Chapter L: Kompert

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THE souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them. They are in peace. Their hope is full of immortality.

WISDOM OF SOLOMON 3. 1, 3, 4.

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AND they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.

DANIEL 12. 3.

THE HOLINESS OF HOME

IT is impossible to describe to those who have not experienced it, the feeling of holy joy which is diffused throughout the humblest Hebrew home by the solemn repetition of acts which in themselves may be regarded as mere customs, without vital connexion with the souls of men. And the particular institution in which it is embodied most characteristically is that of the Sabbath. I do not know how it has come about that a ‘Judaic Sabbath’ means a day of austere gloom. As a matter of fact, it is the one bright spot in the Jewish life. All is joy and good-humour in the Jewish home on the Friday night, when Sabbath ‘comes in’. I would attribute a good deal of the difference between the Jewish and the Christian Sabbath to the seemingly mechanical difference that the former begins and ends at an hour when its advent or exit can be solemnized by ceremonial. It is, indeed, to the Sabbath primarily, and the other home ceremonials which embody the Hebraic conception of the Holiness of the Home, that we can trace the remarkable persistence of the Jewish race through the ages.

JOSEPH JACOBS, 1889.

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THE patriarchal feeling still lingers about his hearth. A man, however fallen, who loves his home, is not wholly lost. The trumpet of Sinai still sounds in the Hebrew ear.

BENJAMIN DISRAELI.

KINDLING THE SABBATH LIGHT

FROM memory’s spring flows a vision to-night,
My mother is kindling and blessing the light;

The light of Queen Sabbath, the heavenly flame,
That one day in seven quells hunger and shame.

My mother is praying and screening her face,
Too bashful to gaze at the Sabbath light’s grace.

She murmurs devoutly, ‘Almighty, be blessed,
For sending Thy angel of joy and of rest.

‘And may as the candles of Sabbath divine
The eyes of my son in Thy Law ever shine.’

Of childhood, fair childhood, the years are long fled:
Youth’s candles are quenched, and my mother is dead.

And yet ev’ry Friday, when twilight arrives,
The face of my mother within me revives;

A prayer on her lips, ‘O Almighty, be blessed,
For sending us Sabbath, the angel of rest.’

And some hidden feeling I cannot control
A Sabbath light kindles deep, deep in my soul.

P. M. RASKIN.

לְכָה דוֹדִי

COME, my beloved, with chorusing praise,
Welcome the Sabbath Bride, Queen of the days.

Sabbath, to welcome thee, joyous we haste;
Fountain of blessing from ever thou wast,
First in God’s planning, though fashioned the last――
Crown of His handiwork, chiefest of days.

City of holiness, filled are the years;
Up from thine overthrow! Forth from thy fears!
Long hast thou dwelt in the valley of tears,
Now shall God’s tenderness shepherd thy ways.

Wake and bestir thee, for come is thy light!
Up! With thy shining the world shall be bright.
Sing! For thy Lord is revealed in His might――
Thine is the splendour His glory displays!

SOLOMON HALEVI ALKABETZ, 16th cent.
(_Trans. S. Solis-Cohen._)

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FAR more than Israel has kept the Sabbath, it is the Sabbath that has kept Israel.

ACHAD HA’AM, 1898.

SABBATH PRAYER

BLESSED be the name of the Sovereign of the universe. Blessed be Thy crown and Thy abiding-place. Let Thy favour rest with Thy people Israel for ever: show them the redemption of Thy right hand in Thy holy temple. Vouchsafe unto us the benign gift of Thy light, and in mercy accept our supplications. May it be Thy will to prolong our life in well-being. Let me also be numbered among the righteous, so that Thou mayest be merciful unto me, and have me in Thy keeping, with all that belong to me and to Thy people Israel. Thou art He that feedeth and sustaineth all; Thou art He that ruleth over all; Thou art He that ruleth over kings, for dominion is Thine. I am the servant of the Holy One, blessed be He, before whom and before whose glorious Law I prostrate myself at all times; not in man do I put my trust, nor upon any angel do I rely, but upon the God of Heaven, who is the God of truth, and whose Law is truth, and whose prophets are prophets of truth, and who aboundeth in deeds of goodness and truth. In Him I put my trust, and unto His holy and glorious name I utter praises. May it be Thy will to open my heart unto Thy Law, and to fulfil the wishes of my heart and of the hearts of all Thy people Israel for good, for life, and for peace.

ZOHAR.

THE SABBATH

NOT for us the Sabbath of the quiet streets,
Sabbath, peaceful o’er the world outspread,
Felt where every man his neighbour greets,
Heard in hush of many a slowly passing tread.

Not the robe of silence for our holy day:
Noisy run the worker and the player;
Toil and stir and laughter of the way
Surge around the steps that seek a place of prayer.

Silent we, while through the thronging street and mart
Work-day clamour of the city rolls:
Cloistered inly, from the world apart,
Ours it is to bear the Sabbath in our souls.

NINA SALAMAN, 1918.

PRAYER BEFORE THE NEW MOON

MAY it be Thy will, O Lord our God and the God of our fathers, to renew unto us this coming month for good and for blessing. O grant us long life, a life of blessing, of sustenance, of bodily vigour, a life marked by the fear of Heaven and the dread of sin, a life free from shame and reproach; a life in which the desires of our heart shall be fulfilled for good.

May the Holy One, blessed be He, renew it unto us and unto all His people, the house of Israel, for life and peace, for gladness and joy, for salvation and consolation; and let us say, Amen.

DAILY PRAYER BOOK.

THE SEDER[64]

FAIR is the twilight,
And fragrant and still:
Little by little
The synagogues fill.

One by one kindle
The night’s gleaming eyes;
Candles in windows
And stars in the skies.

Ended in _Shool_ is
The service divine;
Seder is started
With legends and wine.

Father is blessing
The night of all nights;
All who are hungry
To feast he invites.

‘All who are homeless
Yet masters shall be,
Slaves who are this year――
The next shall be free!’

Children ask ‘questions’,
And father replies;
Playfully sparkle
The wine and the eyes.

Hymns of redemption
All merrily sing;
Queen is each mother,
Each father a king.

Midnight. The Seder
Is come to an end;
Guardian angels
From heaven descend.

Each one a message
Of liberty brings;
Scattering blessings
Of peace from his wings.

P. M. RASKIN.

לֵיל שִׁמּוּרִים

ISRAEL’S WATCH-NIGHT

ISRAEL’S great watch-night dates its origin from the very Deliverance it was to commemorate through all the coming years. Ah! With what a delirious impatience did Pharaoh’s slaves await the midnight hour that was to be at once the knell of Egypt’s tyranny and the joy-note that announced their own freedom! God Himself had singled it out as the time for fulfilling His ancient promise――singled it out, as the Rabbins tell us in hyperbolical language, from the days of creation itself. Too long had unrighteousness flourished. Too long had God seemed to slumber in His Heaven; but now He was to show that the cry of the oppressed had never failed to reach Him, for accumulated wrongs were to be redressed by a complete and unparalleled deliverance. It was for so signal a vindication of the Divine justice that this night was reserved. It was as though the Supreme had set His finger upon this night, in the almanac of Heaven, and declared: This shall witness the long-deferred triumph of Right over Might; this shall tell for all time that I am the Lord, that I reign, and that righteousness and justice are the foundation of My throne, the principles on which I govern My world. This night shall show to all coming generations that it is only the fool who says in his heart ‘There is no God’; that the earthly despot who pursues his career of cruelty, thinking that he has only his victims’ tears to reckon with, is deluding himself to his own ruin.

And is this truth not worth treasuring in these latter days? Often does God seem to hide Himself, to have deserted earth and shut Himself up in Heaven. It is the souls of the meek and the faithful from which humanity’s tears are distilled, from which the painful chorus of a world’s lament goes up, and seemingly up in vain. But the lesson taught to Pharaoh and to Israel on that awful, that joyous night of deliverance, is still a living lesson; not one jot of its force is abated. God neither slumbers nor sleeps. He watches ever. Not one sigh passes unrecorded in the Heavenly Volume.

MORRIS JOSEPH, 1893.

PASSOVER AND FREEDOM

PASSOVER is the Festival of Spring. Its human appeal, therefore, is as old as humanity, and as perennial as Spring. But it is as an historical festival,――Israel’s birthday――as the annual commemoration of an event which has changed the destinies of mankind, that it proclaims the man-redeeming truth, God is the God of Freedom. Even as in Egypt He espoused the cause of brick-making helots against the mighty royal oppressor, He for ever judgeth the world in righteousness, and the peoples with equity. There is an overruling Providence that exalts righteousness and freedom and humbles the Dominion of iniquity and oppression. This teaching has been as a light unto the nations of the Western world in their weary, age-long warfare for liberty.

J. H. HERTZ, 1918.

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THE Passover affirms the great truth that liberty is the inalienable right of every human being. The Feast of Israel’s freedom, its celebration is Israel’s homage to the great principle of _human freedom_.

MORRIS JOSEPH, 1903.

‘ADDIR HU’

GOD of Might,
God of Right,
Thee we give all glory.
Thine the praise
In our days
As in ages hoary.

When we hear,
Year by year,
Our redemption’s story,
Now as erst,
When Thou first
Mad’st the proclamation,

Warning loud
Ev’ry proud,
Ev’ry tyrant nation,
We Thy fame
Still proclaim,
God of our salvation.

G. GOTTHEIL.

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WHEN the Egyptian hosts were drowning in the Red Sea, the angels in heaven were about to break forth in songs of jubilation. But the Holy One, blessed be He, silenced them with the words: ‘My creatures are perishing, and ye are ready to sing!’

TALMUD.

שָׁבֻעוֹת

THE FEAST OF WEEKS

FOR ever, O Lord,
Thy word is settled in heaven.
Thy faithfulness is unto all generations:
Thou hast established the earth, and it abideth.
They abide this day according to Thine ordinances;
For all things are Thy servants.
Unless Thy law had been my delight,
I should then have perished in mine affliction.
I have seen an end of all perfection;
But Thy commandment is exceeding broad.

Thy commandments make me wiser than mine enemies;
For they are ever with me.
I have more understanding than all my teachers;
For Thy testimonies are my meditation.
I understand more than the aged,
Because I have kept Thy precepts.
I have refrained my feet from every evil way,
That I might observe Thy word.
I have not turned aside from Thy judgements;
For Thou hast taught me.

PSALM 119. 90‒2; 96; 98‒102.

A SELF-DENYING GUILD

IS there not something spiritually attractive in the idea of the Jew of this age voluntarily submitting to restrictions on his appetites for the sake of duty――forming one of a religious guild whose special characteristic is self-control? It ought to be the pride of the modern Jew――and every child should be taught to feel it――that his religion demands from him a self-abnegation from which other religionists are absolved; that the price to be paid for the privilege of belonging to the hierarchy of Israel is continuous and conscious self-sacrifice.

The Dietary Laws foster this spirit of self-surrender. Respect for them teaches and helps the Jew, in Rabbinic language, to abase his desires before the will of his Father in Heaven.

MORRIS JOSEPH, 1893.

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WITH everlasting love Thou hast loved the house of Israel, Thy people; a Law and commandments, statutes and judgements, hast Thou taught us. Therefore, O Lord our God, when we lie down and when we rise up we will meditate on Thy statutes; yea, we will rejoice in the words of Thy Law and in Thy commandments for ever; for they are our life and the length of our days.

DAILY PRAYER BOOK.

אַקְדָמוּת

COULD we with ink the ocean fill,
Were every blade of grass a quill,
Were the world of parchment made,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love
Of God above
Would drain that ocean dry;
Nor would the scroll
Contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky!

MEIR BEN ISAAC NEHORAÏ, 1050.

THE BIBLE

IS it a book, a world, a heaven?
Are those words, or flames, or shining stars,
Or burning torches, or clouds of fire
What is it, I ask ye――the Bible?

Who inspired those infinite truths?
Who spoke through the mouth of the prophet?
Who mapped out the highways of ages,
The glorious lines of the Scriptures?

Who planted the flowers of wisdom
In this sacred soil of the angels?
O dream of eternity――Bible――
O Light that is all and for ever.

MORRIS ROSENFELD, 1918.

THE SEPHER TORAH[65]

FOR any community of people to be, and to remain, Jewish, they must be brought up from their tenderest childhood to regard the Sepher Torah as the title-deed of their birthright and pedigree, which they are religiously to hand down unaltered from generation to generation. For is there a Jewish community anywhere, however safely domiciled, which has relinquished the Torah for even one generation and has survived that separation? The Jewish masses, though dispersed to the four winds of the world and mostly destitute of mere shelter――_because tenacious of their creed_, endure, true to themselves and to their past.

The Torah, therefore, is a fountain of life. In it is protection greater than in fortresses. Those who forsake the Torah, bringing it into disrepute and weakening the hold it has on us, are working at the destruction of the brotherhood that cradled and sheltered their fathers and forefathers through all the vicissitudes of the bygone ages, to whom they owe their own life and presence on earth.

W. M. HAFFKINE, 1917.

RELIGION AND MORALITY

‘I AM the Lord thy God’――the pronouncement that forms the introduction to the Decalogue――is rightly regarded as the indispensable basis for all the Commandments, upon whose conscientious fulfilment the well-being of humanity depends. The identification of moral laws with religious precepts, which has been so fully accomplished for the first time in the Law of Moses, gives to the Bible its exceptional importance as a regulator of the conduct of men and of nations. Those who are convinced that by wronging their fellow-men, or transgressing any of the established laws, they violate a command that comes from God, and defy the will of their Maker as expressed in His law, are much less liable to wrongdoing than those who create their own ethical theories and set up their own standards of right and wrong, relying upon their conscience and sense of honour as infallible guides. To some it seems a kind of humiliation if a super-human authority is pointed to as the indispensable guide of human conduct. But man ought never to have assumed such pride as to feel humiliated by the idea of his imperfection and his need of guidance and restraint. History does not justify this pride.

SALIS DAICHES, 1910.

SYMBOLS AND CEREMONIES

YOU have heard that in Egypt the waters of the Nile overflowing its banks, take the place of rain; and that these fructifying waters are led by various channels into the remote fields to irrigate them. Now, the Nile with its precious floods would be of no benefit to the fields without these channels. Thus it is with the Torah and the _Mitzvoth_.[66] The Torah is the mighty stream of spirituality flowing since ancient times through Israel. It would have caused no useful fruits to grow, and would have produced no spiritual progress, no moral advancement, had the Mitzvah not been there to lead its divine floods into the houses, the hearts, and the minds of the individual members of the people, by connecting practical life in all its variety and its activities with the spiritual truths of religion.

It is the greatest mistake, based on an entire misunderstanding of human nature, to assume that men are capable of living in a world of ideas only, and can dispense with symbols that should embody these ideas and give them tangibility and visible form. Only the Mitzvah is the ladder connecting heaven and earth. The Tefillin, containing among others the commandment: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might’, are laid on the head, the seat of thought, and on the arm, the instrument of action, opposite to the heart, the seat of feeling; thus teaching that all our thoughts, feelings, and actions must conform to the will of God. This Mitzvah, performed daily, has contributed more effectively to preserve and to further the morality of our people than have all the learned books on ethics written by our religious philosophers.