Chapter M: Trumper (6)

Properly understood, however, the term "the people of the law" is a title of honor, one of which we may well be proud. As used in our literature and by our people, "law" signifies something more than civil and criminal jurisprudence. It is our word "Torah," meaning doctrine, teaching, including not only what is generally known as law but also what is known as ethics. The people of the law is the people that studies the great thoughts of its great men of all times, and adopts them as rules of life which it becomes a duty and a pleasure to obey. The people of the law is the people that in the midst of a world of chaos in which nation fought nation with the weapons of death, sat in communion with a past world from which came such messages as this: "Attend to me, O my people: and give ear unto me, O my nation: for a law shall go forth from me, and I will make my judgment to rest for a light to the peoples. . . . Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law; fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye dismayed at their revilings. For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool: but my righteousness shall be forever and my salvation unto all generations." Righteousness was the aspect of Deity that appealed to the second Isaiah, and it was he that spoke words of comfort to our people in all the days of their endless tribulations. The certain faith in the ultimate success of right sustained them throughout the centuries and constitutes their strength to-day. This is the law that was handed down to them from of old, the law of right, which though often broken, often forgotten, was always found again and cherished as the one thing worth while in a world torn by the brutal instincts in man--instincts which the law had chained and sought to make harmless.

So we may well cling to our title of the people of the law, remembering that it does not mean merely Nomos, as the Hellenized Jews mistranslated Torah, but legal and ethical doctrine and knowledge in its broadest sense, and that it is the people of the law that have always shown their love of knowledge and found it "a tree of life to those that lay fast hold on it." Some ancient Jewish mystic said that the sword and the book came out of heaven together and Israel had to choose. Israel did choose and thereafter dreamed of days when swords would be beaten into ploughshares.

_How the Heritage of the Law Was Preserved_

The reading of the law has since time immemorial been an established part of the synagogue service, thus educating the people to know their law, the very phrases of which by constant reference and repetition became part of their daily vocabulary. The origin of this custom of reading the law in the synagogue may probably be found in the Biblical references to the great convocations when King and scribe read the law to the assembled people.

The effect of the dispersion of the Jews was to give a peculiar sacredness to the law as the sole heritage of their earlier and happier days. In most of the lands of their dispersion, the Jews dwelt a race apart, separated from the rest of the community by mutual prejudices and antagonisms. The soil on which they dwelt was so far as ultimate overlordship was concerned the land of the stranger, but nevertheless in a very definite and special sense it was the Jews' own land. For it was a land in which the law of the stranger was not the law. The law of the land of their dispersion was not the law of the owner of the soil but the law of the Jews. In this sense the Ghettos of Italy and the Gassen of Germany were not so much Italian and German soil as they were Jewish. As by the modern fiction of extraterritoriality the home of an Ambassador is considered part of his own national territory, so these exclusively Jewish settlements were colonies of Judæa planted on foreign soil. They were separated from the rest of the land by visible or invisible walls, and within these walls, hardly touched by the influences that were at work shaping the life around them, the ancient law of the Jews was preserved and handed down from generation to generation. Hence during the Middle Ages the student of the law became the most important member of the community, and all the energy of the community that was not required to outwit the constant menace of brutal force and religious persecution was devoted to the cultivation of the law and of the literature that it gave rise to.

It should be noted, however, that since the beginning of the Talmudic period, the civil law developed in certain directions only, because after all the Jewish people had no land of their own in the usual sense and no central authority and were constantly moving from place to place, always subject to persecution. Some branches of their law were entirely neglected and others abnormally developed.

_The Schools of the Law_

In the Talmudic period, the judges, members of the Synhedrion, and professors of the law schools, received a long professional training. The course of study lasted seven years, at the end of which, having passed their examination successfully, the graduates were eligible to assignment as judges in the lower courts, from which they were promoted to act as associate judges in the great Synhedrion and eventually might hope to attain the dignity of full synhedrial membership. These judicial dignitaries were obliged to be well versed in the languages, law and customs of the contemporary peoples, especially in the laws of the Greeks and Romans. Great academies of the law flourished in Palestine and still greater ones in Babylonia, the latter eventually supplanting the former. These academies called for the enthusiastic encomium of one Talmudist who said, "God created these academies in order that the promise might be fulfilled that the word of God should not depart from Israel's mouth."

The law students met twice a year in assembly for examination. Their studies were pursued at home, except in the months of Elul and Adar when they went up to the Assembly. Here they were arranged in classes and under the direction of their masters heard lectures and discussed the subject matter presented to them topically. At these Assemblies actual questions of law were submitted from Jewish communities all over the Jewish world, and the solutions to these problems were prepared and forwarded by the great masters. In addition to these professional schools there were everywhere general schools or, as we might say, high schools connected with the synagogues. It is a tribute to the importance that was ascribed to the high schools in later generations that their origin was projected back to the days of the Flood when Shem and Eber established a law school in which subsequently Isaac, Jacob, and Rebecca heard lectures. It will be noted that according to this bit of folklore Rebecca was the first woman law student. The same fancy which invented this most ancient of the schools, also invented the law school which Judah built for Jacob in Egypt, and the school established by Moses in which he and Aaron were the professors and Joshua was the janitor.

_The Study of the Law "the Chief End of Man"_

The fancy of the people associated nearly all of its great men with the study of the law. The entire tribe of Issachar was said to have devoted itself to the study of the law, the merchant tribe of Zebulon furnishing the means of support. God himself, according to another mystic, was a professor in the celestial law school in which He taught the law to the souls of all the righteous, in that heaven which they conceived of as a place where the law might be perpetually studied; and even while the Temple was still standing and sacrifices were being offered, the Jewish teachers used to say that God does not require burnt offerings but the study of His law.

From all of these traditions it will be seen that to the ancients the study of the law was the chief end of man. The Jew never considered ignorance to be bliss and has little sympathy with the religious ideal of many non-Jewish people that religion is more important than knowledge. One of the great masters even went so far as to say that the ignorant man cannot be pious. It was Simon the Just, one of the survivors of the Men of the Great Synagogue, who said that the world stands upon three things, the law, the service of God, and charity, and he put the law first, for the first duty of a man is to observe the law. He must be just before he can be charitable.

At one time it was sought to place some limitations upon the right to become a student of law, and herein the schools of Hillel and Shammai differed. Hillel was the democrat who held that all persons, without exception, should enjoy the privilege of studying law; Shammai was the intellectual aristocrat who sought to limit this privilege to those who were wise, modest, of ample means and of goodly parentage, thereby establishing rules similar to those that obtain in the best modern law schools, which require a collegiate education as a preliminary to admission; but Shammai went further in that he required the students to be wise and modest as well as persons of good breeding and of ample fortune. Just how many of our modern law students could meet these requirements is a question upon which I have no statistics. On this very matter of the proper qualifications for admission to the privilege of studying law, we have heard much in our time. Perhaps a contribution to the subject from the old and somewhat neglected Code of the Mishnah would not be inappropriate. The Mishnah says:

_"Eight and Forty Qualifications for the Law"_

"The law is greater than priesthood and royalty, for royalty is acquired by thirty qualifications, priesthood by four and twenty, but the law by eight and forty, and they are as follows: Study, attention, utterance, understanding, reverence, veneration, modesty, cheerfulness and purity, service of the wise, choice of associates, debate with fellow students, deliberation in study of Bible and Mishnah, a minimum of business, a minimum of worldly pursuits, a minimum of pleasure, a minimum of sleep, a minimum of talk, a minimum of jesting, forbearance, kindliness, faith in the wise, resignation in suffering, knowing one's place, satisfaction with one's lot, bridling one's words, refraining from self-complacency, amiability, loving the Creator, loving His creatures, loving righteousness, loving equity, loving reproof, eschewing worldly honor, not being puffed up by learning nor delighting in laying down the law, helping one's neighbor bear the yoke, inclining toward a favorable judgment of others, steadfast in the truth, steadfast for peace, concentration in study, asking, answering, listening, enlarging, learning with a view to teach, learning with a view to act, enabling one's teacher to become wiser, thoroughly understanding what one hears, and repeating every dictum in the name of him who uttered it." I recommend this list of qualifications to the consideration of modern teachers and students as well as to those who are concerned with the preparation of a code of legal ethics for the profession.

The Jews loved the law and respected it and they honored its expounders and administrators. They do not believe that the world can be made over or made better by any man or by any preaching. They are by instinct conservative, holding on with tenacity to the ideas and institutions that have grown up in past times and that are expressions of the needs of society and of its adjustment to the forces that play upon it. This is why the law, which is the embodiment of these conservative forces, meets with their respect and allegiance, why its study was cultivated with such zeal in the past, and why in our own day it still finds so large a percentage of votaries among the sons of our people.

The Jewish Genius in Literature

_A Study of Three Modern Men of Letters_

BY EDWARD CHAUNCEY BALDWIN

A study of great Jewish names in modern literature has impressed me with the fact that every Jewish man of letters has attained his fame by virtue of qualities that are essentially Jewish. In other words, we cannot fully understand the work of even modern Jewish literary men unless we know the fundamental qualities of Jewish genius. To illustrate what is meant by this assertion, we may consider briefly the work of three nineteenth century Jewish authors--Heine, Beaconsfield, and Zangwill. These men are apparently wholly different; and yet they attained literary eminence through qualities or mind and heart which we have learned to associate with the race from which they sprang.

_Heinrich Heine: A Jew at Heart_

Heinrich Heine is the one writer of the first rank that Germany can boast between the death of Goethe in 1832 and the advent of the younger generation of dramatists, Sudermann, Hauptmann, and the rest, sixty years later. To free himself from such a limitation as his Jewish birth seemed to him to be, and with the more specific object, it is said, of securing a government position in Prussia, Heine allowed himself to become a convert to Christianity. "Judaism," he said, "is not a religion; it is a misfortune." His conversion, however, failed to profit him. He lost the fellowship of his own people, and was contemptuously called "the Jew" by his enemies. In a sense, the designation was entirely just. A Jew at heart Heine remained to the day of his death. On his death bed, speaking of the Jews he said: "Queer people this! Downtrodden for thousands of years, weeping always, suffering always, abandoned always by its God, yet clinging to him tenaciously, loyally, as no other under the sun. Oh, if martyrdom, patience, and faith in spite of trial can confer a patent of nobility, then this people is noble beyond any other. It would have been absurd and petty if, as people accuse me, I had been ashamed of being a Jew."

Not only was Heine a Jew in his instinctive racial sympathies, but his work bears the indelible impress of Judaism. It is a distinctively Jewish product. In it appear the buoyancy of spirit which sustained him under suffering that would have crushed a less resilient temper; the intellectual arrogance; the proneness to censure rather than to commend; and especially the excessive self-consciousness;--all these distinctively Jewish traits were in him exaggerated and helped to make his work what it was. It is his self-consciousness, in particular, that made his _Buch der Lieder_ his best production. In that remarkable collection of lyrics Heine appears at his best, because the ability to compose songs that are the spontaneous utterance of emotion, at one and the same time personal and representative, is a Hebrew heritage. The Hebrew genius was essentially lyric, rather than epic or dramatic; and in consequence, the lyrics of ancient Hebrew literature are its chief glory. In proof of this, we have but to recall the dirges and triumph songs, the reflective lyrics, and the liturgical hymns that compose the collection we know as the Psalms. The excellence of both the old Hebrew lyrics and of Heine's Lieder is to be found in the extraordinary subjectivity of the Hebrew temper--the racial fondness for impassioned, yet artistic, self-expression.

Yet Heine's Jewish traits are evident not only in the subjectivity of his lyrics, but in the new and richer character that he gave to the German Lied. This, hitherto vague and dreamy, became in his hands startlingly concrete and definite. And this is true even when he expresses the most subtle feelings. Always the most evanescent _Stimmung_, not less than moods more primitively simple, find expression in metaphors so sensuously material as to recall Solomon's Song. Compare a typical lyric of Heine, such as the following:

Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne
Die liebt' ich alle in Liebeswonne,
Ich lieb' sie nicht mehr, ich liebe allein
Die Kleine, die Feine, die Reine, die Eine;
Sie selber, aller Liebe Bronne,
Ist Rose und Lilie und Taube und Sonne

with the love lyric sung by one of Israel's nameless singers:

Behold thou art fair, my love;
Behold thou art fair;
Thine eyes are as doves.
Behold thou art fair, my beloved
Yea, thou art pleasant:
And our couch is green.
The beams of our house are cedars,
And our rafters are firs.
I am a rose of Sharon,
A lily of the valleys.
As a lily among thorns,
So is my love among the daughters.[C]

Even so brief a comparison may illustrate, though it may not prove, that for the ultimate source of Heine's Oriental exuberance and materialization, so new to German literature, we must look in Jewish not in European culture.

_The Spiritual Depth of Heine_

Perhaps because Heine was in spirit an Oriental, the Germans never have known exactly what to make of him. Professor Francke says (_History of German Literature_, p. 526) that Heine "produced hardly a single poem which fathoms the depths of life." This assertion seems scarcely defensible in view of such poems as the following:

Wo wird einst des Wandermüden
Letzte Ruhestatte sein?
Unter Palmen in dem Süden?
Unter Linden an dem Rhein?

Werd' ich wo in einer Wüste
Eingescharrt von fremder Hand?
Oder ruh' ich an der Küste
Eines Meeres in dem Sand?

Immerhin! Mich wird umgeben
Gotteshimmel, dort wie hier,
Und als Todtenlampen schweben
Nachts die Sterne über mir.

To find an equally beautiful expression of faith in God as a universal spiritual presence that transcends all space relations, we must go back to the anonymous Jewish poet who wrote the psalm in which occur the lines:

"Whither shall I go from thy spirit?
And whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there:
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall thy hand lead me,
And thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me,
And the light about me shall be night;
Even the darkness hideth me not from thee;
But the night shineth as the day.
For the darkness and the light are both alike to thee."

As a matter of fact, both poems are to be accounted for as equally the product of a rarely gifted people--a people with a unique genius for religion.[D]

_Disraeli and His Oriental Imagination_

Benjamin Disraeli belonged to a family who left Spain in the fifteenth century to avoid the horrors of the Inquisition. Upon their escape, in gratitude to the God of Jacob who had sustained them through unheard of trials, they adopted the name Disraeli, in order that their race might be forever recognized. Of such a family Benjamin Disraeli was a worthy representative. He never was ashamed of his race. On the contrary, he gloried in it, and lost no opportunity to put forth the claim of his people to be the true aristocracy of the earth. "Has not the Jew the oldest blood and the finest genius of the world?" he asks. And again, in one of his books (_Tancred_, 1847), he says, "The Jews are of the purest race; the chosen people; they are the aristocracy of nature."

It is Disraeli's Jewish characteristics that have bewildered and sometimes offended his critics. He has been charged with insincerity because he was so clever, and because he wrote with a kind of Oriental exuberance that was to him entirely natural and a part of his Jewish heritage. Gilfillan is the only critic, so far as I know, who has recognized that Disraeli's excellences, and his defects as well, were racial rather than individual. Speaking of his Oriental fancy and cleverness, Gilfillan says: "Disraeli has a fine fancy, soaring up at intervals into high imagination, and making him a genuine child of that nation from whom came forth the loftiest, richest, and most impassioned songs the earth has ever witnessed--the nation of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Solomon, and Job. He has little humor, but a vast deal of diamond-pointed wit."[E]

_Disraeli's Wit: A Purely Jewish Product_

Disraeli's wit, which made him so many enemies, is a purely Jewish product. It is satiric. Now satire was the form taken by Jewish wit in the Middle Ages as a result of the hard conditions under which the Jews lived. As one modern Jew has said, "The Jews seized the weapon of wit, since they were interdicted the use of every other weapon." With every door closed in hostility against them, there was little they could do but laugh with bitter irony at their fate, and with savage satire at their oppressors. With such an ancestry as this behind him, it is not to be wondered at that Disraeli's wit is scornful, and that he excelled in personal satire and invective. It was never, however, unprovoked. Disraeli never indulged in personal satire or invective except in his own defence. For example, his mockingly ironical reply to the attack of a member of the House of Commons named Roebuck, which was one of the most effective rejoinders Disraeli ever made, was in answer to a most virulent arraignment of his political motives. "I have always felt," he said, "that in this world you must bear a great deal, and that even in this indulgent, though dignified, assembly, where we endeavor so far as possible to carry on public affairs without any unnecessary acerbity--still we must occasionally submit to some things which the rules of this house do not permit. I could, no doubt, have vindicated my character; but that would only have made the honorable member from Bath speak once or twice more, and really I have never any wish to hear him. I have had the most corrupt motives imputed to me. But I know how true it is that a tree must produce its fruit--that a crab-tree will bring forth crab apples, and that a man of meagre and acid mind, who writes a pamphlet or makes a speech, must make a meagre and acid pamphlet or a poor and sour speech. Let things, then, take their course."

_Disraeli's Fondness for Allegory_

Another striking peculiarity of Disraeli was his fondness for veiled allusion. Nearly all of his most popular novels--and this was _one_ of the main reasons for their phenomenal popularity--were thinly veiled representations of Disraeli's own contemporaries, who were easily recognizable by the reading public. Take, for instance, the admirable burlesque entitled _Ixion in Heaven_, where the author tells how Ixion, king of Thessaly, having fallen into disrepute on earth, was taken up into heaven by Jupiter and feasted by the gods. Here Jupiter is really George the Fourth and Apollo is the poet Byron. The latter's pose of gloomy misanthropy, as well as his habit of fasting to keep from growing fat, are admirably satirized in the following dialogue:

"You eat nothing, Apollo," said Ceres.

"Nor drink," said Neptune.

"To eat, to drink, what is it but to live; and what is life but death. . . . I refresh myself now only with soda-water and biscuits. Ganymede, bring some."

Now this fondness for veiled allusion is distinctly a Hebrew characteristic. The Arabs today have a saying, "as fond of a veiled allusion as a Hebrew." This has always been a Hebrew trait. I suppose no literature of any people consists so largely of allegory, in proportion to its bulk, as does the Hebrew. In proof of this assertion, one needs but to allude to the vogue in post-exilic Judaism of the Apocalypse, in which contemporary history was presented in the form of allegory, and to the Rabbinical fondness for the allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures. So it would not be difficult to show that not only these qualities I have mentioned, but all the qualities that made Disraeli admired or feared were his by virtue of his Jewish inheritance.

_Zangwill's Prophetic Spirit in "The War God"_

Israel Zangwill knows the Jews, not as George Eliot did, through a process of philosophic induction, but at first hand, because he is a Jew by birth and breeding. He, unlike Heine, has never tried to conceal the fact that he is a Jew. In Israel Zangwill all the tenderness and sympathy, all the tenacity, the suppleness and adaptability, and it may be added, the baffling inconsistencies of his race appear.

Inconsistent he certainly is. He has been an ardent Zionist, and in his story "Transitional" (from _They That Walk in Darkness_) he seems to hold that assimilation will never solve the Jewish problem; yet in _The Melting Pot_ he obviously regards assimilation as the inevitable and desirable end of Judaism.

In spite of his inconsistencies, Zangwill is one in whom the ancient ideals of Israel live again. It is in the spirit of the prophets that he wrote _The War God_ (1912). This play, with all its faults as an acting drama, is nevertheless a remarkable document, voicing, as it does, on the very eve of the breaking down of European civilization, the old prophetic protest against the brutality and waste of war.

This protest dates back to at least the ninth century B.C. It may not be generally known that it was a Hebrew prophet who first advocated the humane treatment of prisoners of war. The story is told in the Second Book of Kings that when a band of marauding Syrians were corralled in Samaria, the "king of Israel said unto Elisha, when he saw them, 'My father, shall I smite them? Shall I smite them?' And he answered, 'Thou shalt not smite them: wouldst thou smite those whom thou has taken captive with thy sword and with thy bow? Set bread and water before them, that they may eat and drink, and go to their master.' And he prepared great provision for them: and when they had eaten and drunk, he sent them away, and they went to their master. So the bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel" (2 Kings 6:1-23). Again, Amos, in the eighth century, in his arraignment of the sins of the nations, pronounces God's severest judgments upon Damascus, Edom, Ammon, and Moab for their cruelty in war. The charge against Edom, for example, is that "he did pursue his brother with the sword, and did cast off all pity, and his anger did tear perpetually, and he kept his wrath forever." And the later prophets' visions of the Messianic age include as the brightest feature of that wished-for time the prediction that then "the nations shall not learn war any more."

Of such a spirit Mr. Zangwill's play _The War God_ is an expression. It is a satire upon militarism, but a satire without exaggeration. The arguments employed to justify the maintenance of a huge army and navy are not a whit more absurd than the fallacies which have been put forth for a generation by those who would justify the maintenance of armaments. These so-called arguments are presented by "the Chancellor" who represents Bismarck, and by the king of Gothia, in whom we may easily recognize the Russian Czar. "Dominance," roars the Chancellor,--

"There rings the password of the universe.
Who knows it, he is free of every camp.
Equality, your level, endless cornfield,
However fat and fair and golden-stalked,
Would set us pining for the snow-topped peaks
And barren glaciers. Life is fight, thank God!

"Take war away and men would sink to molluscs,
Limpets that wait the tide to wash them food.
The nations would grow foul with lazy feeling.
What heaven loves is breeds with life a-tingle,
Swift-gliding, flashing, darting death at rivals,
Men fearing God and with no other fear.
Thus were the Albans, now the turn is ours
To be the chosen people of Jehovah."

And the King endorses such sentiments with the sage observation,

"No doubt we must protect our growing commerce."

In opposition to such militarists stands Count Frithiof, in whom we may easily see the lineaments of Tolstoi. His motto is, "Resist not evil, but reform yourself." In answer to the Chancellor's declaration, "To safeguard peace, we must prepare for war," he replies,

"I know that maxim; it was forged in hell.
This wealth of ships and guns inflames the vulgar
And makes the very war it guards against.
How often, as the mighty master said, the sight
Of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done."

_A Voice for Social Justice_

Quite outside the dramatic action of the play stands the Jew, Blum, the Chancellor's secretary. Through his astuteness in managing the Chancellor, he has hitherto moulded public policy according to his own will. Finally, near the end of the play, he denounces Christian civilization in a passage worthy of quotation:

"Man wins the realm of air and might have been
An eagle with a soul; you make him harpy,
More murderous than dragons of the ooze.
I tell you, we outsiders see the game,
We Jews, who bidden rise beyond the code
Of eye for eye, must rub both eyes to see
Not e'en eye-justice done in Christendom,
Whose cannon thunder 'gainst both God and Christ."

So might have spoken one of the ancient prophets of his race. Indeed Amos, amid the orgies of the autumn festival at Bethel, did speak in the same spirit when he denounced the formal service of worshippers who ignored the claims of social justice. "Seek good and not evil," cries Amos, "that ye may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye say. Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment (justice) in the gate. It may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph."

So it is evident that even the literary work of modern Jews can be understood and appreciated only as an expression of the characteristics of the Jewish race. In this modern Jewish literature appears the exuberance, the emotional intensity, and the love of social justice that were characteristic also of ancient Hebrew literature as written by prophet, priest, and sage.

_The Role of Israel in Human Emancipation_

Far greater, however, than the work of these three authors, far greater, indeed, than Israel's literature as a whole, of which they are a part, is the life of this people, of which their literature is the record. We speak of a nation's literature as great if it possesses three or four tragedies that are classics. _Hamlet_, _Othello_, _Macbeth_ and _King Lear_ would, for example, be sufficient to justify the title "great" as applied to English literature. What shall we say, then, as some one has suggested, of this people who for more than twenty centuries have lived a tragedy more pathetic than any the world's literature can show? Job has always seemed to me a type of the Jewish race. We recall that majestic picture in the thirty-first chapter, where Job stands up on his ash-mound, robbed of his wealth, bereaved of his children, deserted by his wife, suffering the agonies of a loathsome and incurable disease, and cast off, as it seems to him, by the very God in whom he trusted, and yet, in the face of poverty, and bereavement, and mortal pain, and bewildered isolation, asserts his own unchanged and unalterable belief that righteousness is salvation.

Similarly Israel, through the long centuries of its tragic history, has stood on the ash-mound of its national humiliation. Plundered, vilified, and persecuted, a nation of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, from whom men have hid their faces in aversion not concealed, Israel has yet clung with a grip that nothing could weaken nor dislodge to the fundamental idea that religion--the right relation of man to God--was not creed nor ritual, but simply doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God.

We have been looking backward at the literary accomplishment of three Jewish men of genius. It is, I believe, a fault of modern Judaism to look backward instead of forward, as if the glory of Israel had indeed departed, and as if nothing were left but to look back with pride and regret upon what has passed like a dream away. But I believe Jews may look forward now with confident hope toward the years that are to be. That Israel has completely played its role--that it has finished its service to the world--cannot for a moment entertain. Surely no one who believes in a philosophy of history, who sees in human history more than a meaningless and unrelated succession of events, can think that Israel has been preserved through centuries of discipline for no end whatever. On the contrary, we must believe that Israel has still a mission. What that mission is to be we cannot now foretell. We of this generation are looking upon the breaking down of European civilization. Some of us hope and expect that when the smoke of battle has cleared away there will gradually be built up a new and better social order. In this constructive work of rebuilding, who is better fitted to take a prominent part than the Jew, with his noble heritage of ideals, his passion for social justice? Jews may well rejoice as they reflect upon what individual members of their race have through literature contributed to the emancipation of the human spirit. And they may rejoice also in the hope of what Israel may yet accomplish in the years that are to be.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote C: _Song of Songs_, 1:15-2:2.]

[Footnote D: An adequate and sympathetic treatment of Heine's work as a Jewish poet may be found in _Heinrich Heine als Dichter Judentums_ von Georg J. Plotke (Dresden, 1913).]

[Footnote E: George Gilfillan, _Third Gallery of Literary Portraits_, p. 360.]

[_The Second in a Series of Sketches of Jewish Worthies_]

Jochanan ben Zakkai

BY ABRAHAM M. SIMON

The Jewish commonwealth was dissolved; the Jewish nation disrupted. Jerusalem was taken; the Temple had become a ruin. The last vestige of independence seemed to have been wiped out. All who had taken up arms were either dead, or enslaved, or banished. The infuriated Roman conquerors had spared neither the women nor the children. It seemed as if Judaism had breathed her last in that terrible year 70. Sadduceeism was annihilated; the Zealots were exterminated; the austere sentiment of the Pharisees, continually looking back to ancient customs and institutions, tried to assert itself. It is no longer permitted, they announced, to eat meat or drink wine, now that the Temple has fallen, because animals can no longer be sacrificed on the holy altars, nor wine offered there as a drink-offering. By such asceticism, these Pharisees of the strict school would have caused the destruction of Judaism. But there was a Hillelite still alive--a man who had inherited the spirit of Hillel, who rated conviction higher than ceremony, and consulted the times more than the ancient forms. It was he who kept the remnants together in close union, and did not permit the spirit to vanish, although the material bond was broken. This Hillelite was Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai.

_The Disciple and Favorite of Hillel_

Of the eighty disciples moulded by the great Hillel to continue his policy, Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai was especially distinguished. Before his death, Hillel is said to have designated Jochanan as "the father of wisdom," and "the father of the coming generation." Tradition divides Jochanan's life, like Hillel's, into three periods of forty years each. The first forty years were spent in mercantile pursuits; in the second he studied; and in the third he taught and managed the affairs of the Jewish spiritual community.

Even before the destruction of Jerusalem, Jochanan's fame had spread far and wide. He was a member of the Synhedrion and taught the holy law within the shadow of the Temple. His school was called the "Great House," and was the scene of many incidents which formed the subjects for anecdote and legend. He was the first man who successfully combatted the Sadducees, and who knew how to refute their arguments, which were partly religious and partly juridical. But Jochanan's great fame was chiefly due to the influence which he afterwards exercised at Jabneh.

_Jochanan's Escape from Jerusalem_

Owing to his peaceful character, Rabbi Jochanan had joined the party of peace when the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem, and on several occasions urged the nation, and in particular his nephew, ben Betiach, the leader of the Zealots, to surrender the city. "Why do you desire to destroy the city, and give up the Temple to the flames?" said he to the leaders of the revolution. But his well meant admonitions were disregarded by the "war party." When he saw the end approaching, and recognized that all was lost, he determined to leave the doomed city. He counselled with his foremost disciples, Eliezer ben Hyrkanos, Joshua ben Chananja and others. It was decided that Rabbi Jochanan should leave the city, go to the Roman general, and plead for those people who had no share in the rebellion. But to depart from the city was extremely dangerous, as the Zealots kept up a constant watch and slew all who attempted to leave. Rabbi Jochanan, therefore, caused a rumor to be spread of his sudden sickness and later of his death. Having been placed in a coffin he was carried to the city gates, at the hour of sunset, by his pupils Eliezer and Joshua. When the funeral procession approached, it was stopped at the gate within.

"Whose body do you carry here?" asked the Hebrew guard.

"We are carrying the crown of Israel, the body of our master, Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai," they answered in tears.

The captain of the guards was affected.

"Open the gates, men, and let them pass," the captain ordered.

"Are you sure, captain, that Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai is dead?" exclaimed one of the soldiers. "Maybe they are taking away a living traitor. I will make sure that he is dead."

He raised his dagger to strike at the shrouded form of the Rabbi.

"Hold, soldier!" cried the captain; "to dishonor the body of the saint would be a sin for which all Israel would have to atone. Open the gates and let them pass in peace."

The fanatic reluctantly desisted; the gate was opened and the procession passed through.

Vespasian received the fugitive in a friendly manner, the more since, like Josephus, Jochanan prophesied imperial honors for the general. Asked to name the favor he desired, Rabbi Jochanan, instead of seeking personal gain, requested permission to establish a school at Jabneh (or, as the place is sometimes called, Jamnia), where he could continue to give his lectures to his disciples. The request was granted, and thereupon Jochanan settled with his disciples in Jabneh, there to await the issue of events.

What could Vespasian have thought of Rabbi Jochanan when he made his request? Any one else bearing such prophecies might have asked for gold, honor, great political preferments, while this Hebrew sage asked simply for a corner where he could study undisturbed. How could the Hebrew nation exist when the leaders, their great men, lacked ambition? Little did Vespasian dream that his granting of the Rabbi's modest request would undo the whole work of the Roman conquest.

_The Fall of the Temple: Jabneh Succeeds Jerusalem_

In Jabneh, surrounded by his disciples, Rabbi Jochanan received the terrible news of the fall of Jerusalem and the burning of the Temple. Although he had foreseen the calamity, yet the news crushed the soul of the great master. He and his disciples tore their garments and for seven days wept and mourned in sackcloth and ashes. Jochanan, however, did not despair, for he recognized the truth that Judaism was not indissolubly bound with its Temple and its altar. He saw a new spiritual Temple emerge from the ruins and smoke of the old one; he beheld Judaism rising to a higher plane, offering faith, love, truth and happiness to all humanity. He comforted his colleagues and disciples by reminding them that Judaism still existed. "My children," he said, "weep not, and dry your tears; the Romans have destroyed the material Temple, but the true altar of God, the true place of forgiveness, they could not destroy, and it is with us yet. Would you know where? Behold, in the homes of the poor, there is the altar; love, charity, mercy, and justice are the offerings, the sweet incense which pleases the Lord more than any sacrifice, as it is written: For I take pleasure in mercy and not in burnt offerings." The next step taken by Rabbi Jochanan and his friends was to convoke a Synhedrion at Jabneh, of which he was at once chosen president. With no opposition, Jabneh took the place of Jerusalem, and became the religious national center for the dispersed community. It enjoyed the same religious privileges as Jerusalem. All the important functions of the Synhedrion, by which it exercised a judicial and uniting power over the distant congregations, proceeded from Jabneh.

Rabbi Jochanan's motto was: "If thou hast learnt much Torah, ascribe not any merit to thyself, for thereunto wast thou created." He found his real calling in the study of the Law. His knowledge was spoken of reverently as though it included the whole cycle of Jewish learning. And not only the Law but many languages of the Gentiles occupied the active mind of Rabbi Jochanan. The following description of him is handed down to us by tradition: "He had never been known to engage in any profane conversation. He had always been the first to enter the Academy. He never allowed himself, wittingly or unwittingly, to be overtaken by sleep while in the Academy. He had never gone a distance of four cubits without meditating on the Torah and without phylacteries. No one ever found him engaged in anything but study. He always lectured in person to his pupils. He never taught anything which he did not hear from his masters. He had never been heard to say that it was time to leave the Academy." He advised a certain family in Jerusalem, the members of which died young, to occupy itself with the study of the Torah, so as to mitigate the curse of dying in the prime of life.

_Rabbi Jochanan as Teacher and Commentator_

Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai may be designated as the representative of Halachic Judaism, founded by the great master Hillel, rather than as an originator or independent thinker. Hillel, the most respected of all the teachers of the Law, had given to Judaism a special garb and form. He had drawn the Law from the midst of contending sects into the quiet precincts of the Beth-Hamidrash, and labored to bring into harmony those precepts which were apparently opposed to one another in the Law. Rabbi Jochanan employed and developed Hillel's method. Like Hillel, he was also liberal in his general views. Thus he seems to have frequently engaged in discussions with heathens. And such was his general affability and courtesy to all that no man was ever known to have anticipated his salutations. The Haggadic tradition connects numerous and various sayings with the name of Rabbi Jochanan. The Haggadah was a peculiarly fascinating branch of study. Abounding in brilliant sallies, displays of ingenuity, and wonderful stories, it gave special scope for the cleverness and the rich imagination of the lecturers. By it a Halachah might be illustrated, or a passage of Scripture commented upon in a novel fashion. Without binding himself to any strict exegetical principles, the Haggadist would bring almost anything out of the text, and interweave his comment with legends. At the same time, the Haggadah remained only the personal saying of the individual teacher, and its value depended upon his learning and reputation, or upon the names which he could quote in support of his statements.

In this manner Rabbi Jochanan explained many laws and rendered them comprehensible, when they seemed obscure or extraordinary. Rabbi Jochanan's view of piety corresponded with his teaching that Job's piety was not based on the love of God, but on the fear of God. To love God; to serve Him out of love and not out of fear; to study the law continually, and to have a good heart--these were the essentials of a pious man. He once saw the daughter of Nakdimon ben Gurion picking up a scanty nourishment of barley-corn from among the hoofs of the horses of the enemy. When he recognized the woman, he broke out in tears and told his companion how he had signed her marriage contract as a witness when her father gave her one million golden dinars, besides the wealth she received from her father-in-law. Then the old sage exclaimed: "Unhappy nation, you would not serve God, therefore you must serve your enemies; you would not offer half a shekel for the Temple, therefore you must pay thirty times as much to the institutions of your conquerors; you refused to keep the woods and paths in order for the pilgrims, therefore you must build roads and bridges for the Roman soldiers; and in you is fulfilled the prophecy: Because thou servest not the Lord with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, by reason of abundance of all things, therefore shalt thou serve thy enemies, which the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger and in thirst and in nakedness and in want of all things."

_Jochanan's Spirit in Affliction and in Death_

Rabbi Jochanan had domestic as well as national troubles. A dearly beloved son was taken from him by death, and the soul of the father was filled with grief. His five famous scholars came to offer sympathy and consolation. One recalled the sorrow that Adam had endured when he looked at the body of his murdered son. Another one urged the example of Job; a third, that of Aaron, the brother of Moses; a fourth, that of David, King of Israel.

"My sons," said the stricken father, "how can the sufferings of others alleviate my sorrow?" But Eliezer ben Aroch, the most famous of his scholars, then spoke to him and said:

"A certain man had a priceless jewel entrusted to him. He watched it by day and by night for its safe keeping, but was always troubled by the thought that he might lose it. When, therefore, the owner of the jewel came to take it back, the man was happy, because he no longer had to fear for the safety of the precious jewel. Even so, dear master, thou shouldst rejoice when thou hast given thy son to God, who trusted thee with him, since thou hast returned him in his innocence as thou didst first receive him."

"My son," said the master, "thou hast truly comforted me."

When Rabbi Jochanan was nigh to death, his colleagues and disciples gathered round him in sorrow and trembling.

"Master, Light of Israel!" they exclaimed. "Why weepest thou?"

And the master answered: "If they were about to lead me before a king of flesh and blood, who today is and tomorrow is in the grave--if he were wroth with me, his wrath were not eternal; if he should put me in chains, his chains were not eternal; if he should put me to death, that death would not be eternal; I might appease him with words or bribe him with gifts. But now they are about to lead me before the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, who lives and remains through all eternity. If He is wroth with me, His wrath is eternal; if He casts me into chains, His chains are eternal; if He puts me to death, it is eternal death; Him no words can appease, no gifts soften. And further, there are two ways--one to hell, one to Paradise; and I know not which way they will lead me. Is there not cause for tears?"

Asked to give his disciples a last blessing, he told them:

"Fear God even as ye fear men."

His disciples seemed disappointed, whereupon he added:

"He who would commit a sin first looks around to discover whether any man sees him; so take ye heed that God's all seeing eye see not the sinful thought in your heart."

His death occurred only a few years after the destruction of the Temple. But in that short time he saved Judaism, and the impress he left upon Israel is evident from the famous dictum of the Talmud: "With the death of Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai the light of wisdom was quenched." And many still believe that none like him--scholar and diplomat--has since arisen in Israel.

EDITORS' NOTE.--_The first sketch in this series on
Jewish Worthies, Dr. Moses Hyamson's study of
"Golden-Rule Hillel," appeared in our April number.
The third in the series will be on Rabbi Akiba._

Zionism: A Menorah Prize Essay

BY MARVIN M. LOWENTHAL

(_Concluded_)

[Sidenote: _This Essay was awarded the Menorah Prize at the University of Wisconsin last year. In the first part, printed in our April issue, the author reviews the status of the Jews in medieval Europe and describes the effects upon the Jews of the razing of the Ghetto walls and the play of the modern forces of Emancipation, Enlightenment, Nationalism, and Anti-Semitism. In the situation resulting, the author distinguishes between the "Jewish problem" ("an immediate concrete maladjustment where life and property are imperiled"), existing chiefly in Eastern Europe, and the "Jewish position" ("a social, cultural, or spiritual disharmony or repression"), prevailing in Western Europe and America. After rejecting Reform Judaism and the "palliative measures" of philanthropy as answers to the situation, the author proceeds in this concluding instalment to a consideration of the third alternative, namely, "re-establishment of a national center where, perhaps not the entire people, but a remnant can be saved."_]

That the effort to ameliorate the conditions through charity, and the effort to assimilate and yet keep the essentials apart, are ineffectual has been shown. There remains the third possibility--Zionism. To a consideration of its theoretic background this section will be devoted. Although a natural commingling is unavoidable, Zionism presents three distinguishable aspects--as (1) a creative vision, (2) a solution, (3) a fulfillment.

_The National Ideal_

In its first aspect, Zionism applies the sauce of the proverbial goose to the proverbial gander. Nationalism is the partial cause, or at least the excuse, for making the modern position of the Jew in Europe untenable; nationalism for the Jew becomes a means of evacuating the position. Europe has intimated to the Jew that it can get along without him; the Jew now proposes to show that he can get along without Europe. Nationalism is nothing new to the Jew; from the final dispersion in 70 C. E., through the universalism of the Roman Empire and later of the Roman Church, the national ideal, as indicated in our introduction, was religiously preserved; but its modern practical form first arose among the leaders of the Chovevei Zion movement in the middle of the last century. The "Rom und Jerusalem" of Moses Hess (1862), "Die Verjüngen des Jüdischen Stammes" of Graetz, the Jewish historian (1864), the "Hashachar" of Smolenskin (1869), the "Auto-Emancipation" of Dr. Leo Pinsker (1882) clearly foreshadowed the final and effective expression of political Zionism--namely, "The Jewish State," published by Herzl in 1896.

_The Vision of a Jewish State_

Basing its structure on the formulas of the prophets,[1] who proclaimed that polity was indispensable for effecting the true mission of Israel--for the realization of the religious, social, or ethical ideal; conceiving Israel, as did Reform Judaism, to be its own Messiah, not fated, however, to remain a minutely scattered leaven among nations who condemned or destroyed it, but destined according to the prophetic promise to re-establish itself upon Zion;[2] convinced that a true assimilating of the fruits of emancipation in contradistinction to an imitating of Gentile culture could only be effected by an emancipation from within, by an auto-emancipation;[3] the vision of a Jewish State grew into outline. To the consummation of the picture, a wealth of economic, scientific, and cultural inspiration has been devoted. Herzl and his predecessors selected the stone which had been rejected by the philanthropists and the earnest, but mistaken, builders of Reform Judaism in their efforts to create a fit habitation for the European Jew; and lo! it has become the chief corner-stone.