Chapter I: HAVE produced everything capable of justifying the expectations with (2)

"Many and great are the gifts of the gentile world," he tells us, "but that peculiar greatness within the character of the Jews as a people, it has not. Some have called it religion, some morality; perhaps it is the devotion they have evolved to the unity of things, the אחד חוחי; perhaps it is only a certain sadness of suffering, a certain depth of sympathy they have evolved for all suffering and sorrow, but at any rate it is a racial momentum which our ancestors for four thousand years have been forging and refining in the hottest fires;" and whether it be conceit or inspiration, he adds, "and think not that we, to-day, in the comfortable lassitude of American life, can destroy it." The spirit is greater than the man; the Jew may be lost or be assimilated, but the Jewish race, not yet.

_A Spiritual Vision and Aspiration_

"BUT consider," we say very plainly to him, "the great bulk of the Jews who seem to have lost that old spirit of religion; they pray in a language they scarce understand as though 'they shall be heard for their much speaking'; when you want the Hebrew Bible, moreover, it seems you must go to the gentiles, and have not these added thereto the sublime teachings of Christ?"

"Yes," replies our Jewish friend, with more of grief than of censure in his voice, "and to-day the Christian world is awarding the Iron Cross for excellence in killing. And our people it has made to loathe the name of Christ, because it was his image that was in the hand of the priest who led the mob to massacre at the Inquisition and at Kishineff; though all the time it was that very persecuted people that was itself living the principles and the martyrdom of its greatest prophet." And he continues, and tells us brusquely how he went once to church with a Methodist young lady and how when he was rapt in the music of a Psalm that was being sung, she whispered giddily to him: "Don't that remind you somewhat of the one-step music?" "No," he tells us he replied, "it reminds me that I am the only Christian in this audience."

And we understand in his reply he was not thinking of himself alone (for extremist though he was, he must have known there was many another devout listener in that audience) but rather of his race, of those very Jews of the bended backs, "wily, unkempt," who were elsewhere chanting that same Psalm in a language, 'tis true, they scarce understood, yet with a spiritual zeal and forgetfulness of the "treasures upon earth" which was the very soul of the teachings of Christ. Could his Methodist friend, could even he, with all his university training and American ruddiness, but have the noble spirit of his unlettered grandmother he remembered weeping so bitterly in the old synagogue on Yom Kippur, as though weeping for the sins of all humanity,--Rachel weeping for her children. No, it was not the religion put on and off with the phylacteries that distinguished his fathers; it was never the raiment, but the body. Even in the darkness of the Middle Ages it was the _Malkuth Shaddai_, the kingdom of righteousness, that the old Jew prayed for on his sacred days.

Narrow-minded, indeed, is this last type of Jew; but yet when rays are concentrated to a narrow radius, the outlook through the lens may be wide and far-reaching. We understand that he, too, thinks of posterity as does his cousin, but only as mistress within its own household does he believe the Jewish race can bequeath great strength to its posterity and the posterity of the world,--not as intruder into the home of others, nor even as their welcome guest. The Bible was the work of a narrow, provincial Israel; the Talmud their work when scattered among the nations.

_"To Make Strong the Spirit of the Prophets"_

"WE have made too much," concludes our young friend, "of the cosmopolitan likenesses among nations and men; we must promote their differences, and respect for those differences. That is in the path of peace; it is war, as you know, that levels distinctions. The harmony of an autumn sunset is in its many colors. Our own little handful of people does not wish to make itself great in possessions or strong in arms. We have ever been the meekest among men; while many a Christian nation was taking an eye for an eve, it is we that were turning the other cheek. Yes, we think we have outgrown that boyish fascination for brutal brawn a little more than they. Today, Israel wishes but to express its pent-up soul, to make strong the spirit of its prophets and teachers, its Moses, its Isaiah, its Hillel, so that it may be 'for a light to the Gentiles, (and bear) salvation unto the end of the earth.'"

The Romance of Rabbi Akiba

BY GEORGE J. HOROWITZ

AKIBA ben Joseph, deservedly called the father of Rabbinical Judaism, was one of the most original and the most talented of all the great galaxy of ancient Rabbis. In him was typified the great ideal of a Jewish Rabbi--a man of heart, of hand, and of head. But Akiba is still more remarkable for the charm and romance of his life. He is indeed the one Rabbi with a great romance. The story of his life, stripped of all exaggeration or literary artifice, reads more like a tale of "knight and lady" than like the simple facts of a scholar's life. His great love, his sudden rise from the humblest obscurity, his brilliant intellectual and spiritual achievements, and his glorious death, make up the successive scenes of one of the most inspiring chapters in Jewish history.

_His Youth and Romantic Marriage_

AKIBA was born about the year 50, at a time when the Roman Empire at its height was about to turn all its mighty forces against his people, the little state of Judea; and he died a martyr to his faith, in about the year 132, on the eve of the last great rebellion against Roman domination. His origin and early years are shrouded in darkness. We know that he was an unlettered shepherd in his youth and mistrustful of Rabbis and their learning. His master, Kalba Sabua--so the story goes--was one of the richest men in Jerusalem, one of the three wealthy philanthropists who offered to prevent the famine occasioned by the last great siege of Jerusalem.

While in the service of Kalba Sabua, young Akiba made the acquaintance of his daughter Rachel. They were immediately drawn to one another, he attracted by her great beauty, and she by his innate refinement and superiority. A deep attachment soon sprang up between them. Akiba was still an illiterate man, however, and Rachel made him promise that if she were betrothed unto him he would go to the Beth Hamidrash to study. In those days this was equivalent to acquiring education and culture. To this Akiba assented and there followed a secret marriage. When her father learned of what she had done, he became furious. He disinherited her, and cast her off, leaving her without a roof over her head and absolutely penniless, and he swore that as long as Akiba remained her husband she would receive no help from her father. Then set in a period of bitter poverty for the young pair. Akiba's heart was rent with pain to see his young wife, who had been accustomed from earliest youth to a home of luxury, pass her days in a miserable hovel, with the barest necessities and sometimes even lacking bread to eat. In winter they slept on a pallet and Akiba would pick the straws out of her wonderfully long and beautiful hair. She was beautiful even in her rags and tatters, and once Akiba was moved to exclaim: "Oh, that I had a fitting ornament for thee: a golden image of Jerusalem the Holy City!" Both indeed were nearest his heart. Once a man came to the door of their hut and asked for some straw, saying that his wife was confined to child-bed and he had no couch for her. "Ah, see," said Akiba to his wife, "there are those even poorer than we. This man has not even straw to lie on." This seeming poor man, the Rabbis say, was none other than Elijah, who had come to comfort them in their misery.

_Struggles and Sacrifices for an Education_

THE incident did indeed give them new heart, for until then Akiba could not summon enough resolution to go off and study while his wife remained behind in such abject circumstances. Nor could she insist. But now her old strength came back to her, and she reminded Akiba of his promise: "Go thou, and study in the Beth-Hamidrash." She must have felt undoubtedly that there were great possibilities in him, and in truth she was not mistaken. Akiba, however, in his modesty, had no confidence that he could master the intricate subtleties of Rabbinic law. How could he, who had now reached forty years of age without once attending even an elementary school, hope to make any progress at all so late in life? One day, musing thus, as he stood by the village well, his interest was suddenly roused by observing that one of the stones had a deep hollow, caused probably by the drippings of the buckets. "Who hollowed out this stone?" he asked; and he was answered: "Canst thou not read Scripture, Akiba? 'The waters wear the stones,'--the water, that falls on it continually day after day, has hollowed out the stone." Immediately Akiba argued _a fortiori_ (Kal Vahomer) with respect to himself. "If what is soft can cut what is hard, then the words of the Torah, which are as hard as iron, will surely impress themselves upon my heart, which is only flesh and blood." So Akiba repaired forthwith to a _Melammed Tinokoth_, a teacher of children, and, seated beside his own little son, he began learning his letters. Akiba held one end of the A. B. C. board and his son the other.

The elements once mastered, the next step was the Rabbinical academy. Bitter poverty, however, would not permit Akiba to leave home, and he would probably have remained in his little village for the rest of his life, an obscure and unknown man, if it were not for his wife. It was her noble self-sacrifice that enabled him to become the greatest Rabbi of his time and perhaps of all time. Unknown to him, she stole out into the market-place and sold all that beautiful hair of hers, so that he might continue his studies. Indeed no sacrifice, no self-abnegation, was too great for her. She sent Akiba away and for twelve long years dwelt alone in sorrow and in want, a "living widow," and at the end of that period she crowned it with a renewal of the same great sacrifice. As Akiba was crossing the threshold, home again after twelve years of study, he overheard Rachel talking with a neighbor. "It served thee right," said the neighbor, "for marrying a man so far beneath thee. Now he has gone off and forsaken thee." "If he hearkened to me," was Rachel's reply, "he would stay away another twelve years." At these words Akiba exclaimed: "Since she gives me permission, I will go back to my studies,"--and he went and stayed away another twelve years. Such was the noble renunciation of Rachel, wife of Rabbi Akiba, for his sake and for the sake of the Torah.

_Akiba's Rise to Recognition and Fame_

AKIBA studied assiduously at the schools of R. Nahum of Geniso and of R. Eliezer and R. Joshua, both renowned teachers, who in their youth had been favorite pupils of Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai. It is illuminating to consider Akiba's general method of study. He had the habit, the Talmud tells us, of going alone to meditate over every Halakah (law) that he learned. After this bit of hard thinking, as we would call it, he usually came back with some very difficult questions. Only when these questions were answered did he feel satisfied that he knew the Halakah. That this thorough method of study bore fruitful results Akiba's subsequent achievements showed. At first, however, his genius was not evident and R. Eliezer paid no attention to him. But one day Akiba gave him his first answer and R. Eliezer was astounded at its profundity. Said R. Joshua then to R. Eliezer, in a slightly modified Scriptural phrase, "Is not this he whom thou hast despised? Go thou now and contend with him." From that time on Akiba was acknowledged a master of Rabbinic law.

All that confused mass of traditional rules, precepts, laws, discussions and opinions which composed the Oral Law, and which it usually took a lifetime to master, Akiba made his own within the space of a few years, and at an age when the mind is no longer fresh and impressionable. Akiba's genius showed itself even more brilliantly in his subsequent labors in the same field, which were marked by three great achievements. These were his arrangement of the Oral Law into a systematic code, the Mishnah (substantially as later edited by R. Judah Ha-Nasi), his establishment of a logical foundation for each Halakah, and his discovery and formulation of new and original methods of hermeneutics and exegesis. To appreciate the magnitude of these achievements, we must remember that up to and for some time after Akiba's day, instruction in the rabbinical academies was oral. Each teacher taught, as well as he could recall, exactly what he had heard from the lips of his master, and his pupils in their turn did likewise. Every great Rabbi therefore had his own set of Halakic traditions, his own Mishnah.

The results of this system or rather lack of system were mainly two: the reasons for many of the Halakoth were forgotten, and of the laws that were taught an immense number were uncoordinated, confused and often contradictory. The greatest fault, however, of these early Mishnayoth (Mishnayoth Rishonoth) was their general lack of arrangement. The Halakoth were usually strung together without connection and without any logical grouping. It was Akiba who first organized them into an orderly system. He put all the Halakoth dealing with one particular subject in one group, and then he divided the groups into the six general divisions that our Mishnah has today. Besides this he introduced number mneumonics wherever possible, in order to facilitate memorization. The second work that we owe to Akiba's influence is the Tosephta or Supplement to the Mishnah, as later edited by his pupil R. Nehemiah. Akiba's purpose in this Supplement was to give explanatory matter on the Halakoth of the Mishnah in the form of citations of cases, discussions, and opinions. Here there was more room for originality than in the first work, for when the reason for any law had been forgotten Akiba discovered it again.

_"The Third Founder of Judaism after Moses and Ezra"_

THE achievement, however, in which Akiba's mind revealed itself in all its brilliant originality, and which more than anything else delighted and astonished his colleagues, was his new system of Biblical, or rather Pentateuchal, interpretation, his Midrash ha-Torah. The importance of these new methods cannot be overestimated. The Oral Law is nothing more than the Jewish interpretation of the Torah, and consequently new methods of Pentateuchal exegesis meant the further growth and development of the Oral Law. Akiba thus gave Judaism the capacity for vigorous further development. He was indeed a firm believer in the principle that the Oral Law, even as life itself, is always in process of evolution--"immer in Werden," as the Germans put it--but never completed. His main exegetical principle is quite simple. The language of the Torah is not like the language of an ordinary book. In the Torah every syllable, every letter is fraught with meaning. It is all essence. Hence every detail in the Torah must be interpreted. There is absolutely nothing superfluous. It was these exegetical methods that excited the unbounded admiration of his fellow-rabbis. They said of him that things that were not even revealed to Moses were revealed unto Akiba. By his preservation of the old Halakoth in the Mishnah and by his stimulation of newer developments with his exegesis, Akiba laid the foundations of Talmudic and Rabbinic learning, and truly earned for himself the title of third founder of Judaism after Moses and Ezra.

Akiba's method of teaching also was extraordinary. The order and system that he had brought into the Rabbinic curriculum coupled with his novel methods of exegesis rendered his lectures clear, simple and most interesting. Multitudes flocked to hear him. With hardly an exception all the prominent Rabbis of the following generation attended Akiba's academy. Notable amongst them was R. Meir, who handed down Akiba's Mishnah to R. Judah Ha-Nasi and through him to posterity.

_Happiness and Affluence_

TOWARDS the end of the twenty-four years thus devoted to study, Akiba turned his steps homewards, accompanied by a large band of disciples, which tradition numbers in the thousands. At the rumor that a great Rabbi was coming, Rachel's heart was all aflutter with hope and expectation. Perhaps it was he at last! The whole village went out to meet him, she with the rest. When she saw that it was indeed he, she fell on her knees before him sobbing and began kissing his feet. The pupils surrounding Akiba wanted to push her aside, but he said, "Let her be. What knowledge I possess and what knowledge you possess belongs to her." When Kalba Sabua heard that a great Rabbi had come to town, not dreaming that it was his son-in-law, he made up his mind to go to him and have his vow absolved, for at the sight of his daughter's misery his heart had softened, and but for his vow he would long since have taken her back. He came to the Rabbi and the Rabbi said to him, "If thou hadst known that her husband would one day be a great scholar, wouldst thou have vowed?" "If he knew even one chapter or even one Halakah, I would not have vowed," was the reply. "I am he," said Akiba simply. At these words Kalba Sabua stared in amazement, and then fell at his feet and begged pardon for all his past unkindness towards both Akiba and Rachel. To make more substantial amends he gave them half his fortune and they lived in comfort ever after. The affluence in which Akiba henceforth lived, contrasted with the poverty of his student days when he used to cut wood for a living, is thus quaintly described in the Talmud: "When he was a student Akiba used to fetch a bundle of wood every day. Half he sold for food and half for clothing. But before Akiba departed from this world, he had tables of silver and of gold, and he climbed into his bed on golden ladders." His wife too had the satisfaction of receiving from him and wearing the "Golden Jerusalem," that Akiba had wished he could give her in the days of their poverty. Indeed the magnificence of Rachel's jewels called forth a protest on the part of the students of Akiba's academy. "Thou hast put us to shame before our wives," they said, "for our wives do not possess any such precious ornaments." "Ah, yes," said Akiba, "but she has suffered much with me in the Torah."

_Akiba's Virile Ethics and Philosophy_

AKIBA'S philosophical speculations were no less famous than his Halakic activities. Just about this time all sorts of hybrid religions made up of decadent Greek philosophy and of dying Pagan creeds were in vogue--the various forms of Gnosticism. Christianity--Jewish Gnosticism, that is--was only one of the many perversions that Judaism had to combat. These religions exercised a particular fascination because they dealt largely in esoteric doctrines and in theosophic speculation. There was great danger that Jewish minds might be led astray, as in fact some were. Of the four great Rabbis, who the Talmud says entered upon theosophic studies, only Akiba came through safely. Upon ben Azzai and ben Zoma, both brilliant young students, and upon Aher (Elisha ben Abuya) it had disastrous effects. Ben Azzai died young. Ben Zoma went mad and Elisha ben Abuyah repudiated Judaism. Wherefore the Rabbis never mentioned his name but always spoke of him as "_Aher_" ("the Other").

Akiba's philosophy and ethics are revealed in the following sayings:

"Labor is honorable to man."

"They err who say I will sin now and repent after. The day of atonement brings no forgiveness to the insincere." This saying is strikingly similar to Dante's famous line in the Inferno: "No one can repent and will at once."

The eternal problem why the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper is answered by Akiba in this way. The righteous are punished in this world for their few sins, so that in the next world they may receive only reward. The wicked on the other hand are rewarded here for what little good they do, so that in the next world they may receive only punishment.

"Beloved are Israel, for they are called children of the All-present, as it is said, 'Ye are children unto the Lord your God.' Beloved are Israel for unto them was given the desirable instrument by which the world was created, as it is written 'For I give you good doctrine, forsake ye not my Torah.'" Israel is therefore the Chosen People. Nay more. In another place Akiba says, "Even the poorest of Israel are looked upon as nobles," and even R. Ishmael agreed with him that "Every Jew is a royal prince." Our motto to-day of "noblesse oblige" is the same thought in a strange tongue. "By which the world was created" means that Akiba identified the Torah with "Wisdom," which is described in Proverbs, in that famous chapter beginning "Doth not wisdom cry and understanding put forth her voice?" as having been "set up from everlasting, from the beginning before the earth was." Adapting the opening verse of John, Akiba could very well have said, "In the beginning was the Torah and the Torah was with God," but he certainly would not have said, "and the Torah was God."

"Everything is foreseen," Akiba goes on to say, "yet freedom of choice is given; and the world is judged by grace, yet all is according to the amount of work." His doctrine of "grace" and "works" was that "grace" is acquired through works, or in non-theological language, God's favor goes to the man of good deeds. This was in opposition to the Christian teaching that "grace" came through faith alone. God's justice is tempered with mercy; yet even divine mercy is dealt out fairly, says Akiba. He had such a strong sense of right that he even condemned the action of the Israelites in despoiling the Egyptians. "It is equally wrong to deceive a heathen as to deceive an Israelite," he said. Akiba agreed with Hillel that the chief commandment of the Torah is, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" (Lev. XIX, 18), which again is nothing more than an application of the principle of justice in our dealings with our fellow-men.

_A Man of the People_

IN spite of his great fame Akiba was the most modest of men. While still a student at Jamnia Akiba was noted for his humility. R. Jochanan ben Nuri told how he had occasion several times to complain of Akiba to the Patriarch and how each time Akiba took his reprimand meekly. Nay more. Despite these reproofs Akiba was all the more affectionate towards R. Jochanan, so that the latter was moved to exclaim in admiration, "Reprove a wise man and he will love thee!" (Prov. IX, 8.) Another notable example of Akiba's modesty is his speech at the funeral of his son, which was attended by a great gathering of men, women, and children from all parts of Palestine. "Brethren of Israel," said Akiba, "listen to me. Not because I am a learned man have ye appeared here so numerously. There are those here more learned than I. Nor because I am a rich man. There are those here far richer than I. The people of the South know Akiba; but whence should the people of Galilee know him? The men know him; but whence should the women and children that I see here know him? But I know full well that ye have not given yourselves the trouble to come but for the sake of fulfilling a religious precept and to do honor to the Torah, and your reward will indeed be great." Practising it as he did, Akiba did not fail likewise to preach modesty. "He who esteems himself highly on account of his knowledge," said he, "is like a corpse lying at the wayside; the traveler turns his head away in disgust and walks quickly by." Again, in words almost identical with Luke (XIV, 8-11), Akiba says: "Take thou a seat a few places below thy rank until thou art bidden to take a higher place, for it is better that they should say to thee: 'Come up higher' than that they should bid thee 'Go down lower.'"

Akiba was likewise famous for his kindness and charity. He was a man of the people. His heart was full of charity and affection for the multitude. His interest in their welfare was so deep and genuine that he ultimately came to be called the "Hand of the Poor." As overseer of the poor, Akiba made many long and arduous journeys to collect funds for their relief. It was his opinion that the funds of charity ought not to be invested, in order that ready money might always be at hand, should a poor man present himself. Once Akiba received some money from R. Tarphon, for the purpose of buying some land. But instead Akiba distributed the money to the poor. When Tarphon asked him where the property was, Akiba showed him the verse in Psalms, "He hath scattered, he hath given to the poor; his righteousness endureth forever; his horn shall be exalted with honor." Thereupon Tarphon kissed Akiba on the forehead and exclaimed, "My master and my guide!"

_His Fervent Patriotism_

FOR us to-day, however, the most striking thing about Akiba is his nationalism. Other Rabbis were men of great intellect, other Rabbis were learned, modest, and benevolent, other Rabbis lived, worked and died for Judaism, but no other Rabbi was conspicuously and so zealously a nationalist. Akiba loved "Eretz Yisrael" passionately, not only with the visionary fervor of the pious Jew, but with the practical idealism of a patriot. In all his extended journeys for the collection of alms, he took care to spread and keep alive in the breast of his fellow-Jews the desire for the rebuilding of Zion as a practical and immediate reality.

It was Akiba's spirit that inspired and animated the last great rebellion against Rome. This "final polemos," as the Talmud calls it, was preparing for a number of years. Akiba openly acknowledged Bar Kochba, who was to be the leader of the revolt, as the promised Messiah, as "the star that would come out of Jacob." All the great influence, therefore, of Akiba's moral support was behind Bar Kochba's military preparations. The Jews had indeed much to complain of. Hadrian had broken faith with them; he had failed to rebuild their Temple as he had promised, and now (about the year 130), to make matters worse, he was beginning a systematic persecution of their religion. He forbade circumcision, the study of the Torah, the keeping of the Sabbath, the ordination of disciples, in short everything that went to express the Jewish religion. The Jews determined upon war. But even before the outbreak of hostilities their greatest loss occurred. Akiba and several other great Rabbis were captured by the Romans, imprisoned, condemned to death, and executed. Their crime was simply that they had continued teaching the Torah in spite of the Imperial decree.

_"Even Unto Death"_

THIS was the manner of Akiba's death. When he heard that the renowned R. Ishmael and a certain Simon were captured, he was stirred all the more to persevere in his teaching. "Prepare ye for death, for terrible days are awaiting us," said Akiba to his pupils. A certain Pappos ben Judah met Akiba assembling the people and teaching the Torah in public. "Dost thou not fear the Government?" said Pappos. "Thou art considered a wise man, Pappos," answered Akiba, "but verily thou art but a fool. I shall give thee a parable to the matter. Once a fox was walking along the edge of a stream. He saw the fishes in commotion, hurrying hither and thither. 'Before what do ye flee?' said he to them. 'We are fleeing before the nets of the fishermen that are cast out to catch us.' 'Would ye be willing to come up on dry land and live with me, even as your fathers and my fathers were wont to live?' 'Art thou he who is called the most discerning among beasts? Verily thou art but a fool. If even in the element that means life to us, we are fearful of death, how much more so in the element that means our death.' Even so are we. If even in the time that we are occupied with the Torah, of which it is said, 'For it is thy life and the length of thy days,' we are fearful of death, how much more so if even for a moment we cease its study." Not many days later Akiba was captured and thrown into prison. Pappos ben Judah also found himself imprisoned with Akiba. "How camest thou here?" asked Akiba. "Happy art thou," replied Pappos, "that thou hast been taken prisoner for the sake of the Torah; woe is me, Pappos, that I have been taken prisoner for vain things."

When they led Akiba out to execution it was the hour of the reading of the "Shema." Tinnius Rufus, the governor, caused his skin to be torn off with hot irons; but Akiba was directing his heart towards accepting the yoke of God's kingdom, that he might accept it with love. He recited the "Shema" with a peaceful smile on his face. Rufus, astounded at his insensibility to pain, asked him whether he was a sorcerer. "I am no sorcerer," replied Akiba. "All the days of my life have I grieved that I could not carry out the commandment, 'Thou shalt love thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul and with all thy might,'--even unto death. But now that I am able to fulfill it shall I not rejoice?" And with the last syllable of the "Shema"--Hear, Oh Israel, the Lord our God the Lord is One--Akiba expired.

EDITORS' NOTE.--_This is the third in a series of
sketches of "Jewish Worthies," of which the fourth
will have "Judah the Prince" for its subject._

_HEBREWS willingly neglectful of their own inheritance
cannot hope to be of much value as Americans. Nor is
the republic interested in suppressing this or any
other valuable legacy from the past. Our "assimilative
process" is far off from being the terrible thing
which European critics sometimes charge against us. We
do reshape peoples who come to us from the old world,
but not at the cost of the things they cherish or of
the gifts they bring. Our civilization is enriched,
not impoverished, by these diverse race traits,
loyalty to which helps to make a loyalty worth having.
If the future world order is to be founded on the
harmonization of ethnic differences, there should be
place enough for such differences in our own
peace-aspiring republic._--_From an Editorial in The
Boston Herald._

Aspects of Jewish Life and Letters

_As Revealed in Four Noteworthy Books_

I

A SYMPATHETIC STUDY OF PHARISAISM[B]

AS a rule, Jewish readers approach the works of Christian writers upon Jewish subjects with distrust. They are accustomed to find in them either the misrepresentations of Anti-Semitic hatred or the misrepresentations of conversionist love. The present book, based upon lectures delivered at Oxford upon the Hibbert foundation, is a representative of the rare group of studies belonging to neither class. It embodies an earnest and surprisingly successful attempt to depict justly the religious life of the Jews in the time of the Talmud. The writer is well prepared for his task by thirty years' devoted study of Rabbinical literature; he is known as the author of a careful and scholarly work on "Christianity in Talmud and Midrash."

The book includes a preliminary historical sketch, a study of what the Rabbis meant by Torah, indicating the true nature of Pharisaic legalism, chapters on the attitude of Jesus and of Paul toward the Pharisees, and two final chapters on the Pharisaic theology. The book is valuable as a Christian reply to Weber, the German author of a learned, widely-used, and thoroughly unfair presentation of Jewish theology. Mr. Herford frankly confesses that he is an apologist of the Pharisees, but his book is in no sense an iconoclastic attack upon the ideas received among Christians as to the character of the Pharisees. He freely admits, as any fair-minded Jew would, the dangers of the Pharisaic system, but he is likewise careful to point out that these dangers were by no means destructive of true spiritual life. It is most refreshing to find a book of this sort included in the Crown Theological Library, along with the erudite but anti-Jewish works of Bousset and Harnack.

_The Truth About the Pharisees_

MR. HERFORD aims to set forth the truth about the Pharisees rather than to present new ideas or conclusions. Nevertheless, his book contains here and there new suggestions. His theory that the men of the Great Synagogue were identical with the Soferim, though it has a certain plausibility, is hardly supported by any great weight of historical evidence. It is interesting to learn that the Synagogue represents the oldest form of congregational worship, and is the oldest human institution that has survived without interruption. The parallel between the Hassidim and the Saints of Cromwell's time (p. 38) is curious. Mr. Herford has the somewhat strange notion (pp. 44-5) that there is a sign of "mutual distrust" in the weeping of the High Priest and the representatives of the Beth Din after the former had taken the oath to observe the regulations concerning the Day of Atonement. To the ordinary reader of the Mishnah the tears seem a perfectly natural expression of the emotional strain under which all the people labored on the great day.

It is hard to part from Mr. Herford's admirable book without quoting a very fine tribute which he pays to the Jewish people. In speaking of the influence of Ezra's ideals, he says (p. 55): "The Talmud is the witness to show how some of his countrymen, some of the bravest, some of the ablest, some of the most pious and saintly, and a host of unnamed faithful, were true to those ideals and clung to those hopes; and how, through good report and ill report, through shocks of disaster and the ruin of their state, ground down by persecution, or torn by faction, steadily facing enemies within, they held on to the religion of the Torah."

_University of Illinois_

II

JUDAISM AND PHILANTHROPY[C]

SOME years ago I met a certain Russian Jew at a conference called to discuss various problems of education. He was an immigrant who had made his fortune through speculation in real estate, and with his rise in fortune he had, it was evident, thrown off, one after another, the social habits, the religious outlook, and the organization of the daily life which were the heritage he had brought with him from Russia. He was at that time, he told me, president of a large Jewish congregation, whose pillars of support were men like himself. He complained bitterly of their backwardness and illiberality. They would not introduce an organ and refused to change the prayer book or to secure an "advanced" rabbi. For himself, he did not care whether they had a synagogue--I mean temple--at all. He retained no longer any of the superstitions or narrowness of his colleagues, and if it were not for the fact that he felt himself out of place among members of the radically reformed temple he would have attended that long ago. He was a member of it, of course. His wife had made him join some years ago. It was a double expense, to be sure, but his wife wanted to be active in the Women's Council, and the children met other nice children in the Sunday School. He did not think anyhow that synagogal affiliation made any difference.

"I am," he said, "a good Jew. I give charity."

The remark took me aback, yet the logical development to the point of view that he expressed was inevitable. In an environment where the call of ambition is generally a call toward de-Judaization, the connection between Jews who prosper and the great masses of the Jewish people becomes, perforce, an external and artificial one. It is notorious that the temple has thus far had no appeal to and no message for the Jewish masses, that its membership is recruited from the well-to-do and the successful, and that its relation to the great groups which are destined never to be well-to-do or successful becomes purely a relation of philanthropy. The elements of brotherhood, of a common consciousness and a common purpose, fade or get submerged. Where the masses are concerned the whole corporate essence of reformed Judaism becomes concentrated in the word "charity."

_Justice vs. Charity in the Jewish Ideal_

YET it is significant that in Hebrew there is no special word for charity. The term צדקה (Zedakah) meant originally righteousness, and the righteousness which the prophets advocated was the substance of social justice. It was incorporated into the fundamental law of the Jewish state, which differed from that of other ancient states in the fact that its intention was to secure freedom and "life" for each individual man. Charity, as we now understand the word, had no place in the social conceptions of the prophets and was not acknowledged in the Law. The three codes which are preserved to us in the Bible from the covenant in Exodus to the extraordinarily profound legislation of Leviticus express an evolution of the social sense founded on a right appreciation of social justice and democracy. "Life," and its sustenance food, and shelter were regarded as the rights of each and every man and not as gifts from one man to another. The law concerning the tenure of land is particularly significant for its insight into the economic basis of social justice, and the laws concerning indebtedness and slavery only less so. Charity appears only when the state disintegrates. It is coincident with the decay of the social organization and the consequent failings of the sense of corporate responsibility, and consists substantially of the conversion of a right into a gift. This change is registered in the new meaning which the word "Zedakah" receives. For a state in which social justice prevails there is no room for charity, while a social order which involves charity is not one which maintains justice. Thus it may be said that the prophets, because they operated in terms of the reorganization of the whole of society and not of the incidental correction of piecemeal evils, were humanists. Their program was constructive and aimed at the enfranchisement of manhood. The rabbis, on the other hand, were (relatively only) philanthropists. Their program was remedial, and they aimed rather at the relief of suffering than the realization and perfection of human potentialities.

To-day the term "charity" has given way to a new equivalent, with a somewhat different connotation. This new equivalent is "social service." That it should be urged, as Mr. Lewis urges it, upon liberal Judaism is simply another indication of the evanescing adherence of that sect to the corporate life of the Jewish people. Although "social service" carries with it more of the sense of justice than the term charity, it is still, in intention, a charitable thing. It is not a thing done through the inevitable forms of right social organization, but through the gracious good will of a kindly individual. It still maintains the Christian quality of "grace" which is a condescension, a going down, a philanthropy. It stands in contrast to _law_, which knows no such qualities, and the call which Mr. Lewis makes to liberal Judaists for a special kind of social service is itself a demonstration that "liberal Judaism" thus far has little in common with the substance of Jewish life. Indeed his whole book is a demonstration of this fact, for of the six chapters that it contains only one has anything to say of social service as such in the present day, while four are analyses, not of charity, but of the law of righteousness as it operated in the Jewish polity, both in Palestine and in the Diaspora. Even the actual charity of the Middle Ages carries a quality of obligation and socially ordained necessity which is derived from the basic law of the Jewish people.

_The Hope of Liberal Judaism_

BUT to-day, while the great Jewish masses still live, more or less adequately under the basic law and exercise such righteousness as they may in the division of obligation which the laws of the Galuth lands compel, the classes are divorced from its rule altogether. The call with which Mr. Lewis closes his book,--

"We must teach the masses of our people, upon whom the
Judaism of yesterday has lost hold, that their
salvation lies in liberal Judaism, which is beginning
to find itself to-day and which will become the
Judaism of to-morrow,"

--is the best indication of this. Liberal Judaism has not touched the minds or hearts of the masses. The radicals despise it as a capitalistic system of compromise with the social environment. To the rest of the working classes, it makes thus far no appeal whatever. It is only upon the radicals that the "Judaism of yesterday" has lost its hold, and to them liberal Judaism can have no appeal. To the rest of the Jewish people it can be significant and really developed into the "Judaism of to-morrow" only in so far as it can succeed in reincorporating itself into the common life. I am an old social service person, and I am prepared to deny categorically that such a reincorporation is possible through social service. What is needed is sympathetic intelligence, insight into the life and aspirations of the masses, return of the classes to the masses, participation in their ideals, their traditions, and their common life. It is not by a cutting off from the past, but by a development out of it that such a reincorporation can be consummated.

If liberal Judaism is to be a living and growing force at all, it can become so only by accepting the inevitable conditions which govern all life. Life is organic; religion is only one of the many organs of human society, even Jewish society. Its health and vitality are dependent upon the health and vitality of the social residuum. The hope of liberal Judaism lies in a reincorporated national life for the Jews. That alone can preserve the Jewish religion, either from petrifying as orthodoxy through resistance against environmental pressure, or from evaporating as reform through submission to environmental pressure.

_University of Wisconsin_

III

THE HEBREW GENIUS[D]

THIS little volume is five years old, but its review is always timely; and for THE MENORAH JOURNAL very appropriate. The English language is extremely poor in popular, yet scholarly and well-written books and essays on Jewish literature. A great many of those who are thoroughly versed in Hebrew literature, who regard the study of the original Rabbinic sources as a work of love if not a profession and a life work, have not a sufficient command of English or of systematic exposition to be able to present the spirit of these writings in acceptable form to the lay reader. The few scientific scholars in our seminaries and colleges who could if they chose write authoritatively and withal in an interesting manner concerning the course of Jewish thought during the past two or three millenia, prefer to devote their time and energy to the more technical aspects of the subject, which are not designed for the uninitiated reader. And the men of journalistic calibre and inclination, even if we had them, are not the most desirable purveyors of Jewish knowledge. The truth of the matter is, in the words of Nietzsche, that ears are still growing for the intelligent American Jewish people so far as Jewish literature--Hebrew classical literature--is concerned.

The cause of the paucity of works in English on Jewish literary subjects is really economic. There is no lack of young men among the people of the Book whose ideal of a well-spent life is one of complete devotion to a scholarly career in the service of our ancient and medieval classics. But unfortunately the very young men who give promise of presenting in a creditable manner our intellectual heritage for the benefit of the majority otherwise occupied, have no means of their own, and yet are not ready (as it should not be expected of them that they should be) to take the vow of poverty and celibacy and form a Jewish monastic order of St. Haninah. Accordingly not a few of these choose the Rabbinic career as the most likely profession to enable them to keep in touch with Jewish learning--more or less a disappointed hope to the real scholar who has no other fitness for the modern Rabbinate except his scholarship. Others are completely side-tracked and lost to Jewish scholarship.

Thus the lack of interest in Jewish learning and scholarship keeps promising young men away from these unpromising studies. The result is that the field in English remains uncultivated, which reacts again unfavorably in a diminution of interest, and the vicious circle is complete.

_The Need of Encouragement to Jewish Learning_