Mr. Arthur Davis, in whose memory has been founded the series of
Lectures devoted to the fostering of Hebraic thought and learning, of
which this is the first, was born in 1846 and died on the first day of
Passover, 1906. His childhood was spent in the town of Derby, where
there was then no Synagogue or Jewish minister or teacher of Hebrew.
Spontaneously he developed a strong Jewish consciousness, and an
enthusiasm for the Hebrew language, which led him to become one of its
greatest scholars in this, or any other, country.
He was able to put his learning to good use. He observed the wise
maxim of Leonardo da Vinci, "Avoid studies of which the result dies
with the worker." He was not one of those learned men, of whom there
are many examples--a recent and conspicuous instance was the late Lord
Acton--whose minds are so choked with the accumulations of the
knowledge they have absorbed that they can produce little or nothing.
His output, though not prolific, was substantial. In middle life he
wrote a volume on "The Hebrew Accents of the Twenty-one Books of the
Bible," which has become a classical authority on that somewhat
recondite subject. It was he who originated and planned the new
edition of the Festival Prayer Book in six volumes, and he wrote most
of the prose translations. When he died, though only two volumes out
of the six had been published, he left the whole of the text complete.
To Mr. Herbert M. Adler, who had been his collaborator from the
beginning, fell the finishing of the great editorial task.
Not least of his services lay in the fact that he had transmitted much
of his knowledge to his two daughters, who have worthily continued his
tradition of Hebrew scholarship and culture.
Arthur Davis's life work, then, was that of a student and interpreter
of Hebrew. It is a profoundly interesting fact that, in our age,
movements have been set on foot in more than one direction for the
revival of languages which were dead or dying. We see before our eyes
Welsh and Irish in process of being saved from extinction, with the
hope perhaps of restoring their ancient glories in poetry and prose.
Such movements show that our time is not so utilitarian and
materialistic as is often supposed. A similar revivifying process is
affecting Hebrew. For centuries it has been preserved as a ritual
language, sheltered within the walls of the Synagogue; often not fully
understood, and never spoken, by the members of the congregations. Now
it is becoming in Palestine once more a living and spoken language.
Hebrew is one example among many of a language outliving for purposes
of ritual its use in ordinary speech. A ritual is regarded as a sacred
thing, unchanging, and usually unchangeable, except as the result of
some great religious upheaval. The language in which it is framed
continues fixed, amid the slowly developing conditions of the workaday
world. Often, indeed, the use of an ancient language, which has
gradually fallen into disuse among the people, is deliberately
maintained for the air of mystery and of awe which is conveyed by its
use, and which has something of the same effect upon the intellect as
the "dim religious light" of a cathedral has upon the emotions.
Further, it reserves to the priesthood a kind of esoteric knowledge,
which gives them an additional authority that they would desire to
maintain. So we find that in the days of Marcus Aurelius an ancient
Salian liturgy was used in the Roman temples which had become almost
unintelligible to the worshippers. The ritual of the religion of Isis
in Greece was, at the same period, conducted in an unknown tongue. In
the present age Church Slavonic, the ecclesiastical language of the
orthodox Slavs, is only just intelligible to the peasantry of Russia
and the neighbouring Slav countries. The Buddhists of China conduct
their services in Sanscrit, which neither the monks nor the people
understand, and the services of the Buddhists in Japan are either in
Sanscrit or in ancient Chinese. I believe it is a fact that in
Abyssinia, again, the liturgy is in a language called Geez, which is
no longer in use as a living tongue and is not understood.
But we need not go to earlier centuries or to distant countries for
examples. In any Roman Catholic church in London to-day you will find
the service conducted in a language which, if understood at all by
the general body of the congregation, has been learnt by them only for
the purposes of the liturgy.
Of all these ritual languages which have outlived their current use
and have been preserved for religious purposes alone, Hebrew is, so
far as I am aware, the only one which has ever showed signs of
renewing its old vitality--like the roses of Jericho which appear to
be dead and shrivelled but which, when placed in water, recover their
vitality and their bloom. We may join in hoping that again in
Palestine Hebrew may recover something of its old supremacy in the
field of morals and of intellect.
To render this possible the work of scholars such as Arthur Davis has
contributed. To him this was a labour of love, and for love. He would
receive no payment for any of his religious work or writings. Part of
the profits that accrued from the publication of his edition of "The
Services of the Synagogue" has been devoted to the formation of a fund
from which will be defrayed the expenses--after the first--of a series
of annual lectures on subjects of Jewish interest, to be delivered by
men of various schools of thought. We are fortunate that the initial
lecture is to be delivered to-day by the most distinguished of living
Jewish men of letters.
Arthur Davis was a man of much elevation and charm of character. He
took an active part in the work of communal, and particularly
educational, organizations. He was one of those men--not rare among
Jews, though the rest of the world does not always recognize it--who
are philanthropic in spirit, practical in action, modest,
self-sacrificing, devoted to a fine family life, having in them much
of the student and something even of the saint. It is fitting that his
memory should be kept alive.