Chapter M: H. Harris, 1887

II

WE, more than any other nation on the globe, recall the happy day when the light of promise first dawned in a modern Canaan, overflowing with the milk and honey of humane kindness, in a land symbolized by the torch of the goddess of liberty, whose soft, mild, yet penetrating rays are reflected o’er all the scattered sons of much-tried Israel, whom she so benignantly beckons to these shores.

ALEXANDER KOHUT, _on the 400th Anniversary
of the Discovery of America_, 1892.

THE DELUGE OF FIRE

(1914‒1918)

MANKIND craves the conviction that the agony and tears and suffering of these hundreds of millions of belligerents, constituting the vast majority of the human race, are not in vain; that somehow good will come of all this infinite woe.

In old Jewish books there is a wondrous legend of a second Deluge, a Deluge of Fire, that would sweep over the earth. In anticipation of it, the children of men were bidden to write the story of man on tables of clay, as such tables would not only escape destruction, but would become the more enduring. We to-day are the eyewitnesses of such a fire-deluge dreamt of by the ancients. Let us not, however, fear that civilization and religion will perish from the earth. Quite other will be its far-reaching results for mankind. Right and humanity will emerge stronger than ever from this world-conflagration. Before this war we saw that the laws of God and man were written as it were on mere tables of clay, breakable and effaceable at will. This very world-conflagration, however, will yet render the Law of Nations indestructible and for ever unassailable by insolence or power. The behests of humanity, which so far have been but pious wishes, will be converted into regulative principles in international dealings.

J. H. HERTZ, _to a congregation of Jewish
soldiers at the Front, France_, 1915.

THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS

THE sun and the moon are become black,
And the stars withdraw their shining ...
And the heavens and the earth shall shake;
But the Lord will be a refuge unto His people.

JOEL 4. 15, 16.

* * * * *

AND the loftiness of man shall be bowed down,
And the haughtiness of men shall be brought low;
And the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.
And the idols shall utterly pass away.

ISAIAH 2. 17, 18.

* * * * *

AND, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.

1 KINGS 19. 11, 12.

* * * * *

HEAL us, O Lord, and we shall be healed; save us, and we shall be saved; for Thou art our praise. Vouchsafe a perfect healing unto all our wounds; for Thou, almighty King, art a faithful and merciful Physician.

DAILY PRAYER BOOK.

THE MESSIANIC HOPE

WHEN the harp of Judah sounded, thrilled with the touch of inspiration Divine, among the echoes it waked in the human heart were those sweet sounds whose witcheries transport the soul into the realms of happiness. That melody has been our source of courage, our solace and our strength, and in all our wanderings we have sung it. It is the music of the Messianic age, the triumph-hymn to be one day thundered by all humanity, the real psalm of life as mankind shall sing it when Israel’s world-task of teaching it shall have been accomplished. Its harmony is the harmony of the families of the earth, at last at peace, at last united in brotherhood, at last happy in their return to the One Great Father.

H. PEREIRA MENDES, 1887.

* * * * *

HAVE we not all one father?
Hath not one God created us?
Why do we deal treacherously every man
against his brother,
Profaning the covenant of our fathers?

MALACHI 2. 10.

THE VISION OF A UNITED HUMANITY

AND it shall come to pass in the end of days,
That the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be
established as the top of the mountains,
And shall be exalted above the hills;
And all nations shall flow unto it,
And many peoples shall go and say:
‘Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
To the house of the God of Jacob;
And He will teach us of His ways;
And we will walk in His paths.’
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
And He shall judge between the nations,
And shall decide for many peoples;
And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
And their spears into pruning-hooks;
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
Neither shall they learn war any more.

ISAIAH 2. 2‒4.

* * * * *

THE Jew who is true to himself will labour with especial energy in the cause of peace. His religion, his history, his mission, all pledge him to a policy of peace, as a citizen as well as an individual. The war-loving Jew is a contradiction in terms. The ‘Man of Sorrows’ must beware of helping, however remotely, to heap sorrow upon others.

MORRIS JOSEPH, 1903.

TRUST YE IN THE LORD FOR EVER

THOU wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on
Thee; because he trusted in Thee.
Trust ye in the Lord for ever, for the Lord is God, an
everlasting Rock.
The way of the just is straight: Thou, Most Upright, makest
plain the path of the just.
Yea, in the way of Thy judgements, O Lord, have we waited for
Thee; to Thy name and to Thy memorial is the desire of
our soul.
With my soul have I desired Thee in the night;
Yea, with my spirit within me will I seek Thee early: for
when Thy judgements are in the earth, the inhabitants of
the world learn righteousness.
Let favour be showed to the wicked, yet will he not learn
righteousness: in the land of uprightness will he deal
wrongfully and will not behold the majesty of the Lord.
Lord, Thy hand is lifted up, yet they see not: but they shall
see Thy zeal for the people, and be ashamed; yea, the
fire of Thine adversaries shall devour them.
Lord, Thou wilt ordain peace for us: for Thou hast also
wrought all our works for us.

ISAIAH 26. 3, 4, 7‒12.

II

THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK

_NOW the Lord said unto Abram: ‘... I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and be thou a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and him that curseth thee will I curse; and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’_

GENESIS 12. 1‒3.

_THUS saith God the Lord ... I the Lord have called thee in righteousness and have taken hold of thine hand, and kept thee, and set thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the nations; to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house._

ISAIAH 42. 5‒7.

ISRAEL IMMORTAL

THUS saith the Lord, Who giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, Who stirreth up the sea, that the waves thereof roar; the Lord of hosts is His name: If these ordinances depart from before Me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before Me for ever.

JEREMIAH 31. 35, 36.

* * * * *

THE sun and moon for ever shine――by day
And night they mark the Eternal’s high design.
Changeless and tireless, speeding on their way,
The sun and moon for ever shine.

Symbols are they of Israel’s chosen line,
A nation still, though countless foes combine;
Smitten by God and healed by God are they:
They shall not fear, safe ’neath the Rock divine,
Nor cease to be, until men cease to say,
The sun and moon for ever shine.

YEHUDAH HALEVI, 1150.
(_Trans. Alice Lucas._)

* * * * *

THE life of man is numbered by days,
The days of Israel are innumerable.

ECCLESIASTICUS 37. 25.

* * * * *

KINGDOMS arise and kingdoms pass away, but Israel endureth for evermore.

MIDRASH.

THE ETERNAL RIDDLE[13]

ISRAEL, my people,
God’s greatest riddle,
Will thy solution
Ever be told?

Fought――never conquered,
Bent――never broken,
Mortal――immortal,
Youthful, though old.

Egypt enslaved thee,
Babylon crushed thee,
Rome led thee captive,
Homeless thy head.

Where are those nations
Mighty and fearsome?
Thou hast survived them,
They are long dead.

Nations keep coming,
Nations keep going,
Passing like shadows,
Wiped off the earth.

Thou an eternal
Witness remainest,
Watching their burial,
Watching their birth.

Pray, who revealed thee
Heavens great secret:
Death and destruction
Thus to defy?

Suffering torture,
Stake, inquisition――
Prithee, who taught thee
Never to die?

Ay, and who gave thee
Faith, deep as ocean,
Strong as the rock-hills,
Fierce as the sun?

Hated and hunted,
Ever thou wand’rest,
Bearing a message:
God is but one!

Pray, has thy saga
Likewise an ending,
As its beginning
Glorious of old?

Israel, my people,
God’s greatest riddle,
Will thy solution
Ever be told?

P. M. RASKIN, 1914.

THE SECRET OF ISRAEL’S IMMORTALITY[14]

WHAT has prevented this constantly migrating people, this veritable Wandering Jew, from degenerating into brutalized vagabonds, into vagrant hordes of gipsies? The answer is at hand. In its journey through the desert of life, for eighteen centuries, the Jewish people carried along the Ark of the Covenant, which breathed into its heart ideal aspirations, and even illumined the badge of disgrace affixed to its garment with an apostolic glory. The proscribed, outlawed, universally persecuted Jew felt a sublime, noble pride in being singled out to perpetuate and to suffer for a religion which reflects eternity, by which the nations of the earth were gradually educated to a knowledge of God and morality, and from which is to spring the salvation and redemption of the world.

Such a people, which disdains its present but has the eye steadily fixed on its future, which lives as it were on hope, is on that very account eternal, like hope.

H. GRAETZ, 1853.

THE BOOK OF BOOKS

THE Bible, what a book! Large and wide as the world, based on the abysses of creation, and towering aloft into the blue secrets of heaven. Sunrise and sunset, promise and fulfilment, birth and death――the whole drama of humanity――are contained in this one book. It is the Book of Books. The Jews may readily be consoled at the loss of Jerusalem, and the Temple, and the Ark of the Covenant, and all the crown jewels of King Solomon. Such forfeiture is as naught when weighed against the Bible, the imperishable treasure that they have saved. If I do not err, it was Mahomet who named the Jews the ‘People of the Book’, a name which in Eastern countries has remained theirs to the present day, and is deeply significant. That one book is to the Jews their country. Within the well-fenced boundaries of that book they live and have their being; they enjoy their inalienable citizenship, are strong to admiration; thence none can dislodge them. Absorbed in the perusal of their sacred book they little heeded the changes that were wrought in the real world around them. Nations rose and vanished, States flourished and decayed, revolutions raged throughout the earth――but they, the Jews, sat poring over this book, unconscious of the wild chase of time that rushed on above their heads.

H. HEINE, 1830.

THE BIBLE[15]

AS to an ancient temple
Whose vast proportions tower
With summit inaccessible
Among the stars of heaven;
While the resistless ocean
Of peoples and of cities
Breaks at its feet in foam,
Work that a hundred ages
Hallow: I bow to thee.

From out thy mighty bosom
Rise hymns sublime, and melodies
Like to the heavens singing
Praises to their Creator;
While at the sound, an ecstasy,
A trance, fills all my being
With terror and with awe――
I feel my proud heart thrilling
With throbs of holy pride.

Oh! come, thou high beneficent
Heritage of my fathers;
Our country, altar, prophet,
Our life, our all, art thou!
In doubt, in woe, in outrage,
In pangs of dissolution
That wring our tortured hearts,
Come, ope the rosy portals
Of Hope to us once more.

Ah me! what countless miseries,
What tears all unregarded.
Hast thou consoled and softened
With gentle voice and holy!
How many hearts that struggle
With doubt, remorse, anxiety,
With all the woes of ages,
Dost thou, on ample pinions,
Lift purified to Heaven!

Listen! the world is rising,
Seeking, unquiet, thrilling,
Awakens the new century
To new hopes and new visions.
Men hear upon the mountains
Strange and life-giving voices;
Every soul seems to wait,
And from that Book the signal
For the new day shall come.

DAVID LEVI, 1846.
(_Trans. Mary A. Craig._)

* * * * *

FROM century to century, even unto this day, through the fairest regions of civilization, the Bible dominates existence. Its vision of life moulds states and societies. Its Psalms are more popular in every country than the poems of the nation’s own poets. Beside this one book with its infinite editions ... all other literatures seem ‘trifles light as air’.

ISRAEL ZANGWILL, 1895.

A JEWISH VERSION OF THE BIBLE

I

OUR great claim to the gratitude of mankind is that we gave to the world the word of God, the Bible. We have stormed heaven to snatch down this heavenly gift, as the Paitan[16] puts it. We threw ourselves into the breach, and covered it with our bodies against every attack. We allowed ourselves to be slain in hundreds and thousands rather than become unfaithful to it, and we bore witness to its truth, and watched over its purity, in the face of a hostile world. The Bible is our sole _raison d’être_; and it is just this which the Higher Anti-Semitism, both within and without our ranks, is seeking to destroy, denying all our claims for the past and leaving us without hope for the future. This intellectual persecution can only be fought with intellectual weapons, and unless we make an effort to recover our Bible we are irrevocably lost from both worlds.

S. SCHECHTER, 1903.

II

THERE is an old tradition that the day on which, for the first time, the Pentateuch was translated into a foreign language――into Greek――was considered by Jews as a day of great national calamity. It was feared that the translation, being incorrect, might become the source of error instead of being the fountain of divine truths. The fear felt and expressed about two thousand years ago has been fully justified by the history of the several versions that have since been undertaken, and by the large number of false doctrines, supposed to be founded on the authority of Holy Writ, whilst really originating in mistakes made by translators.

M. FRIEDLÄNDER, 1886.

* * * * *

NEW translations of the Bible have appeared and are appearing in various languages; but none of them has made, or intends to make, a complete and exhaustive use of Jewish contributions to the subject. Great university professors who know much, very much, but who do not know Jewish literature, unconsciously assume that they do not know it because it is not worth knowing――a judgement that no man has a right to pronounce until he has studied it――and this they have not done.

M. SULZBERGER, 1898.

* * * * *

THE book, commonly known as the Authorized, or King James’s Version, has been so long looked upon with a deep veneration almost bordering on superstitious dread, that, to most persons, the very thought of furnishing an improved translation of the Divine records will be viewed as an impious assumption and a contempt of the wisdom of former ages. Since the time of King James, however, the world has progressed in biblical knowledge no less than in all other branches of science; and giant minds have laboured to make clear what formerly was obscure.

ISAAC LEESER, 1855.

* * * * *