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 HE JEWISH SABBATH 
 
 by 
 
 SAMSON 
 
 
 California 
 
 Translated by 
 
 BEN JOSEPHUSSORO.
 
 
 THE JEWISH SABBATH 
 
 by 
 
 SAMSON RAPHAEL H1RSCH. 
 
 Translated by 
 BEN JOSEPHUSSORO. 
 
 NEWPORT : 
 MULLOCK AND SONS, LIMITKD, PRINTERS. 
 
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 PREFACE. 
 
 One of the most ancient religious institutions, one which is 
 honoured in all civilised countries, and is perhaps most widely 
 observed by all classes of society, is that of the weekly holiday or 
 day of rest. It is a generally accepted fact that the origin of this 
 institution is to be traced back to the Jewish Sabbath. The early 
 Christians originally observed Sunday as a day of sanctincation 
 side by side with the Sabbath, but when later on, the observance 
 of the Sabbath was abandoned by them, many of the notions and 
 principles connected therewith, were transferred to the Sunday 
 observance. It was not until the 8th century that formal prohibi- 
 tion of all worldly occupation not of immediate urgency, was deter- 
 mined upon. Although the designation of "Sunday," ("Dies 
 sous") cannot properly be accepted as -a synonym of the original 
 " Sabbath," its real significance as a day of rest from worldly toil 
 and labour, and a day of subordination to the Divine will, is ra- 
 dicated by other designations, such as " Lord's Day," " Dies 
 Dominicus," " Dimanche," " Domenica," " Domingo," etc. The 
 reformers at first advocated the observance of Sunday solely on the 
 ground of practical expediency, but, even in those days, Beza 
 insisted, that Sunday was a divine ordinance having taken the place 
 of the Jewish Sabbath. It is therefore remarkable, although at 
 the same time explicable on psychological grounds, that just that 
 very section of the church, which on the ground of one of its funda- 
 mental principles, rejects all human or sacerdotal intervention 
 between God and man, and which, in this as in several other 
 respects, approaches Judaism very closely, should take a far more 
 serious view of the observance of Sunday as a holy day. than the 
 other branches of that communion. Thus among Protestants more 
 especially hi England, Scotland and North America, the strictest 
 form of Sunday observance has been preserved to this day .Although 
 certain antiquated laws have had to be abandoned owing to their 
 interference with the individual liberty of conscience, it is
 
 nevertheless a well-known fact that our most modern and 
 progressive legislators have been actively engaged in devising 
 the best means for regulating the observance of the Sabbath, the 
 principles of which were laid down more than thirty-four centuries 
 ago in Exodus xx., 8-11 and Deuteronomy v., 12-15 (especially 
 the latter portion of verse 14 and v., 16). For many decades 
 already the most civilized states have set the example, not 
 only by prohibiting all official transactions and other work on 
 Sunday in their governmental departments, but also by 
 endeavouring to protect labourers, servants and factory workmen 
 from the more or less justified demands of their employers. 
 
 It cannot be denied, that in other civilised countries as well, 
 a more rigorous observance of the weekly day of rest has been 
 spreading during the last few decades. 
 
 In spite of the great revolutions which occurred in the sphere 
 of religious thought, towards the end of the 18th and during the 
 first half of the 19th century, in spite of the Atheism which then 
 became fashionable, in spite of Positivism, Materialism, and 
 Darwinism, and notwithstanding the enormous advances made in 
 science, industry and commerce in recent times, Sunday observance 
 is becoming more general from year to year, even among the 
 Catholic populations of Continental Europe^ 1 ) And though the 
 external forms of such observance vary as widely as the 
 spiritual interpretations and the ethical conceptions which are 
 bound up with them, this does not by any means do away with 
 the undeniable fact, that the fundamental idea underlying these 
 institutions is steadily gaining ground. 
 
 If only for this reason, some analysis of the historical and 
 symbolical significance of the weekly day of rest which has been 
 received by the world at large as a gift from Judaism mi^ht 
 be of interest an analysis that shall discuss the " Sabbath " in 
 
 (l)It is noteworthy that even France quite recently, by the law of 1906, 
 established a weekly day of rest for every workman or employee, of 24 con- 
 secutive hours. In Belgium the laws regulating the Sunday rest were es- 
 tablished in 1905 and 1907, in Spain in 1904 and 1905, in Italy in 1907 and in 
 Switzerland in 1906. In Germany the present regulations have been in force 
 since 1900, in Denmark since 1904. In Austria the law of 1895 was amended 
 in 1905 and in Hungary that of 1891 was amended in 1903 and 1908.
 
 relation to the creation of the world, to the period of legal 
 $$%&$&. the Jewish nation, to the building of the Temple, also 
 to its educational influence and its social and political aspects. 
 
 Among modern contributions to this class of religious literature 
 we might search in vain for a more thorough and valuable work 
 than a treatise entitled " The Jewish Sabbath " by Samson Raphael 
 Hirsch, republished two or three years ago, in commemoration 
 of the Centenary of the Author's birth, by the " Verein der Sabbath- 
 freunde " in Frankfort-on-Main. 
 
 Every Jew in German speaking countries, knows how much 
 the writings of this man, with their vivid freshness of colour, their 
 modernness, their almost unrivalled thoroughness, relieved by 
 flashes of bright humour, have contributed towards a clearer 
 conception of the mission of Judaism, and hence, also towards 
 stimulating and elevating Jewish effort for its realisation. These 
 writings, in spite of their sometimes decried " fanciful exegesis " 
 have become to hundreds and thousands of his disciples and fol- 
 lowers a " viaticum " on their path of life, and they have enabled 
 them to demonstrate to the world that it is possible to accomplish 
 eminent achievements, in art and science, commerce and industry, 
 nay, that it is possible even to be hard-working, poor and much 
 harassed, and yet to remain a Jew faithful to the old Law, and 
 devoted to the observance of the Sabbath. They have created 
 ideals which have been instrumental in training the wealthy to 
 charity and humility, and the poor to that unwavering trust in 
 God and that cheerful spirit which is so often admired. 
 
 Unfortunately, translation into a foreign tongue, more es- 
 pecially in the case of an author whose train of thought was not 
 of the commonplace order, presents no mean difficulties. But for 
 the fact that certain friends, more particularly Rev. D. Wasserzug 
 of the Dalston Synagogue (to whom we gladly take this opportunity 
 of expressing our sincere thanks) afforded us the invaluable advan- 
 tage of their most generous assistance, these pages would never 
 have seen the light of publicity. 
 
 Nevertheless we cannot refrain from soliciting the kind in- 
 dulgence of our esteemed readers as regards any imperfections that
 
 may have escaped attention. Any suggestion with regard to 
 'correction will be most gratefully accepted, and noted with a view 
 to its being considered in any future revised edition that may be 
 published. 
 
 Since the publication of the first issue of this booklet we 
 have found the following notice in a recent number of the 
 " Israelit " (Frankfort /. ) which, we think, will interest some 
 of our readers : 
 
 t 
 THE SABBATH and HYGINE. In an article on ' ( Hygienic thoughts 
 
 and their manifestations in History " (Deutsche Revue, Oct. 
 1911) quoting from the last number of " Sabbath " the writer 
 makes the following observations : 
 
 " What a fulness of blessing, both spiritual and physical, 
 has been conferred on the Jewish people by this their holy day, 
 their day of rest ! More than any other institution the Sabbath 
 has given them the power to hold their own among other people, 
 and the benefits of this day of rest they have transmitted to 
 the Christian and Islamitic faiths. Thus they have given its 
 immeasurable hygienic blessings to the greater part of the iworld. 
 Had the Jewish race given to mankind nothing beyond this 
 registration of every seventh day as a day of rest, we should be 
 bound, already on this score alone, to regard them as one among 
 the greatest hygienic benefactors of mankind." 
 
 The writer of this paragraph^ is Geheimer Medizinalrat 
 Carl Sudhoff, Professor of History and Medicine at Leipzig 
 University and 1 / a Christian.
 
 THE JEWISH SABBATH. 
 
 THE LOVELY PEARL. 
 
 " See that God has given you the Sabbath." Ex. 16, 29. 
 " Behold the lovely pearl 
 " which I have given you !" Yalkut, ibid. 
 
 Among all the heavenly gifts which Judaism has bestowed upon 
 its followers, none surely is so holy, so full of blessing, as the gift 
 of the oldest earthly institution, the gift of the Sabbath, the Jewish 
 Sabbath. Take from the Jew his Sabbath, and you rob him of 
 his richest jewel, and nothing that you may offer him in exchange 
 can replace it. Take from the Jew his Sabbath, and you empty 
 his life of friendship and happiness, and however much his friends 
 may throng round him and crown him with ever so many wreaths 
 of joy, he will never again find such a friend as the Sabbath. The 
 delight of other enjoyments fades away before the sweet, quiet 
 bliss of the Sabbath joy. 
 
 For the Sabbath is the pearl and friend of the Jew. 
 
 God has bound the Jew to the Sabbath in holy wedlock. He 
 has introduced to him this most excellent of all His institutions 
 as a loving bride. If he remains true to her, with all his heart, in 
 devotion and self-sacrifice, she will prove his most loyal com- 
 panion. She knows how to transform the poorest cottage into 
 a paradise for him, and to turn his darkest night into fairest day. 
 With her hand strong in love, she knows how to guide him 
 safely along the most slippery paths, to level all mountains, to 
 dry all tears, to heal all wounds, to sooth all pains, and to extinguish 
 all cares. She makes the poorest rich, and the rich she teaches to 
 become the true masters of their wealth and their pleasures. The 
 simple she makes wise, and to the wise she points out the true 
 foundation of their wisdom. She raises up the fallen and to the
 
 pure and strong she gives the very soul of their purity, the very 
 essence of their strength. 
 
 Little do they know what a treasure they are casting away, 
 who turn their back upon this friend of their soul. Little 
 do those know how poor they leave their children, who fail to leave 
 them this pearl. Make your children rich, make them good, 
 intelligent, strong, make them clever, educated, learned, honoured, 
 and in addition give them the Sabbath, the old Jewish Sabbath 
 give it to them by your teaching, nay, more, give it to them by your 
 joyous, your earnest, your self-sacrificing example, and you 
 will have secured permanence for their riches, a support for their 
 virtues, a shining light for their cleverness, vigour for their strength ; 
 and for their knowledge, their science, their education and their 
 honour, you will have secured their very pith and essence, their 
 true value and significance. 
 
 You may enjoy your rest in peace, for even though your 
 children's wealth should disappear, their virtue falter, their clever- 
 ness fade away, their health fail, their intelligence prove inadequate, 
 their friends untrue, even though you will have to leave them and 
 you cannot remain with them for ever even though they are far 
 away and deserted and poor and degraded, yet the Sabbath will not 
 forsake them, the Sabbath will remain with them and will at all 
 times provide them with an inexhaustible store of comfort and 
 strength, of light and balm, of sublime and exalted feeling, of peace 
 and joy. 
 
 Give them EVERYTHING, however, but if you neglect to 
 wed their souls to the Sabbath, you give over their happiness and 
 peace, their bliss and joy, their wisdom, their Judaism to the 
 incalculable vicissitudes of fortune ! 
 
 For this reason we venture to set down in these pages a few 
 reflections on this pearl of Judaism, the Jewish Sabbath. Happy 
 indeed shall we be, if our feeble pen succeeds in drawing, impres- 
 sively and truthfully, but a few features of its rich store of precious 
 teaching, if only one family, one cottage, one Jewish soul shall 
 be induced to save uninjured and unimpaired, this eternal 
 treasure of life from the influence of the time.
 
 1 THE SABBATH, A DAY OF REST ORDAINFD 
 
 BY GOD. 
 
 " When the Sabbath comes, comes rent." 
 
 And were it nothing more than this, nothing more than a day of 
 rest ordained by God, recurring every seventh day, as it presents 
 itself in its outward appearance ti the most superficial observer, 
 what a blessing it would even then bring in its train ! 
 
 If you had not this Sabbath, this day of rest, ordained by God, 
 when would you rest, when would you come to your self, come to 
 your wife and child, when would you attend to your mind and spirit, 
 to your heaven upon earth ? " When you had the time to spare ? " 
 but WHEN would you have time, when would you DARE 
 to have time to spare ? 
 
 Incessantly is the material world around you at work, it never 
 rests, unceasingly it struggles for its material existence, irresistibly 
 it marches on. He who does not go forward, goes backwards, he 
 who stands still is trodden down : " by day and by night they never 
 stand still " and could you, would you dare to cry " halt " to your 
 labour ; " halt " to your cares for your daily existence ? You 
 could, you might dare once in the way to proclaim a rest for your 
 hand, your head, your mind ; once in the way wipe away the pers- 
 piration, smooth your forehead, shakt from you the dust of the 
 arena of life ? But dare you once stop even to look forward with 
 earnest intent to the goal which you have to gain ; to gaze back for 
 once, look around you and down into your inner self, look joyously 
 and caln.ly at the hope which you cherished, the ideals which you 
 strove after and partly realised, and for once in the way step out 
 from the restless and afflicted world of, " THAT is TO BE " into the 
 blissful world of " BEING," into the enjoyment of a paradise on 
 earth ? 
 
 ' Paradise " ? Who dares still to speak of a paradise on 
 earth The gates of paradise were closed behind us long ago. 
 The tree of life blossoms of itself now for no one. Thorns and 
 thistles cumber the way ; our bread is gained in the sweat of the 
 brow, and is eaten with sorrow and sighing. Without the Sabbath, 
 without rest, man is fated but to toil; without the Sabbath, without
 
 10 
 
 rest, he is tormented by worry. And though a thousand minds 
 were thinking day by day how to increase knowledge : though a 
 man's thousand inventions were day by day adding to power, this 
 knowledge would make him no richer or happier, this power would 
 bring him no greater freedom or ease. " The more knowledge, 
 the more care " ; the more inventions, the more wants, the more 
 strength, the more action. The father had to contend only with his 
 neighbour ; but on the wings of the clouds the son has to battle 
 with the whole world. The father had but his village to look round, 
 but with flashes of lightning the son sets about to explore the whole 
 world. Numberless possessions and pleasures unknown to the sim- 
 ple father, the wiser son must win for himself and his fanrly in the 
 sweat of his brow, at the highest output of his nervous force, at the 
 uttermost charge on his time. He has to provide so much FOR 
 himself, so much FOR his wife and child, that he has no time to 
 think OF himself, OF wife and child ; and the cares for the house es- 
 trange him from the home. The word " existence " has assumed 
 such gigantic proportions that life is entirely absorbed in the task of 
 earning this existence, and no time is left to enquire into its purpose 
 and aim, its value and meaning. The word " existence " has 
 become so immense a problem that the sum total of all human 
 wisdom, the exploration of the heavens and the earth, of countries 
 and seas, aye, even virtue and morality, and almost even charity 
 and benevolence, have to provide themselves with the industrial 
 hall-mark of economic utility in order to obtain recognition and 
 notice from a bread-earning humanity. And man, created to be 
 God's image in wisdom and kindness, in love and justice ; created 
 to rejoice, like God, in his work, pants under the yoke of the toil 
 of the earth, dripping with sweat, seeking for food, and no longer 
 hears the " Where art thou ? " of God's voice wandering up and 
 down in search of him. 
 
 But then appears the messenger from Eden, the angel of God, 
 the Sabbath approaches him and says, " In the name of God : no 
 further !" You must not only care for earthly bread for yourself 
 and your family. You sin against yourself, your wife and child, if 
 your hand is always busy only to procure food, if your foot is 
 always moving only to find, if your head is always meditating 
 only how to gain, the means of a livelihood. Have you no mind, no 
 heart, no soul which in this temporal life are to blossom forth into
 
 11 
 
 eternal salvation, and dare you let your souls starve and wither 
 while you keep on only feeding and decking your bodies ? Enough 
 of labour! Your God commands that you SHALL no longer labour, 
 and that is a guarantee that you NEED not labour, that you have 
 done enough when you have honestly worked for six days. " If you 
 do not wish to deny your better, eternal self, and your God, then 
 desist from working, and enter your home with me." You now 
 stand still, and the panting breast ebbs and flows more calmly 
 the pulse of life beats more placidly, and you return to yourself. 
 You lay down the yoke of labour, you wipe the sweat from your 
 dripping brow, and shake off the dust from your garments, your 
 forehead regains its smoothness, you raise your eyes, you look 
 above and around you smile. And now you hear the searching 
 voice from Eden calling you home to the delightful attractions of 
 your family circle ; to the cheering side of wife and children. It 
 introduces the Sabbath to your souls, to your home ; and your 
 dwelling becomes transfigured. No house is so small, or poor, in 
 which God's splendour does not enter with the Sabbath ! The 
 light that shines in you, doubles the brightness of the Sabbath-light ; 
 the peace that dwells in you, flavours the Sabbath meal ; care, 
 tears, grief and sorrow, all these the Sabbath banishes from 
 the poorest home. " Sabbath has come, you must not weep ! " 
 " Sabbath has come, you must not mourn ! " The Sabbath has 
 balm and comfort for all, makes all rich and equal. The Sabbath 
 says to each one : 
 
 T by 5U,, " Place upon God the burden of 
 your way, and He will accomplish it ! " If you have done your 
 duty, God will do the rest. This the Sabbath guarantees you, 
 because it bids you, in His name to cry a halt to your cares and 
 troubles and labours. It shows Him to you as your Father in 
 heaven, the omnipotent Ruler and Guide of the times, shows 
 Him to you as your God, who fights your battles with and for 
 you, who knows your troubles and feels your cares, and would 
 gladly take from you the greater and heavier part of your life's 
 burden, would you but wish and entrust it to Him. 
 
 The Sabbath makes all rich and EQUAL ! The gains for 
 which the battle of the week is fought, separate men according 
 to the amount which each one acquires. Not all are successful in
 
 12 
 
 the struggle, and there is infinite variety in the results achieved. 
 But the treasures of paradise which the Sabbath dispenses the 
 peace, the divine bliss, the repose, these are granted to all in 
 equally rich abundance, and " if all of us would but once keep 
 the Sabbath truly, it would mean redemption for all. (Yalkut on 
 Psalm 95, 7). 
 
 But it is ONLY to GOD'S SABBATH that such a wonderful result 
 is vouchsafed, only when GOD bids you pause in your labour, can 
 you gain rest. In vain do you choose for yourself another day of 
 rest during the week, your hand may be idle, your foot may rest, 
 your body may feast, but it is only God who calms the mind, soothes 
 the heart, revives the soul. ONLY WHEN GOD ORDAINS the repose 
 you have the assurance that you may repose, and find in God 
 the consummation of your life. 
 
 Only God's Sabbath brings you rest. 
 
 2. THE SABBATH OF THE CREATION. 
 " Finished were the heavens and the. earth.*' 
 
 We have considered the Jewish Sabbath in its widest aspect 
 and have seen the abundance of blessings which it, and it alone, 
 and then only as a day of rest ORDAINED BY GOD, is able to 
 bestow upon us. But the Sabbath is much more. It enshrines 
 yet a far richer treasure of light and truth, of holiness and blessing, 
 which reveals itself to us the more, the deeper we enter into its 
 spirit, and the less we are content to contemplate God's command- 
 ments merely on their surface. 
 
 For are not God's laws like His works ! Even the man most 
 ignorant of nature delights in the sight of heaven and earth, is 
 elevated by the brilliancy of the starry sky, is charmed by the 
 bloom and fragrance of the flowers, the life and might of the host 
 of living things ; even the most unschooled is uplifted by a 
 careless walk through God's lovely garden of nature. But how
 
 13 
 
 different becomes your delight when you have learnt to name 
 a few of the stars that greet you from the sky, how different 
 when you have acquired the most elementary knowledge of 
 the laws by which we believe them to be guided in their orbits. 
 With quite another and deeper delight do you contemplate the 
 flower, the fruit, the animal, the beast, when you are familiar 
 with the laws which are expressed in their forms, their shapes, 
 their parts, their structure, their vascular system, their sap, and 
 their development. Thus informed you wander thoughtfully through 
 God's great workshop; thoughts of the Master greet you everywhere, 
 nothing that you find there is insignificant, or trivial, or small ; 
 indeed just in the very smallest thing do you admire the Divine 
 skill which is true to itself even in the finest fibre. 
 
 Thus is it also with the laws of God. Even to the most ignorant 
 their fulfilment brings the richest blessing. " A tree of life they 
 are for everyone who clings to them ! " But the more you ponder 
 over them, the more intimate you become with the ideas which God 
 Himself has expressed in them, the more clearly you perceive 
 the relations that exist between their ordinance, their parts and 
 their purposes ; the more will they become for you an inexhaustible 
 source of instruction and blessing, the more will the voice of the 
 highest wisdom of life speak to you even from the smallest organism, 
 and you will recognise that even in this kingdom of God "Ql N*? S 3 
 Kin pi, there is nothing without value or purpose, nothing small or 
 unimportant, D2Q Kin pi OKI, and if anything seems to us to be 
 vain and purposeless, mean and insignificant, the reason for it is to 
 be found in our own nature, 13 D'JW DDK pNSP HO^, because we do 
 not trouble to enter into its meaning, Kin TID^K D3"PI Kin 'D 
 13 pyjP DHKtP nyBO DS^n, or else we would perceive even in the 
 smallest thing a source of life, blessing and salvation. 
 
 Having therefore first of all considered the Sabbath in its 
 general, its outward appearance, it is now proper for us to review 
 the Divine utterances concerning it, as we find them preserved in 
 Holy Writ. 
 
 The oldest pronouncement concerning the Sabbath is the first 
 to arrest our attention. It shows this institution to us as the key- 
 stone and crown, the aim and corn] Micm of CREATION.
 
 14 
 
 " Completed were heaven and earth and all the host of them. 
 
 Then with the seventh day, God comphted His work which He had made. 
 
 And Ood blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, 
 
 For with it He had ceased from all His work. 
 
 Which God had created in order to complete it." Gen. 2, 1-4. 
 
 The Sabbath calls your attention to the conception of 
 jnKfTi, viz. : the conception DN2V 93 of the whole great host of 
 beings which fill heaven and earth, of all the innumerable warring 
 and contending elements and forces which compose this N3Y, this 
 world of strife (as the Rabbis ingeniously explain the expression) 
 and utters the pregnant and significant words : "l^l,, ! "VDHbD, ! 
 " They were COMPLETED ! " " They are one WORK, they are 
 His WORK ! " and pronouncing "D^K/, ! the name of " God " 
 throughout the spaces of the universe, with blessing and sanctifica- 
 tion points to Him who completed them, to Him who called heaven 
 and earth His work. 
 
 " They were completed ! " They not only arose in 
 their time, but the smallest as well as the greatest thing, whether 
 in its totality or in part, was the expression, the realisation of an 
 idea of Him who did not rest till He had carried out and completed 
 His idea. The fulfilment of His idea stands before you, and the 
 Sabbath directs your attention to Him, who conceived the idea of 
 OK3Y 731 , of this world so full of contrast and harmony, of discord 
 and peace, of hatred and love, so varied and yet so uniform ; the 
 fulfilment of His idea stands before you. 
 
 And therefore : irDK^D ! JN'JD : Angel, messenger, 
 message, mission, task, so the work is called in the spirit of Holy 
 Writ. Every work is rON^D, the embodiment, the realiser, the 
 executor of the Master's idea. So long as it exists and operates, 
 it exists and operates only by the Master's injunction ; and though 
 you do not see the Master, the greatest and the smallest thing is 
 His messenger, His message tfOKte. It stands there, because He 
 has placed it there ; it works and operates because He has deter- 
 mined the form, gauged and measured the force and material, 
 originated the life and motion, which inform every action. He 
 has said : Let this be, let this effect and create ! for the laws of 
 nature which you descry are but His ordinances !
 
 15 
 
 Fools are those wise men who ponder day and night over their 
 scientific experiments, watching the analytical and synthetic pro- 
 cesses which are at work in the subject of their investigation, 
 who with the magnifying glasses of their short-sightedness discover 
 the smallest forms and with the telescope explore the boundless 
 expanse in their distant vision ; and now, because through the 
 powers given to them by the Master they espy wonder after wonder 
 and hold His works in their crucibles or before their glasses 
 imagine that it is the MASTER himself whom they hold and survey. 
 
 what He has prepared for you and sent you, His 
 servants, His masterpieces, these you may analyse and divide 
 into their component parts, ascertain the results of 
 their combination, and fathom the laws of their evolution ; 
 you may learn to admire more and more the great 
 Master's wisdom and power in the immeasurable expanse 
 of the universe, and in the minuteness of almost imper- 
 ceptible things but you are fools if you fancy that you 
 have the Master Himself in your furnaces, before your glasses, 
 in your scales, under your knives. Fools ! You take the watch 
 to pieces to find its makei, you turn over the pages of the book in 
 search for its author, you cut up the picture to discover the painter- 
 the work, the ideas, the forms are your world ! But HE, the Con- 
 ceiver of the idea, the Creator of the work, the Moulder of the form, 
 HE is not. to be found in your retorts. Even the more exalted of 
 His ideas, the spirit, its free movement, its life, are not to be found 
 there. You ARE NOT EVEN CAPABLE OF CONSTRUCTING THE 
 
 BEGINNING, THE VERY FIRST BEGINNING OF A LIVJNG ORGANISM. 
 
 And if all the world " even at this, the proudest moment of 
 modern science, the saying of the old Rabbis still expresses a 
 truth " and if all the world and the wisdom of the whole world 
 were to combine, they would not be able to form the tiniest 
 gnat ! " Only inanimate matter and the forces which operate 
 in inanimate matter are your kingdom. At the first begin- 
 ning of life your brain reels and your sight fails, and yet you 
 imagined you had captured Him, the unassisted Creator of the world 
 in which you live, the Selecter of the materials which you weigh, 
 the Originator of the forces which you study, the Moulder of the 
 forms which you measure, the Propounder of the laws which you
 
 16 
 
 investigate, the Giver of the life which you marvel at, the Con- 
 ceiver of the thoughts whose alphabet you are only beginning to 
 
 Spell ! HE IN HIS FREEDOM, AND WHATSOEVER HE HAS ENDOWED 
 WITH A SHARE OF HIS FREEDOM, ARE BEYOND YOUR ENUMERATION 
 AND MEASUREMENT. 
 
 " How matter separates from and combines with matter, how 
 form is developed from form and rounded off "for this, at most a 
 standard criterion may be found, but how even the smallest atom 
 of the simplest substance unites with even the simplest kind of 
 organic vesicle to serve a specific purpose, and to conform to a 
 definite pre-conceived idea ; how a substance void of thought 
 becomes joined to a form that is instinct with organised thought, 
 a form whose creative energy and omnipotence meet you at every 
 step, all THIS eludes every calculation and hypothesis, since the sum 
 total of all BLINDLY working forces which are, therefore, 
 susceptible of calculation is not sufficient to create even the 
 smallest fibre of a form which reveals a THOUGHT. And to this 
 day, and for all future time, the despised wisdom of the Rabbis still 
 remains true : " Wherever, form, dimension, organic structure, 
 i.e. wherever a purpose and tendency are revealed, all the elements 
 and substances together with their forces are insufficient to explain 
 them, and you are inevitably' driven to seek the ONE. the wise 
 omnipotent Creator, who plans and fixes the limit. (R. Yehuda 
 HaVevi). 
 
 Oh, what bliss, what glory will one day be promoted by the pearl 
 of the century, the science of nature, when to each latest "cosmos" 
 the spirit of the old Sabbath shall have been joined; when an insight 
 into nature shall no longer obscure the recognition of the Creator, 
 when the Architect shall no longer be forgotten and eclipsed by the 
 building, the Creator by the forces, the Law-giver by the laws, the 
 Thinker by the thought ; when the mortal leaders of science shall 
 no longer be here with their alembics and scales, their glasses and 
 knives, shaking their heads and saying in presumptuous blindness : 
 only what we feel and melt and weigh and see and measure and 
 count, exists, but we have melted and weighed, measured and 
 counted and have not found God : when only the mortal leaders 
 of science while disclosing new vistas of " nature " to their con- 
 temporaries, shall no longer rob them of God ; when, on the
 
 17 
 
 contrary, each fresh draught from nature's well of thought shall 
 increase the thirst for the km wledge of the Conceiver of these 
 thoughts, and each newly-ascertained law shall only increase the 
 reverence for the Law-giver, and each newly-discovered marvel shall 
 only heighten the longing for communion with the Master ; when the 
 most devoted explorer of the cosmos shall, at the same time, be the 
 most devoted Sabbath-priest in the glorification of God, and, filled 
 with the spirit of the old Sabbath shall go forth as its herald, and 
 proclaim to the spirits and minds of men the old Sabbath watch- 
 word : iroN^D ! " Behold HIS WORK ! 
 
 This time is indeed coming. Its herald and priest, its founda- 
 tion and SURETY is : THE SABBATH OF THE CREATION., 
 
 Heaven arid earth and the whole host of the elements that won 
 harmony from discord were completed, but God's work of creation, 
 rtirON'-B ! " was not yet completed. The completion of His works 
 was the Sabbath. WITH THE SEVENTH DAY ONLY DID 
 GOD COMPLETE His WORK, and just as each one of the six days 
 fulfils the end designed for it, so also will the seventh, the Sabbath 
 day fulfil ITS appropriate end. Indeed only by the attainment 
 of the purpose of the Sabbath will a true crown be set to the pre- 
 ceding creations, for behold, God has BLESSED this seventh day and 
 solemnly and inviolably SANCTIFIED it. 
 
 Heaven and earth, the whole world as perceived by the senses 
 was created. But not merely as the arena for unconscious strife 
 and involuntary conflict did God create this world ; for MAN was 
 already here uniting in this world of contradictions, the 
 highest contradictions in himself. He is dust from dust, 
 he belongs to unconscious matter that acts and is acted upon 
 without will, yet he carries within himself the invisible, and etern- 
 ally free spirit of God, and because of this Divine spirit, is destined 
 for a communion that sees and recognises God, and for a moral 
 activity that expresses itself in the free worship of God. He 
 is God's image on earth and at the feet of this creature among 
 creatures the whole terrestrial world is laid. 
 
 If he fulfils his vocation, then joy, all contradictions hna 
 their solution in him, and the created world achieves its purpose. 
 The whole world originating in God is brought back again to God
 
 by him, and not only do all things on earth grow from God, they 
 grow and mature in Him too. The MEDIATOR AND PRIEST is MAN. 
 
 BUT HOW, IF HE BEGINS TO GO ASTRAY in his mission 
 to doubt his God, and thus to doubt his own, innermost nature ; 
 if in his conflict with this sensuous world, the consciousness of his 
 own free and Divine nature becomes obscured, and if, in the inter- 
 course with this sensuous world he loses the consciousness of the 
 invisible and free God ; if this sensuous world becomes everything 
 to him, and he forgets God, out of whose unassisted thought and 
 will-power this sensuous world came into being, and with the aban- 
 donment of his belief in God's supreme power, he loses faith also 
 in his own free divine nature, and he learns to despair of God, to 
 despair of himself. 
 
 LET HIM CONTEMPLATE THE SABBATH IN THE CREATION ! 
 
 This institution is for ever destined to accompany man on 
 his career of toil and struggle on earth, and after six days 
 shall have drawn his glance down to earth, its function is for ever 
 to lift it up again and to show him the One whose, "irOtf'ja/, 
 whose angel, whose messenger, whose agent in carrying out his 
 injunctions is to be the whole of creation, but whose HIGHEST 
 angel, whose HIGHEST messenger, whose most ENLIGHTENED 
 
 SERVANT THE SERVANT WHO FULFILS HIS TASK WITH FREE SELF- 
 SURRENDERING DEVOTION IS TO BE MAN HIMSELF, HIS PRIEST ON 
 EARTH. 
 
 And this Sabbath was introduced into the creation, this Sabbath 
 which was added as the seventh day of creation was made the 
 crown and coping stone, the completion and condition to the six 
 preceding days, the six preceding days revolving round the seventh 
 day, the whole world of sense being bound up with the Sabbath. 
 The whole material welfare of man on earth has also been linked 
 with the Sabbath ; " blessing and holiness, progress and cosmic 
 stability are all ultimately founded on the Sabbath. And behold, 
 man's moral nature, and man's moral and divinely inspired vocation 
 is found after all to be no dream, no fairy tale ! " Heaven and earth 
 are witnesses of his spiritual destiny and guarantees of its realisa- 
 tion ! " Heaven and earth smile kindly upon his labours, so long 
 as in the execution of his work he is filled with the spirit of the 
 Sabbath so long as he lives and toils on earth with earnest moral
 
 endeavour according to the Divine will. MAKE HIM THE LORD AND 
 
 MASTER OF THE WHOLE OF THE SIX DAYS' WORLD, let his acknow- 
 ledge embrace the universal conquests of all the secrets of nature, 
 give him wings to soar through the air, make lightning the messenger 
 of his thoughts, harness clouds to his triumphal car, BUT IF YOU 
 STRIKE THE SABBATH OUT OF HIS WORLD you cause him to deny his 
 God and his own spiritual destiny and the earth, that was to 
 be his paradise, becomes his grave. For the SABBATH, is a part of 
 the WORLD'S CREATION, a part of the WORLD'S ORDER. 
 
 It is not the mere output ot perspiring toil that wrings the fruit 
 out of the ground. The consciousness of God and the moral aim of 
 the toiler are no less indispensable conditions of blessing. The first 
 Sabbath greeted humanity already at the threshold of paradise. 
 And as the spirit of the Sabbath continued more and more to depart 
 from- humanity, blessing departed from nature too, and the WHOLE 
 HISTORY of the WORLD became NOTHING MORE than the RECORD 
 of the VAIN ENDEAVOUR TO REGAIN, WITHOUT the SABBATH, the LOST 
 PARADISE on EARTH. " The earth mourneth, the earth fadeth away 
 so long as the world of man languisheth and fadeth away. But 
 God brings back the new heaven and earth when the spirit of the 
 Sabbath shall have asserted itself victoriously, and " with every 
 new moon, and with every Sabbath all flesh, shall come to 
 worship before Me, saith the Lord." (Is. xxiv., 4 ; Ixvi. 23.) 
 
 3. THE SABBATH IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 THE SABBATH HAD DISAPPEARED FROM THE EARTH, for two 
 
 thousand years the Sabbath had been banished from human 
 life. Man knelt before a creature of sense, and trembled 
 before the numberless forces and material powers which everywhere 
 hampered his existence and clogged his efforts on earth. Man 
 felt himself at war with nature and every fragment snatched from 
 nature only became in his hand a weapon, which made history only 
 a panorama of human strife and contention. War was upon 
 earth, man's creative genius was turned to violence, his 
 creative spirit to cunning and craft, selfishness and love of pleasure. 
 *' To be and to enjoy," were his watch-words on earth, and in this
 
 20 
 
 watchword each one had thought only for himself. WITH 
 REGARD TO NATURE, MEN TREMBLED before the dark 
 powers ruling therein. The mysterious essence of the smallest 
 worm, the mysterious properties of the living fibre of wood 
 terrified him ; and this man trembling before the smallest 
 worm, before the slightest quiver of nature, himself became 
 a terror to his fellow-man. MAN TREMBLED BEFORE TREM- 
 BLING MAN. War of humanity with nature, war of 
 man with man had become the meaning of life on 
 earth, passion and greed, fear and hatred its levers. How to 
 save oneself from nature, how to make her powers subservient, how 
 to save oneself from the rivalry of a competing brother, and how 
 to turn a brother's competition to one's own advantage, this was 
 the sum and substance of man's wisdom ; for the Sabbath had 
 vanished from the earth. 
 
 THE SABBATH HAD DISAPPEARED AND WITH IT THE CON- 
 SCIOUSNESS OF THE ONE AND ONLY MASTER and Lord, whose 
 thought and will alone are active as well in the infinite in the whole 
 as in the minutest fragment. The Sabbath had disappeared and 
 with it went the consciousness of the only DIGNITY AND DIS- 
 TINCTION WHICH MAN POSSESSED in this great divine universe. 
 Man is the one being with whom the One and only Master of the 
 universe is bound by a special covenant, into whom He has breathed 
 a spark of His own free and eternal nature, and with this breath has 
 destined him, not to be a slave of nature or a tyrant of his brother, 
 but His FIRST FREE SERVANT in a divinely governed world to whom 
 He entrusted the promotion of liberty, of truth and justice, of love 
 and blessing. With the passing of the Sabbath there went 
 too the consciousness that ONE free God-pleasing emotion in the 
 human heart, ONE free God-pleasing human word, ONE free 
 God-pleasing human act possessed of more power than all the mighty 
 thunder of the chained and imprisoned forces of nature, and that 
 man need only be GOOD to see the earth at his feet. With the 
 passing of faith in God's Sabbath, there disappeared too the faith 
 in man's divine nature, in man's moral freedom, in the divine 
 empire over his moral thought, speech and life. The belief had 
 ffone, that the One and only Master of the world had promised His 
 covenant, His assistance, and His blessing to Man's free moral 
 choice and only to man's free moral choice ; and that it is not the
 
 21 
 
 knowledge which comprehends, it is not the art that overcomes 
 nature, it is not man's calculating cleverness, it is not man's 
 will that holds man in subjection but the knowledge 
 which realises God, the art which serves Him, the wisdom which 
 comprehends Him, and the deed which emulates Him and sheds 
 blessing on mankind ; it is these which are able to secure man's 
 welfare on earth. 
 
 The Sabbath was lacking, and for two thousand years the 
 Sabbath stood by God's throne : " To everything Thou hast assigned 
 a friend and an upholder, only I stand without a friend, without 
 an upholder, disdained, forgotten." 
 
 Then it was that a human family in whose bosom a spark of 
 God's pure consciousness had taken refuge, was cast by Him into 
 the iron crucible of an Egypt that had forgotten God. During a 
 long night lasting for centuries, He made them experience the utter 
 misery, the infinite woe, the absolute curse of a tyranny that inherent 
 in a nature-cult which is without the humanising influence of the 
 Sabbath. At last He had taught the gods and tyrants of Egypt to 
 tremble before His finger, and before the pure God-adoring spirit 
 which swayed the heart of a slave, for whose deliverance and 
 redemption the hand of the world's Master was to be uplifted. He 
 had SHOWN that the most abject slave, without any possession or 
 rights whatsoever, when supported by a free and untrammelled faith 
 in God was more powerful than all the power that denied Him, 
 and was armed with all the terrors that are wielded by the forces 
 of nature and of man. He had burst chains and had divided the 
 sea's waves for Israel and had now led them into the wilderness, 
 there to begint he redemption of mankind there to make them 
 
 FIND THE SABBATH. 
 
 - " Would that we had died by the hand of God in the land of 
 Egypt where we sat by the flesh pots and did eat bread to the 
 full ! You have brought us into the wilderness to let this whole 
 assembly die of hunger ! " 
 
 " I am here ! " said God unto Moses, " I will rain bread from 
 heaven for you : the people shall go out and gather the daily 
 requirements every day, that I may prove them, whether they will
 
 22 
 
 walk in My law or not. But on the sixth day when they shall prepare 
 what they have brought home, it shall be twice as much as what 
 they otherwise gather daily." 
 
 - - " This is the bread which God has given you for food 1 
 But this is the word that God has commanded : Gather of it every 
 man according to his needs. According to the number of your 
 souls let every man take for them that are in his tents a measure for 
 each head. 
 
 - - - Then they gathered, some more, some less. But when 
 they did measure it with a measure, he that gathered much, had 
 no more, and he that gathered little, had no less. But each one had 
 gathered according to his need of food. 
 
 Let no one leave of it till the morning ! 
 
 Some of them left of it till the morning ; then it bred 
 
 worms and became rotten, and Moses was wroth with them. 
 
 So they gathered every morning, each one according to his 
 needs : When the sun grew hot it melted. 
 
 Then it was that on the sixth day they gathered twice as much 
 bread, two measures for each one. And all the rulers of the con- 
 gregation came and told Moses. 
 
 But he answered them : That is what God has said ! The 
 Sabbath rest, God's holy Sabbath is to-morrow! What you want 
 to bake, bake it to-day, what you want to boil, boil it to-day, and 
 everything that remaineth keep it for to-morrow. And they kept 
 it till the morning as Moses bade them. It mouldered not, and 
 no worm was in it. Then Moses said : Eat it to-day for to-day is 
 God's holy Sabbath, to-day you will not find it in the field. Six 
 days you shall gather but on the seventh day is the Sabbath, on 
 it there shall be none. But on the seventh day some of the people 
 went to gather and they found none. 
 
 Then God said to Moses : How long do you refuse to keep My 
 commandments and My teachings. See for that God hath given 
 you the Sabbath, therefore, He giveth you on the sixth day the
 
 23 
 
 bread of two days. Let every man abide in his place on the seventh 
 day. So the people kept the Sabbath on the seventh day. 
 
 But the children of Israel ate manna for forty years, until they 
 came to an inhabited land. They ate manna until they came to 
 the borders of the land of Canaan. (Ex., chap. 16.) 
 
 Thus you see the Sabbath given to every cottage, to every 
 human soul, and the life of a whole generation pledged and pro- 
 mised two thousand times over ! 
 
 Why do you tremble before the forces of NATURE, why do 
 you court her favour the Sabbath tears you from her altars, and 
 throws you into the arms of Him who begat you ; shows you nature's 
 one and only Lord and Master, the all-powerful, the all prevading, 
 all over-ruling who is yet near you with the most fervent love, 
 shows you "l"njO D'DB> 33H, the Director of the heavenly paths 
 by your side. The Sabbath assigns you a position above and 
 outside nature in the covenant which she has established with her 
 God and yours. 
 
 He who fixes the number of stars, 
 
 He who gives the stars their names, 
 
 The great all-powerful Lord, 
 
 Encompasseth the infinite with His spirit, 
 
 He giveth length of days to every meek human soul. 
 
 And casteth the wicked to the ground ! 
 
 Who covereth the heaven with clouds, 
 
 Who prepareth rain for the earth, 
 
 Who maketh herbs to grow upon the mountains, 
 
 Who giveth to the beast their food, 
 
 The young ravens what they cry for, 
 
 He delighteth not to trust in the strength of horses, 
 
 He desirethhim not to trust the strength of his legs, 
 
 He is near in love to them that fear Him, 
 
 That hope in His mercy. (Psalm 147, 4-6 ; 8-11). 
 
 As near as He is to the whole great universe So NEAR is HE 
 TO EACH INDIVIDUAL SOUL. He poureth out the whole 
 fulness of His world-swaying power, the whole fulness of His world- 
 sustaining love for the benefit of each individual, even the poorest, 
 human soul. Even to count every single person in a human 
 habitation is not too insignificant for Him. He makes heaven and 
 earth revolve in order to feed ONE starving human creature day by 
 day, for with God heaven and earth do not outweigh even ONE 
 human soul that worships Him and inclines towards Him in love.
 
 24 
 
 But to RECOGNISE God and to TRUST in God, that is the corner 
 stone of the whole divine teaching. The SABBATH therefore 
 stands supreme before all laws in the aim to establish this recogni- 
 tion and trust in God on a firm foundation, so that you may be 
 EDUCATED by this PROBATION to realise your faith in Him. 
 
 To build temples to God, to beautify altars for God, to sing 
 Halleluiah to God, to declare one's trust in God, in words, in poems, 
 in hymns, this is not the essential thing ; to have His name in 
 one's mouth, but not to have the courage to forego the smallest 
 profit in life, or to give up the smallest enjoyment for 
 the sake of that name this is not the essential thing. 
 To serve GOD IN TEMPLES while IN LIFE you serve the CREATURE, 
 THAT SURELY is NOT JUDAISM, that is not the Jewish freedom 
 that has been sent to redeem and bless mankind. But to show IN 
 and THROUGHOUT your life, your knowledge of and trust in God, 
 gladly to retreat into a desert with wife and child if God's word 
 calls you there, to be prepared for His sake to renounce 
 goods and chattels, gain and pleasure, strength and life; not to trem- 
 ble if, for His sake, the world around you were to become a desert ; 
 not to tremble if, in order to fulfil His word you had to forfeit the 
 favour of nature and man; to reject the flesh pots of Egypt and the 
 bread made by man, and to accept it only from God's hands ; not 
 to tremble even if you know not to-day whence your bread may 
 come to-morrow, to regard as rottenness and corruption that which 
 the God-denying narrow-hearted man gathers and enjoys, but cheer- 
 fully to await His blessing from the smallest thing that He 
 bestows upon you as a reward for your efforts to please Him 
 THIS is JUDAISM And to train for this Judaism, to prove your- 
 self in this Judaism, to test yourself again and again whether 
 you are strong enough for such Judaism, for this the Sabbath 
 was sent you. THE SABBATH is THE TOUCH-STONE OF THE JEW. 
 On the Sabbath you are to bo tested again and again whether 
 your Judaism, and your knowledge of and trust in God are 
 genuine. '.K 1 ? DK 
 
 CALL YOURSELF NO LONGER A JEW IF YOU DO NOT KEEP THE 
 SABBATH, no longer call yourself a Jew if your knowledge of 
 and trust in God do not stand the test of the Sabbath. By the 
 Sabbath your God wishes to see whether He may still count you 
 among His people or not. BECAUSE WITH THE SABBATH JUDAISM 
 
 STANDS OR FALLS.
 
 25 
 
 Of all God's holy institutions none, therefore, was so carefully 
 prepared, none subjected to so long and continuous a trial, none so 
 repeatedly attuned to human consciousness and human recognition, 
 as the SABBATH. In none of God's holy institutions was Israel 
 so expressly and continuously trained and educated as in the Sab- 
 bath. Just as the first institution to greet Israel on his entering 
 the desert was the Sabbath, so we may say that the whole of his 
 forty years' journey in the wilderness was nothing more 
 than an education for the Sabbath : Hence every complaint 
 and murmuring in the wilderness against the long-suffering 
 Father was nothing more than a sin against the Sabbath 
 spirit. Indeed, if you go through the whole history of 
 your people, you will find that every misfortune which 
 befel Israel, again and again arose solely from the fact that the 
 Sabbath spirit had not completely penetrated their minds. 
 
 For FORTY YEARS the Sabbath had its pledge and guarantee 
 in Israel. No child in Israel could be in doubt as to which was the 
 Lord's day )03 IBHpl |03 1D13, every Sabbath was announced 
 already on the Friday by the two-fold measure of the manna, and 
 every Sabbath stood forth, sanctified by God, and proclaimed as a 
 day on which man was to refrain from going forth to seek his food, 
 '"6 DVfl B>np, because the day was to be holy unto God ! On 
 the Sabbath manna was not to be found in the field. 
 
 For FORTY YEARS the people were taught UT\bn by *b O 
 DINn rrfP r\$b tha* it was not only the bread gained from nature by 
 human art which nourishes man : DIKH PPPP '1 'fi NY10 bl by "O 
 but the favour of God which man had to seek. 
 
 For FORTY YEARS the people were taught that God desires 
 man's industry, that he should not turn his week days into holidays, 
 but that on the other hand he must not be utterly absorbed in this 
 struggle for a subsistence, he must not sacrifice the present for the 
 future. The people were taught that God's blessing would be as 
 certain to-morrow as it was to-day, that, trusting in God, they could 
 rejoice every day, and trusting in God, might rest on the seventh 
 day. THAT ONLY TRUST IN GOD WOULD ENSURE MAINTENANCE 
 
 AND BLESSING, BUT THAT MATERIAL POSSESSIONS GAINED THROUGH
 
 26 
 
 THE DENIAL OF GOD, WOULD BEAR IN THEMSELVES THE GERM OF 
 PUTREFACTION. 
 
 And this lesson which seems so simple, for which our fore- 
 fathers were trained for forty years, is to remain Israel's everlasting 
 heritage. "Because, however simple the lesson may seem, yet it 
 and it alone bears within it the possibilities of holiness and happi- 
 ness, peace and blessing for humanity. 
 
 WITH THE SABBATH BEGINS THE TRANSFORMATION OF 
 
 MAN. The Sabbatli man is a new man. He looks upon nature 
 and history, God and humanity, himself and his relations to 
 nature and to God and to his fellow creatures with different eyes. 
 
 He does not crawl or tremble before nature, he does not bend 
 his knee before the " groves and bats " the name of God has 
 made him FREE, free from the terrors of nature's forces ; his 
 covenant with God uplifts his soul above all nature's empire, 
 " in heaven he has but Him, and beside Him he needs nothing 
 on earth ! " 
 
 He does not lord it over nature. The name of God has made 
 him HUMBLE. Notwithstanding all the power with which he 
 rules nature, he humbly bows his head before the one higher Creator 
 and Master, and desires to use the strength granted to him only 
 in the saving service of Him who has placed him in nature's garden, 
 " to protect and to perfect it ! " 
 
 He does not crawl and tremble before the power of man. The 
 name of GOD has made him FREE, free from the fear of man, and 
 the worship of man. God is as near to the humble cottage, as He 
 is to the most magnificient mansion ; the souls of His children in 
 the meanest cradle are of as much account as the scions of 
 things swathed in silk. God is as near to the man of quiet, humble 
 calling as He is to the much trumpeted hero, and if God is with 
 him in his quiet pure labour, what can man do to him ? 
 
 He is no enemy in the family of man. The name of God has 
 made him free, free from envy and arrogance, from hatred and 
 emnity, from revenge and violence. Just as he feels himself bound 
 up with God, so he sees God's name stamped upon everyone of his
 
 27 
 
 brethren. Hence this name draws everyone near to him, as to a 
 brother, and teaches him to regard every one's circle as a divinely 
 hallowed place. He neither looks disdainfully upon the poorest of 
 his brethren, nor envies the richest. He grudges no one his bless- 
 ing, no one his share of the possessions, pleasures and honours, 
 which God has conferred upon him. " He who gathers much has 
 in his eyes no more, he who gathers little has in his eyes no less 
 than the measure allotted by God to each person." 
 
 " COMPETITION ", this word of blessing and of curse which 
 drives the man without a Sabbath into the sweat and dust of the 
 race after fortune, which transforms the friendly eye that was made 
 to smile genially upon every fellow-worker, into a killing look of 
 envy ; which clenches in violence and cruel treachery the hand that 
 was made to grasp every fellow-man's hand in frank and hearty and 
 sympathetic grip ; which locks up the heart, that divine human 
 heart in which mercy and love that are for ever aspiring unto God 
 should dwell, with the locks of envy, malice and hatred ; which 
 dwarfs the spirit, that divine spirit which was destined to be a torch 
 of truth and justice and redeeming wisdom, into a will o' the wisp of 
 falsehood, injustice and violence ; " competition " which has trans- 
 formed society from a brotherhood that rejoiced in the blessing of 
 God into a horde of endless fratricidal strife ; " competition," how- 
 ever, for the Sabbath observer has lost its baneful power. He is 
 not here to build his house on the ruins of his neighbour's fortune ; 
 heis not here to put his proud and domineering foot upon his 
 brother's neck. His brother's cannot raise him } his brother's elev- 
 ation cannot hinder him. His God is rich enough to maintain with 
 blessing the millions of homes striving in purity. And as the bitter 
 poison of envy is driven out of the breast of man who keeps the 
 Sabbath, the paradise blossoms of LOVE and CHARITY grow up in 
 its place inspiring him with their gracious perfume to realise his 
 greatest blessing in the blessing which he lovingly prepares for his 
 fellow mortals. 
 
 That DELUSION of the SABBATH-DESECRATOR which teaches 
 man " to have his god only in his hand " which makes man " wor- 
 ship his net of violence and drag of cunning because by them 
 his portion is a fat one and his food savoury," THAT delusion 
 makes " man like the fish of the sea, like worms that have no
 
 28 
 
 
 
 master " ; because under it humanity has lost its only hold, its 
 God. 
 
 On the contrary, by the Sabbath, every human home and heart 
 recognises in God not only the God of the universe, but THE 
 
 ETERNALLY EXALTED GOD WHO IS EVER NEAR TO EVERY HUMAN 
 
 DWELLING and to EVERY HUMAN HEART, under Whose care and 
 guidance every dwelling and every soul truly reposes. With this 
 knowledge and this HOLY aspiration salvation is brought to 
 every dwelling and peace to every soul. 
 
 Give the world the Sabbath and you will break the fetters and 
 heal the wounds of mankind. 
 
 4. THE SABBATH OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 
 
 Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. 
 
 Six days thou ahalt labour and do all thy work ; 
 
 But the seventh day it the Sabbath of the Lord thy Ood, 
 
 In it thou shalt do no work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy 
 
 manservant, nor thy maidservant, t hy cattle and also the stranger 
 
 within thy gates, 
 For in six days Ood created heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in 
 
 and upon them, and rested on the seventh day 
 Therefore God has blessed the seventh day and hallowed it. 
 
 (Ex. 20, 8-11.) 
 
 In the wilderness, Israel found the Sabbath again, and the 
 Sabbath found Israel. In the wilderness where the life of man was 
 visibly maintained by divine mercy ; where every crumb of 
 manna was a reminder of God, the Creator and Lord, of God, the 
 Ruler and Disposer, the Father, Protector, and Sustainer of every 
 human being, of every human heart ; in the wilderness where 
 man was so absolutely nothing, and God was so evidently every- 
 thing ; in the wilderness it was difficult to forget God, it was diffi- 
 cult not to remember the Sabbath. 
 
 But the wilderness was not Israel's final destination, and to 
 proclaim the knowledge of God in this unique situation so full of 
 miracles was not the whole sum of Israel's mission. Israel was 
 to ENTER the COMITY OF NATIONS with his idea of God matured 
 on his own soil. He was to develop a political life in all its 
 unity and diversity. The pillar of cloud and the pillar of
 
 29 
 
 fire remained in the wilderness, the manna ceased as soon 
 as Israel set foot on an inhabited land From that 
 time forth there were fields to be tilled, vineyards to be 
 planted, meadows to be looked after, flocks to be tended, crafts 
 to be practised, justice to be administered, and order to be 
 established. Henceforth, like all other human societies, Israel was 
 to wring from nature by the exercise of human intelligence and 
 human strength the means of a livelihood, the privilege of owner- 
 ship and happiness ; and by the exercise of human intelligence and 
 strength to bind the community to the individual and to adjust 
 the liberty of the individual to the law established by the com- 
 munity. In this political STATE where man and nature show 
 themselves in all respects and effects, the latter either subordinate 
 to or master of the mind of man ; in this POLITICAL LIFE, 
 where man seems to be everything, where his intellect, 
 his strength, his power, his art, his inventions, his 
 institutions appear to be predominating factors ; in this 
 political life where man rules like a creator there was 
 and always is near at hand the danger that the idea of " God " 
 might recede more and more into the background ; that man might 
 say, H* 1 D^iyi TD " my strength and my power," that he might 
 forget, h*n fllPy 1 ? PIS ~}b pun Kin ^3, to whom he owes his strength, 
 who has given him his intellect, which has made nature his servant, 
 who is nature's and his own Creator and Master, in whose service 
 and for whose satisfaction he is to exercise his strength. In this 
 political life THE DANGER is EVER PRESENT THAT ECONOMY 
 
 AND POLITICS BECOME THE TWO GODS OF MAN, and GOD who 
 
 should be the beginning and the end of all human effort, is 
 effaced, and all the claims of truth and justice, of morality, of holi- 
 ness and of love, claims which bring human life into harmony with 
 God, and crown it with dignity and importance, with salvation and 
 blessing, have at most to be satisfied with only a fragment of the 
 incense-laden feast, and often do not get even that fragment, 
 because they add nothing to wealth that is purely industrial and 
 political, but on the contrary frequently require sacrifices of strength 
 and power. The danger is so imminent, and it should not befall 
 Israel ; indeed, Israel was sent for the very purpose of averting 
 this danger ! 
 
 It was not without purpose then that God had delivered them
 
 30 
 
 out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage ; it was not without pur- 
 pose that God made them realise the full curse of a life, whether in a 
 state of nature or organised, which is at war with God and would deny 
 Him ; it was not without purpose that God had shown them, and 
 through them all mankind, how all the gods of the earth tremble 
 before His finger, how He is not only the God of nature, but also 
 the God of history, not only the God of heaven, but also the God 
 of earth, and not only the God of earth but the God also of states 
 and cities, of cottages and houses ; and that no prince on his throne, 
 and no slave under his load are too high or too low that He should 
 not be near to them, judging, punishing, helping, saving it was not 
 without purpose that He made them pass through this great and 
 unique experience when bringing them into the domain of human 
 history. 
 
 On the basis of this experience a whole national and political 
 life was to be evolved in which there was to be no room for the 
 Egyptian worship of nature and man, no room for a denial of God 
 and a human tyranny so characteristic of Egypt. 
 
 On the basis of this experience a national and political life was 
 to be built up in which science and art, industry and commerce, 
 force and power, were not to blind man's eyes, so that he 
 should no longer see the one and only God, or imprison his heart 
 in an iron casement, that it should no longer feel its own divine 
 dignity or be sensible of the influence of the guardian angels of 
 mankind, the teachings of truth and justice, morality and love. 
 
 On the basis of this experience a national and political life was 
 to be evolved in which the sun of God's greatness need not 
 set in order that the stars of human greatness might shine ; 
 in which science and art, industry and commerce, force and power 
 should not erect, for self adoration, the golden-iron-clay idol of 
 glorified human grandeur, and in which the worship of the Creator 
 should not pale before the self-worship of the creature. 
 
 On the ccntary on the basis of this experience a national and 
 political life was rather to be evolved, in which man's smallest and 
 greatest activities were to be developed in contact with God, in which
 
 31 
 
 science and art, industry and commerce, agriculture and state- 
 craft, IN SHORT, ALL ASPECTS OF HUMAN POWER AND 
 GREATNESS WERE TO JOIN FORCES SOLELY FOR THE GLORI- 
 FICATION OF THE ONE AND ONLY GOD ; in which sacrifices 
 were to be made to God and His precepts fulfilled in the 
 palace of the ruler, in the hut of the peasant, in the study of the scho- 
 lar, in the laboratory of the scientist ; in which every moment 
 of the day, whether with the plough or the needle, the sword or the 
 anvil, the pen or the spade at all times, at every, hour, with every 
 thought and feeling, with every word and action private and public 
 life the service of the one and only God was to be performed AND 
 
 THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE NATION, THE HOME AND THE STATE 
 WERE TO FIND THEIR OWN GLORIFICATION SOLELY IN THE GLORI- 
 FICATION OF THE ONE AND ONLY GOD ! 
 
 '33K, f< I," God, had therefore said to Israel, I, whom you know 
 from Egypt, from the home of slavery, you know in what manner 
 I am God, God in nature, God in social life. I SHALL BE YOUR 
 GOD, to Me you shall dedicate yourselves and Me you shall serve 
 in all your relations, with all your powers, efforts and aims. You 
 shall erect no idols beside Me, whether in private or public life, 
 build no altars to them or devote your strength to them. For I God, 
 YOUR God claim the WHOLE man, the whole life of the family, the 
 nation and the state. The smallest thing which man, nation or state 
 withholds from My services affects their happiness, and that of 
 their children and children's children. When, however, the 
 surrender to My will shall be complete, and the fulfilment 
 of My commandments perfect, then I lay the foundation 
 of the happiness of all mankind to the thousandth gen- 
 eration. Hence, you . should not lightly esteem the simplest 
 word you utter, for I do not lightly esteem even the smallest thing ; 
 I am near to the simplest word, the least shaped thought of the 
 most insignificant and forsaken of men. I am in the centre of all 
 human intercourse, and am witness of and surety to men's 
 truthfulness, I make heaven and earth the executors of man's least 
 and most transient utterance's. Wherever My name is mentioned 
 there I am, and who so mentions My name for deception, for false- 
 hood, for levity shall never remain free. 
 
 p^ n3B>n DV DK IIO TOT ! Therefore take heed that your
 
 32 
 
 political and economic life does not banish God from your heart, that 
 you do not come to imagine that God sends manna for every soul 
 whether young or old, only in the wilderness, but in your organised 
 social life, you alone, with your intellect, your strength, your 
 mastery of life, are the provider of manna. IN THE MIDST OF 
 
 THE BUSIEST, THE MOST WONDERFUL DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN 
 HISTORY ^AND EFFORT, " REMEMBER THE SABBATH DAY TO KEEP 
 
 IT HOLY" and make the Sabbath AN ETERNAL MONUMENT OF 
 THE KNOWLEDGE AND SANCTIFICATION OF GOD, both in the centre 
 of your busy public life and the peaceful retreat of your domestic 
 hearth. 
 
 For six days work the earth and rule it ! For six days labour 
 and do your work, your " Melachah," master and mould and shape 
 the things of the earth for your ends, impress upon them the stamp 
 of your intellect, of your will, and make them " Melachthecha,'* 
 servants, and messengers and executors of your will ! For six days. 
 till and plough, sow and plant, reap and gather, thresh and grind, 
 bake and cook. For six days cut and spin, wash and bleach, weave 
 and sew. For six days hunt and kill, tan and shear. For six days 
 write and draw, paint and sketch. For six days wield the hammer 
 and chisel, and practise every art and craft. For six days administer 
 the affairs of state,the relations of the community to the individual , 
 of the individual to the community and promote their 
 mutual purposes. For six days carry from the sphere of 
 the individual to that of the community, from the sphere 
 of the community to that of the individual, and extend the 
 welfare of the community, in its corporate capacity. But 
 the seventh is THE SABBATH OF THE LORD THY GOD. On the 
 seventh do no manner of work ! On the seventh day let 
 the husbandman quit his plough, the reaper his scythe, the 
 miller his mill, the baker his oven, the spinner his spindle, the 
 weaver his spool, the hunter his net, the tanner his pit, the furnace- 
 man his fire, the sculptor his chisel, the trader his business, and let 
 every one remember HIM WHO has given him this world, from 
 WHOM he derives the intellect and strength, the insight and skill, 
 to master it ; WHO has formed the materials, created the forces,, 
 laid down the laws which human intellect turns to account to its 
 own use Let him remember, HIM in WHOSE service he is working
 
 33 
 
 and producing, under WHOSE eye he is dealing and trading, and 
 WHOSE purposes he must seek to further. Let him remember, 
 moreover, on WHOSE goodwill and help and blessing, the well- 
 being of the community and of the individual, of the prince and of the 
 peasant in the last resort depends. And let him lay his productions 
 and materials, his world and himself as holy sacrifices on the altar of 
 HIM who created heaven and earth, and who rested on the seventh 
 day and blessed and sanctified it. And finally let him therefore 
 realise THAT THE CREATOR OF OLD is THE LIVING GOD OF TO- 
 DAY, who watches every man and every human effort, to see how 
 man uses or abuses the world lent to him and the forces bestowed 
 upon him, AND THAT HE is THE SOLE ARCHITECT TO WHOM 
 
 EVERY MAN HAS TO RENDER AN ACCOUNT OF HIS DOINGS OF THE 
 WEEK. 
 
 Thus it has been for thousands of years and can we in our time 
 dispense with the Sabbath ? OUR TIME in which the spirit of 
 invention and art has exalted imman greatness to an unimagined 
 height ; in which the clouds have become our steeds, the lightning 
 our messengers, and the sunbeams colours, and pencils^ for our 
 painters ? OUR TIME which is getting nearer and nearer, not only to 
 the secrets of heaven, but what is still more, to the secrets of the 
 earth and life ; which is beginning to discover the laws of nature 
 and to find the magic [mula which her forces obey, and Tl^ in 
 which every newly discovered marval of nature is utilised, not as is 
 said, for aimless scientific amusements, but for immediately practical 
 purposes, for the increase of man's wealth and pleasure ; OUR 
 TIME in which the conquest of nature by man's INDUSTRY is 
 revered as the only saving God whose altars never lack for wor- 
 shippers OUR TIME INDEED CAN IT DISPENSE WITH THE SABBATH? 
 
 HAD THE SABBATH NOT BEEN GIVEN TO US LONG SINCE BY 
 OUR MERCIFUL FATHER IN HEAVEN, WE SHOULD HAVE TO 
 IMPLORE HIM FOR IT ON OUR BENDED KNEES, SO that it might 
 
 save us from ourselves, save us and our children, from self -deifi- 
 cation and the denial of God, the danger of which has never been 
 greater than in our days. 
 
 If the Sabbath were a recognised institution, every newly 
 discovered marvel of nature would only increase our reverence for 
 the great Master, who is the Author of it, who ha rojceived the
 
 34 
 
 ideas, and calculated and determined the laws which we discover, 
 investigate and fathom, and our gratitude towards HIM would be 
 still further kindled for having vouchsafed us a spark of His spirit 
 and a portion of His creative energy whereby we are able to follow 
 Him, in the operation of His mind and will. 
 
 If the Sabbath were a recognised institution, the deeper our 
 insight, the more ingenious our inventions, the more extensive 
 our discoveries, the more modest would we become, and the more 
 reverently would we walk across the stage of nature and of human 
 activity which, with ever-growing splendour, reveals God's creative 
 wisdom ; the more holy would we consider every little speck of dust 
 which we gratefully use in God's great household, the more holy 
 would we ourselves become, as well as every human being toiling 
 along and near us ; the more holy would every faculty of our in- 
 tellect, mind and body which has been called by God to such high 
 authority in His kingdom become, and the more would we at all times 
 endeavour to use everything, the smallest as well as the greatest for 
 the purpose only of our salvation, that under God's protection and 
 blessing it may be made to contribute to His great scheme of sal- 
 vation for the whole of mankind. Our God-like UNDERSTANDING 
 would even be surpassed by our God-like COMPASSION, and every new 
 discovery, every new invention would not only add to our wealth 
 and pleasure, but be a source of ever new BLESSING and SALVATION. 
 
 Who can fathom the full grandeur and blessing of a Sabbath in 
 our time ? Would that on every seventh day civilized man would 
 descend from his throne of cloud and lightning, and in meek devotion 
 place himself and the world he rules at the feet of Him before whose 
 creative grandeur all human, art pales like a vision and compared 
 with whose radiant crown his own lustre is but like a single pearl of 
 glory. \Vould that with ever increasing devoutness civilized man 
 would embrace on the first day of the week a world that is being 
 constantly rejuvenated by the spirit of Sabbath ; and that there 
 would be but ONE AIM, namely to use his power a thousand 
 times multiplied and his insight a thousand times quickened, 
 SOLELY IN THE SERVICE OF TRUTH AND JUSTICE, HOLINESS AND 
 LOVE. 
 
 Sabbath in our time ! To cease for a whole dayyfrom all 
 business, from all work in the frenzied hurry-scurry of our time !
 
 35 
 
 To close the, exchanges, the workshops and factories, to stop all 
 railway services great heavens ! how would it be possible? The 
 pulse of life would stop beating and the world perish !" 
 
 The world perish ? On the contrary, it would be saved, p by 
 1PW 1,^1 narn DV n 'I 70 ! The GOD who sanctified the Sabbath, 
 He has BLESSED IT TOO ! |03 13"D1 |03 lanp, He who withholds 
 the manna on the Sabbath day, knows how to bless the work of 
 the week with a twofold measure of manna, and if only you 
 would reverently lay at His feet on the Sabbathi the sacrifice of 
 your labour, He would bless its fruits with the fulness of peace 
 and joy, of salvation and blessing. 
 
 Therefore im:3t /no^aa pn by ima? ! wiph naw/w n -o, 
 
 pn by, the more you see how labour in your time 
 swallows up every circumstance, every human concern, the more you 
 yourself feel the pressure of the industrial current, the more you must 
 tremble at the thought that you and your child may finally be com- 
 pletely submerged in it, and that you may lose in it your God and 
 the whole dignity of your calling as a man. The more significant the 
 industrial factor becomes to you, the more precious, as you say, 
 becomes your time. The more your profit or loss depends on days, 
 hours and minutes, the stronger becomes the industrial fetter. 
 The greater the Sabbath-sacrifice the more zealously must 
 you grasp the CUP of the Sabbath-sanctification, and the 
 more devoutly must you gather IDDKl "pay ~[r\3) "p3, wife and 
 child and all the members of your household around you and 
 hallow the Sabbath, extolling it and returning fervent thanks for 
 its saving and sanctifying gift. You must teach them through 
 your self-sacrificing example that not only in the desert was 
 the dew-covered granule of manna a message of God, 
 not only in the desert did every dwelling and every soul 
 depend on God's mercy, not only in the desert did God know how 
 to compensate for the keeping of the Sabbath by a two-fold blessing 
 of the week, but that even in the midst of the city's boisterous 
 traffic it is only God's mercy that protects your dwellings and sustains 
 its inhabitants, it is only God's mercy that knows and numbers every 
 soul, old and young under your roof. It is not your strength, not 
 your cleverness, not your assiduous industry, but only God's blessing 
 which is assured to everyone who surrenders himself to Him ir
 
 36 
 
 faithfulness, He feeds you and your family, and to yon too, 
 the Sabbath will mean not a loss, but the provision of A DOUBLE 
 
 MEASURE OF BREAD, AND YOU WILL BE THE MORE BLESSED, 
 THE MORE JOYOUSLY AND CONSCIENTIOUSLY YOU KEEP THE SABBATH. 
 
 Gather your wife and child and all the members of your household 
 around you, and teach them by the solemnity of your Sabbath- 
 celebration that not your industry, your trade, ci your profession 
 is your god and the centre of your life, but that God is still your 
 Lord even now, the God who not only created the world, but 
 Who rules it with omnipotence, and governs it with blessing, 
 and Who, from the time of Egypt downward, has taught you to 
 realise His almighty power and His blessed and sheltering 
 providence, that He may remain your and your children's God for 
 ever and \fc ever. 
 
 Just as you greet the Sabbath on its entry and usher it in 
 in sanctity into your domestic hearth with the cup of " thinking " 
 and "remembering" TOt , so when the Sabbath departs you , 
 gather wife and child and the members of your household around 
 you, and before you once more make use of "Fire," the symbol 
 of man's conquest over nature, you raise the cup again with the 
 same joyousness as when you received it, manifesting your desire, 
 as you bow the Sabbath out, to " preserve " and retain TlOtP, 
 the sanctifying influence which it has brought you ; not to let it 
 vanish indeed with the departure of the Sabbath, but to take it 
 with you into your week-day life ; and gladly do you refer to the 
 evidence which it gives of your having fulfilled your Sabbath 
 celebration : Tljttt^ b run, You thus testify that GOD is to you 
 the God of your salvation ; you testify this by the assurance 
 and the repose and trustful faith with which you once 
 again enter upon the week ; you have gained two- 
 fold what you may have lost in material traffic, and you 
 call upon your household to drink joy and gladness out 
 of THESE springs of salvation ! God is your strength, He 
 makes you joyous and glad, He has hitherto helped you, He will 
 give you and all who belong to you His blessing in the future, too. 
 Joy and gladness, brightness and honour WERE the Jewish heritage. 
 THEY WILL BE so AND REMAIN so. Therefore, you " raise on 
 high the cup of salvation " and consecrate yourself to God, who
 
 37 
 
 mixes the cup of your destiny, and you brace yourself to take with 
 you the " fragrant spice of recreation," which the Sabbath has 
 brought you, into your working and producing days. You brace 
 yourself to display your activity in God's world, whose symbol 
 you hold up to view in the " fire," in the spirit of Him who has 
 ordained this activity, and has given you the power to assert this 
 authority. For He who has separated the holy from the uncon- 
 secrated, the light from darkness, Israel from the rest of mankind, 
 has also separated the Sabbath from the six working days, in order 
 that by its means " holiness and light " and the " Jewish spirit " 
 may be preserved and secured for your productive work on earth. 
 
 THE SABBATH AND THE TEMPLE. 
 
 " Only keep My Sabbaths ! "Ex. 31, 15. 
 
 When the prophet Isaiah was consecrated to his high calling 
 as God's messenger, and his eyes were opened so that he was able 
 clearly to realise the condition of his people, he heard the angels' 
 choir praising God with the exclamation : that though holy, 
 holy, holy was the Lord of hosts, yet the whole earth was full 
 of His glory : and before this exclamation the pillars of the 
 temple trembled and the halls of the sanctuary were filled with 
 smoke. 
 
 The little word "-|X /( a only" with which God in the beginning 
 secured the holiness of the Sabbath whilst building THE Temple, 
 has grown in our time into a word of thunder that causes the 
 very pillars of our temples to shake. 
 
 Build me a Temple and I will dwell among you, God had said : 
 take gold and silver and copper, azure and purple, crimson and 
 byssus, cedar-wood, oil and spices and precious stones, and make 
 the ark and the table, the lamp, and the altars, make golden 
 hangings and stretch over them carpets with cherubim /,"|K" 
 ONLY KEEP MY SABBATH ; FOR THAT is THE SIGN BETWEEN ME AND 
 
 YOU THROUGHOUT ALL YOUR GENERATIONS THAT YOU MAY KNOW 
 THAT I, GOD, MAKE YOU HOLY.
 
 38 
 
 Temple and altar, table and lamp, incense and sacrifice 
 all these are meaningless, if, outside the Temple, you desecrate the 
 Sabbath ! To VISIT THE TEMPLE, TO SING SONGS OF HALLELUIAH 
 
 IS BLASPHEMY, IF WORSHIPPERS AND SINGERS DO NOT KEEP THE 
 SABBATH. 
 
 For temples and altars are not the signs of recognition between 
 God and Israel, temples and altars are not the sanctuary which has 
 been committed to every Jew, temples and altars are not the ever- 
 lasting covenant ; by the SABBATH God wishes to test you 
 whether you are His or not ; D^yb KM niK Sritf' ^ pi T3, 
 between God and Israel it is the everlasting sign, C^b N'n BTlp "O, 
 the Sabbath is the sanctuary of every Jew DK niPj;^ 
 tibiy ma DrnTH 1 ? rOPn, the SABBATH is the covenant to be 
 preserved throughout all generations. 
 
 PROVE, FIRST OF ALL, BY THE SABBATH, THAT GOD IS TO YOU 
 A GOD OF LIFE, THAT YOU COMMIT TO HIM YOUR HOME, your family, 
 
 your business, your strength, youi aspirations, your fortune, your 
 sustenance, your happiness, that you are ready to devote your 
 life to Him, to sacrifice it for His sake, THEN BUILD HIM TEMPLES, 
 for then the Temple \\il) be helpful to you in your pursuit of 3 our 
 holy ideals ; it ovill help you to effect the atonement, the 
 sanctification, the glorification of your whole life. You will then 
 find God in the Temple, because you seek Him there as He wishes 
 to be sought. Do not seek Him merely for the fleeting moment of 
 swift speedir.g devctkn, or for the brightly decked hours of ritual 
 service, but seek Him fcj the full round of your time, as master of 
 your thoughts, ccntiollei of your feelings, guide of your actions, 
 owner of youi possessions, and director of your pleasures; seek Him 
 in your home, at youi business, in your education, in your joys. 
 
 |^ But if you desecrate the Sabbath in your life, IF YOU so LITTLE 
 
 WORSHIP GOD, YOUR ONLY SUPPORT, THAT YOU HAVE NOT THE 
 COURAGE EVEN TO TRUST HIM FOR ONE DAY IN THE WEEK, if yOU 
 
 care so little about your divine uplifting which the temple is to se- 
 cure for you, that when you take a single step outside the temple 
 you can be induced, not only by the hope of profit, whether great or 
 small, but even by the slightest attraction, themost insignificant prac- 
 tice, the least and most transient pleasure, jest, or pastime, to trample
 
 39 
 
 under foot, frivolously and publicly, the sign which God has es- 
 tablished as a token between you and Him ; if the bond which the 
 Temple is to rivet, is such a feeble thread that it snaps outside its 
 very threshold, and if in the mode of your life you wilfully destroy 
 your covenant with God and blasphemously throw into His face the 
 tattered fragments of His compact, THEN DO NOT CALL UNTO GOD 
 
 BY NAME AND DO NOT BUILD TLMPLES UNTO HIM. For YOUR 
 
 GOD is a dead idol. The living Jewish God who made the cov- 
 enant of the spirit with you for life, is not this God ; the temple, 
 in \v!rch you seek to drug your dead -God wits the opiate of 
 incense lest He arise and angrily destroy the life that is withheld 
 from him, is a prison. 
 
 You cannot erase these words from God's book : 
 
 " ONLY keep My Sabbath for it is the sign between Me and 
 you, throughout your generations, that you may know that I God, 
 do sanctify you. Keep the Sabbath, for it is your sanctuary. He 
 who denies it, deserves death. Foi* he who does any work on the 
 Sabbath, his soul shall be cut off from among his people. On six 
 days shall work be done, but on the seventh is the Sabbath, God's 
 sanctuary, to be celebrated by abstaining from work, he who does 
 work on the Sabbath has deserved death ! The children of Israel 
 shall keep the Sabbath as a PERPETUAL COVENANT throughout 
 all their generations. Between Me and the children of Israel it is 
 a PERPETUAL SIGN that in six days God created heaven and 
 earth and only on the seventh day ceased to create and retired 
 unto Himself." (Ex. 31, 13-17.) 
 
 All our levity and all our false teaching cannot blot out or 
 explain away these divine declarations. 
 
 The Sabbath remains the hall-mark of the Jew, his sanctuary 
 and covenant. And the Jew who desecrates the Sabbath rejects the 
 sign, denies the sanctuary, destroys the covenant. 
 
 You may build temples, " BUT keep my Sabbaths, for the 
 Sabbath alone is the sign, by which you may know that I, God, do 
 sanctify you ! " " It is a perpetual sign that God created heaven 
 and earth." 
 
 You may wish to glorify God by the temples whichjjyou
 
 40 
 
 build, but only by the Sabbath can you testify that God sanctifies 
 you. 
 
 The name of God is used by men in many languages and in 
 many meanings, and every nation has built temples to ITS god. 
 The name of God which you have in your mouth, and the temples 
 which you build, mean nothing in themselves. It is only by the 
 Sabbath that you can demonstrate that your God, to whom you 
 build your temples, is the one and only God, who created heaven 
 and earth and only then sealed and crowned his work of creation 
 when with the seventh day He had established this monument of 
 the absolute holiness of His relations with mankind. It is not He, 
 therefore, who wants the temple, but You who want it. You, 
 in the first place, have to demonstrate through the Sabbath that 
 your God is He who spoke of Himself in these words : 
 
 " Heaven is My throne, and the earth my footstool, where is 
 the house that you would build unto Me, and where is the place of 
 My rest ? My hand has created the universe, when the universe 
 came into existence, says God, and only him will I regard with love, 
 who, though poor and bruised in spirit, yet lives conscientiously 
 according to My word." (Is. 66, 1-3.) 
 
 You have to demonstrate through the Sabbath that it is your 
 God who made His prophet say : 
 
 " Trust ye not in lying words, saying : ' Temples of God, 
 God's temples ! Man himself shall be the temple of God ! ' " 
 foer. 7, 4) 
 
 In regard to time and importance the Sabbath takes precedence 
 of the whole system of Jewish Laws and Commandments ; nay it is 
 just from the Sabbath that all Jewish institutions derive their true 
 connection with the pure idea of the living God. From the sacredness 
 of the Sabbath proceeds the sacredness of Israel and his festivals, 
 arwn BnpD D^Cim tonm. Abolish the Sabbath and you root 
 out the fundamental principle of Israel and his religion. Even the 
 seal of the covenant on the flesh is not made on the Jewish body 
 until, as our wise men ingeniously remind us, the first Sabbath has 
 been greeted. 
 
 Temples and altars may even fall into ruin and decay, but the
 
 41 
 
 Sabbath D3 1 ? KYI Emp y is a sanctuary that can never be destroyed. 
 It accompanies the Jew always and everywhere, that he builds 
 ever anew every seventh day DSlJ? JVi3 DnTVPl^ rOPn DK mtPJ^. 
 It is a perpetual covenant that he has to ratify ever anew every 
 seventh day. 
 
 If you keep the Sabbath, you testify and prove ever and anon 
 to your God that you are His, that you are sanctified through Him 
 and that you sign anew as it were the letter of your covenant with 
 God. 
 
 But what is it, by which the Sabbath is to be kept according 
 to God's commandment, or by which it is violated, on this point you 
 cannot be in doubt. The consecration or the desecration of the 
 Sabbath must be something visible. For your God calls it a 
 " sign," a " means of recognition " "KT. nw "Hjn'v 
 
 Whether you have preached or not, listened to the sermon or 
 missed it, prayed or Ijfeft your prayers* unsaid.you have neither 
 consecrated or desecrated the Sabbath by these acts or omissions. 
 4< Sabbath Sabbathon " says your God ! There must be rest from 
 work on the Sabbath, therefore resting from work means keeping 
 the Sabbath, doing work means desecrating it. The Law does not 
 say that he who does not attend to the sermon or say his prayers, 
 or sing on the Sabbath, has transgressed it ; but it says, who so 
 works on the Sabbath forfeits his life. 
 
 " Issur m'lachlah " ABSTINENCE FROM WORK, this is 
 the sign which your God expects from you on every Sabbath, 
 abstinence from work is the sign, by which He seeks to prove you 
 whether you still call yourself His. 
 
 Abstinence from work is the sign by which you are to demon- 
 strate that God is the Creator of heaven and earth, that He is also 
 your Creator and that you too, belong to Him, that all your powers 
 are His, belong to His service, are consecrated to Him, are holy 
 
 umo Him Datnpa 'n ^N "D nyfo. 
 
 For six days the world belongs to you, for six days you may 
 exercise your dominion over everything that your God has created, 
 and perform " M'lachah " ; you may stamp your creative impress 
 on everything and make it the agent of your will, the executor of
 
 42 
 
 your purpose. But ON THE SEVENTH DAY YOU SHALL TESTIFY 
 THAT, after all, THE WORLD is NOT YOURS, that you are not its lord 
 and master, but merely God's vassal on earth, that you only live 
 and work by God's grace, that He 'is YOUR Lord and Master, the 
 Lord and Master of the smallest as of the greatest creature within 
 your ken. To this you shall testify by giving the world its freedom 
 on this day, by retiring into that sphere of creation which is 
 subject to you and by not exerting your powers on any work of God 
 to bend it to your purpose. 
 
 By Issur m'lachah, by abstinence from work on the Sabbath 
 you place yourself and your work reverently on God's holy altar. 
 
 By Issur m'lachah you make the twenty-four hours on the 
 Sabbath a continual sacrifice of the world unto your God and a 
 consecration of yourself. 
 
 The bird, the fish, the animal that you refrain from seizing 
 on the Sabbath, the plant tliat you refrain from tearing up, the 
 material that you refrain from fashioning or chiselling, or cutting 
 or mixing, or moulding, or preparing, all these facts are just so 
 many expressions of homage to your God, proclaiming HIM Creator 
 and Master and Lord of the world ; and the Jewish child which re- 
 frains from catching the butterfly, or plucking the blossom on the 
 Sabbath has glorified the Almighty God more effectively than the 
 most brilliant orators and poets glorify Him by their words and songs . 
 
 Every idea and every faculty which stimulates thought held 
 in check on the Sabbath in God's world, so as not to make the 
 smallest creature, the tiniest fibre of material into a servant of the 
 least of your purposes, every idea and every faculty which stimu- 
 lates\hought held in check on the Sabbath, so as nowhere in God's 
 world to stamp and impress of your human authority, are just so 
 many tokens of the consecration and hallowing of your thinking 
 and creative life in the service of God, so many renewed tokens 
 of your wish to fulfil your covenant with your God and the Jew 
 whom neither the desire of pleasure nor the hope of profit, neither 
 the love of comfort nor frivolity can tempt to engage in productive 
 activity on the Sabbath has, by this self-restraint and by the con- 
 secration of his thoughts and forces to the service of God, sanctified 
 and elevated himself more truly and lastingly, than if he had shed
 
 43 
 
 most devoutly tears in the temple before God and then hurried to 
 his business. 
 
 And not only in respect to nature does God require on the 
 Sabbath these tokens of the subjection and consecration of your 
 thoughts and faculties to His service. God is God also of history, 
 a God of human society. The conditions of society, the relations 
 of the individual to the community, and of the community to the 
 individual, and above all the political conditions and activities 
 of men are His concern too. It is just in these relations of life that 
 God seeks to be glorified ; they must, therefore, be so ordered 
 as to win His favour, that His kingdom and His glory may once 
 more enter into the sphere of human life. Hence also for the sake 
 of these relations which you hold to society, you must perpetually 
 prove ever anew, on the Sabbath, the subordination and consecra- 
 tion of your creative ideas and faculties to the service of God, and 
 for this consecration to God also of your thinking and creative life 
 in the social sphere, God has instituted a sign between 
 
 you and Him. nimo nwsn ,D'3in man^ Trrn mano nsnrr 
 ,D^nn niena men jmx ^ote ,Trrn rntr6 o^in these are the 
 
 symbols of recognition which your God has instituted for the 
 sanctification and glorification of your activity in your relations 
 to human society on the Sabbath. 
 
 BY CARRYING NOTHING ON THE SABBATH FROM A PRIVATE 
 AREA INTO THE PUBLIC AREA AND VICE VERSA, AND BY CARRYING 
 NOTHING FOUR YARDS OUTSIDE THE PUBLIC AREA, YOU AFFIRM 
 THAT THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE SOCIAL ORDER ARE 
 
 LIKEWISE ORDAINED BY GOD. Neither an arbitrary will nor necess- 
 ity is to appear to you as the originator of the human state, as the 
 the factor which led man to man and founded society where the 
 individual can find his salvation only in co-operation with the many, 
 and the salvation of the individual is made the goal of the corporate 
 activity. GOD associates you with the state, He indicates society as 
 the foundation on which alone you can attain to the fulfilment of 
 our human destiny, in which alone you can accomplish the task 
 which He, your Creator and Lord and Master, has committed to 
 you. "V our relations to society and the relations of society to you, 
 the relation further- more, of Society to itself, are equally holy before 
 God. Ihey are as much the scene cf divine governance and
 
 44 
 
 providence as the entire realm of nature. It, therefore, God is to 
 recognise you as His, you must subordinate to Him on the Sabbath, 
 the thoughts and faculties which operate also in your social life, you 
 must consecrate and dedicate them to God, to the service of His 
 kingdom on earth, so that in your social relations you refrain from 
 violence and lavi lessness, hatred and injustice, and on the contrary 
 you endeavour to become a messenger of justice and order, of loving- 
 kindness and mercy, who with trustful devotion shape your relations 
 to society in a manner so pleasing to God lhat the " LIBERTY OF THE 
 
 INDIVIDUAL SHALL NOT DISTURB THE ORDER OF THE COMMUNITY, 
 THAT THE BOND OF THE COMMUNITY SHALL NOT DESTROY THE LIBERTY 
 
 OF THE INDIVIDUAL and that in the corporate life, the affairs of the 
 community shall be directed with wisdom and justice to their 
 divinely approved end ; that TFPn DIBH and D^IH Dim and 
 O^in nifcna "TIB^O may be preserved and safeguarded each 
 according to its ordinance. 
 
 And so highly does God esteem this consecration of the 
 Sabbath, of the relations of society that He caused it to be set 
 forth by His prophet Jeremiah, when the fall of the Jewish state was 
 already impending. 
 
 " Thus has God spoken to me : Go and station thyself in the 
 gates of the people, by which the kings of Judah come in and by 
 which they go out, and in all the gates of Jerusalem ; and say to 
 them : Hear the word of God, ye princes of Judah, and all Judah, 
 and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem that enter by these gates ! 
 Thus God has spoken : For the sake of your own good take heed 
 and carry nothing on the Sabbath day and bring nothing in by the 
 gates of Jerusalem, and carry nothing out of your houses on the 
 Sabbath day. and do not work, but sanctify the Sabbath day, as I 
 commanded your fathers . . . Then shall there enter by the gates 
 of this city, kings and princes, sitting upon the throne of David 
 riding in chariots and on horses, they and their princes, the men 
 
 Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and this city shall remain 
 
 undisturbed for ever. And they shall come from the cities of Judah 
 
 and from the places about Jerusalem, and from the land of Benjamin, 
 
 om the low land, and from the mountains, and from the South, 
 
 tgmg burnt offerings and meal offerings and incense and sacrifice 
 of thanksgiving unto the house of God.
 
 45 
 
 But if you will not hearken unto Me to sanctify the Sabbath- 
 day and to carry nothing in or out by the gates of Jerusalem on the 
 Sabbath day, then I will kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it 
 shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched." 
 (Jer. 17, 19-22, 25-27.) 
 
 Thus even IN THE HOUR WHEN THE FALL OF THE STATE OF 
 JERUSALEM WAS AT HAND, GOD MADE THE KEEPING OF THE 
 SABBATH AND PARTICULARLY THE HALLOWING OF THE nowm PJKVin, 
 
 THE SYMBOL NAMELY OF THE SUBJECTION TO GOD OF ALL THE 
 PRIVATE AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS OF THE COMMUNITY AS A CONDITION 
 OF ITS SALVATION AND ITS UNDISTURBED PROSPERITY FOR ALL 
 FUTURE TIME. 
 
 And surely you are not to believe that work is forbidden on the 
 Sabbath, only in regard to the so-called lower purpcses of business 
 or the earning of a livelihood, but that it is no desecration of the 
 Sabbath to do work for the sake of pleasure, or amusement, for the 
 cultivation of the arts and sciences, for the promotion of education 
 or religion. This you are not to believe. Is there a higher or holier 
 purpose to which man's creative energy could have been dedicated 
 than the building of the first temple of God on earth than the work 
 concerning, which God said "Build Me a sanctuary and I will dwell 
 among you ? " Is there a higher aim to which man can aspire ? 
 And behold the building of this sanctuary em Codies all the 
 characteristic activites which man exercises, in his conquest of 
 nature as in his social relations, from the first cut of the upturned 
 sod to the transfer of the finished work, which in the constitution 
 of the Temple, became the symbol of Israel's national life. It was 
 in itself a consecration of the collective activities of men never- 
 theless God placed the Sabbath above the building of the temple 
 and said : " ONLY keep My Sabbath, for THIS only is the sign 
 of recognition that I, God, do sanctify you. 
 
 Well, then, let us prove ourselves true sons of Israel, let us 
 observe the Sabbath as an everlasting covenant for our children and 
 children's children ; let us, by our celebration of the Sabbath, bear 
 witness among our fellow men to God's supremacy in nature and 
 society. Then eveiy Jew and every Jewess may stand forth sancti- 
 fied by the celebration of the Sabbath and the word of the Jewish 
 sage may be verified : hvTNrb nnp n30n TJO Dlh ton mp V,
 
 46 
 
 the Sabbath is Israel's sanctification nSlJtf inurw *nh& HO, why is 
 this man's shop closed ? n:}tfn HX 1D0 Kintf, " because he is keeping 
 the Sabbath," -IOK* <D ty T^D H3n PK ICtfO* 'D ^ K^M 11? 6l 
 ^JT3P3 nil PtP2 ID^V Nl3ff D^iyn .TIT), and every one that keeps the 
 Sabbath bears witness before God to the highest conception of 
 salvation, who by His word created the world in six days and 
 rested on' the seventh, for does it not say 'K <JK1 '1 DKi n? DPiO 
 " You are my witnesses, says the Lord, and I am God." 
 
 6. THE SABBATH AND EDUCATION. 
 
 run INTD vai IDS ^ 
 
 " Le/ ewery man honour and fear his mother and father. 
 and keep My Sabbaths !" (Lev 19, 3). 
 
 Among all the forces with which the blessing or curse of 
 humanity is bound up, there is none more hidden and yet more 
 patent, none more tender and yet more powerful, none nobler 
 and yet more generally accessible than the influence of education. 
 
 Even if all the forces of darkness were to unite to destroy the 
 human race, yet if the fathers and mothers of the new-born genera- 
 tion pledged themselves to save the future by educating it, the 
 future would be saved. 
 
 And if heaven and earth were to combine finally to establish 
 on earth the kingdom of salvation and peace, of blessing and joy, 
 yet if fathers and mothers excluded this work of salvation from 
 their educational system, heaven and earth would be unable to save 
 the future of mankind. Mankind would undoubtedly be lost. 
 
 Stronger than the united strength of all earthly powers, more 
 powerful than the united force of all the experience of wise 
 men, is the spell exercised on the child's mind by the mother's eye, 
 by the father's word, by the teaching and example of parents in 
 moulding the coming generation.
 
 47 
 
 NOT IN THE CABINETS OF PRINCES, NOT IN THE FIELD OF 
 BATTLE, BUT IN THE NURSERIES, AT THE CHILDREN'S CRADLE, ON 
 
 THE MOTHER'S KNEES is THE FATE OF NATIONS DECIDED. 
 
 "'i -pi nean V-IPIK lira nro vaa n mv IBM jyo? vnjrr <| 3" 
 
 " I have known him that he will command his children and his 
 house after him that they shall keep the way of God " said God 
 and He entrusted the seed of salvation folded in the Abrahamic 
 faith, to the overmastering power of education triumphantly 
 preserved in the bosom of one single family in the face of the an- 
 tagonism of a whole erring world. 
 
 vb p3 -|jn? '\T 1J O jnn JttT,, Four hundred years 
 of sojourning among strangers, slavery, and torture, were calmly 
 imposed upon this family by God, who trusted to the power of 
 education to plant the ancestral faith with so firm a root that all 
 the terrors of tyranny and degradation would be powerless to 
 destroy it. 
 
 1fl "I will scatter you among the nations" again 
 said God, and once more He trusted to the power of education to 
 fasten the bonds of religious teaching and of life with so firm a rivet, 
 that the influence of the most divers nations and countries, of the 
 most divers customs and conditions, of the most divers times 
 and crises, the shock of the most hostile attacks, the force of an 
 overwhelming disintegration caused by the most widespread disper- 
 sion, not only for decades, not only for centuries, but for thousands 
 of years, would be powerless to sunder the bonds which education 
 had forged, would be powerless to destroy the seed which education 
 had sown. 
 
 To education, God entrusted His holiest work 33^ ~\fcb Dnjnim 
 " you shall bequeath to your children and to your childrens 
 children that which you learnt in Hor^b " Om W13 HKT JW 
 'T 1CN " and this is My covenant with them, said God, the spirit 
 that rests upon thee, and the words which I have put into thy 
 mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of thy children's 
 mouths, said God, from henceforth and for ever ''thus He spoke, 
 and nowhere has education achieved more brilliantly conspicuous 
 triumphs than in Jewish houses, on the knees of Jewish fathers, 
 in the bosom of Jewish mothers.
 
 48 
 
 Kl T^K DK "!32 y therefore, God spoke: "Honour thy father 
 and thy mother!" 1KTTI V3K1 10K ff"K "let everyone revere 
 his father and mother." With these words he fastened the bonds 
 between children and parents in the community of Israel as strongly 
 as the bond that links mankind to God, and next to the venera- 
 tion and reverence that we owe to God, He placed the veneration and 
 reverence that we owe to our parents. And indeed, all Israel's 
 hopes are based on the pure and holy keeping of this bond. Since 
 education is to form the connecting link between the latest genera- 
 tion and those ancestors who, at the feet of flaming Horeb, were 
 filled with divine enthusiasm, and pledged themselves to the ever- 
 lasting covenant of the " Naasseh Venishma " of deed and thought ; 
 since education is thus ever progressively to lead the descendants 
 of the Jewish race to that height on which the desire of the greatest 
 of the prophets is to be fulfilled " that the whole of the nation may 
 become prophets and God may bestow His spirit upon all ! " Since, 
 our cradles, our nurseries, our homes are the holiest places in which 
 D'p3Vl tfbbw ""BO, out of the mouths of children and babes, the 
 stronghold of God's kingdom on earth is to be built ; since our 
 fathers and mothers are called to that holiest of priesthoods which 
 is to kindle in the pure hearts and souls of our little ones the 
 sacred flame of the knowledge, the fear, love of God, through- 
 out their lives; God has therefore placed the child's soul into the 
 hands of its parents, as the seed is in the hands of the sower 
 or to use the simile of the author of the Psalm " like the arrow 
 in the hands of the archer," and He has said to the parents : 
 here you have ""T HPyO " the noblest work of My hands " educate 
 it IKfinn? " for my glorification." And to the child He has said : 
 px nxi l'3K DX "OS " Reverently obey your father and your 
 mother " and lID^n WQP nxi IXTTl VJ3X1 1DK P-'X 
 
 " Let everyone honour and fear his father and mother ' 
 
 BUT 
 
 " keep My Sabbaths ! " 
 How full of meaning is this little word " But ! " 
 
 The deepest pain and the noblest comfort, and at the same 
 time the only right foundation, the essence, the whole force and 
 blessedness of education are contained in this " but." 
 
 Was not the building of the temple the holiest work of man- 
 kind ? Yet with regard to the building of the temple God said
 
 49 
 
 n"]K" " but keep My Sabbath " and raised the Sabbath above 
 temple and divine service, indeed He made it the foundation and 
 root of temple and divine services. 
 
 And just as God said with regard to the temple, so He says here 
 with regard to education : " Let every man honour and fear his 
 father and mother, but keep My Sabbaths ! " 
 
 With indissoluble bonds God has attached the infant's mind to 
 father and mother ; hence obedience, absolute obedience is the 
 first, the most important, the most essential tribute of honour 
 which the Jewish child has to pay to father and mother throughout 
 life. Not only as boy and girl, not only as young man and maiden, 
 but even as man and woman, even should this rare fortune fall 
 to your lot as an old man or woman," honour thy father and thy 
 mother " means to the Jewish child in the community of Israel 
 " OBEY thy father and thy mother ! " 
 
 To live as father and mother desire, to rejoice their hearts with 
 your thoughts and feelings, your sentiments and opinions, your 
 sayings and doings, your work and your recreation, your whole mode 
 of living and striving, this is the meaning of honouring father and 
 mother ; and all your caresses and gifts, all presents, your greetings 
 and formal expressions of reverence are empty and meaningless so 
 long as you cause grief to father and mother by your mode of living. 
 In this cause for grief they see the work of their education frustrated, 
 they see the perpetual reproach of having failed to perform, in your 
 case, their great and holy task. " Educate this human soul to become 
 a valiant Jew, a valiant Jewess ! " said God when He first bade you 
 smile into your parent's enraptured face, and you have not become 
 valiant, have not become a Jew, or Jewess of what avail to them 
 then is the wreath with which you celebrate their birthday, if your 
 life plants thorns of grief in your father's and mother's heart. 
 
 " Honour father and mother " means " obey father and mother" 
 and on the obedience of the child to his parents God has based all 
 hope of Israel's salvation. Yet His holy book adds : " But keep 
 My Sabbaths "; there lies the deepest pain. . 
 
 His holy book has already pictured parents, families, communi- 
 ties, and generations, where parents themselves have broken with
 
 50 
 
 the Sabbath, have renounced obedience to THEIR father's teaching, 
 have spurned the vessel of the Jewish sanctuary which has come 
 down to them from their ancestors, and who then have to face their 
 children with empty hands, and though they may leave them 
 material wealth and possessions, honour and fame, they cannot 
 leave them the glory of Horeb, which alone gives a true value to all 
 other possessions, a true glory to all other splendours. They 
 know how to educate their children for agriculture, for commerce, 
 for art and science, but they have no place in their education for 
 Judaism, which, through the influence of the spirit of the Sabbath 
 devotes the ripening powers of their child to God's service and places 
 his whole life under God's care and guidance. Against this sad 
 phenomenon the word of God protests, which says to the child : 
 " Honour father and mother," " reverence father and mother," 
 show thyself docile, and absolutely submissive in all good and 
 praiseworthylactions, and even ordinary circumstances. Where, how- 
 ever, your parents are opposed to God's will, Tl00n TirDP JINI, there 
 you must be prepared to withstand the hardest task, to fulfil the most 
 painful duty. With meek, but earnest resolution, with bleeding, 
 but unflinching heart you must refer your parents to God D37O 
 m33S D^"Pl ! Then as you owe obedience so much more to God 
 do at least remain faithful to God, faithful to His holy will, 
 and follow His injunctions, even when your parents' teaching has 
 led you astray. 
 
 And see what surpassing comfort there dwells in this hard diffi- 
 cult situation ! What a glorious triumph there springs just from 
 this embarassing position, because God's word counts upon finding 
 ready admittance into the children's hearts, even though the 
 parents' hearts have long been closed to it. Not only was an 
 Abraham born under Terah's roof, Hezekiah too was the son of 
 Achaz, just as Josiah was descended from Menasheh and Amon. 
 The sons of Korah returned to God, the grandsons of him whom the 
 earth swallowed up because of his disobedience swept their inspired 
 harps beside God's altar, and Samuel, a descendant of Korah was 
 the third in glorious triumvirate with Moses and Aaron. So deep 
 are the roots which a training in the fear of God strikes in the hearts 
 of the parents that, quite unconsciously the seed of goodness and 
 nobleness, passing sometimes through the medium of alienated
 
 51 
 
 children, is transmitted into the hearts of the grandchildren, and 
 -discovers there the most suitable soil for the cultivation of that very 
 seed which the parents' infatuation tried to deny to it. So much 
 faith has God in good education that the triumphant progress to- 
 wards the eventual realisation of His kingdom on earth which 
 education is to accomplish cannot be hindered even by period* of 
 neglected education. To such extent has God made man's heart 
 susceptible to all that is good and pure that even the most danger- 
 ous enemy of man's salvation, a corrupt education is unable utterly 
 and irrevocably to ruin completely the human heart in the later 
 generations. 
 
 But not only to a system of education that is totally divorced 
 from the Sabbath does God oppose His Sabbath here as the Saviour 
 of future generations. The Sabbath is further designed to counter- 
 act the error, the weakness, the confusion to which EVERY educa- 
 tion is subject. You yourself, Jewish father, you yourself, Jewish 
 mother, if you are earnest with regard to your children's education, 
 if you honestly wish to train them for God, then you must train 
 them yourself to keep the Sabbath ; you must hand them the sacred 
 book and show them God as your and their father, show them that 
 the Sabbath is your and their educator, and you must teach them 
 to obej. God first and then yourself. And what a completeness, 
 what a foundation, what a vital force and hallowing power does 
 your education receive, when you bow down with your child before 
 God, and by your observance of the Sabbath, manifest your obedi- 
 ence to God by your own example. 
 
 Do you, Jewish father, expect obedience from your child, if 
 you refuse it to your Father in heaven ? How can your child 
 remain faithful to you ilyou break faith with your Father in heaven ? 
 If the will and guidance of your Father in heaven means so little to 
 you that you hesitate to give up, for His sake, the most trifling 
 profit, the most insignificant comfort, the slightest pleasure, the 
 most unimportant custom, how can you expect your child to give 
 up his inclinations, his desires, his opinions, his comfort, his habit, 
 in order to submit to your will ? 
 
 By banishing the Sabbath from your family life, you cast God 
 down from the altar of your hearth and set yourself up, your human 
 will and understanding, your intractable intentions and opinions, 
 as the loadstar of your home. What will you appeal to, if your son
 
 52 
 
 or your daughter, on their part oppose their will to yours, if they 
 wish to go their own way, just as you have gone and are going 
 yours ? 
 
 Oh, you fathers and mothers, you do not know what a treasure,, 
 what a faithful helpmeet, what a teacher and guide, an educator and 
 friend you lob yourselves and children of, when you desecrate the 
 Sabbath ! 
 
 Keep the Sabbath, forego material profit, comfort, inclination, 
 show by your actions, not by an empty ritual celebration, that you 
 are faithful children of your heavenly Father, and your children, by 
 giving up their material profit, their comfort, their inclinations, 
 will prove themselves by their actions, your faithful children. 
 
 Keep the Sabbath. With every Sabbath place your whole 
 life and endeavour at the feet of God, and you will stamp the name 
 of God upon your whole life, upon your whole upbringing. In His 
 name you will perform the parental priestly office of education, in 
 His name you will expect from your children not what is in accord- 
 ance with your will, but what is in accordance with His will, and in 
 His name you will be able to claim and you will receive obedience. 
 
 Keep the Sabbath, SEEK BY YOUR EXAMPLE TO MAKE THE CELE- 
 BRATION OF THE SABBATH A NECESSITY OF LIFE, of soul and heart for 
 your children, and the Sabbath will complete what your training has 
 failed to do. The sanctifying, inspiring, strengthening and en- 
 nobling influence which its holiness has on every Jewish soul will 
 crown the work of your education, and the Sabbath your re- 
 membrance of your celebration of the Sabbath in the home of your 
 parents your own celebration of it in your own later and in- 
 dependent life will uplift your children, will wed them ever 
 anew to all that is divire and good to all that is pure and 
 hcly. It \\i)l compkte jour education and will transfigure you 
 and your children in your united glorification of God, long after 
 you have left them, Jong after you have been removed frcm 
 this earth and returned to youi heaverJ) Father to that beyond 
 where the whole lite is identified with the one everlasting Sabbath,
 
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