"_Her paths are paths of pleasantness, and all her ways are peace. She
is a tree of life to those that lay fast hold on her, and happy is
every one that retaineth her."--Prov. 3:17, 18._
[Illustration: _DAVID WERNER AMRAM (born in Philadelphia, 1866),
educated at the University of Pennsylvania, has been Lecturer and
since 1912 Professor of Law in the University of Pennsylvania Law
School. Professor Amram has published books and articles not only on
common law topics but on interesting subjects in Jewish legal lore and
belles-lettres, among his books being: "The Jewish Law of Divorce,"
"Leading Cases in the Bible," and "The Makers of Hebrew Books in
Italy."_]
One of the methods by which the Jewish people managed to survive
endless misery and persecution during eighteen centuries of dispersion
and protect themselves from the continuous bombardment of their social
and moral citadels was by taking refuge in the study of the law. The
study and observance of the law, both civil and religious, saved the
Jews from degeneration and vulgarization, and preserved for them the
humanizing memories of the thoughts and deeds of their forebears.
Through their common interest in the law and its study they kept in
touch with one another throughout the lands of their dispersion, they
kept alive their feeling of brotherhood and the memory of their
ancient independence, and translated this memory into a hope for the
re-establishment of the State, a hope which has never died.
"_The People of the Law_"
The term "the people of the law" has often been applied to the Jews in
the opprobrious sense that they are a people who deal according to
hard and strict rules, untouched by the qualities of love and mercy.
Properly understood, however, the term "the people of the law" is a
title of honor, one of which we may well be proud. As used in our
literature and by our people, "law" signifies something more than
civil and criminal jurisprudence. It is our word "Torah," meaning
doctrine, teaching, including not only what is generally known as law
but also what is known as ethics. The people of the law is the people
that studies the great thoughts of its great men of all times, and
adopts them as rules of life which it becomes a duty and a pleasure to
obey. The people of the law is the people that in the midst of a world
of chaos in which nation fought nation with the weapons of death, sat
in communion with a past world from which came such messages as this:
"Attend to me, O my people: and give ear unto me, O my nation: for a
law shall go forth from me, and I will make my judgment to rest for a
light to the peoples. . . . Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness,
the people in whose heart is my law; fear ye not the reproach of men,
neither be ye dismayed at their revilings. For the moth shall eat them
up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool: but my
righteousness shall be forever and my salvation unto all generations."
Righteousness was the aspect of Deity that appealed to the second
Isaiah, and it was he that spoke words of comfort to our people in all
the days of their endless tribulations. The certain faith in the
ultimate success of right sustained them throughout the centuries and
constitutes their strength to-day. This is the law that was handed
down to them from of old, the law of right, which though often broken,
often forgotten, was always found again and cherished as the one thing
worth while in a world torn by the brutal instincts in man--instincts
which the law had chained and sought to make harmless.
So we may well cling to our title of the people of the law,
remembering that it does not mean merely Nomos, as the Hellenized Jews
mistranslated Torah, but legal and ethical doctrine and knowledge in
its broadest sense, and that it is the people of the law that have
always shown their love of knowledge and found it "a tree of life to
those that lay fast hold on it." Some ancient Jewish mystic said that
the sword and the book came out of heaven together and Israel had to
choose. Israel did choose and thereafter dreamed of days when swords
would be beaten into ploughshares.
_How the Heritage of the Law Was Preserved_
The reading of the law has since time immemorial been an established
part of the synagogue service, thus educating the people to know their
law, the very phrases of which by constant reference and repetition
became part of their daily vocabulary. The origin of this custom of
reading the law in the synagogue may probably be found in the Biblical
references to the great convocations when King and scribe read the law
to the assembled people.
The effect of the dispersion of the Jews was to give a peculiar
sacredness to the law as the sole heritage of their earlier and
happier days. In most of the lands of their dispersion, the Jews dwelt
a race apart, separated from the rest of the community by mutual
prejudices and antagonisms. The soil on which they dwelt was so far as
ultimate overlordship was concerned the land of the stranger, but
nevertheless in a very definite and special sense it was the Jews'
own land. For it was a land in which the law of the stranger was not
the law. The law of the land of their dispersion was not the law of
the owner of the soil but the law of the Jews. In this sense the
Ghettos of Italy and the Gassen of Germany were not so much Italian
and German soil as they were Jewish. As by the modern fiction of
extraterritoriality the home of an Ambassador is considered part of
his own national territory, so these exclusively Jewish settlements
were colonies of Judæa planted on foreign soil. They were separated
from the rest of the land by visible or invisible walls, and within
these walls, hardly touched by the influences that were at work
shaping the life around them, the ancient law of the Jews was
preserved and handed down from generation to generation. Hence during
the Middle Ages the student of the law became the most important
member of the community, and all the energy of the community that was
not required to outwit the constant menace of brutal force and
religious persecution was devoted to the cultivation of the law and of
the literature that it gave rise to.
It should be noted, however, that since the beginning of the Talmudic
period, the civil law developed in certain directions only, because
after all the Jewish people had no land of their own in the usual
sense and no central authority and were constantly moving from place
to place, always subject to persecution. Some branches of their law
were entirely neglected and others abnormally developed.
_The Schools of the Law_
In the Talmudic period, the judges, members of the Synhedrion, and
professors of the law schools, received a long professional training.
The course of study lasted seven years, at the end of which, having
passed their examination successfully, the graduates were eligible to
assignment as judges in the lower courts, from which they were
promoted to act as associate judges in the great Synhedrion and
eventually might hope to attain the dignity of full synhedrial
membership. These judicial dignitaries were obliged to be well versed
in the languages, law and customs of the contemporary peoples,
especially in the laws of the Greeks and Romans. Great academies of
the law flourished in Palestine and still greater ones in Babylonia,
the latter eventually supplanting the former. These academies called
for the enthusiastic encomium of one Talmudist who said, "God created
these academies in order that the promise might be fulfilled that the
word of God should not depart from Israel's mouth."
The law students met twice a year in assembly for examination. Their
studies were pursued at home, except in the months of Elul and Adar
when they went up to the Assembly. Here they were arranged in classes
and under the direction of their masters heard lectures and discussed
the subject matter presented to them topically. At these Assemblies
actual questions of law were submitted from Jewish communities all
over the Jewish world, and the solutions to these problems were
prepared and forwarded by the great masters. In addition to these
professional schools there were everywhere general schools or, as we
might say, high schools connected with the synagogues. It is a tribute
to the importance that was ascribed to the high schools in later
generations that their origin was projected back to the days of the
Flood when Shem and Eber established a law school in which
subsequently Isaac, Jacob, and Rebecca heard lectures. It will be
noted that according to this bit of folklore Rebecca was the first
woman law student. The same fancy which invented this most ancient of
the schools, also invented the law school which Judah built for Jacob
in Egypt, and the school established by Moses in which he and Aaron
were the professors and Joshua was the janitor.
_The Study of the Law "the Chief End of Man"_
The fancy of the people associated nearly all of its great men with
the study of the law. The entire tribe of Issachar was said to have
devoted itself to the study of the law, the merchant tribe of Zebulon
furnishing the means of support. God himself, according to another
mystic, was a professor in the celestial law school in which He taught
the law to the souls of all the righteous, in that heaven which they
conceived of as a place where the law might be perpetually studied;
and even while the Temple was still standing and sacrifices were being
offered, the Jewish teachers used to say that God does not require
burnt offerings but the study of His law.
From all of these traditions it will be seen that to the ancients the
study of the law was the chief end of man. The Jew never considered
ignorance to be bliss and has little sympathy with the religious ideal
of many non-Jewish people that religion is more important than
knowledge. One of the great masters even went so far as to say that
the ignorant man cannot be pious. It was Simon the Just, one of the
survivors of the Men of the Great Synagogue, who said that the world
stands upon three things, the law, the service of God, and charity,
and he put the law first, for the first duty of a man is to observe
the law. He must be just before he can be charitable.
At one time it was sought to place some limitations upon the right to
become a student of law, and herein the schools of Hillel and Shammai
differed. Hillel was the democrat who held that all persons, without
exception, should enjoy the privilege of studying law; Shammai was the
intellectual aristocrat who sought to limit this privilege to those
who were wise, modest, of ample means and of goodly parentage, thereby
establishing rules similar to those that obtain in the best modern law
schools, which require a collegiate education as a preliminary to
admission; but Shammai went further in that he required the students
to be wise and modest as well as persons of good breeding and of
ample fortune. Just how many of our modern law students could meet
these requirements is a question upon which I have no statistics. On
this very matter of the proper qualifications for admission to the
privilege of studying law, we have heard much in our time. Perhaps a
contribution to the subject from the old and somewhat neglected Code
of the Mishnah would not be inappropriate. The Mishnah says:
_"Eight and Forty Qualifications for the Law"_
"The law is greater than priesthood and royalty, for royalty is
acquired by thirty qualifications, priesthood by four and twenty, but
the law by eight and forty, and they are as follows: Study, attention,
utterance, understanding, reverence, veneration, modesty, cheerfulness
and purity, service of the wise, choice of associates, debate with
fellow students, deliberation in study of Bible and Mishnah, a minimum
of business, a minimum of worldly pursuits, a minimum of pleasure, a
minimum of sleep, a minimum of talk, a minimum of jesting,
forbearance, kindliness, faith in the wise, resignation in suffering,
knowing one's place, satisfaction with one's lot, bridling one's
words, refraining from self-complacency, amiability, loving the
Creator, loving His creatures, loving righteousness, loving equity,
loving reproof, eschewing worldly honor, not being puffed up by
learning nor delighting in laying down the law, helping one's neighbor
bear the yoke, inclining toward a favorable judgment of others,
steadfast in the truth, steadfast for peace, concentration in study,
asking, answering, listening, enlarging, learning with a view to
teach, learning with a view to act, enabling one's teacher to become
wiser, thoroughly understanding what one hears, and repeating every
dictum in the name of him who uttered it." I recommend this list of
qualifications to the consideration of modern teachers and students as
well as to those who are concerned with the preparation of a code of
legal ethics for the profession.
The Jews loved the law and respected it and they honored its
expounders and administrators. They do not believe that the world can
be made over or made better by any man or by any preaching. They are
by instinct conservative, holding on with tenacity to the ideas and
institutions that have grown up in past times and that are expressions
of the needs of society and of its adjustment to the forces that play
upon it. This is why the law, which is the embodiment of these
conservative forces, meets with their respect and allegiance, why its
study was cultivated with such zeal in the past, and why in our own
day it still finds so large a percentage of votaries among the sons of
our people.
[Illustration: Signature: D.W. Amram]