WHAT OF THE JEWISH HOME?
Before answering the question, what of the Jewish home, before
discussing the problem to what extent does the irrepressible conflict
take place therein, it is needful to place the Jewish home in its
proper setting. In truth, the historical glory of the Jewish home, let
Jews remember and non-Jews learn, is the most beautiful and honorable
chapter in Jewish history. Nothing can dim the brightness of its
one-time splendor. If nothing else of Israel were to survive, the
memory of the home would honor and glorify Israel for all time. Truly
there is nothing in world history quite comparable thereto.
Somehow the world without has been touched to awe at the beauty and
radiance of the home in Israel. It has felt that the reverent love
within the Jewish home was more than love and reverence, that these
were touched by that beauty of holiness which gave to them their
exalted quality. The Jewish home blended two ideals, patriarchal and
matriarchal. It was never patriarchate alone, nor yet solely
matriarchate. It was a home governed by a joint sovereignty. It rested
no more truly upon tender love for the mother than upon real reverence
for the father. In a sense, it might be thought that herein the Jewish
home was not unique, for Plato had said: "After the gods and
demi-gods, parents ought to have the most honor." And Aristotle had
added: "It is proper to give them honor such as is given to the gods."
But the God whom Israel honored stood infinitely higher than the gods
whom the Greeks honored before parents. Canon Driver points out in the
Cambridge Bible that duty to parents stands next to duties toward God:
the penalty for cursing them is death even as the penalty for
blaspheming God. Ibn Ezra held that, if Israel keep this
commandment,--Honor thy father and thy mother,--it will not be exiled
from the promised land. Exiled it was from the promised land, but
obedience to the fifth Commandment did much to make the life of
Israel despite exile one of the beauty of promise fulfilled.
The grace and glory of the Jewish home were twofold. The selflessness
of parents evoked such filial tenderness and self-forgetfulness as to
bring about the perfect understanding of togetherness. The reverence
of the Jewish child for parents continued even beyond death. The
passing of the visible presence of a parent little lessened and often
greatened the revering love of the Jewish child. This accounts for the
pathos and romance associated with the "Kaddish" chant of the Hebrew
liturgy, forerunner of the Mass, and perhaps in the mind of Jesus when
he bade, Do this in remembrance of Me. This glorification of the
Author of death as well as life, is not to be viewed as a symbol of
ancestor-worship but rather as a sign of the tenderest of human pieties.
What the child was in the Jewish home it became because of what its
parents were toward it. To say that the Jewish mother has been
unsurpassed in the history of men because she dreamed that a child by
her borne might become a Messiah of its people does not quite touch
the roots of the unbelievable tenderness and beauty of maternal
dedication in the Jewish home. Neither is the relation of the Jewish
father and child wholly to be explained by the fact of his involuntary
aloofness from the world and his dependence upon the home for
whatsoever of peace and joy this world could give him. It is not too
much to say that the Messianic ideal of the Jewish mother and the fact
of the Jew's exclusion from the world without may have tended to
deepen and to hallow parental love, but the mystery abides not less
wondrous in some ways than the mystery of Israel's survival.
Certain perils, it might be imagined, were the inevitable
accompaniment of or sequel to this wonderful love and reverence within
the Jewish home,--the peril of repression of the inner life of the
child chiefly and also of the parent. But students of Jewish history
would hardly aver that the intellectual and spiritual nature of the
child was really stifled or stunted by reason of the illimitable
filial reverence. And if at times there was intellectual
self-repression and spiritual self-surrender, who can measure the
inmost and invisible gains which accrued to and rewarded the child?
It is a happy thought of Renan[V] that all the joys of Israel are in
reality an enlargement of the family life; their feast is a repast in
common, the natural eucharist to which the poor is admitted, a
thanksgiving for life as it is with its limits, which do not prevent
it from being present under the eye of Jahweh who dispenses good and
evil. The Fifth Commandment bade more than obedience on the part of
children to parents; by indirection it enjoined parents and children
alike to magnify the home, to make it the centre and core of Israel's
life, so that it became the very salvation of Israel when no other
salvation was at hand.
The very name that is given to Israel, the house of Israel, seems to
have been prophetic of what the family life of Israel was destined to
be. The house of Israel and the life of the Jewish home became
interchangeable terms. That the Jewish home safeguarded and
perpetuated Israel through ages of darkness and tears and tragedy is
true beyond peradventure. Whether this home-life in all its dignity
and grandeur was the result of the ghetto is rather doubtful. The
ghetto, which was the environment of the exile in its narrowest terms,
gave to Israel an unique opportunity for the development of what might
be called its genius for home-life. But if opportunity and genius
conjoined to create the result, this genius was inspired and fortified
from generation to generation by willing, even eager, obedience to the
Fifth Commandment of the Decalogue.
One might search far and wide without finding a finer illustration of
the character of the Jewish parental-filial relation than the
immemorial service in the Jewish home, commonly known as the Seder or
service of the Passover eve. That Seder with its family symposium has
been the glory of Israel throughout the ages. Ofttimes its serene joy
and august peace have been marred by brutal attack and onslaught, but
even this, the invasion by the world's hosts, has but served to lend a
new dignity and pathos to its beauty. Precious and historic memories
revolve about this family-scene, the children turning to the parents
for counsel and teaching and parents turning to their children and
giving these of their best by bringing God and the recognition of His
wonderful leading to the life of the child.
That Seder of the Passover eve in the Jewish home reminds one of the
Biblical parable,--for parable it is though the chronicler know it
not,--that even in slave-ridden Egypt the angel of death could not
touch the Jewish home. It was exempt from the ravages of death,
because within it was something of immortal quality, something immune
to the challenge of destruction. The Jew who knows something of the
history of his people, over and beyond the list of boarding-schools so
Christian as to shut out Jewish children, knows that this was
prefigured by the prophet when he announced in the unforgettable word
of the Hebrew Bible: And He shall turn the heart of the parents to the
children and the heart of the children to the parents. That is exactly
what the Jewish home did, turning the hearts of parent and child to
each other, knitting them together in one indissoluble tie, so that
the home become as naught else the very soul of Israel.