THE MIDRASH AND ITS POETRY
Mechilta, Sifra, Sifre, Pesikta, Tanchuma, Midrash
Rabbah, Yalkut.--Proverbs.--Parables.--Fables.
In its earliest forms identical with the Halachah, or the practical and
legal aspects of the Mishnah and the Talmud, the Midrash, in its fuller
development, became an independent branch of Rabbinical literature. Like
the Talmud, the Midrash is of a composite nature, and under the one name
the accumulations of ages are included. Some of its contents are earlier
than the completion of the Bible, others were collected and even created
as recently as the tenth or the eleventh century of the current era.
Midrash ("Study," "Inquiry") was in the first instance an _Explanation
of the Scriptures_. This explanation is often the clear, natural
exposition of the text, and it enforces rules of conduct both ethical
and ritual. The historical and moral traditions which clustered round
the incidents and characters of the Bible soon received a more vivid
setting. The poetical sense of the Rabbis expressed itself in a vast and
beautiful array of legendary additions to the Bible, but the additions
are always devised with a moral purpose, to give point to a preacher's
homily or to inspire the imagination of the audience with nobler
fancies. Besides being expository, the Midrash is, therefore, didactic
and poetical, the moral being conveyed in the guise of a _narrative_,
amplifying and developing the contents of Scripture. The Midrash gives
the results of that deep searching of the Scriptures which became second
nature with the Jews, and it also represents the changes and expansions
of ethical and theological ideals as applied to a changing and growing
life.
From another point of view, also, the Midrash is a poetical literature.
Its function as a species of _popular homiletics_ made it necessary to
appeal to the emotions. In its warm and living application of abstract
truths to daily ends, in its responsive and hopeful intensification of
the nearness of God to Israel, in its idealization of the past and
future of the Jews, it employed the poet's art in essence, though not in
form. It will be seen later on that in another sense the Midrash is a
poetical literature, using the lore of the folk, the parable, the
proverb, the allegory, and the fable, and often using them in the
language of poetry.
The oldest Midrash is the actual report of sermons and addresses of the
Tannaite age; the latest is a medieval compilation from all extant
sources. The works to which the name Midrash is applied are the
_Mechilta_ (to Exodus); the _Sifra_ (to Leviticus); the _Sifre_ (to
Numbers and Deuteronomy); the _Pesikta_ (to various _Sections_ of the
Bible, whence its name); the _Tanchuma_ (to the Pentateuch); the
_Midrash Rabbah_ (the "Great Midrash," to the Pentateuch and the Five
Scrolls of Esther, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of
Songs); and the _Midrash Haggadol_ (identical in name, and in contents
similar to, but not identical with, the _Midrash Rabbah_); together with
a large number of collected Midrashim, such as the _Yalkut_, and a host
of smaller works, several of which are no longer extant.
Regarding the Midrash in its purely literary aspects, we find its style
to be far more lucid than that of the Talmud, though portions of the
Halachic Midrash are identical in character with the Talmud. The Midrash
has many passages in which the simple graces of form match the beauty of
idea. But for the most part the style is simple and prosaic, rather than
ornate or poetical. It produces its effects by the most straightforward
means, and strikes a modern reader as lacking distinction in form. The
dead level of commonplace expression is, however, brightened by
brilliant passages of frequent occurrence. Prayers, proverbs, parables,
and fables, dot the pages of Talmud and Midrash alike. The ancient
_proverbs_ of the Jews were more than mere chips from the block of
experience. They were poems, by reason of their use of metaphor,
alliteration, assonance, and imagination. The Rabbinical proverbs show
all these poetical qualities.
He who steals from a thief smells of theft.--Charity is the
salt of Wealth.--Silence is a fence about Wisdom.--Many old
camels carry the skins of their young.--Two dry sticks and one
green burn together.--If the priest steals the god, on what
can one take an oath?--All the dyers cannot bleach a raven's
wing.--Into a well from which you have drunk, cast no
stone.--Alas for the bread which the baker calls bad.--Slander
is a Snake that stings in Syria, and slays in Rome.--The Dove
escaped from the Eagle and found a Serpent in her nest.--Tell
no secrets, for the Wall has ears.
These, like many more of the Rabbinical proverbs, are essentially
poetical. Some, indeed, are either expanded metaphors or metaphors
touched by genius into poetry. The alliterative proverbs and maxims of
the Talmud and Midrash are less easily illustrated. Sometimes they
enshrine a pun or a conceit, or depend for their aptness upon an
assonance. In some of the Talmudic proverbs there is a spice of
cynicism. But most of them show a genial attitude towards life.
The poetical proverb easily passes into the parable. Loved in Bible
times, the parable became in after centuries the most popular form of
didactic poetry among the Jews. The Bible has its parables, but the
Midrash overflows with them. They are occasionally re-workings of older
thoughts, but mostly they are original creations, invented for a special
purpose, stories devised to drive home a moral, allegories administering
in pleasant wrappings unpalatable satires or admonitions. In all ages
up to the present, Jewish moralists have relied on the parable as their
most effective instrument. The poetry of the Jewish parables is
characteristic also of the parables imitated from the Jewish, but the
latter have a distinguishing feature peculiar to them. This is their
humor, the witty or humorous parable being exclusively Jewish. The
parable is less spontaneous than the proverb. It is a product of moral
poetry rather than of folk wisdom. Yet the parable was so like the
proverb that the moral of a parable often became a new proverb. The
diction of the parable is naturally more ornate. By the beauty of its
expression, its frequent application of rural incidents to the life
familiar in the cities, the rhythm and flow of its periods, its fertile
imagination, the parable should certainly be placed high in the world's
poetry. But it was poetry with a _tendency_, the _mashal_, or
proverb-parable, being what the Rabbis themselves termed it, "the clear
small light by which lost jewels can be found."
The following is a parable of Hillel, which is here cited more to
mention that noble, gentle Sage than as a specimen of this class of
literature. Hillel belongs to a period earlier than that dealt with in
this book, but his loving and pure spirit breathes through the pages of
the Talmud and Midrash:
Hillel, the gentle, the beloved sage,
Expounded day by day the sacred page
To his disciples in the house of learning;
And day by day, when home at eve returning,
They lingered, clustering round him, loth to part
From him whose gentle rule won every heart.
But evermore, when they were wont to plead
For longer converse, forth he went with speed,
Saying each day: "I go--the hour is late--
To tend the guest who doth my coming wait,"
Until at last they said: "The Rabbi jests,
When telling us thus daily of his guests
That wait for him." The Rabbi paused awhile,
And then made answer: "Think you I beguile
You with an idle tale? Not so, forsooth!
I have a guest whom I must tend in truth.
Is not the soul of man indeed a guest,
Who in this body deigns a while to rest,
And dwells with me all peacefully to-day:
To-morrow--may it not have fled away?"
Space must be found for one other parable, taken (like many other
poetical quotations in this volume) from Mrs. Lucas' translations:
Simeon ben Migdal, at the close of day,
Upon the shores of ocean chanced to stray,
And there a man of form and mien uncouth,
Dwarfed and misshapen, met he on the way.
"Hail, Rabbi," spoke the stranger passing by,
But Simeon thus, discourteous, made reply:
"Say, are there in thy city many more,
Like unto thee, an insult to the eye?"
"Nay, that I cannot tell," the wand'rer said,
"But if thou wouldst ply the scorner's trade,
Go first and ask the Master Potter why
He has a vessel so misshapen made?"
Then (so the legend tells) the Rabbi knew
That he had sinned, and prone himself he threw
Before the other's feet, and prayed of him
Pardon for the words that now his soul did rue.
But still the other answered as before:
"Go, in the Potter's ear thy plaint outpour,
For what am I! His hand has fashioned me,
And I in humble faith that hand adore."
Brethren, do we not often too forget
Whose hand it is that many a time has set
A radiant soul in an unlovely form,
A fair white bird caged in a mouldering net?
Nay more, do not life's times and chances, sent
By the great Artificer with intent
That they should prove a blessing, oft appear
To us a burden that we sore lament?
Ah! soul, poor soul of man! what heavenly fire
Would thrill thy depths and love of God inspire,
Could'st thou but see the Master hand revealed,
Majestic move "earth's scheme of things entire."
It cannot be! Unseen he guideth us,
But yet our feeble hands, the luminous
Pure lamp of faith can light to glorify
The narrow path that he has traced for us.
Finally, there are the _Beast Fables_ of the Talmud and the Midrash.
Most of these were borrowed directly or indirectly from India. We are
told in the Talmud that Rabbi Meir knew three hundred Fox Fables, and
that with his death (about 290 C.E.) "fabulists ceased to be," Very few
of Meir's fables are extant, so that it is impossible to gather whether
or not they were original. There are only thirty fables in the Talmud
and the Midrash, and of these several cannot be parallelled in other
literatures. Some of the Talmudic fables are found also in the
classical and the earliest Indian collections; some in the later
collections; some in the classics, but not in the Indian lists; some in
India, but not in the Latin and Greek authors. Among the latter is the
well-known fable of the _Fox and the Fishes_, used so dramatically by
Rabbi Akiba. The original Talmudic fables are, according to Mr. J.
Jacobs, the following: _Chaff, Straw, and Wheat_, who dispute for which
of them the seed has been sown: the winnowing fan soon decides; _The
Caged Bird_, who is envied by his free fellow; _The Wolf and the two
Hounds_, who have quarrelled; the wolf seizes one, the other goes to his
rival's aid, fearing the same fate himself on the morrow, unless he
helps the other dog to-day; _The Wolf at the Well_, the mouth of the
well is covered with a net: "If I go down into the well," says the wolf,
"I shall be caught. If I do not descend, I shall die of thirst"; _The
Cock and the Bat_, who sit together waiting for the sunrise: "I wait
for the dawn," said the cock, "for the light is my signal; but as for
thee--the light is thy ruin"; and, finally, what Mr. Jacobs calls the
grim beast-tale of the _Fox as Singer_, in which the beasts--invited by
the lion to a feast, and covered by him with the skins of wild
beasts--are led by the fox in a chorus: "What has happened to those
above us, will happen to him above," implying that their host, too, will
come to a violent death. In the context the fable is applied to Haman,
whose fate, it is augured, will resemble that of the two officers whose
guilt Mordecai detected.
Such fables are used in the Talmud to point religious or even political
morals, very much as the parables were. The fable, however, took a lower
flight than the parable, and its moral was based on expediency, rather
than on the highest ethical ideals. The importance of the Talmudic
fables is historical more than literary or religious. Hebrew fables
supply one of the links connecting the popular literature of the East
with that of the West. But they hardly belong in the true sense to
Jewish literature. Parables, on the other hand, were an essential and
characteristic branch of that literature.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
MIDRASH.
Schiller-Szinessy.--_Encycl. Brit._, Vol. XVI, p. 285.
Graetz.--II, p. 328 [331] _seq._
Steinschneider.--_Jewish Literature_, pp. 5 _seq._,
36 _seq._
L.N. Dembitz.--_Jewish Services in Synagogue and Home_
(Jewish Publication Society of America, 1898), p. 44.
FABLES.
J. Jacobs.--_The Fables of Æsop_ (London, 1889), I,
p. 110 _seq._
Read also Schechter, _Studies in Judaism_, p. 272 [331];
and _J.Q.R._, (Kohler), V, p. 399; VII, p. 581;
(Bacher) IV, p. 406; (Davis) VIII, p. 529; (Abrahams) I, p. 216;
II, p. 172; Chenery, _Legends from the Midrash_ (_Miscellany
of the Society of Hebrew Literature_, Vol. II).