0/3
 
 THE TALMUD. 
 
 BY DR. J. L. LANDAU. 
 
 [Series of Lectures delivered at the Grand Theatre, 
 Johannesburg, before the members of the Jewish Guild.] 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen, The subject of my lecture, 
 viz., the Talmud, is one of immense importance and of 
 intense interest. Important, because Judaism from its 
 every aspect, social and religious, moral and intellectual, 
 has not only been based and built up upon the founda- 
 tions of that marvellous book, but is actually its product. 
 Judaism has drawn its vital sap from its soil and owes 
 to it every shape and form of its historical development. 
 We to-day are not Bible-Jews, but Talmud-Jews. Even 
 the Reform Jew must admit this, although he battles 
 against and tries to belittle and to paralyse its influence. 
 And this subject is interesting, because no book in the 
 world's literature has met with so much opposition, hos- 
 tility, arid relentless persecution as has the Talmud. In 
 this respect it has shared the fate of the nation which 
 produced it. From the very time of its inception to 
 the present day the Talmud, like the Jewish people, has 
 been constantly forcing and fighting its way through a 
 world of prejudice and animosity. In spite of its in- 
 trinsic value and importance, it has been but little known 
 outside the walls of the Beth-Hamidrash, and therefore 
 misunderstood and misjudged. And, ladies and gentle- 
 men, notwithstanding the multitude of books that have 
 been written about it, it is still most difficult to define. 
 If you ask me what the Talmud is, it is impossible for 
 me to answer your question in one short condensed sen- 
 tence. 
 
 " The Talmud," says Graetz, in his " History of 
 the Jews/' " rnust not be regarded as an ordinary work; 
 it possesses absolutely no similarity to any other literary
 
 production, but forms, without any figure of speech, a 
 world of its own. The most talented could therefore 
 hardly hope to succeed in sketching its character, even 
 though he had penetrated deeply into its nature. It is, 
 however, of less consequence what the Talmud is in itself 
 than what was its influence on history, on those genera- 
 tions whose education it chiefly controlled." I shall, 
 however, attempt to fulfil my task to the best of my 
 ability. I gladly accepted the invitation of your Society 
 to lecture on this subject, as my experience teaches me 
 that the prejudice against the Talmud, against that un- 
 failing well-spring of our moral and immortal strength, 
 has now become more pronounced among our own people 
 than even among non-Jews. 
 
 The technical definition of the Talmud is as 
 follows: It consists of six main divisions called 
 Orders. Each Order contains a number of 
 treatises (tractates), and each treatise is divided into 
 chapters. Each chapter is headed by a Mishnah i.e., 
 some legal decision as transmitted by the senior rabbis, 
 the Tanaites, and finally fixed by Rabbi Judah the 
 Patriarch. Every Mishnah is followed by a full discus- 
 sion by the junior rabbis, the Amorites, who lived after 
 Rabbi Jehudah, and that part is called Gemara, study. 
 Both together, the Mishnah and the Gemara, are desig- 
 nated as the Talmud. In the latest edition published in 
 Wilna, with the best-known commentaries, it fills eigh- 
 teen large folio volumes. 
 
 Let me, however, try to illustrate its significance by 
 calling it a kaleidoscope or cinematograph of thought, 
 of spiritual progress. We can now by a great stretch of 
 imagination think of the possibility of seeing the his- 
 torical development of a nation during many centuries 
 portrayed by a cinematograph. Those rapidly changing 
 life-like pictures might show us a nation in the process 
 of its development, how it gradually grows and pro- 
 gresses by commerce and industry, by its political de- 
 feats and victories, and other similar phases of its 
 national life. But no kaleidoscope has as yet been in- 
 vented that could illustrate the process of the spiritual, 
 intellectual, and moral development of a nation. The 
 Talmud might be likened to such an apparatus. It is a 
 work whose compilation and completion occupied almost 
 seven centuries, and which engaged the whole intellectual 
 capacity of over 2,000 eminent Jewish scholars. It deals 
 with every phase of human life, and with every branch of
 
 human thought. Geology, botany, medicine, astronomy, 
 physics, mathematics, law and poetry, religion and 
 philosophy. And most of those subjects are presented in 
 the original form of the discussions that had taken place 
 in the various houses of learning, as it were, in the pro- 
 cess of their crystallisation. The rabbis themselves com- 
 pared the Talmud to a mighty ocean, in which the various 
 streams of Jewish thought met and intermingled. 
 
 I have said that the Jew of to-day is not a Bible- 
 Jew, but a Talmud-Jew. In what relation does the Tal- 
 mud stand to the Bible? It is commonly supposed to be 
 a commentary on the Bible, an exposition of its laws, an 
 elucidation of its obscure passages, but, in truth, it goes 
 far beyond the Bible in its conception of the social and 
 religious tendencies of man. A Midrash that is a 
 homiletic portion of the Talmud tried to illustrate that 
 fact by the following legend : Moses, on one of his visits 
 to Heaven, found the Lord occupied with the study of 
 the Torah and putting crowns over certain letters. The 
 prophet stood amazed, and asked what it meant. " After 
 many, many centuries," the Lord explained, " a great 
 rabbi, Akiba, the son of Joseph, will complete the 
 crowning work of the Torah by interpreting every letter 
 in the spirit of changed times and conditions; he will 
 spiritualise every dead letter by breathing into it part 
 of his own glowing and immortal soul." Moses unhesi- 
 tatingly expressed the wish to see that eminent teacher 
 face to face, and accordingly the scene suddenly changed. 
 The heavens turned into a large house of learning, where 
 hundreds of pupils sat at the feet of a hoary scholar, 
 listening to his exposition of the law with great atten- 
 tion and reverence. Moses, at the command of the Lord, 
 took his seat behind the tenth row of the students, and he 
 also tried to follow those learned remarks, but was unable 
 to grasp them. His spirit failed, he felt humbled, and 
 only regained his composure when he heard Akiba remark 
 that all his explanations were based on the Law of 
 Moses. " Lord," exclaimed Moses, " surely that rabbi 
 seems more deserving of the honour of giving Thy Law 
 to the people." " No," replied God, "even the reason 
 of this, My decree, is beyond thy grasp." This legend is 
 intended to impress upon us and to emphasise the fact 
 that the Talmud is more than a mere commentary, that 
 it forms a further important stage in the development of 
 the Law, that it marks the immense progress made by the 
 spirit of the Jewish people since the days of Moses. 
 Rabbi Akiba was certainly not greater than Moses, nor
 
 was he even as great, but he was the pupil raised on the 
 shoulders of his teacher, his gaze therefore embraced a 
 wider horizon. 
 
 In the course of my lectures I shall be able to show 
 you in which respect and to Avhat extent the Talmud 
 advanced beyond the literal meaning of the Torah, and 
 to show you the radical and determined manner of its 
 authors in the pursuit of their aims. And, .in order, to 
 enable you to get a better insight into the whole fabric 
 of that most complicated and intricate work, I shall 
 divide my subject into three principal parts: (1) Its 
 authors, (2) its doctrines, and (3) its history. Needless 
 to say, I shall confine my remarks to the principal 
 names and facts, as you well understand that it is well- 
 nigh impossible to deal adequately with this vast subject 
 in the limited time at my disposal. 
 
 I. 
 
 The first foundation-stones of that imposing and 
 majestic structure called the Talmud must have been laid 
 long before Ezra the Scribe. By foundation-stones I 
 understand unwritten traditions, which, according to a 
 Mishnah, were handed down from generation to genera- 
 tion, from the elders to the men of the Great Synagogue. 
 True, that the Prophets and Hagiographa were also 
 designated as Siadoxn as traditions, but that ex 
 pression generally and principally referred to laws, doc- 
 trines and customs communicated by word of mouth. 
 The names of the men, however, who were responsible for 
 them history passes over in silence. Ezra flourished in 
 the middle of the fifth century B.C.E., and the first man 
 mentioned in the Mishnah as the last of the sages who 
 formed the Great Synagogue is Simon the Just, who, 
 according to Zunz (G.V.), flourished between 221-202 
 B.C.E., and, according to Herzfeld, he officiated as high 
 priest between 226-198. A Talmudical legend (also men- 
 tioned in Josephus Ant. IX., 8) wove a halo of glory 
 round his personality. It relates that when Alexander 
 the Great entered Palestine Simon went to meet him 
 dressed in his white priestly robes, and the great con- 
 queror was so deeply impressed by his personality that 
 he bowed to him and paid him homage. Ben Sirah, or 
 Ecclesiasticus, glorified his memory in a poem, which has 
 been included in the afternoon ritual of the day of 
 Kippur. All accounts agree that he fully deserved the 
 attribute " the Just," and, although historians cannot
 
 agree as to the date of his activity, they all agree that he, 
 by his public life as well as by his profound knowledge 
 and the respect he enjoyed and the influence he wielded, 
 worthily completed a circle of famous learned men, 
 leaders of thought, known as the Men of the Great Syna- 
 gogue. And yet, of all his teachings only one single 
 saying has been preserved in its original version. One 
 of the most striking features of the ancient Jewish 
 scholar and teacher was to hide his person behind his 
 work. The word popularity either did not occur in his 
 vocabulary or had no attraction for him. His modest}' 
 forbade him to enter a place suffused with the glare of 
 glory. His person mattered but little. He regarded 
 himself as a mere instrument in the hands of history or 
 of Providence. He was satisfied that his word and his 
 work remained. , 
 
 Must it not strike us as most strange that a nation 
 of immense intellectual abilities, of such mental force, 
 which produced Prophets and Psalmists and thinkers 
 like the authors of Job and Ecclesiastes, men of immortal 
 fame, should for centuries have been so Barren, mentally 
 so indolent, as to produce no other literary work worthy 
 of preservation? Even the few poetic and Midrashic 
 works, known as Apocrypha, had also been rejected and 
 confiscated by the Rabbis, and had it not been for the 
 first Christian students and translators of the Bible, 
 those Apocryphal books would altogether have been lost 
 and forgotten. All we have left of the literary activity even 
 of men such as Simon and Antigonus of Soko are short 
 maxims, fortunately preserved in the Ethics of the 
 Fathers. The key to that problem is given partly in 
 that very saying of Antigonus, and partly in the last 
 verses of Ecclesiastes. That saying reads: " Be not as 
 slaves that minister to the Lord with a view to receive 
 recompense, but be as slaves that serve God from pure 
 motives. Let the fear of Heaven be upon you." Pro- 
 fessor Taylor remarks on that saying: "Antigonus in- 
 culcates disinterested service without expressly enunciat- 
 ing any doctrine, even concerning a future state of retri- 
 bution." He preached the lesson of selflessness and self- 
 drnial in the work for a good cause. And the last 
 verses of Ecclesiastes read: " My son, be admonished not 
 to produce books, to which there is no end, most of which 
 contain much idle talk and tedious nonsense." Not 
 scholarly repute, nor scholarly display, were their am- 
 bitions and ideals, but fear of God i.e., moral improve-
 
 nient, and the happiness afforded by piety. Simon the 
 Just therefore laid down the following three well-known 
 principles (upon which the world is based) : " The Torah, 
 the service of God, and the practice of charity." 
 
 In the course of my lectures I shall have yet another 
 opportunity to refer to this fact and to discuss 
 it at greater length. Now r I only wish to remark that 
 those views of the rabbis on wisdom and virtue and their 
 mode of life remind us vividly of one great, perhaps the 
 greatest, sage of ancient Greece, viz., Socrates. Neither 
 did he leave, nor could he have left, any writings behind 
 him, according to his principles. All we know of and 
 about him is recorded in the writings of his disciples, 
 in the memoirs of Xenophon and in Plato's dialogues. 
 " He devoted himself to his work to the end," says Zeller 
 (History of Greek Philosophy), " even under circum- 
 stances of the greatest poverty. His self-renunciation 
 was complete. He asked for no reward. ... A pat- 
 tern of a life of few needs, of moral purity, justice and 
 piety, yet at the same time full of genuine human kindli- 
 ness." Socrates believed in the necessity of acquiring 
 knowledge, because it is impossible to do right without 
 knowledge. Virtue is promoted by instruction, know- 
 ledge is a means to right action. Virtue is knowledge, 
 and the object of knowledge is the Good. All virtues 
 thus have their root in wisdom. We shall later be able 
 to see in how far the Jewish sages, the authors of the 
 Talmud, knowingly or unknowingly, practised and pro- 
 pagated the doctrines of that Grecian philosopher. 
 
 The first great rabbi to arrest our attention as a 
 statesman, reformer, and revolutionist, is Simon ben 
 Shetach, a brother of Queen Alexandra and brother-in- 
 law of the Hasmonean King and High Priest Alexander 
 Jannaeus. Ben Shetach is also called the Jewish Brutus, 
 as he, like the Roman, once enforced the law at the ex- 
 pense of the life of his only son. His struggle "with the 
 Sadducees and against 1 the authority of the priests belongs 
 to the history of the Talmud. Here I only wish to be per- 
 mitted to mention that it was due to his determined atti- 
 tude and untiring efforts that the heated and passionate 
 contest between the two parties, Sadducees and Pharisees, 
 led to the ultimate victory of the latter, although the 
 King was the fiercest and most reckless of their oppo- 
 nents. All the scattered members of the party, who had 
 been exiled or intimidated by brute force, and had fled 
 to Egypt or other countries, returned and rallied around
 
 him, and formed that invincible brotherhood which over- 
 powered and outlived not only the Hasmonaean and 
 Herodian Dynasties, but even the Roman Empire. Simon 
 ben Shetach reorganised the Synhedrion, suppressed 
 superstition, and thus merited the title of a reorganiser 
 of the law. It was said that he had restored to the crown 
 of the Torah its ancient splendour. And one of his most 
 memorable meritorious deeds was the establishing of the 
 first public Jewish schools. In all large towns high schools 
 for the use of young men from the age of 16 sprang up at 
 his instance. 
 
 More famous and well known even among Christian 
 scholars is Hillel the Elder. He was the author of that 
 Golden Rule in which are supposed to culminate the 
 moral teachings of the New Testament, and which he 
 expressed more than fifty years before the founders of 
 Christianity. It is related that a heathen once came to 
 Shamai, a contemporary of Hillel, with the desire to be 
 converted to Judaism, but under the peculiar condition 
 that that Rabbi should condense its essence in the shortest 
 possible sentence, so that he might be able to learn it 
 stante pede. That teacher, who was opposed to prosely- 
 tism, perhaps so influenced by the reign of Herod, who 
 was an Edomite, drove the stranger from his house. 
 Hillel, however, received him with that gentle kindness 
 which was characteristic of him, and he then uttered those 
 memorable words: "My child, love thy neighbour as 
 thyself, do not unto others what is hateful to thee. This 
 is the fundamental principle of the whole Torah, from 
 which all other laws and doctrines emanate." 
 
 Hillel, who lived at the time of Herod, was a Baby- 
 lonian, and worked himself up from very small begin- 
 nings. He came to Jerusalem for the purpose of study- 
 ing the law under the two great Rabbis Sh'maaya and 
 Abtalion, and in order to earn his living and to be able 
 to pay the necessary entrance fee to the doorkeeper of 
 the school he became a woodcutter. One Friday, we 
 are told, when he had not earned enough to pay that fee, 
 but was still most anxious not to miss any lecture, he 
 climbed up to the roof and listened at the window-sill. 
 And so absorbed was his mind in that lecture that he 
 did not notice the falling snow nor its deadly effect. 
 After some years he himself was privileged to occupy the 
 presidential seat of that high school and of the Senate, 
 not by any political influence, but by virtue of his un- 
 rivalled knowledge and ability. Even a powerful and
 
 8 
 
 suspicious sovereign like Herod the Great respected his 
 authority and treated him with marked reverence. He, 
 therefore, was justified in setting up the following prin- 
 ciple: " If I am not for myself, who can be for me; but 
 if I am for myself only, what am I, and if not now 
 when? " Maxims charged with deep philosophical mean- 
 ing. In the first place, every man must stand for him- 
 self. God helps him who helps himself. Only a coward, 
 a man without self-confidence and self-respect, relies 
 upon others. It is for each of us to use his own ability 
 to the best advantage. But woe unto him who is over- 
 confident and whose whole thought is absorbed in selfish 
 aims, who tries to benefit his own position at the expense 
 of others, especially of the common weal. And never post- 
 pone a good action. " Cru-jH- !////>/, " had said alr-ady 
 the Roman poet Horace. Seize the moment quickly, for 
 only the present is thine. No one can tell what the next 
 moment might bring. And, like Socrates, he also im- 
 pressed upon his pupils: "The empty-headed can- 
 not avoid mistakes, and the ignorant man can- 
 not be virtuous." All these short sayings gain 
 an ever-deeper meaning when illustrated by events 
 of that period, to which they undoubtedly allude, but I 
 do not wish to deal now with the historical moment of 
 the Talmud. It would also occupy too much of our time 
 were I to discuss more fully his life and his work. Let 
 me therefore refer at once to his chief contributions to 
 the Talmud. 
 
 Hillel is said to have been the author of the first 
 seven rules of exegetical principles by which the law is 
 expounded. He was the founder of a new system which 
 greatly helped to enrich the mass of traditional lore and 
 to widen its sphere of influence. Those rules made it 
 possible for ancient traditions to be remoulded and to 
 be developed in accordance with the conditions and de- 
 mands of changed times. They made them, so to say, 
 flexible and fluid. That he was mainly responsible for 
 that system is obvious from the fact, mentioned in the 
 Talmud, that he first had to demonstrate its correctness 
 and legal validity before a large assembly of scholars 
 before it was accepted. That victory, on the eve of a 
 Passover Festival, raised him to the highest position. 
 He was also the first in whose name certain original in- 
 terpretations of Biblical passages and of Biblical laws 
 are recorded. Little is known of his son Simon; only 
 his grandson, Gamaliel 1., who, like his father and
 
 grandfather, occupied the presidency of the Synhedrion. 
 enjoyed a certain fame, and all Jewish communities ac- 
 knowledged his authority. But he lived in times of 
 political upheavals, which led to the destruction of 
 Jerusalem, and there is no doubt that many literary 
 productions were buried in the ruins of that city. 
 
 As the next great striking personality after Hillel 
 I would mention Rabbi Jochanan ben Zaccai, who lived 
 at the time of the Destruction of the Second Temple. 
 
 We are told that when the war against the Romans 
 raged before the walls of Jerusalem, when the zealots 
 made their last desperate efforts to defend the last 
 doomed fortifications round the Temple, when hunger 
 and bloodshed, the fury of war, had decimated the in- 
 habitants of the holy city, a few distinguished scholars 
 carried upon their shoulders a coffin to the gates of the 
 city and were allowed to pass, because the corpse was 
 supposed to be that of Ben Zaccai. But that famous 
 Rabbi was not dead. The funeral procession only 
 served to delude the guards. The Rabbi had himself 
 carried straight to the Roman camp and to the tent of 
 the- commanding General, \Vspassian, whom he asked 
 for permission to establish and to maintain a 
 house of learning in Jamnia. The General, 
 
 who knew and revered the Rabbi, granted his 
 request, and that school, established and presided 
 over by Ben Zaccai, formed the well-spring of 
 all future spiritual and moral Jewish strength, the 
 fountain-head of Jewish knowledge, the source of that 
 moral force and mental vigour which enabled future 
 generations to resist all relentless persecution. All Jewish 
 scholars who had escaped the sword of the enemy rallied 
 round him, men of rare and eminent abilities, all im- 
 bued with the spirit of their mission, mindful of the 
 gravity of their sacred task, and all determined to pursue 
 but one aim, to continue and to develop the traditions 
 handed to them by their great masters. Among them 
 were men like Eliezer the Great, Rabbi Joshua, Rabbi 
 dose, and many others, whose legal views, sayings, and 
 "siucia'iy controversies, fill a considerable part of the 
 Mishnah. 
 
 Rabbi Eliezer the Great, the son of Hyrcanus, was 
 the child of very rich parents, who neglected his educa- 
 tion and wished him to remain an Am-Aretz, an unedu- 
 cated peasant. He, however, impelled by a strong desire 
 for study, one day left his home, joined the ranks of the
 
 10 
 
 students in Jerusalem, and, under great privation, pur- 
 sued his studies with unabated passion, until he was 
 permitted to sit at the feet of Ben Zaccai, and, later, he 
 not only received his father's pardon, but even became 
 a brother-in-law of Gamaliel II., whose sister he married. 
 Gamaliel II. was a descendent of Hillel and a Patriarch 
 of the Exile. 
 
 Rabbi Eliezer possessed some excellent qualities, to 
 which he owed his success. He had a phenomenal 
 memory, and was called by his teacher " a cemented cis- 
 tern, which loses not a drop." According to his own 
 statement, " he always entered the College first, and was 
 the last to leave it." Ben Zaccai had a very high opinion 
 of his abilities, and once maintained: " If all the sages 
 of Israel were on one scale of the balance, and Eliezer, 
 the son of Hyrcanus, in the other, he would outweigh 
 them all." In accordance with his own axiom, he was 
 not easily moved to anger, and treated his colleagues 
 with every mark of respect. But he was affected by one 
 fault, which became to him a source of sore grief and 
 brought upon him painful humiliation. Tradition was 
 to him petrified law. Under no condition would he decide 
 on any legal question if he could not refer to some older 
 authority. And once aware of such a decision, he would 
 not examine its correctness or justification, or the special 
 condition from which it resulted, but accepted it as 
 definite law. He trusted his memory more than his 
 power of discrimination. 
 
 One day a serious dispute on an important Levitical 
 question arose between him and his colleagues. He, 
 reiving upon a previous decision, clung to it with reso- 
 lute pertinacity and insisted upon its legality. Joshua, 
 his chief opponent, a man of remarkable sagacity, argued 
 against him, demonstrating by various reasons that 
 Eliezer was wrong. The dispute lasted a whole day, and 
 Eliezer, unable to refute his colleague's arguments, ap- 
 pealed to the walls of the college, to the tree at its en- 
 trance, and to the elements to testify to the correctness 
 of his statement. At last a voice from Heaven decided 
 in his favour, and demanded Joshua's submission. But 
 the latter defiantly replied: " The law was given to 
 men, not to angels, and it is subject to our views. 
 Heaven has no right to interfere." And all the mem- 
 bers of the college sided with him, endorsed his opinion, 
 and Eliezer was expelled and excommunicated.
 
 11 
 
 I have told you this little story because just its 
 fabulous part is intended and best calculated to reveal 
 to us the methods of study that obtained in those col- 
 leges, to prove to us that no blind conservatism, unrea- 
 sonable submission to unfounded traditions, guided the 
 rabbis in their legal decisions, but their critical sense 
 and minute scientific investigation. 
 
 On the other hand, they regarded discipline as one 
 of the most essential conditions for the vindication of 
 the law and the maintenance of its authority. It once 
 happened that the Patriarch Gamaliel II. proclaimed 
 a certain day as the Day of Kippur. Joshua was con- 
 vinced that the Patriarch had erred in his calculation 
 and fixed another day. When Gamaliel got to know of 
 Joshua's objection he ordered him to appear before him 
 on the day of Atonement according to his (Joshua's) com- 
 putation, with his staff and purse of money. Joshua 
 was very grieved, as it is unlawful to carry money on 
 that sacred day. He was sure that his view was correct; 
 it thus meant the profanation of the Yom Kippur. But 
 Rabbi Akiba prevailed on him to obey. What the 
 Patriarch had done, he argued, was well done. The 
 Torah itself conferred upon him that authority. Not 
 the Calendar but the acknowledged leader, not the dead 
 letter or an accepted custom but the living guiding 
 spirit, must be permitted to rule. 
 
 I have now again mentioned the name of that mar- 
 vellous man whom Moses had seen in a vision surrounded 
 by his pupils, and whose knowledge he envied. Akiba's 
 life reads like a romance, partly enveloped in the mist 
 of legend and partly hallowed by the halo of religious 
 and national glory. The years of boyhood he spent in 
 perfect ignorance as an ordinary illiterate shepherd. 
 Like all uneducated men of his time, he harboured pas- 
 sionate hatred for men of learning. Then it happened 
 that the daughter of his wealthy master fell in love with 
 him. She married him against her father's wish, and 
 shared with him all the pangs and privations of poverty. 
 One day she conceived the idea of his becoming a scholar 
 and persuaded him to enter a house of learning. As he 
 could not offer her material comfort, she argued, he 
 might, for her sake, acquire knowledge and gain the 
 respect of his fellow-men. He left her, and for many 
 years pursued his studies with every physical and 
 mental effort. When he returned he overheard a con- 
 versation, which his wife had with one of her neigh-
 
 12 
 
 hours. The latter sneered at her for confiding in a man 
 who had deserted her for such a long period. If I had 
 nay way, his wife retorted, he would stay away longer 
 still, in order to complete his studies. Without show- 
 ing himself he returned to his college. But after some 
 years he returned to her at the head of a multitude of 
 rabbis and laymen, all of whom acknowledged him as 
 their master. His fame as a rabbi filled the whole 
 Jewish world. When Bar Cochba raised the banner 
 of rebellion against the Romans, in 132 C.E., Akiba 
 was chiefly responsible for his first signal success. He 
 travelled through all the three Continents, all the 
 provinces of the Roman Empire, and all the lands of 
 the Exile, to arouse his brethren to concerted action. 
 And everywhere he was received with great respect 
 and reverence, even by rulers of distant countries. 
 According to a legendary record 24,000 of his pupils 
 and followers joined Bar Cochba 's revolutionary army, 
 and when the latter was defeated by the more powerful 
 Romans, they shared his fate. And Akiba himself died 
 the death of a martyr. The story of his martyrdom 
 is an established historical fact. The Roman general 
 inflicted upon him the severest tortures, but the sage, 
 who had attained to a very great age, retained his com- 
 posure and breathed his last with the words : ' ' Hear, 
 O Israel. . . . the Lord is One." 
 
 He was the first to collect the scattered fragments 
 of the Halachoth and traditions, which until then had 
 not been written down, but had been transmitted by 
 word of mouth from school to school and from man to 
 man. He was the first to compile the Mishnah, to 
 codify the law. His memory was, therefore, glorified 
 in legends and in references made to his scholarship, 
 which testify to the admiration in which he was held. 
 His successors said that he had formed all the laws 
 into rings, which he again linked together so as to form 
 one long chain of tradition. At his death the wells of 
 learning suddenly failed, and the honour of the Torah 
 vanished. Even one of his eminent contemporaries 
 once humbly admitted to him: " Akiba, he who parts 
 from thee, parts from life." His knowledge was 
 phenomenal and his penetrating intellect almost 
 irresistible. 
 
 One feels very much tempted to mention name 
 after name of those remarkable and noble personages 
 and to portray their interesting lives. But as it is quite
 
 13 
 
 impossible, I would crave your indulgence and atten- 
 tion only for another few minutes, in order to introduce 
 to you two other rabbis, one Eabbi Meir, as a type of 
 rabbinical tolerance, the other Rabbi Judah Hanassy, 
 the Prince, or the Saint, who definitely completed the 
 codification of those laws, which originated from the 
 senior sages, called Tanaim, in six volumes, called the 
 Mishnah. 
 
 "The most original personage of his period was 
 unquestionably Meir," says Prof. Graetz. "His great 
 intellect, thoroughness of purpose, and knowledge, 
 remind us of his teacher Akiba." Even his wife 
 Bruria, the daughter of a renowned rabbi, enjoyed the 
 fame of having been thoroughly versed in rabbinical 
 law. She used to have controversies with her husband's 
 friends and pupils. Of him it was said that he was 
 so versatile, so sagacious and ready-witted, that he 
 could vindicate any legal statement he ventured to 
 make. But his modesty was as great as his thirst for 
 knowledge. At that time there lived the notorious Elisha 
 ben Abuyah, also called the renegade, and wrongly 
 styled by some modern writers the Faust of the 
 Talmud. He was a great scholar but was carried away 
 by the Judaeo-Christian, or Gnostic movement; he 
 turned against his former colleagues and openly 
 opposed them and publicly violated the law. One day 
 it was a Sabbath day Rabbi Meir met him riding 
 on horseback, and he followed him on foot, consulting 
 him and discussing with him various difficult Biblical 
 passages, and only stopped when the other passed 
 beyond the area limited by the law. When asked why 
 he, Rabbi Meir, tolerated the flagrant desecration of 
 the Sabbath, and even humbled himself to receive in- 
 struction from him, he replied: " When Meir finds a 
 pomegranate he eats its contents and throws away the 
 skin," true to the rabbinical principle: "Accept the 
 truth from whomever it comes." He also counted 
 among his intimate friends heathen philosophers. Need- 
 less to say that he also mastered the Grecian and 
 Roman literatures, and of his profane literary work it 
 is known that he was the author of three hundred 
 fables, besides his orations, in which he excelled all 
 his contemporaries. 
 
 Rabbi Judah (flourished at the end of the 2nd and 
 at the beginning of the 3rd centuries C.E.) was a 
 descendant' of Hillel, and succeeded his father in the
 
 14 
 
 office of Nassi. He was very wealthy according to 
 some historical records, fabulously wealthy and 
 enjoyed the friendship of a Eoman Emperor, Antonius. 
 His admirers used to say that, since Moses, knowledge 
 and authority, wisdom and wealth, had not been united 
 in one person as in him. As the country after the Bar 
 Cochba war was devastated, travelling was fraught 
 with great danger, and the study of the law was still 
 considered as defiance of the Emperor's will, Judah 
 maintained most of the students who attended his 
 college at his own cost. In times of famine he threw 
 open his storehouse to all that needed his help. Yet, 
 notwithstanding his powerful influence and his elevated 
 position, he was very modest and lived a life of pro- 
 verbial simplicity. After his death it was said that 
 with him modesty and fear of sin had passed away. 
 He was the author of the prayer which we recite every 
 morning: " May it be Thy will, O Lord, my God and 
 God of my fathers, to deliver me this day and every 
 day from arrogant men and from arrogance, from a 
 bad man .... and from a bad neighbour, whether 
 he be a son of the covenant or be not a son of the 
 covenant " (Broch. 16). 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen, the Romans had a Pantheon, 
 and so have the French people to-day, a temple dedi- 
 cated to the memory of great men, who had shed the 
 lustre of their fame upon their country and nation, 
 whose lives and lasting merits had placed their fellow- 
 men under a debt of gratitude. The Westminster Abbey 
 
 in London is the British Pantheon. The Jewish nation 
 
 could not possibly build such a temple in honour of 
 her spiritual heroes. No Pantheon could be so vast as 
 to accommodate all the monuments which we would 
 have to erect, considering that our history covers a 
 period of four thousand years. Our Pantheons are 
 the Torah and the Talmud. Every sage of those hun- 
 dreds of rabbis, who carried together the bricks from 
 which was formed the structure of the Talmud, has 
 inscribed his name with indelible letters on the pages 
 of our history. Each deserves the reverence and apprecia- 
 tion of the Jewish nation, and, I make bold to state, 
 of many another nation. One might exclaim with 
 Isaiah II. : " Enlarge the place of thy tent, stretch 
 forth the curtains of thy habitations, spare not, 
 lengthen thy cords, strengthen thy stakes, for thy sons 
 shall break forth on the right hand and on the left."
 
 15 
 
 I, therefore, thought of addressing you in the 
 words once used by the Grecian philosopher Heraclit : 
 "elvai yap evravda 0eoi';s," Enter, for there are gods 
 here, too ! I wished, hy the short sketches I have 
 given you of a few of those eminent men, who were 
 responsible for the corner-stones of that remarkable 
 structure, to prove to you that they were men not only 
 of great learning, but also of pure character and of 
 noble principles, whose only thought was the propa- 
 gation of truth and knowledge and the promotion of 
 their nation's welfare. 
 
 That the doctrines they taught and the laws they 
 framed fully justify such eulogy I shall endeavour to 
 demonstrate in mv next lectures. 
 
 n. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen, 
 
 In my first lecture on this subject I stated that 
 we to-day are not Bible-Jews but Talmud-Jews. My 
 to-night's lecture on the History of the Talmud will 
 justify that statement and conclusively prove that it 
 is based on the results of a long-drawn-out struggle 
 between Rabbinism and its opponents. The Torah, 
 when viewed from a strictly orthodox standpoint, had 
 no history. It certainly records historical events, but 
 the laws it teaches, and the doctrines it embodies, are 
 divine. 
 
 Maimonides expresses this idea in the eighth and 
 ninth principles of our Faith, which read as follows : 
 " I believe with perfect faith that the Torah in our 
 possession is the same that was given to Moses our 
 teacher, that it never was changed, and that there 
 will never be any other Torah from the Creator, blessed 
 be His Name." 
 
 A book that is the product of one mind, and is 
 subject to no changes, can have no history. On the 
 other hand, it must be clear to every thinking man 
 that a volume of 150 pages, in the small edition pub- 
 lished by the Bible Society, cannot possibly contain 
 all those, even most necessary, laws that are intended 
 to regulate the life of an individual, and much less to 
 guide and to instruct millions of men throughout the 
 ages. Our demands and needs, our ambitions and
 
 16 
 
 aspirations, even in a primitive state, could not pos- 
 sibly be condensed in so small a volume. Besides, 
 if the letter of the law were to be taken as absolute, 
 as petrified, as adfnitting of no further interpretation, 
 it could not claim the authority of categorical impera- 
 tiveness for a race which is continually developing and 
 progressing according to the laws which govern indi- 
 vidual and national life. The remark that was made 
 by a Grecian philosopher thousands of years ago, 
 namely, that all things are in constant flux (-n-avra. 
 p e i), that nothing remains unchanged, has ever 
 been true, and how could a petrified law be applied 
 to ever-changing human conditions ? 
 
 This was the view of those sages who were 
 responsible for the inception and production of the 
 Talmud. Let me illustrate the meaning of this state- 
 ment by a few examples. The Torah (Ex. xxi., 24) 
 says distinctly : " If men strive, and one hurts the 
 other, he who caused the mischief shall be punished, 
 1 Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, etc.' ' The rabbis 
 maintained that those verses must be explained 
 according to the higher, living spirit of Jewish tradi- 
 tion. It could not mean that if one injured his neigh- 
 bour's eye his own eye should actually be put out. 
 That was barbarous. And what, they asked, if the 
 culprit died under the operation ? It would then be 
 an act of ordinary, unpardonable revenge. It would 
 mean life for an eye. That could not have been the 
 intention of the lawgiver. And they, therefore, placed 
 upon that verse a different interpretation. The Torah, 
 again (ib. xvi., 29) says: " Behold the Lord hath given 
 you the Sabbath. . . . abide ye every man in his 
 place, let no man leave his place on the seventh day." 
 The rabbis say the Sabbath is not only a day of rest 
 but also one of moral happiness, of spiritual edification 
 and of joy, as it is written (Is. Iviii., 13): " And thou 
 shalt call the Sabbath a delight." There would, how- 
 ever, be no pleasure for a man, especially a poor man. 
 who lived in a humble cottage, to be imprisoned 
 within its walls for twenty-four hours. That could, 
 therefore, not have been the view of the lawgiver. 
 And they explained that it really meant that every 
 Jew could walk on the Sabbath two thousand cubits 
 in every direction, and by a certain legal arrangement, 
 the Erub, that distance could easily be extended. The 
 two thousand cubits were further not applied to the 
 area round one's residence, but round the inhabited
 
 17 
 
 town, because within a town, even of the colossal 
 extent of a London, one is permitted to walk without 
 any restriction. In order to prove the correctness of 
 their interpretations, they employed certain exegetical 
 principles, by which the laws were to be expounded, 
 and which are said to have first been introduced by 
 Hillel the Elder. For instance, the inference from 
 minor to major, the inference from similar phrases, 
 etc. By such methods based on logical rules the 
 rabbis were able to support every innovation, and to 
 enforce every new law by the authority of the Torah, 
 and to prove that it was rooted in that divine book, 
 from which it drew its vital sap. The rabbis thus 
 achieved a double purpose, In the first place, they 
 invested their innovations or interpretations with the 
 sanctity of the Divine Book, and in the second they 
 kept the word of the Lord alive in a state of flux, 
 to use that philosophical expression. To-day, being 
 in possession of the recently discovered Code of Ham- 
 murabi the work of a Babylonian Sovereign who 
 lived about four thousand years ago, or more than 
 two thousand years before the compilation of the 
 Mishnah, we are even in a better position to appre- 
 ciate the principles by which the rabbis were guided, 
 the motives by which they were inspired ; and can 
 better understand why they took up such a resolute 
 attitude in defence of those principles. Nay, we 
 to-day can hardly realise why they should have met 
 with such determined opposition. And it was more 
 than mere opposition. It was a struggle for life or 
 death, the historically well-known struggle that had 
 lasted first for 150 years between the Pharisees and 
 Sadducees, and later for many centuries between the 
 Rabbinites and Karaites. 
 
 The struggle in the first case affected doctrines 
 which were of an infinitely more serious nature than 
 ordinary legal questions. For instance, was the soul 
 of man immortal, was the Jew justified in hoping for 
 a future life ? was the wicked after his death made 
 responsible for his sins in this world, and was there 
 a Providential power ? In all the five books of the 
 Torah there is not a single verse that answers one of 
 these questions. The Torah promises the just and 
 pious worldly blessings, such as heavenly dew, fertility 
 of the soil, long life and prosperity, while the sinner 
 is told that he will suffer in this life all the conse- 
 quences of his wicked actions. The Sadducees, there-
 
 18 
 
 fore, flatly denied and refuted all doctrines regarding 
 the future of the soul, as recorded in many verses 
 of the book of Ecclesiastes : "Whatsoever thy hand 
 findeth to do, do it with thy might, for there is. no 
 work, responsibility or knowledge in the grave whither 
 thou goest " (9, 10), and " The future of the sons of 
 man is the same as that of the beast, the one dieth 
 .as the other, they all share one fate " (3, 19). Whereas 
 the rabbis, the leaders of the Pharisaean party, tried 
 to prove by half-veiled hints given in various verses 
 -of the Torah that the belief in the immortality of the 
 soul and of the responsibility of man after death was 
 as ancient as the Torah itself, that it formed one of 
 the fundamental doctrines of Judaism ; that the latter, 
 not being a purely political institution, stands or falls 
 by that doctrine. Later rabbis went even further, and 
 maintained that not only the soul but that the mortal 
 frame of man was not altogether perishable. The 
 body, too was the work of the Lord. God is 
 immortal, consequently his work too is imperishable. 
 The work of God must be everlasting. From that 
 belief originates the doctrine of Resurrection, which 
 Maimonides included in the thirteen creeds. That 
 this belief, too, is rooted in a deep philosophical 
 thought need hardly be pointed out to a modern audi- 
 ence, especially to those who are conversant with 
 ancient and modern philosophical problems. 
 
 Let me now show you by another example the 
 admirable foresight of the rabbis and the breadth of 
 their views. In their efforts to adapt the law to the 
 changed conditions of the life of their people they 
 went so far as to repeal, and to declare invalid, a 
 whole book of the Torah. Each of you knows that 
 the Sacrificial Code, the Book Leviticus, had through- 
 out the centuries during which the First and Second 
 Temples were in existence, been considered as the 
 very basis of Judaism, as the very essence of the 
 Jewish religion. The Temple formed the centre of 
 Jewish life. All the laws concerning the sacrifices 
 were observed with the most scrupulous minuteness. 
 The whole spiritual and political salvation of the 
 nation seemed to depend upon the service within its 
 walls, and to have its source in that sacred edifice. 
 Legend surrounded it with a halo of heavenly glory. 
 That belief was too deeply rooted in the hearts of 
 the people to allow of any direct attack on it. The 
 prophets at the time of the First Temple already
 
 19 
 
 criticised both, priest and sacrifice, with all the vehe- 
 mence of their satire, but to no effect. Priest and 
 sacrifice gained even more popularity, and became 
 invested with even greater sanctity, at the time of the 
 Maccabees, who wore the double diadem of heroism 
 and holiness, of sovereignty and priesthood. But in 
 spite of that fact, the rabbis made strong efforts to 
 minimise the influence of the representatives of the 
 Temple and to undermine their authority. And when 
 the Temple was destroyed by the Romans, in 70 B.C.E., 
 they considered the moment as most opportune to abro- 
 gate the sacrificial system altogether and to place study 
 and prayer in its stead. The House of Learning was 
 to take the place of the Temple. Rabbi Jochanan ben 
 Zacai, therefore, asked the Emperor Vespasian not to 
 spare the Temple, but to grant him the right to estab- 
 lish a school. With these few remarks I have indicated 
 the vast influence of the rabbis and the vast sphere of 
 their activity, their dominating authority, and the 
 loftiness of the task they had set themselves. And no 
 one will be surprised to hear that the struggle I have 
 mentioned, that occupied so many years, led at last 
 to the complete victory of the Pharisees and to the 
 triumph of the ideas which emanated from pure con- 
 viction and selfless piety. 
 
 Already Ezra, who was a priest, is introduced to 
 us as " Hasopher," the Scribe. In the book which 
 bears his name, he is applauded as teacher and 
 restorer of the law, instead of as priest who helped to 
 restore the Temple. At the glorious period of Has- 
 monean rule, at the time of Hyrcanus the Great, the 
 leaders of the Pharisees were aroused to the danger 
 of their new position, as that Prince, like his father, 
 combined in his person both dignities, that of Sove- 
 reign and of High-Priest. They could not allow the 
 priest to regain with political help his influence of old. 
 At a royal banquet, at which Hyrcanus himself pre- 
 sided, one of the rabbis had the courage to call upon 
 him to renounce his High-Priesthood. The man is said 
 to have unfortunately used a shallow pretext which 
 was easily disproved. The Hasmonean Prince, how- 
 ever, guessed the true motive of that political move, 
 and openly turned against the rabbis, whom he treated 
 with relentless hostility. But although the Sadducean 
 party was composed of the most influential sections of 
 the people the soldiers, the priests, and the magnates, 
 they suffered defeat after defeat, while the influence of
 
 20 
 
 the rabbis grew stronger and stronger. On a certain 
 Day of Atonement the most distinguished day of the 
 Jewish year, when the High-Priest posed as the hero 
 of the nation it happened that when the King and 
 High-Priest Alexander Jannaeus left the precincts of the 
 Temple followed by crowds on his triumphal march 
 home, the two leading rabbis of that time, Sh'mayah 
 and Abtalion, were seen at a distance. The people 
 suddenly turned from following the King and followed 
 those spiritual leaders. The anger of the King was 
 kindled, and he indignantly exclaimed: "Let those 
 proselytes go in peace." Those rabbis, the descendants 
 of an obscure family, were said to have been proselytes. 
 But they had the courage to retort : " Peace unto those 
 who, though proselytes, do the work of Aaron, but no 
 peace to the children of Aaron who do not carry out 
 his work " (Yoma Ixxi.). The priests themselves helped 
 to undermine their position, to profane the holiness 
 of their functions, at one time by their Hellenistic and 
 later by their Sadducaean tendencies. 
 
 The men who were responsible for the development 
 of the law as compiled in the Talmud were guided by 
 the following principle : that knowledge is the basis of 
 all virtue. He who is ignorant cannot serve God, 
 because he does not understand how to serve Him. 
 He cannot be a good Jew because he takes supersti- 
 tion for religion, he neglects essentials and cherishes 
 trifles. Ignorance has, in their opinion, been the 
 source of all evil. In my former lecture I mentioned 
 i hh was exactly the view of Socrates. Still there 
 was a vital difference between the views of the rabbis 
 and those of the Grecian sage. To him knowledge was 
 the ultimate aim of human effort, to them knowledge 
 was but a means for the teaching of Judaism, or for the 
 cultivation of character. True to that principle, con- 
 sistent with the practice of their teachings, they placed 
 the learned man above the aristocrat. A bastard if 
 learned they considered to be superior to an ignorant 
 High-Priest. Shemaya and Abtalion expressed the 
 idea in their reply to King Alexander Jannaeus. Know- 
 ledge is not hereditary. It cannot be handed down 
 like gold and silver from father to son. It must be 
 acquired by personal effort and perseverance, by ability 
 and industry. A man who possesses ability and dis- 
 plays much energy deserves more credit than one who 
 owes his position to birth, or to the labours of others. 
 A man who distinguishes himself by perseverance and
 
 21 
 
 experience, whose every action emanates from convic- 
 tion, also deserves more confidence than he who follows 
 his master blindly, whose only merit is thoughtless 
 obedience to the law. 
 
 This principle alone was enough to arouse against 
 them infuriated opposition. The rich and the mighty, 
 as well as the vast uneducated masses, rose against 
 them in undisguised hatred. We have it from Rabbi 
 Akiba himself that when he was an Am Aretz, an 
 ignorant shepherd, his hatred of the rabbis was so 
 great that, had he been in a position, he would have 
 torn each of them limb from limb. Their position was 
 thus not a very enviable one. That they still succeeded 
 was partly due to the moral depravity that prevailed 
 throughout the Roman Empire, and partly to the lofti- 
 ness of their purpose, the selflessness of their labours, 
 and the purity of their motives. The doctrines of the 
 Jewish religion began to triumph not only in Judea, 
 but also in all distant parts of the Roman Empire. 
 Sovereigns and men of high rank, near relatives of the 
 Emperors, men and women, devoted themselves to 
 the study of Judaism and openly confessed their adher- 
 ence to it. A religion which taught lofty idealism, 
 which inspired faith in a Highest Being, and elevated 
 its followers to a higher plane of thought, wrought 
 miracles in the course of but a few decades. 
 We have it on the best authorities, from famous Roman 
 writers and poets, from Tacitus, Cicero, Horace, and 
 others, that the spirit of the Jewish religion was domi- 
 nant in all the Grecian islands and beyond the seas. 
 Institutions like the Sabbath and doctrines such as 
 the immortality of the soul appealed to all those who 
 had longed for a nobler conception of life, who had 
 craved for a redemption from the vices of paganism. 
 On the other hand, I must ask you not to lose sight 
 of these two facts. Firstly, that there still were even 
 in Judaean provinces, especially in Gallilee, enormous 
 masses of uneducated people, who found the practice 
 of the law according to rabbinical demands onerous 
 and repulsive. Secondly, that the rabbis did burden 
 their followers with observances and restrictions which 
 demanded their whole moral strength and often also 
 self-denial. These two facts explain the rapid growth 
 of Christianity and the ultimate success of Paul, in 
 spite of the strong opposition of his own fellow-apostles. 
 Tt is an historicallv established fact that the rabbis,
 
 22 
 
 of course indirectly and impelled by a spirit of opposi- 
 tion, helped Paul more than his own co-workers. 
 
 It is too well known to need any proof that the secret 
 of the first successes of Judeo-Christianity was the 
 adherence of those uneducated men and women, 
 mentioned in the New Testament as publicans, whom 
 the rabbis are said to have despised and repelled. That 
 reproach was in so far correct as the so-called publicans 
 felt themselves repelled by the laws, which the rabbis 
 enjoined on every Jew with all their rigour and with 
 all the vigour at their command. Although it is 
 beyond all doubt that the ceremonial and moral laws 
 proved to the majority of the nation a source of joy 
 and gratification, that most of the people clung to those 
 laws with sincere passion and practised them with 
 much affection, a fact that is borne out by many 
 ancient literary documents and historical events, it is 
 none the less true that there were people to whom the 
 law was a burden. We thus read in Matt, (ix., 10-11) : 
 " And it came to pass as Jesus sat at meat in the 
 house, behold many publicans and sinners came and 
 sat down with Him and His disciples. And when the 
 Pharisees saw it they said unto His disciples, why 
 eateth your master with publicans and sinners ? But 
 when He heard that He remarked. "They that are well 
 need not a physician, but they that arf sick." And 
 in another passage we are told that he exclaimed: 
 ' Woe unto you learned men, Pharisees, for ye shut 
 up the kingdom of heaven against men " (ib. xxiii., 
 17) ; and : " Woe unto you, rabbis, for ye lade men with 
 burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch 
 not the burdens with one of your fingers." These and 
 similar utterances, which are ascribed to the creator 
 of Christianity, although dating from a much later 
 period, show that with the movement of proselytism 
 there grew a tendency to sacrifice essentials of the law 
 in order to make the acceptance of Judaism easier, 
 simpler, and pleasanter. It is true, that in spite of 
 those utterances the apostles of Christianity still 
 adhered to and defended the law against the vehement 
 attacks of Paul, but the latter determined to reject it 
 all and to preach a Judaism without Jewish tradition, 
 to sacrifice the chosen few in order to gain the thou- 
 sands to whom he preached his new religion. He him- 
 self was brought up at the feet of Pharisaean teachers, 
 and, to use his own phrase (Acts), was taught accord- 
 ing to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, but
 
 23 
 
 on his way to Damascus he changed his mind, and 
 from a zealous pupil of the rabbis he became one of 
 their relentless enemies. It is not within the scope 
 of this lecture to show how Paul was opposed, and 
 even persecuted, by his own colleagues, who held 
 different views on the future of their gospel, and who 
 attributed a different policy to their Master ; I merely 
 wish to emphasise the fact that the growth of Chris- 
 tianity in the first and second centuries was greatly 
 due to the effort to preach Judaism, but at the same 
 time to relieve all proselytes of the yoke of the law. 
 This fact will explain the attitude of the rabbis during 
 those centuries when the foundations of the Talmud 
 were based and so firmly established as to resist all 
 future storms. 
 
 The rabbis could not fail to see the great danger 
 of those new religious tendencies, they could see that 
 the propagation of Judaism without the Jewish 
 religious traditions must lead back to paganism. So 
 many different sects arose in those days among the 
 Jewish people, each of which tried to interpret the 
 Torah in its own spirit, that Judaism was on the point 
 of being drowned in a flood of false religious concep- 
 tions, of pseudo-philosophical theories. That danger 
 was even greater, as the spiritual leaders of the nation 
 had lost their hold upon the scattered fugitives who 
 had fled to distant deserted lands, where they hoped 
 they would escape the sword and the hatred of the 
 Eomans. The Temple was a heap of ashes, and no 
 authority could effectively control all the dispersed 
 units of the captivity. The rabbis, therefore, in order 
 to minimise the influence of foreign elements, strongly 
 opposed proselytism. Ideas rarely improve by popu- 
 larisation. Plato's, or Kant's, or Spinoza's philo- 
 sophical theories would soon sink to a farce, and be 
 mercilessly mutilated, were they left to the interpreta- 
 tion of the multitude. And to keep the Jews aloof 
 from their heathen neighbours, and to protect the 
 ideals of Judaism from profanation and distortion by 
 the new sects, they drew the circles around them closer 
 and closer, and built the fences around the law higher 
 and higher. And as their zeal grew stronger, the 
 greater were the efforts of the Judeo-Christians at prose- 
 Ivtising and at spreading their new doctrines. The 
 Law, the Torah, was the only link that was left to 
 unite the children of Israel in all the lands of the 
 Exile. And if you read books like the travels of Ben-
 
 24 
 
 jamin of Tudela, or of Rabbi Pessachya of Ratisbon, 
 both of the 12th century, you would be surprised to 
 hear how powerful was the magic influence of rab- 
 binical law, how invincible its living spirit, and how 
 impregnable the fences they had erected centuries 
 before. The Jews, as long as they observed and 
 respected the restrictions of the rabbis, remained a 
 separate and morally unassailable body. Their neigh- 
 bours sank deeper and deeper into the morass of 
 paganism, or moral depravity; but they in their isolated 
 ghettos, in their poor homes and modest places of 
 worship, kept alive the purer flame of Monotheism, 
 and cultivated that nobler faith that had been taught 
 by the prophets, and towards which the civilised world 
 is gradually moving. I shall soon prove to you that it 
 was rabbinical influence that was instrumental in 
 arousing that non-Jewish spirit, to bring about that 
 memorable religious revolution of the 16th century, 
 whose effects have not yet been sufficiently realised. 
 
 However, long before the 16th century the Talmud 
 was again put to a severe test by members of our own 
 race, who disputed its authority. 
 
 In Babylonia the Jews had established strong, 
 important and prosperous communities, headed by two 
 schools, centres of study and of Jewish spiritual life, 
 viz., at Sora and Pumbeditha. The united communi- 
 ties appointed their own political chief, who bore the 
 title of Prince of the Captivity, and whose appointment 
 was usually confirmed by the King of Persia. The 
 Prince or Exilarch, a descendant of the House of David, 
 shared his judicial power with the Gaon, the head of 
 the School, as the Talmud was respected by the whole 
 community. When the victorious flag of Islam pene- 
 trated all the countries between India and the North 
 of Africa, and spread its folds over three Continents, 
 it also paved the way for the students of the Talmud, 
 the torch-bearers of Rabbinical Judaism. But sud- 
 denly there arose, in the second half of the 7th century, 
 an enemy of the Talmud out of the midst of the Baby- 
 lonian community, in the son of a Graon, a certain Anan 
 who after his father's death had aspired to that office, 
 and, when he failed, turned against his opponents and 
 against the Talmud itself. He must have been a man 
 of unusual ability, as he succeeded in establishing an 
 independent anti-Talmudic community in the Holy 
 City. That new religious sect is known by the name
 
 10 
 
 of Karaites, i.e., people who acknowledge the authority 
 of the Bible but not that of the Talmud. In some 
 cases they returned to the literal meaning of the Bible 
 verse, in others they adopted different interpretations 
 and produced a Talmud of their own. So, for instance, 
 do they adhere to the strict letter, which forbids the 
 Jew to leave the house on the Sabbath or kindle a fire 
 on that day. They consequently spend their Friday 
 -?ve cheerlessly in darkness. It is impossible for me to 
 include in this lecture a short treatise on Karaism, as 
 it would by far exceed the time at my disposal. I only 
 wish to mention that, although the struggle between 
 Eabbinism and Karaism grew in extent and bitterness 
 for many centuries, it proved to be the salt, provided 
 by history, to save Judaism from corruption. Those 
 who had been indifferent, and especially the students 
 of the Talmud, aroused themselves to face their oppo- 
 nents, to parry their attacks, to refute their new expo- 
 sition of the law, and thus displayed mental forces 
 which might otherwise have remained latent. The 
 study of the Bible, and especially of the Hebrew lan- 
 guage, which had been sorely neglected, were again 
 taken up with great zest and vigour. That struggle 
 brought to light a genius like Eabbi Saadia Gaon. In 
 His fierce attacks he had to refer to subjects which till 
 then had not been scientifically treated. He was thus 
 the first to write a philosophical treatise on the 
 problems of the Jewish religion. Others took up the 
 study of Hebrew grammar, and published the first 
 essays on that important subject. These studies gave 
 also a greater impulse to some poetical attempts. 
 Rabbi Moses Maimonides, who flourished four centuries 
 later (1135 1204) still found a powerful and influential 
 community of Karaites in Egypt, who seized upon 
 every opportunity to make their Rabbinical antagonists 
 feel the sting of their hatred. But he, with his 
 immense ability and unparalleled knowledge of 
 Judaism, soon forced them to the background and crushed 
 their opposition. Since then they have dwindled more 
 and more into small scattered fragments, and from a 
 religious point of view have sunk into utter insignifi- 
 cance. To-day one must travel to the Crimea or to 
 some forgotten corner in Galicia or some other distant 
 part of the world in order to find some of their 
 remnants. And their vast literature belongs to the 
 lumber-room of the museums, and is studied by 
 specialists as historical documents of forgotten ages.
 
 while the Talmud and its exponents and adherents, in 
 spite of all dangers and unparalleled trials, wield to-day 
 throughout the world, and in every field of human 
 activity, an influence they have never before enjoyed. 
 The Karaites, the official and scientific opponents of 
 the Talmud, are, according to Harkavy, estimated to 
 number about ten thousand in Russia and two thou- 
 sand in other countries. The Russian Government 
 took due notice of their historic hatred of the Talmud, 
 and bestowed upon them, as a mark of recognition and 
 gratification, special political privileges. 
 
 But whatever were the motives that prompted the 
 founders of Karaism, their followers, it must be frankly- 
 admitted, were sincere. With all their fanaticism they 
 in most cases confined their attacks to the domain of 
 literature; their disputes, as a rule, bore the stamp of 
 religious sincerity. The Talmud, however, was to be 
 subjected to the test of still greater trials to the test 
 of fire. Like the Jew himself, the Talmud was 
 destined to prove its immunity from the flames of the 
 stake. In the first half of the 13th century a certain 
 Donin from La Rochelle openly expressed his doubt? 
 about the authority of the Talmud. We are not told 
 whether as a new disciple of the Karaites or as a 
 heretic. The rabbis excommunicated him, according 
 to ancient custom. Donin, embittered and exasperated 
 against his own brethren, embraced Christianity and 
 resorted to calumny and violence. He appealed to 
 Pope Gregory IX., laid his grievances before him, and 
 received from the head of the Church the satisfaction 
 for which he thirsted. After many examinations to 
 which leading rabbis had been subjected, a Papal 
 Edict was published which decreed the destruction of 
 all existing copies of the Talmud. It was most fortu- 
 nate that the Princes of the Provincial Churches in 
 Spain, England, and in other countries, disregarded 
 that Papal command. Those high dignataries were 
 perfectly convinced that that Edict was not justified, 
 and refused to carry it into effect. In France, how- 
 ever, the fanaticism of the monks triumphed, and in 
 June, 1242, four-and-twenty cartloads of Talmudical 
 writings were burned in Paris in one spot and on the 
 same day. When I remind you of the fact that print- 
 ing offices did not yet exist in those days, that copies 
 of such a voluminous book could not easily be repro- 
 duced, you will better be able to realise the whole 
 tragedy of that Auto-da-fe.
 
 27 
 
 At the end of the 15th century a baptised Bavarian 
 Jew, a butcher by trade, a certain Pfefferkorn, 
 embraced Christianity in order to escape the conse- 
 quences of social crimes, and to wreak vengeance upon 
 his own people, who would not tolerate him in their 
 midst. In order to achieve his purpose he accused the 
 Talmud of being a book that incited the Jews to all 
 social and religious transgressions, of being a source 
 of heresy and hypocrisy. To prove his accusations he 
 fabricated quotations and misrepresented various 
 doctrines of that book, which he placed before the 
 Dominicans of Cologne, who were unable to read one 
 single letter of the original. They, who even appealed 
 to a sister of the German Emperor for her personal 
 intervention, first gained the ear of the Pope 
 Alexander IV., and then the influence of the Emperor 
 Maximilian, to examine the Talmud, in order to prove 
 that all those accusations were true. The Dominicans 
 thought they would thus be able to deal a death-blow 
 at the Jewish people, to lay the axe at their very roots, 
 to stop the well-spring of their spiritual life. 
 Although the Commission that had been appointed by 
 the Pope decided in favour of the Talmud, the 
 Emperor, yielding to new representations by his own 
 sister, ordered a new trial, and issued an Imperial 
 decree by which Pfefferkorn was empowered to achieve 
 his purpose. That manoeuvre against the Jews was, 
 however, again intended by Providence to bring about 
 unforeseen results which helped to strengthen the 
 position of the Jews and to undermine the foundations 
 of the Catholic Church. The rule repeated itself, the 
 smallest sinful efforts, most insignificant causes, often 
 have most detrimental effects. The results produced 
 by that attack on Judaism partly helped to change the 
 social and religious aspect of Europe. 
 
 The hero of that drama was John Reuchlin (born 
 1455, died 1522), a man of upright character and of 
 unequalled knowledge among his contemporaries. He 
 is said to have " delivered Germany from the reproach 
 of barbarism." He was an admirer of the Hebrew 
 language, and in order to complete his Hebrew studies 
 he twice engaged the services of Jewish teachers. 
 First, when at the court of the Emperor Frederic III., 
 he was assisted in his studies by the Jewish Imperial 
 physician. Jacob Loans, and when Ambassador at the 
 Court of Pope Alexander VI. he made the acquaint- 
 ance of the well-known Rabbi Obadia Sforno, who lent
 
 28 
 
 him similar assistance. As the integrity of that famous 
 scholar was beyond suspicion, and as he was the only 
 Christian Professor who had a slight knowledge of the 
 Hebrew literature, he was appealed to to express his 
 opinion on the Talmud, which he did in glowing terms. 
 The Dominicans, who felt sorely disappointed, then 
 turned against him. A storm of indignation burst upon 
 the aged scholar. Pfefferkorn published a pamphlet 
 against him in which he suggested that Reuchlin was 
 bribed by the Jews. But Reuchlin was a stylist of 
 rare skill and power, and he retorted with similar 
 vehemence. This controversy aroused Reuchlin's 
 devoted pupils, among them men who later took a 
 leading part in the Reform Movement, Crotus 
 Rubeanus and Ulrich von Huten, and the latter 
 published the famous " Epistolae virorum obscur- 
 orum," a satire of irresistible and destructive effect, 
 which revealed the whole moral depravity of the 
 Dominican Order. It is of great interest, and deserves 
 to be specially mentioned, that while engaged in that 
 painful struggle with his enemies, Reuchlin, the sincere 
 and devoted Catholic, appealed to a Jewish physician 
 at the Court of Pope Leo X. to use his influence on 
 behalf of the Talmud. 
 
 Reuchlin spent the last years of his life in strife 
 and grief. The struggle lasted for years, and it would 
 occupy too much of our time were I to relate even 
 the chief events in Germany, France, and Italy, the 
 scene of that memorable struggle. But the Talmud 
 and the Jews, and with them their Christian advocate 
 of glorious memory, triumphed at the end. Not by 
 any official, Papal, or Imperial decree, but by the 
 dictum of history. The Dominicans themselves 
 admitted that that controversy had brought them into 
 hatred and disrepute. It did more it created an irre- 
 parable breach between the lay heads of the Church, 
 it divided the representatives of Papal authority into 
 two hostile camps, and thus formed the prelude to the 
 great drama of the Reformation which immediately 
 followed. On the other hand, it aroused universal 
 interest in the study of the Bible, the Hebrew lan- 
 guage, and its literature. The way was paved for the 
 ancient spirit of the prophets, and the gates of the 
 Universities were burst open for the ideals of ancient 
 Judaism, which had been forcibly suppressed for many 
 centuries.
 
 29 
 
 Needless to say, the attacks on the Talmud have 
 since then never ceased. Besides continual pin-pricks, 
 some attacks were made with much eclat which stirred 
 the public to its depths. In the second half of the 17th 
 century it was Eisenmenger who published his 
 Entdecktes Judenthum " (Judaism unmasked), 
 which book was confiscated by an Imperial decree. 
 Eisenmenger was willing to suppress it for a sum of 
 30,000 florins, which the Jews were not prepared to 
 pay. The name of Rohling, who was Professor in 
 Prague, and who published his book, " Der Talmud 
 Jude " in 1871, is still fresh in every man's memory. 
 He in most parts copied Eisenmenger's quotations, 
 which, I need not say, were unscrupulous fabrications. 
 Dr. Bloch, an Austrian rabbi, then publicly offered to 
 prove in open court that that Professor of Oriental 
 languages was unable to read the Hebrew of his own 
 quotations. The most eminent Orientalists of Euro- 
 pean Universities emphatically declared that Rohlii-c 
 was an ignoramus and a liar, and he was thus morally 
 annihilated. But notwithstanding all these indisput 
 able historical facts, there still are men who believe in 
 all those calumnies that have been published against 
 the Talmud. And not only among non-Jews, but even 
 amo'ng our own people. Heine, in his book on 
 " Germany," or on " Religion and Philosophy," stated 
 that Moses Mendelssohn had destroyed the prestige .if 
 the Talmud and established a pure Mosaism. As 
 Luther overthrew the Papacy, so Mendelssohn over- 
 threw Talmudism, and that, too. by a similar process. 
 He discarded tradition and declared the Bible, which 
 he translated into German, to be the only well-spring 
 of the Jewish religion." Heine himself could hardly 
 read one line in the Talmud. And he was mistaken 
 in his opinion regarding Mendelssohn's conception of 
 and attitude towards that Book. But he judged that 
 philosopher by his disciples, by men like David Fried- 
 lander. David Friedlander's whole family, however, 
 and his intimate friends did not adhere to the religion 
 of the Bible. They all embraced Christianity, as did 
 Heine himself, and all those who revolted against the 
 authority of the Talmud. Not because of inner con- 
 victions ; Heine was honest and truthful enough to 
 admit it publicly. He also accused Friedlander of 
 similar low, unpardonable motives. In my next 
 lecture on the teachings and doctrines of the Talmud 
 I shall be able to show that the rabbis were inspired
 
 30 
 
 by the noblest ideals ; in fact, that they often taught 
 and propagated principles and morals too advanced not 
 only for their own time but even for this modern age. 
 But the Talmud, like the Jewish people who produced 
 it, can afford to wait. 
 
 Some historians relate that when Caesar was 
 attacked by his enemies, and almost mortally wounded, 
 he still remained calm and firm, but when his own 
 Brutus attacked him he exclaimed, in Greek: "Kat ?r, 
 TtKvov." Shakespeare, in the first scene of the 
 third act of his drama, makes Caesar exclaim : " Et tu, 
 Brute. Then fall, Caesar!" And he died. The Talmud 
 when attacked by its own children does not die. Those 
 children die morally, they disappear from the Jewish 
 scene. But the Talmud and its adherents, who have 
 waited for so many centuries, will continue to wait for 
 the day when full justice will be meted out to both. 
 
 III. 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, 
 
 We are told that when Rabbi Akiba was awaiting 
 his execution, a certain man Pappus, a political 
 opponent of Bar-Cochba, entered his prison cell and 
 strongly advised him to reject the Law and to abandon 
 the study of the Torah. which was strictly forbidden by 
 the Roman authorities, in order to save his life. The 
 aged sage then told him the following fable: "A fox 
 once cunningly tried to persuade some fishes to leave 
 their lake and to share his cave, where he would protect 
 them from the snares of men. But they instinctively 
 foresaw the danger and retorted, ' If we are not quite 
 safe in our own element, how can we hope to be so on 
 dry land ' 1 " That great Rabbi thus declared the study 
 of the Law to be the very mainstay of the Jewish people, 
 and that view has dominated the lives of the Jews 
 throughout the ages of the exile. The doctrines of our 
 religion, or, what amounts to the same, the doctrines 
 embodied in the Talmud, form the very element of the 
 Jew. They were calculated to influence every moment 
 of his life, from the cradle to the grave. " His every 
 emotion and every feeling, the most fugitive as well as 
 the most profound, are foreseen, noted and embodied 
 in a formula. In the most solemn moments of life as in
 
 31 
 
 the most vulgar, the believer finds himself in the pre- 
 sence of a commandment, of a Mitzwa to be accom- 
 plished, recalling him to heavenly things, sanctifying 
 the present hour and keeping him in perpetual com- 
 munication with the divine." It would, however, be a 
 grave mistake to assume that the strict laws of the 
 Talmud closed around the Jew like spiritual Ghetto- 
 walls, that the ritual and ceremonial Mitzwoth formed 
 the links of an iron chain that weighed his life down 
 and turned his world into a "Valley of weeping," as 
 some Christian scholars would have us believe. I shall 
 soon prove to you by quotations from the Talmudical 
 literature that the various laws were framed by the 
 Rabbis with a view of ennobling the life of the Jew, of 
 raising him to a higher plane of thought, of cultivating 
 in him the loftiest moral principles, and of filling his 
 life with that joy and happiness which a world of pre- 
 judice and hostility had denied him. The Psalmist 
 expresses this view in the verse (119, 92): "Had Thy 
 Law not been my delight, I should have perished in mine 
 affliction." 
 
 In order not to exceed the limited space of time at 
 uiy disposal and to enable you to review these laws with 
 greater facility, I shall arrange them in three distinct 
 groups, viz., those dealing (1) with the individual Jew, 
 (2) with vhe family, and (3) with the community. 
 
 1. THE INDIVIDUAL. 
 
 The Rabbis, in accordance with Jewish tradition, 
 invested man with the highest dignity, and imposed 
 upon him the noblest tasks. Rabbi Akiba used to say: 
 " Distinguished is man that he was created in the image 
 of God " (Ethics of the Fathers III., 18), and therefore, 
 " whosoe^rr sheddeth human blood it is reckoned to him 
 as if he diminished the likeness of his Creator " (Bere- 
 shith Rab. XXXIV.). For the same reason it is man's 
 duty to imitate the ways of God to be gracious ind 
 merciful (Sab. 113b), and Hillel condensed all the laws 
 concerning man into the one well-known verse: "Love 
 thy neighbour as thyself," or: "Do not unto otuers 
 what thou wouldst not have done unto thyself " (Ibid. 
 30b). The same sage impressed upon his hearers and 
 followers: "Be of the disciples of Aaron, love peace 
 and pursue peace, love thy fellow-men, and draw them 
 by thine own example near to the Torah " (Ethics I., 
 12). Needless to say, that he who insults his neighbour
 
 32 
 
 commits a grave sin, " he has no share in the future 
 world." "He should rather throw himself into a heated 
 furnace than expose his friend to shame in public " 
 (B.M., 59a). 
 
 All men are alike, all are the descendants of one 
 father, of Adam. And when God created the first man, 
 He had the dust, from which he formed his body, 
 gathered from all corners of the earth (Pirke D'Rabbi 
 Eliezer XIII), so that if a man from the east should 
 choose to settle in the west, or vice-versa, no part of the 
 world should be closed' to him (Cf. Sanh. 38a). Man 
 must not be restricted to one country, to one social or 
 political sphere, nor limited to one place, his birth- 
 place. Man is a cosmopolite, a citizen of the whole 
 world. But the greater his privileges the graver his 
 duties and responsibilities. A man's greatest privilege 
 is his personal liberty, his independence, and his most 
 sacred duty is to guard it, to make every physical and 
 moral effort to retain it. To-day it is generally 
 admitted that slavery has been the most corruptive and 
 destructive element in social life; it has had the most 
 baneful influence on the development of human morals. 
 The sense of human dignity lies at the foundation of 
 our morals and that sense must be deadened by the rela- 
 tions which, as a rule, prevail between master and slave. 
 Besides it cultivates brutish feelings and promotes 
 immoral habits among the masters. " The results of 
 the institution of slavery says Lecky (History of 
 European Morals, Vol. I.) were probably even more 
 serious. In addition to its manifest effect in encouraging 
 a tyrannical and ferocious spirit in the masters, it cast 
 a stigma upon all labour, and at once degraded and 
 impoverished the free poor. . . ." In Rome "The 
 slave population was itself a hotbed of vice, and it con- 
 taminated all with which it came in contact." It is 
 quite superfluous to-day, especially when lecturing 
 before a Jewish audience, to dwell at greater length on 
 the vice of slavery. But I may be permitted to mention 
 that even a philosopher of the fame of an Aristotle 
 declared slavery to be part of the law of nature, so 
 deeply rooted was the notion of serfdom in the social 
 system of ancient nations. And that vicious system 
 remained in vogue throughout the Christian world with 
 the consent of Christian Governments until almost the 
 middle of the eighteenth century. England was the first 
 to pass a Bill for its abolition, only in August, 1833,
 
 33 
 
 other countries followed but slowly, and the Southern 
 Provinces of America only in 1862, forced by the vic- 
 torious armies of President Lincoln after sanguinary 
 battles. 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen, these few brief remarks will 
 serve to explain the attitude taken up by the Rabbis 
 towards this social evil, and will enable us better to 
 appreciate the;v various doctrines on the subject. 
 
 No one can be blamed for yielding to violence. 
 When conquered by an enemy, when taken captive, very 
 few prefer death to the loss of their liberty. The num- 
 ber of Jewish captives at the destruction of the Second 
 Temple is estimated at nine hundred thousand. They 
 could not all seek death in battle or commit suicide. 
 The Rabbis, therefore, considered the ransom of cap- 
 tives as the greatest act of charity (B.B. 8b). Even 
 money collected for the building of a place of worship 
 could be utilised for such purpose. He who hesitates in 
 the performance of that Mitzwah violates a distinct law 
 of the Torah, which reads: " Thou shalt not view with 
 indifference the murder of thy neighbour " (Lev. XIX., 
 16). If a slave escaped from his master and sought 
 refuge in the land of Israel, the Torah already enjoined 
 upon the Jew to offer him a safe asylum (Deut. 23, 
 15-16): "Thou shalt not deliver a slave to his master, 
 he shall dwell with thee, in the midst of thee, in the 
 place which he shall choose within one of thy gates, 
 where he liketh best, thou shalt not oppress him." The 
 Rabbis remark on these verges that they refer even to a 
 Canaanite slave who had escaped from his Jewish 
 master who lived outside Palestine (Gitt. 45a). 
 Wheeler Robinson (Century Bible a. loc.) remarks : " This 
 stands in marked contrast with the severe enactments 
 of the Code of Hammurabi concerning runaway slaves, 
 from Babylonian territory." That law of Hammurabi 
 reads: "If anyone harbours in his house a runaway 
 male or female slave from the palace or the house of a 
 noble, and does not bring them out at the command of 
 the majordomo, the master of the house shall be put to 
 death." Mr. Robinson might have added, that the 
 Jewish law marked a great contrast even with the laws 
 which obtained in Christendom up to modern times. 
 According to the Rabbis (Gitt. 43b), if a master who 
 resided in Palestine sold his slave to another man who 
 lived in a foreign country, the slave regained his liberty 
 ipso facto. And the Torah already decreed, that if a
 
 84 
 
 Jewish master treated his Canaanite slave cruelly and 
 caused him permanent physical injury, he had no right 
 to retain his services ; the slave had to be set free at 
 once. Any bondman or bondmaid who embraced 
 Judaism regained his or her liberty. I need not men- 
 tion that the Hebrew slave, who was not permitted to 
 serve his master longer than six years, had to be treated 
 with every kindness, as an equal, as a brother. Hence 
 the saying: " He who buys a Hebrew slave buys a master 
 for himself " (Kid. 20a)" 
 
 One of the main causes that place a man in a state 
 of dependence, that bend his free will and compel him 
 to seek the help of his fellow-men is poverty (Erub. 
 41b), as Proverbs expresses it: " Man transgresses for a 
 piece of bread " (28, 22). In order to counteract that 
 great evil the Rabbis impressed upon their followers : 
 " Happy is he who prefers the bitter bread of God to 
 the dainties of men " (Erub. 18b). But hard work 
 alone can save one from dire distress. "A famine that 
 had lasted for seven years never affected the artisan " 
 (Sanli. 29a). No work should, therefore, be considered 
 too degrading, were it even to flay a carcase in the mar- 
 ket place (B.B. llOa). On the contrary, nothing 
 honours a person more than honest work (Ned. 49b), 
 and helps one more even than noble pedigree (Beresh. 
 Rab. 74). Rabbi Judah therefore used to say: "Who- 
 soever teaches not his son some handicraft trains him 
 for robbery " (Kid. 29a). It is undoubtedly the sacred 
 duty of every parent to have his child educated, Well 
 taught and trained in the spirit of the Torah and in 
 houses of learning, under the strict control of God- 
 fearing teachers. In my previous lectures I repeatedly 
 pointed out to you this fact, and tried to show that our 
 Rabbis laid great stress on study, and impressed upon 
 us its necessity with every possible emphasis and with 
 the whole weight of their authority. But "excellent is 
 the study of the Torah when combined with some trade 
 (worldly pursuit), for the practice of them both makes 
 iniquity impossible; and all Torah without work must 
 fail at length, and occasion iniquity" (Ethics n., 2). 
 The RaBbis practised what they preached ; the more so, 
 as they considered it a sin and altogether undignified 
 for scholars to make their knowledge of the Torah a 
 source of income, to accept any remuneration for their 
 services. An eminent sage, like Hillel the Elder, was 
 in his earlv manhood a wood-cutter. Rabbi Joshua "vas
 
 35 
 
 a smith, and Rabbi Jochanan a shoemaker. And other 
 Rabbis were engaged in similar avocations. During 
 the Middle Ages the Rabbis chose, as a rule, medicine 
 as a profession. 
 
 2. THE FAMILY. 
 
 But whatever be one's profession, it is every man's 
 duty not to live the life of a hermit, not to separate 
 himself from the community (Ethics II., 5). Our 
 knowledge and our ability should be employed in the 
 service and for the benefit of our fellow-citizens. Rabbi 
 Eliezer ben Azaria used to say: "Whosesoever wisdom 
 is in excess of his work, to what is he like? To a tree 
 whose branches are abundant but its roots scanty. When 
 the wind comes it uproots and overturns it. But whose- 
 soever works are in excess of his wisdom, to what is he 
 like 1 To a tree whose branches 4 are scanty and its 
 roots abundant, though all the winds come upon it, they 
 stir it not from its place" (Ibid. III., 27). Neither a 
 man's views nor his intentions are of much consequence. 
 Even God, to whom are revealed our inmost thoughts, 
 judges us by our deeds, according to our public activity 
 (Pes. 50b, Kid. 39, 40a). 
 
 A man's first duty is to establish a home. This 
 view of the Rabbis was extremely opposed to that of 
 Paul, who in his "Epistles to the Corinthians" '(I., 
 vii., 1-7) says: "It is good for a man not to touch a 
 woman. For I would that all men were even as I my- 
 self" (i.e., unmarried). The Rabbis insisted on the 
 advisability of early marriages, and needless to say, for 
 purely moral reasons. But, they also maintained, God 
 created this world not to be deserted, but to be inhabited 
 and cultivated by the propagation of the race (Jeb. 61 a). 
 And he who lives without a wife, lives a life void of 
 blessing, joy, and happiness (Ibid. 62b). Of course, 
 one has no right to marry before he has provided a 
 home for his wife. The Torah already taught us this 
 important lesson, that one should first build a house 
 and plant a garden, i.e., one should first acquire tTie 
 means of subsistence and then try to gain the heart of a 
 woman (Sota 44a). Every man should honour his wife 
 even more than himself, and cherish her, for she enables 
 him to avoid sin, to live a life of moral peace and happi- 
 ness (Jeb. 62b). She also watches over the education 
 of the children and promotes their spiritual welfare and 
 intellectual progress (Ber. 17a).
 
 36 
 
 In due consideration of all these facts, Lemuel, - 
 King of Massa (Prov. XXXI.), sang the praise of the 
 brave woman, whose price was far above rubies, whom 
 her husband trusted and her children called blessed, but 
 whose virtues and fear of God surpassed her grace and 
 beauty. " For grace is deceitful and beauty vain." 
 The doctrines of the Eabbis concerning woman eman- 
 ated from a similar spirit. Rabbi Pinchas, the Priest. 
 used to say, " a virtuous wife is like an altar in the 
 house, to pacify, to propitiate and to make atonement." 
 (Tan. Gen. 34). One should, therefore, make every 
 sacrifice in order to marry the daughter of a learned 
 man, though she be very poor. He who prefers a large 
 dowry to education pays the penalty of his shortsighted- 
 ness as pater familias (Pes. 49b). And the same rules 
 apply to a girl who has reached an age of maturity. 
 Paul said (I. Cor., vii., 34): " There is difference be- 
 tween a wife and a. virgin. The unmarried woman 
 careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy 
 both in body and in spirit, but she that is married 
 careth for the things of the world. . . . Rabbi 
 
 Akiba said, whosoever allows his daughter to remain 
 unmarried, exposes her to the dangers of an immoral 
 world (Sanh. 76a), and another sage added: " If thy 
 daughter is of age it is better for her to marry one 
 beneath her station than remain unmarried " (Pes. 
 113a). But no father has a right to dispose of his 
 daughter against her will ; he thus defeats his own ends 
 (Kid. 41a). Even a bondman is not permitted to remain 
 unmarried. And if he is partly a slave and partly free, 
 and on account of his unsatisfactory position unable 
 to marry either a free woman or a bondwoman, his master 
 is compelled to set him completely free and to accept a 
 bond for his claim. On this point the School of Hillel 
 agreed with their opponents, the School of Shammai (Gitt. 
 iv., 5). 
 
 That the Rabbis were right and not the advocates 
 of celibacy, has been evidenced by the history of the 
 Catholic Clergy. Most eminent Christian historians 
 have unrolled pictures of clerical life, even among the 
 noblest princes and highest dignitaries of the Church, 
 that are most repulsive as documents of human de- 
 pravity. Graf von Hoensbroech in his book on " Das 
 Papstthum, in seiner sozial-kultnrellen Wirksamkeit " 
 (Leipzig, 1902), Vol. 2, ch. XVIII, " Der Zoelibat," 
 says: "Die Sitten der ehelosen Statthalter Christi, der
 
 ungeheure Einfluss dieser Sitten auf die christliche 
 Welt im allgemeinen, und auf die Geistlichkeit im 
 besondern, warten noch auf einen Darsteller." "Whole 
 centuries bear the impress of those papal morals, which 
 remind one more of the worst times of Athens and of 
 pagan Imperial Rome than of Jerusalem " (p. 496). In 
 1490 the number of immoral women in Rome alone 
 amounted to 6,800 (Ibid.). William, Archbishop of 
 Paris (d. 1249), complained: "One finds not virtue 
 but filth and vice among the clergy ; they are not sin- 
 ners but criminals, so that the Church reminds one 
 more of Babylon, Egypt and Sodom" (Ibid., where the 
 author mentions his authorities). I could quote many 
 documents in support of this statement (Comp. H. C. 
 Lea " Historv of Sacerdotal Celibacy," Philadelphia 
 1867, as also'Bebel, "Die Frau," 49 Aufl. p. 70), but 
 I resist the temptation for obvious reasons, and merely 
 wish to point out that all those thousands of priests 
 were the victims of the doctrine of celibacy. I need 
 hardly mention that the same doctrine and its deplor- 
 able consequences were greatly responsible for the rapid 
 growth of the Reformation. Luther's refrain: " Wer 
 nicht liebt Wein, Weib and Gesang, bleibt ein Narr 
 sein Lebenlang " (Who loves not wine, woman, and 
 song, remains a fool all his life long), found a rousing 
 echo in all German provinces. 
 
 But the Rabbis are strongly blamed for having 
 gone to the other extreme. They, we are told, advo- 
 cated the ridiculous custom of early marriages, and 
 silently tolerated the barbaric custom of polygamy. 
 These seem to be serious objections, supported as they 
 are by weighty reasons and historical, indisputable 
 facts. The Christian Church claims the credit of hav- 
 ing established and enforced the principle of monogamy. 
 
 As to early marriages, no other religious institu- 
 tion has helped to save our race from decay and de- 
 generation more than this. Lecky, in his History, etc., 
 Vol. I., says: "The nearly universal custom of early 
 marriages among the Irish peasantry has alone ren- 
 dered possible that high standard of female chastity, 
 that intense and jealous sensitiveness respecting female 
 honour for which, among many failings and some vices, 
 the Irish poor have long been pre-eminent in Europe. . 
 There is no fact in Irish history more singular than the 
 complete, and I believe, unpanill<ll nlixe.nce amonij 
 the Irish priesthood of those moral scandals which in
 
 38 
 
 every Continental countn' occasionally prove the danger 
 of vows of celibacy." Volumes of apologetical essa\s 
 could not better demonstrate the justification of that 
 Rabbinical view and ancient Jewish custom, than these 
 few dry but true statements of the English historian. 
 Had he known the proverbial chastity of the Jewish 
 Ghetto- woman, the moral purity of the Jewish Ghetto- 
 home, he would have paid his tribute cf admiration to 
 both. The institution of early marriages saved our race 
 from extinction during the ages of fierce persecution, 
 when tens of thousands were annihilated by fire and 
 sword, and wars and diseases, which raged through 
 Europe during the Middle Ages. And to the same cus- 
 tom our people owes that high moral standard that 
 enabled the Jew to resist persecution and pestilence. 
 
 The promotion of early marriages has saved the 
 Jewish community from another abominable evil, which 
 shames the annals of other nations, ancient as well as 
 modern. The word prostitution fills every Jew with a 
 feeling of horror and disgust. Immoral houses never 
 existed among Jews, would never have been tolerated 
 in the Jewish Ghetto. It would lead me too far were 
 I to refer to ancient nations, especially those of the 
 East, which encouraged immorality as part of their 
 religious worship. The Torah refers to that vicious 
 custom in the following words: "Whosoever shall com- 
 mit any of these abominations, even the souls of the 
 transgressors shall be cut off from among their people. 
 Therefore shall ye keep mine ordinance that ye defile 
 not yourselves therein. . . . (Lev. xviii.. 29, 30.) 
 
 Even Solon " established houses of prostitution fdic- 
 teria) which were a State monopoly." Dr. Shadwell. 
 in the " Encyclopaedia Britannica," s.v. (llth ed., Vol. 
 22, p. 459), says: " The Church was not severe upon 
 prostitutes, to whom the altar was open upon repent- 
 ance, and some of the fathers explicitly recognised their 
 trade as a necessary evil." And in spite of all organised 
 institutions for the rescue of the thousands of legal and 
 social outcasts, immoral houses sprang up throughout 
 the Christian countries of Europe and vice flourished 
 throughout the Middle Ages. " Public brothels on a 
 large scale were established at Toulouse. Avignon and 
 Montpellier. At Toulouse the profits were shared 
 between the city and the university; at Avignon and 
 Montpellier the trade was a municipal monopoly." 
 That the moral conditions of later generations, and even 
 of our own civilised times* have grown worse, and are
 
 39 
 
 continually growing more and more deplorable, is 
 borne out by Dr. Shadwell's article, from which I have 
 just quoted, by other .similar articles bearing on this 
 subject, which are based on modern statistics and by 
 books such as Bebel's "Die Frau " and Amos's "State 
 Regulations of Vice." In Berlin alone, the number of 
 registered immoral women increased during the years 
 1886 to 1897 from 3,006 to 5,098, and they represent 
 but a small percentage of prostitutes, whose number had 
 been estimated at 50,000 (Bebel, Ibid.). 
 
 I have mentioned these facts, which arouse in us 
 feelings of shame and disgust, in order to prove to you 
 how very deep was the knowledge of our Rabbis of 
 human nature. Their principle was : The law must be 
 so framed as to enable every man to live as a law- 
 abiding citizen, and not to be forced into crime. It is 
 written (Lev. xviii., 5): "'And ye shall keep my 
 statutes and my laws, which if a man do he shall live 
 by them." The law has thus been given to promote 
 man's happiness (Yom. 85b). The Sabbath is a most 
 sacred religious institution, but it may be violated for 
 the sake of a man's health. It may be desecrated to 
 lessen the pain of a newly-born infant, though not in 
 honour of King David after his death (Sabb. 151b). 
 Indeed, any law may be overridden to save a human life, 
 with the exception <jf three laws, viz., idolatory, murder, 
 and fornication, which must be observed at all costs, 
 even at the risk of one's life. 
 
 The various utterances of our Rabbis regarding 
 marriage and married life leave no doubt on one's 
 mind, that they loathed the idea of polygamy. No great 
 Rabbi is known to have married two wives. And did 
 not the Torah impress upon the king himself, "Not to 
 multiply wives to himself"? (Deut. xvii., 17). But, say 
 the Rabbis, "the Torah has been given to mortals, not 
 to angels " (Br. 25b). Most of those wretched women 
 who have sunk to the level of the brute, who are treated 
 as the outcasts of society, are the victims of impossible 
 laws, or of barbarous customs, to use a modern expres- 
 sion, the victims of white slave traffic. Princes from 
 the days of Justinian and Charlemagne to the most 
 Catholic protectors of Christianity, Louis XIV. and XV., 
 have openly violated the law of monogamy. Even 
 priests of the Church could not resist the impulse of 
 nature. "The Anabaptists insisted on freedom in the 
 matter, and Bernardino Ochino conditionally defended
 
 40 
 
 plurality of wives. When, in 1540, Philip the Mag- 
 nanimous, the reforming Landgraf of Hesse, determined 
 to marry a second wife, Luther and Melanchthon 
 approved as his personal friends, though not as doctors 
 of theology, while Martin Bucer assisted at the mar- 
 riage " (Enc. Br. llth ed. s.v. Polygamy). I make 
 bold to say that a re-organisation of our social conditions 
 according to Rabbinical doctrines, would reduce the 
 number of the victims of lust, of the agents of 
 immorality, to a tolerable minimum, and would restore 
 to many a Jewish community that pride of race and 
 sense of chastity that distinguished our ancestors in 
 former centuries. In this connection I may mention 
 that Rabbi Gershom ben Jehudah, who flourished in the 
 tenth century in Mayence, strictly forbade polygamy, 
 and as his authority has been recognised and his 
 measures for the public welfare have been religiously 
 respected and observed by the Jews throughout the 
 Christian world, no case of polygamy has since been 
 tolerated in any Jewish community. At a Synod of 
 Rabbis held in Troyes, in the second half of the twelfth 
 century, over which Rabbi Tarn presided, it was again 
 decided that that ordinance of Rabbi Gershom regarding 
 polygamy could be abrogated only for most weighty 
 reasons and "by unanimous consent of a hundred rabbis 
 from three different provinces (Graotz : Geschichte, etc., 
 Vol. 6, p. 182). 
 
 The enactment of divorce formed another effective 
 deterrent that served to minimise the spread of 
 immorality. The Torah already decreed: "When a 
 man taketh a wife and marries her, then it shall be if 
 she finds no favour in his eyes, because he found in her 
 some moral delinquency, that he shall write her a bill 
 of divorcement and send her out of his house. And 
 when she is departed out of his house, she may go and 
 be another man's wife" (Deut. xxiv., 1-2). In contra- 
 distinction to that Biblical law, the founder of Chris- 
 tianity is reported to have said (Matt, v., 31): "Who- 
 soever shall put away his wife saving for the cause of 
 fornication, causes her to commit adultery, and whoso- 
 ever shall marry her that is divorced, committeth 
 adultery." Paul made that rule of his master even 
 more stringent. He said (I. Corinthians, vii., 10-11): 
 "And unto the married I command . . . Let not the 
 wife depart from her husband, but if she depart let 
 her remain unmarried." The canon law of Rome,
 
 41 
 
 therefore, decided there could be no divorce " a vinculc 
 matrimonii," and this vital social question has t'oi 
 centuries been the cause of strife and bitter controversy 
 among the various sections of the Church, and- the con- 
 sequences proved very fatal. " The law of servitude in 
 marriage," says J. S. Mill, " is a monstrous contradic- 
 tion to all the principles of the modern world and to all 
 the experience through which these principles have been 
 slowly and painfully worked out . . ." And Gabriel 
 Ernest Legouve, in his " La Fein me en France," writes: 
 " What accounts for so many cases of polygamy among 
 the people? The indissolubility of marriage. To what 
 shall we attribute the ever increasing number of illegiti- 
 mate children ? Again to the indissolubility of mar- 
 riage. What stirs up dissension between husband and 
 wife and often leads even to murder? Again the 
 indissolubility of marriage." The school of Hillel, 
 therefore, maintained a man may divorce his wife if 
 she disgraces him in any way, and Rabbi Akiba went 
 even further in his explanation of the Biblical verse, 
 and argued that one may divorce his wife if he no 
 longer loves her, as it is written : " If it happen that 
 she found no favour in his eyes " (Gitt. 90a). In his 
 opinion, ethical reasons alone were strong enough to 
 render a marriage invalid. That view of the great 
 Rabbi, which has puzzled many a Talmudical student, 
 is better understood in our modern time, and would be 
 better appreciated by writers on modern social prob- 
 lems such as Ellen Key. 
 
 The Rabbis did not think lightly of a man's 
 matrimonial obligations. They said: "The altar sheds 
 tears when a man divorces the wife and companion of 
 his youth" (Gitt. 90b). 'There is compensation for 
 everything in life, except for the loss of one's first wife " 
 (Sanh. 22a). But they based their laws and enactments 
 on moral principles, and their motives have now been 
 vindicated by the codes of most modern civilised 
 countries. 
 
 3. THE COMMUNITY. 
 
 The arrangement that wherever ten Jews reside 
 they must at once form themselves into a congregation, 
 has greatly helped to promote among our people a sense 
 of public duty. Hillel used to say : True I must rely 
 upon myself, but if I am for myself only, what am I? 
 (Ethics I., 15). Especially at a time when the com-
 
 42 
 
 munity is in distress, no Jew must say, I shall stay at 
 home, eat and drink, and my soul shall be at peace. He 
 who is guilty of such callousness two angels place their 
 hands upon his head and say: "This man, who has 
 separated himself from the community shall not live to 
 see its prosperity" (Taan. lla). Maimonides in his 
 chapter on Repentance remarks: "Such a man, 
 although he in his private life carries out the laws, he 
 shall have no share in the future world." Even a 
 scholar, who is always engaged in study, must take his 
 share in the work of the community and contribute 
 towards its needs (M.K. Ga). One's first public duty 
 is towards the poor, for charity outweighs all other 
 meritorious actions (B.B. 9a). And he who saves one 
 of his people it is accounted unto him as if he had 
 saved a whole world (Sanh. 37a). 
 
 The true spirit in which one should dispense 
 charity is that the recipient should be unaware of the 
 donor (B.B. lOa). Rabbi Eliazer used to say, " he 
 who distributes charity secretly surpasses even Moses " 
 (Ibid. 9b). Of the poor the orphan has the first claim 
 upon our generosity, especially the female orphan, who 
 is the less resourceful (Ket. 67a). Of course, one should 
 be effectively assisted before he sinks to the degraded 
 position of a beggar, as it is written (Lev. xxv., 35): 
 " If thy brother be waxen poor and fallen in decay, 
 then thou shalt relieve him, though he be a stranger or 
 a sojourner, that he may live with thee. Take thou 
 no usury of him, nor any kind of increase, but fear 
 thy God, that thy brother may live with thee." I am 
 glad the English version, from which I quoted, is cor- 
 rect, following our best Hebrew commentators. The 
 Sep. and the Vulg. misunderstood our text. The former 
 translates cis TrpocnjXiTov KOI irapoiKov and the latter 
 " Quasi advenam et peregrinum." This translation 
 is false ; neither the letter nor the spirit of 
 this verse justify such interpretation (Cf. Kalisch a. 1). 
 And the Rabbis commenting on this law add: "Thou 
 shalt support thy fellow-man even four and five times, 
 as often as he appeals for help, unless he uses che 
 money for some unlawful purpose" (Siph. a. 1.). 
 Some critics raise the objection that this law to help 
 people in reduced circumstances and to assist them with 
 loans without any interest, was meant only for the Jew, 
 that it was, however, not unlawful to take interest from 
 a stranger. They seem to overlook the fact that every
 
 43 
 
 law is based on the principle of reciprocity. No 
 stranger would have lent the Jew any money without 
 any demand for profit. The Rabbinical court possessed 
 no executive power or authority among non-Jews. But 
 they impressed upon the members of the Jewish com- 
 munity to treat their non-Jewish business friends with 
 equity, even at the expense of their legal demands, for 
 the sake of peace (Cf. Gitt. o9b). 
 
 Acts of charity, however, and the advancing of 
 timely loans, must be prompted by a spirit of kindness 
 and of brotherly love (Sanh. 49a). It is not what one 
 gives, but how he gives it. And monetary assistance 
 does not constitute the highest form of charity. The 
 poor have yet other needs, moral and spiritual, which 
 demand our immediate and whole-hearted attention. 
 To" teach, say the Rabbis, is the noblest act of charity 
 (Ibid.). The verse (Dan. xii., 3): "And they that turn 
 many to righteousness shall shine as the stars for ever 
 and ever," is said to refer to those who teach little 
 children (B.B. 8a). For even the poorest is bidden to 
 study. He who is ignorant cannot be truly pious, he 
 is unable to carry out his religious obligations (Ethics 
 II., 6). The Rabbis advocated strongly the education 
 of the poor, " because from them goeth forth the Law " 
 (Ned. SI a), and from their ranks had arisen great 
 masters like Hillel and Akiba. They therefore impress 
 upon us (Eth. VI., 4): "This is the way that is calcu- 
 lated to promote study ; eat bread with salt, drink 
 water by measure, sleep upon the bare ground and live 
 a life of privation and devote thy whole thought to 
 study ; if thou doest thus, thou shalt be happy, and it 
 shall be well with thee." However paradoxical this 
 Mishnah may sound, it only expresses a hackneyed truth, 
 borne out by hundreds of well-known facts. The 
 greatest minds worked themselves up from small begin- 
 nings, and forced their way to prominence out of the 
 deepest obscurity. 
 
 The idea of free tuition was first conceived by 
 Simeon ben Shetach, a brother of Queen Salomea, to 
 whom I have referred in my first lecture. But he had 
 established schools for young men of the age of seven- 
 teen. The High Priest Rabbi Joshua ben Gamala, who 
 nourished before the destruction of the Second Temple, 
 enjoys the distinction of having established in every 
 Jewish community elementary schools for children from 
 the age of six (B.B. 21a). The guiding motive of those
 
 44 
 
 pioneers of free education was: "As the Lord has given 
 us the Law as an act of favour, so must we teach it 
 gratuitously " (Bech. 29a). 
 
 The community should be governed in a perfectly 
 democratic spirit, by lay and spiritual leaders, all to be 
 appointed by the will and with the consent of the rom- 
 munity (Br. 55a). The Parnass, the President, must not 
 usurp power, "he must not himself place the crown upon 
 his head" (Aboth de Rab. Nath. ch. 11) "He who treats 
 the community with overbearing pride, God weeps over 
 him " (Chag. 5b). Needless to say the representative 
 of the community must be a man of piety and ability 
 (Eth. iii., 9). In order that his influence and the 
 honour he enjoys may not corrupt him, he should be 
 assisted and controlled by two colleagues (Jer. Pe. 
 viii., 6). 
 
 But above them stands the Rabbi, the spiritual 
 leader, who wields even greater influence, and whose 
 authority is unassailable. His mission is to teach, to 
 instruct and to advise, and to decide on all momentous 
 questions, both social and religious. He too is assisted 
 by two assessors, but his is the most exalted position in 
 the community. He ranks above the ruling prince. 
 Any Jew of ability might aspire to the royal dignity, 
 as did Saul, David, and others, but very few could 
 adequately fill the position of a Rabbi (Hor. 13a). 
 Rabbi Akiba maintained that the Bible verse (Deut. 
 vi., 13): " Thou shalt reverence the Lord thy God," was 
 also intended to emphasise the respect and reverence due 
 to the Rabbi. He is the representative of the Law, 
 and the torch-bearer of learning. Those of you who 
 have some knowledge of Jewish communal life in former 
 centuries, I might even say of former decades, in certain 
 parts of the Jewish world, know that those enactments 
 and doctrines of the Talmud were carried out in letter 
 and in spirit. 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen, in the course of my lectures 
 I have tried to give you a bird's eye view of the Talmud, 
 but I feel that I have hardly touched the fringes of this 
 immense subject. I have, for instance, been unable to 
 include an at least equally important part of its litera- 
 ture, viz., the Hagadah, " whose chief subjects consist 
 in explaining historical events, prophetic utterances, 
 and in bringing to mind the past and treating of the 
 future of Judaism." But I hope I have been able to
 
 45 
 
 vindicate the honour of both the book and its authors, 
 that I have succeeded in showing that our great 
 teachers were men of keen foresight and inspired with 
 deep love of their faith, their people, and, indeed, of 
 the whole human race, and that they were guided by 
 motives of justice and equity. They themselves, as it to 
 sum up the whole essence of their teachings in two main 
 doctrines, opened the first chapter of the first treatise 
 with the law regarding the reading of the Sh'maa, the 
 proclamation of the Unity of God, and concluded the 
 last chapter with the Mishnah : " The Holy One, blessed 
 be He, found no better blessing for Israel than peace, 
 as it is written : ' The Lord will give strength unto His 
 people, the Lord will bless His people with peace.' ' 
 Maimonides concluded his great encyclopaedic work on 
 the Talmud with the remark, that at the time of the 
 Messiah all the Israelites will be wise and learned, as it 
 is written : "And the earth shall be full of the know- 
 ledge of God, as the waters cover the sea." The 
 expression " Wisdom " characterises the spiritual trend 
 of that great sage who was a disciple of Aristotle, while 
 the word " Peace " expresses the ideal of the Rabbis, 
 who saw in the ultimate fraternisation of men the 
 highest achievement of all human effort, when 
 
 " the war-drum throbb'd no longer, 
 And the battle-flags were furl'd, 
 In the Parliament of men, 
 The Federation of the World."
 
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