare the world not only united with
God, but one with God. Even the lowest worm in
this scale becomes to a certain extent identical with
all the causes of worlds or emanations preceding it.
There is, accordingly, a constant blending of the
temporal and the eternal. Indeed, the action of the
first emanation, which assumes some room for imma-
nation, became possible only by the process of the
Divine Essence concentrating itself into itself, and
thus making a place for a world or the possibility of
emanations. This self-concentration of the Divine,
creating space for the universes, or for ideas or
attributes from which a universe might evolve, is
counteracted by a process of expansion, or an out-
flow of the Divine Essence, thus making Creation
God-full. The impossibility, however, on the part of
the universes, or the ''vessels", to become a real
receptacle for the light emitted from Divine Grace,
inasmuch as the receptacle cannot be identical with
the thing received, caused a deterioration in the
26o 5 TUDIES IN JUDAISM
descending scala of universes or worlds, which brought
about the condition of chaos, in which the origin of
evil is to be sought. The chaos is so thorough and
so complete that evil cannot be entirely without good,
indeed, it would have no existence ,- whilst the good,
in the lower worlds at least, is not entirely free from
evil. This is especially the case with this world of
ours, the most substantialised. It is the world of the
Husks, of mere appearances or disguises, obscuring
the real realities, and but for the "sparks", or beams,
of the holy and pure scattered in it, it would disappear
into nothingness, and be swallowed up by its own
unredeemable darkness. The elimination of evil, and
the restoration of the world to Divine goodness, is the
great problem under which creation is labouring.
Loria is usually described as the author of this
system of Concentration, called in Hebrew Zimziun.
Now, it is true that Cordovero, as far as I could see,
only once uses this term in his Pardcs.''''^ But it
should be remarked that R. Sabbatai Horwitz, the
author of the Shcpha Tal (Abundance of Dew), an
avowed disciple of Cordovero, and considered the
best expounder of his system, is constantly operating
with Zimzum, at the same time giving the most lucid
expositions of the Concentration theory to be found
in any Cabbalistic book; but he never so much as
mentions Loria. However, I am prepared to accept
in good faith the testimony of R. Menahem Azariah
of Fano, mentioned above, Avho spent a large fortune
m. procuring the writings of Cordovero and in giving
SAFED 261
them wide circulation, but who subsequently declared
that the system of Loria bears the same relation to
that of Cordovero as the latter sustains to the Biblical
commentaries of Kimchi, which give only the simple
meaning of the Scriptures and never touch on the
mysteries of the Torah."^
Some light perhaps may be thrown on this point
by a remark ascribed by legend to Cordovero him-
self, to the effect that Cordovero on a certain occasion
expressed his opinion that there was no real disagree-
ment between his system and that of his successor
(Loria) J only whilst he himself dwelt more on the
aspect of the Sephij^otJi (Emanations), his successor
enlarged more on the Parzuphhn, as they are to be
found in the Idras of the Zohar.'^^ Parzuphim, a
Greek term, signifies, when occurring in the regular
Rabbinical literature, faces, visages, forehead, and
features. The mystic seemed to use the term in the
wider sense of the "full stature," comprising all parts
of the human body, allegorised, sublimised, to repre-
sent attributes and ideas. Starting from the favoured
notion of the mystics, conceiving man as a microcosm
(or the world in miniature), virtually connected with
and focussing all the different orders of creation, and
pressing (rather unduly) the logical consequence in-
volved in the Scriptural statement, "So God created
man in his own image" and similar verses, the mystic
reverses the process, and if he does not exactly create
God in the image of man, he conceives even in the
ideal universe "man in enlargement", and looks to
262 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
his image for the illustration of all Existence and
Generation. His language then becomes less abstract
and his metaphors much bolder. He imposes on
himself, it is true, absolute silence with regard to the
Infinite, or the Unknowable, or the Super-Essential,
who is transcendentalised beyond language and beyond
thought. But more intrepid grows his phraseology
when he reaches the first manifestation of the Most
Hidden of all Hidden, which he terms the Original
Man, or the Ideal Man {Adam Kadmoii), the arche-
type of creation, endowed with certain qualities making
it possible to establish likeness ** between the image and
him who fashioned it." The danger of this system,
with its bold negations on the one hand, and its
hazardous "anthropology" on the other, is evident
enough and needs no further explanation. It should,
however, be remarked that no one felt this danger
more deeply and warned against it more emphatically
than the Cabbalists themselves. It is sufficient here
to refer to the compiler of the Idras, which, as just
indicated, were the main source of Loria's inspiration.
The Idras may, perhaps, be characterised as the
mystical anatomy of the "Original Man". They
dilate, naturally, upon the corporeal expressions of
the Bible in connexion with the Deity, but add to
them also limbs and organs of the human body not
occurring in the Scriptures, describing them minutely
and explaining them in a theosophic and mystical
manner. But this lengthy discourse (especially the
so-called Great Idra, claiming to have been promul-
SAFED 263
gated in the circle of the ancient Rabbis) is prefaced by
a solemn warning by R. Simon ben Yochai, the alleged
hero of this gathering, not to take these metaphors
and terms literally. He enjoins them to rise and lift
their hands when he pronounces the anathema over
those not heeding his warning, with the Scriptural
words, *' Cursed be the man that maketh any graven
or molten image an abomination unto the Lord, the
work of the hands of the craftsman, and putteth it in
a secret place. And all the people shall answer, and
say Amen" (Deut. 27:15).
Loria was apparently more given to this branch of
the Cabbala than to any other. This is, at least, the
impression one receives on examining the works or
the hymns attributed to him. There the anthropo-
morphistic element is more conspicuous, and the
terminology more concrete than in the works of his
predecessors, and it is not impossible that it was just
this novel feature in his teaching which proved attract-
ive to the more daring spirits. But there must have
been, besides, something great and attractive about
Loria' s personality that gave him this overwhelming
influence in a city so abounding in great scholars and
great mystics as was Safed. This will be more clearly
seen if we follow his career in his new home.
The whole ministry of Loria in Safed lasted at the
utmost six years. '^9 With the exception of R. David
ben Zimra, whom he had known in Cairo, there is
nothing on record to show that he had any connexion
264 ^ TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
with the leading spirits of Safed before his settling in
this city. But we find him soon, as shown before, in
the society of Caro and Cordovero, the recognised heads
of the Talmudic and mystical schools respectively.
His relation to Cordovero was that, as we have
already pointed out, of a disciple or disciple-colleague
to his master. As to Caro, we are in possession of a
Responsum showing that Loria soHcited his advice in
the decision of a civil case, which suggests a certain
subordination on the part of Loria in purely Rabbinic
matters. But this did not prevent Caro from being
counted, according to legend, among the greatest
admirers of Loria. Their relations must have grown
more intimate when Loria's son became eng-aeed to a
daughter of Caro. Shlomel, to whom we owe the
knowledge of this fact, reports in this connexion, in
the name of Caro's widow, that when her husband
came home from the banquet given in honour of this
betrothal, he said to her, **My wife, I can hardly
describe to you how much I profited in my knowledge
of the secrets o{ the Torah coming from the mouth of
Loria at this banquet. Not even an angel is in pos-
session of such heavenly lore as he displayed this
night, his soul being that of an ancient prophet." It
should, however, be noted that Shlomel naively
proceeds to say that Loria rather discouraged Caro in
his efforts to become his disciple in the Cabbala,
maintaining that Caro's soul was only fit to receive
wisdom on the plane of Cordovero. As a proof of
this, Loria is supposed to have given the fact, that as
SAFED 265
often as he began to reveal some great mystery to
Caro, the latter would fall asleep, so that Caro himself
became convinced that he was not sufficiently prepared
for the revelations of Loria.'3°
The ascendency of Loria probably dated from the
year 1570, when he succeeded Cordovero as the head
of the mystical school. But whilst Cordovero was
admired and revered as a saint and a scholar, Loria
was looked upon as one of those superhuman beings
who, by a special act of Providence, are permitted to
visit us mortals for the especial purpose of our salvation.
Their real home is heaven, and they come to us only
on leave of absence. According to his biographers,
his face was shining like the sun, and his thoughts
were chaste and holy. In his knowledge of the Divine
there was none like him since the glorious days of R.
Simon ben Yochai. He was, moreover, master of all
the sciences. He knew physiognomy and chiromancy,
and understood the conversation of the trees, and the
language of the birds, and the speech of the angels.
Looking at the forehead of a man he could tell at a
glance from what particular source his soul was derived,
and the processes of transmigration through which it
had passed, and what its present mission was on earth.
He also could discern the souls of the wicked which
(as a punishment) had taken up their abode in woods
and in stone quarries, in the beasts of the field, in
insects and unclean birds. He was able to tell men
their past as well as predict their future, and to
prescribe for them the rules of conduct calculated to
266 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
make amends for their shortcomings in a previous
existence. ^31
The name under which Loria usually appears in
this new hagiology is ARI (Lion), forming the anagram
of the Hebrew words signifying "the Divine Rabbi
Isaac," whilst his disciples and other enthusiastic fol-
lowers are termed "the Lion -Whelps." Probably
they included among their number several of the
old Associates of Cordovero who, indeed, under
the leadership of Loria seem to have become more
consolidated and to have figured more prominently
as a compact body than in former days. It is true
that we have indications that some of the disciples of
Cordovero hesitated for some time in their recognition
of the new master, putting him to the test in various
ways. But all opposition seems soon to have ceased,
so that Loria maintained the field. ^32
The most important acquisition to the Lion- Whelps
was R. Chayim Vital who, it seems, had until then
pursued his mystical studies entirely independent of the
Cabbalists of Safed. At the time of Loria' s appearance
on the stage, Vital was living in Damascus, occupied in
writing a commentary on the Zohar. He paid little
attention to the rumours reaching him from Safed, that
a great new master had arisen in Israel. These
rumours, however, were strengthened by visions in
dreams of the night, which, according to legend, Vital
could no longer disregard, so that he determined to
go to Safed and meet Loria. They had hardly met
SAFED 267
before Vital had occasion to learn that at last he had
found a master. He soon became the most devoted
member of Loria's school and the most active in the
propagation of his teaching. ^33
The text-book of the school was the Zohar, which
Loria would expound to his disciples after due prep-
aration for it on their part. The Idra, referred to
above, seems to have been the object of their particular
inquiry and curiosity. But it must be remarked that
even in the narrow circle of his trusted pupils, Loria
was not very communicative in the revelation of what
he considered to be the ''mystery of mysteries."
The few revelations he did make were made, according
to the testimony of his disciples, only under protest,
at their urgent solicitation and at the very risk of the
life of the master, he having been apparently unwilling
to reveal such great secrets to insignificant mortals.
But even his disciples could not prevail upon him to
give a presentation of his system in a book for the
benefit of posterity. Nay, even the permission to take
down notes of his lectures was given only grudgingly
and, as it seems, was withdrawn subsequently. ^34
Next to the mysteries of the Torah, it was apparently
the personality of Loria himself which exercised their
minds. Loria, it is true, was vaguely known to the
general population of Safed as ''the Holy Man" and
*'the Divine CabbaHst." Occasionally he gave an
edifying lecture in some synagogue. There is also a
tradition that he was a member of the Board of
Censors in Safed, composed of various Rabbis who
268 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
were responsible for the morals of the city, and that
he distinguished himself there by defending the hon-
our of a woman who lay under grave suspicion. ^^s
According to another account, he came also in contact
with the world through his business relations, to which
he gave up three days of the week.^36 j ^^ ^^^ think
that this report is correct. It is more probable that
he had some competency granted to him by his rich
uncle and father-in-law. Be this as it may, there is
no doubt that he was best known to the Associates,
numbering ten or twelve, who constituted the inner
circle of Loria's acquaintance and converted themselves
into as many Boswells. None of his movements
escaped them. They watched to see how he rose
from his bed and when ; how he washed his hands,
how he cut his nails, how he read his prayers, how he
ate his meals, and more often, how he fasted and when ;
how he said Grace after meals, how he addressed
himself to his fellow-men, and what his relations to
them were ; how he prepared himself for the Sabbath,
and how many garments he wore on that day; what
songs he intoned during the meal, and how he cut
the bread, and what shape the table had at which
these meals were served. This fitted in well with
their system, in which man, as already hinted, plays
the important part, especially the "superman," sur-
rounded by that Divine halo which makes him, to
use a Talmudical expression, a partner of the Holy
One, blessed be he, in the creation of the world. ^37
In the Talmud, this distinction of creating worlds is
SAFED 269
bestowed on the man who administers justice. '3^ In
the Cabbala, this function of creating worlds, and not
less of destroying worlds (in the case of evil-doers),
is extended to all the actions of man by reason of his
soul being the plexus of the whole scale of worlds.
This makes a whole universe sensitive to all his
motions. In the case of Loria arose a whole literature,
dealing with what is called Attentions, or Devotions,
including the rules of conduct observed by Loria.
The Attentions are for the most part of a mystical
nature, bearing upon Loria's interpretation of the
contents of the ritual and the mystical meaning which
he divined in the performance of every commandment ;
but there are also Attentions of more general interest. '39
Loria's first care was naturally for the young
** Lions", or the Associates, who were apparently in
need of a little taming and discipline, to effect which
he erected for them an " enclosure", or rather, square,
a block of buildings, providing chambers also for their
wives and children. Isolation from the world, though
living in the world, forms a part of the programme of
every mystic. But the experiment was not successful.
After a few months had passed, the women began to
quarrel, and imparted their grievances to their hus-
bands, leading to unpleasantness among the Associ-
ates. This mortified Loria very deeply. '^°
The Associates were divided into two classes,
probably in accordance with their knowledge of mysti-
cal lore, but this did not prevent Loria from considering
them as one body in the fullest sense of the word.
270 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
each of the Associates being held only as a member
or a joint of the body, so that in loving himself he
loved the whole organism. Loria further bade them
to pray constantly one for the other, and especially to
feel the distress of each other in the case of sickness
and misfortune. The love of the organism, however,
extended to the whole of Israel, and Loria prescribed,
that before beginning prayers man should receive upon
himself the affirmative commandment, ''And thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" (Lev. 19: 17), so
that he may pray for Israel, in Israel, and with Israel.
And it was this overwhelming sense of his solidarity
with Israel which urged him to read the Confession
prescribed for Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) in all
its fullest details, explaining that though there may be
sins which he himself had not committed, he felt him-
self to be a member of the great body of Israel
whose individual members form only one great unit
of souls. ''^^ Vital, the favourite pupil of Loria, prescribes
as one of the conditions for the acquiring of the gift of
the Holy Spirit, "Love all creatures, including non-
Jews. ""'^^ Loria himself was careful not to kill any
living creature, be it even an insect or a worm. This
was probably a result of his belief in the teaching of
Metempsychosis, so prominent in Loria's system,
which peopled for him the animate world with the
souls of a fallen humanity, now appearing in the shapes
of lower creation. ''^3
Prayer, as may be expected, was to Loria one of
the main functions of life, there being, according to him,
SAFED 271
no prayer in which man, by reason of his close com-
munion with God, does not become the receptacle of
new Divine light and a new outflow of Divine mercy.
Every word of the ritual, every letter in it, had, besides
its literal meaning, also its awful mysteries, occupying
a most prominent place in the writings attributed to him
or to his disciples. He saw in the lack of proper de-
votion during prayer the great obstacle in the way of
the redemption of Israel.'^'^ It is hardly to be wondered
at that such sublime prayer, accompanied by all the
"Attentions" as Loria prescribed them, should be
preceded by a series of ablutions, forming a part of the
mystical programme at all times. It is reported that
Loria said that physical purity, obtained by such
ablutions, is greatly helpful to man, and he would
perform them in the severest cold. On the other
hand, it is recorded that when his mother objected to
them on account of his delicate health, he would
defer to her wishes cheerfully, ^^s
This trait of considerateness was an essential
feature of his character. He led, as we can imagine,
a very simple life, dressing very plainly and spending
little on himself, but he would accept the budget of
his wife without a protest, and grant all the expense
she considered fit.'^^^ It was also his custom to pay
for any object required for religious purposes the
amount asked, whatever it might be. Anger he
declared to be the source of all evil, considering it
as a sort of spiritual suicide, and though he was very
tender in the treatment of his disciples, he once
272 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
rebuked one of the Associates who showed too much
resentment against his brother for not being sufficiently
attentive to his studies. ^^^ Xhe man who is betrayed
into anger puts up a strange god in his heart, which
is a sanctuary, and where the Divine Presence should
dwell. Hence, let no man be betrayed into anger,
either against a Gentile or a Jew, not even in the case
when he has been robbed or insulted, but let always
his mind remain calm. ''The Lord, his God, is with
him, and the shout of the King is in him." It is
reported that the Loria Associates made it a rule not
to initiate anyone into the mysteries of the Cabbala
who was by temperament inclined to anger. ^'^^ There
is also a story about Loria that he would, on his
walks, usually place himself behind a certain student
of Safed. It seems that his disciples rather resented
this humility of their master, and expostulated with
him. His answer was to the effect that he could see
that the student felt especially honoured by walking
before him ; since this was his desire, Loria thouo-ht it
his duty to satisfy it; just as we, according to the
Rabbinic law, are bound to provide a proper escort for
the poor of noble descent, if they have been accus-
tomed to it all their lives. ^^49
It is hardly necessary to say that Loria was chari-
table ; he had appointed times every day when he
gave a certain amount of alms to the treasurer of his
synagogue, but he further considered it as a solemn
act, and would, as in the most important prayers,
stand on his feet when he gave his PeriitaJi. Often he
SAFED 273
would give all the money in his possession, not look-
ing to see whether anything remained in his pocket. '5°
This is certainly against all the rules of scientific charity.
I hope that we shall overlook this defect in his
character when we remember the remark of a French
philosopher of the eighteenth century, who said that
''magnanimity owes no account of its motives to
prudence."
He was especially strict in the fulfilment of the
command bidding us to pay the workman his wages
on the very day on which he has performed his labour
(Deut. 24: 15), and it went so far with him that he
would not allow himself to read the afternoon prayer
before getting the necessary money to pay off debts of
this kind, saying, " How dare I approach my Maker
when such a commandment came within my reach and
I did not accomplish it?"'^^
In this connexion, the following story may be re-
produced : As we have seen, many Jews in Safed were
engaged in the clothing trade. Among these was R.
Abraham Galanti, referred to above. One day Galanti
came to Loria asking him, as the phrase was, to ''give an
improvement to his soul," — that is, to tell him whether
Loria had not detected that he was backward in the
fulfilment of one of the commandments. Loria at first
declined to comply with his wish, as Galanti was one
of the scholars and saints of Safed; but after much
urging, he fixed his eyes on Galanti' s forehead and
said to him, " that he was defective in the commandment
* Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him'
274 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
(Lev. 19: 13). The mystical notion is that sin and
passion leave their impression on the face of man, and
disfigure the image of God. Galanti went home trem-
bling in every limb, and deeply mortified that he
should have disgraced himself so far as to be in-
volved in the sin of dishonesty. He put on sackcloth
and spread ashes on his head in accordance with the
usage of penitents, and called a meeting of all the
hands engaged in his factory. When they arrived, he
said to them : **Know ye not that I am only flesh and
blood, and therefore subject to error? Accordingly,
I must ask that you should examine most carefully
your accounts with me, to see that I do you no
wrong." Their answer was: ''We have no account
against you. Since we have been in the master's em-
ploy we are wanting in nothing, and the Lord has sent
us his blessing. There is none among us who would
think of making a bill of his demands." Thereupon
the Rabbi said : **It is through your negligence in this
respect that I have become the victim of sin. I will,
therefore, put money before you ; take what you de-
sire, and forgive any claims you may have against
me." But they would not touch the money, except
one woman, who stretched out her hands and took
two Pcnitoth. Galanti then went to Loria, who said,
as he came out to meet him, "Why did you feel so
mortified?" Galanti answered, ''Is it a small matter
that I should feel that I may possibly have robbed
somebody? Now, if I have found grace in your eyes,
tell me if the mark of this sin is still upon my fore-
SAFED 275
head?" Loria answered, "No sign of sin is visible
any longer," and revealed to him that the mistake
consisted in the fact that this woman who had taken
two Pcrutoth was one of the best weavers in his factory,
and should have been better paid than the other em-
ployees. *'But they are very particular in heaven
about such things," said Loria, ** hence the ugly mark
which I perceived on you."^52
Sabbath was the day of days with Loria and the
Associates, new heavenly light reaching our sublunar
regions on that day. The preparation for the Sabbath
began Friday morning, when Loria would read the
portion of the week from a scroll of the Pentateuch.
Then would come dressing the hair, ablutions, and
arraying himself in white garments in honour of the
Sabbath. Early in the afternoon, Loria would form a
procession, together with the Associates, to the fields
to receive there Queen Sabbath with the song, ''Come,
my Beloved." '" It was on such occasions that Loria,
who was otherwise, as we have seen, rather reserved in
revealing the mysteries of the Torah, would become com-
municative and uncover Divine secrets which no ear had
been worthy enough to listen to before. And not only
would the living profit by this hour of grace, but
also the souls of the departed would benefit, wandering
about for eternities, and taking up their abodes in the
different kingdoms, the mineral, the vegetable, and the
animal. These would on such occasions come to
Loria, asking for his prayers to lift them up into the
higher regions. *'He saw spirits everywhere, and
276 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
heard their whispers in the rushing of the water, in
the movements of the trees and grass, in the song or
twittering of the birds, even in the flickering of
flames." ^54 Jhe neighbourhood of Safed, to which
legend, long before this period, had transferred from
Judaea the earthly remains of prophets and ancient
sages, became to Loria, who saw their souls hovering
on the graves, a veritable Valley of Jehoshaphat in the
hour of resurrection. He held intercourse with them,
and united, in ** concentrated prayer," his soul with
theirs. "55 But, above all, it was contemporary human-
ity which harboured these souls, if such an expression
be permissible with Loria. Indeed, recognising as
Loria did, by the process of metempsychosis, in every
person he met old acquaintances from history, with
whom he had associated in a former existence, and
believing further, as he did, that it was only with the
adyent of the Messiah that this transmigration of souls
would cease, all limits of space and time practi-
cally disappeared for him. To him the "generations
past and the generations to come formed with those
who are alive one single whole." All souls were
evolved from the ''original soul " of Adam, derived from
the different parts of his body, and they suffered by his
Fall. All live eternally, and are swayed by almost the
same passions and by the same ideals as they were
before. A certain neighbour of Loria, of a quarrel-
some disposition, was none else to him than Korah of
old, whilst Loria himself was a spark of the soul of
Moses. '5^ R. Abraham Halevi, referred to above, was
SAFED 277
reported by legend to have perceived the Divine Glory
during his prayers at the Holy Wall in Jerusalem.
Loria thereupon discovered in him a spark of the soul
of the prophet Jeremiah, who, according to a Rabbin-
ical legend, had a similar vision on the same conse-
crated spot.'57 R. Moses Alsheich, again, famous, as
noted above, for his homiletical works, was pregnant
with the soul of R. Samuel ben Nachmani, the famous
Agadist of the fourth century.'ss Loria himself and
the Associates, in their present capacity as mystics,
represented the reincarnation of the supposed heroes of
the Zohar, headed by R. Simon ben Yochai and his son
R. Eleazar.'59 Men were not to him what they were, but
what they had been once, and it was their former exist-
ence which determined his relations to them. Thus it
is reported that one morning his disciple R. Samuel de
Useda entered the house of Loria, who was lecturing
to the Associates. Loria, upon perceiving him, at
once arose before him and greeted him with the words,
"Blessed be he that cometh," took him by the hand,
placed him at his right side, and had a long conversa-
tion with him. Vital, who was present, was curious
to know why his master showed this young man
so much honour, and asked him the reason. He
said : It was not before him that I arose, but before
the soul of R. Phinehas ben Jair, who lived some
eight hundred years ago, and was especially distin-
guished by his acts of charity and lovingkindness.
Of this soul the young man became possessed to-day.
Upon inquiry, Useda confessed that that morning, on
278 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
his way to the synagogue, he had passed by a house
from which the voice of lamentation and crying
reached his ears. When he went in, he found the
tenants all naked, robbers having taken away their
clothes. He at once gave them all the raiment he
had on, and returned home, where he clad himself in
his Sabbath garments. '^°
Such things Lona saw best on the eve of the
Sabbath by the aid of the Divine light radiating from
the holiness of the day to come. When the prayers
and the songs in the fields were over, Loria would
return home, where he would be met by his mother,
whom he kissed on entering the house. As it would
seem, he was accompanied by Vital, who used to
spend the Sabbath with him. Then would beg-in as
we can imagine, the Kiddush (Sanctification of the day
over the cup of wine), and the meal, at which any
number of concentrated ''Attentions" were observed.
We are also in possession of three mystical songs
composed by Loria himself, sung at the three meals
by which the Sabbath day was distinguished.'^'
The Sabbath emitted its rays, lighting up the whole
week, sanctifying even such moments of human life
as those in which material needs and common passions
are very little favourable to spirituality. Loria, in
common with other mystics, succeeded in spiritualis-
ing the whole life of man, just as the legalist finds
nothing in human affairs which is either above or
below the Torah. De Vidas, referred to before, the
favourite pupil of Cordovero, wrote a book, Rcshith
SAFED 279
Chochmah, dealing with such topics as the fear of God,
the love of God, holiness, humility, sin, reward and
punishment, and repentance, but he did not disdain to
devote whole pages to such subjects as the intimate
relations or intercourse between the sexes, commerce
and trade, good manners and social etiquette, all of
which form a part of the sacred life. The same thing
may be observed of the pupils of Loria. The book,
E:: ha- Chayim (The Tree of Life), ascribed to Vital and
supposed to represent a compilation of the most
important of Loria' s teachings, is prefaced among
others by this motto, ''Depart from evil and do good"
(Psalms 34 : 14). It is followed by a number of rules,
some of which we have already met with in the pre-
ceding remarks. The first of them impresses upon
the mystic the necessity of the strict fulfilment of the
Law in all its minutiae, whether Scriptural or tradi-
tional.'^^ ''The Gates of Holiness," by Vital, gives
a set of rules for those who are in search of eternal
perfection, the absorption in the Divine, and is per-
vaded by the same spirit of loyalty to the Law, both
in its ceremonial and moral parts.
Thus the Safed of the sixteenth century, at least,
is free from all antinominian tendencies, which are the
supposed inevitable consequences of mysticism. The
Safed Jew of that period saw no antagonism of principle
between Caro and Loria. Caro was for him the authority,
Loria the model. But just as Loria was amenable to
the discipline of the Law, so was Caro not unresponsive
to the finer impulses of love and admiration.
28o STUDIES IN JUDAISM
Loria died in the year 1572 (according to some, in
1 574) after a short ilhiess of three days. '^3 Vital took
over the leadership, and it was under his direction
that various writings and works were soon compiled
and put into circulation, claiming the authority of
Loria. How far Loria would have felt himself
responsible for all that was then written and said in
his name, is a question not to be easily decided.
Probably he would have disowned a great deal of
what was afterwards known as the writings of Loria.
I have already referred to his hesitation in giving
publicity to what he considered to be the secrets of
the Torah, but he must also have felt that his highly-
coloured metaphors and rich imagery might become
a stumbling-block to those who had not passed
through all the grades of holiness, and were not
satisfied with being brought near God on the
''religious-fatigue" system, but preferred to have God
brought down to them. We have it also on good
authority that before his death he said to his disciples,
''Know for a truth that you have not a single
Proposition (of the mystical lore expounded by Loria)
that can be considered complete." When they said
to him, " Not even R. Chayim Vital?" he answered .-
Perhaps he knows a little more than you, but not
much.'^'^
The Propositions, however, concerned only a few
exalted personages among the mystics, who made
them the special subject of their studies and further
development. What filtered through these Proposi-
SAFED 2Sr
tions and reached those who laid no claim to this title,
"was not metaphysic but moral, not immanence but
sin," or rather the fear of sin. The Propositions
placed man, as already hinted at, upon a pedestal, the
eminence of which caused giddiness to many an exalted
personage, who, deeming himself a god or a demi-god,
lost his balance and fell beyond hope of redemption.
The great majority of Israel remained mindful
of the old warning, **Be not rash with thy mouth,
and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any-
thing before God : for God is in heaven, and thou
upon earth- therefore let thy words be few" (Eccles.
5 : 2). Haste and rashness became especially dis-
credited after the bursting of that theological bubble
known in history as the Pseudo-Messianic claims
of Sabbatai Zebi. The Propositions, with the over-
emphasis of the God-likeness of man, were only
allowed to stand so far as God-likeness demanded
superior holiness on the part of man With a proper
instinct the people at large left the Es ha-Chayiin
by Vital, with its Propositions, to the few, and it
lasted nearly two centuries till it first appeared in
print J but his book "The Gates of Holiness," with
its deeply ethical contents, became at once a
popular tract, and passed through many editions.
Likewise, the Jewish public took but little notice of
R. Moses Chayim Luzzatto's " One Hundred and
Thirty- Eight Doors of Wisdom", but it did appreciate
at once his noble "Path of the Upright", preaching
morality and holiness. The book is constantly going
282 5 TUDIES IN JUDA ISM
through new editions, and in certain parts of the East
there are special "Path oi the Upright Societies"
devoted to the study of this book. The Safed influence
is especially marked on the devotional works of R.
Isaiah Horwitz, R. Aaron Kaydanower, and R. Elijah
Cohen, which works became the common spiritual good
of the people. Their morality is austere, their tone
sombre, and their demands on man's rehgious capa-
bilities exacting. All this is traceable enough in the
work of the Safed penitents. They certainly have not
erred on the line of self-complacency and self- righteous-
ness. They warn man not to behave "as so many
fools do," who are so over-confident of their salvation
because they are engaged in their trade the w^hole day,
recite punctually the three prescribed prayers for the
day, and neither steal nor rob nor commit any other
acts of gross immorality, and harm nobody. These are
cheap virtues, according to our moralists, of which even
the Gentiles are not devoid, and which one's neigh-
bours from motives of self-preservation would compel
one to observe. What justifies man to entertain exalted
hopes of the "world to come" is, according to the
stern moralists, the minute observance of the Law in
all its details "in great love," the constant increasing
in the quality of saintliness, the possession of the
quality to please God and man, and the readiness to give
up his life in perfect joy for the sake of the love of
God. On the other hand, they have, as indicated
above, retained enough of the Safed emphasis of the
God-likeness of man to disregard in the end the
SAFED 283
dualism of flesh and spirit, a conception un- Jewish in
its origin, and now revived only under a mistaken
notion of " spirituality." In spite of the ascetic teach-
ings, with their depreciation of the ''turbid body," to be
threatened by the terrors of hell and cajoled by the
joys of paradise, they were thus able to insist upon the
holiness of the flesh {Ked^ishath ha-GiipJi) and upon its
purity as much as upon that of the soul, as well as to
accord to the flesh a share in the bliss to come, held
out to man as a consequence of a holy and religious
life, which a supercilious philosophy entirely denied. '^s
Caro passed away in 1575, Trani five years later
(1580). The decline of Safed soon set in. Samson
Bak, who travelled in Palestine in 1588, was com-
pelled to leave Safed for Jerusalem on account of the
distress which had overtaken the former city at that
period. R. Isaiah Horwitz, who settled in Palestine
soon after the beginning of the seventeenth century,
describes the Jerusalem population as richer in num-
bers than that of Safed. '^^
The men who succeeded Caro and Loria were, for
the most part, their disciples. R. Moses Galanti, an
ordained disciple of Caro and an adherent of Loria,
R. Yomtob Zahalon, described as the head of the city
of Safed and of the Yeshibah, and R. Joseph Trani, the
son of R. Moses Trani, who obtained in later life
even more distinction than his famous father, seem to
be the most prominent names of this period. At least
this is the impression we receive from their Responsa
284 STUDIES IN JUDAISM
collections, in which they figure as men of weight and
authority. They still meet in the general board ; and
in a document giving the minutes of such a meeting
dating from the first decade of the seventeenth century,
we have the signatures of not less than twenty Rabbis,
with some of whom we made acquaintance in the former
pages. Mention is also made of a rabbi Joshua ben
Nun, who is described as the Chief Rabbi and the head
of all the heads of the colleges, and who was, besides,
the administrator of all the charities of the city. The
old devotion to the study of the Torah and the occu-
pation with mystical literature are still continued. After
they finished their prayers, the whole congregation
formed themselves into groups, listening to lectures on
such subjects as Bible, Halachah, Hagadah, or the
Zohar, so that none left the Synagogue to go to business
before he gave some time to study. The fifth day in the
week (Thursday) seems to have been a special day of
devotion, when they would all gather in one big syna-
gogue to pray for Israel and to bless those who sent
support for the poor of the Holy Land. The service
would conclude with a sermon by Galanti and other
men distinguished for their humility and saintliness. It
is not impossible that this synagogue was the one built
by a wealthy man in Constantinople in memory of Loria,
and richly endowed by him. '^7 None, however, was
sufficiently great to make his authority felt in such
a way as to give him any real prominence over his
contemporaries. Even Vital's authority does not seem
to have been quite undisputed. He afterwards left
SAFED 285
Safed and died in Damascus in 1620, and the sons of
Caro and Trani emigrated to Turkey. The Chmielnicki
persecutions of the middle of the seventeenth century,
which must have taxed the resources of Jewry to its
utmost, probably withdrew a good deal of the support
which Safed had received till then for its Talmudical
Colleges; whilst the excesses of certain Cabbalists
about the same period, who joined pseudo-Messiah
movements, must have put a damper upon the zeal
of the mystics and the study of mysticism which was
the special glory of Safed.
Safed thus ceases to be a centre of attraction.
It decays slowly, and Jerusalem comes to its rights.
It lives on the past, profiting by the glory of Caro,
Trani, Loria, and Cordovero. Even to-day the Syna-
gogue of Caro and the Synagogue of Loria form the
main sights in Safed. But it is not any longer the
Safed of the sixteenth century.
APPENDIXES
APPENDIXES
The following two Appendixes bear upon the subject of the
ninth essay. *' Safed in the Sixteenth Century "—A City of Legists
and Mystics." In Appendix A are pubHshed, for the first time,
from manuscripts, four lists of moral precepts and usages ob-
served by the saints of Safed, in some cases by the community
at large. They throw important light upon the spiritual history
of the community in that century, and they are often referred
to in the Notes on this essay. These four lists were composed
by R. Moses Cordovero, Abraham Galanti, Abraham Halevi,
and Moses of nx^l^^ (Lieria?). The first three are famous
names, and occur often in our text, whilst Moses of nX"'T'7 is
known only by a reference to him in the Responsa of R.
Abraham de Boton, in connexion with a money litigation, where
he is called Chacham. Three of these lists are reproduced
from a manuscript in the Library of the Jewish Theological
Seminary of America, whilst the first was copied from MS. C 812,
X 893, bearing the title Likkute Shosha7iini, in Columbia Univer-
sity Library, containing only this list, but in a better text. On
the other hand, there are missing in it the last five precepts,
which were supplied from the Seminary MSS. They are indi-
cated by square brackets.
Appendix B forms an attempt to furnish a list of the names
of the sages and the saints of Safed in the sixteenth century,
not all of whom could well be brought into the text. It is im-
possible to adhere rigidly to the date, and there occur names of
persons who come to the front in the first two or three decades
of the seventeenth century, after the disappearance of Caro,
Trani, Cordovero, and Loria. But as they were more or less
connected, either as disciples or followers of the authorities just
mentioned, and certainly had already reached the meridian of
life when the seventeenth century broke upon them, we have a
right to include them in this list. Others, again, came to Safed
only in their old age, or they may have stayed there only for a
time, but they all contributed to the fame of Safed in that cen-
tury. The sources used are the regular biographic and biblio-
290 APPENDIXES
graphic authorities, such as Conforte, Sambari, Azulai, Michael,
to which general references are given. In other cases, references
are given to Responsa and to the Diary of Vital, and to the
book D''?13^3. In questionable cases, the doubt is indicated by
a query. Of course, this list is to be considered as a mere
attempt. It is impossible to obtain certainty in all cases, for
there occur in the Responsa names connected with Safed for
which there is really no authority that they ever lived in this
place, their opinions having been obtained through correspond-
ence with the Safed Rabbis.
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Occurring in Appendix B (pp. 302-6) and in the Notes on
" Safed in the Sixteenth Century " (pp. 317-28)
An. Jb. Letter by an anonymous traveller, published in the
Jahrbuchfurdie Gesch. des Juden., vol. 3. Leipzig, 1863.
Az. or Azulai. Chayim Joseph David Azulai.— D^'pnJH DC'.
AzKARi. Eliezer b. Moses Azkari.— D'"nn "12D (ed. Warsaw,
1879).
Bertinoro. Letters of travel by R. Obadiah, of Bertinoro,
published in the ya//r(5/^<f////ir^z> Gesch. des Juden., vol.
3. Leipzig, 1863.
Calimani. R. Baruch b. Simchah Calimani. — Introduction to
the Commentary of R. Moses Alsheich to the Pentateuch
(Venice, 1601 ).
Caro I. R. Joseph Caro— Responsa.— 'pDP Dp^K.
Caro II. Responsa on D'^T^ ^:n (ed. Mantua, 1730).
Chabib. R. Levi Aben Chabib.— Responsa (Venice, 1565).
Ch.Y. D^D" m?Dn, ascribed to Nathan of Gaza; but see also
n''03n m^ by Menahem Mendel Heilperin (ed. Livorno,
1762-4).
Con. or Conforte. David Conforte.— nnnn Xllp (ed. Cassel).
Frumkin. Arye Low Frumkin. — 75<"lDt^ pN.
Ghirondi. Samuel Mordecai Ghirondi, partial author of
•psntr^ >'?n3 nn'pin.
V'3. D^'?13^in -(DD (Przemysl, 1875).
APPENDIXES 291
Kahana. David Kahana. — f]:ij pS.
Kaydanower. R. Zebi b. Aaron Samuel Kaydanower. —
Mi. Heimann Joseph Michael.— a^^nn IIS (Frankfort, 1891).
MM. Dn'J'D n^JD, by Caro (ed. Wilna, 1879).
MN. D^D'J nC:'i;D'l m:i3n IDD (Constantinople, 1720).
Pardes. Moses b. Jacob Cordoverc—D^JID"! DTID.
Rabinowitz. Saul Pinchas Rabinowitz.— n'piJ \SVirD (Warsaw,
1894).
Radbaz (usually abbreviated T'l'Tl)- David b. Solomon
Abi Zimra. — Responsa.
Same, or Sambari. "Mediaeval Jewish Chronicles " (ed. Neu-
bauer, Oxford, 1887).— Containing also extracts of the
Chronicles of Joseph b. Isaac Sambari, pp. 1 15-162.
ScHWARZ. pxn mNUn, by Joseph Schwarz (ed. A. M.
Luncz, Jerusalem, 1900).
SG. Moses ben Jacob Cordovero. pcn'^J "^QD, Venice. 1600.
Sh. J. Baruch (Jacob b. Moses Chayim).— D^':'^'")"!^ ^ni^ (con-
taining also a traveller's account of Palestine, in 1522, by
an anonymous author. Livorno, 1785)-
Shlomel. R. Solomon b. Chayim Meinsterl, better known as
Shlomel.— nj<n ^r\yL\ together with the D"C^ ^Dlp*? (Li-
vorno, 1790).
Trani. R Moses b. Joseph of Trani.
Vital. R. Chayim b. Joseph Vital.— ^SOni D^^n "\ "^ni^
(Ostrog, 1826).
292 APPENDIX A
T^**rh\>\ ]^*'rT\r\ ^'^^^^^ e^^x n2;o "^yi ie^x
rb 12 12:^^1 Dn2 ^m D^v^n Dni« ne^r niz;^
^s*5?c^ HK^np nam n-iin nm:i nnnn^o u^ njs^ ^x \s
ub fc<n^K> nD niVDni nmnn mvD mmnD pni ^1:2 n^ xn^
DJD pjy ^y iniD V'tid nyi^ in^i n"yioD Vp ^o^i nvi
piDsni "iJi IDN1 ^Dt^'J n^s Dnxn p D3^ li^in piDM oy^n
.D^n^yjn p nvi^ hjjd iDip** ibr«ssi 'iJi "12x2 itj^s: pi"iid
Dnoy Jnjn^i nvinn oy a-nyr:) inyn xn> D^iy^ 'j
.nn^n jn^n"' nmnn ^y Dnmyn ^y i^^axi nn:3
nma x^t? n^an nyj^'3 D-'^oa Dnmn "imn^ n^:^ "1
.r^^>r\\> nnm nii^'Dn n^^t^'yi n-nn
.nronni nnn mt^^ by ib^sx onx dic> by *njj noib xbt^ 't
.n"iin nmn 5<bx no^^n rr'an "im^ ^^ 'd
.m^n nmn sSn* "ip^yi bbs NC)by"i 'b^Dn -inT" \h^ '^
.mTDD HDob n*" mv xbi i^ lam yjn xb x"^
ib^as miDn p:^ bs nbp nyut^ Ditr ync:^^ i6^ 2"^
.nDX2
••DD iptr fc^^vv i6) pn-i^ nptr nmci nptr 12T' xb:^' y^
APPENDIX A 293
.minyn '•r-'jw
nt^ytj^ n» nn^^ my ^22 'nn -innn Dy |n^^i nstj^b V'd
Dna piDD irxs^' ^DL^' niD^'^T ynij^ai niyn^ ymxm niJit^Nn
.Dip biK &<^ n^n 'n ••jjnj vby nniiv nj^DL*»n
.mrnni pbsm n^btoa nnjro n^sn b^snn^ -inrn^ t"''
v-ins m nDX^K^ nD d-i bipn pron nsna '\xh n"^
.n^^m n^^D nixn nix
^D' b^tj^nn N*^i ns^n pt^'N-i Dvn hDN»b j^^jr inrb to"^
DV3 ^nbir inx dvd inv Dm u pinc'^ inr^i p"" x^i ica
.niVD miyoi n"ii aiD
ni33^ pi3^i pinn ^y pip^i p-ixn ^y nt^^ rhh ba 'd
,n^ixjn pp p^n^^^t^> vnijiiy ^y d:i
.mvrD miyD ^rh\\ in-'na ni£:n miyo v\'2.^ ^^ n"d
.nnnj ^y iiotd -idn*^ pron n^in Dmp h\r\ Dr ^^a n"3
niK^yo nnx x'-ni ^dve^ hd ^d nSoa nn^^D -inrb y'D
v^D^n rh^i nn^ci' n^ N^n ain Nnn^Dm 'h^'o
nibnpD D^NK^ nin^D yms dhixd hm^ Ni:'^^ -inrS T'd
nano n^i D^jv^^i? n3 D^jnpci' riD D^sjn hd dhi nj^3Lj> '•jq
.y-in psj'^
IKDm -iDNJK' vn^tsn ^dd^ dv !?33 ^'^-n \T\'h n"D
.pnD npnva
Dnmn vn' D^jvyi ninDn nso yDL*> nxnpn pi^:? V'd
.nn^ by
imnD^ N^' ^iNiD ^*"t^ "'sc n"iinn nxnp y1Dt^'i) r"3
,Dv D^L^^tJ* mj inN" «bi ^^r^ m: Dbtj'b nnr^b n"3
.nrEi> Dnipi n!)^3K Diip nninn^ inrb d"3
294 APPENDIX A
.pDs n^3p iiD^n nJtj'D t^ipron dv bsn pioy^ V'h
,'^y\n iti'y n^:t^' ^j:d D^Dya ^t^'b£J^ iin^nn ^3 ni^o^^ T'b
.jno nnx n^sna mnah nii)snn ^DnniyDi m^n^ n'6
nyanxa njtj'a D^oyQ nynx n^si^f-i ^&^'^EJ♦ nuynni? V'b
.nnic^D nr nn pi'-dv dki niaipn
[ .|»T ^33 Dnnnn Dy c^nipn pK^^n -yrh ]
[ .nnx 11DTD1 D^p-iD 'n pTon dd-iq mip \rh^r\ by 'ds!^ ]
[ .inD ^DD nvJEj^ro nn^ b^b baa niobb ]
[ ♦yivc> nvjc'DH ba yutj' baa mrnb ]
[ .ninsb na by nvjt^o D^pns 'a yuK^ baa yn^b ]
n"nniDD D^ii^^n ddhh n^ nn^nDDipnyin
*^^"^^ 3"mn nD!^n Diz;vn '^m ^edj^; onnnx
Dna ^m onxn Dnii< ntj'y ntJ^t? Dnann nbx
Dipo D'-i Dn^cbm D^t^01 D^t^jx pjynJD Dyn ba n"n any 'x
D''Jijnna"i nin^boa iba Dvn ba dej> D^at:'Vi Dvn 1n1^? D^Djano la^^
^D K'-'i nb\':5D |vm bnj px i:)Da by D-'t^'otj' dhd c'^i nrpboi D^^m
D''anDoi '5< p^ ^in iD^y d^^dsj^ '•d ^^^ Nvvai ijnja vn^a p:noc^
.n"a nnuD in^x
isDa piipi ni^na po-iat^oEj^ nt^yo ••tj'jx k''* n"n b"'b 'a
.n^bnn
DCJ^anji nnntj'a i^a nnjD nban baa pbani n^bto p^'^^ '^
.Dyn baa nr jhjd
niEJ'mD ^naai nvDja "Tiaa pvapno ni^n nn^ hds any 't
D^Nvi^i nbn:i nnjD pbbanoi D"aD-ina nos p-ip niabna p-iipi
APPENDIX A 295
Dpi? i^D'-^pD^ Dn^n D^onn onvipi D^jm: t^^i r\r\ya^ niv^n nic^y^
HDD i)''5? r\'t'o n^^3&5 ^y pDiaDi n^m mnc'yDi ni^nn nxDi nnDK^
nvDJ3 '•nna pvnpno Dvn mvn nnx ^yion ^in ^d^ 'n
.Di^ DV inix |''SjnDoi |''DjnnrDi Dn^s^n "I'-tJ^ pipi
511D D** nynp ny pipi n^-'b nivnn poiy nos bt:> 't ^^"'^ 'i
nic^^pn DnDisi npinn ny min h^ njin pjntoi y:^Ti tj^-nm:;^
riKvn -11DTO D^yj ^ipa DnDiJ^i Dn^^:n ^y pDiyni2^pnnDVD3^
nnj< nn^n riW ^33 n^:i30 nniyn m^sD 'hh b 'r
nniNt> py^JC5J-3 '^yy\')^T\ ni^SD -ins nr iidtd piip:^a n^^b ^3n ist'i
T\rwrh HTn nmNzi ^^ip d^d^d rh'hr\ nms ^jjd x^^t^> na^n
D1J'' K^ nn pi3?Dc:' ^DK^ DT-a n^np ti^^i it ni)''^' h"^ s\n ir nnTi ^d
sm^^ •'jnn "i"idi< n\i^Ej' '^s^s Dn^Dsn n^nn nns ni)''i'
••s-ivi^yt^^ -inx niys:^ '2 ix nns r^w d'JJ^^ niyu&j' my 'n
fjHpi f^np bD nvDJD ^nnn D^vapno ni^-'^Nn ins nij^btj' ^s^ lyiD
nvjcj^Di D^Din^i D^{<ui nn^n jmpi nS^i?n^D D^it:^'' d:^ni i^lj^ n"3n
Dnip npnn D^bniD Dyn {53 tni npnn -11s iy ^sipn nij^mi nnn
♦niyn^
D^3 nnK^D^!3npDin"2mTy^ii< ms^^ij D-'t^^v tj>"y bs 'd
bt^ pDTDi n^^N ''ja 'nb nn -noTD onoiNi nn^^ n:nn D-'ji^ni!)^
innDat:^^it:nnK^yj ny nnij^ni Drn iniNic^ ^y DnaoDi D''jj"ipi
.D-'in pii^n D"'^iJ iJwS
Dn^Di "lun pa n^^^i d^d b&J^ pn-'p Dn« bmj n"D niy '^^^
.VJS!? ^DirO iriDC^ ^DD HDHI
1BD |nip Dtn li^^ Dvn b n"3D d^nvv ars n"D Dvn n'""
296 APPENDIX A
"•np^D riDJn rhhr^ ^d prc'^ jrx onia^^n nv ^h :""
.D^nvs3"i ninati'm nn^c'ai -n::'y nn^ntj^
.D-n^D^ni D^t^Ji D'-tJ^ix pjyriD n"-i 3-iy T'-
.^20^5 1QD pn
vmxpp^nDi ins cq3 pjip d^^ji 'j my i?3 nc^vD ^t;^JN i"^
rwi'o pK'iyi n^iD c^ixb^p ': idd p^^'iv nt^^o 'e^'JX t"'
.n-)in
nynp Diip \^'h ^^^ rhhi^ Dra nninS D^ny ynp^ n"d
.niin^ D-'ny
hy^ nnn:) ^y nioiD jni^t^n ^y pniptr n::^^ ••e^^jk ti"' n"D
pn nimn pn ^m^< 1yvot^' "D ^:3^ ni^D^i y:;'^ ^y -inyi? y'D
.nn^nK^n^T"y dk^ np-'^Dtj^ mNDiymniK 1^bin5? i<^c> k>"3i rw'^y:^:!
DTipi im Dit^i yrt^ D^ip inDD?o loipn vt* ^il:^^ T'd
.nj<oinn nn Taynb ypip ^i\ Sy ^m^E^
'n Tin^msT^ nm^n ^y 1*1"' D^:^6 in^n nnso t^vvLTD n"D
D^nro Dn« ^tr nn Dmj pyn ^d myntri Dm:)3 inrn^ T'n
^5b "ipK^^? "13T 'n r\\>i'' ^ >d n^nni "iniDD^n nx ^n^nn Nitr^ 'n:sj^
nsj'y^ -iK^x ^i<nfe^^ Dy 'n mn nL*'x nnnn nm nps*
T'liT* DEJ'n pntrn ^jj3 nni niin^ ro Dni Dnn -ni dinh Dms
.•nryn npy "p^i^ DD^^pom t^'^p^
ij^^n^T neon V':3 "it^^yn n^^y mvD prD^^pD n^iJD "•^^n- tj*^ t"3
mxa -jniK pn^jDi m^b Nn^e^ nv-i S^d srn^n ir-'m 'n^Lj^y 'a
APPENDIX A 297
^\>t;T\ -iL"x pnpDH nD^ pya nn^ nxnn r^n^h dt^ jOTOnvn^
^hy^ .nb \xn na::' nbnpn h^> x:x^r\ 3"niSi Dn^c'n -i^:^' pnip
JVD ^3n^i 'n nn:?D3i 'n ipnm nnc' '?:Dro D^':n2 'n p-np nnci^
.n^D ^n^t^'p T'd "tjjd nnc' 'D3 D^pns T'd -nob cmpn irai
nx nnj;^ nr^xriDn po^ ^y nvni? irn^s* 'n n"3 nj ^ij^ nnyi
."i"ox .310 n'li'yi y-iD -non 'n^ iJ"i:»r
nnn^^ nr^-ion en nSs^
n^^na nnj» pSSan^:^' dv^C' ^Nn^ rrwvs ^Syn nn jroro 'x
.l"nn '^2wSi Dvn ^3 d^h^jd Dn^n"! pbsn^
(?myb) Pi^j^bnnp d^k^jh '^sxi n"n my D^:ynD r\hr\pr\ nn 'n
i?23 nnjD D^^^ariDi i^nn D^JynDt^• nniK^n^^yn mnn t^^ ':
'3 ynt^ ^3n D^^ynroti' dhd t:>n iq^^i pt^^i nip^Di nymi n^D^n m^
pN^ D^ncT TirD^^ rhhr^ ^:»nn D"'»pt^'D min ^^yn nil 'n
mnn D^t^'1y pi n^nn p-in ^y D^nm d^jjipdi nmn::' n^snyriDi
.i^K'Dn Dv nnitrn ^:^yn
'J E^^^i Dmo 'nDHD c'^ s"y n:t^'o D^i»i^ min ^byn mi 'n
.'131
B^"y niyi .Dnbi'* ^^p^ D^^niD d*d^> ^ni^ nmn ^^yn n^D '1
.nn^^M ^3 D^:3^ d^k>31^i ^inb e^np p3 ^n3nb p^3iD
D"'b3prDi D-J3b D^:^'13b D^ niy3r3 tJ'"y d^nvv nin3 nr33 'T
"1IDTDI nn n3b proTSi D^^i< ^J3 'rh i3n nioTt: p"iipi n3t:' ^:2
.nS3 •'S13 'DIXI n35^n dv^ -i^t:^
"•Di n"-i3 pi DnDtni D^^i^nni DmiK^o nniyo 'J ^33 'n
298 APPENDIX A
EJ'M |Tsn D'KiD yavN ann HwS^Q a^n^jo nj^non nn 'd
.mynvt^ 'n nn pn^j»
THT.-i^ nnnn ^yi ivni -ivn ^d ^y D^D^intr dhd e^^^ '^
.Dv iiynD iD^jDni?! nnt^'n ^y
D"iip Tsi^i D''»yQ '2 nint^n pbin p!:^Di{< jnn C'^ n'""
.nniCTi ^D^ 'U1 nosn
^y pDDH Vy^'^. "invi D^JC' iT'D Dms D-'n^jron p ^sn
.n^n^D nD3 n^^nnoi nnny nD3 nc^y^K^
nDtJ>^i ^pnbi "mt^^ nat^^N^'i^D ^d CD^Di^int;^ man c^^ y^
.nnon ^j^d noa nn^^noi
h'h\ "ipnn Tii^ ny niyntj' ^^i? nnoi^ min ^^yi ^d V'd
,nin^i)DS Njynn ^^b D^Dp nyn pcni p icai 3"j N:iymn
.D\T m^co n^sn Diip npn^* duij n"n ^aa V'^
nban D^JDpi d^D'j no^^ njnon D^naiD d^d^d l*'^ t"''
.manni
/Ej>{^ ^^^ ^3 DHDib min ""^yn n?03 n"-"
^D p-" pn1t^'1 "it;o pbaij^ pst:* Dn^on min ^^ya nroa t:'"*
.jn^m^iy ^yi p-inn ^y p^axniDC^ ^\i^r\
n-'^nE^V nb^3Nn na:^^ nnp n"-i n^ti'iyt:' Dn5< ^jn hdd 'a
.pi^T -iJi iny jni^ti' nnc' '•nvid pi na^Di
Dnnni noj^a 1^^2x1 i^Sa y^^im pxc> dik ^jn noa N"a
.niQipn nymfc<2
TDD Dni{< D^N^tj>Di Dn^na ^inn moin-'i D^Din^ n^bnjn y'D
.Dp-iai)
^pB'D naxbon ppDiyi n"r) D^vapro jd^j n""i3 T'a
APPENDIX A 299
rii^3 niu \i^i '21 "1:11 K-1^1 ^y ^j^oc'n Dvn ^n^i 's jnipi
/131 x^Ej'j pip p"iip Dv ^D3i |E^nj p-ipi nc»D
Dy^m Dvn ^ pn-'Dn^m nmm p[?Dni n^^D n^jn^ 'n
nj^i< p^sm n^i^D nnps:^ n[?2n b^ ^d Dn^ix n^ nnTiD D-'j'ipnn 'J
pbani n^^L^n ni^ann nvnai nnn}< finn ^ndd:^ •'JSD nbnpriD
D^iyn n:i^iy DnN*j» niv^m n-nnnc> 'i n^^y n^n^i mc^n 1^ p«
^53 pbsn n^jD ij^N'^ ^Di Nan D^iy^ ni2^D 1^ pt^iy nrn
'n'' ibon '•jsi'o NV^ "'DTiot^' n^nj nnr moyb nair iJ^i< Dvn
DntJ' 'NJEJ* ^Nit^^"* ^y n^cn D^ntDpoi D^sin Dnii> D^yiK^K^
Dms ntj^ip ^?^^ Dvn ^ani nbsn ^31 p^ann n^jtDm D^n ^Jism
by r\^^':hr\ D^yn ^nj nmy nxi inr c^nn dh^d^d -nDsb 'njs^>
.s^xi bt^' pb^an i^N v-iwxiv npbn byi 1^ bt^' p'^sn ibx in^
"11DT inn Dnip nnx nyjj' nincb dv niy^D nn:r D^JiDnb 'n
pl^Dinbin^*E:>iN3on"5< i<bis* noxj xbnnK'nDv nnc^^n nv n«
n"3^n D"vni 'j:^ vj2 nx imp fi^did i:\s dj^i t^^np by bino
inDK^ njEi> ^J3 nipi:n nx-in dn* b""i d^dd n"D D"^r3D ^"jk^
fl^Dinb 5<bs 'h pi< nair '^bbnD on^nux^ ynn py xbn D^c^nn
Dr riN 'n "in^n p by 'xjt^^ pjo inx^v^i ino^jDn K^npbybmn
I J jj'-ir Dv niyno id^j3?^ dxi nx xbx "lox: xb r\i^r\ dv nas^'n
'^abi Djno c;ninbbno dni p '?Dn niDtpiDsbt^^ n"-i '^sbi \^^
.nnD 13 Dv nx mar
bK> unjD xinr 'x oyto D"''ni mnati^n D^jnb nnja ^ubb 'J
'n ni<b?ob n»ni n^jnb ^itoynoi D^jnb t^^nib^ ^xybx n"n nnin^ 'n
p ^y inn nix nn D^nS '^t^^nib t2"n ninnc^n niJDE^'jntj' '3
pc>iy nt^ob ptriyti' no::' bxnc^^ Dnnt^>wS* 'j .'n innD omxn
nj^DK^n pi nin^ xinc> pnn tJ'nbriD 'n bmn nbyob i^jjd
inj^::K^i M n^t^^z nixji ^jx nnint:^ nmp D^»t^ K^nbx 'xjk^
300 APPENDIX A
Dy p"Dn r.y i"^ nbiy mnisn Dy p"Dn nntj' n6 Tttim ^'^ot^
( .D^jai) ^njn vn-* ny ban n^nnn -yo^ nr byi n""" 3": nbiy n^jon
"nnni hvdjd ^nnn rvnpriDi n"-i my ^nDL^'D p^nyc^ 'n
n"mji>n djdd "idni pm nycni nbann Dvn am mii'-nD
tj'npDn n^a pin i>y nuD ^i^ by ison n^nn ^n^i ptj^ n^:yn
rr-iynn Dytoa Dnnx py ns^ DJiy ns ninn^ 'N:tr pyi ni:)iy byi
'n iDin pL'^bo ii^^n n« K'unvi \m iDinn nn s^^ninb 'x
inn ubn nnpD v^Dy-i pip nnpD D^^p cnpjon n^nt^' |^dd
DixEJ' |Dnsi> ': nn?oii Dnnbn ti'DO D3d ddd nnp^ ••3 dix
Mil nnic'n ^t^"lyl njynn NinD> pni pin |ro p^nin insD i<t:in
['DJ i"D] D^Dni Nint^ 12b^« ^ii^n* msD pui inr Dinno
D11 nbnn Dinnro Nin inTTiJoi dtidd xin yt^>1n .D^-^bx
,pii D-'Joni Ninsj'
nm niDC'Di nicj^'o ban '■•:^in^' ntryD ^::'j&<i on^on c^'' M
.DJipb D^nc^ Di5< ^:i3i nii-'nyn icni n3iL*'n ^rjyi ny^ani pc'ua
by rpnb D^nnn ba by D^nbintr d^c::' \si^ din* ^jn t^'^ '\
npTi'n D^an ib imi< D^jniJ ^^y N^n dxi mbiDS on xroc^nnTOn
i^»ipD -"b ^.c^'yi '^2 \y\ 131 n"^bi ^"b« '»^:a nnro ^n nnrnn nyos
^nabnt^'v sin bsDDSi' ^sb DD^na ^n:nKi ^"ic» n"bi n"jp n"nTD
.bi^i'^J xin nnron n-'jc invnm pnn n^^Dn
DyDi psn tj'xiD yn^*x nnii in^q n^n^jo nnro ir<^ 'T
nion p3 n^vnn pn idj xin mbn mvon nN?3c> '•ab it mvD
'^Di mn^ i^inc' iTD^ v^nm D";t3^ Dn^j^n bn inn ^iin^ sin:^
^D bn iiyi nbiS3 Nint^' u mnn cnis^n dc'c> ^nn^b "3 'iin^
1nDt^'J by pnbic nna nojn n^?^1D mnn nx^s n-'jo irxEJ*
nosi c»^ D^bn:i D^rDyni mis n"i n'^'nt^'n t^'^bi d"d''::'ni n"t5Q
nivrDi nnvn nmi nx^DD^n^Jo nt^^y» ^k^jn^i on^on bnx Dnibii)
iy ibiJ5i> Dvn nb^bii Dvn i»y i^ron x^nc:* nivD isco nrx it
"Jin i"r D^E^n dk mn*' u^n '^sij .icy nabin iniD3i iniD dv
APPENDIX A 301
( .Tin'' nn n
DytDi "nsj'n nn nyc^i nnyn nys^ n^3^ sb£i> Dnnnt:^ 'n
^b^? nnyK^Ej^ n^y ,r\^^ nb^c^ 13J E^^nb^ xbti' totrsn "•sb "it niv»
n^niD-iniym t^-iab Saix x^i D2 '^:^np nnyt^ o Dn^nt^^nb nniDx
tj'nS^ N^ inn nt^'^5 ••is^'y xVinn nt^xn ^jb:inMnDC': nK^v-nK^
.nr iN^ ^'y mniyn ntj^s Piin h'h^r\^^ r\^^ rh'o^ "i3J
^i)^^n^L^' ny^D DnnD d^n* n^^^yo ^2^'jni on^on ncDt^^ 'to
^^nnn^ [nys^jo^'] 'n* nmn DytDi ^nL^'b iri:>y id^^d^^ ny b^ann^
DipDn ni^annc^ '2 .nayn Dy im^ titr^ ^ixn r^^ l^cn ny nm^
nnvon 'n nr^nix 2-ip^ji> nnx ir^jy n^ by t?in pip '^di pnp
n*on-in nnyoi nnpoK^ 'jn .j^dd 'n bx pip inn nnx bwS nnx
Dy pn mo i^m D^p^i<n Nin 'n inn D^nnnn Dy pnni pnn Dy
nt^'yD nan nt^'npa ^n^d dd^jdd bin nm "lanoni D^onnn mo
jini ntj'npa dj:}^ nvntj^ Ssdd nr nvron nx 1^1 u 'kjej^ n"yno
.binn p3i £^>npn pa bnanbi pt^bn bmn iniN pm iniN
D^nan by dim Dnip niyt:> 'n t^'"y D^sbint:^ D^n^on j:»^j^> '■•
D^-'pDn hy:^ t\'^^ m^Dt;; by din ^:a Tnrnb mxuDn byi
y'nn non n^n 'd^:i n"2tj^ inn nivon b D^-'p ib^xa tcl^ riTot^
y'nn by "iniycj' pjt:i pnsi D^ot:' n"-i3e:> D'pbx ^v\^ i"s nx^"'
nsj'y nivD ^nivo ^nnini ^nivD yiot^'b Dnji<r3 njx ny 'njc> nivD
.na byns^ n-imi iv^yi^ nnin ^nnin nc^yn sbi
302 APPENDIX B
APPENDIX B
(For List of Abbreviations see pp. 290-1.)
Aaron b. Eleazar (the Blind). Mi., p. 147.
Abraham ^DD"n5< (^tD^t^1"^t^). SeeManassehb. \sr2ieV s Nishmath
Chayini, III : 10 ; Caro I, 124.
Abraham de Boton. Con. 48 a.
Abraham Gabriel. Con.; Mi.;7"i, 88b.
Abraham Galanti. Con.; Samb.; Az.
Abraham b. Gedaliah b. Asher. Con.; Samb.; Az.; Mi.
Abraham Halevi D^DIin. Con.; Az.; Mi. (p. 61. See references,
but confused there with Abraham Halevi the Elder. Cf.
Frumkin, 72).
Abraham b. Isaac Laniado. Mi., no. 145.
Abraham b. Isaac Zahalon. Mi.
Abraham b. Jacob Berab. Con.
Abraham Lachmi. See Manasseh b. Israel's Nishmath Chayim,
III: 10.
Abraham Shalom (the Elder). Con. (see especially 33 b );
Samb.; Mi.
Abraham Shalom (the Younger). Con.; Mi. (p. 122).
Abraham b. Solomon p^y. See Preface to Zechariah b.
Saruk's Commentary on Esther.
Benjamin Halevi. Con. (p. 49 b.) (?); Samb.; Mi. (pp.
280-281).
Chayim b. Isaac "innn. Con.; Samb.; Az.; Mi.
Chayim Vital. See text.
Chiya Rofe (the physician). Con.; Samb.; Az.; Mi.
David Amarillo. See Solomon Adeni, Introduction to his
Commentary Hd'pC^ riDX^D-
David de tJ'^ll^C'Xp. Con. 48 a. See Notes.
David Cohen. Vital, 14b.
David Habillo. Con.; Samb.; Az.; Mi.
David Navarro. Con.; Samb.
David b. Zechariah p^lV See Mi., nos. 718 and 813. See
also Frumkin, 58.
David Abi Zimra. Con.; Samb.; Az.; Mi.
Eliezer Azkari. Con.; Samb.; A/.; Mi.
APPENDIX B 303
Eliezer Ginzburg, son-in-law of N"?0-i. See David Grunhut,
^Xn niD, title page.
Eleazar b. Isaac i^ms. Con.'; Az.; Mi.
Eleazar B. YoCHAi. Con.; Samb.; Az.; Mi.
Elijah Falcon. Con.; Samb.; particularly p. 152; Az., and
^. n. Moses Alsheich ; Mi. See Manasseh b. Israel's
Nishmath Chayini, III : 10.
Elijah DE ViDAS. Con.; Samb.; Az.; Mi. See also text.
Elisha Gallico. Con.; Samb.; Az.; Mi. See also Zunz, In-
troduction to De Rossi, Meor E7iayim.
Gedaliah Alkabez. See Az. Cf. Steinschneider, Catalogue,
col. 1002.
Gedaliah Cordovero. Con.; Mi.
Gedaliah Halevi. Con. 48 a; identical with Vital's brother-
in-law; see Vital, 3 a, and ^":i, 87 b.
Isaac Alfandari. Con. 46 b.
Isaac i<mK. Con., especially p. 41 a.
Isaac de Boton. Con. 48 a.
Isaac Cohen. Vital, 20 a, 23 b ; cf . Con. 41 a.
Isaac Gerson. Con.
Isaac Krispin. Samb. 152 (?).
Isaac Loria. See text.
Isaac b. Menahem 1DD2. See Neubauer, Cat., no. 411.
Isaac Misod. Con. 36 a. Perhaps identical with Isaac b.
David, called "Misod," mentioned by Trani, I, 32.
Isaac irSi^D. See Az.; Abraham b. Asher and references;
Con. (?).
IsHMAEL Halevi Ashkenazi. Vital, 14 b.
Israel Coriel. Con.; Samb.; Az.
Israel Saruk. Con. 46b ; Az., and sub Solomon Loria.
Issachar Sasson. Con.; Samb.
Jacob Abulafiah. Samb.; Az. MN 7 b and 12a. See, how-
ever, Modena, Ari Noham, 19 b.
Jacob on C>^X, etc. Samb. 151 (?).
Jacob C]-)^'?^^ or ]>nD^X or Dio'pj?. Vital, 14 b; Samb.
Jacob Berab. See text.
Jacob Berab (b. Abraham) (the Younger). Con.; Samb. 162.
Jacob b. Chayim. Pref. to rac^ nX2.
304 APPENDIX B
Jacob Falcon. Con.
Jacob ^'p^l^ Perhaps a corruption of n^J ^13. See Samb. ; Vital,
25 a, 151, and Azkari, 95.
Jacob Sasson. Con. 48 a.
Jacob Zemach. Con.; Az.
Jedidiah Galanti. Con.; Mi.
Jehiel Ginzburg. See Jinvyi nHD^^O Jin^in, p. 187.
Jehudah b. Uri (of Heidelberg). See Caro II, 62 c.
Jeremiah of Candia. Con. 48 b.
Jonathan Galanti. Con. 48 a.
Jonathan Sagis. Con. 48 a; Vital, 23 b; V'J, 88 a.
Joseph Arzin. Vital, 23 b; h"^, 81 a„ Cf. n^ ]*DXD, by R.
Moses Almosnino, 18 b.
Joseph Ashkenazi. Con.; Samb.; Az. Cf Kaufmann, Monats-
schrift, vol. 42, p. 38 seq., and Bloch, vol. 47, p. 153.
Joseph Barzillai. Mi.
Joseph pnnS"'. Con. 48 a.
Joseph of nxn^'? (Lieria). Az.; Samb.
Joseph Sagis. Con.; Samb.; Az. (?).
Joseph Sajjah. Con.; Az.
Joseph Saragossi. Samb.; Az.
Joseph Skandrani. Con. 30b; Az.; Mi., no. 1042.
Joseph b. Tabul. Con. 40 b and 48 a ; Vital, 23 b. Probably
identical with Joseph Maarabi.
Joseph Tibbon. Con. 41 a.
Joseph Vital. Samb.; Az.
Joshua b. Nun, Con. ; Az.
JuDAH |i;*L^D. Vital, 23 b; Con. 40b; ^"J, 88a.
Lapiduth. Az. See Vital, i a.
Levi b. Chabib. Con. ; Samb. ; Az. ; Mi. See also Frumkin, 30 a.
INIenahem b. Abraham Galanti. Kaydanower, ch. 15.
Menahem ha-Babli. See Caro II, 35 b (?).
Menahem Gallico. Ghirondi, 252.
MisoD AzuLAi. Con. Perhaps identical with Misod Maarabi.
See Shlomel, 34 b, and Con. 40 b.
MoRDECAi ha-Cohen (author of a commentary on the Bible).
Con.; Az.
MoRDECAi Dato. Con. 42 b; Landshut, mui^n mcr, s. n.
APPENDIX B
305
Moses Alkabez. Con.; Ghirondi, 242.
Moses Alsheich. See text.
Moses Baruch. Con.; Az. See also Caro II, 17a.
Moses Basula. Con. ; Ghirondi, 250. Cf. also Mortara, p. 7.
Moses Cordovero. See text,
Moses Galanti. Con.; Samb.; Az.
Moses Halevi "pino. Con.; Samb.
Moses b. Israel Nagara. Con.; Samb.; Az.
Moses Jonah. Con, 41 a ; V':!, 89 a.
Moses b. Joseph Trani. See text.
Moses of nS''"l''S (Lieria), Boton, ni Ont^, no. 184.
Moses b. MachiRo Con.; Az.
Moses Mintz. V'J, 88b ; ^^ ha-Chayim, 6a. Cf. Mi., no. 531.
Moses Nigrin. Con.; Az.; cf. also Ghirondi, 226.
Moses Onkeneyra. Az. See Caro I, 124, spelled somewhat
variously.
Moses of Rome. See i;"j m;t^.
Moses Saadya. Con.; Samb, See also Caro II, 17a, Cf.
Vital, 12 b, 15 b.
Pharez Colobi, See text,
Sabbatai Manasseh, Samb.; cf Caro I, 124, and ^'"^,,9^ a.
Samuel Biagl See Manasseh b. Israel's Nishmath Chayini.
Samuel Gallico, Con.; Az.
Samuel b. Shem Tob Atiya. Con.; Samb. See Frumkin, 51.
Samuel DE UsEDA, Con.; Samb.; Az.
Samuel Verga. Con.; Samb.; Az.
Shem Tob Atiya, Con.; Az.
Simon Ashkenazi, See Peri Ez Chayim.
Solomon J5<3D!15<. Con.; Samb.; Az. See also Jewish Quar-
terly Review, IX, p, 269,
Solomon Adeni. See his Introduction to his Commentary ^"o
to the Mishnah (Wilna, 1887). For this reference I am
obliged to Dr. L. Ginzberg.
Solomon Alkabez. See text,
Solomon Cohen. Con. 48 a.
Solomon Sagis. Con.; Az.
Solomon V^''"l''D. Con.; Samb.; Az. Cf Frumkin, 44.
Solomon b, Yakar. Chabib, Responsa, 322 a.
3o6 APPENDIX B
SuLAiMAN B. x:nit<. Con.; variously spelled. See especially
p. 42a, and Cassel's note ; Samb.; Az. D i, identical with
the writer of the same name known by his notes to the
Siphre and the Mechilta. Cf. Pardo's Preface to his
commentary to the Siphre.
ToBiAH Halevi. Con.; Samb.; Az.; Mi.
YoMTOB Zahalon. Coh.; Az.
Zechariah b. Solomon ^^E*>di;T (father-in-law of Caro).
Differently spelled by various authors. Samb.; Az.; Mi.
(P- 364)- Cf also Frumkin, 59^
NOTES
NOTES
A HOARD OF HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS
I
^ Published in The Times, London, August 3, 1897, and in The
Sunday School Times, Philadelphia, about the same date.
A HOARD OF HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS
II
1^ Most of the contents of this article, written when the exami-
nation of the Genizah had been proceeding for several months,
were published in The Jewish Chronicle, London, October 15'
1897, and April i, 1898.
^ See above, page 9 seq.
^ See below, page 41 seq.
THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE
* Given as Inaugural Lecture on my appointment as Professor
of Hebrew in University College, London, January 26, 1899.
^ See Barth, Etymologische Stiidieji, p. 14 seq.
' Berachoth, 61 a.
^ * Several more editions, embodying also fragments of Ben
Sira that have come to light since the article was written, have
been added. It should be noted that doubts luere also ex-
pressed since then against the authenticity of these fragments,
but those who raised these doubts were, with the exception
of two or three students, hardly justified to speak about the
matter. One of them even confessed that he did not study the
question. His objections were probably on general principles
to object to everything, whilst the doubts which came from the
two or three serious students were refuted in ever so many bro-
chures and articles in learned papers. The consensus of the
great majority of scholars in America, England, France, Ger-
many, and even Russia, who did study the question thoroughly
and most carefully examined all the evidence /'ra and cojitra, is
in favour of the authenticity of these discovered fragments.
3IO NOTES pp. 54-79
5 See "The Wisdom of Ben Sira," edited by S.Schechter and
C. Taylor (Cambridge, England), 1899. See especially Intro-
duction, pp. 7 to 38, where the arguments advanced in these last
pages are given more fully.
A GLIMPSE OF THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE JEWS IN
THE AGE OF JESUS THE SON OF SIRACH
^ Lecture delivered at the Jewish Theological Seminary of
America, in the series of Public Lectures, Academic Year
I 904- I 905.
^ See above, p. 41 seq.
3 See above, p. 47.
*See Be7i Sira, original Hebrew, 51 : 23.
^ See Mishnah Aboth, IV, 13, and Aboth d. Rabbi Nathan, I, 31.
^See 2 Maccabees, IV, 14.
■^ See 2 Maccabees, VI, 19, and i Maccabees, I, 62, 63, and II. 42.
^See Bechoroth, 29 a, o{ Derech Erez Ziita IV, of which the
text is a paraphrase.
^ See Dr. Edersheim's Introduction to his commentary on
Ecclesiasticus in the Speaker's Bible.
^"So Revised Version. Cf. also Ryssel in Kautzsch's Apo-
crypha, on this verse. The sense probably is that they pray for
the prosperity of their work.
" See also Syr. Version.
" See Kiddushin, 82 a.
^^ See original Hebrew, ed. Schechter-Taylor, and notes.
^* See Baba Kama, 1 10 b.
'^ Pesachim, 57 a.
^^See Bechoroth, 26 b. It should, however, be remarked that
according to Siphre, 145 a (ed. Friedmann), the majority of the
priests were well off. I am inclined to think that this latter
statement must be confined to certain places and certain ages.
'^ See Bechoroth, 45 a.
^^ See Baba Kama, 85 b.
^^ The originality of Ben Sira can be maintained only by
assuming, with Botticher, Dillmann, and others, that the "T^BT,
the "rich" of Isaiah (53 : 9), is a corruption ofn "by, "evil-
doers," or pt^*V> "oppressor." In this case Ben Sira would
be the first to identify the -i^::>i; with the rti^l.
pp. 8I-I03 NOTES 311
20 See Sukkah, 49 b.
21 See Aboth d. Rabbi Nathan, ed. Schechter, II, 15, text and
notes.
^^ See Edersheim's commentary to these passages.
22 See Sanhcdrin, 23 a.
2* See Shabbath, 11 a.
^^ See Tosefta Berachoth, 6, and references and the commen-
taries to it. Cf. Aruc/i, s. v. 1^*0, and Friedmann in his work on
the Agadah of Passover, p. 20 seq.
^•^ See Tosefta Berachoth^ ed. Zuckermandel, ch. 4,
" Tosefta Berachoth, ch. 7.
^**See Sirach, XXXII, 11, original Hebrew, and Ta'anith, 5 b.
^^ See Bet'achoth, 63 b.
^'^ See Leopold Low, Gesammelte Schriften, III, 407.
^^ Nazir, 4 b.
^'^ See Satihedrin, 38 a.
3=* See ^<5^//z d. Rabbi Nathan, II, 31.
^*See Ta'anith, I, 23 a.
35 See Aboth, I, 6, and Aboth d. Rabbi Nathan, I, 8.
3^ See Siphre, 93 b, and references given there.
^^See Yebamoth, 61 a, and Graetz, Geschichte, 111:444.
•''** There is strong doubt about this verse. See Ryssel's com-
mentary on Die Spri'iche Jesiis, etc., 26 ; iS.
^^See Kiddushin, 30 b.
^'^See Kethuboth, 59. See also Tosefta Kethiiboth, 5. Cf.
Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilchoth Ishuth, 21, and com-
mentaries.
*^ See Midrash Rabbah to Lamentations, I, 4.
"•'^ Jerusalem Talmud, Peah, III, 9, Nedarim, 40, and Tractate
Semachoth Zutarti, ed. Horowitz, and reference given there.
*^ See Nedarim, 40 a.
ON THE STUDY OF THE TALMUD
^ Paper read before the Hebrew class at University College,
London, October 19, 1899.
^ In connexion with this work I should like to call the atten-
tion of students to Das letzte Passahmahl Christi ujid der Tag
seines Todes, by Professor D. Chwolson (St. Petersburg, 1892),
a work which, for the depth of its Rabbinic learning and the
312 NOTES pp. 106-122
critical acumen displayed in it, has hardly its equal. It is, in-
deed, so far as I know, the first attempt to treat what one may
call the Halachic part of the New Testament with the thorough-
ness and devotion usually bestowed only on doctrinal points.
'Cf. rn^iD, p. 45, nniM.
* Lev. Rabbah^ I.
^ See especially the Midrash Lekach Tob, ad loc.
^ Cant. Rabbah, ad loc.
^ Ibid.
'^ Pesikta Rabbathi (ed. Friedmann), p. 36, text and notes.
'^ Shibbole Halleket, 145 a.
^"B. T. Baba ]\[ezia, 45 a, and parallel passages.
" B. T. Sanhcdrin, 39 a.
'-Jer. T. Sukkah, 55 a.
'^^ MishnahYoma, VIII, 9.
^* Cant. Rabbah, I, and parallel passages.
'5 Ca7it. Rabbah, ibid.
^•^ B. T. Satihedrin, 95 a.
*^ B, T. Chagigah, 15 a, and parallel passages.
^^B. T. Berachoth, 3 a.
^^See L5w, Gesammelte Schriften, II, p. 58, note i. A good
essay on the subject is still a desideratum.
2° Num. Rabbah, XIV, and parallel passages.
""^Lev. Rabbah, XXI.
^^Jer. T. Sotah, 22 a.
23 Chapters of R. Eliezcr, XLIV, but see also B. T. Yoma, 22 b.
2* See Perek R. Meir.
2^B. T. Chagigah, 15 a.
^^ Pesikta (ed. Buber), p. 162 seq.
" B. T. Baba Mezia, 59 a.
2'^ Torath Kohanim (ed. Weiss), 91 b.
2^ See Pesikta Rabbathi, 124 b.
3" B. T. Sanhedrin, 34 a.
^^ Mechitta, 3 a, 6 a, etc.
^2 Tanchuma, niDD-
^■' Yalkut, I, ^ 766. See Dr. Taylor's Sayings of the Jewish
Fathers, 2d ed., p. 160.
^*See Jewish Quarterly Review, VI, pp. 419 and 634, for
references.
pp. 122-141 NOTES 313
3^ Yalkiit, ibid.; Genesis Rabbah, I, and Cajii. Rabbah, VIIL
3«C«;z/. Rabbah, VII; 7V«;/z. Rabbah, II ; 6"/>/i'r^ (ed. Fried-
mann), 143 a ; and Rashi's Commentary to Cant. V, 9.
'"B. T. Chagigah, II, and the Jerusalem Talmud, ibid.
THE MEMOIRS OF A JEWESS OF THE SEVEN-
TEENTH CENTURY
^ Die Memoiren der Gluckel von Hameln, 1645-ijig, her-
ausgegeben von Professor Dr. David Kaufmann (Frankfort, J.
Kauffmann, 1896).
' Diary, p. 24,
^ Ibid. pp. 24 and 25.
^ Ibid. pp. 26 and 27.
^ Ibid. pp. 36 and 37.
® Ibid. p. 57 seq.
^ Ibid. p. 58.
^ Ibid. pp. 59 and 60.
^Ibid. pp. 61, 62, 63, and 66,
^0 Ibid. pp. 66 and 67.
^1 Ibid pp. 68 and 69.
^2 Ibid p. 125.
'^ Ibid. p. 74.
^* Ibid. pp. 108, III, 113, and 116.
^^ Ibid. p. 121.
^^ Ibid. p. 57.
1^ Ibid. p. 235.
^^ Ibid. p. 80 seq,
^^ Ibid. pp. 145-148.
20 Ibid, p, 24.
^Ubid. p, 34.
22 Ibid. p. 264,
23 See Monatsschrift, XXXIV, p. 145 seq.
2* See Diary, p. 26.
^^ See ibid. p. i seq,
"^^ Ibid. pp. 6 and 7,
2- Ibid, p. 8.
2^ Ibid. p. 13.
2^ Ibid. p. 125.
^"Ibid. p. 272. For similar passages, seepp, 93, 89, 121, 172, etc.
314 NOTES pp. 141-155
^' Ibid. pp. 5, 6, and 13.
^2 Ibid. p. 141.
S3 Ibid. p. 133.
3* Ibid. p. 185.
3^ Ibid. pp. 4-15.
'' Ibid. p. 2.
•" Ibid. p. 18.
3^ Ibid. pp. 17 and 82.
3" Ibid. p. 136.
^nbid. P15.
^^ Ibid. p. 125.
*2 Ibid. pp. 18 and 19.
*^Ibid. p. 277.
*^ Ibid. p. 274.
*^Ibid. p. 275.
*^ Ibid. pp. 296-303.
*^Ibid. pp. 312 and 321.
SAINTS AND SAINTLINESS
^ Delivered in the Course of Public Lectures of the Jewish
Theological Seminary of America, February 9, 1905.
^ Kethuboth, 17 a. A fair collection of references to Rabbinic
Literature regarding the expressions Chasid and Chescd is to
be found in the Scfer Chasidim, Parma, p. 240, note i.
3 Rabbi Bachye ben Bakodah, nun^H nnin, ch. 9; r)"L*\ by
Maimonides, ch. 4 and ch. 6. Cf. Schechter, Jewish Quarterly
Review, X, pp. 8-12, quotations given there in the text and notes.
*See R. Moses Chayim Luzzatto, Dn*^> nS^DD, ed. Wilna,
p. 48, something of this definition.
^ See Midrash to Psalms, 149.
^See Schultz, "Old Testament Theology," II, p. 80.
■^ See ibid.
^ Baba Kama, 30 a.
^' ^" See above, p. 9.
"See Kiizari, ed. Sluzki, p. 61 ; n"XlO, 113, on TJDCX H^Dn.
^'^ See Berachoth, 30 b and 32 b.
^•\See Sotah, 40 a; T. J. Berachoth, 4d.
" T. J. Bcrachoth, 7 d.
^^ T. J, ibid. See the end of the prayer of R. Tanchum.
pp. 155-166 NOTES 315
^•5 See Midrash to Ps., ch. 76.
^^ Berachoth, 3 b.
^^See Bachye, ?"nin, ed. Sluzki, 127 a.
"See jV^ ^iri^', a liturgical collection very popular in the
East.
^^ Abraham Liiicoln, Complete Works, vol. II, p. 661.
^^ See Kuzari, ibid.
^^ See Bezah, 16 a.
^^ Kuzari, 62 b.
^* See Pesikta Rabbat/ii, 117 b.
25 See Shabbath, 150 b, and Pesikta Rabbathi, 116K
""^SeeSkabbat/i, 12 b.
^^ See Zz/> «;?^ Conve7'sations of R. Nachman of Bi-aslaw.
^^ See Kiczari, 59 a.
^^ Yebamoth, 20 a.
^^ See his commentary to Leviticus, 19 : 2.
^^ See below, p. 216.
^^ See Mis/i;m/i Ta'anit/i, IV, 3.
^3 See HDDn ri'l^XI by R. Elijah de Vidas, especially the
chapters on Holiness and Repentance. See also below, p. 245.
'•^* See DTK nn^in, by Ezekiel Feivel ben Zeeb, containing
the life of that Rabbi.
''SeeAbot/i,Y: 4.
^•^See Litt/e Sefer Chasidim (page 13 a), by Rabbi Moses
Cohen ben Eliezer, printed in Warsaw, 1866. Cf. Guedemann,
Geschichte des Erziehimgsweseiis, etc.. Ill, p. 212.
3^ See D^pny ninilX (Konigsberg), p. 41a.
-'^r\y\T\ ^blpS, by Rabbi Mordecai of Czernobile, Lemberg,
1867, p. 6 b.
39 See Dnj3 tyii:3 of Rabbi Pinchas, of Korzek, 26 b. To be
quoted hereafter as AT. P.
*° See M. P. 27 a.
" See Baba Kama, 30 a.
*2See pK'Sn n^'Diy, Warsaw, 1884, where all the Rabbinic
references on this point will be found.
*3 Makkoth, 24 a. Cf. also Rashi's commentary.
^* J. T. Terumoth, 46 c.
*5See Ecclesiastes Rabbah, and Sefer Chasidim, 44.
3i6 NOTES pp. 167-181
*6ntynpn n;'ty, Rabbi Chayim Vital, Warsaw, 1876, p. 9 a.,
to be quoted in this article as Vital.
*" See Vital, 15 a.
'^Sqq3L F.2ih.
«See Horodetzky, Haslii/oah, XV, 167.
^''See 31. P. 21 b and 24 b.
^1 Vital, 17 a.
^2 Vital, 9 a.
53 See Aboth, IV : 4.
5* Derech Erez Ziita, 10.
55 J/ T'. 22 a.
5^ See Vital, p, 13 a, who introduces this passage with nnt^,
whilst the whole style proves it to be a Midrash. Cf. Shab-
baih, 3 r a, but it forms no exact parallel passage.
^■^Guttman, I]-) niy;'Dl njnj< "I'll, Warsaw, 1898, 7 a.
5^ Sefer Chasidim, Parma, 363.
53 jV, p. 28 a.
60 m jn jn ^/ i?^7<^<5/ ii/^/^r/t.
6^ See below, p. 216.
«'^ ylZ P. 26 a.
63 See Horodetzky, Hashiloah, XV, 170.
6* See Kethuboth, 50 a. See also commentaries.
65 Aboth, V : 10.
66 See Baba Bathra, 7 b.
67 See DnjoX '£31 pS, ed. Wilna, 1896, p. 52 a seq.
6^Guttman, ibid., p. 11 a.
63 See below, p. 277, the story of Loria and Useda.
'^ See Chayim Meir Heilman, '31 D"*:!, Berditczev, 1892, 11:3 a.
"^ See Little Sefer Chasidim, 13 a. See also below, p. 238.
'^ See Sefer Chasidim, Parma, 477 and 478.
"3 See Kaydanower, ch. 7.
'* See above, p. 157, and also below, p. 270.
'5 Ps. 16: 8, 9 seq.
■^See "l^^n p:3>» by Naphtali Bacharach, 121 c, to be quoted
hereafter as Bacharach.
7' See Bachye, /"mn, 126 b seq.
''^See Rabbi Judah Halevi, Divan, II, 91a.
73 See Zohar, ed. Krotoschin, to Num., p. 222 b. Ibid, to
pp. 181-207 NOTES 317
Deut, p. 281 a. Cf. Luzzatto, D'"ity' FiVdo, 29 a. See also
Sefer Chasidim, Parma, p. 240, note i.
80 See '3-1 n'3, I: 16 a.
FOUR EPISTLES TO THE JEWS OF ENGLAND
^ Published in The Jewish Chronicle, London, 1901.
SAFED IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
(For List of Abbreviations see pp. 290-1.)
'^ See Schwarz, p. 476 ; cf. Baedeker, Index. See also Rapo-
port, Introduction to nnnn J<"iip of Shalom Cohen (Warsaw,
1838).
2 See Caro I, i.
^ See Graetz, Geschichte d.Jtiden, 2d ed., IX : 29 seq. ; cf. also
English Translation, IV : 400 seq.
* D'Tin niJ<, ch. V; cf. Kayserling, Geschichte d. Jiiden in Por-
tugal, pp. 42 and 96.
^ See Neubauer's "Mediaeval Jewish Chronicles," I nii. Simi-
lar sentiments may also be found in R. Isaac Arama's TWO nun.
^Ed. Pietrkow (1902), p. 42.
^ See Responsa of K. Asher (Rosh), VIII : 10.
8 See Epstein, Revue des Etudes Juives, XLII, p. 18, and
Biichler, XLIV, p. 241 seq.
^ See Graetz, Geschichte, VII : 13 ; cf. Schwarz, 443. Of
course, this brief outline has to be comple+ed by the accounts
of the travels of Benjamin of Tudela, i^nd R. Pethahiah, and
similar works.
i« See Pharchi, n-i£)1 -ifliDD.
^^ See Hebrew Appendix Ozar Tob to Magazin, 1 : 027 ; see
also Graetz, Geschichte , VII : 182; cf. Hebrew periodical Jeru-
salem, edited by Luncz, II, p. 7.
^^See Graetz, Geschichte, VII : 308-9, Sind Jerusalem, II, p. 12,
^■^ See Carmoly, Itineraires, 261, from an unpublished MS.
(cod. Paris, 1070); cf. also Pharchi, 284.
^* See Jerusalem, VI, p. 337.
^^ See Graetz, Geschichte, IX : 28; cf. the Hebrew translation,
VII : 26, notes 2 and 4. The name points to a Spanish origin;
cf. also Azkari, 24 a, and Azulai, s. n. The date of Saragossi's
settling in Safed cannot be ascertained, but it must have been
during the first two decades of the sixteenth century.
3i8 NOTES pp. 207-216
^^ See Bertinoro, 209 and 222; cf. Graetz, Gesc/nchfe,Wl\ : 278,
and IX: 26, and Rabinowitz, 213 ; but see also Luncz m Jerusa-
lem, I, p. 58. It should, however, be remarked that the travellers
are not quite unanimous in their evidence as to the hostility of
the Mohammedan population toward the Jews. On the other
hand, it seems that matters with regard to taxes deteriorated
later in Safed. Cf. Caro I, i, 2ind Jerusalem, V, p. 161.
^' See Bertinoro, 222,
^^See An. Jb., 277.
^^See Shlomel, 42 d; see also Kaydanower, ch. 16, and
l^Tpn jl-inD, I, 43 a.
^°See Sh. J, 16 b; Shlomel, 43 a; see also Responsa of R.
Solomon Cohen, II, 38 ; Responsa ^"^ onS, by R. Abraham
Boton, 14S ; DD ]*D8<D by R. Moses Almosnino, 16 a.
2^ See in general about Caro, Graetz, Geschichte, IX, Index ;
Rabinowitz, Index ; Cassel, Joseph Karo und das Maggid
Mescharim (Berlin, 1888), and the authorities mentioned in Dr.
Louis Ginzberg's article "Caro," J. Encycl. See Neubauer,
Catalogue, no. 2578, containing a list of ten eulogies on the
death of Joseph Caro, and as to the unlrustwortJmiess of the
Mentor-Angel, see Rabinowitz, p. 43, note 4.
22 MM 17 a.
^^ Cassel, ibid., is almost the only writer who doubted the
authenticity of this work. His arguments are in every respect
weak, whilst there *r contemporary evidence to the contrary.
See Rabinowitz, 242 seq., Briill, Jahrbucher, IX: 150, and
Ginzberg, ibid.
2^ See MM 4 a, 13 c, 18 c, 23 d, 33 b, 49 a.
'=* See MM 3 c.
2^ See Horwitz, n"Siy (ed. Warsaw), 162a seq.
2^ See MM 22 c.
2^ See MM 11 c, 12 a, 17 a, 25 c, cf. Graetz, Geschichte, IX;
340 and 561, but see also Hebrew translation, VII : 415, and
appendix at the end by JafTe.
23 See especially xMM, pp. 25 c and 26 a about D"'"in (t]Dr'1 ?
pVXD'XD) ; cf Kahana, 77, note i.
3" See MM 18 c and 28 a.
^^ See MM 4 a, 16 a, 37 a.
'2 See MM 6 b, 34 a, 50 a.
pp. 216-226 NOTES 319
"3 See MINI 28 a.
3* See MM 35 c.
35 See MM 2 b.
s^SeeMMsod, 37 b.
3^ See MM i6a, i8d, 46 a.
3«SeeMM46d.
'^^ See MM 3 a, 14 a, 21c, 24 c, 25 d, 34 d, 44 d.
^«SeeMM3b.
*' See MM 3 d, 21 b, c.
^2 See MM 52 b.
*''SeeMM 29 d.
*♦ See MxM 3 b, 41 d.
^5 See MM 3 b.
^•^See MM 13 a, 18 c.
*' See MM 8 a, 10 b, 19 d, 23 d, 26 b.
*^ See MM 8 b, c.
*•' See MM 50 d.
5° See MM 4 d, 13 d, 14 a, 19 d, 20 d, 21a, 27 a, 29 b. About
Nicopolis in particular, ibid., 17 b.
5' See MM 25 c.
52 See MM 12 d, 13 a.
53 See MM 23 a.
5* See MM 5 a, 6 b, 8 d, 14 c, 25 b and c, 27 a, b, c, 28 d, 30 a
and b, 34 b, 42 c.
55 See MM 3d, 4b and c, 8 c, 9 c, 16 d, 19 d, 24 d, 30 c, 46 c,
50 a and d. About the possibilitj'^ of references to Alkabez,
see Rabinowitz, 245, note i. See also below, note 76.
5^ The following remarks about Molko are mostly based on
Graetz, Geschichte, IX, Index. See also English translation
IV, Index, and Vogelstein and Rieger, Geschichte der Juden
in Rom, II, Index.
5^ See Graetz, Geschichte, VIII: 253 and 562, and references
given there, to which Sambari, p. 147, maybe added. See, how-
ever, Rabinowitz, 152, note i. His doubts are fully justified, as
there is not a single real trace in all the contemporary literature
coming from Palestine pointing to Molko's staying in that
country.
5^ See references given to MM in note 55, especially the one
to MM 50 a.
320 NOTES pp. 227-233
^^ See above, note 50. See also Honvitz, H'S^y I, 134 b, and
Guttman, 2") HL'TOI njVOS "111, Warsaw, 1898, 14 b.
^^ See Azulai ^. ;/. ; cf. also Ghirondi, p. 380 seq. See also
Alkabez, Introduction to his 'I^H nn^ (Lemberg, 1863); cf.
Briill, Jahrbiicher, IX, 150, and Rabinowitz, 245. See also
Landshut, mum "11::;*, s. n.
^' See MM 50 d (headed DID;*), which is dated in the MSS. of
the MM the second Adar IV") (March, 1536), and it is clear from
the contents that Caro was still in y^i<h ]'in at that period. For
the fact that there were about one thousand families in Safed,
I have only the authority of Graetz, Geschichtc, VII : 302. See
Trani, III, 48.
^2 See Trani, I, 28; Caro II, 16 c. Alsheich, Responsa,
no. 27, and cf. Shlomel, 43 a.
^^ See Frumkin, 7.
"^See Responsa of Berab, no. 22; Bacharach, 109 c; Boton,
:31 OnS, no. 92, and Vital, 13 b. There are also in the book
'^2WV)' jlpn, by R. Issachar b. Mordecai b. Shushan, references
to DmSDH r\'\^r\'^ and D'TJDU'Xn Snp.
^^ See Trani, III, 48.
•'^ See Trani, I, 106; II, 115 and 131; Responsa by Alsheich,
no. 27 ; Responsa by R. Joseph Trani, I, 82.
^^See Sh. J., 16 b, and Bertinoro, 222.
^^See Sh. J., 16 b, and Trani, III, 46.
^''See Berab, no. 22; Trani, I, 171 ; II, 25; Radbaz, II, 638.
and Responsa of R. Moses Galanti, no. 11.
^^ See Chabib, 292 d.
"^ See R. Chayim Alsheich's Preface to the Pentateuch Com-
mentary of R. Moses Alsheich, ed. Venice, j6oi, p. 6 a. Cf. Leo
Modena's Brief e (ed. by Prof. Dr. L. Blau), Letter 147.
^2 See Berliner, periodical /<?r«.y«/<?;«, II, 68 seq. The Jewish
Theological Seminary Library possesses the most important
productions of this press.
"See Sh. J., 16 b, and Shlomel, 43 a.
^* See Responsa of R. Isaac de Latas, p. 54 ; cf. Graetz,
Geschichte, IX, end.
'■^ See above, p. 209.
^^ See MM 19 d ; cf ibid. 4 d. There can be little doubt that
the Solomon mentioned there is Solomon Alkabez.
pp. 233-237 NOTES 321
'^ About Berab and the history of the Ordination controversy,
see Graetz, Geschichte, IX: 300 seq. ; Rabinowitz, 218 seq. ;
and the references given there, especially to the HD'ODn n"iJlX
forming an appendix to the Responsa of Chabib. It should
never be forgotten that in judging Berab we are entirely depen-
dent on material coming from an opponent, who in the heat
of the controversy could with all his meekness not remain
impartial to his antagonist, and therefore large deductions
should be made from all that is said in the aforementioned
appendix of the harshness of Berab's character and of the real
motives for his action. Cf. also Frumkin, 38 seq.
'^ See Chabib, 186 d, 198 d, 302 b, and 305 c.
''^ See Chabib, 188 d. Of the four ordained, we have only the
names of Caro and Trani. Graetz, Geschichte IX : 307, note,
and Frumkin, 73, note i, advance hypotheses as to the names
of the other two. Yachya. in his n'llDpn rhwiW speaks of ten
who received the Ordination, but the meaning of the passage
is not quite certain.
^°See MM 29 a; cf. Graetz, ibid. 311. Caro seems to have
given up the matter altogether afterwards, there being not a
single reference to the Ordination question, either in his jtJTI
D£)tyrD, no. 61, or in his commentary to Maimonides' ^"^^Ts njl^D
jmnJD 'H, IV. Only in his ^DV n^n to the t33tyD ji:/n, no. 295,
there is a faint reference to it. Cf. Azulai's ^DT '3*^2 to |^n
DiDSyn, 64.
81 See MM 16 d.
8' About Trani, see Fin, Sn^DH (octavo edition), II, 586 seq.
8^ See Trani, 11, 67 ; cf. also I, 41 and 47.
«4 See Trani, III, 48.
^^See e. g. Trani, I, 156, 189, 274, 336, II, 46 and 180; cf.
Caro I, 24.
«« See \y^ ri3n«, Anon., 26 d. Cf. also Caro I, 14, where he
speaks of his lack of time, which is given to lecturing to the
Chaberim both in the morning and in the evening.
®^ See Alsheich, Opinion incorporated in Caro I, 73=
^ See Caro I, 92 ; II, 14 seq. Cf. R. Menahem Azariah of
Fano, Preface to the jIDin nSi), Cf. also Azulai ; Conforte ;
Sambari ; and Kahana, p. 80 seq.
322 iVO TES pp. 237-246
^^ See Pardes, Preface.
^ See 'l^n nnn, 39 b seq.
^^ See SG, pp. i a, 23 a and b, 24 b ; cf. Kahana, p. So, note 2.
^^ See Appendix A. 292, 293. With regard to Alkabez see
tympn nnno, 11, 25 b.
^3 See 'liy'n "iiN by Popers, 23 b. See also reference given
above, note 60.
^* See Kahana, p. 145, note 6, to which are to be added
R. Menahem Azariah of Fano and R. Sabbatai Horwitz, the
author of ^C3;'3iy.
^^ See Preface to the work mentioned in note 88. Cf. Catalog
der hebrdischen Ha7idschriften der kgl. Bibliothek tu Modena,
S. Jona, p. 10 seq. ; cf. also Kaufmann.
"^ See the authorities quoted above in note 88 ; cf. also
Bacharach, 7 a and 33 c.
'''Besides the usual authorities, such as Conforte (Index),
Sambari (Index), and Azulai, s. n., see also Calimani, and
Alsheich's Preface to his Commentary to Proverbs. Cf Leo
Modena's Briefe, Letter 98. Most of the biographers give the
relation of Loria as stated in the text. Cf. also Vital, 2 b.
Rabbi Abraham Chazkuni, however, in his book npin riJ^T
nnnn, states in the name of Alsheich that he had a direct tradi-
tion from Loria regarding a certain mystic point, whilst accord-
ing to Calimani he was one of the direct recipients of Loria's
mystical teachings. See also Steinschneider, Jerusalem, III,
no. 33 c, to a MS. HK^p min by Alsheich on the precarious con-
dition of the Jews of Safed. Unfortunately, the MS. was
inaccessible to me.
^^ See Appendix A 298 : 17.
^^ See Appendix A 297 : 4 ; 293 : 20.
'^•'See Conforte (Index), and Azulai, s. n. Cf. Bacharach
109 c ; Ch. Y. II, 4 a, and IV, 10 b ; Kaydanower, 93, and Popers,
7 b.
^°^ See Appendix A 294 : i, 2 ; 295 : 6, 8 ; 296 : 13, 14, 15 ;
297 : 2 ; 298 : 15.
^°2 See Azkari, Preface ; cf. Kahana, p. 149.
^°^ See Appendix A 297 : 3.
»o^ See HDDn iTiy«-l (ed. Cracow), 174 a.
*°*See Appendix A 294 : 36 ; cf 298 : 11, 19, 22.
pp. 246-251 NOTES 323
^"^ See Azkari, 95 a seq.
^°^ See Appendix A 293 : 25 ; cf. Baba Bathra, 10 a, n"8< ^^"ly,
no. 92, end.
^"^ See Appendix A 296 : 27 ; 298 : 16, 27.
'"^ See Appendix A 293 : 22 ; cf. 294 : 4.
"° See Shlomel and Vital, where such legends are scattered
over the books, parallels to which are to be found in Bacharach's
and Kaydanower's works in various places. Sambari, of whose
chronicles the Jewish Theological Seminary Library possesses
a good copy, is also replete with such stories. Cf also HQli'J
cn, III, 10; see Kahana, pp. 146, 148, and 150. Yachya in
his ^"TW has also any number of such stories.
"^ The legend about Joseph is incorporated in the book
WW 'Olp"? (Livorno, 1790) ; Kahana, p. 11, note 5.
"^ See Appendix A 293 : 21 ; 297 : 8.
"^ Cf. Shabbath, 12 a and b, and the references given there on
the margin to the codes of Maimonides and Caro.
"* See Appendix A 293 : 19 ; 295 : 9 ; 297 : 7, 8 ; 298 : 13, 2O0
^'^ See D'p'IV r\in*llJ< incorporated in the Hebrew book men-
tioned above in note iii, 69 b.
"''See Azulai, s. n.- Ch. Y., II, 55b.
"^ The main sources for Loria's biography are the legendary
accounts, of which two versions exist. The one is that first
published in the Sanimchucrk nrDDH ni'lIJ'lJ (see Zedner, 356),
and republished any number of times both as appendix to other
works as well as by itself under the name of '"^^n ^X\:iW, This
is the version made use of by almost all writers on the subject.
The second version, strongly related to it, but in a somewhat
more connected form as well as more precise in its dates, is the
D'D'J nj^i'DI niJIDH "liJD published first in Constantinople in 1720,
and then in Safed by R. Samuel Heller in the year 1876. See
also i">^^n "TlX by Moses Mordecai Lebtob, pp. 214-216, where
the first two or three pages of this version are reproduced.
Sambari's account of the life of Loria is omitted by Neubauer,
but the Jewish Theological Seminary Library possesses a
photograph copy of the whole work as preserved in the Paris MS.,
and a copy of the omissions relating to Safed from the Oxford MS,
This account of Sambari is almost identical with the second
version. Much material is also to be found in Bacharach, 6 a. 7 b,
324 NO TES p. 252
iobtoi4a, 33 a to 34 a, 77 a, 109 c, ii6b andc, 126 a and d, 138a,
141 c, 142a and b, 143 a, 146 b, c, and d, 152 to I54. Bacharach's
story is, as is well known, based on Shlomel. Kaydanower has
also various legends about Loria (see chs. 2, 5, 7, 9, 12, 16, 22,
31, 34, 46, 48, 77, 80, 87, and 93), which agree on the whole with
the second version. Ch. Y. also made use of this version. This
version, hardly known to any modern writer except Bloch, in
his Die Kabbalah auf ihreni Hdhepunkt tmd ihre Meister,
(Pressburg, 1905), is extant in various MSS. It is hardly
necessary to say that all these legends are greatly exaggerated,
and sometimes even written "with a purpose." Cf. Modena,
on: nj<, ch. 25 ; but on the whole, the legends fairly represent
the estimation in which Loria was held by his contemporaries.
Cf. also Calimani, Conforte Index, Sambari Index, and Azulai,
s. 7K See further, Graetz, Geschichte, IX, Index, and Kahana.
The account in the text is mostly based on the Constantinople edi-
tion, to be quoted as MN, the initials of the Maaseh Nissim
version. Cf. also Dr. Ginzberg's article "Cabala," Jewish
Encyclopedia, and the literature given there about the various
mystical systems, to which has to be added Bloch as above.
The reader who will study the question will find that we are
still in want of a good exposition of Loria's Cabbala, its strange
and bewildering terminology, and how far it is to be considered a
development of Cordovero's system. The best essay on this
subject is undoubtedly the just mentioned article by Dr. Ginz-
berg, and the book of Mieses mentioned by him ; but even in
these articles we have more of the system of Cordovero as
expounded by R. Sabbatai Horwitz than that of Loria as con-
veyed by his disciple Vital.
"^See Graetz, Geschichte, VIII: 211-213. See also ibid., p„
292, note. Cf. Frumkin, pp. 15, 58, 61-68. From the Responsa
of R. Samuel de Modena, 2, it is clear that the German-Jewish
settlements in the Turkish Empire preceded those of the
Spanish Jews. Cf. Solomon Rosanis, nan:in:i h}r\^' '12' '-^21,
p. 163 seq. Graetz's statement in Geschichie, IX: 24, that
the Jewish settlement in Jerusalem counted in the year 1522
fifteen hundred families rests on a mistaken reading of his
authority, where Graetz, by some oversight, added the word
n«D, which is not to be found in the text. The sense in the
pp. 254-261 NOTES 325
Sh. J. is plain enough, that the German community counted
fifteen famihes. Cf. Schwarz, pp. 453 and 457. See also
Epstein, J^'in nniDtyD, pp. 33 and 35. It is interesting to see
that our Loria's son was named Solomon Loria, probably after
his grandfather.
"^ See MN 2 a. Cf. Azulai, s. n., and Ch. Y., 13 b. According
to Conforte (40 b), however, Loria was the pupil of R. David
Abi Zimra and the colleague of R. Bezaleel, a view which is
supported by Vital, 9 a, p"> V'T\'^.
^2° See MN 2 a-b. The MS. has the following important
additional matter : in^ia n^nn^l 1^^ Ninn "IQDH 1^ *nn
"inv ... 1^ nnoix D^^ra^i . . . d>:k^ r^^^ n>:i*na
Dnnx U':^ "i diS^j -in^S -j^dd h^s^^m n^-ivoi munnS p
in^n^ l^in nnt^ m;^ 'Pini. Sambari has the following words :
^^^^i^T] DnvD jrivncj^ }>N>^pnn ':^ nn« -isdi mt^^n onvca
.iniK^'^2 7\^r\ "i2Dn nn ^n: -i^s^i; r\'n^ von ^"i; j<nn"^x
SeeShlomel's chronology (p. 33 d), which is somewhat different.
It is to be observed that the MS. contains no statement
as to the date of Loria's leaving Egypt, so that it may be
fixed with Graetz, Geschichte, IX : 587, not later than 1568.
This would allow ample time for his making the acquaintance
of Cordovero, who died in 1570, and becoming his regular
disciple. Kahana's arguments against Graetz (p. 150) are not
convincing. We have always to remember that the tendency
was to reduce Loria's residence in Safed to a minimum, so as to
make him entirely independent of Cordovero.
'^^See Shlomel, 33b, and Preface to the D"nn ]*;\ About
the mystical writings of R. David Abi Zimra, and those of R.
Bezaleel, see Azulai, .s. n.
^■^^ See Kahana, p. 203, note i.
^-'•^ See Sambari, 151, and Conforte, 40 b.
12* See MN i b. The MS. adds Joseph Ashkenazi.
^^^ See Fardes, 77 a.
^""^ Pardes, 26 a.
^2- Introduction to the |innn nS3, 3 b.
326 NOTES pp. 261-269
128 See MN 2 b and 3 a. More fully in the MS. 3 a-b. C^'ll^l
nynnn ^n^ Din^on nan ^nnriD D^oinn r\^^^p m:^^* vn
Kinn t^^sn cnsn nnir^n -inr i^^n^ ^n^D n^^^ ^nj^ mT2D
nni^x r'n D"Dn sn^siD d^diviq nynnn nm. see also
Preface to n'Tl^'. Cf. Graetz, Geschtchfe, IX : 589. See also
Bloch (as above, note 117), p. 35.
^-^ See above, note 120, and below, note 163, as to the date
of Loria's death.
^^° See Shlomel, 44 b, and Bacharach, 6 c. It is to be noticed that
Vital maintained a sceptical attitude toward the relations of Caro's
Maggid. See Kahana, p. 268, text and notes, and Rabinowitz,
243. It is not impossible that the distrust was mutual.
"^ See Shlomel, 34 b seq. See also Preface to n"n;*.
^32 See MN 3 a and 5 b. The author of the DOU ^ilp was a
disciple of Cordovero.
'■^=^ See MN 3 a b.
13* See MN 4 a b. The MS. 5 a has that Loria said : ^n Vr p'?
tn^: ^h D^ns . . . '•^OJD TDC^^C' no 'h mriD^ ddd *Tni< ^Djy
Vm noS n'pn nin^^ nVi^n. The question whether Loria wrote
anything, and how far these so-called traditions in his name are
to be relied upon is still a very mooted one. See Kahana, p. 202,
text and notes, and references given there. The general im-
pression one receives from the various legendary accounts
quoted above is that he declined to write anything, and that he
was reluctant to impart any mystical knowledge even by word
of mouth.
^■•^See Azulai, s. n. See MN 3 a with regard to Loria's
serving on a board.
i^'e See Modena, DH: nx, p. 66.
^^^ See such works as the mjOH "i£)D in its various editions
and arrangements (Zedner, 379), and the m^-DI T:j by R. Jacob
ben Chayim Zemach (Zedner, 299).
™ See Shabbaih, 10 a.
'^^See above, note 137, to which has to be added the n";;3
by Vital.
'*<> See Shlomel, 141 b. "<:Dn seems to mean a block of build-
ings with a synagogue attached to it. According to the Ch. Y.,
34 c, it means a College or a Yeshibah. See also Vital, i5a.
pp. 270-283 NOTES 327
^*^See Graetz, Geschichtc, XI: 587 seq., and references
given there. See also rnjiD (ed. Jessnitz, 1723), i a.
^*2See above, p. 168.
^*^ See niJlD, 2d; cf. Kahana, p. 203, note 5.
14* Seem JO, lie.
"5 See mjlD, I b.
i« See niVDl I^JJ, 45 b.
^'^ See nun 6c. Cf. uyri mn-nx, 67 a.
1*^ See Azkari, p. 48. See also the statement of the traveller
Samson Bak, Jerusalem, II, p. 145.
i« See nun, 3 a.
150 See npi]f nnSn ""'-iHn ;r"ty.
151 See nun, I a.
152 See Ch. Y., IV, 53 a and b.
153 See nun, 3 b seq., 24 b seq. Bacharach, 11 d.
15* See Shlomel, 39 c, Bacharach, 11 a, and Ch. Y., I, 37 b.
155 See Shlomel, 39, and Bacharach, ibid.
156 See D^''?uSj (Przemysl, 1875), 86 a and b.
15^ See Azulai, s. n., and Kaydanower, ch. 93. Cf. Pesikta
Rabbathi, 131b seq., and the Second Esdras, ch. 10, r. v.
'5^ See Azulai, s. n.
'59 See Shlomel, 39 a, Bacharach, 10 d. Cf. Graetz, Geschichtey
IX : 588. See also V'J, 50 seq.; 61 seq ; 87 d seq., about various
contemporaries of Loria. Cf. also Steinschneider, Catalogue
Munich, 2d ed., Berlin, 1895, pp. 250-1.
1'''^ See Shlomel, 35 b.
1*51 See nun, I b, and Ch. Y., I, 48 b, 51 b, and 59 b.
1*52 See Preface to the n"n;r.
1*5^ The date of Loria's death is given by most bibliographers
as the year 1572. Against this we have, however, the evidence
of Conforte, 41 a, who fixes it in the year 1573, for which he is
attacked by Azulai and others. Sambari, p. 151, fixes it in the
year 1574, which is also confirmed by the traveller Samson Bak.
See Jerusalem, II, p. 146, text and notes.
J''* See the statement of R. Moses Galanti, the Younger, in the
preface to the book "in p:D, by R. David Abi Zimra (Amsterdam,
1679).
i''5Horwitz is the one who dwells more on the mystical
exposition of the ideal man than any of the authors of "^Dl^ "'SD
328 NOTES pp. 283-284
who became popular with the large masses, and a careful
reading of the first seventy pages of his T["^W (ed. Warsaw, 8°)
will show that it is chiefly the ^UH nj^np and the hope conse-
quent upon it which he is aiming at. Cf. especially page 19 b ;
20a seq.; 28aseq.; 3obseq.; 33aseq.; 47aseq.; 59 a seq.
^^ See Jerusalem, II, p. 143, and Frumkin, 117.
^^^See Azulai under these names. Cf also Shlomel, 36 a and
41 d. See also the Responsa of R. Joseph Trani, I, 82. Cf.
also Sambari, 161, with regard to the Loria Synagogue.
INDEX
INDEX
[This Index is to be supplemented by the list of sages and saints
of Safed constituting Appendix B , pp. 302-6.]
Aaron, the descendants of, alluded
to, 64.
Aaron Kaydanower, influence of
Safed on, 282.
Ab-Beth-Din, the, officer of the
Sanhedrin, 105.
See also " Father of the Court
of Justice."
Abiathar, the Scroll of, and the
calendar controversy, 29.
Abishai, rescues David, 111-12.
Abraham, the Shield of, in Ec-
clesiasticus, 67; in Christian
and Jewish sources, 107;
epithets of, 1 18-19; independ-
ence of, 184.
Abraham, brother-in-law of GKick-
el von Hameln, 132, 133.
Abraham de Boton, Responsa by,
289.
Abraham Galanti, honour done to,
208; and the treatment of
workmen, 273-5; precepts by,
289.
Abraham Halevi Beruchim, mystic,
missionary preacher, 243-4;
exhortations of, 243; urges
preparations for the Sabbath,
243; and Jeremiah, 276-7; pre-
cepts by, 289.
Abraham Hurwitz, the ethical will
of, alluded to, 139.
Abraham ben Solomon, on the
Jews of Spain, 204.
Abtalyon, a proselyte, holds a high
office in the Sanhedrin, 64.
Abundance of Dew, Cabbalistic
book by Sabbatai Horwitz,
260.
Adam Kadmon, a Cabbalistic term,
262.
Adler, Herman, Chief Rabbi of
England, alluded to, 4.
Adrianople, Joseph Caro in, 210-
11; alluded to, 225, 252.
Advice, Ben Sira on asking, 94.
Africa, Northern, Jewish study
centres established in, 28.
Agadist, an, un God's praying,
155-
Agricultural pursuits, Jews urged
to engage in, 174; by the na-
tives of Safed, 230.
Agrippa II, alluded to 95.
Akiba, Aquila under the influence
of, 22; quoted, 1 10.
Akylas, Rabbinic name for Aquila.
See Aquila.
Alcharizi, quoted, 81.
Alexander the Great, alluded to,
55-
Alexandria, Jewish, disappointing,
4-
Alimah, by Moses Cordovero, 240.
Alkabez. See Solomon Halevi
Alkabez.
Alsheich. See Moses Alsheich.
Altona, in the Memoirs of Gluck-
el von Hameln, 128-9; privi-
leges of the Jews in, 128-9;
victims of Chmielnicki in,
130.
Amos, the prophet, on social prob-
lems, 77.
Amsterdam, alluded to, 134.
Amulets, in the Genizah, 11.
Analecten sur Textkritik, by Dr.
Felix Perles, cited, 15.
332
IISTDEX
Anatomy, studied by the Rabbis,
76.
Ancona, Solomon Molko preaches
in, 224.
Angels, in Ecclesiasticus, 69;
created by Joseph Caro, 219.
Anger, impairs the relation be-
tween man and his fellow,
166, 170; Joseph Caro on,
212, 216; Moses Cordovero on,
. 238; Isaac Loria on, 271-2.
Animals, the treatment of, and
saintliness, 174-5, 270.
Anthropomorphistic element in
the Cabbala, 262-3.
Anti-Christiana, mythical character
of, 102.
Antinominian tendencies, conse-
quences of, 160; Safed free
from, 279.
Apocrypha, the, defined, 2; frag-
ments of, in the Genizah, 10;
quoted by the daughter-voice,
114; a Jewish commentary on,
needed, 201.
Apologetics, in the Genizah, 12.
Apostasy, in the time of Ben Sira
contrasted with that in earlier
times, 65-6.
Apostles, the, alluded to, 123.
Aquila (Akylas), remains of, in
the Genizah, 19; Rabbinic
name of, 20, 21; historical
and legendary account of,
20-2; proselyte to Christianity
and Judaism, 20-2; Greek ver-
sion of the Bible by, 22-5.
Arabic, versions of the Bible in,
in the Genizah, 9, 13; com-
mentaries in, in the Genizah,
10.
Arha Turim, by Jacob ben Asher,
commentary on, 211; alluded
to, 222.
Ari, epithet of Isaac Loria, 266.
Aristeas Letter, the, on the vest-
ments of the high priest, 61;
on the Temple service, 62.
Arrogance of the Jew in the West,
189.
Artisan, the, and prayer, in Ec-
clesiasticus, 70; Ben Sira on,
71.
See also Handicrafts; Trades.
Aryans, the, and Israel, 183.
Ascetic practices, in Safed, 244;
Vital opposed to certain, 245;
of the Society of Penitents,
245-6; Azkari on, 246; of
Isaac Loria, 255.
See also Ascetic teachings; As-
ceticism; Fasting.
Ascetic teachings, in Safed, 282-3.
Asceticism, and saintliness, 161-3;
modern admiration of, 162;
in Judaism, 19 1-2; practiced
by Joseph Caro, 215-16; of
Solomon Molko, 223; the evils
of, mitigated, 250.
See also Ascetic practices; As-
cetic teachings; Fasting.
Asher, epithet of, in the Maggid
Meshariin, 222.
Ashkenazi. See Bezaleel Ash-
kenazi; Isaac Loria; Joseph
Ashkenazi.
Askara. See Hananel Ibn As-
kara.
Assidseans, the, ascendency of, 65.
See also Chasidim, the.
Associates, the, of Alkabez. See
Associates, the, of Moses Cor-
dovero.
Associates, the, of Loria, devotion
of, to their master, 268; live
in isolation, 269; divided into
two classes, 269-70; exclude
those prone to anger, 272;
celebration of the Sabbath by,
275; as reincarnations, 277.
See also Associates, the, of
Moses Cordovero; ** Lion-
Whelps, The."
Associates, the, of Moses Cor-
dovero, and Joseph Caro's
Mentor-Angel, 233; presided
INDEX
333
over, by Alkabez, 238, 239; de-
scribed, 238-9; precepts drawn
up for, 238-9, 244; ascetic
practices of, 245-6; under
Isaac Loria, 266.
Sec also Associates, the, of
Loria.
Atonement, the Day of, special
prayers for, in Safed, 244;
confession of sins on, 270.
Attentions, the, of Isaac Loria,
269, 271, 278.
Autograph documents, in the Geni-
zah, 1 1, 29.
Autonomy of the various com-
munities in Safed, 229, 233,
Azkari. See Eliezer Azkari.
Baal Shem. See Israel Baal
Sheni.
Babylon, the schools of, cease,
28; alluded to, 205.
" Babylon, Fortress of," in Cairo,
5-
Babylonian Talmud, the, fras;-
ments of, in the Genizah, 10;
compared with the Jerusalem
Talmud, 27-8.
See also Talmud, the.
Bachelors, the Jewish view of, 95.
See also Celibacy.
Bachye, an exponent of Judaism,
192; the writings of, recom-
mended to Joseph Caro, by
the Mentor-Angel, 217.
Baiersdorf, alluded to, 146.
Bak, Samson, on Safedj 283.
Bakhshish, facilitates work in the
Genizah, 8.
Banquet, a, in the time of Ben
Sira, 84-91.
Banquets, permitted, 238, 248.
See also Dining.
Baptism, in Jewish literature, 109-
10.
Barbary States, the immigrants
from, in Safed, 207.
Barley, produced near Safed, 230.
Barth, philologist, quoted, :i2.
Bashiatsi. See Elijah Bashiatsi.
Beans, produced near Safed, 230.
Beer, on non-commercial pursuits
for Jews, 174.
Benediction, a, preceding martyr-
dom, 226.
See also Prayer.
Ben Hagla, a lost book, 53.
Benjamin of Tudela, traveller, on
Cairo, 5.
Ben Meir, controversy of, with
Saadya, 29.
Bensimon, Aaron, Grand Rabbi of
Cairo, 4, and the Genizah, 5.
Ben Sira, the dates of, 55-6;
sources on, 56-7 ; the state of
Judaism, etc. in the time of,
58; scarcity of references to
the Synagogue in the time of,
65; the hymn of, and the
Eighteen Benedictions, 67-8;
on the future life, 68-9; occu-
pations of the Jews in the time
of, 71; on artisans, 71; on the
commercial classes, 71-2; on
the military classes, 72-2; on
the scholastic profession, 7:^;
on the priests, 75; on the
medical profession, 75-7; as a
social reformer, 77-9, 81, 83;
on the value of leisure, 80;
conservatism of, 80-1; on un-
righteous wealth , 81-2; on
poverty, 82; religion and poli-
tics of, 83; as a man of the
world, 84-91; on temperance,
87; on wine, 88-90; on drunk-
enness, 89; on seriousness and
modesty, 91; on the bore,
91-2; on the evils of the ton-
gue, 92-3; on friendship, 93-4;
on asking advice, 94; on char-
itableness, 94; on women, 95;
on marriage, 96, 98; on pedi-
gree, 96; on the education of
children, 96-8; on heirs, 98-9;
334
INDEX
on visiting the sick, 99-100;
on death, 100; on burial, loi;
on the period of mourning,
lOI.
See also Ecclesiasticus.
Ben Sira, The Wisdom of. See
Ecclesiaticus.
Ben Soma, and Joshua ben Ha-
naniah, 112.
Bequest, a, for Yeshiboth in
Safed, 209.
Berab. See Jacob Berab.
Berachoth, prescriptions for prayer
in, 154-
Bertinoro. See Obadiah of Berti-
noro.
Beruchim. See Abraham Halevi
Beruchim.
Beth ha-Keneseth, the, a name for
the Synagogue, 63.
Beth ha-Midrash, the, the impor-
tance of, 42; a name for the
Synagogue, 63.
Beth ha-Wa'ad, a General Board,
in Safed, 229-30, 251, 284.
Beth Jacob, Spanish congregation
in Safed, 235.
Beth Joseph, the, by Joseph Caro,
described, 211; Joseph Caro
desires the perfection of, 217.
Beyrout, alluded to, 206.
Bezaleel Ashkenazi, teacher of
Isaac Loria, 253, 257.
Bible, the, regulations for writing,
14; treatment of Christologi-
cal passages in, 23; dates of
the books of, 33-4; purpose of
the study of Hebrew, 36;
study of, should precede its
criticism, 37; ignorance of
Hebrew and criticism of,
37-8; value of the Hebrew Ec-
clesiasticus for the study of,
43-4; the style of, imitated in
Ecclesiasticus, 47; and the
dates of Ben Sira, 56; on
corporal punishment, 97; the
Talmud important in the
study of, 103; Introductions
to, and Rabbinic literature,
105; and Jewish scholars, 195;
the object of attack, 198; Jew-
ish devotion to, needed, 199-
201; and Christian scholars,
200; a Jewish commentary on,
201; and Safed, 202; taught
to Marranos, 22^; commen-
tary on, by Moses Alsheich,
241.
See also Bible, the, fragments
of; Bible, the, Greek version
of; Canon, the; Exegesis, Bib-
lical; Torah, the; and under
the various Books of the
Bible.
Bible, the, fragments of, in the
Genizah, 9-10, 12; easily iden-
tified, 13; oldest Bible nnanu-
scripts known, 14; abbrevia-
tion system illustrated in, 14-
15; for children, 15-16; colo-
phons to, 16-17; palimpsests,
17-18.
Bible, the, Greek version of, by
Aquila, 19, 22-5; literalism of,
22-3, 24, 25; compared with
the Septuagint, 23-4; pre-
served by Origen, 24-5.
Bibliography, value of, 120.
Bikkxir Cholim, in Rabbinic litera-
ture, 99.
Bills, among the Genizah frag-
ments, 28.
Bleek, alluded to, 33.
Bodleian Library, the, alluded to,
15; fragments of Ecclesiasti-
cus in, 45.
Boehme, alluded to, 178.
Books, kinds of, consigned to a
Genizah, 2-s, 7-
Bore, the, Ben Sira on, 91-2.
Boton. See Abraham de Boton.
Bride, term for the Kencseth
Israel, 121.
British Museum, the, alluded to,
103.
INDEX
335
Brother, term for the Keneseth
Israel, 121.
Buhl, on social problems in Israel,
78.
Builders, in demand in Safed,
230.
Building, occupation of the Jews
in the time of Ben Sira, 71.
Burkitt, F. C, editor of Aquila
fragments, 25.
Butchers, act as caterers, 86.
Buxtorfs, the two, and Rabbinic
literature, 103.
Cabbala, the, the study of, urged
by Joseph Caro's Mentor-
Angel, 217; taught to ]\Iar-
ranos, 223; Solomon ]\IoIko
converts Joseph Caro to, 226;
authoritative work on, 240;
Isaac Loria introduced to,
254-5; taught to Isaac Loria
by Elijah, 256; the world as
viewed by, 258-60; man as
viewed by, 261-3, 268-9; on
anthropomorphisms, 262-3;
and the Propositions, 280-1.
See also Chayim Vital; Isaac
Loria; Moses Cordovero, etc.;
and Zohar, the.
Cabbalists, the, the difficulties of,
258.
Caine, Hall, alluded to, 188.
Cairo, the Genizah at, 3; modern
character of, 4; buildings in,
5; Isaac Loria at, 253-6.
Calendar, the, controversy on, 29.
Cambridge, the University of, and
the Cairo Genizah, 3-4, 11.
Canon, the, value of histories of,
27', hypothesis of the rise of,
unsatisfactory, 43; and the
dates of Ben Sira, 56; Rab-
binic account of, and the
higher criticism, 105.
See also Bible, the.
Canon, the second, causes leading
to, doubtful, 42,
Carlyle, quoted, 148.
Caro. See Joseph Caro.
Carpentry, trade of the Jews in
the time of Ben Sira, 71.
Cattaui, Youssef M., liberality of,
5.
Cattle-breeding, occupation of the
Jews in the time of Ben Sira,
71-
Celibacy, and saintliness, 176-7.
See also Bachelors.
Censors, the Board of, Isaac Loria
on, in Safed, 267-8,
Ceremonies, and the saint, 160;
and spirituality, 187-8.
Cerf Levy, second husband of
Gliickel von Hameln, 145-6.
Chaberim. See Associates, the.
Chabib. See Levi ben (Aben)
Chabib.
Chagigah, a story from, 123-4.
Chaldaic versions of the Bible, in
the Genizah, 9, 13.
Chalphanim, the, in Hamburg, 135.
Chanina ben Teradyon, quoted, i.
Charitableness, Ben Sira on, 94;
in Rabbinic literature, 94.
Charity, Ben Sira on, 81; and
saintliness, 171-4; is practiced
in Safed, 246-7; of Isaac
Loria, 272-3.
Charles V., Emperor, and Solomon
Molko, 225.
Chasid, defined, 151.
See also Saint.
Chasidim, the, and Ben Sira, 83-4;
discredited by the higher
criticism, 105.
See also Assidseans, the.
Chasiduth, saintliness, 151.
See also Saintliness.
Chastity, Joseph Caro on, 216.
Chayim Hameln, husband of
Gliickel von Hameln, 131,
133; saintliness of, 133-4; as
33^
INDEX
a business man, 134; death of,
138, 141-2.
Chayim Vital, disciple of Moses
Alsheich, 241; opposed to cer-
tain ascetic practices, 245 ; the
accomplishments of, 251; fol-
lower of Isaac Loria, 266,
270, 277; goes to Safed, 266-7;
on the love of the non-Jew,
270; spends the Sabbath with
Isaac Loria, 278; book ascrib-
ed to, 279, 281; book by,
279, 281; successor to Isaac
Loria, 280; authority of, in
Safed, 284-5; death of, 285.
Chebrahs, in Hamburg, 135.
Cheder, the, Gliickel von Hameln
taught in, 139.
Chelo. See Isaac ben Joseph
Chelo.
Chiromancy, Isaac Loria an adept
in, 265.
Chmielnicki, Bogdan, victims of,
in Hamburg, etc., 129-30, 133;
alluded to, 204; effect of, on
Safed, 285.
Christian scholars, and the Tal-
mud, 103-4; on the Jews in
the time of Jesus, 120-1; and
the study of the Bible, 200-1;
and post-Biblical Judaism,
201.
Christianity, Aquila a proselyte
to, 21; Schleiermacher's view
of, 104; the history of the
rise of, 125.
Christological passages, in the
Bible, treatment of, 23.
" Chronicle of the World," the, a
secondary source on Ben Sira,
56; quoted, 57.
Chronicles, the Books of, inter-
pret Deuteronomy, 37; on the
Persian-Greek period of Jew-
ish history, 43; purpose of,
106-7.
Chronology, the, of the Persian-
Greek period, 41.
Church, the Established, and the
study of theology, 196, 197.
Chushiel ben Elhanan (or Han-
anel), letter by, 29.
Clement VII., Pope, and Solomon
Molko, 224-5.
Clergy, the Jewish, and theology,
195-7; and the Bible, 200,
201.
Cleves, alluded to, 136.
Clothes, manufactured in Safed,
230.
Cohen. See Elijah Cohen.
Colobi. See Pharez Colobi.
Colophons, to Biblical Genizah
fragments, 16-17.
Columbia University, manuscript
in, used, 289.
" Come, my Beloved. See Lcchah
Dodi.
Commentaries, fragments of, in
the Genizah, 10.
Commentary, a Jewish, on the
Bible needed, 201.
Commercial classes, the, Ben Sira
on, 71-2; Rabbinic sentiment
on, 72.
See also Trading.
Compulsory education, in Judaea,
95-
See also Education; and In-
rtruction.
Concentration, the system of, in
the Cabbala, 259, 260.
Confession of sins. See Sins, the
confession of.
Confirmation, the rite of, and wo-
men in the synagogue, 137.
Conforte, on Isaac Loria and
iMoses Cordovero, 257.
Congregation of Israel, the, com-
pared to a lily, 108; symbol-
ised by a dove, 1 11.
See also Kencscth Israel, tlie.
Consolacam as tribitlacocs de
Ysrael, by Samuel Usque,
quoted, 202-3.
INDEX
337
" Consolation and Tribulations of
Israel, The," by Samuel
Usque, quoted, 202-3.
Constantinople, the Jews of, sup-
port Safed institutions, 209;
trade with Safed, 230.
Contemporaneous history in Ec-
clesiasticus, 51-3.
Controversial works, in the Geni-
zah, II.
Controversies, theological, 34-5.
Converts, how brought back to the
faith, 171.
Conveyances, among the Genizah
fragments, 28.
Coptic-Hebrew palimpsests, 18.
Cordovero. See Moses Cordovero.
Corporal punishment, Ben Sira on,
97-
Cotton, produced near Safed, 230.
Covetousness, impairs the relation
between man and his fellow,
166.
Criticism, the Higher. See Ex-
egesis, Biblical.
Crusades, the, and pilgrimages to
the Holy Land, 205.
Cooking, taught to girls, 98.
Cudworth and the Rabbis, 103.
Dalman, and Jewish terms, 120.
Damascus, trades with Safed, 230;
alluded to, 266, 285.
*' Dancing," by Mrs. Lily Grove,
quoted, 137.
Daniel, the Book of, late date of,
59; commentary on, printed in
Safed, 231.
Dates of the composition of the
Biblical books, how deter-
mined, 33-4.
Daughter, term for the Keneseth
Israel, 121.
Daughter-voice, the, in the vision
of Jose, 113; a means of
revelation, 11 3-1 6; reproduces
Biblical verses, 11 3- 14; quotes
the Apocrypha, 114; to whom
audible, 11 4-1 5; when authori-
tative, 116.
Daughters, as described in Jewish
literature, 98.
David, and the authorship of the
Psalms, 39; restoration of the
line of, in Ecclesiasticus, 50-1;
alluded to, 64; a Rabbinic
legend on, 111-12; the harp
of, 156.
David ben (Abi) Zimra, position
of, in Safed, 250-1; teacher
of Isaac Loria, 257, 263.
David Reubeni, and Solomon
Molko, 223.
Death, various designations of,
99; Ben Sira on, 100; and
saintliness, 181.
Defilement, interpreted Rabbinic-
ally, no; the cause of, 190.
De la Reina. See Joseph de la
Reina.
Despair, impairs the relation be-
tween man and his fellow,
166.
De Synagoga vetere, by Vitringa,
importance of, 104.
De Synedriis, by Selden, and the
Talmud, 103.
Deuteronomy, the Book of, in-
terpreted by other books of
the Bible, Z7\ passages in, in-
terpreted, 20, 118; quoted,
112, IIS, 263, 27Z.
Devotional works, the Mentor-
Angel urges the reading of,
on Joseph Caro, 217; in-
fluence of Safed on, 282-3.
Devotions, the, of Isaac Loria,
269, 271, 278.
Die heilige Schrift, by Kautzsch,
cited, 41.
Die Worte Jesii, by Dalman, and
Jewish terms, 121.
Dietary laws, the, in the time of
Ben Sira, 70.
See also Forbidden food.
338
INDEX
" Digest of the Law," by Jacob
ben Asher, 211.
Dillmann, alluded to, 2>2>< 200;
analysis of the Pentateuch by,
ZZ-
Dining, in the time of Ben Sira,
84-91; regulations for, 84-5;
invitations for, 85; hour for,
85; room for, 85-6; menu for,
86-7.
See also Banquet, a; and Ban-
quets.
Disraeli, alluded to, 222.
Discourse on the Lord's Supper,
by Cudworth, and the Rabbis,
103.
Dissipation, impairs the relation
between man and his fellow,
166.
" Divine Cabbalist, The," epithet
of Isaac Loria, 267.
Divine Essence, the, in the Cab-
bala, 259.
Divine Presence, the, and the
saints after death, 88; in ex-
ile, 124, 243; respect for, 124;
pure thoughts the seat of,
216; classes excluded from,
238.
" Divine Rabbi Isaac," epithet of
Isaac Loria, 266.
Divorce, bills of, in the Genizah,
II.
Dove, the, symbolises the Holy
Ghost, 111-12.
Drunkenness, Ben Sira on, 89.
Duhm, alluded to, 200.
" Duties of the Heart, The," by
Bachye, recommended to Jo-
seph Caro, by his Mentor-
Angel, 217.
Eagle, the, a Rabbinic symbol,
112-13.
Ecclesiastes, the authorship of, 39;
the date of, doubtful, 42;
verses from, in Ecclesiasticus,
68; quoted, 114, 166, 281.
Ecclesiasticus, chief source for the
time of Ben Sira, 56; pitfalls
in the use of, 57-8; quoted
57 et seq., 114, 123; on the
Temple service, 60-2; and the
Eighteen Benedictions, 67-8;
on resurrection, 68-9; on an-
gels, 69; on original sin, 69.
See also Ben Sira; and Ec-
clesiasticias, the original of.
Ecclesiasticus, the original of,
fragments of, in the Genizah,
10, 26; value of, in historical
research, 26-7; value of, to
the Biblical student, 43-4;
46-7; date of, 43-4; used by
Luzzatto , 44; mentioned by
St. Jerome and Saadya, 45;
discovery of, 45; editions of,
45 ; number of chapters of,
found, 45 ; the language of,
46, 47; Job known to the
author of, 47; the Psalms
known to the author of, 47;
hymn from, 48-9, 50; proof of
the authenticitj' of, 49; litur-
gical elements in, 50, 51; re-
ligious thought exhibited in,
50; contemporaneous history
in, 51-3; Persian influence in,
S1-3.
See also Ben Sira; and Ec-
clesiasticus.
Edersheim, Dr., on Ben Sira,
68-9.
Education, compulsory, in Judaea,
95; in the time of Ben Sira,
96-8; facilities for an, in
Safed, 209.
See also Instruction.
Egypt, alluded to, 205.
Ehrt, on Maccabaean Psalms, 44.
Eighteen Benedictions, the, in-
fluenced by Ecclesiasticus, 50,
51; in their earliest form,
67-8; and Ben Sira, 67, 68;
and Isaiah, 67; conclusion of,
167.
INDEX
339
Eighteenth century, the, ideas of,
149.
Ekkehart, alluded to, 178.
Eleazar ben Arach, and the first
chapter of Ezekiel, 124-5.
Eleazar ben Simon, the Associates
of Loria the reincarnations
of, ZTJ.
Eliezer Azkari, and the society
Tent of Peace, 244; on ascetic
practices, 246,
Eliezer, the Great, eulogy on, i ;
teacher of Aquila, 21-2.
Elijah, Gaon of Wilna, on fasting,
162; exponent of Judaism,
192; a Jewish reformer, 192;
book by a pupil of, 192-3;
and the study of the Bible,
200; alluded to, 204.
Elijah, the Prophet, synagogue
at Cairo named for, 5; office
of, as historical recorder, 57,
58; the model of the saint,
161; and Joshua ben Levi,
166; the model of zealots,
171; an exponent of Juda-
ism, 192; Joseph Caro worthy
of communion with, 214; an-
nounces the birth of Isaac
Loria, 252-3; Isaac Loria in
communion with, 255; the
teacher of Isaac Loria in the
Cabbala 256.
Elijah Bashiatsi, Karaite, on the
German Jews in Palestine,
252.
Elijah Cohen, influence of Safed
on, 282.
Elijah Loanz, a kinsman of Isaac
Loria, 251.
Elijah de Vidas, on the Society of
Penitents, 245 ; work by,
278-9.
Eliot, George, Kaufmann on, 126.
Elisha ben Abuyah, and the daugh-
ter-voice, 115.
Elsmere, Robert, alluded to, 188.
Emanations, the, of the Cabbala,
258; dwelt upon by Moses
Cordovero, 261.
Emancipation, deeds of, in the
Genizah, 11.
Emerson, alluded to, 200.
Eminences. See Gaonim.
England, Rabbis from, go to the
Holy Land, 205.
English Jews, a foreigner on, 189-
93.
Enoch, the Book of, alluded to,
125.
Ephraim, the father of Joseph
Caro, 210.
Epitaphs, the wording of, i.
Erbauungslectiire iinserer Altvor-
deren by Dr. P. F. Frankl,
referred to, 139.
Essenes, alluded to, iii.
Esther, sister-in-law of Gliickei
von Llameln, 133.
Esther, the Book of, quoted, 151;
homiletical commentary on,
227-8.
Esther Schwab. See Schwab, Es-
ther.
Etiirog, the, charity and the duty
of, 173-4.
Etymologische Studien, by Barth,
quoted, 32.
Etymology, affected by theology,
Europe, Jewish study centres es-
tablished in, 28.
Ewald, alluded to, 33, 200.
Excommunications, in the Geni-
zah, II.
Exegesis, Biblical, two theological
schools in, 32-4; value of, 40;
value of the Hebrew Ec-
clesiasticus for, 43-4; and the
dates of Ben Sira, 55-6; mod-
ern, and the Talmud, 105-6;
and Christian bias, 200.
See also Interpretation.
" Exile, The Prince of the,"
Genizah documents on, 11.
340
INDEX
Exodus, the Book of, passage in,
interpreted, 76.
Exports from Safed, 230.
" Expositor, The," first to publish
the original Hebrew of Ec-
clesiasticus, 45.
Eye, term for the Keneseth Israel,
121.
Ezekiel, expounder of the " Priest-
ly Code," 36; vision of, 124-5.
E:: ha-Chayini, book ascribed to
Vital, 279; for the few, 281.
Ezra, the Book of, quoted, 244.
Ezra the Scribe, Synagogue of,
at Cairo, 5; the Ordinances
of, and the dates of Ben
Sira, 56; alluded to, 105.
Farming, occupation of the Jews
in the time of Ben Sira, 71;
near Safed, 230,
Fasting, inferences from the com-
mand of, 161; by saints,
161-3; enjoined upon Joseph
Caro by his Mentor-Angel,
215; practiced by the Asso-
ciates, 245-6; prohibited on
the Sabbath, 248.
See also Ascetic practices; As-
cetic teachings; Asceticism.
" Father in heaven," not under-
stood by Christian writers,
120-1.
See also Heavenly Father.
" Father of the Court of Justice,"
a proselyte, 64.
See also Ab-Beth-Din.
" Fathers," the first of the Eigh-
teen Benedictions, and Ec-
clesiasticus, 51, 67, 68.
Fathers, the other Books of the,
Ben Sira's description of the
Hagiographa, 59.
Fathers of the Church, the, cited,
21, 23.
See also Jerome, Origen, |
Fathers of the Synagogue, the,
quoted, 12, 107.
See also Pirke Aboth.
Faust, a Jewish, 248.
Ferdinand, of Spain, alluded to, 212.
Festivals, the, as viewed by the
saint, 158.
Figs, produced near Safed, 230.
Fire, baptism with, 109.
Fisch, friend of Joseph Hameln,
131-
Forbidden food, and the saint,
159-61; Nachmanides on, 160.
See also Dietary laws, the.
Fragments, the, in the Genizah.
character of, 5-6; irregular
traffic with, 9; number of, 9;
classes of, 9-1 1, 12-13; diffi-
cult to classify, 13-14; hand-
writing of, 14; trellis-writing
exemplified in, 14-15; by
Aquila, 19, 25; on the period
of the Gaonim, 28-9.
See also Bible, the, fragments
of, in the Genizah; Genizah,
a; Liturgy, the.
France, Rabbis from, go to the
Holy Land, 205.
Frankfort, alluded to, 134; a
branch of the Loria family in,
251.
Frankl, Dr. P. F., on the litera-
ture in Jiidisch-Deutsch, 139.
Frederick III, of Denmark, the
Jews under, 128.
Frederick William, Elector of
Brandenburg, and Elia Gom-
perz, 136; at the wedding of
Gliickel von Hameln's daugh-
ter, 137.
Freudchen, wife of Joseph Ha-
meln, 131.
Freudenthal, alluded to, 112.
Friedmann, Meyer, alluded to, 12.
Friendship, the Jewish view of,
93; Ben Sira on, 93-4,
Fruits, metaphorically used, 107.
Funerals, costliness of, loo-i.
INDEX
341
Gabirol, and the study of the
Bible, 200.
Galanti. See Abraham Galanti;
and Moses Galanti,
Galilee, Upper, Safed in, 202; the
situation of the Jews of, 207.
Gamaliel, and funeral reform, 100.
Gaon. See Shem Tob Ibn Gaon.
Gaonim, the, period of the most
prominent of, reconstructed
by the Genizah fragments,
28-9; letters and books by,
28.
Garden, The. Sec Pardes.
" Gates of Holiness, The," by
Chayim Vital, 279; a popular
book, 281.
Gavinezo. See Jacob Gavinezo.
Genealogical tables, in Rabbinic
literature, 106.
General Board. See Beth ha-
Wa'ad.
Genesis, the Book of, a passage
in, interpreted, 24; quoted,
32, 175-
Genizah, a, defined, 1-2; com-
tents of, 2-:^.
Genizah, the, at Cairo, 3, 5-30;
manuscripts in, 6-7; printed
matter in, 7; difficulties of
working in, 7-8; classes of
fragments in, 9-1 1, 12-13, 13-
30; specimens of handwriting
in, 13-14; Aquila's Bible ver-
sion in, 19, 25; and the
Gaonim, 28-9.
See also Fragments, the, in the
Genizah.
" Genizah Specimens," published
in " The Jewish Quarterly
Review," 45.
Gentiles, to be loved, 168, 270; to
be prayed for, 171.
Georgian-Hebrew palimpsests, 18.
German community in Safed, 229.
German Jews, emigrate to Moham-
medan countries, 251-2; intro-
duce the printing trade in
Safed, 231.
Gibson, Mrs. See Lewis-Gibson
collection, the.
Gifts of the Levite, by Solomon
Alkabez, 227-8.
Gifts, the twenty-four, of the
priesthood, 73-4.
Girls, the education of, 97-8.
Gluckel von Hameln, importance
of the Memoirs of, 126-7;
parentage of, 127; simplicity
of, 128; first recollections of,
128-9; on the return of the
Jews to Hamburg, 129; on
the Chmielnicki persecution,
130; illness of, 130; marriage
of, 131; on her husband's
family, 131-3; on her hus-
band, 133-4; removes to Ham-
burg, 134; as a business wo-
man, 134; on Sabbatai Zebi,
135-6; daughter of, married,
136-7; humility of, 138, 140-1,
144; activities of, 138; edu-
cation of, 138-9; a theodicy
by, 139-40; on the mercy of
God, 140; on immortality,
141-2; on service of God, 142-
3; on love of neighbour, 143;
injunctions of, to her chil-
dren, 144-5; last years of,
145-6; second marriage of,
145-6; death of, 146.
Gnosis, fragment of, a Jewish,
112.
God, love of and saintliness,
180-1.
Goethe, as a student of Hebrew,
35-
Gold ink, used by Jews, 14.
Goliath, alluded to, in.
Gomperz, Elia, father-in-law of
Gluckel von Hameln's daugh-
ter, 136.
Gomperz, Kossman, son-in-law of
Gluckel von Hameln, 136-7.
342
INDEX
Gospels, the, and Schleiermacher,
104.
See also Johannine Gospel, the;
and Synoptic Gospels, the.
Grace, the reality of, and saint-
liness, 179, 180-1.
Grace after meals, at a banquet,
88; how to pronounce, 239; a
Psalm added to, 247.
Graetz, alluded to, 112.
Grain, exported from Safed, 230.
Great Synagogue, the, and the
dates of Ben Sira, 56; contro-
versy about, 105-6.
Greatness, human, the ideal of
191.
Greek, the use of, by Aquila, 22-2,
24; esteemed by the Rabbis,
24.
Greek-Hebrew palimpsests, 18, 25.
Greek synagogue, in Safed, 229.
Greek version of the Bible, the, by
Aquila, 22-5; in the Genizah,
25; value of Genizah frag-
ments of, 25.
Green, the colour of Sabbatai
Zebi, 135.
Grieve, David, alluded to, 188.
Grove, Mrs. Lily, quoted, 137.
Hadrian, Emperor, kinsman of
Aquila, 20.
Hagiographa, the , colophons to
manuscripts of, 16; date of,
44; and the dates of Ben Sira,
56; Ben Sira on, 59.
Hai, alluded to, 2^.
Halevy, Joseph, on Job and Ec-
clesiasticus, 46-7.
Hamburg, the re-settlement of the
Jews in, 127, 129; in the
Memoirs of Gliickel von Ha-
meln, 128; victims of Chmiel-
nicki in, 130; the home of
Gliickel von Hameln, 134-5;
Messianic fever in, 135.
Hameln, difficulty of journey to,
131.
Ilananel Ibn Askara, migrates to
Safed, 206.
Handicrafts, and the Torah, 79-80;
in the education of children,
96.
See also Artisan; and Trades.
Handwriting of the Bible frag-
ments in the Genizah, 13-14.
Hanover, alluded to, 131, 204.
Harvest, metaphorically used, 107.
Hatred, impairs the relation be-
tween man and his fellow,
166.
" Head of the banquet house,"
84-5.
Heave-offering. See Terumah.
Heavenly Academy, the, greetings
from, to Joseph Caro, 218-19;
Isaac Loria and, 256.
Heavenly Father, a favourite ex-
pression with Gliickel von
Hameln, 142-3.
See also " Father in heaven."
Hebrew, secular use of, 3; the
study of, difficult, 35; impor-
tance of vocalisation of, 35-6;
purpose of the study of, 36:
ignorance of, and criticism of
the Bible, 37-8; in the time of
Ben Sira, 46; how much
known by Gliickel von Ham-
eln, 138-9; and Jewish uni-
versity students, 194-5; need
of the study of, 197-8; ignor-
ance of, among Jews, 198-9.
Hebrew-Hebrew palimpsests, 18.
Hebrew literature, a Testament,
31-2.
Heine, and Lechah Dodi, 228.
Heiresses, in Jerusalem, 95.
Heirs, male, Ben Sira on, 98-9.
Hellenistic influence on the age of
Ben Sira, 55.
Hengstenberg, Prof., alluded to,
33-
Herder, and Lechah Dodi, 228.
Hessen, Parnas of. See Joseph
Hameln.
INDEX
343
Hexapla, the, preserves render-
ings by Aquila, 25.
High priest, a, commission bought
for, 95.
High priest, the, as described in
the Aristeas Letter, 61.
High priests, the, privileges of, 75.
Higher criticism, the. See Ex-
egesis, Biblical.
Hildesheim, alluded to, 135.
Hillel, and the Temple, 63; the
doctrine of immortality in the
time of, 70; a workingman,
80; alluded to, 123.
H istorisch-Kritische Einleitung (to
the Old Testament), by
Kuenen, value of, 40.
History, in the Genizah, 12, 13,
28-9; contemporaneous, in Ec-
clesiasticus, 51-3.
History of the Jewish People in
the Age of Jesus Christ, by
Schiirer, value of, 119-20.
Holiness, allied with saintliness,
151; defined, 15 1-2; heading
for marriage laws, 176.
Holinesses, the third of the Eigh-
teen Benedictions, 67-8.
Holy Ghost, the. See Holy Spirit,
the.
Holy Land, the, a refuge for
exiles, 202, 203, 204-6; de-
scribed by Samuel Usque,
203; pilgrimages to, 205-6; ex-
plored, 205; Joseph Caro de-
sires to settle in, 219-20;
attraction of, 231-3.
" Holy Man, The," epithet of
Isaac Loria, 267.
Holy Spirit, the, and Canonical
books, 2; baptism with, 109;
as used in Jewish literature,
no; and purification, iio-ii;
symbolised, 111-12; and truth,
163.
Home, the Jewish, in the time of
Ben Sira, 70.
Homiletic commentary on the
Bible, by Moses Alsheich, 241.
Homiletic nature of toasts, 87.
Horae Rabbinicae, by Lightfoot,
and the Talmud, 103.
Horwitz. See Isaiah Horwitz;and
Sabbatai Horwitz.
House of Assembly, the. See
Beth ha-Keneseth, the
" House of Interpretation." See
Beth ha-Midrash, the; and
Synagogue, the.
Humility, of Gliickel von Hameln,
138, 1 40- 1, 144; the antidote
to all unsocial qualities, 168-
70; story illustrating, 208-9;
of Isaac Loria, 272.
Hurwitz, Abraham. See Abraham
Hurwitz.
Husks, the, the powers of evil,
Isaac Loria delivered from,
253; disguises, 260.
Hymns, for the Sabbath meals,
249.
Hymnus Patruni, in Ecclesiasticus,
46, 47, 48-9, 50, 67-8.
Hypocrites, excluded from the
Divine Presence, 238.
Ibn Ezra, alluded to, 200.
Idras, the, of the Zohar, 261-3;
studied by the school of
Isaac Loria, 267.
Idra, the Great, 262-3.
Immanations, the, of the Cab-
bala, 258, 259.
Immersion, in Jewish literature,
109-10.
Immortality, the doctrine of, in
Ecclesiasticus, 69; accepted in
the Pharisaic schools, 70;
Gluckel von Hameln on,
141-2; belief in, a Jewish doc-
trine, 142.
" In Memoriam," and the Sermon
on the Mount, 36.
Indians, the, and Orientalism, 150.
Informers, how looked upon, 166.
344
INDEX
Injury to one's neighbour, and
saintliness, 165-6.
Ink, gold, used by Jews, 14.
Instruction, main function of the
Synagogue in Ben Sira's time,
63; free in the Synagogue, 66.
See also Education.
Interpretation, Rabbinic rules of,
116-18.
Intolerance, displayed by the
Shnlchati Aruch, 212.
Introductions to the Old Testa-
ment, value of, 27-
Iron-smiths, among the Jews in the
time of Ben Sira, 71.
Isaac, the Rock of, in Ecclesiasti-
cus, 67.
Isaac ben Joseph Chelo, on Safed,
206.
Isaac Loria , mystic, narrative
about, 175; prominent figure
in Safed, 210; on Moses Cor-
dovero, 241 ; on Moses Al-
sheich, 241; the family of,
251; the birth of, 252-3; the
circumcision of, 253; pre-
cocity of, 253; adopted by his
uncle, 253; teachers of, 253,
257; introduced to the Cab-
bala, 254-5; devoted student
of the Cabbala, 255; Elijah
teaches the Cabbala to, 256;
legendary account of, 256;
library of, 256; indebted to
Moses Cordovero, 257-8, 261;
Associates of, in Safed, 257,
263-5; and the system of Zim-
sum, 260-1; inspired by the
Idras, 262-3; life of, in Safed,
263-4; son of, 264; estimate
of, as a Cabbalist, 265-6;
epithets of, 266, 267; the fol-
lowers of, 266; and Chayim
Vital, 266-7; reticent on Cab-
balistic subjects, 267, 275, 280;
personality of, 267 et seq.:
a literature on, 269; and his
Associates, 269-70; prayer in
the system of, 270-1; consid-
erateness of, 271-2; charitable-
ness of, 272-3; relation of, to
workmen, 273-5; the Sabbath
celebrated by, 275-8; holds
intercourse with the departed,
275-6; and metempsychosis,
275-7; mystical songs by, 278;
spiritualises the whole life of
man, 278-9; abstract of the
teachings of, by \'ital,279; and
Joseph Caro, 279; death of,
280; questionable authenticity
of the writings ascribed to,
280; adherents of, 283; syna-
gogue in memory of, 284.
Isabella, of Spain, alluded to, 212.
Isaiah, the Prophet, the Second, a
fact, 39; alluded to, 69.
Isaiah, the Book of, interpreted by
the Psalms, 36; reminiscences
of, in Ecclesiasticus, 50; Ben
Sira on, 58-9; and the Eigh-
teen Benedictions, 67; on so-
cial problems, 77; quoted, 90,
119.
Isaiah Horwitz, influence of Safed
on, 282; on Safed, 283.
Ishmael ben Piabi, high priest,
complaint against the house
of, 75-
Israel Baal Shem, a Jewish re-
former, 192; and the study of
the Bible, 200; alluded to,
204.
Israel Nagara, alluded to, 157;
as a devotional poet, 251.
Italian synagogue in Safed, 229.
Jabez. See Joseph Jabez.
Jabneh the daughter-voice heard
in, 114; and Johanan ben
Zakkai, 124.
Jachet-Agathe Schwab, mother-in-
law of Gluckel von Hameln's
daughter, 146.
Jacob, the Mighty One of, in Ec-
clesiasticus, 67.
INDEX
345
Jacob ben Asher, author of Arha
Turim, 211; epithet of, in the
Maggid Mesharim, 222.
Jacob Berab, position of, in Safed,
233-5; recognised as an au-
thority, 233; works of, 233;
attempts to re-introduce Ordi-
nation, 233-5; opponent of,
234; ordains elders, 234, 235;
death of, 235.
Jacob Gavinezo, quoted by Eliezer
Azkari, 246.
Jacob Mantino, betrays Solomon
Molko, 225.
James, apostle, alluded to, 100.
Jansenists, the School of the, al-
luded to, 178.
Jason, a traitorous priest, 65.
Jealousy, impairs the relation be-
tween man and his fellow,
166.
Jeconiah, and the daughter-voice,
113-14.
Jeremiah, the Prophet, synagogue
at Cairo named for, 5 ; alluded
to, 277.
Jeremiah, the Book of, reminis-
cences of, in Ecclesiasticus,
50; quoted, 114, 151; passage
in, interpreted, 118.
Jerome, on Aquila's Greek version
of the Bible, 24; mentions
Ecclesiasticus, 45.
Jeruham, epithet of, in the Mag-
gid Mesharim, 222.
Jerusalem, a dinner in, 84-91; a
religious centre, 204-5; un-
favourable conditions prevail-
ing in, 207; Solomon Molko
visits, 224; outstrips Safed,
283.
Jerusalem Talmud, the, fragments
of, in the Genizah, 10, 25,
27-8; scientific value of, 27-8.
See also, Talmud, the.
Jesus, Jewish literature on, 102;
the time of, 102; the baptism
of, iio-ii; Jewish life in the
time of, not properly treated,
120; place of, in the Old Test-
ament studies hy Christians,
201.
Jesus Sirach und die sociale
Frage, by Pastor Wohlenberg,
quoted, 77.
Jesus the son of Sirach. See Ben
Sira; and Ecclesiasticus.
Jewish persuasion, the, and, na-
tionality, 182-3.
" Jewish Quarterly Review, The,"
publishes the original Hebrew
of Ecclesiasticus, 45.
Jewish Theological Seminary of
America, The, in possession
of Alimah, by Moses Cor-
dovero, 240; a manuscript in,
used, 289.
Jews, the, and the Septuagint, 23\
and national self-conscious-
ness, 182-3; and a religious
mission, 184-7; and intellect-
ual achievements, 184-5; of
the East and West contrasted,
185-6, 189-93; and the natural
sciences, 193; and the Hebrew
language, 194-5; and theology,
195-
Job, the Book of, theories on the
date of, 46; the name of,
omitted in the Greek Ec-
clesiasticus, 46-7; and the cos-
mography of Ben Sira, 47;
and the Eighteen Benedic-
tions, 68; verses from, in Ec-
clesiasticus, 68; quoted, 113.
Job, epithet of, 118.
Joel, M., alluded to, 112.
Johanan ben Zakkai, and the first
chapter ofEzekiel, 123-5.
Johannine Gospel, the, as used by
Schleiermacher, 104.
Jonah, Rabbenu, epithet of, in the
Maggid Mesharim, 222..
Jose, vision of, 112-13.
Joseph, epithet of, 118.
346
INDEX
Joseph Ashkenazi, and Isaac
Loria, 257.
Joseph Caro, legist self-control of,
160-1; on the avoidance of
anger, 170; on Safed, 202;
prominent figure in Safed,
210; birth and early life of,
210-11; the first Halachic au-
thority, 211-12; works by,
211-13; the Mentor-Angel of,
213 et seq.; and Elijah, 214;
matrimonial affairs of, 215;
asceticism practiced by, 215-
16; maxims by, 216; reading
and studies, urged upon, by
the Mentor- Angel, 217; three
aspirations of, 217-21; desires
recognition as an intellectual
authority, 217-19; the son of,
217-18, 285; desires to settle
in the Holy Land, 219-20;
desires martyrdom, 220-1,
226-7; attachment of, to Solo-
mon Alkabez, 222, 22,7; at-
tachment of, to Solomon
Molko, 222, 22$-y, reasons of,
for settling in Safed, 22S,
232-2; and Jacob Berab, 233,
234; ordained elder, 234; in-
fluence of, grows, 235, 236-7;
as head of a Talmudical col-
lege, 236-7; on Moses Cor-
dovero, 240-1; alluded to, 250;
and Isaac Loria, 257, 264-5,
279; and the Cabbala, 264-5;
death of, 283; disciple of,
283.
Joseph Ilameln, father-in-law of
Cliickel, marriage of, 131;
Gliickel's veneration for, 132.
Joseph Jabez, on the Jews of
Spam, 203, 204.
Joseph Mantabia, on Safed, 206.
Joseph Nagara, scribe in Safed,
251-
Joseph de la Reina, fate of, 248.
Joseph Saragossi, a resident of
Safed. activities of, 206-7;
Talmudic college established
by, 209.
Joseph Taytasak, teacher of Solo-
mon Alkabez, 227; teacher of
Moses Alsheich, 241.
Joseph Trani, emigrates to Turkey,
28s.
Joseph Zarphathi, the Epistle of,
252.
Josephus, on the Persian-Greek
period of Jewish history, 43,
used by the higher criticism,
105.
Joshua, teacher of Aquila, 21, 22.
Joshua ben Gamala, how made
high priest, 95.
Joshua ben Hananiah, and Ben
Soma, 112.
Joshua ben Levi, and the daugh-
ter-voice, 1 14-15; and Elijah,
165-6.
Joshua ben Nun, rabbi in Safed,
284.
Joshua ben Perachyah, on friend-
ship, 93.
Joy, the place of, in the life of
the mystic, 250.
Judah Halevi, alluded to, 157,
204; and the study of the
Bible, 200.
Judaism, Aquila a proselyte to, 20,
21, 22; the state of, in the
time of Ben Sira, 58; limita-
tions ignorantly ascribed to,
148-0, 161, 186, 190; and the
ideas of the twentieth cen-
tury, 150; and the relation of
the sexes, 175-6; charged with
lack of enthusiasm, 186, 190;
English, a foreigner on, 189-
93; asceticism in, 191-2;
proper exponents of, 192; the
reformers of, 192; spirituality
in, 192-3; and learning, 196-7;
unfavourable position of,
197-9.
Judaism, post-exilic, character of,
34; the Synagogue in, 60.
INDEX
347
Jiidisch-Deutsch, language of the
Memoirs of Gliickel von Ha-
meln, 138; literature in, and
Gliickel von Hameln, 139.
Kalir, and Safed, 202.
Kaliric period, the, specimens of,
in the Genizah, 19.
Karaites, the, controversies of,
with the Rabbinites, 28.
Kaufmann, David, as editor, 126-7.
Kautzsch, chronology of the Per-
sian-Greek period by, 41.
Kaydanower. See Aaron Kay-
danower.
*' Kedushah," heading for mar-
riage laws, 176.
Kedushah, holiness, allied with
Chasiduth, 15 1-2.
See also Holiness.
Kedushath ha-Guph, holiness of
the flesh, insisted on, 283.
Kelale ha-Tahnud, by Joseph Caro,
213.
Keneseth ha-Gedolah, the, and the
dates of Ben Sira, 56.
See also Great Synagogue, the.
Keneseth Israel, the, in Rabbinic
theology, 12 1-2; and the indi-
vidual, 123-5,
See also Congregation of Israel,
the.
Kennicott, on the Septuagint, 15.
Keseph Mishneh, by Joseph Caro,
212-13.
Kethubah, the, forgotten at the
wedding of Gliickel von Ha-
meln's daughter, 137.
Kethubim, the. See Hagiographa,
the.
Kiddush, the, and Solomon Molko,
224; made by Isaac Loria,
278.
Kimchi, alluded to, 200, 261.
" Kingdom of Heaven, The," not
understood by Christian writ-
ers, 120.
Kittel, on the rise of the Canon,
43-
Korah, alluded to, 276.
Krochmal, on the Sanhedrin, 106;
a Jewish reformer, 192.
Kuenen, as a Bible critic, 40;
alluded to, 42, 200; on the
Sanhedrin, 106.
Lamb, term for the Keneseth Is-
rael, 121.
Laresa, alluded to, 206.
Lassalle, alluded to, jy.
Law, the, in the time of Ben
Sira, 58; the standard of, not
applicable to the saint, 152;
and spirituality, 187-8, 190;
the proper performance of,
191; the need of study of, 197,
200-1.
See also Bible, the; Pentateuch,
the; and Torah, the.
Leases, among the Genizah frag-
ments, 28.
Lechah Dodi, by Solomon Alka-
bez, popularity of, 228; sung
by Isaac Loria, 275.
Legal documents, in the Genizah,
Legends, regarding Aquila, 20-2;
regarding Jesus, 102; regard-
ing Solomon Molko, 224; re-
garding Isaac Loria, 252-3,
254, 256, 257; regarding Cor-
dovero, 261; regarding Jere-
miah, 277.
Leipzig, alluded to, 134.
Lemberg, alluded to, 132.
Letters, among the Genizah frag-
ments, 28.
Levi ben (Aben) Chabib, on the
leadership of Safed, 230; op-
ponent of Jacob Berab, in the
Ordination controversy, 234.
Levitical Code, the, binding in the
time of Ben Sira, 64.
See also Priestly Code, the.
348
INDEX
Leviticus, the Book of, value of,
for children, i6; a passage in,
interpreted, ii6; quoted, 270,
272,-
Levy, Cerf. See Cerf Levy.
Lewis-Gibson collection of frag-
ments, the, and Ecclesiasticus,
10, 45-
Lewis, Mrs. See Lewis-Gibson
collection, the.
Liars, excluded from the Divine
Presence, 238.
See also Lying.
Liddon, alluded to, 187.
Lieria. See Moses of Lieria.
Lightfoot, and the Talmud, 103.
Likl'ute Shoslianim, manuscript in
Columbia University, 289.
Lily, the, used allegorically in
Rabbinic literature, 108.
Lincoln, Abraham, on the sin of
Slavery, 157.
" Lion-Whelps, The," the follow-
ers of Isaac Loria, 266.
Lisbon, alluded to, 223.
Literature, Hebrew, a Testament,
3^-2.
" Little Book of Saints," quoted,
174.
Liturgical elements in Ecclesiasti-
cus, 50, 51.
Liturgy, a, created by the Syna-
gogue, 67; for midnight, 156.
Liturgy, the fragments of, in the
Genizah, 9, 10, 12, 18-19,
25-6; palimpsests, 18-19; sim-
ilarity of, to Ecclesiasticus,
26; confession of sins in, 157.
See also Paitanim; Piyutim;
and Prayer.
Lives, The, by Plutarch, cited, 20.
Loanz. See Elijah Loanz.
Lob Bon, brother-in-law of Gliick-
el von Hameln, 133.
Lob Pinkerle, father of Gliickel
von Hameln, 127; provides for
the victims of Chmielnicki,
130; informed against, 130-1.
" Lord's Prayer," the, parallel to,
in the Talmud, 120.
Loria, Isaac. See Isaac Loria.
Lorraine, alluded to, 145.
Love, the antidote to all unsocial
qualities, 168-71; the vocabu-
lary of, applied to the relation
of man to God, 176.
Luzzatto, Moses Chayim, books
by, 281-2.
Luzatto, Samuel David, as a Bible
critic, 44; and the study of
the Bible, 200.
Lydda, alluded to, 165.
Lying, classified, 165.
See also Liars.
MacAlister, Dr. Donald, alluded
to, 3.
Maccabaean Psalms, the, the num-
ber of, doubtful, 42; lan-
guage of, 44; hypothesis of,
not endorsed by the original
Ecclesiasticus, 46, 47-8; scep-
ticism as to the hypothesis of,
S6.
See also Psalms, the.
Maccabaeans, the, the rise of,
after Ben Sira, 55.
Maccabees, the. Second Book of,
cited, 65.
Maggid, the, of Joseph Caro. See
Mentor-Angel, the, of Joseph
Caro.
Maggid, the, of Solomon Molko,
224.
Maggid Mesharim, the, by Joseph
Caro, 213; diary of spiritual
experiences, 214; non-legal
nature of, 214-15; names oc-
curring in, 221-2.
Magi, the, story of, as viewed by
the Rabbinic student, 107.
Maimonides, alluded to, 28; on
marriage laws, 176; and the
study of the Bible, 200; Jo-
seph Caro commentator on
the works of, 212-13; epithet
INDEX
349
o£. in the Maggid Meshariin,
222.
Maimonides controversy, a docu-
ment on the, and Safed, 206.
Makreese, on Cairo, 5.
Malache ha-Shareth, the, 124.
Man, in the Cabbala, 261-3, 268-9,
281; the Original, 262.
Manasseh, repentant, 11 5- 16.
Manoth ha-Levi, by Solomon
Alkabez, 227-8.
Mantabia. See Joseph Mantabia.
Mantino. See Jacob Mantino.
Mantua, Solomon Molko dies at,
225.
Manuscripts in a Genizah, 6-7, 11.
Maratta bath Boethus, heiress, 95.
Marcion, epithet applied to
Schleiermacher, 104; alluded
to, 159-
Marquardt, alluded to, 86.
Marrano, a, the education of, 223;
and the Cabbalah, 254.
Marriage, Ben Sira on, 96, 98; the
Rabbis on, 96.
See also Bachelors; and Celi-
bacy.
Marriage contracts, in the Geni-
zah, II.
Marriage laws, Maimonides on,
176.
Marseillaise, applied to a Piyut,
19.
Martineau, quoted, 183.
Martyrdom, and saintliness, 178;
of the Jewesses in Spain, 203;
desired by Joseph Caro,
220-1; of Solomon Molko in-
fluences Joseph Caro, 226-7;
benediction preceding, 226-7.
Marx, Karl, alluded to, yy.
Massoretic notes on Bible frag-
ments in the Genizah, 13.
Massoretic text of the Bible, the,
dread of partiality for, :i7.
Matthew, the Gospel of, compared
with Rabbinic literature, 107-
10; quoted, 123.
Maurice of Nassau, at the wed-
ding of Gliickel von Hameln's
daughter, 137.
Meal-offering, the, indispensable
in the time of Ben Sira, 64.
Meat, at dinners in Jerusalem,
86, 87.
Mechilta, and the study of the
Bible, 200.
Medical profession, the, in the
time of Ben Sira, 72, 75-7.
Meir, See Ben Meir.
Memoir en der Gliickel von Ha-
meln, edited by Kaufmann,
126-7; character and contents
of, 127-8, 137; language of,
138; opening words of, 139;
how preserved, 146-7.
" Men of the Station," and fast-
ing, 161.
Menahem Azariah, on Moses Cor-
dovero's fertility as an au
thor, 240; on Cordovero's sys-
tem, 260-1.
Mentor-Angel, the, of Joseph
Caro, advises him to leave
Nicopolis, 210; and the Mish-
nah, 213; the voice of, 213-
14; reproves Joseph Caro,
214, 216; control exercised
by, 215; exacting demands by,
215-16; instructions by, 216;
reading and studies recom-
mended by, 217; tenderness
of, 217; promises by, to Jo-
seph Caro, 217-21; pedagog-
ical tactics of, 218-19, 221;
and sojourn in the Holy
Land, 219-20; and Solomon
Molko, 225-6, 233; on Joseph
Caro's dwelling-place, 232-3;
and Ordination, 234-5; on Jo-
seph Caro's social work, 235;
on the Sabbath meals, 248.
See also Mishnah, the.
Menu of a dinner in Jerusalem,
86.
350
INDEX
Messiah, the, the star of, 107;
creation of the Spirit of, 121.
See also Messiah, the, the ad-
vent of.
Messiah, the, the advent of, pray-
ed for in the time of Ben
Sira, 51; preached by Solo-
mon Molko, 224, 225; dis-
cussed by the society Tent of
Peace, 244; Joseph de la
Reina on, 248; and the trans-
migration of souls, 276.
Messianic belief, the, in Ecclesias-
ticus, 50-1.
Metaphors, Biblical, in the Cab-
bala, 262-3.
Metempsychosis, Isaac Loria to re-
deem souls from, 253; in
Isaac Loria's system, 270,
275-7-
Metz, in the Memoirs of Gliickel
von Hameln, 128; home of
Gliickel von Ilameln, 145-6.
Midnight, a time for prayer,
155-6; order of prayers for,
156-7; the confession of sins
at, 157.
Midrash, the, quoted, 118, 169.
Midrash RabbaJi, the, commentary
on, 241.
Midrashim, the, fragments of, in
the Genizah, 10, 12; miracles
in, 122-3.
Mighty One of Jacob, in Ec-
clesiasticus, 67.
Mikweh of Israel, explained, iio.
Military class, a, in the time of
Ben Sira, 72-2,.
Milton, alluded to, 35.
Minchah services attended by
business men in Hamburg,
13s.
Miracles, place of, in the spiritual
history of the Jews, 122-5.
Mishnah, the, the language of,
44; as Caro's Mentor- Angel,
161, 213; Caro's fondness for.
213; Caro's visions of, 213-
14.
See also Mentor-Angel, the, of
Joseph Caro,
Mislineh Torah, by Maimonides,
commentary on, 213.
Misod, humility of, 209.
]\Iission, a Jewish, 184-7.
IMissionaries, characteristics of,
184, 186.
Mitzwah, a, the proper perform-
ance of, 191.
Mocatti, a Sephardic merchant.
137-
Modesty, Ben Sira on, 91.
Mohammedan countries, migration
of Jews to, 251-2.
Mohammedans, the, relation of,
to the Jews of the Holy Land,
207.
Monday, a fast, 162.
Moral precepts, composed by
Moses Cordovero, for the As-
sociates, 238-9; composed by
Solomon Alkabez, 239; ob-
served by the saints of Safed,
289, 292-301.
Morality, and spirituality, 187.
Mordecai Francis, tax-farmer,
uncle of Isaac Loria 253,
254-5, 268.
Moriscos, the, in Safed, 230.
IMosaic persuasion, the, and na-
tionality, 182-3.
Moses, and the authorship of the
Torah, 39; alluded to, 276.
Moses Alsheich, book by, printed
in Safed, 231; disciple of Jo-
seph Caro, 237, 241; as a
scholar, 241; alluded to, 250;
and Samuel ben Nachmani,
277.
Moses Cordovero, Cabbalist, a dis-
ciple of, 208, 278; brother-in-
law of Solomon Alkabez, 227,
237; disciple of Joseph Caro,
237; as Talmudist, 237; and
Solomon Alkabez, 237, 239-40;
INDEX
351
moral precepts composed by,
238-9, 248, 289; chief work
of, 240; other works of, 240;
eulogies on, 240-1; alluded to,
250; and Isaac Loria, 257-8,
261, 264; on the first im-
manations, 259; and the sys-
tem of Zimsum, 260-1; rever-
ence for, 265; the disciples
of, and Isaac Loria, 266.
Moses Galanti, disciple of Joseph
Caro, 283, 284.
Moses of Hameln, grandson of
Gliickel, 146.
Moses ben Joseph Trani, Rabbi
at Safed, 235-7; ordained an
elder, 235; devotion of, to
Jacob Berab, 235; works of,
235; a specialist on real estate
quotations, 236; differs with
Joseph Caro, 236; alluded to,
250; death of, 283; son of,
283, 285.
Moses ben Judah, signs a docu-
ment in the Maimonides con-
troversy, 206.
Moses of Lieria, precepts by, 289.
Mother, term for the Kcnesefh
Israel, 121.
Mourning, the period of, loi.
Music, at a banquet in the time of
Ben Sira, 88, 90.
Mystical works, in the Genizah,
Mystics, Jewish, on the Law and
love, 190; on the world and
God, 259.
Mysticism, and saintliness, 149,
177-8.
Nachmani. Sec Samuel ben Nach-
mani.
Nachmanides, and the dietary
laws, 160; on the relation of
the sexes, 176; and the study
of the Bible, 200.
Nagara, See Israel Nagara; and
Joseph Nagara.
Naphtali, Safed in the allotment
of the tribe of, 202.
Nasi, the, officer of the Sanhe-
drin, 105.
Nathan Nata, on the sinfulness
of the Jews, 204.
Nationality, and the Jewish per-
suasion, 182-3; Jews begging
for a, 183-4.
Natural sciences, the, and the
Jews, 193-
Naumann, on Ben Sira, 77.
Nazarite vow, the, Ben Sira on,
90; inferences from, 161.
" Needs of the Congregation," so-
cial work, 235.
Nehemiah, the Book of, on the
portions of the Levites, 74;
and social evils, 78-9.
Nephesh ha-Chayim, spirituality
displayed in, 192-3.
Neue Kircliliche Zeitschrift, al-
luded to, 77.
Newman, alluded to, 187.
New-Hebrew, language of Eccle-
siasticus, 44, 47.
New Moon, the, additional service
on the eve of, in Safed;
243-4; a holiday, 249.
New Testament, the, cited, 38;
the Talmud important in the
study of, 103; used by the
higher criticism, 105; com-
pared with Rabbinic homilies,
106 et scq.; Rabbinic phrase-
ology in, 117; relation of, to
the Old Testament, 201.
New Year's Day, the third Bene-
diction for, 67-8.
Nicopolis, Joseph Caro in, 210;
alluded, to, 220, 226.
Nineteenth century, the, ideas of,
149-50.
Nowack, on social problems in Is-
rael, 78.
352
INDEX
Numbers, the Book of, a passage
in, used homiletically, 107;
a passage in, interpreted, 118.
Nursing, taught to girls, 98.
Oaths, a Midrash on, 118; Moses
Cordovero on, 238.
Obadiah of Bertinoro, on the Jews
of Safed, 207-8.
Oil, produced near Safed, 230; ex-
ported from Safed, 230.
Old Testament, the, relation of,
to the New Testament, 201;
finality of, 201.
See also Bible, the.
Olives, the Mount of, meetings of
pilgrims on, 205.
" One Hundred and Thirty-Eight
Doors of Wisdom," by Moses
Chayim Luzzatto, 281.
Oral Law, the, codified in the
Beth Joseph, 211.
See also Talmud, the.
" Order of Prayers for Midnight,
The," 156.
Ordinances of Ezra, the, and the
dates of Ben Sira, 56.
" Ordination," attempts to re-in-
troduce, 233-5; full meaning
of, 233-4; importance of, 234.
Origen, and Aquila's Greek ver-
sion of the Bible, 24-5.
Original sin, the doctrine of, in
Ecclesiasticus, 69.
Orphans, treatment of, in Safed,
247.
Oxford, fragments of Ecclesiasti-
cus at, ID.
Paitanim, the religious value of
the work of, 18-19.
See also Liturgy, the.
Palestine, the Loria family in,
251.
See also Holy Land, the.
Palimpsests, among the Genizah
fragments, 17-18, 25.
" Paradise Lost," alluded to, 35.
Pardes, the, a Cabbalistic work,
by Moses Cordovero, 240;
and Zimzum, 260.
Parnas, of Hamburg, 127, 130-1;
of Hessen, 131, 132; in the
Cologne province, 133; of
Metz, 145, 146.
Parziiphim, dwelt upon by Isaac
Loria, 261; defined, 261.
Pascal, alluded to, 178.
Passover, the, special prayers for,
in Safed, 244.
" Path of the Upright, The," by
Moses Chayim Luzzatto,
281-2.
Pathological interest attached to
Safed, 247.
Pedigree, Ben Sira on, 96.
Penance, and repentance, 246.
Penitential Days, the, as viewed
by the saint, 159.
Penitents, the Society of, de-
scribed, 245, 249.
Pensees, by Pascal, alluded to,
178.
Pentateuch, the, disposition of
worn-out copies of, i ; colo-
phons to manuscripts of, 16,
17; criticism of, 33-4; the
revelation of God to man,
154-
See also Bible, the; Law, the;
Torah, the.
Pepys, the diary of, alluded to,
84.
Perles, Dr. Felix, on trellis-writ-
ing, 15.
Persecutions, and the Jewish
genius, 185.
Persian influence in Ecclesiasticus,
51-3-
Persian-Greek period, the, of Jew-
ish history, a document of, 26;
according to modern Bible
critics, 41, 42, 43.
Pesikta, the, and the study of
the Bible, 200.
INDEX
353
Petra, in the New Testament and
in Rabbinic literature, 1 18-19.
Petulance, impairs the relation be-
tween man and his fellow,
166.
Pharchi, traveller, explores the
Holy Land, 205, 206.
Pharez Colobi, head of the Safed
community, a merchant, 208.
Pharisaic Schools, the, and the
doctrine of immortality, 70.
Philo, alluded to, 4.
Philosophical works, in the Geni-
zah, II, 12.
Phinehas ben Jair, on purification,
iio-ii; the reincarnation of,
277-8.
Physiognomy, Isaac Loria an
adept in, 265.
Physiology, studied by the Rabbis,
76.
Pilgrimages, to the Holy Land,
205.
Pires, Diogo, Marrano name of
Solomon Molko, 223.
Pirke Aboth, quoted, 12, 30, 107;
a commentary on, 250.
Piyutim, of the Kaliric period,
19; palimpsests, 25.
See also Liturgy, the; and
Paitanim.
" Pleasures of Faith," by Ruskin,
quoted, 177.
Plutarch, cited, 20.
Pocock, and the Talmud, 103.
Poland, the Jews of, victims of
Chmielnicki, 129-30; a centre
for Jewish studies, 132; the
Loria family in, 251.
Polish Jews, as reformers, 192.
Political distinctions, value of, to
the Jews, 197.
Politics, the, of Ben Sira, 83.
Porta Mosis, by Pocock, and the
Talmud, 103.
Portugal, the exiles from, in the
Holy Land, 203, 228-30; al-
luded to, 222.
Post-Biblical literature, the study
of. 197; Judaism and Chris-
tian scholars, 201.
See also Talmud, the.
Potters, among the Jews in the
time of Ben Sira, 71.
Poverty, Ben Sira's view on, 82.
Power, desire for, impairs the re-'
lation of man and his fellow,
166.
Prayer, the revelation of man to
God, 9, 154; in the Syna-
gogue, 66-8; nature of, 66;
and the artisan, 70; the place
of, among the Jews, 120-1;
and saintliness, 154-7; thanks-
giving for, 155; by God, 155;
favourable time for, 155-6;
must be universal, 171; the
place of, in Safed, 242-3;
and charity, 246-7; in the
system of Isaac Loria, 270-1.
See also Liturgy, the.
Prayer-Book, the, fragments of, in
the Genizah, 10.
See also Liturgy, the.
Prescriptions, medical, in the
Genizah,! i.
" President " of the Sanhedrin, a
proselyte, 64.
See also Nasi, the.
Pride, impairs the relation be-
tween man and his fellow,
166; the source of all evils,
167-8.
Priesthood, the crown of the, 64.
*' Priestly Code," the, expounded
by Ezekiel, 36; supposed evil
effects of, 71.
See also Levitical Code, the.
Priests, the, admired by Ben Sira
65; traitors, 65-6; and the die
tary laws, 70; revenues of
73-5; desperate position of,
75; as tax-farmers, 79.
Printers, in demand in Safed, 231
Privatleben der Romer, by Mar
quardt, alluded to, 86.
354
INDEX
Products of the neighbourhood of
Safed, 230.
Professions, the, in the time of
Ben Sira, "jz.
Property, sacredness of, held by
Ben Sira, 80-1.
Prophets, the, value of Lives and
Times of, 37; Ben Sira's faith
in, 51; admired in the time
of Ben Sira, 69.
Prophets, the Books of the, colo-
phons to manuscripts of, 16;
the Canon of, formed in the
time of Ben Sira, 58; the rev-
elation of God to man, 154.
Propositions, the, and the Cab-
balists, 280-1.
Proverb, a Jewish, 93.
Proverbs, the Book or, written in
two columns, 26; a model for
Ecclesiasticus, 47, 57; on cor-
poral punishment, 97; quot-
ed, 151, 237.
Psalms, the, quoted, 24, 59, 153-4,
156, 161, 179, 247, 279; used
as a hymn-book, 34; inter-
pret Isaiah, 36; interpret
Deuteronomy, t,-j; the author-
ship of, 39; date of, 42;
known to Ben Sira, 47-8; and
the dates of Ben Sira, 55-6;
a model for Ecclesiasticus,
48-9, 50, 58; verses from, in
Ecclesiasticus, 68; passages in,
interpreted, 108, 1 16-17, 122;
the revelation of man to God,
154; testify to enthusiasm in
Judaism, 186.
See also Maccabaean Psalms,
the.
Psalter, the. See Psalms, the.
Pseudo-Messianic movements, ex-
cesses of, 281, 285.
Ptolemaic armies, the, Jews in,
72.
Punctuation, system of, in Geni-
zah fragments, 10, 13.
Purification, Phinehas ben Jair
on, no.
Pusey, Dr., alluded to, 32-
Rabbi, how the title was used,
232.
" Rabbi, a Christian," in the syna-
gogues of Hamburg, 129.
Rabbi, an ancient, quoted, 153,
154-
See also Rabbis, the.
Rabbinic literature, on gaiety, 91;
on charitableness, 94; on vis-
iting the sick, 99; in the time
of Jesus, 102; view of some
Christian scholars on, 104-6;
compared with the New Testa-
ment, 106 et seq.; studied by
Christians, 125.
See also Rabbis, the; and Tal-
mud, the.
Rabbinic phraseology, in the New
Testament, 117.
Rabbinism, in the time of Ben
Sira, 58.
Rabbinites, the, controversies of,
with the Karaites, 28.
Rabbis, the, on Aquila's Greek
version of the Bible, 24; and
the Temple, 63 • on trades and
vocations, yz; and medical
studies, 76; on friendship, 93;
on marriage, 96; on pedigree,
96; on the education of chil-
dren, 96; on the period of
mourning, loi; and the daugh-
ter-voice, 116; interpretations
of, 1 16-18; on the privilege of
prayer, 155; and regard for
truth, 164; on the limits of
almsgiving, 172; on the cause
of defilement, 190; on the
value of study, 196; on the
redemption of Israel, 199; on
the Torah, 200.
5"^^ also Rabbinic literature;
and Talmud, the.
INDEX
355
Reade, Charles, alluded to, 222.
•■ Reader without Tears," 16.
Real estate, Moses ben Joseph
Trani a specialist on the law
of, 236.
Redemption, the, of Israel, and
prayer, 271.
Religion, and the European genius,
183-4.
Religion, the, of Ben Sira, 83.
Renaissance, the, defined, 199.
Renan, quoted, 102.
" Renewed world," not understood
by Christian writers, 121.
Repentance, and baptism, 109; the
saving power of, 1 15-16; de-
fined, 246.
Reshith Chochmah, by Elijah de
Vidas, 278-9.
Responsa, by Joseph Caro, 213,
264; by Jacob Berab, 233;
by Moses ben Joseph Trani,
235; by Moses Cordovero,
237; by Moses Alsheich, 241;
by Safed authorities, 283-4;
Resurrection, the doctrine of, in
the time of Ben Sira, 68-9.
Reubeni. Sec David Reubeni.
Reuchlin, and the Talmud, 103.
Revelation, place of the daughter-
voice in, 1 13.
Reward and punishment, a Jewish
doctrine, 142.
Rock, epithet of Abraham, 11 8- 19.
Rock of Isaac, the, in Ecclesiasti-
cus, 67.
Rome, Solomon Molko, in, 224-5.
Rosh. See Asher.
Royalty, the crown of, 64.
Ruler of the feast, the, functions
of, 85 ; honor paid to, 88.
Ruskin, quoted, 177; alluded to,
200.
Russian Jews, as reformers, 192.
Ruth, the Book of, date of, doubt-
ful, 42.
Saadya, alluded to, 28; contro-
versy of, with Ben Meir, 29;
and Ecclesiasticus, 45.
Sabbatai Horwitz, Cabbalist, and
Moses Cordovero, 260.
Sabbatai Zebi, Pseudo-Messiah,
Gliickel von Hameln on,
135-6; alluded to, 281.
Sabbath, the, the observance of, in
the time of Ben Sira, 70; as
viewed by the saint, 158; the
mate of Israel, 158; no fast-
ing on, 162; the reception of,
216, 228, 239, 243; a day of
joy, 248-9; society for cele-
brating the end of, 249; cele-
bration of, by Isaac Loria,
275-8.
Sabbatical year, the, different
views on, 2360
" Sacred Letter, The," by Nach-
manides, on the relation of
the sexes, 176.
Safed, situation of, 202; in Jew-
ish literature, 202, 206; emi-
gration to, 206; in the four-
teenth and the fifteenth cen-
tury, 206; elements of the
population in, 207; why pre-
ferred to Jerusalem, 207-9;
simple life in, 208; humility
of the scholars of, 208-9;
synagogues in, 209, 228, 229,
230, 284; growth of, 209,
228-9; the great men of, 210-
1 1 ; Solomon Molko visits,
224; at the time of Joseph
Caro, 228-33; the Sephardim
in, 229-30; various nationali-
ties in, 229-30; general meet-
ing house in, 229-30; trades
and occupations in, 230-31,
27^; products of neighbour-
hood of, 230; i>rosperity in,
231; the spiritual and intel-
lectual life in, 231-3, 242 et
scq,, 250; worship in, 242-4;
356
INDEX
intellectual opportunities in,
250-1; at its zenith, 251; Isaac
Loria comes to, 256; Chayim
Vital comes to, 266-7; the as-
cetic influence of, 282-3; de-
cline of, 283-s; a list of the
saints of, 302-6.
Sages, the. See Scribes, the
Sagis. See Solomon Sagis.
Saint, the, in the world to come,
88; Hebrew equivalent for,
151; individualism of, 152,
159, 160; longing of, for
prayer, 154-7; and the Sab-
bath, 158; and the festivals,
158; and the Penitential
Days, 159; self-control of,
159-61; and asceticism, 161-3;
and regard for the truth,
163-4; and the laws of con-
duct, 165-70; and injury to
his neighbour, 165-6; and hu-
mility, 167-70; and love of
neighbour, 170-1; and zeal for
the faith, 171; and almsgiv-
ing, 171-4; and dumb beasts,
174-5; and marriage, 176-7;
and mysticism, 177-8; and sin,
178-80; and grace, 179, 180-1;
and death, 181; defined by
mystics, 181.
See also Safed; and Saintliness.
St. Francis, of Assisi, and Se-
mitic religion, 184.
St. Jerome. See Jerome.
St. Michaels, Coptic church, a
synagogue, 5.
St. Paul, alluded to, 159. •
St. Peter's church at Rome, al-
luded to, 63.
Saintliness, and mysticism, 149;
Hebrew equivalent for, 151;
allied with holiness, 151-2;
defined by Jewish writers,
152; a subjective quality, 153;
communion with the Divine,
153-4; and prayer, 154-7.
Sec also Saint, the.
Saints, organisations of, among
Jews, 153.
Saints, the. See Assidaeans, the;
and Chasidim, the.
Salonica, alluded to, 220, 225,
227.
Sambari, chronicler, in Cairo, 5;
on Isaac Loria and Moses Cor-
dovero, 257.
Samson Bak, traveller, in Safed,
283.
Samuel, the First Book of, quoted,
191.
Samuel ben Nachmani, Agadist,
and Moses Alsheich, 277.
Samuel ben Shimshon, on Safed,
206.
Samuel de Useda, commentator on
Pirke Aboth, 250; reincarna-
tion of Phinehas ben Jair,
277-8.
Samuel Usque, on the Holy Land,
202-3.
" Sanctification of the name of
God," not understood by
Christian writers, 120; and
martyrdom, 203; by Joseph
Caro, 220-1.
Sanhedrin, the, offices of, held by
proselytes, 64; the constitu-
tion of, 105-6; at Jabneh, 124;
attempt to re-establish, 233-4.
Saragossi. See Joseph Saragossi.
Satan, pursues David, 111-12.
Saul, and the daughter-voice, 114.
Sayings of the Jewish Fathers.
See Pirke Aboth.
Scholastic profession, the, in the
time of Ben Sira, 72, yz-
Shechinah, the. See Divine Pres-
ence, the.
Schleiermacher, alluded to, 35;
and the Talmud, 104.
Schiirer, the value of the history
by, 119-20.
Schwab, Esther, daughter of
Gliickel von Hameln, 145; vir-
tues of, 146.
INDEX
357
Schwab. See Jachet-Agathe
Schwab,
Scoffers, exchided from the Divine
Presence, 238.
Scott, Sir Walter, alluded to, 222.
Scribes, the, the teachers, 62; as-
cendency of, 65; ordinances
of, 70.
See also Ezra the Scribe.
Scriptures, the. See Bible, the.
Sects, Jewish, writings of, in the
Genizah, 13.
Selden, and the Talmud, 103.
Select Discourses, by John Smith,
and the Rabbis, 103.
Self-assertion, impairs the relation
of man and his fellow, 166.
Self-consciousness, lack of, among
Jews, 183-4, 185, 199-200; how
strengthened, 199.
Semichah. See " Ordination."
Senior. See Shneor Zalman.
Sephardim, the, and Sabbatai Zebi,
135; of Amsterdam at the
wedding of Gliickel von Ha-
meln's daughter, 137; in
Safed, 229-30.
See also under Portugal, and
Spain.
Sepher Charedim, by Eliezer Az-
kari, 244.
Sepher ha-Zohar. See Zohar, the.
Sephiroth. See Emanations.
Septuagint, the, excessively es-
teemed, 4; misreadings of, ac-
counted for, 15; compared
with Aquila's version of the
Bible, 2s; inaccuracies in,
23-4-
Sermon on the Mount, the, com-
mentary on, 36; Rabbinic
phraseology in, 117.
Servants, not in demand in Safed,
208, 231.
Sexes, the relation of the, as
viewed by Judaism, 175-7; i"
the Reshith Chochmah, 279.
Shammai, the doctrine of immor-
tality in the time of, 70.
Sharp, Becky, alluded to, 187.
Shem Tob Ibn Gaon, migrates to
Safed, 206.
Shema, the, Joseph Caro on, 216.
Shemariah, a proselyte, holds a
high office in the Sanhedrin,
64.^
Shemariah ben Elhanan, letter ad-
dressed to, 29.
Shepha Tal, Cabbalistic book, by
Sabbatai Horwitz, 260.
Sherira, alluded to, 28.
Shield of Abraham, the, in Ec-
clesiasticus, 67.
Shittah Mekuhezeth, by Bezaleel
Ashkenazi, 253.
Shlomel of Moravia, on the resi-
dents of Safed, 208; on edu-
cational facilities in Safed,
209; on Safed, 231-2; on the
relation between Isaac Loria
and Joseph Caro, 264.
Shmuel, brother-in-law of Gliickel
von Hameln, 132, 133; Chief
Rabbi of Hildesheim, 133.
Shneor Zalman, on charity in a
time of distress, 172-3; suc-
cessor to, 174.
Shulamith, alluded to, 56.
Shulchan Aruch, the, alluded to,
170; value of, as a code, 211-
12.
Shulem, Chief Rabbi of Lemberg,
connected with the Hameln
family, 132.
Sicily, alluded to, 206.
Sick, visits to the, 99-100.
Sidgwick, Professor, alluded to, 3.
Sidon, alluded to, 206.
Siloam inscription, the, referred
to, 25.
Simon the Just, son of Johanan,
high priest, extolled by Ben
Sira, 50; described by Ben
Sira, 60-1, 62; and the vows
of a Nazarite, 90.
358
INDEX
Simon ben Shetach, and the Tem-
ple, 63.
Simon 'oen Yochai, an exponent of
Judaism, 192; reputed author
of the Zohar, 255; on Biblical
metaphors, 263; compared
with Isaac Loria, 265 ; Isaac
Loria the reincarnation of,
277-
Sin, the Hebrew term for, no;
the consciousness of, and
saintliness, 178-80; Joseph
Caro on, 216; the sense of,
displayed by Jewish writers,
203-4; disfigures the face of
man, 274.
See also Sins, the confession of.
Sin offering, the, indispensable in
the time of Ben Sira, 64.
Sinope, birthplace of Aquila, 20.
Sins, the confession of, before
death, 100; in the Jewish lit-
urgy, 157; in the Safed order
of service, 242; by members
of societies, 244-5; by Isaac
Loria, 270.
See also Sin.
Siphre, and the study of the Bible,
200.
Sirach. See Ecclesiasticus.
Sister, term for the Kcncsetli Is-
rael, 121.
Slander, classified, 165.
Slavery, Lincoln on the sin of,
157-
Sleep, indulgence in, forbidden to
Joseph Caro, by his Mentor-
Angel, 216.
Smith, John, and the Rabbis, 103.
Smiths, in demand in Safed, 230.
Smyrna, alluded to, 135.
Social conditions in the time of
Ben Sira, 77-9.
Social problems in Israel, 78-9.
Social reforms, Ben Sira on, 79,
80, 83,
Societies in Safed, 244-6.
Socrates, alluded to, 192.
Solomon, relation of, to Ecclesias-
tes, 39; the daughter-voice in-
tercedes for, 113.
Solomon, the father of Isaac
Loria, 253.
Solomon Halevi Alkabez, and
Caro's Mentor-Angel, 213-14,
219-20; referred to in the
Maggid Mesharim, 222; data
of the early life of, 227;
books and poems by, 227-8;
and Joseph Caro's Mentor-
Angel, 233; and Moses Cor-
dovero, 237, 239-40; and Jos-
seph Caro, 237-8; presides
over the Associates, 238, 239;
precepts drawn up by, 239;
alluded to, 250.
Solomon Molko, frequent refer-
ence to, in the Maggid Me-
sharim, 222; as the subject of
an historical novel, 222; early
life of, 222- s; and David
Reubeni, 223; visions of,
223-4; ii^ Palestine, 224; in
Italy, 224-s; as Messiah ben
Joseph, 225; betrayed, 225;
death of, 225; influence of, on
Joseph Caro, 225-6.
Solomon Sagis, humility of, 208-9;
alluded to, 250.
Son, term for the Kenescth Israel,
Song of Songs, the, date of,
doubtful, 42; the interpreta-
tion of passages in, 107-8;
allegory of the relation of
God and Israel, 176-7; testifies
to enthusiasm in Judaism, 186.
Spain, Rabbis from, go to the
Holy Land, 205; the exiles
from, in the Holy Land, 203,
206, 228-30; the Jews of, re-
proved, 203-4; iri Adrianople,
210.
Spanish, used in Safed, 229.
Speech, Ben Sira on the evils of,
92-3-
INDEX
359
Spinning, taught to girls, 98.
Spinoza, and persecutions, 185.
Spirituality, defined, 187-8; in
Judaism, 192-3.
See also Saint, the; and Saint-
liness.
Stade, alluded to, 200.
Stadthagen, home of Joseph Ha-
meln, 131.
" Stevenson, Robert Louis, The
Letters of," quoted, 182.
Strack, alluded to, 33.
Strengths, the second of the Eigh-
teen Benedictions, 67, 68.
Succath Shalom. See Tent of
Peace, the society of.
Swearing. Sec Oaths.
Synagogue, the, in post-exilic
Judaism, 60; teaching the
function of, 62, 63, 66; rela-
tion of, to the Temple, 63-4,
70; designations of, 63; func-
tions of, 63-4, 66; democratic
constitution of, 64; as a re-
ligious factor in the time of
Ben Sira, 64-5; prayer the
function of, 66-8; and the
home, 70.
Synagogue, tiie Great. See Kenc-
seth ha-Gedolah; and Great
Synagogue, the.
Synagogues in Safed, 209, 228,
229, 230, 284.
Synoptic Gospels, the, and Schlei-
ermacher, 104.
Syriac, Palestinian, — Hebrew pa-
limpsests, 18.
Tabernacles, the Feast of, a time
of pilgrimages, 205; special
prayers for, in Safed, 244.
Taharah, the, of Jesus, iio-ii.
Tailors, in demand in Safed, 230.
Tale-bearers, excluded from the
Divine Presence, 238.
Talmud, the, fragments of, in the
Genizah, 10, 12, 27-8; com-
mentaries on, in the Genizah,
10; quotations from Ben Sira
in, 44; lost book mentioned in,
S3; and the dates of Ben Sira,
56; a secondary source on
Ben Sira, 56; on the order of
the table, 86; quoted, 87, 109;
a story from, on the effect of
wine, 90; on visiting the sick,
99-100; important in the study
of the Bible, 103; and Chris-
tian scholars, 103-4; and
Schleiermacher, 104; and the
higher criticism, 105-6; par-
allel to the " Lord's Prayer "
in, 120; miracles in, 122; and
the laws of conduct, 165; and
Safed, 202; methodology of,
213; taught to Marranos, 223;
commentary on, by Jacob
Berab, 233; on man as creator
of the world, 268-9.
Sec also Babylonian Talmud,
the; Jerusalem Talmud, the:
Law, the; Oral Law, the;
Rabbis, the; and Rabbinical
literature, the.
Talmudic Colleges, new light on
the rise of, 29; at Safed, 209,
229, 235, 236-7, 2Z7, 241, 285;
at Adrianople, 211.
Tanners, in demand in Safed, 230.
Tax-farmers, priests act as, 79.
Taxes, on immigrant Jews, in
Jerusalem, 207.
Taylor, Dr. C, patron of Hebrew
literature, 3-4; editor of
Aquila fragments, 25 ; and
Rabbinic studies, 104.
Taytasak. See Joseph Taytasak.
Teachers, not in demand in
Safed, 231.
Temperance, urged by Ben Sira,
87.
Temple, the, in the time of Ben
Sira, 60-2; the service in,
61-2; relation of, to the Syna-
36o
INDEX
gogue, 63-4, 70; a synagogue
within the precincts of, 63;
and the Rabbis, 63; aristocra-
tic constitution of, 64; de-
spised by the priests, 65;
lucrative offices in, 74-5.
Ten Tribes, the, ambassador of,
223.
Tent of Peace, the society of, de-
scribed, 244-5.
Tennyson, alluded to, 36, 200.
Terumah, the, chief revenue of
the priests, 73-4; enjoyment
of, limited, 74.
Tetragrammaton, the, on the
Aquila fragments, 25.
Theodicy, a, in the memoirs of
Gliickel von Hameln, 139-40.
Theological controversies, 34-5.
Theology, in Biblical exegesis,
32-4; in the time of Ben Sira,
69; the Keneseth Israel in the
Rabbinic, 12 1-2; not studied
by Jews, 195; and the Jewish
clergy, 195-7.
Thursday, a fast, 162; a special
day of devotion, 284.
Toasts, in Jewish antiquity, 87.
Tobiades, the, traitorous priests,
65.
Torah, the original meaning of,
32.
Torah, the, the revelation of God
to man, 9; authorship of, 39.
See also Pentateuch, the.
Torah, the, Ben Sira on, 59-60;
the crown of, 64; and handi-
crafts, 79-80; as interpreted
by Catholic Israel, 116; stud-
ied by business men in Ham-
burg, 135; the spread of, one
of Joseph Caro's aspirations,
218-19.
See also Oral Law, the; Rabbis,
the; Rabbinic literature; Tal-
mud the.
Torrutiel, alluded to, 204.
Trades, Jews urged to engage in.
174; pursued in Safed, 230-1.
See also Artisan; and Handi-
crafts.
Trading, by residents of Safed,
230.
See also Commercial classes,
the.
Tx-adition, the validity of, 39, 41,
43. 53; and the early history
of Israel, 41; and the dates
of Ben Sira, 55-6.
Trani. See Joseph Trani; and
Moses ben Joseph Trani.
Translations, proper use to be
made of, 37-8.
Transmigration of souls. See
Metempsychosis.
Trellis-writing, exemplified in the
Genizah fragments, 15.
Truth speaking, and saintliness,
163-4.
Tiirim. See Arba Ttirini.
Turkey, a refuge for Jews, 205,
252; the Jews of, support
schools in Safed, 209; toler-
ant treatment of the Jews in,
221; Solomon Molko takes
refuge in, 224.
Twentieth century, the, ideals of,
149-50.
" Twin-Talmud of the East," the
Babylonian Talmud, 27,
Ula bar Koseheb, and Joshua ben
Levi, 165-6.
Universality, true meaning of, 185.
Universe, according to the Cab-
bala, 258-60.
Useda. See Samuel de Useda.
Usque. See Samuel Usque.
\'anity, the root of all evils, 167-80
Variae Lcctioncs, alluded to, 10.
Vatican, the, alluded to, 63.
Venice, alluded to, 225.
Vidas. See Elijah de Vidas.
INDEX
361
Vineyard, metaphorically used,
107.
Vital. See Chayim Vital.
Vitringa, and Rabbinic studies,
103, 104.
Voltaire, Carlyle on, 148.
WalHngton, Nehemiah, alluded to,
84.
Watke, alluded to, 35.
Wealth, dishonest, classified, 165.
Weavers, in demand in Safed,
230.
Weaving, taught to girls, 98; a
trade in Safed, 230.
Weed, Thurlow, alluded to, 157,
Weeks, the Feast of, special pray-
ers for, in Safed, 244.
Weiss, Isaac Hirsch, alluded to,
12.
Wellhausen, hypothesis of, on the
word Torah, 32; alluded to,
42; on the Sanhedrin, 106.
Wesley, John, alluded to, 187.
Wheat, used allegorically in Rab-
binic literature, 108-9; pro-
duced near Safed, 230.
Wife, qualities of a good, 96, 98.
Wilna, Jews from, flee to Ham-
burg, 130.
Wills, in the Genizah, 11.
Wine, at banquets in the time of
Ben Sira, 86, 88, 89, 90; in-
dulgence in, forbidden to Jo-
seph Caro, by his Mentor-An-
gel, 215-16; produced near
Safed, 230; exported from
Safed, 230; served at Sabbath
meals, 249.
Wisdom, identical with the Torah,
59-
Wisdom literature, the, of the
Middle Ages, zd.
Wisdom of Ben Sira, The. See
Ecclesiasticus.
Wohlenberg, alluded to, tj.
Woman, passages on, the strange,
in Ecclesiasticus, 57; Ben Sira
on, 95, 96; and the natural
sciences, 193; instructed in
the liturgy, in Safed, 242.
Wood-workers, in demand in
Safed, 230.
Wool, the weaving of, in Safed,
230.
" Words of the Scribes, The," 70.
Wordsworth, alluded to, 200.
Workmen, and Isaac Loria, 273.5.
Worship, in the synagogue of Ben
Sira's time, 63.
See also Liturgy, the; and
Prayer.
Yeshibah. See Talmudic College,
a.
Yeshiboth. See Talmudic Col-
leges.
Yeser, explained, 35-6.
Yomtob Zahalon, prominent in
Safed, 283.
Yom Kippur, See Atonement, the
Day of.
Yoser, explained, 35-6.
Zadok, an exponent of Judaism,
192.
Zadok, the priestly house of,
superseded, 49, 50; in Ecclesi-
asticus, 51.
Zahalon. See Yomtob Zahalon.
Zalman, and the Gaon of Wilna,
162.
Zalman. See Shneor Zalman.
Zarphathi. See Joseph Zarphathi.
Zeal, religious, and saintliness,
171; and missions, 186.
Zechariah, the Book of, remin-
iscences of, in Ecclesiasticus,
SO.
Zechariah Zechsel, father-in-law of
Joseph Caro, 215.
Zemiroth Israel, by Israel Nagara,
251.
Zephed, and Safed, 202.
362
INDEX
Zimzum, the system of, 260.
Zipporah, daughter of Gliickel von
Hameln, married, 136-7.
Zohar, the, explained by Solomon
Alkabez, 238; given to Isaac
Loria by a Marrano, 254-5;
studied by Isaac Loria, 255;
the Idras of, 261-3; commen-
tary on, 266; studied by the
school of Isaac Loria, 267.
See also Cabbala, the.
Zunz, and students of Rabbinism,
103.
Ziir Litcratiir niid Gcschichte, by
Zunz, and students of Rabbin-
ism, 103.
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