3. But the great seer of the exile, whose anonymity lends still greater

impressiveness to his words of comfort, stood on a higher historical plane

than that of Ezekiel the priest. He witnessed the transformation of the

entire political world of his time through the victory of Cyrus the Mede

over the Babylonian empire, and thus was able to attain a profounder grasp

of the destiny of his own nation. Hence he was not satisfied with the view

of Ezekiel. The latter had applied the popular saying, “The fathers have

eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge,”(1176) to

refute the belief that an individual was punished for the sins of his

fathers; but he failed to extend this doctrine to the whole nation.

Whatever sins were committed by the generation who were exiled, their

children ought not to suffer for them “in double measure.”(1177) Moreover,

the realm of love has a higher law than atonement through retribution.

Love brings its sacrifice without asking why. By willing sacrifice of self

it serves its higher purpose. He who struggles and suffers silently for

the good and true is _God’s servant_, who cannot perish. He attains a

higher glory, transcending the fate of mortality. This is the new

revelation that came to the seer, as he pondered on the destiny of Israel

in exile, illumining for him that dark enigma of his people’s tragic

history.

The problem of suffering, especially that of the servant of God, or the

pious, occupied the Jewish mind ever since the days of Jeremiah and

especially during the exile. The author of the book of Job elaborated this

into a great theodicy, speaking of Job also as the “servant of the

Lord.”(1178) Whatever pattern our exilic seer employed, beside the

chapters about the Servant of the Lord,(1179) whatever tragic fate of some

great contemporary the plaintive song in the fifty-second and fifty-third

chapters referred to (some point to Jeremiah, others to Zerubabel),(1180)

or whether the poet had in mind only the tragic fate of Israel, as many

modern exegetes think; in any case he conceived the unique and pathetic

picture of Israel as the suffering Servant of the Lord, who is at last to

be exalted:(1181)

“Behold, My servant shall prosper, he shall be exalted and lifted up, and

shall be very high. According as many were appalled at thee—so marred was

his visage unlike that of a man, and his form unlike that of the sons of

men—so shall he startle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths

because of him; for that which had not been told them they shall see, and

that which they had not heard shall they perceive. Who would have believed

our report? And to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he

shot up right forth as a sapling, and as a root out of a dry ground; he

had no form nor comeliness, that we should look upon him, nor beauty that

we should delight in him. He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of

pains, and acquainted with disease, and as one from whom men hide their

face; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely our diseases he did

bear, and our pains he carried; whereas we did esteem him stricken,

smitten of God and afflicted. But he was wounded because of our

transgressions, he was crushed because of our iniquities; the chastisement

of our welfare was upon him, and with his stripes we were healed. All we,

like sheep, did go astray, we turned every one to his own way; and the

Lord hath made to light on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed,

though he humbled himself, and opened not his mouth; as a lamb that is led

to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before her shearers is dumb; yea, he

opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away, and

with his generation who did reason? For he was cut off out of the land of

the living, for the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due.

And they made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich his tomb;

although he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet

it pleased the Lord to crush him by disease; to see if his soul would

offer itself in restitution, that he might see his seed, prolong his days,

and that the purpose of the Lord might prosper by his hand. Of the travail

of his soul he shall see to the full, even My servant, who by his

knowledge did justify the Righteous One to the many, and their iniquities

he did bear. Therefore will I divide him a portion among the great, and he

shall divide his soul with the mighty; because he bared his soul unto

death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of

many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”

4. Whatever be the historical background of this great elegy, our seer

uses it to portray Israel as the tragic hero of the world’s history. His

prophetic genius possessed a unique insight into the character and destiny

of his people, seeing Israel as a man of woe and grief, chosen by

Providence to undergo unheard-of trials for a great cause, by which, at

the last, he is to be exalted. Bent and disfigured by his burden of misery

and shame, shunned and abhorred as one laden with sin, he suffers for no

guilt of his own. He is called to testify to his God among all the

peoples, and is thus the _Servant of the Lord_, the atoning sacrifice for

the sins of mankind, from whose bruises healing is to come to all the

nations,—an inimitable picture of a self-sacrificing hero, whose death

means life to the world and glory to God, and who will at last live

forever with the Lord whom he has served so steadfastly. Our seer mentions

in earlier passages the Servant of the Lord who “gave his back to the

smiters, and his cheeks to them that plucked off the hair; and hid not his

face from shame and spitting.”(1182) Yet “he shall set his face like a

flint,” so that “he shall not fail nor be crushed, till he have set the

right in the earth; and the isles shall wait for his teaching.”(1183)

Still more directly, he says: “And He said unto Me, ‘Thou art My servant,

Israel, in whom I will be glorified.’ ... It is too light a thing that

thou shouldest be My servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to

restore the offspring of Israel; I will also give thee for a light of the

nations, that My salvation may be unto the end of the earth. Thus saith

the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel, his Holy One, to him who is despised of

men, to him who is abhorred of nations, to a servant of rulers: kings

shall see and arise, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves; because

of the Lord that is faithful, even the Holy One of Israel, who hath chosen

thee.”(1184)

5. It was, however, no easy matter for men reared in the old view to reach

the lofty conception of a suffering hero. Even the dramatic figure of Job

seemed to lack the right solution. Job protests his guiltlessness, defies

the dark power of fate, and even challenges divine justice, but God

himself announces at the end that no man can grasp the essence of His plan

for the world. A later and more naïve writer, who added the conclusion of

the book, reversed Job’s destiny and compensated him by a double share of

what he had lost in both wealth and family.(1185) As if the great problem

of suffering could be solved by such external means! Neither would the

problem of the great tragedy of Israel, the martyr-priest of the

centuries, the Job of the nations, ever find its solution in a national

restoration. A mere political rebirth could never compensate for the

thousandfold death and untold woe of the Jew for his God and his faith!

But the people at large could not grasp such a conception as is that of

Deutero-Isaiah’s of the mission of Israel to be the suffering servant of

the Lord, the witness of God—which is “martyr” in the Greek version,—the

redeemer of the nations. They were eager to return to Palestine, to

rebuild State and Temple under the leadership of the heir to the throne of

David. But when their hope had failed that Zerubbabel would prove to be

the “shoot of Jesse,”(1186) the prophetic elegy was referred to the

Messiah, and the belief gained ground that he would have to suffer before

he would triumph.(1187) Thus many a pseudo-Messiah fell a victim to the

tyranny of Rome in both Judæa and Samaria,—for the Samaritans also hoped

for a Messiah, a redeemer of the type of Moses.(1188) Finally a belief

arose that there would be two Messiahs, one of the house of Joseph, that

is, the tribe of Ephraim, who would fall before the sword of the

enemy,(1189) and the other of the house of David, who was to conquer the

heathen nations and establish his throne forever.(1190)

The Church referred the pathetic figure of the man of sorrow to her

crucified Messiah or Christ. Yet he who was to be a world-savior bore

through his followers damnation to his own kinsmen, and thus was rendered

the chief cause of the persecution of the martyr-race of Israel.

6. We learn, however, from Origen, a Church father of the third century,

that Jewish scholars, in a controversy with him, expressed the view that

the Servant of the Lord refers to the Jewish people, which, dispersed

among the nations and universally despised, would finally obtain the

ascendancy over them, so that many of the heathen would espouse the Jewish

faith.(1191) Most of the medieval Jewish exegetes, including Rashi, who

usually follows the traditional view, refer the chapter likewise to the

Jewish people. As a matter of fact, the earlier chapters which speak of

the Servant of the Lord can have no other meaning, while many points in

the description of the suffering hero, especially the reference to his

seed after his death, do not fit the Nazarene at all. Hence all

independent Christian scholars to-day have abandoned the tradition of the

Church, and admit that Israel alone is declared by the prophet to be the

one singled out by God to atone for the sins of the nations, to arouse all

humanity to a deeper spiritual vision, and finally to triumph over all the

heathen world.(1192)

7. Thus the strange history of the martyr people is put in the right light

and the great tragedy of Israel explained. Israel is the champion of the

Lord, chosen to battle and suffer for the supreme values of mankind, for

freedom and justice, truth and humanity; the man of woe and grief, whose

blood is to fertilize the soil with the seeds of righteousness and love

for mankind. From the days of Pharaoh to the present day, every oppressor

of the Jews has become the means of bringing greater liberty to a wider

circle; for the God of Israel, the Hater of bondage, has been appealed to

in behalf of freedom in the old world and the new. Every hardship that

made life unbearable to the Jew became a road to humanity’s triumph over

barbarism. All the injustice and malice which hurled their bitter shafts

against Israel, the Pariah of the nations, led ultimately to the greater

victory of right and love. So all the dark waves of hatred and fanaticism

that beat against the Jewish people served only to impress the truth of

monotheism, coupled with sincere love of God and man, more deeply upon all

hearts and to consign hypocrisy and falsehood to eternal contempt. Such is

the belief confidently held by the people of God, and ever confirmed anew

by the history of the ages. “He is near that justifieth me; who will

contend with me? let us stand up together; who is mine adversary? let him

come near to me. Behold, the Lord God will help me; who is he that shall

condemn me?”(1193) Thus speaks the Servant of the Lord, certain that he

will finally triumph, because he defends God’s cause, and is bound

indissolubly to Him.(1194) Indeed, God says of him: “Surely, he that

toucheth you toucheth the apple of Mine (his) eye.”(1195)

8. The great importance which the rabbis attached to Israel’s martyrdom is

shown by the following remarks in connection with the laws of sacrifice:

“Behold, how the Torah selects for the sacrificial altar only such animals

as belong to the pursued, not the pursuers: the ox which is pursued by the

lion; the lamb which is pursued by the wolf; the goat which is pursued by

the panther, but none of those which feed on prey. In like manner God

chose for His own the persecuted ones: Abel, who was persecuted by his

brother Cain; Noah, who was derided by the generation of the flood;

Abraham, who had to flee before the tyrant Nimrod; and Isaac, Jacob, and

Joseph, who met with unkindness from their own brothers. In the same way

God has chosen Israel from among the seventy nations, as the lamb hunted,

as it were, by seventy wolves, that it should bear His law to

mankind.”(1196) This idea is expressed also in the Haggadic saying: “Those

shall be privileged to see the majesty of God in full splendor who meet

humiliation, but do not humiliate others; who bear insult, but do not

inflict it on others; and who endure a life of martyrdom in pure love of

God.”(1197)

Indeed, the medieval Jew accepted his sad lot in this spirit of

resignation. But the modern Jew is in a different situation. In the mighty

effort of our age for higher truth, broader love and larger justice, he

beholds the nearing of the prophetic goal of a united humanity, based on

the belief in God, the King and Father of all. Accordingly, modern Judaism

proclaims more insistently than ever that the Jewish people is the Servant

of the Lord, the suffering Messiah of the nations, who offered his life as

an atoning sacrifice for humanity and furnished his blood as the cement

with which to build the divine kingdom of truth and justice. Indeed, the

cosmopolitan spirit of the Jew is the one element needed for the

universality of culture. On the other hand, the world at large is to-day

learning more and more to regard the superb loyalty of the Jew to his

ancestral faith with greater fairness and admiration and to accord larger

appreciation to him and his religion. Once the flood of hatred,

dissension, and prejudice that brought such untold havoc shall have

disappeared from the earth; once religion emerges from the nebulous

atmosphere of other-worldliness, and directs its longing for God toward a

life of godliness on earth in the spirit of the ancient prophets, then the

historic mission of the Jew will also be better understood. Israel, the

hunted dove, which found no resting-place for the sole of its foot during

the flood of sin and persecution, will then appear with the olive-branch

of peace for all humanity, to open the hearts of men that all may enter

the covenant with the universal Father. Then, and not till then, will the

shame of those thousands of years be rolled away, when the world will

recognize that not _a_ Jew, but _the_ Jew has been the suffering Messiah,

and that he was sent forth to be the savior of the nations.

Chapter LIII. The Messianic Hope

1. Recent investigators have brought to light many a vision of an era of

heavenly bliss brought about by some powerful ruler, voiced in hoary

antiquity by seer or singer in addressing the royal masters of Babylon or

Egypt.(1198) But no word in the entire vocabulary of ancient poetry or

prose can so touch the deeper chords of the heart, and so voice the

highest hopes of mankind, as does the name _Messiah_ (“God’s anointed”).

From a simple title for any of the kings of Israel, it grew in meaning

until it comprised the highest hopes of the nation. The Jewish vision of

the future was not the twilight of the gods, which meant the end of the

world with its deities, but the dawn of a new world, bright with the

knowledge of God and blessed by the brotherhood of man. This, the

Messianic ideal, is the creation of the prophetic genius of Israel, and in

turn it influenced man’s conception of God, lifting Him out of the

national bounds, and making Him the God of humanity, Ruler of history.

Israel’s Messianic hope has become the motive power of civilization. In

the time of deepest national humiliation it gave the prophets their power

to surmount the present and soar to heights of vision; through it the

Jewish people attained their strength to resist oppression, buoyed up by

perfect confidence and sublime hope. At the same time its magic luster

captivated the non-Jewish nations, spurring them on to mighty deeds. Thus

it has actually conquered the whole world of man. With every step in

culture it points forward to higher aims, still unattained; it promises to

lead mankind, united in God, the Only One, to truth and justice,

righteousness and love. As the banner of Israel, the Messiah of the

nations, it is destined to become the lode-star of all nations and all

religions. This is the kernel of the Jewish doctrine concerning the

Messiah.

2. This Messianic hope, on closer analysis, reveals two elements, both of

prophetic origin: one national, the other religious and universal. The

latter is the logical outcome of the monotheism of the great exilic seer,

who based his stirring pictures of the glorious future of Israel upon the

all-encompassing knowledge of God possessed by the Chosen People. The

classic expression of this hope appears in Isaiah II, 1-4, and Micah IV,

1-14: “And it shall come to pass in the end of days, that the mountain of

the Lord’s house shall be established as the top of the mountains, and

shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And

many peoples shall go and say: ‘Come ye and let us go up to the mountain

of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His

ways, and we will walk in His paths,’ for out of Zion shall go forth the

law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge between

the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their

swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation

shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any

more.” We note, indeed, that no reference to the Messiah or a king of the

house of David appears either in this passage or any of the prophecies of

Deutero-Isaiah. Justice and peace for all humanity are expected through

the reign of God alone. The specific Messianic character of this prophecy

took shape only in its association with the older national hope, voiced by

the prophet Isaiah.

3. The real Messianic hope involved the reëstablishment of the throne of

David, and was expressed most perfectly in the words of Isaiah: “And there

shall come forth a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a twig shall grow

forth out of his roots. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,

the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might,

the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. And his delight shall

be in the fear of the Lord; and he shall not judge after the sight of his

eyes, neither decide after the hearing of his ears; but with righteousness

shall he judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the land;

and he shall smite the land with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath

of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the

girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. And the

wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the

kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a

little child shall lead them.... They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My

holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord,

as the waters cover the sea.”(1199)

This pattern of the ideal ruler may have been modeled after some ancient

Babylonian formula for the adoration of kings, as has been asserted of

late; and the same may be true of the mystic titles given by Isaiah to the

royal heir: “Wonderful counselor, divine hero, father of spoil, prince of

peace.”(1200) When the little kingdom of Judæa fell, the prospect of a

realization of the great prophetic vision seemed gone forever. Therefore

the exiles in Babylon fastened their hopes so much more firmly on the

“Shoot,” particularly on Zerubabel (“the seed born in Babylon”), the

object of the fondest hopes of the later prophets.(1201) When he, too,

disappointed their expectations, probably due to Persian interference,

they transferred the advent of the Messiah more and more into the realm of

miracle, and popular fancy dwelt fondly on his appearance as God’s

champion against the hosts of heathendom (Gog and Magog).(1202)

4. The conception of the priest-prophet Ezekiel is very significant in

this connection; for him the kingdom of Israel’s God could only be

established by the restoration of the throne of David, the servant of the

Lord, and by the utter destruction of the hosts of heathendom, who were

hostile to both God and Israel. In accordance with this hope the author of

the second Psalm presents a dramatic picture of the Messiah triumphing

over the heathen nations, a picture which became typical for all the

future. “Why are the nations in an uproar? And why do the peoples mutter

in vain? The kings of the earth stand up, and the rulers take counsel

together against the Lord, and against His anointed: ‘Let us break their

bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.’ He that sitteth in

heaven laugheth, the Lord hath them in derision. Then will He speak unto

them in His wrath, and affright them in His sore displeasure: ‘Truly it is

I that have established My king upon Zion, My holy mountain.’ I will tell

of the decree: The Lord said unto me: ‘Thou art My son, this day have I

begotten thee. Ask of Me, and I will give the nations for thine

inheritance, and the ends of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt

break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a

potter’s vessel.’ ” Henceforth the conception of the Messiah alternated

between Isaiah’s prince of peace and the world-conqueror of the

Psalmist.(1203) The name Messiah does not occur in Scripture in the

absolute form, but always occurs in the construct with JHVH or a pronoun,

signifying “the Anointed of the Lord.” Accordingly, it expresses the

relation of the Anointed to God, his sovereign, in striking contrast to

the heathen kings who themselves claimed adoration as gods. The very name

Messiah excludes the possibility of deification. The term Messiah was used

with the article only in much later times, _ha Meshiah_, or in the

Aramaic, _Meshiha_, from which we derive the name, Messiah.

5. In the course of time, however, as the people waited in vain for a

redeemer, the expected Messiah was lifted more and more into the realm of

the ideal. The belief took hold especially in the inner circle of the

pious (Hasidim) that the Messiah was hidden somewhere, protected by God,

to appear miraculously after having vanquished the hostile powers. The

Essenes, the representatives of the secret lore, developed this conception

in the Apocalyptic writings, thus giving the Messiah a certain cosmic or

supernatural character. They probably modeled their thoughts upon the

Zoroastrian system, where _Soshiosh_, the world savior, would appear in

the last millennium as the messenger of Ormuzd to destroy forever the

kingdom of evil and establish the dominion of the good.(1204) Thus, when

Isaiah says of the Messiah that “by the breath of his mouth he shall slay

the wicked,” this is referred to the principle of evil, Satan or Belial,

who was sometimes actually identified with the Persian Ahriman.(1205)

Moreover, after the Persian system, the whole process of history was

divided into six millenniums of strife between the principle of good and

evil, represented by the Torah and the ungodliness of the world, and a

seventh millennium, the kingdom of God or the Messianic age. The dates of

these were calculated upon the basis of the book of Daniel, with its four

world-kingdoms and mysterious numbers.(1206)

6. The Biblical passages which refer to “the end of days” were also

connected with the advent of the Messianic age, and the so-called

eschatological writings speak of fixed periods following one another. In

accordance with certain prophetic hints, they expected first the

“birth-throes”(1207) or “vestiges” of the Messianic age, a great physical

and moral crisis with the turmoil of nature, plagues, and moral

degeneracy. Before the Messiah would suddenly appear from his hiding

place, the prophet Elijah was to return from heaven, whither he had

ascended in a fiery chariot. But, while he had lived in implacable wrath

against idolaters, he was now to come as a messenger of peace, reconciling

the hearts of Israel with God and with one another, preparing the way to

repentance, and thus to the redemption and reunion of Israel.(1208) The

next stage is the gathering together of Israel from all corners of the

earth to the holy land under the leadership of the Messiah, summoned by

the blast of the heavenly trumpet.(1209) Then begins that gigantic warfare

on the holy soil between the hosts of Israel and the vast forces of

heathendom led by the half-mystic powers of Gog and Magog, a conflict

which, according to Ezekiel, is to last for seven years and to end with

the annihilation of the powers of evil. Before the real Messiah, the son

of David, appears in victory, another Messiah of the tribe of Ephraim is

to fall in battle, according to a belief dating from the second century

and possibly connected with the Bar Kochba war.(1210) In another

tradition, probably older, the true Messiah himself is to suffer and

die.(1211) At all events, he must destroy Rome, the fourth world-kingdom.

But he is also to slay the arch-fiend Ahriman, afterwards known as

Armillus. Moreover, he will redeem the dead from Sheol, as he possesses

the key to open all the graves of the holy land, and thus all the sons of

Israel will partake in the glory of his kingdom. Then at last the city of

Jerusalem will arise in splendor, built of gold and precious stones, the

marvel of the world, and in its midst the Temple, a structure of

surpassing magnificence. The holy vessels of the tabernacle, hidden for

ages in the wilderness, will appear, and the nations will offer the wealth

of the whole earth as their tribute to the Messiah. All will practice

righteousness and piety, and will be rewarded by bliss and numerous

posterity.(1212)

Opinions differ widely as to the duration of the Messianic age. They range

from forty to four hundred years, and again from three generations to a

full millennium.(1213) This difference is partly caused by the distinction

between the national hope, with the temporary welfare of the people of

Israel, and the religious hope concerning the divine kingdom, which is to

last forever. A very late rabbinic belief holds that the Messiah will be

able to give a new law and even to abrogate Mosaic prohibitions.(1214)

7. At any rate, no complete system of eschatology existed during the

Talmudic age, as the views of the various apocalyptic writers were

influenced by the changing events of the time and the new environments,

with their constant influence upon popular belief. A certain uniformity,

indeed, existed in the fundamental ideas. The Messianic hope in its

national character includes always the reunion of all Israel under a

victorious ruler of the house of David, who shall destroy all hostile

powers and bring an era of supreme prosperity and happiness as well as of

peace and good-will among men. The Haggadists indulged also in dreams of

the marvelous fertility of the soil of Palestine in the Messianic

time,(1215) and of the resurrection of the dead in the holy land. But in

Judaism such views could never become dogmas, as they did in the Church,

even though they were common in both the older and younger Haggadah. These

national expectations were expressed in the liturgy by the Eighteen

Benedictions, composed by the founders of the Synagogue, the so-called Men

of the Great Synagogue; here the prayers for “the gathering of the

dispersed” and the “destruction of the kingdom of Insolence” precede those

for the “rebuilding of Jerusalem and the restoration of the throne of

David.” But the mystic speculations on the origin, activity, and sojourn

of the Messiah, which were a favorite theme of the apocalyptic writers and

the Haggadists during the pre-Christian and the first Christian centuries,

gave way to a more sober mode of thought, in the disappointment that

followed the collapse of the great Messianic movements. On the one hand,

the Church deified its Messiah and thus relapsed into paganism; on the

other, Bar Kochba, “the son of the star,” whom the leading Jewish masters

of the law actually considered the Messiah who would free them from Rome,

proved to be a “star of ill-luck” to the Jewish people.(1216) “Like one

who wanders in the dark night, now and then kindling a light to brighten

up his path, only to have it again and again extinguished by the wind,

until at last he resolves to wait patiently for the break of day when he

will no longer require a light,” so were the people of Israel with their

would-be deliverers, who appeared from time to time to delude their hopes,

until they exclaimed at last: “In Thy light alone, O Lord, we behold

light.”(1217) Samuel the Babylonian, of the third century, in opposition

to the Messianic visionaries of his time, declared: “The Messianic age

differs from the present in nothing except that Israel will throw off the

yoke of the nations and regain its political independence.”(1218) Another

sage said: “May the curse of heaven fall upon those who calculate the date

of the advent of the Messiah and thus create political and social unrest

among the people!”(1219) A third declared: “The Messiah will appear when

nobody expects him.”(1220) Most remarkable of all is the bold utterance of

Rabbi Hillel of the fourth century, a lineal descendant of the great

master Hillel and the originator of the present Jewish calendar system. In

all likelihood many of his contemporaries were busy calculating the advent

of the Messianic time according to the number of Jubilees in the

world-eras, whereupon he said: “Israel need not await the advent of the

Messiah, as Isaiah’s prophecy was fulfilled by the appearance of King

Hezekiah.”(1221)

8. Throughout the Middle Ages, when the political or national hopes rose

high, we find various Messianic movements in both East and West revived by

religious aspirations. But Maimonides, the great rationalist, in his

commentary on the Mishnah and in his Code, formulated a Messianic belief

which was quite free from mystical and supernatural elements. His twelfth

article of faith declares that “the Jew, unless he wishes to forfeit his

claim to eternal life by denial of his faith, must, in acceptance of the

teachings of Moses and the prophets down to Malachi, believe that the

Messiah will issue forth from the house of David in the person of a

descendant of Solomon, the only legitimate king; and he shall far excel

all rulers in history by his reign, glorious in justice and peace. Neither

impatience nor deceptive calculation of the time of the advent of the

Messiah should shatter this belief. Still, notwithstanding the majesty and

wisdom of the Messiah, he must be regarded as a mortal being like any

other and only as the restorer of the Davidic dynasty. He will die and

leave a son as his successor, who will in his turn die and leave the

throne to his heir. Nor will there be any material change in the order of

things in the whole system of nature and human life; accordingly Isaiah’s

picture of the living together of lamb and wolf cannot be taken literally,

nor any of the Haggadic sayings with reference to the Messianic time. We

are only to believe in the coming of Elijah as a messenger of peace and

the forerunner of the Messiah, and also in the great decisive battle with

the hosts of heathendom embodied in Gog and Magog, through whose defeat

the dominion of the Messiah will be permanently established.” “The

Messianic kingdom itself,” continues Maimonides with reference to the

utterance of Samuel quoted above, “is to bring the Jewish nation its

political independence, but not the subjection of all the heathen nations,

nor merely material prosperity and sensual pleasure, but an era of general

affluence and peace, enabling the Jewish people to devote their lives

without care or anxiety to the study of the Torah and universal wisdom, so

that by their teachings they may lead all mankind to the knowledge of God

and make them also share in the eternal bliss of the world to come.”(1222)

9. Against this rationalized hope for the Messiah, which merges the

national expectation into the universal hope for the kingdom of God,

strong objections were raised by Abraham ben David of Posquieres, the

mystic, a fierce opponent of Maimonides, who referred to various Biblical

and Talmudical passages in contradiction to this view.(1223) On the other

hand, Joseph Albo, the popular philosopher, who was trained by his public

debates against the representatives of the Church, emphasized especially

the rational character of the Jewish theology, and declared that the

Messianic hope cannot be counted among the fundamental doctrines of

Judaism, or else Rabbi Hillel could never have rejected it so

boldly.(1224)

On this point we must consider the fine observation of Rashi that Hillel

denied only a personal Messiah, but not the coming of a Messianic age,

assuming that God himself will redeem Israel and be acknowledged

everywhere as Ruler of the world. As a matter of fact, too much difference

of opinion existed among the Tanaim and Amoraim on the personality of the

Messiah and the duration of his reign to admit of a definite article of

faith on the question. The expected Messiah, the heir of the Davidic

throne, naturally embodied the national hope of the Jewish people in their

dispersion, when all looked to Palestine as their land and to Jerusalem as

their political center and rallying point in days to come. Traditional

Judaism, awaiting the restoration of the Mosaic sacrificial cult as the

condition for the return of the _Shekinah_ to Zion, was bound to persist

in its belief in a personal Messiah who would restore the Temple and its

service.

10. A complete change in the religious aspiration of the Jew was brought

about by the transformation of his political status and hopes in the

nineteenth century. The new era witnessed his admission in many lands to

full citizenship on an equality with his fellow-citizens of other faiths.

He was no longer distinguished from them in his manner of speech and

dress, nor in his mode of education and thought; he therefore necessarily

identified himself completely with the nation whose language and

literature had nurtured his mind, and whose political and social destinies

he shared with true patriotic fervor. He stood apart from the rest only by

virtue of his religion, the great spiritual heritage of his hoary past.

Consequently the hope voiced in the Synagogal liturgy for a return to

Palestine, the formation of a Jewish State under a king of the house of

David, and the restoration of the sacrificial cult, no longer expressed

the views of the Jew in Western civilization. The prayer for the

rebuilding of Jerusalem and the restoration of the Temple with its

priestly cult could no longer voice his religious hope. Thus the leaders

of Reform Judaism in the middle of the nineteenth century declared

themselves unanimously opposed to retaining the belief in a personal

Messiah and the political restoration of Israel, either in doctrine or in

their liturgy.(1225) They accentuated all the more strongly Israel’s hope

for a Messianic age, a time of universal knowledge of God and love of man,

so intimately interwoven with the religious mission of the Jewish people.

Harking back to the suffering Servant of the Lord in Deutero-Isaiah, they

transferred the title of Messiah to the Jewish nation. Reform Judaism has

thus accepted the belief that Israel, the suffering Messiah of the

centuries, shall at the end of days become the triumphant Messiah of the

nations.(1226)

11. This view taken by reform Judaism is the logical outcome of the

political and social emancipation of the Jew in western Europe and

America. Naturally, it had no appeal to the Jew in the Eastern lands,

where he was kept apart by mental training, social habits and the

discrimination of the law, so that he regarded himself as a member of a

different nationality in every sense. Palestine remained the object of his

hope and longing in both his social and religious life. When modern ideas

of life began to transform the religious views and habits in many a

quarter, and terrible persecutions again aroused the longing of the

unfortunate sufferers for a return to the land of their fathers, the term

Zionism was coined, and the movement rapidly spread. It expressed the

purely national aims of the Jewish people, disregarding the religious

aspirations always heretofore connected with the Messianic hope. This term

has since become the watchword of all those who hope for a political

restoration of the Jewish people on Palestinian soil, as well as of others

whose longings are of a more cultural nature. Both regard the Jewish

people as a nation like any other, denying to it the specific character of

a priest-people and a holy nation with a religious mission for humanity,

which has been assigned to it at the very beginning of its history and has

served to preserve it through the centuries. On this account Zionism,

whether political or cultural, can have no place in Jewish theology. Quite

different is the attitude of religious Zionism which emphasizes the

ancient hopes and longings for the restoration of the Jewish Temple and

State in connection with the nationalistic movement.

12. Political Zionism owes its origin to the wave of Anti-Semitism which

rose as a counter-movement to the emancipation of the Jew, that alienated

many of the household of Israel from their religion. Thus it has the merit

of awakening many Jews upon whom the ancestral faith had lost its hold to

a sense of love and loyalty to the Jewish past. In many it has aroused a

laudable zeal for the study of Jewish history and literature, which should

bring them a deeper insight into, and closer identification with, the

historic character of Israel, the suffering Messiah of the nations, and

thus in time transform the national Jew into a religious Jew. The study of

Israel’s mighty past will, it is hoped, bring to them the conviction that

the power, the hope and the refuge of Israel is in its God, and not in any

territorial possession. We require a regeneration, not of the nation, but

of the faith of Israel, which is its soul.

Chapter LIV. Resurrection, a National Hope

1. The Jewish belief in resurrection is intimately bound up with the hope

for the restoration of the Israelitish nation on its own soil, and

consequently rather national; indeed, originally purely local and

territorial.(1227) True, the rabbis justified their belief in resurrection

by such Scriptural verses as: “I kill and I make alive”(1228) and “The

Lord killeth, and maketh alive; He bringeth down to the grave, and

bringeth up.”(1229) Founded on such passages, the belief would have to

include all men, and could be confined neither to the Jewish people nor to

the land of Judea. However, we find no trace of such a belief in the

entire Bible save for two late post-exilic passages(1230) which are in

fact apocalyptic, being based upon earlier prophecies, and themselves, in

turn, basic to the later dogma of the Pharisees.

2. The picture of a resurrection was first drawn by the prophet Hosea, who

applied it to Israel. In his distress over the destiny of his people he

says: “Come, and let us return unto the Lord; for He hath torn, and He

will heal us, He hath smitten, and He will bind us up. After two days will

He revive us, on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in

His presence.”(1231) Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones which rose to a new

life under the mighty sway of the spirit of God,(1232) gave more definite

shape to the picture, although in the form of allegory. As the prophet

himself says, he aimed to describe the resurrection of Judah and Israel

from their grave of exile. The obscure Messianic prophecy in Isaiah,

chapters XXIV to XXVII, strikes a new note. First the author deals with

the terrible slaughter which God will inflict upon the heathen, after

which “He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away

tears from off all faces; and the reproach of His people will He take away

from off all the earth.”(1233) Finally, when the oppressors of Israel are

completely annihilated, exclaims the seer: “Thy dead shall live, thy dead

bodies shall arise—awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust—for thy dew

is a fructifying dew, and the earth shall bring to life the shades.”(1234)

Daniel speaks in a similar vein: “And many of them that sleep in the dust

of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to reproaches

and everlasting abhorrence.”(1235)

3. In this hope for resurrection at the end of days the leading thought is

that the prophecies which have been unfulfilled during the lifetime of the

pious, and particularly the martyrs, shall be realized in the world to

come.(1236) In the oldest apocalyptic writings this life of the future is

still conceived as earthly bliss, inasmuch as the writers think only of

the Messianic time of national glory, depicted in such glowing colors by

the prophets. Unbounded richness of the soil and numerous offspring,

abundant treasures brought by remote nations and their rulers, peace and

happiness far and wide—such are the characteristics of the Messianic age.

In order that the dead may share in all this, it is to be preceded by the

resurrection and the great _Day of Judgment_ in the valley of Jehoshaphat

or Gehinnom (Gehenna), where the righteous are to be singled out to

participate in the realm of the Messiah.(1237) As a national prospect the

Messianic hope was based upon the passage in Deutero-Isaiah: “Thy people

also shall be all righteous, they shall inherit the land forever.”(1238)

Consequently an ancient Mishnah taught that “All Israel shall have a share

in the world to come.”(1239) In fact, the term “inherit the land” was used

as late as the Mishnah to express the idea of sharing in the future life;

so also in the New Testament, where the resurrection was expected before

the coming of the kingdom of the Messiah.(1240)

4. The logical assumption was, accordingly, that only the dead of the holy

land should enjoy the resurrection. The prophetic verses were cited: “I

will set glory in the land of the living,”(1241) and “He that giveth

breath to the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein,”(1242)

and were interpreted in the sense that God would restore the breath of

life only to those buried in the holy land.(1243) Likewise the verse of

the Psalmist, “I shall walk before the Lord in the land of the living,”

was referred to Palestine, as the land where the dead shall awaken to a

new life.(1244) Hence the rabbis held the strange belief that when the

great heavenly trumpet is sounded to summon all the tribes of Israel from

the ends of the earth to the holy land,(1245) those who have been buried

outside of Palestine must pass through cavities under the earth, until

they reach the soil where the miracle of the resurrection will be

performed.(1246) It has, therefore, become a custom of the pious among the

Orthodox to this very day, in case they could not bury the dead in

Palestine, to put dust of the holy land beneath their head, that they

might arise wherever they were buried.

5. We may take it for granted that this naïve conception of the

resurrection could not be permanent, and so was modified to include a

double resurrection: the first, national, to usher in the Messianic

kingdom, and the other, universal, to usher in the everlasting life of the

future. The former offered scant room for the heathen world, at best only

for those who had actually joined the ranks of Judaism; the latter,

however, included the last judgment for all souls and thus opened the way

for the salvation of the righteous among the nations as well as the people

of Israel. At this point the conception of resurrection led to higher and

more spiritual ideas, as has been shown in Chapter XLIII.

6. However, the belief in the resurrection of the body, though expressed

in the ancient liturgy, is in such utter contradiction to our entire

attitude toward both science and religion, that it may be considered

obsolete for the modern Jew. Orthodoxy, which clings to it in formal

loyalty to tradition, regards it as a miracle which God will perform in

the future, exactly like the many Biblical miracles which defy reason.

7. The Zionist movement has given many Jews a new attitude toward the

national resurrection of Israel. The nationalists expect the Jewish nation

to awaken from a sleep of eighteen hundred years to new greatness in its

ancient home, not as a religious, but as a political body, and in

renouncing all allegiance to the priestly mission of Israel and its

ancestral faith they are as remote from genuine Orthodoxy as from Reform

Judaism. They assert that the soul of the Jewish people requires a

national body rooted in its ancient soil in order that it may fulfill its

appointed task among the nations; they even go so far as to declare all

the achievements brought about by the assimilation of the culture of the

surrounding nations to be a deterioration of the genuine character of the

Jewish nation. The fact is that, as in nature there is nowhere a

resurrection of the dead but an ever renewed regeneration of life, so is

the history of the Jew and of Judaism a continuous process of regeneration

manifested at every great turning-point of history, when the ideas and

cultural elements of a new civilization exert their powerful influence on

life and thought. There never was, nor will be an exclusively Jewish

culture. It is the wondrous power of assimilation of the Jew which ever

created and fashioned his culture anew. That which constitutes the

peculiarity of the Jew and his life force is his religion fostered through

the ages, preserved amidst the most antagonistic influences and hostile

environments, and ever rejuvenated by its unique universalistic spirit

when revived by contact with kindred movements. To maintain and propagate

this, his religion in all lands and amidst all civilizations, is the task

assigned to him by Providence, until God’s Kingdom has been established

all over the globe.

Chapter LV. Israel and the Heathen Nations

1. As there is but one Creator and Ruler of the universe, so there is

before Him but one humanity. All the nations are under His guidance, while

Israel, His chosen people, points to the kingdom of God which is to

embrace them all. Israel was called the “first-born son” of God(1247) at

the very moment of his election, implying that all the sons of men are His

children. All of them are links in the divine plan of salvation. In the

same sense God spoke through Isaiah: “Blessed be Egypt, My people, and

Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel Mine inheritance.”(1248) As the

first page of Scripture assigns a common origin to them all in the first

man, so, the prophets tell us, at the end of time they shall all be filled

with longing for the one God and form with Israel one community on earth,

a great brotherhood of man serving the common Father above.(1249) Still,

the actual world began, not with the unity, but with the wide diversity

and dispersion of mankind. The idea of the unity of man came as a

corollary to the kindred conception of the unity of God, after a long

historical process.

Just as the creation of the world opens with the separation of light from

darkness, so the process of the spiritual and moral development of mankind

begins, according to the divine plan of salvation, with the separation of

Israel from the heathen nations.(1250) The sharper the contrast became

between the spiritual God of Israel and the crude sensual gods of

heathendom, the wider grew the chasm between Judaism and heathenism,

between Israel and the nations. As light is opposed to darkness, so

Israel’s truth stood opposed to the idolatry of the nations, until

Christianity and Islam, its daughter-religions, arose between the two

extremes. Henceforth Israel waits with still more confidence for the age

whose dawning will bring the full knowledge of God to all mankind, leading

the world from the night of error and discord to the noon-day brightness

of truth and unity, when a universal monotheism will make all humanity

one.

2. Nothing was more remote from ancient Israel than the hatred of the

stranger or hostility to other nations, so often attributed to it.(1251)

In the time of the patriarchs and under the monarchy, the Hebrews fostered

a spirit of friendly intercourse with their neighbors, which was often

confirmed by peaceful alliances.(1252) Of course, during war time the

spirit of hostility had full sway, particularly as ancient warfare imposed

a relentless ban upon both booty and human life among the vanquished. But

even then the kings of Israel were called compassionate also toward their

enemies when compared with other rulers.(1253) Indeed, the code of Israel

is distinguished from all other codes of antiquity by mildness and tender

compassion. On the other hand, the God of justice, revealed through Amos,

Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk, punishes Israel and the nations

impartially on account of their moral transgressions.(1254) He avenges

acts of treachery, even when committed against pagan tyrants. “Shall not

the Judge of all the earth do justly?”(1255) Such is the recurrent thought

that governs Israel, demanding the same standard of judgment for Israelite

and stranger.

3. The simple sense of justice inherent in the Jewish people admits so

little difference between our own God-consciousness and that of others,

that Scripture represents the Philistine King Abimelech as receiving a

warning from Abraham’s God *JHVH*.(1256) As the Bible holds up Job, the

Bedouin Sheik, as the pattern of a blameless servant of God and true lover

of mankind,(1257) so the Talmud cites the Philistine Dama ben Nethina as

an example of filial piety.(1258) Altogether, the merits of the heathen

receive their full measure of appreciation throughout Jewish

literature,(1259) even though a narrow dissenting view occurs now and

then.(1260)

4. Still from the very beginning a tendency to relentless harshness

existed in one direction, when the pure worship of Israel’s one and only

God was endangered. The early Book of the Covenant forbade every alliance

with idolatrous nations,(1261) and the Deuteronomic Code made this more

stringent by prohibiting intermarriage and even the toleration of

idolaters in the land, lest they seduce the people of God to turn away

from Him.(1262) The Pharisean leaders, the founders of Rabbinism, went

still further by placing an interdict upon eating with the heathen or

using food and wine prepared by them, thus aiming at a complete separation

from the non-Jewish world.(1263)

The contrast between Judaism and heathenism was further heightened by the

view of the prophets and psalmists, showing that the great nations were

the very embodiment of idolatrous iniquity, murderous violence and sexual

impurity, a world of arrogance and pride, defying God and doomed to

perdition, because they opposed the kingdom of God proclaimed by

Israel.(1264) Henceforth the term “the nations” (_goyim_) was taken by the

religious as meaning the wicked ones, who would not be able to stand the

divine judgment in the future life, but would go down to Sheol, or

Gehenna, to fall a prey to everlasting corruption, to the fire that is

never quenched.(1265)

5. Yet such a wholesale condemnation could not long be maintained; it was

too strongly contradicted in principle by the prophets and Psalmists, and

quite as much by the apocalyptic writers and Haggadists of later times.

The book of Jonah testifies that Israel’s God sent His prophet to the

heathen of Nineveh to exhort them to repentance, that they might obtain

forgiveness and salvation like repentant Israel.(1266) Heathenism is

doomed to perish, not the heathen; they are to acknowledge the heavenly

Judge in their very punishments and return to Him. Such is the conclusion

of all the exhortations of the prophets predicting punishment to the

nations. Moreover, those heathen who escape the doom of the world-powers

are to proclaim the mighty deeds of the Lord to the utmost lands. Nay,

according to the grand vision of the exilic seer, among the many nations

that shall assemble at the end of days to worship the Lord in Zion, select

ones will be admitted to the priesthood with the sons of Aaron.(1267) The

name _Hadrak_, understood as “he who bringeth back,” suggested itself to

the rabbis as a title of the Messiah, the converter of the heathen

nations.(1268) So in both the Talmud and the Sibylline books(1269) Noah is

represented as a preacher of repentance to the nations before the flood,

and accordingly the latter book adjures the Hellenic world to repent of

their sinful lives before they would be overwhelmed by the flood of fire

at the great judgment day. In the same spirit the Haggadists tell that God

sent Balaam, Job, and other pious men as prophets of the heathen to teach

them the way of repentance.(1270) And the rabbis actually say that, if the

heathen nations had not refused the Torah when the Lord offered it to them

at Sinai, it would have been the common property of all mankind.(1271)

6. The leading minds of Judaism felt only pity for the blind obstinacy of

the great mass of heathen, who worshiped the creatures instead of the

Creator, or the stars of heaven instead of Him who is enthroned above the

skies. They regarded heathenism either as evidence of spiritual want and

weakness, or as the result of destiny. Indeed, the words of the

Deuteronomist sound like an echo of Babylonian fatalism when he asserts

that God himself assigned to the nations the worship of the stars as their

inheritance.(1272) Later the opinion gained ground that the heathen

deities were real demons, holding dominion over the nations and leading

them astray.(1273) The exilic seer attacked idolatry most vigorously as

folly and falsehood, and thus the note of derision and irony is struck by

Deutero-Isaiah, the Psalms, and in many of the propaganda writings of the

Hellenistic age, in their references to heathenism.

On the other hand, it is very significant that the Palestinian sages and

their successors condemned heathenism as a moral plague, conducing to

depravity, lewdness, and bloodshed. They regarded the powers of the world,

especially Edom (Rome), as being under the dominion of the Evil One, and

therefore doomed to perish in the flames of Gehenna. As they rejected the

Ten Commandments out of love for bloodshed, lust, and robbery, so,

according to the Haggadists, they will be unable to withstand the last

judgment and will suffer eternal punishment. Since their one desire was to

enjoy the life of this world, their lot in the future will be Gehenna;

while the gates of the Garden of Eden will be open for Israel, the people

oppressed and sorely tried, yet ever faithful to the covenant of

Abraham.(1274) Of course, this view implied both comfort and vengeance,

but we must not forget that the harsh statements contained in the Talmud

owe their origin to bitter distress and cannot be considered Jewish

doctrines, as unfriendly critics frequently do.(1275)

7. As has been shown above, the dominant view of the Synagogue is that

eternal salvation belongs to the righteous among the nations as well as

those of Israel. In this sense, Psalm IX, 18, is understood to the effect

that “all those heathens who have forgotten God will go down to the nether

world.”(1276) One of the sages expresses a still broader view: “When

judging the nations, God determines their standard by their best

representatives.”(1277) Many rabbis held the belief that circumcision

secured for the Jew a place in “Abraham’s bosom” while the uncircumcised

are consigned to Gehenna, thus assigning to circumcision a corresponding

place to that of baptism in the Christian Church. This belief seems to be

based upon a passage in Ezekiel, where the prophet speaks of the _arelim_,

or “uncircumcised,” as dwelling in the nether world.(1278) But a number of

passages in the Talmud, especially in the Tosefta,(1279) show that

circumcision was not believed to have the power to save a sinner from

Gehenna, On the other hand, we have the great teaching of R. Johanan ben

Zakkai in opposing his disciple Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, telling that the

sacrifices which atoned for the sins of Israel are paralleled by deeds of

benevolence, which can atone for the sins of the heathen.(1280) Both the

Talmud and Philo state that the seventy bullocks which were offered up

during the seven days of the Feast of Tabernacles were brought by Israel

as sacrifices for the seventy nations of the world.(1281)

8. Where no cause existed to fear the influence of idolatry, friendly

relations with non-Jews were always recommended and cultivated. A non-Jew

who devotes his life to the study and practice of the law, said Rabbi

Meir, is equal to the high priest; for Scripture says: “The laws which, if

a man do, he shall live by them,” implying that pure humanity is the one

essential required by God.(1282) Indeed, Rabbi Meir enjoyed a close

friendship with Œnomaos of Gadara,(1283) a heathen philosopher spoken of

admiringly in Talmudic sources and placed on a par with Balaam as noble

representatives of heathendom. Obviously this good opinion was held,

because both spoke favorably of Judaism, whose “synagogues and

schoolhouses formed the strongest bulwark against the attacks of

Jew-haters.” Other friendships which were described in popular legends and

held up as examples for emulation are those between Jehuda ha Nasi and the

Emperor Antoninus (Severus)(1284) and that of Samuel of Babylonia with

Ablat, a Persian sage.(1285)

9. The Mosaic and Talmudic law prescribed quite different treatment for

those heathen who persisted in idolatrous practices and refused to observe

the laws of humanity, called the seven Noahitic laws, as will be explained

more fully in the next chapter. No toleration could be granted them within

the ancient jurisdiction; “Thou shall show them no mercy” was the phrase

of the law for the seven tribes of Canaan, and this was applied to all

idolaters.(1286) Hence Maimonides lays down the rule in his Code that

“wherever and whenever the Mosaic law is in force, the people must be

compelled to abjure heathenism and accept the seven laws of Noah in the

name of God, or else they are doomed to die.”(1287)

On the other hand, in the very same Code, Maimonides writes in the spirit

of Rabbi Meir: “Not only the Jewish tribe is sanctified by the highest

degree of human holiness, but every human being, without difference of

birth, in whom is the spirit of love and the power of knowledge to devote

his life exclusively to the service of God and the dissemination of His

knowledge, and who, walking uprightly before Him, has cast off the yoke of

the many earthly desires pursued by the rest of men. God is his portion

and his eternal inheritance, and God will provide for his needs, as He did

for the priest and the Levite of yore.”(1288)

10. To be sure, a statement of this nature presents a different judgment

of heathenism from that of the ancient national law. But the historical

and comparative study of religions has caused us to entertain altogether

different views of the various heathen religions, both those representing

primitive stages of childlike imagination and superstition, and those more

developed faiths which inculcate genuine ideals of a more or less lofty

character. Certainly the laws of Deuteronomy, written when the nation had

dwindled down to the little kingdom of Judæa, and those further expounded

in the Mishnah enjoining the most rigorous intolerance toward every

vestige of paganism, had only a theoretical value for the powerless Jewish

nation; while both the Church and the rulers of Islam were largely guided

by them in practical measures. The higher view of Judaism was expressed by

the last of the prophets: “ ‘For from the rising of the sun even unto the

going down of the same My name is great among the nations; and in every

place offerings are presented unto My name, even pure oblations, for My

name is great among the nations,’ saith the Lord of hosts.”(1289) The fact

is that heathenism seeks the God whom Israel by its revelation has found.

In this spirit both Philo and Josephus took the Scriptural passage, “Thou

shalt not curse God,” taking the Hebrew _Elohim_ in the plural sense, “the

gods”; thus they said a Jew must not offend the religious sense of the

heathen by scorn or ridicule, however careful he must be to avoid the

imitation of their practices and superstitions.(1290)

As a matter of fact, the Code of Law aimed to separate Israel and the

nations in order to avoid the crude worship of idols, animals and stars

practiced by the heathen of antiquity. It was not framed for masters like

Socrates, Buddha, and Confucius, with their lofty moral views and their

claims upon humanity. The God who revealed himself to Abraham, Job, Enoch,

and Balaam, as well as to Moses and Isaiah, spoke to them also, and the

wise ones of Israel have ever hearkened to their inspiring lessons. Their

words are echoed in Jewish literature together with Solomon’s words of

wisdom. Plato, Plotinus, and Aristotle received the most friendly

hospitality from the rabbinic philosophers and mystic writers of Jewry,

and so Buddhist sayings and views penetrated into Jewish ethics and

popular teachings. Both the Jew and his literature are cosmopolitan, and

Judaism never withholds its appreciation of the merits of the heathen

world.(1291)

11. We must especially emphasize one claim of the Jewish people above

other nations which the rabbis call _zekuth aboth_, “the merit of the

fathers,” and which we may term “hereditary virtue.” The election of

Israel, in spite of its own lack of merit, is declared in Deuteronomy and

elsewhere to be due to the merit of the fathers, with whom God concluded

His covenant in love.(1292) The promise is often repeated that God will

ever remember His covenant with the fathers and not let the people perish,

even though their sins were great; therefore the rabbis assumed that the

patriarchs had accumulated a store of merit by their virtues which would

redound before God to the benefit of their descendants, supplementing

their own weaknesses.(1293) This merit or righteousness of the fathers

formed a prominent part of the hope and prayer, nay, of the whole

theological system of the Jewish people. They regarded the patriarchs and

all the great leaders of the past as patterns of loyalty and love for God,

so that, according to the Midrash, Israel might say in the words of the

Shulamite: “Black am I” considering my own merit, “but comely” when

considering the merit of the fathers.(1294) Whether this store of merit

would ever be exhausted is a matter of controversy among the rabbis. Some

referred to God’s own words that He will ever remember His covenant with

the fathers; others pointed to the verse in Deutero-Isaiah: “For the

mountains may depart, and the hills be removed; but My kindness shall not

depart from thee, neither shall My covenant of peace be removed,” which

they interpreted symbolically to mean: when the merit of the patriarchs

and matriarchs of Israel is exhausted, God’s mercy and compassion for

Israel will be there never to depart.(1295) Translated into our own mode

of thinking, this merit of the fathers claimed for Israel signifies the

unique treasure of a spiritual inheritance which belongs to the Jew. This

inheritance of thousands of years provides such rare examples and such

high inspiration that it incites to the highest virtue, the firmest

loyalty, and the greatest love for truth and justice. Judaism, knowing no

such thing as original sin, points with pride instead to hereditary

virtue, deriving an inexhaustible source of blessing from its historical

continuity of four thousand years.

Chapter LVI. The Stranger and the Proselyte

1. Among all the laws of the Mosaic Code, that which has no parallel in

any other ancient code is the one enjoining justice, kindness and love

toward the stranger. The Book of the Covenant teaches: “And a stranger

shall thou not wrong, neither shalt thou oppress him; for ye were

strangers in the land of Egypt,”(1296) and “A stranger shalt thou not

oppress; for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in

the land of Egypt.” The Deuteronomic writer lays special stress on the

fact that Israel’s God, “who regardeth not persons nor taketh bribes, doth

execute justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loveth the stranger,

in giving him food and raiment.” He then concludes: “Love ye therefore the

stranger; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.”(1297) The Priestly

Code goes still further, granting the stranger the same legal protection

as the native.(1298)

2. We would, however, misunderstand the spirit of all antiquity, including

ancient Israel, if we consider this as an expression of universal love for

mankind and the recognition of every human being as fellow-man and

brother. Throughout antiquity and during the semi-civilized Middle Ages, a

stranger was an enemy unless he became a guest. If he sought protection at

the family hearth or (in the Orient) under the tent of a Sheik, he thereby

entered into a tutelary relation with both the clan or tribe and its

deity. After entering into such a relation, temporary or permanent, he

became, in the term which the Mosaic law uses in common with the general

Semitic custom, a _Ger_ or _Toshab_, “sojourner” or “settler,” entitled to

full protection.(1299) This relation of dependency on the community is

occasionally expressed by the term: “thy stranger that is within thy

gates.”(1300) Such protection implied, in turn, that the _Ger_ or

_protegé_ owed an obligation to the tribe or community which shielded him.

He stood under the protection of the tribal god, frequently assumed his

name, and thus dared not violate the law of the land or of its deity, lest

he forfeit his claim to protection.

3. In accordance with this, the oft-repeated Mosaic command for

benevolence toward the stranger, which placed him on the same footing with

the needy and helpless, imposed certain religious obligations upon him. He

was enjoined, like the Israelite, not to violate the sanctity of the

Sabbath by labor, nor to provoke God’s anger by idolatrous practices, and,

according to the Priestly Code, to avoid the eating of blood and the

contracting of incestuous marriages as well as the transgression of the

laws for Passover and the Day of Atonement. Naturally, in criminal cases

such as blasphemy he was subject to the death-penalty just like the

native.(1301) Still, the _Ger_ was not admitted as a citizen, and in the

Mosaic system of law he was always a tolerated or protected alien, unless

he underwent went the rite of circumcision and thus joined the Israelitish

community.(1302)

4. With the transformation of the Israelitish State into the Jewish

community—in other words, with the change of the people from a political

to a religious status,—this relation to the non-Jew underwent a decided

change. As the contrast to the heathen became more marked, the _Ger_

assumed a new position. As he pledged himself to abandon all vestiges of

idolatry and to conform to certain principles of the Jewish law, he

entered into closer relations with the people. Accordingly, he adopted

certain parts of the Mosaic code or the entire law, and thus became either

a partial or a complete member of the religious community of Israel. In

either case he was regarded as a follower of the God of the Covenant. In

spite of the exclusive spirit which was dominant in the period following

Ezra, two forces favored the extending of the boundaries of Judaism beyond

the confines of the nation. On the one hand, the Babylonian Exile had

visualized and partially realized the prophecy of Jeremiah: “Unto Thee

shall the nations come from the ends of the earth, and shall say: ‘Our

fathers have inherited naught but lies, vanity and things wherein there is

no profit.’ ”(1303) For example, Zechariah announced a time when “many

peoples and mighty nations shall come to seek the Lord of Hosts in

Jerusalem and to entreat the favor of the Lord,” and “Ten men shall take

hold, out of all the languages of nations, shall even take hold of the

skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, ‘We will go with you, for we have

heard that God is with you.’ ”(1304) Another prophet said at the time of

the overthrow of Babylon: “For the Lord will have compassion on Jacob, and

will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land, and the stranger

(_Ger_, or proselyte) shall join himself with them, and they shall cleave

to the house of Jacob.”(1305) The Psalmists especially refer to the

heathen who shall join Israel,(1306) so that _Ger_ now becomes the regular

term for proselyte.(1307)

In addition to this inward religious desire we must consider the social

and political impulse. The handful of Judæans who had returned from

Babylonia were so surrounded by heathen tribes that, while the Samaritans

had attracted the less desirable groups, they were glad to welcome the

influx of such as promised to become true worshipers of God. The chief

problem was how to provide a legal form for these to “come over,”

_proselyte_ being the Greek term for “him who comes over.” By such a form

they could enter the community while accepting certain religious

obligations. In fact, such obligations had been stated before in the

Priestly Code, which admitted into the political community as “sojourners”

or “indwellers” those who pledged themselves to abstain from idolatry,

blasphemy, incest, the eating of blood or of flesh from living animals,

and from all violence against human life and property. They were debarred

only from marriage into the religious community, “the congregation of the

Lord.” Henceforth _Ger_ and _Ger Toshab_ became juridical terms, the

social and legal designation of those proselytes who had abjured

heathenism and joined the monotheistic ranks of Judaism as “worshipers of

God.”

5. Thus the first great step in the progress of Judaism from a national

system of law to a universal religion was made in Judæa. The next step was

to recognize the idea of the revelation of God to the “god-fearing men” of

the primeval ages, as described in the Mosaic books, and thus to open the

gates of the national religion for heathen who had become “God-fearing

men” or “worshipers of the Lord.” Thus the Psalms, after enumerating the

customary two or three classes, “the house of Israel,” “of Aaron,” and “of

Levi,” often add the “God-fearing” proselyte.(1308) The Synagogue was

especially attractive to the heathen who sought religious truth because of

its elevating devotion and its public instruction in the Scripture,

translated into Greek, the language of the cultured world. This sponsored

a new system for propagating the Jewish faith. The so-called Propaganda

literature of Alexandria laid its chief stress upon the ethical laws of

Judaism, not seeking to submit the non-Jew to the observance of the entire

Mosaic law or to subject him to the rite of circumcision. The Jewish

merchants, coming into contact with non-Jews in their travels on land and

sea, endeavored especially to present their religious tenets in terms of a

broad, universal religion. As a universal faith forms the background of

the entire Wisdom literature, particularly the book of Job, a simple

monotheism could be founded upon a divine revelation to mankind in

general, corresponding to the one to Noah and his sons after the flood.

The laws connected with this covenant, called the Noahitic laws, were

general humanitarian precepts. We find these enumerated in the Talmud as

six, seven, and occasionally ten. Sometimes we read of thirty such laws to

be accepted by the heathen, probably founded upon the nineteenth chapter

of Leviticus, at one time central in Jewish ethics.(1309) At any rate, the

observance of the so-called Noahitic laws was demanded of all worshipers

of the one God of Israel.

Strange to say, however, this extensive propaganda of the Alexandrian Jews

during the two or three pre-Christian centuries left few traces in the

history and literature of Palestinian Judaism. Two reasons seem at hand;

the growth of the Paulinian Church, which absorbed the missionary activity

of the Synagogue, and the effort of Talmudic Judaism to obliterate the old

missionary tradition. To judge from occasional references in Josephus and

the New Testament, as well as many inscriptions all over the lands of the

Mediterranean,(1310) the number of heathen converts to the Synagogue was

very large and caused attacks on Judaism in both Rome and Alexandria.

Josephus tells us that Jews and proselytes in all lands sent sacrificial

gifts to Jerusalem in such abundance as to excite the avarice of the

Romans.(1311) The Midrash preserves a highly interesting passage which

casts light on the earlier significance of the winning of heathen

converts, reading as follows: “When it is said in Zephaniah II, 5: ‘Woe to

the inhabitants of the sea-coast, the nation of Kerethites’; this means

that the inhabitants of the various pagan lands would be doomed to undergo

_Kareth_, ‘perdition,’ save for the one God-fearing proselyte, who is won

over to Judaism each year and set up to save the heathen world.”(1312) In

other words, the merit of the one proselyte whose conversion awakens the

hope for the winning of the entire heathen world to pure monotheism, is an

atoning power for all. Such was the teaching of the Pharisees, whom the

gospel of Matthew brands as hypocrites because of their zeal in making

proselytes.

6. This kind of proselytism was encouraged only by Alexandrian or

Hellenistic Judaism. In Palestine, however, the social system of the

nation was quite unfavorable to the simple “God-worshiper,” who remained

merely a tolerated alien, even though protected, and never really entered

the national body. Legally he was termed _Ger Toshab_, “settler,” which

meant semi-proselyte. The type of this class was Naaman, the Syrian

general who was instructed by Elijah to bathe in the Jordan to cure his

leprosy, and then became a worshiper of the God of Israel.(1313)

Similarly, whatever the real origin of the proselyte’s bath may have been,

a baptismal bath was prescribed for the proselyte to wash off the stain of

idolatry.(1314) He was regarded as one who had “fled from his former

master” (in heaven) to find refuge with the only God;(1315) therefore he

was legally entitled to shelter, support, and religious instruction from

the authorities.(1316) Certain places were assigned where he was to

receive protection and provision for his needs, but he was not allowed to

settle in Jerusalem, where only full proselytes were received as

citizens.(1317) According to Philo, special hospices were fitted out for

the reception of semi-proselytes.(1318)

7. In order to enjoy full citizenship and equal rights, the proselyte had

to undergo both the baptismal bath and the rite of circumcision, thus

accepting all the laws of the Mosaic Code equally with the Israelite born.

Beside this, he had to bring a special proselyte’s sacrifice as a

testimony to his belief in the God of Israel. In distinction from the _Ger

Toshab_, or semi-proselyte, he was then called _Ger ha Zedek_ or _Ger

Zedek_. This name, usually translated as “proselyte of righteousness,”

obviously possesses a deeper historical meaning. The Psalmist voices a

pure ethical monotheism in his query: “O Lord, who shall be a guest

(_Ger_, sojourner) in thy tent?” which he answers: “He that walketh

uprightly and worketh righteousness and speaketh truth in his

heart.”(1319) But the legal view of the priestly authorities was that only

the man who offers a “sacrifice of righteousness” and pledges himself to

observe all the laws binding upon Israel might become a “guest” in the

Temple on Zion, an adopted citizen of Jerusalem, the “city of

righteousness.”(1320) In illustration of this view a striking

interpretation to a Deuteronomic verse is preserved: “They shall call

people unto the mountain, there shall they offer sacrifices of

righteousness: that is, the heathen nations with their kings who come to

Jerusalem for commerce with the Jewish people shall be so fascinated by

its pure monotheistic worship and its simple diet, that they will espouse

the Jewish faith and bring sacrifices to the God of Israel as

proselytes.”(1321)

The prominence of the full proselyte in the early Synagogue appears in the

ancient benediction for the righteous leaders and Hasidim, the Soferim and

Synedrion, the ruling authorities of the Jewish nation, where special

mention is made of “the Proselytes of (the) Righteousness.”(1322) These

full proselytes pushed aside the half-proselytes, so that, while both are

mentioned in the earlier classification, only the latter are considered by

the later Haggadah.(1323) With the dissolution of the Jewish State no

juridical basis remained for the _Ger Toshab_, the “protected stranger.”

R. Simeon ben Eleazar expressed this in the statement: “With the cessation

of the Jubilee year there was no longer any place for the _Ger Toshab_ in

Judæa.”(1324) We read in Josephus that no proselytes were accepted in his

time unless they submitted to the Abrahamitic rite and became full

proselytes.(1325)

However, as Josephus tells us, a strong desire to espouse the Jewish faith

existed among the pagan women of neighboring countries, especially of

Syria.(1326) The same situation existed in Rome according to the

rabbinical sources, Josephus, Roman writers, and many tomb

inscriptions.(1327) Conspicuous among these proselytes was Queen Helen of

Adiabene, who won lasting fame by her generous gifts to the Jewish people

in time of famine and to the Temple at Jerusalem; her son Menobaz, at the

advice of a Jewish teacher, underwent the rite of circumcision in order to

rise from a mere God-worshiper to a full proselyte.(1328) The

Midrash(1329) enumerates nine heathen women of the Bible who became

God-worshipers: Hagar; Asenath, the wife of Joseph, whose conversion is

described in a little known but very instructive Apocryphal book by that

name;(1330) Zipporah, the wife of Moses; Shifra and Puah, the Egyptian

midwives;(1331) Pharaoh’s daughter, the foster-mother of Moses, whom the

rabbis identified with Bithia (_Bath Yah_, “Daughter of the Lord”);(1332)

Rahab, whom the Midrash represents as the wife of Joshua and ancestress of

many prophets;(1333) Ruth and Jael. Philo adds Tamar, the daughter-in-law

of Judah, as a type of a proselyte.(1334)

8. Beside the term _Ger_, with its derivatives, which gave legal standing

to the proselyte, the religious genius of Judaism found another term which

illustrated far better the idea of conversion to Judaism. The words of

Boaz to Ruth: “Be thy reward complete from the Lord thy God of Israel,

under whose wings thou art come to take refuge,”(1335) were applied by the

Pharisean leaders to all who joined the faith as Ruth did. So it became a

technical term for converts to Judaism, “to come, or be brought, under the

wings of the divine majesty” (Shekinah).(1336) Philo frequently expresses

the idea that the proselyte who renounces heathenism and places himself

under the protection of Israel’s God, stands in filial relation to Him

exactly like the born Israelite.(1337) Therefore Hillel devoted his life

to missionary activity, endeavoring “to bring the soul of many a heathen

under the wings of the Shekinah.” But in this he was merely following the

rabbinic ideal of Abraham,(1338) and of Jethro, of whom the Midrash says:

“After having been won to the monotheistic faith by Moses, he returned to

his land to bring his countrymen, the Kenites, under the wings of the

Shekinah.”(1339) The proselyte’s bath in living water was to constitute a

rebirth of the former heathen, poetically expressed in the Halakic rule:

“A convert is like a newborn creature.”(1340) The Paulinian idea that

baptism creates a new Adam in place of the old is but an adaptation of the

Pharisaic view. Some ancient teachers therefore declared the proselyte’s

bath more important than circumcision, since it forms the sole initiatory

rite for female proselytes, as it was with the wives of the

patriarchs.(1341)

9. The school of Hillel followed in the footsteps of Hellenistic Judaism

in accentuating the ethical element in the law;(1342) so naturally it

encouraged proselytism as well. The Midrash preserves the following

Mishnah, handed down by Simeon ben Gamaliel, but not contained in our

Mishnaic Code: “If a _Ger_ desires to espouse the Jewish faith, we extend

to him the hand of welcome in order to bring him under the wings of the

Shekinah.”(1343) Both the Midrash and the early Church literature reveal

traces of a Jewish treatise on proselytes, containing rules for admission

into the two grades, which was written in the spirit of the Hellenistic

propaganda, but was afterward rewritten and adopted by the Christian

Church. The school of Shammai in its rigorous legalism opposed proselytism

in general, and its chief representative, Eliezer ben Hyrcanos, distrusted

proselytes altogether.(1344) On the other hand, the followers of Hillel

were decidedly in favor of converting the heathen and were probably

responsible for many Haggadic passages extolling the proselytes. Thus the

verse of Deutero-Isaiah: “One shall say, ‘I am the Lord’s,’ and another

shall call himself by the name of Jacob; and another shall subscribe with

his hand unto the Lord, and surname himself by the name of Israel” is

peculiarly applied in the Midrash. The first half, we are told, denotes

two classes of Israelites, those who are without blemish, and those who

have sinned and repented; the second half includes the two classes of

proselytes, those who have become full Jews (_Gere ha Zedek_) and those

who are merely worshippers of God (_Yir’e Shamayim_). A later Haggadic

version characteristically omits the last, recognizing only the full

converts (_Gere Emeth_) as proselytes.(1345) The following parable in the

spirit of the Essenes illustrates their viewpoint. In commenting upon the

verse from the Psalms: “The Lord keepeth the strangers,” the story is

told: A king possessed a flock of sheep and goats and noted that a deer

joined them, accompanying them to their pasture and returning with them.

So he said to the herdsmen: “Take good care of this deer of mine which has

left the free and broad desert to go in and out with my flock, and do not

let it suffer hunger or thirst.” Likewise God takes special delight in the

proselytes who leave their own nation, giving up their fellowship with the

great multitude in order to worship Him as the One and Only God, together

with the little people of Israel.(1346) Similarly the Biblical verse

concerning wisdom: “I love them that love me, and those that seek me

earnestly shall find me”(1347) is referred to the proselytes, “who give up

their entire past from pure love of God, and place their lives under the

sheltering wings of the divine majesty.” All these Midrashic passages and

many others are but feeble echoes of the conceptions of the Hellenistic

propaganda, which were so ably set forth by Philo and the Book of Asenath.

Indeed, Judaism must have exerted a powerful influence upon the cultured

world of Hellas and Rome in those days, as is evidenced both in the

Hellenistic writings of the Jew and in the Greek and Roman writers

themselves. Their very defamation of Judaism unwittingly gives testimony

to the danger to which Judaism exposed the pagan conception of life, and

to the hold it took upon many of the heathen.(1348)

10. The reaction against this missionary movement took place in Judea. The

enforced conversion of the Idumeans to Judaism by John Hyrcanus benefited

neither the nation nor the faith of the Jew, and turned the school of

Shammai, which belonged to the party of the Zealots, entirely against the

whole system of proselytism. On the whole, bitter experience taught the

Jews distrust of conversions due to fear, such as those of the Samaritans

who feared the lions that killed the inhabitants, or to political and

social advantage, like those under David and Solomon, or in the days of

Mordecai and Esther, or still later under John Hyrcanus.(1349) Instead,

all stress was laid upon religious conviction and loyalty to the law. In

fact, Josephus mentions many proselytes who in his time fell away from

Judaism,(1350) who may perhaps have been converts to Christianity. The

later Halakah, fixed under the influence of the Hadrianic persecution and

quoted in the Talmud as Baraitha, prescribes the following mode of

admission for the time after the destruction of the Temple, omitting

significantly much that was used in the preceding period:(1351) “If a

person desires to join Judaism as a proselyte, let him first learn of the

sad lot of the Jewish people and their martyrdom, so as to be dissuaded

from joining. If, however, he persists in his intention, let him be

instructed in a number of laws, both prohibitory and mandatory, easy and

hard to observe, and be informed also as to the punishment for their

disobedience and the reward for fulfillment. After he has then declared

his willingness to accept the belief in God and to adhere to His law, he

must submit to the rite of circumcision in the presence of two members of

the Pharisean community, take the baptismal bath, and is then fully

admitted into the Jewish fold.” It is instructive to compare this Halakic

rule with the manual for proselytes preserved by the Church under the name

of “The Two Ways,” but in a revised form.(1352) The mode of admission in

the Halakah seems modeled superficially after the more elaborate one of

the earlier code, where the Shema as the Jewish creed and the Ten

Commandments, possibly with the addition of the eighteenth and nineteenth

chapters of Leviticus and the twenty-seventh chapter of Deuteronomy, seem

to have formed the basis for the instruction and the solemn oath of the

proselyte.

11. As long as the Jewish people possessed a flourishing world-wide

commerce, unhampered by the power of the Church, they were still joined by

numerous proselytes in the various lands and enjoyed general confidence.

Indeed, many prominent members of the Roman nobility became zealous

adherents of Judaism, such as Aquilas, the translator of the Bible, and

Clemens Flavius, the senator of the Imperial house,(1353) and many

prominent Jewish masters were said to be descendants of illustrious

proselytes.(1354) All this changed as soon as the Christian Church girded

herself with “the sword of Esau.” From that time on proselytism became a

peril and a source of evil to the Jew. The sages no longer took pride in

the prophetic promise that “the stranger will join himself to Israel,” nor

did they find in the words “and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob”

an allusion to the prediction that some of these proselytes would be added

“to the priesthood of the Lord,” as some earlier teachers had interpreted

the passage.(1355) R. Helbo of the fourth century, on the contrary,

explained that proselytes have become a plague like “leprosy” for the

house of Jacob, taking the Hebrew _nispehu_ as an allusion to the word

_Sappahat_, “leprosy.”(1356) Henceforth all attempts at proselytism were

deprecated and discouraged, while uncircumcised proselytes,—probably

meaning the persecuting Christians—were relegated to Gehinnom.(1357)

12. This view was not shared by all contemporaries, however. R. Abbahu of

Cæsarea, who had many an interesting and bitter dispute with his Christian

fellow-citizens,(1358) was broad-minded enough to declare the proselytes

to be genuine worshipers of God.(1359) Joshua ben Hanania encouraged the

proselyte Aquilas and prognosticated great success for proselytes in

general as teachers of both the Haggada and Halakah. So other Haggadists

urged special love and compassion for the half-proselyte,(1360) and

entertained a special hope of the Messianic age that many heathen should

turn to God in sincerity of heart.(1361) At all events, it was considered

a great sin to reproach a convert with his idolatrous past.(1362) Indeed,

the phrase, “they that fear the Lord,” used so often in the Psalms, is

referred by the Haggadists to the proselytes; true, the chief stress is

laid upon the full proselytes, the _Gere Zedek_, but a foremost place in

the world to come is still reserved for God-worshipers like the Emperor

Antoninus.(1363) Thus Psalm CXXVIII, which speaks of the “God-fearing

man,” was applied to the proselyte, to whom were therefore promised

temporal bliss and eternal salvation, rejoicing in the Law, in deeds of

love and bounteous blessing from Zion.(1364) While the Halakah remained

antagonistic to proselytism on account of its narrow adherence to the

spirit of the Priestly Code, the Haggadah exhibits a broader view.

Resonant with the spirit of prophecy, it beckons to all men to come and

seek shelter under the wings of the one and only God, in order to

disseminate light and love all over the world.

13. Modern Judaism, quickened anew with the spirit of the ancient seers of

Israel, cannot remain bound by a later and altogether too rigid Halakah.

At the very beginning of the Talmudic period stands Hillel, the liberal

sage and master of the law, who, like Abraham of old, extended the hand of

fellowship to all who wished to know God and His law; he actually pushed

aside the national bounds to make way for a faith of love for God and the

fellow man. For this is the significance of his answer to the Roman

scoffer who wanted to hear the law expounded while he was standing on one

foot: “Whatever is hateful to thee, do not do to thy fellow man! That is

the law; all the rest is only commentary.”(1365) Thus the leaders of

progressive Judaism also have stepped out of the dark prison walls of the

Talmudic Ghetto and reasserted the humanitarian principles of the founders

of the Synagogue, who welcomed the proselytes into Israel and introduced

special blessings for them into the liturgy. They declare again, with the

author of Psalm LXXXVII, that Zion, the “city of God,” should be, not a

national center of Israel, but the metropolis of humanity, because Judaism

is destined to be a universal religion.(1366)

Not that Judaism is to follow the proselytizing methods of the Church,

which aims to capture souls by wholesale conversion without due regard for

the attitude or conviction of the individual. But we can no longer afford

to shut the gate to those who wish to enter, impelled by conviction or

other motives having a religious bearing, even though they do not conform

to the Talmudic law.(1367) This attitude guided the leaders of American

Reform Judaism at the rabbinical conference under the presidency of Isaac

M. Wise, when they considered the admission of proselytes at the present

time. In their decision they followed the maxim of the prophet of yore:

“Open the gates (of Judaism) that a righteous nation may enter that

keepeth the faith.”(1368)

14. It is interesting to observe how Philo of Alexandria contrasts those

who join the Jewish faith with those who have become apostates. The

former, he says, become at once prudent, temperate, modest, gentle, kind,

human, reverential, just, magnanimous, lovers of truth, and superior to

the temptations of wealth and pleasure, whereas the latter are

intemperate, unchaste, unjust, irreverent, low-minded, quarrelsome,

accustomed to falsehood and perjury, and ready to sell their freedom for

sensual pleasures of all kinds.(1369) In the times of Hellenic culture

apostasy made its appearance among the upper classes of the Jews. As the

higher-minded among the heathen world were drawn towards the sublime

monotheistic faith of the Jew, so the pleasure-seeking and worldly-minded

among the Jews were attracted by the allurements of Greek culture to

become faithless to the God of Israel, break away from the law, and

violate the covenant. Especially under Syrian rule, apostasy became a real

danger to the Jewish community, and many measures had to be decided upon

to avert it. The desertion of the ancestral faith was looked upon as

rebellion and treason against God and Israel.(1370) With the rise of the

Christian Church to power and influence the number of apostates increased,

and with it also the danger to the small community of the Jews in the

various lands. In the same measure as the Church made a meritorious

practice of the conversion of the Jews, whether by persuasive means or by

force and persecution, the authorities of Judaism had to provide the Jew

with spiritual weapons of self-defense in the shape of polemical and

apologetic writings,(1371) and to warn him against too close a contact

with the apostate, which was too often fraught with peril for the whole

community. As a number of these apostates became actual maligners of the

Jews under the Roman empire, a special malediction against sectarians, the

so-called _Birkat ha-Minim_, was inserted in the Eighteen Benedictions

under the direction of Gamaliel II.(1372) “Those who have emanated from my

own midst hurt me most,” says the Synagogue, referring to herself the

words of the Sulamite in the Song of Songs.(1373) While every other

offender from among the Jewish people is declared to be “brother,”

notwithstanding his sin,(1374) the apostate was declared to be one from

whom no free-will offering was to be accepted,(1375) and to whom the gates

of repentance and the gates of salvation are forever closed.(1376) The

feeling of bitterness against him grew in intensity, as throughout Jewish

history he often played the despicable rôle of an accuser of his former

coreligionists and betrayer of their faith. The modern Jew also, though he

sympathizes with every liberal movement among men and respects every

honest opinion, however radically different from his own, cannot but

behold in the attitude of him who deserts the small yet heroic band of

defenders of his ancient faith and joins the great and powerful majority

around him, a disloyalty and weakness of character unworthy of a son of

Abraham, the faithful. Since the beginning of the new era in the time of

Mendelssohn, apostasy has made great inroads upon the numerical and

intellectual strength of Judaism, especially among the upper classes. It

is no longer, however, of an aggressive character, but rather a result of

the lack of Jewish self-respect and religious sentiment, against which

measures tending to a revival of the Jewish spirit are being taken more

and more. The Jews are called by the rabbis “the faithful sons of the

faithful.” The apostate must be made to feel that he is of a lower type,

since he has become a deserter from the army of the battlers for the Lord,

the Only One God of Israel.

Chapter LVII. Christianity and Mohammedanism, the Daughter-Religions Of

Judaism

1. “It shall come to pass on that day that living waters shall go out from

Jerusalem; half of them toward the eastern sea and half of them toward the

western sea.... And the Lord shall be King over all the earth; in that day

shall the Lord be One, and His name one.”(1377) These prophetic words of

Zechariah may be applied to the two great world-religions which emanated

from Judaism and won fully half of the human race, as it exists at

present, for the God of Abraham. Though they have incorporated many

non-Jewish elements in their systems, they have spread the fundamental

truths of the Jewish faith and Jewish ethics to every part of the earth.

Christianity in the West and Islam in the East have aided in leading

mankind ever nearer to the pure monotheistic truth. Consciously or

unconsciously, both found their guiding motive in the Messianic hope of

the prophets of Israel and based their moral systems on the ethics of the

Hebrew Scriptures. The leading spirits of Judaism recognized this,

declaring both the Christian and Mohammedan religions to be agencies of

Divine Providence, intrusted with the historical mission of coöperating in

the building up of the Messianic Kingdom, thus preparing for the ultimate

triumph of pure monotheism in the hearts and lives of all men and nations

of the world. These views, voiced by Jehuda ha Levi, Maimonides, and

Nahmanides,(1378) were reiterated by many enlightened rabbis of later

times. These point out that both the Christian and Mohammedan nations

believe in the same God and His revelation to man, in the unity of the

human race, and in the future life; that they have spread the knowledge of

God by a sacred literature based upon our Scripture; that they have

retained the divine commandments essentially as they are phrased in our

Decalogue; and have practically taught men to fulfill the Noahitic laws of

humanity.(1379) On account of the last fact the medieval Jewish

authorities considered Christians to be half-proselytes,(1380) while the

Mohammedans, being pure monotheists, were always still closer to Judaism.

2. In general, however, rabbinic Judaism was not in a position to judge

Christianity impartially, as it never learned to know primitive

Christianity as presented in the New Testament. We see no indication in

either the oldest Talmudic sources or Josephus that the movement made any

more impression in Galilee or Jerusalem than the other Messianic

agitations of the time. All that we learn concerning Jesus from the rabbis

of the second century and later is that magic arts were practiced by him

and his disciples who exorcised by his name; and, still worse, that the

sect named after him was suspected of moral aberrations like a few Gnostic

sects, known by the collective name of _Minim_, “sectarians.”(1381) As a

matter of fact, the early Church was chiefly recruited from the Essenes

and distinguished itself little from the rest of the Synagogue. Its

members, who are called Judæo-Christians, continued to observe the Jewish

law and changed their attitude to it only gradually.(1382) Matters took a

different turn under the influence of Paul, the apostle to the heathen,

who emphasized the antinomian spirit; the Judæo-Christian sects were then

pushed aside, hostility to Judaism became prominent, and the Church strove

more and more for a _rapprochement_ with Rome.(1383) Then the rabbis awoke

to the serious danger to Judaism from these heretics, _Minim_, when after

the tragic downfall of the Jewish nation they grew to world-power as

allies of the Roman Empire. Thus Isaac Nappaha, a Haggadist of the fourth

century, declared: “The turning point for the advent of the Messiah, the

son of David, will not come until the whole (Roman) Empire has been

converted to Christianity (_Minuth_).”(1384) This is supplemented by the

Babylonian Rabbah, who plays with a Biblical phrase, saying: “Not until

the whole (Roman) world has turned to the Son (of God).”(1385) Henceforth

Christian Rome was termed _Edom_, like pagan Rome from the days of Herod

the Idumean. In fact, her imperial edicts showed the fratricidal hatred of

Esau, with hardly a trace of the professed religion of love. No wonder the

Haggadists identified Rome with the Biblical “Boar of the forest,” and

waited impatiently for the time when she would have to give up her rule as

the fourth world-empire to the people of God, ushering in the Messianic

era.(1386)

3. Meanwhile the relapse of Christianity from monotheism became more

steady and more apparent. The One God of the Jew was pushed into the

background by the “Son of Man”; and the Virgin-Mother with her divine

child became adored like the Queen of Heaven of pagan times, showing

similarity especially to Isis, the Egyptian mother-goddess, with Horus,

the young son-god, on her lap. The pagan deities of the various lands were

transformed into saints of the Church and worshiped by means of images, in

order to win the pagan masses for the Christian faith. The original pure

and absolute monotheism and the stern conception of holiness were thus

turned into their very opposites by the hierarchy and monasticism of the

Church. How, then, could the Jewish people recognize the crucified Christ

as one of their own? One whose preaching seemed to bring them only

damnation and death instead of salvation and life, even while speaking in

the name of Israel’s God after the manner of the prophets of yore? How

could they see in the strange doctrines of the Church any resemblance to

their own system of faith, especially as the very doctrines which repelled

them were those most emphasized by Christianity? Maimonides considered the

adherents of the Roman Church to be idolaters,(1387) a view which was

modified by the Jewish authorities in the West, as they became better

acquainted with Christian doctrines.(1388)

4. The world-empire of the Church was subsequently divided between Rome,

which the Jewish writers called _Edom_,(1389) and Byzantium, which they

named _Yavan_, but neither showed any real advance in religious views and

ideals. On the contrary, they both persecuted with fire and sword the

little people who were faithful to their ancient monotheism, and

suppressed what remained of learning and science. As the Church had the

great task of disciplining wild and semi-barbarous races, there was little

room left for learning or for high ideals. At this time a rigorous avenger

of the persecuted spirit of pure monotheism arose among the sons of

Ishmael in the desert of Arabia in the person of Mohammed, a camel-driver

of Mecca, a man of mighty passions and void of learning, but imbued with

the fire of the ancient prophets of Israel. He felt summoned by Allah, the

God of Abraham, to wage war against the idolatry of his nation and restore

the pure faith of antiquity. He kindled a flame in the hearts of his

countrymen which did not cease, until they had proclaimed the unity of God

throughout the Orient, had put to flight the trinitarian dogma of the

Church in both Asia and Africa, and extended their domain as far as the

Spanish peninsula. He offered the Jews inducements to recognize him as the

last, “the seal,” of the prophets, by promising to adopt some of their

religious practices; but when they refused, he showed himself fanatical

and revengeful, a genuine son of the Bedouins, unrelenting in his wrath

and ending his career as a cruel, sensuous despot of the true Oriental

type. Nevertheless, he created a religion which led to a remarkable

advancement of intellectual and spiritual culture, and in which Judaism

found a valuable incentive to similar endeavors. Thus Ishmael proved a

better heir to Abraham than was Esau, the hostile brother of Jacob.(1390)

5. The important, yet delicate question, which of the three religions is

the best, the Mohammedan, Christian or Jewish, was answered most cleverly

by Lessing in his _Nathan the Wise_, by adapting the parable of the three

rings, taken from Boccaccio. His conclusion is that the best religion is

the one which induces men best to promote the welfare of their fellow

men.(1391) But the question itself is much older; it was discussed at the

court of the Kaliphs in Bagdad as early as the tenth century, where the

adherents of every religion there represented expressed their opinions in

all candor. For centuries it was the subject of philosophical and

comparative investigations.(1392) Among these, the most thorough and

profound is the _Cuzari_ by the Jewish philosopher and poet, Jehuda ha

Levi. But the parable of the three rings also has been traced through

Jewish and Christian collections of tales dating back to the thirteenth

century, and seems to be originally the work of a Jewish author. Standing

between the two powerful faiths with their appeal to the temporal arm, the

Jew had to resort to his wit as almost his only resource for escape. Two

Jewish works have preserved earlier forms of the parable. In Ibn Verga’s

collection of histories of the fifteenth century, it is related that “Don

Pedro the Elder, King of Aragon (1196-1213), asked Ephraim Sancho, a

Jewish sage, which of the two religions, the Jewish or Christian, was the

better one. After three days’ deliberation, the sage told the king a story

of two sons who had each received a precious stone from their father, a

jeweler, when he went on a journey. The sons then went to a stranger,

threatening him with violence, unless he would decide which of the jewels

was the more valuable. The king, believing the story to be a fact,

protested against the action of the two sons, whereupon the Jew explained:

Esau and Jacob are the two sons who have each received a jewel from their

heavenly Father. Instead of asking me which jewel is the more precious,

ask God, the heavenly Jeweler. He knows the difference, and can tell the

two apart.”(1393)

An older and probably more original form of the parable was discovered by

Steinschneider in a work by Abraham Abulafia of the thirteenth century,

running as follows: “A father intended to bequeath a precious jewel to his

only son, but was exasperated by his ingratitude, and therefore buried it.

His servants, however, knowing of the treasure, took it and claimed to

have received it from the father. In the course of time they became so

arrogant that the son repented of his conduct, whereupon the father gave

him the jewel as his rightful possession.” The story ends by stating that

Israel is the son and the Moslem and Christian the servants.

Beside this witty solution of a delicate problem, some Mohammedans made

attempts very early, doubtless on account of discussions with learned

Jews, to prove the justification of the three religions from the Jewish

Scriptures themselves. Thus they referred the verse speaking of the

revelation of God on Sinai, Mount Seir, and Mount Paran(1394) to the

religious teachings of Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed. Naturally, the Jewish

exegetes and philosophers objected vigorously to such an interpretation.

6. The question which religion is the best, has been most satisfactorily

answered for Judaism by R. Joshua ben Hanania, who said that “the

righteous of the heathen have also a share in the world to come.”(1395)

The question which religion is true, has been, alas, too long arbitrated

by the sword, and will be decided peacefully only when the whole earth

will be full of the knowledge of God. Our own age, however, has begun to

examine the title to existence of every religion from the broad standpoint

of history and ethnology, assigning to each its proper rank. In this large

purview even the crude beliefs of savages are shown to be of value, and

the various heathen religions are seen to have a historical task of their

own. Each of them has to some extent awakened the dormant divine spark in

man; one has aided in the growth of the ideal of the beautiful in art,

another in the rise of the ideal of the true in philosophy and science; a

third in the cultivation of the ideal of the good and in stimulating

sympathy and love so as to ennoble men and nations. Thus after a careful

examination of the historical documents of the Christian and Mohammedan

religions, it is possible to state clearly their great historic mission

and their achievements in the whole domain of civilization. The Jewish

religion, as the mother who gave birth to both, must deliver the verdict,

how far they still contribute to the upbuilding of God’s kingdom on earth.

In fulfilling their appointed mission, each has given rise to valuable and

peculiar institutions, and each has fallen short of the Messianic ideal as

visualized by our great prophets of old. Only an impartial judgment can

say which one has reached the higher stage of civilization.

7. Christianity’s origin from Judaism is proved by its religious documents

as well as by its very name, which is derived from the Greek for the title

Messiah (_Christos_), bestowed on the Nazarene by his followers. Still the

name Christianity arose in Antioch among non-Jews who scarcely knew its

meaning. All the sources of the New Testament, however much they conflict

in details, agree that the movement of Christianity began with the

appearance of John the Baptist, a popular Essene saint. He rallied the

multitude at the shore of the Jordan, preparing them for the approaching

end of the Roman world-kingdom with the proclamation, “Wash yourselves

clean from your sins!” that is, “Take the baptismal bath of repentance,

for the kingdom of heaven is nigh.”(1396) He conferred the baptismal bath

of repentance upon Jesus of Nazareth and the first apostles.(1397) Jesus

took up this message when John was imprisoned and finally killed by Herod

Antipas on account of his preachment against him.(1398) The life of Jesus

is wrapt in legends which may be reduced to the following historical

elements:(1399) The young Nazarene was of an altogether different

temperament from that of John the Baptist, the stern, Elijah-like preacher

in the wilderness;(1400) he manifested as preacher and as a healer of the

sick a profound love for, and tender sympathy with suffering humanity, a

trait especially fostered among the Essenes. This drew him toward that

class of people who were shunned as unclean by the uncompromising leaders

of the Pharisees, and also by the rigid brotherhoods of the Essenes, whose

chief object was to attain the highest degree of holiness by a life of

asceticism. His simple countrymen, the fishers and shepherds of Galilee,

on hearing his wise and humane teachings and seeing his miraculous cures,

considered him a prophet and a conqueror of the hosts of demons, the

workers of disease. In contrast to the learned Pharisees, he felt it to be

his calling to bring the good tidings of salvation to the poor and

outcast, to “seek the lost sheep of the house of Israel” and win them for

God. He soon found himself surrounded by a multitude of followers, who, on

a Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem, induced him to announce himself as the

expected Messiah. He attracted the people in Jerusalem by his vehement

attacks upon the Sadducean hierarchy, which he threatened with the wrath

of heaven for its abuses, and also by his denunciations of the

self-sufficient Pharisean doctors of the law. Soon the crisis came when he

openly declared war against the avarice of the priests, who owned the

markets where the sacrificial fowl for the Temple were sold, overthrowing

the tables of the money-changers, and declaring the Temple to have become

“a den of robbers.”(1401) The hierarchical council delivered him to

Pontius Pilatus, the Roman prefect, as an aspirant to the royal title of

Messiah, which in the eyes of the Romans meant a revolutionary leader. The

Roman soldiers crucified him and mocked him, calling him, “Jesus, the king

of the Jews.”(1402)

The fate of crucifixion, however, did not end the career of Jesus, as it

had that of many other claimants to the Messiahship in those turbulent

times. His personality had impressed itself so deeply upon his followers

that they could not admit that he had gone from them forever. They awaited

his resurrection and return in all the heavenly glory of the “Son of Man,”

and saw him in their ecstatic visions, attending their love-feasts,(1403)

or walking about on the lake of Nazareth while they were fishing from

their boats, or hovering at the summit of the mountains.(1404) This was

but the starting point of that remarkable religious movement which grew

first among the lower classes in northern Palestine and Syria,(1405) then

gradually throughout the entire Roman Empire, shaking the whole of

heathendom until all its deities gave way to the God of Israel, the divine

Father of the crucified Messiah. The Jewish tidings of salvation for the

poor and lowly offered by the Nazarene became the death-knell to the proud

might of paganism.

8. But the ways of Providence are as inscrutable as they are wonderful.

The poor and lowly members of the early Christian Churches, with their

leaders, called “apostles” or “messengers” of the community,—elected

originally to carry out works of charity and love,(1406)—would never have

been able to conquer the great world, if they had persisted in the Essene

traditions. They owed their success to the large Hellenistic groups who

joined them at an early period and introduced the Greek language as their

medium of expression. Henceforth the propaganda activity of the

Alexandrian Jews was adopted by the young Church, which likewise took up

all the works of wisdom and ethics written in Greek for the instruction of

the proselytes and the young, scarcely known to the Palestinian schools.

The Essene baptism for repentance was replaced by baptism for conversion

or initiation into the new faith, while the neophyte to be prepared for

this rite was for a long time instructed mainly in the doctrines of the

Jewish faith.(1407) Subsequently collections of wise sayings and moral

teachings ascribed to the Nazarene and handed down in the Aramaic

vernacular, orally or in writing, were translated into Greek. These

together with the manuals for proselytes were the original Church

teachings. The Greek language paved the way for the Church to enter the

great pagan world, exactly as the Greek translation of the Bible in

Alexandria brought the teachings of Judaism to the knowledge of the

outside world.

At first the same obstacle confronted the early Church which had prevented

the Synagogue from becoming a world conqueror, namely, the rite of

circumcision, which was required for full membership. Without this,

baptized converts were only half-proselytes and could not be fully

assimilated. This classification was still upheld by the Apostolic

Convention, which met under the presidency of James the Elder.(1408) The

time was ripe for a bold and radical innovation, and at this psychological

moment arose a man of great zeal and unbridled energy as well as of a

creative genius and a mystical imagination,—Saul of Tarsus, known by his

Roman name Paulus.(1409) He had been sent by the authorities at Jerusalem

to pursue the adherents of the new sect, but when he had come as far as

Damascus in Syria, he suddenly turned from a persecutor into the most

ardent promoter of the nascent Church, impelled by a strange

hallucination. Paul was a carpet weaver by trade, born and reared in

Tarsus, a seaport of Asia Minor, where he seems to have had a Greek

training and to have imbibed Gnostic or semi-pagan ideas beside his

Biblical knowledge. In this ecstatic vision on his journey he beheld the

figure of Jesus, “the crucified Christ,” whose adherents he was pursuing,

yet whom he had never seen in the flesh, appearing as a heavenly being

whom Paul identified as the heavenly Adam, the archetypal “godlike” man.

Upon this strange vision he constructed a theological system far more

pagan than Jewish in type, according to which man was corrupt through the

sin of the first couple, and the death of Jesus on the cross was to be the

atoning sacrifice offered by God himself, who gave His own son as a ransom

for the sins of humanity. This doctrine he used as a lever with which, at

one bold stroke, he was to unhinge the Mosaic law and make the infant

Church a world-religion. Through baptism in the name of the Christ, the

old sin-laden Adam was to be cast off and the new heavenly Adam, in the

image of Christ, put on instead. The new covenant of God’s atoning love

was to replace the old covenant of Sinai, to abolish forever the old

covenant based upon the Jewish law, and to set mankind free from all law,

“which begets sin and works wrath.” In Christ, “who is the end of the

law,” the sinfulness of the flesh should be overcome and the gates of

salvation be opened to a world redeemed from both death and sin.(1410) The

one essential for salvation was to accept the _mystery_ concerning the

birth and death of Christ, after the manner of the heathen

mystery-religions, and to employ as sacramental symbols of the mystery the

rites of baptism and communion with Christ.

9. This system of Paul, however, demanded a high price of its votaries.

Acceptance of the belief meant the surrender of reason and free thinking.

This breach in pure monotheism opened the door for the whole heathen

mythology and the worship of the heathen deities in a new form. But the

saddest result was the dualism of the system; the kingdom of God predicted

by the prophets and sages of Israel for all humanity was transferred to

the hereafter, and this life with all its healthy aspirations was

considered sinful and in the hands of Satan. The cross, originally a sign

of life,(1411) became from this time and through the Middle Ages a sign of

death, casting a shadow of sin upon the Christian world and a shadow of

terror upon the Jew.

The greatest harm of all, however, was done to Judaism itself. Paul made a

caricature of the Law, which he declared to be a rigid, external system,

not elevating life, but only inciting to transgression and engendering

curse. He even aroused a feeling of hatred toward the Law, which grew in

intensity, until it became a source of untold cruelty for many centuries.

This spirit permeated the Gospels more and more in their successive

appearance, even finding its way into the Sermon on the Mount. In the

simple form given in the Gospel of Luke this was a teaching of love and

tenderness; in Matthew, Jesus is represented as offering a new

dispensation to replace the revelation of Sinai.(1412) Here the Mosaic law

is presented as a system of commandments demanding austere adherence to

the letter with no regard to the inner life, whereas, on the other hand,

the actual teachings of the Nazarene were animated by love and sympathy,

emanating from the ethical spirit of the Law. Yet the very words of Jesus

in this same sermon disavow every hint of antinomianism: “Verily I say

unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no

wise pass from the Law till all be fulfilled.”(1413) As a matter of fact,

the very teachings of love and inwardness which are embodied in both the

Sermon on the Mount and the epistles of Paul were largely adopted from the

Pharisean schools and Hasidean works as well as from the Alexandrian

Propaganda literature and the Proselyte Manuals preserved by the Church.

In fact, part of this criticism was voiced by the Pharisees, as they

attacked the Sadducean insistence upon the letter of the Law. The

Pharisean spirit of progress applied new methods of interpretation to the

Mosaic Code and especially to the Decalogue, deriving from them a higher

conception of God and godliness, breaking the fetters of the letter, and

working mainly for the holiness of the inner life and the endeavor to

spread happiness about.(1414) Taking no heed of the actual achievements of

the Synagogue, the Paulinian Church rose triumphantly to power after the

downfall of the Jewish State and impregnated the Christian world with

hostility to Judaism and the Jew, which lasts to this very day, thus

turning the gospel of love into a source of religious hatred.

10. Nevertheless it cannot be denied that Paulinian Christianity, while

growing into a world-conquering Church, achieved the dissemination of the

Sinaitic doctrines as neither Judaism nor the Judæo-Christian sect could

ever have done. The missionary zeal of the apostle to the heathen caused a

fermentation and dissolution in the entire neo-Jewish world, which will

not end until all pagan elements are eliminated. Eventually the whole of

civilization will accept, through a purified Christianity, the Fatherhood

of God, the only Ruler of the world, and the brotherhood of all men as His

children. Then, in place of an unsound overemphasis on the principle of

love, justice will be the foundation of society; in place of a pessimistic

other-worldliness, the optimistic hope for a kingdom of God on earth will

constitute the spiritual and ethical ideal of humanity. We must not be

blind to the fact that only her alliance with Rome, her holding in one

hand the sword of Esau and in the other the Scriptures of the house of

Jacob, made the Church able to train the crude heathen nations for a life

of duty and love, for the willing subordination to a higher power, and

caused them to banish vice and cruelty from their deep hold on social and

domestic life. Only the powerful Church was able to develop the ancient

Jewish institutions of charity and redeeming love into magnificent systems

of beneficence, which have led civilization forward toward ideals which it

will take centuries to realize.

Nor must we overlook the mission of the Church in the realm of art, a

mission which Judaism could never have undertaken. The stern conception of

a spiritual God who tolerated no visible representation of His being made

impossible the development of plastic art among the Jews. The semi-pagan

image worship of the Christian Church, the representation of God and the

saints in pictorial form, favored ecclesiastical art, until it broadened

in the Renaissance into the various arts of modern times. Similarly, the

predominance of mysticism over reason, of the emotions over the intellect

in the Church, gave rise to its wonderful creation of music, endowing the

soul with new powers to soar aloft to undreamed-of heights of emotion, to

be carried along as upon Seraph’s wings to realms where human language

falters and grows faint. Beyond dispute Christianity deserves great credit

for having among all religions opened wide the flood gates of the soul by

cultivating the emotions through works of art and the development of

music, thereby enriching human life in all directions.

11. Islam, the other daughter of Judaism, for its part, fostered the

intellectual side of humanity, so contemptuously neglected by the Church.

The cultivation of philosophy and science was the historical task assigned

to the Mohammedan religion. From the sources of information we have about

the life and revelation of Mohammed, we learn that the origin of the

belief in Allah, the God of Abraham, goes back to an earlier period when

Jewish tribes settled in south Arabia. Among these Jews were traders,

goldsmiths, famous warriors, and knights endowed with the gift of song,

who disseminated Jewish legends concerning Biblical heroes.(1415) Amid

hallucinations and mighty emotional outbursts this belief in Allah took

root in the fiery soul of Mohammed, who thus received sublime conceptions

of the one God and His creation, and of the world’s Judge and His future

Day of Judgment. The sight of idolatry, cruelty, and vice among his

countrymen filled him with boundless indignation, so that he began his

career as a God-sent preacher of repentance, modeling his life after the

great prophets of yore. With drastic threats of the last Judgment he tried

to force the idolaters to return to Allah in true repentance. But few of

his hearers believed in his prophetic mission, and the leading men of the

city of Mecca, who derived a large income from the heathen sanctuary

there, opposed him with fierce and violent measures.

Thus he was forced to flee to the Jewish colony of Yathrib, afterwards

called Medina, “the city” of the prophet. He hoped for recognition there,

especially after he had made certain concessions, such as turning the face

toward Jerusalem in prayer, and keeping the Day of Atonement on the tenth

of Tishri. In addition, he emphasized the unity of God in the strongest

possible manner, and opposed every encroachment upon it by the belief in

additional powers or persons, attacking the Christians on the one hand and

his Arabian countrymen on the other, with the sarcastic phrase: “Verily,

God has neither a son, nor has He any daughter.” In spite of all these

facts, the Jews could not be brought to recognize the uneducated son of

the desert as a prophet. Therefore his proffered friendship was turned to

deadly hatred and passionate revenge. His whole nature underwent a great

change; his former enthusiasm and prophetic zeal were replaced by

calculation and worldly desire, so that the preacher of repentance of

Mecca became at the last a lover of bloodshed, robbery and lust. Instead

of Jerusalem he chose Mecca with its heathen traditions as the center of

his religious system and aimed chiefly to win the Arabian tribes for his

divine revelation.

Thus the entire Arabian nation, full of youthful energy, burning with the

impulse of great deeds, bore the faith of the One God to the world by the

sword. Like Israel of old, it stepped forth from the desert with a divine

revelation contained in a holy book. It conquered first the Christian

lands of the East, which under the Trinitarian dogma had lapsed from pure

monotheism, then the northern coast of Africa, and it finally unfurled the

green flag of Islam over the lands of the West to free them from the

fanatical Church. Henceforth war was waged for centuries between the One

God of Abraham and the triune God of the Church in both Spain and

Palestine. Then might the genius of history ask: “Watchman, what of the

night? Watchman, what of the night?” And again the words are heard, as

from on high: “The morning cometh, and also the night.” The final victory

is yet to come.

12. It cannot be denied that the Mohammedan monotheism has a certain

harshness and bluntness. It cannot win the heart by the mildness of heaven

or the recognition of man’s individuality. _Islam_, as the name denotes,

demands blind submission to the will of God, and it has led to a fatalism

which paralyzes the sense of freedom, and to a fanaticism which treats

every other faith with contempt. Islam has remained a national religion,

which has never attained the outlook upon the whole of humanity, so

characteristic of the prophets of Israel. Its view of the hereafter is

crude and sensuous, while its picture of the Day of Judgment bears no

trace of the divine mercy. On the other hand, we must recognize that the

reverence of the Koran lent the “Men of the Book,” the representatives of

culture, greater dignity, and provided a mighty incentive to study and

inquiry. Damascus and Bagdad became under the Caliphs centers of learning,

of philosophical study and scientific investigation, uniting Nestorian,

Jew, and Mohammedan in the great efforts towards general enlightenment.

The consequence was that Greek science and philosophy, banished by the

Church, were revived by the Mohammedan rulers and again cultivated, so

that Judaism also felt their fructifying power. Our modern Christian

civilization, so-called by Christian historians, is largely the fruit of

the rich intellectual seeds sown by Mohammedans and Jews, after the works

of ancient Greeks had been translated into Syrian, Arabic, and Hebrew by a

group of Syrian Unitarians (the Nestorians) assisted by Jewish

scholars.(1416)

As for instance the Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick II, the friend of

Jewish and other liberal thinkers, was much more of an investigator than a

believer, so did the spirit of investigation derived from Islam and

Judaism pervade Christendom, and create the great intellectual movements

which finally undermined its creeds and shattered its solidarity into

contending sects. _Return_ to the Bible and the God of the Bible, to a

Sabbath devoted to instruction in the word of God, and to the recognition

of human freedom and the sanctity of the family—this was the watchword of

the Reformation. Return to the right of free thought and free conscience,

which implies the pure worship of God as He lives in the heart, is now the

watchword of those who endeavor to reform the Protestant Church. That is,

both are moved by a desire to return to the principles and ideals set

forth by Israel’s prophets of old.

13. Both the Church, Protestant and Catholic, and the Mosque have a

Providential mission which they must fulfill through the ages of history,

until all the heathen have learned to worship God as the spirit of

holiness in man, instead of seeking Him in the blind forces of nature or

of destiny. True, the Mohammedan religion is predisposed to sensuality and

still awaits the process of purification to become completely

spiritualized; yet indications are not lacking that a process of reform is

approaching to bring out the gold of pure monotheism and cast off the

dross of Oriental voluptuousness and superstition. We must remember that

during the dark night of medieval ignorance and barbarism Islam carried

throughout all lands the torch of philosophy and scientific investigation

and of the pure faith in God. Even to-day it accomplishes far more for the

advancement of life in the east of Asia and the south of Africa than did

the Russian Church with her gross superstition and idolatry, or even some

branches of Protestantism, with their deification of a human being.

Between Church and Mosque, hated and despised by both, stood and still

stands the Synagogue, proudly conscious of its divine mission. It feels

itself the banner-bearer of a truth which brooks no compromise, of a

justice which insists on the rights of all men. It offers the world a

religion of peace and love, admitting no division or discord among

mankind, waiting for the day when the God of Sinai shall rear high His

throne in the hearts of all men and nations. To-day the Synagogue,

rejuvenated by the influences of modern culture, looks with ever greater

confidence to a speedy realization of its Messianic hope for all humanity.

Hitherto Judaism was restrained by its two daughter-religions from

pursuing its former missionary activity. It was forced to employ all its

energy in the single effort for self-preservation. But in the striking

contrasts of our age, when the enlightened spirit of humanity struggles so

bitterly with the forces of barbarism and brutality, we may well see the

approaching dawn of a new era. That glorious day, we feel, will witness

the ultimate triumph of justice and truth, and out of the day which is

“neither day nor night” will bring forth the time when “the Lord shall be

King over all the earth, the Lord shall be One and His name One.”(1417)

This will be an auspicious time for Israel to arise with renewed prophetic

vigor as the bearer of a world-uniting faith, as the triumphant Messiah of

the nations. Through Israel the monotheistic faiths of the world may find

a union so that, in fulfillment of the ancient prophecy,(1418) its Sabbath

may be a world-Sabbath and its Atonement Day a feast of at-one-ment and

reconciliation for all mankind. “He that believeth shall not make

haste.”(1419)

Yet just because of this universalistic Messianic hope of Judaism it is

still imperative, as it has been throughout the past, that the Jewish

people must continue its separateness as “a Kingdom of priests and a holy

nation,” and for the sake of its world-mission avoid intermarrying with

members of other sects, unless they espouse the Jewish faith.(1420)

Israel’s particularism, says Professor Lazarus,(1421) has its universalism

as motive and aim.

Chapter LVIII. The Synagogue and its Institutions

1. Every religion, as soon as it attains any degree of self-consciousness,

aims to present a convincing form of truth to the individual and to win

adherents in increasing numbers. Nevertheless the maintenance of a

religion does not rest upon its doctrines, which must differ according to

the intellectual capacity of the people and the prevailing views of each

age. Its stability is based upon those forms and institutions which lend

it a peculiar character, and which express, symbolically or otherwise,

definite ideas, religious, ethical, and historical. For this reason many

exponents of Judaism would entirely discard the idea of a systematic

theology, and insist on the observance of the ceremonial laws as the one

essential. In following tradition in this manner, they forget that the

forms of religious practice have undergone many changes in the course of

time. In fact, the vitality of Judaism lies in its unique capacity for

development. Its ever youthful mind has constantly created new forms to

express the ideas of the time, or has invested old ones with new

meanings.(1422)

2. The greatest and, indeed, the unique creation of Judaism is the

Synagogue, which started it on its world-mission and made the Torah the

common property of the entire people. Devised in the Exile as a substitute

for the Temple, it soon eclipsed it as a religious force and a rallying

point for the whole people, appealing through the prayers and Scriptural

lessons to the congregation as a whole. The Synagogue was limited to no

one locality, like the Temple, but raised its banner wherever Jews settled

throughout the globe. It was thus able to spread the truths of Judaism to

the remotest parts of the earth, and to invest the Sabbath and festivals

with deeper meaning by utilizing them for the instruction and elevation of

the people. What did it matter, if the Temple fell a prey to the flame for

a second time, or if the whole sacrificial cult of the priesthood with all

its pomp were to cease forever? The soul of Judaism lived indestructibly

in the house of prayer and learning. In the Synagogue was fanned the holy

flame which kindled the heart with love of God and fellow-men; here were

offered sacrifices more pleasing to God than the blood and fat of beasts,

sacrifices of love and charity.(1423)

3. The Synagogue has its peculiar institutions and ceremonies, but no

sacraments like those of the Church. Its institutions, such as the

festivals, aim to preserve the historic memory of the people; its

ceremonies, called “signs” or “testimonies” in the Scripture, are to

sanctify the life of the nation, the family, or the individual. Neither

possesses a sacramental power, as does baptism or communion in the Church,

in giving salvation, or imparting something of the nature of the Deity, or

making one a member of the religious community. The Jew is a member of the

Jewish community by his birth, which imposes upon him the obligations of

the covenant which God made with Israel at Mount Sinai. Judaism is a

religious heritage intrusted to a nation of priests, and is not acquired

by any rite of consecration or confession of faith. Such a form of

consecration and confession is required only in the case of

proselytes.(1424) It is superfluous to state that Confirmation does not

bestow the character of Jew upon the young, any more than the former rite

of Bar Mizwah did upon the young Israelite who was called up to the

reading from the Law in his thirteenth year as a form of initiation into

Jewish life.(1425)

4. The rite of circumcision is enjoined upon the father in the Mosaic Code

as a “sign” of the covenant with Abraham, to be performed on every son on

the eighth day after birth.(1426) Therefore it is held in high esteem, and

the father terms the act in his benediction “admission into the covenant

of Abraham”;(1427) but in spite of this it is not a sacrament and does not

determine membership in the Jewish community. The operation was not to be

performed by a person of sacred calling such as priest or rabbi, but in

ancient Biblical times was performed by women,(1428) and in the Talmudic

period by the surgeon.(1429) In fact, if no Jewish surgeon was at hand,

some Talmudic authorities held that a non-Jewish surgeon could perform it.

Moreover, where hygienic reasons forced the omission of the rite, the man

was still a Jew.(1430) The rite itself underwent a change; it was

performed with stone knives in Biblical times, just as in Egypt and even

to-day in Arabia and Syria.(1431) It became a mark of distinction for the

people during the Exile.(1432) But the act was invested with special

religious sanctity during the Syrian persecution, when many Jewish youths

“violated the covenant” in order to appear uncircumcised when they

appeared in the arena with the heathen.(1433) At this time new methods

were introduced to guard the “seal” of the covenant,(1434) while pious

mothers faced martyrdom willingly to preserve the rite of Abraham among

their children. Later on the rabbis even declared circumcision to be a

safeguard against the pit of Gehenna(1435) and made Elijah the guardian of

the covenant.(1436) The rite may be traced back to primitive life, when

the operation was usually performed at the time of puberty and as a

preliminary to marriage,(1437) but in Jewish life it assumed a religious

meaning and became endeared to the people as the consecration of the child

as the future head of a family. The idea underlying the institution (as

Zunz correctly calls it)(1438) is the sanctification of the Jewish

household as represented by its male members. The member of a people that

is to be holy unto God must bear the seal of the covenant on his flesh; as

a potential father of another generation, the sign he bore had a deeper

meaning for the future of the people.(1439) The rationalistic view that

the Mosaic law is merely hygienic, although found as early as Philo, is

quite erroneous.(1440)

5. The same rationalist view(1441) is often applied to the dietary laws of

the Mosaic Code, but without any justification from the Biblical point of

view. These laws prohibit as unclean various species of animals, or such

as have fallen dead or as the prey of wild beasts, or certain portions

like blood and suet.(1442) The Holiness Code states its reason for these

prohibitions very emphatically: “I am the Lord your God, who have set you

apart from the peoples. Ye shall therefore separate between the clean

beast and the unclean, and between the unclean fowl and the clean; and ye

shall not make your souls detestable by beast, or by fowl, or by any thing

wherewith the ground teemeth, which I have set apart for you to hold

unclean. And ye shall be holy unto Me; for I the Lord your God am holy,

and have set you apart from the peoples, that ye should be Mine.”(1443)

The Deuteronomic Code gives the same reason for the prohibition of the

unclean beasts: “For thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God.” It

seems that these prohibitions of “unclean” foods were intended originally

for the priesthood and other holy men, as appears in Ezekiel and

elsewhere.(1444) As a matter of fact, the same class of animals from which

the Israelites were commanded to abstain were also forbidden to the

priests or saints of India, Persia, Mesopotamia, and partly of

Egypt.(1445) The natural conclusion is that the Mosaic law intended these

rules as a practical expression of its general principle that Israel was

to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”(1446) In other words,

Israel was to fill the usual place of the priest among the nations of the

ancient world, a priest-people observing the priestly laws of

sanctification. Whatever the origin of these customs may have been,

whether they were tabu laws in connection with totemism or some other

primitive view, the Priestly Code itself admits their lack of an

Israelitish origin by recognizing that they were known to Noah.(1447) They

were simply adopted by the law-giver of Israel to make the whole people

feel their priestly calling.

In later times the dietary laws, especially abstinence from the flesh of

swine, became a mark of distinction which separated the Jew from his

heathen surroundings; and they became a symbol of Jewish loyalty in the

Syrian persecutions when pious Jews faced martyrdom for them as willingly

as for the refusal to adore the Syrian idols.(1448) In fact, Pharisaism

adopted the principle of separation from the heathen in every matter

pertaining to diet, and this spirit of separatism was strengthened by the

scorn of the Greeks and Romans and afterward by the antinomian spirit of

Christianity. While Hellenistic writers, eager to find a universal meaning

in these laws, assigned certain physical or psychic reasons for

them,(1449) the rabbis of the Talmud insisted that they were given solely

for the moral purification of Israel. Thus they were to be observed as

tests of Israel’s submission to the divine will and not because of

personal distaste. In their own words, “We must overcome all desire for

the sake of our Father in heaven”; and “Only to those who wrestle with

temptation does the kingdom of God come.”(1450) In the course of time

these prohibitions were steadily extended, until they encircled the whole

life of the Jew, forming an insurmountable wall which secluded him from

his non-Jewish environment. Finally, separation from the world came to be

regarded as an end in itself.(1451)

Now, it cannot be denied that these laws actually disciplined the medieval

Jew, so that during centuries of wild dissipation he practiced sobriety

and moderation; as Maimonides says,(1452) they served as lessons in

self-mastery, in curbing carnal desire, and keeping him clean in soul as

well as body. The question remains whether they still fulfill their real

object of consecrating Israel to its priestly mission among the nations.

Certainly the priestly character of these laws is no longer understood,

and the great majority of the Jewish people who live among the various

nations have long discarded them. Orthodox Judaism, which follows

tradition without inquiring into the purpose of the laws, is entirely

consistent in maintaining the importance of every item of the traditional

Jewish life. Reform Judaism has a different view, as it sees in the

humanitarianism of the present a mode of realizing the Messianic hope of

Israel. Therefore it cannot afford to encourage the separation of the Jew

from his environment in any way except through the maintenance of his

religion, and cannot encourage the dietary laws as a means of separatism.

Its great problem is to find other methods to inculcate the spirit of

holiness in the modern Jew, to render him conscious of his priestly

mission, while he lives in unison and fellowship with all his

fellow-citizens.(1453)

6. The tendency to distinguish the Jew from his non-Jewish neighbor in the

course of time found expression in the laws for wearing phylacteries

(_tefillin_) on his forehead and arm, a special sign on the doorpost of

his house (_mezuzzah_) and fringes (_zizith_) on the four corners of his

shawl (_tallith_).(1454) As a matter of fact, the original Biblical

passages had no such meaning, but acquired it through rabbinical

interpretation. The Mosaic law said: “And thou shalt bind them for a sign

upon thy hand, and they shall be for frontlets between thine eyes. And

thou shalt write them upon the doorposts of thy house and upon thy gates.”

This refers clearly to the words of God, admonishing the people to keep

them in mind, as the preceding verse indicates. Likewise, the precept

regarding the fringes upon the four-cornered garment emphasizes rather the

blue thread in the fringes, which is to help the people remember the

commandments of the Lord, that they may not go astray, “following after

the promptings of their own hearts and eyes.” As the name phylacteries

shows, these were originally talismans or amulets. True, the law as stated

in Deuteronomy may be taken symbolically;(1455) but the corresponding

passage in Exodus, which is traditionally referred to the phylacteries,

indicates its origin by its close relation to the Passover sacrifice. The

blood of this was, no doubt, put originally on the arm and forehead,(1456)

which is still done by the Samaritans(1457) and has striking parallels in

the practice of the Fellahin in Palestine and Syria.(1458) Originally the

sacrificial blood was supposed to ward off evil spirits from men, beasts

and houses or tents, and gradually this pagan custom was transformed into

a religious precept to consecrate the body, life, and home of the Jew. In

more ancient times the phylacteries were worn by pious men and women all

day and not merely during the time of prayer, and seem to have served both

as a religious symbol and an amulet. This was certainly the case with the

_mezuzzah_ on the doorpost and probably with the blue thread at the

corners of the _tallith_.(1459) As both phylacteries and _tallith_ came

into use at the divine service in connection with the recital of the

_Shema_ and the chapter on the _zizith_, the symbols assumed a higher

meaning. Arrayed in his vestments, the pious Jew offered daily allegiance

to his Maker, feeling that he was thereby protected from evil within and

without; similarly, the sacred sign upon the door both consecrated and

protected his home. Even with this conception the talismanic character was

never quite forgotten. Throughout the Middle Ages these ceremonies were

observed as divine commandments; and tradition having seemingly fixed them

for all time, the Jew took great pride in the fact that he was

“distinguished” in many ways, and especially in his forms of

worship.(1460) Of course, they distinguished him far more when these

ceremonies were practiced for the entire day. Since the modern era has

brought the Jew nearer to his neighbors and he has opened the Synagogue to

invite the non-Jewish world to hear its teachings, these practices have

lost their hold upon the people, becoming meaningless forms. The wearing

of these sacred symbols while at prayer seems superfluous as a means of

“turning men’s hearts away from frivolous and sinful thoughts.”(1461)

7. The most important institution of the Synagogue, and the one most

fraught with blessing for all mankind, is the Sabbath. Although its name

and existence point to a Babylonian origin,(1462) it is still the peculiar

creation of the Jewish genius and a chief pillar of the Jewish religion.

As a day of rest crowning the daily labor of the week, it testifies to the

Creator of the universe who made all that is in accordance with His divine

plan of perfection. The underlying idea expressed in Scripture is that the

Sabbath is a divine institution. As God himself worked out His design for

the world in absolute freedom and rested with delight at its completion,

so man is to follow His example, working during six days of the week and

then enjoying the rest of the Sabbath with a mind elated by higher

thoughts. Moreover, the day of rest observed by Israel should recall his

redemption from the slavery and continual labor of Egypt. Thereby every

creature made in God’s image, the slave and stranger as well as the born

Israelite, is given the heavenly boon of freedom and recreation to hallow

the labor of the week. There are thus two explanations given for the

Sabbath, one in the Decalogue of Exodus, the Holiness Code and Priestly

Code,(1463) the other in the Decalogue of Deuteronomy and the Book of the

Covenant.(1464)

These two views, in turn, gave rise to different conceptions of the

Sabbath laws. Many ancient teachers laid chief stress on the letter of the

law which bids men cease from labor. Others, who penetrated farther into

the spirit of Deuteronomy and the Covenant Code, emphasized the human need

for relaxation and refreshment of soul. The older school, especially the

Sadducees, demanded absolute cessation of labor on pain of death for any

work, however insignificant, and even for the moving from one place to

another. They thought of the Sabbath as a sign of the covenant between God

and Israel, and hence held that it should be observed as punctiliously as

possible.(1465) In the same measure as the Pharisees, with their program

of religious democracy and common sense, obtained the upper hand, the

Biblical strictness of the Sabbath law was modified. The term labor was

defined by analogy with the work done for the tabernacle, and so

restricted as to make the death penalty much more limited.(1466) Moreover,

the Pharisees held that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the

Sabbath;(1467) so, although they adhered strictly to the prohibition of

labor, the Sabbath received at their hands more of the other element, and

became a day for the elevation of the soul, “a day of delight” for the

spirit.(1468) The whole man, body and soul alike, should enjoy God’s gifts

more fully on this day; he should cast off care and sanctify the day by

praise offered to God at the family table. At a very early period in

Israel the Sabbath was distinguished by the words of instruction and

comfort offered by the prophets to the people who consulted them on the

day of rest.(1469) During the Exile and afterward the people assembled on

the Sabbath to hear the word of God read from the Torah and the prophets

and to join in prayer and song, which soon became a permanent

institution.(1470) Thus the Sabbath elevated and educated the Jewish

people, and afterward transferred its blessings also to the Christian and

Mohammedan world. Especially during the Middle Ages the Sabbath became an

oasis, a refreshing spring of water for the Jew. All through the week he

was a Pariah in the outside world, but the Sabbath brought him bliss in

his home and spiritual power in his Synagogue and school. Cheerfully he

bore the yoke of statutes and ordinances that grew ever heavier under the

rabbinical amplification; for he hailed the Sabbath as the “queen” that

raised him from a hated wanderer to a prince in his own domain.(1471)