1. The checkered, stormy, and yet triumphant march of the Jewish people through the ages remains the great enigma of history for all those who do not believe in a divine plan of salvation to be consummated through Israel. The idea of Israel's mission alone throws light on its law and its destiny. Even before God had revealed to the people at Mt. Sinai the Ten Commandments, the foundation of all religion and morality, and there concluded with them a covenant for all time, He spoke: “Ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” thus consecrating them to be a priest-people among the nations, and enjoining them to a life of especial holiness. Possessing as a heritage from the Patriarchs the germ of a higher religious consciousness, in distinction from all other peoples, they were to make the cultivation, development, and promotion of the highest religious truth their life-task, and thus to become the people of God. At first they were to establish in the Holy Land a theocratic government, a State in which God alone was the Ruler, while they lived in priestly isolation from all the nations around. Thus they prepared themselves for the time when, scattered over all the earth, they might again work as the priest-people through the ages for the upbuilding of the universal kingdom of God. This was Israel's destiny from the very first, as expressed by the great seer of the Exile when he beheld Israel wandering forth among the nations, “Ye shall be named the [pg 343] priests of the Lord; men shall call you the ministers of our God.”1100
2. Among all religions the priest is considered especially holy as the mediator between God and man, and in his appearance as well as in his mode of life he must observe special forms of purity and holiness. He alone may approach the Godhead, ascertain its will, and administer the sacrificial cult in the sanctuary. He must represent the Divinity in its relation to the people, embody it in his outward life, enjoy nothing which it abhors, and touch nothing which could render him impure. These priestly rules exist among all the nations of antiquity in striking similarity, and indicate a common origin in the prehistoric period, during which the entire cult developed through a priestly caste, beginning with simple, primitive conceptions and transmitted in ever more elaborate form from father to son. It goes without saying that the priests of the original Hebrew race, which migrated from Babylonia, retained the ancient customs and rules. They must also have adopted many other things from neighboring peoples. During the entire period of the first temple, the priests—despite all prophetic warnings—preferred the heathen cult with its vainglorious pomp to the simple worship of the patriarchal times. As everywhere else, the priesthood of Israel, and later of Judæa as well, thought only of its own interests, of the retention of its ancient prerogatives, unmindful of the higher calling to which it had been chosen, to serve the God of truth and justice, to exemplify true holiness, to stand for moral rather than ceremonial purity. Yet the sacerdotal institutions were indispensable so long as the people required a sanctuary where the Deity should dwell, and where the sacrificial cult should be administered. Every trespass by a layman on the sanctuary reserved for the priests was considered sacrilege and called for divine punishment. [pg 344] It was thus necessary to deepen the popular notion of holiness and of the reverence due the sanctuary, before these could be elevated into the realm of spirituality and morality. The priesthood had to be won for the service of the loftier religious ideas, so that it might gradually educate the people in general for its sublime priestly mission. This conception underlies both the Mosaic law and its rabbinical interpretation.
3. Through Biblical and post-Biblical literature and history there runs a twofold tendency, one anti-sacerdotal,—emanating from the prophets and later the Hasideans or Pharisees,—the other a mediating tendency, favorable to the priesthood. The ritualistic piety of the priests was bitterly assailed by the prophets as being subversive of all morality, and later on the Sadducean hierarchy also constituted a threat to the moral and spiritual welfare of the people. Before even the revelation at Sinai was to take place, we read that warning was given to the priests “not to break through” and stand above the people.1101
On the other hand, the law demands of the Aaronites a peculiar degree of holiness, since “they offer the bread of their God upon the altar.”1102 Their blood must be kept pure by the avoidance of improper marriages. Everything unclean or polluting must be kept far from them.1103 The law, following a tradition which probably arose in ancient Babylon, prescribed minutely their mode of admission into the divine service, their vestments and their conditions of life, the ritual of sacrifice and of purity; and every violation of these laws, every trespass by a layman, was declared to be punishable with death.1104 The sanctuary contains no room for the nation of priests; no layman durst venture to cross its threshold. Even in the legal system of the rabbis the ancient rights and privileges of the priesthood, dating from the time when they [pg 345] possessed no property, remained inviolate, and their precedence in everything was undisputed.1105
The glaring contrast between the idea of a universal priesthood of the people and the institution of the Aaronites is explained by a deeper insight into history. The success of the reformation under Josiah on the basis of the Deuteronomic code rested in the last analysis on the fact that the priests of the house of Zadok at Jerusalem were placed in the service of the higher prophetic teaching by being rendered the guardians, executors, and later, in conjunction with the Levites, the teachers of the Law, as it was presented in the book of the law of Moses, soon afterward completed. The priesthood, deprived of everything that might remind one of the former idolatry and heathenish practices, was, in its purer and holier character, to lead the priest-people to true moral holiness through its connection with the sanctuary and its ancient cult. Still the impulse for the moral rebirth of the nation, for the establishment of a priest-people, did not emanate from the Temple priesthood, nor even from the sacred soil of Palestine; but from the Synagogue, which began in the Exile, under the influence of the prophetic word and the Levitical song, in the form of public worship by the congregation of the pious. Here arose a generation of godly men, a class of singularly devout ones, living in priestly holiness, who consecrated their lives to the practice of the law, and whom the exile seer had designated as the true Israel, the servant of the Lord, and these formed the nucleus of the renewed Israel.
4. That which the prophet Ezekiel had attempted in his proposed constitution1106 was accomplished in a far more thorough manner by the Holiness Code, which emanated from his school and became the central portion of the Mosaic books, and by the so-called Priestly Code, which followed later. The object was to bring about the sanctification of [pg 346] the entire people upon the holy soil of the national land, through institutions embodying the ideal of the holiness of God in the life and cult of the people. Circumcision, idealized by the prophetic author of Deuteronomy,1107 was to be made the sign of the covenant to mark as holy the progeny of Abraham;1108 strict laws of marriage were to put an end to all heathenish unchastity; the Sabbath rest was to consecrate the labors of the week, the Sabbatical month and year the produce of the soil.1109 The prohibition of unclean foods, heretofore reserved, as among other nations, for the priests and other consecrated persons, was now applied to the whole community in order that Israel should learn “to set itself apart from all other nations as a holy people.”1110 Even their apparel was to proclaim the priestly holiness of the people by a blue fringe at the border of the garments.1111
Whereas from the time of Ezra to Simon the Just priestly rulers endeavored to promote the work of educating the people for holiness, the pious men from among the people made still greater efforts to assert the claim of holiness for the entire Jewish people as a priest-nation.1112 The repasts of these pious fellowships should be in no way inferior in sanctity to those of the priests in the Temple. New ceremonies of sanctification were to open and close the Sabbaths and festivals. Symbols of priestly consecration should adorn forehead and arm in the form of the phylacteries (tefillin), and should be placed at the entrance of every house in the so-called mezuzzah. “God has given unto all an heritage (the Torah), the kingdom, the priesthood, and the sanctuary”1113—this became the leitmotif for the Pharisaic school, who constantly enlarged the domain of piety so that it should include [pg 347] the whole of life. Whoever did not belong to this circle of the pious was regarded with scorn as one of the lower class (am ha-aretz).
5. The chief effort of the pious, the founders of the Judaism of the Synagogue, was to keep the Jewish people from the demoralizing influences of pagan nature-worship, represented first by Semitic and later by Greek culture. The leaders of the Pharisees “built a fence about the law”1114 extending the prohibition of mingling with the heathen nations so as also to prohibit eating with them and participating in their feasts and social gatherings,—not for the preservation of the Jewish race merely, as Christian theologians maintain, but for the sake of keeping its inner life intact and pure.1115 “God surrounded us with brazen walls, hedged us in with laws of purity in regard to food and drink and physical contact, yea, even to that which we see and hear, in order that we should be pure in body and soul, free from absurd beliefs, not polluted by contact with others or through association with the wicked; for most of the peoples defile themselves with their sexual practices, and whole lands pride themselves upon it. But we hold ourselves aloof from all this”—so spoke Eleazar the priest to King Ptolemy Philadelphus, according to the Letter of Aristeas, thus giving expression to the sentiment most deeply rooted in the souls of the pious of that period.1116 They strove to build up a nation of whom the Tannaim could say, “Whoever possesses no sense of shame and chastity, of him it is certain that his ancestors did not stand at Sinai.”1117
Naturally enough, the Greek and Roman people took offense at this aloofness and separation from every contact with the outer world, and explained it as due to a spirit of hostility to mankind. Even up to the present it has been the lot of Jewry and Judaism to be misunderstood by the world [pg 348] at large, to be the object of either its hate or its pity. The world disregards the magnificence of the plan by which an entire people were to be reared as a priest-nation, as citizens of a kingdom of God, among whom, in the course of centuries, the seed of prophetic truth was to germinate and sprout forth for the salvation of humanity. If, in complete contrast to heathen immorality, the Jew in his life, his thinking, and his will was governed by the strictest moral discipline; if, in spite of the most cruel persecutions and the most insidious temptations, the Jewish people remained steadfast to its pure belief in God and its traditional standards of chastity, exhibiting a loyalty which amazed the nations and the religious sects about, but was neither understood nor followed by them, this was mainly due to the hallowing influences of the priestly laws. They steeled the people for the fulfillment of their duty and shielded them against all hostile powers both within and without. The very burden of the law, so bitterly denounced by Christianity since the time of Paul, lent Judaism its dignity at all times, protecting it from the assaults of the tempter; and that which seemed to the outsider a heavy load was to the Jew a source of pride in the consciousness of his divine election.1118
6. But most significant in the character and development of Judaism is the fact that all the leading ideas and motives which emanated from the priesthood of the Jewish people were concentrated in one single focus, the hallowing of the name of God. Two terms expressed this idea in both a negative and a positive form, the warning against “Hillul ha Shem”—profanation of the name of God—and the duty of “Kiddush ha Shem”—sanctification of God's name. These exerted a marvelous power in curbing the passions and self-indulgence of the Jew and in spurring him on to the greatest [pg 349] possible self-sacrifice and to an unparalleled willingness to undergo suffering and martyrdom for the cause. These terms are derived from the Biblical verse, “Ye shall not profane My holy name, but I will be hallowed among the children of Israel; I am the Lord who halloweth you.”1119 This verse forms the concluding sentence of the precepts for the Aaronitic priesthood and warns them as the guardians of the sanctuary to do nothing which might in the popular estimation degrade them or the divine cause intrusted to them. When, however, during the Maccabean wars, the little band of the pious proved themselves to be the true priesthood in their Opposition to the faithless Aaronites, offering their very lives as a sacrifice for the preservation of the true faith in God, the Scriptural word received a new and higher meaning. It came to signify the obligation of the entire priest-people to consecrate the name of God by the sacrifice of their lives, and also their duty to guard against its profanation by any offensive act. In connection with this Scriptural passage the sages represent God as saying, “I have brought you out of Egypt only on the condition that you are ready to sacrifice your lives, if need be, to consecrate My name.”1120 From that period it became a duty and even a law of Judaism, as Maimonides shows in his Code, for each person in life and in death to bear witness to His God.1121 “Ye are My witnesses, saith the Lord, and I am God”1122—and witnesses being in the Greek version martyrs, the word afterward received the meaning of “blood-witnesses.”—This passage of the prophet is commented on by Simeon ben Johai, one of the great teachers who suffered under Hadrian's persecution, in the following words, “If ye become My witnesses, then am I your Lord, God of the world; but if ye do not witness to Me, I cease to [pg 350] be, as it were, the Lord, God of all the world.”1123 That is to say, it is the martyrdom of the pious which glorifies God's name before all the world. Or, as Felix Perles says so beautifully, “As every good and noble man must ever bear in mind that the dignity of humanity is intrusted to his hand, so should each earnest adherent of the Jewish faith remember that the glory of God is intrusted to his care.”1124 The Jewish people has fulfilled this priestly task through a martyrdom of over two thousand years and has scornfully resisted every demand to abandon its faith in God, not consenting to do so even in appearance. Surely historians or philosophers who can ridicule or commiserate such resistance betray a hatred which blinds their sense of justice. As a matter of fact, it was the consciousness of the Jewish people of its priestly mission that has made it a pattern of loyalty for all time.
7. Moreover, the fear of profaning the divine name became the highest incentive to, and safeguard of the morality of the Jew. Every misdeed toward a non-Jew is considered by the teachers of Judaism a double sin, yea, sometimes, an unpardonable one, because it gives a false impression of the moral standard of Judaism and infringes upon the honor of God as well as that of man. The disciples of Rabbi Simeon ben Shetach once bought an ass for him from an Arab, and to their joy found a precious stone in its collar. “Did the seller know of this gem?” asked the master. On being answered in the negative, he called out angrily, “Do you consider me a barbarian? Return the Arab his precious stone immediately!” And when the heathen received it back, he cried out, “Praised be the God of Simeon ben Shetach!”1125 Thus the conscientious Jew honors his God by his conduct, says the Talmud, referring to this and many similar examples. Such lessons of the Jew's responsibility for the recognition [pg 351] of the high moral purity of his religion have ever constituted a high barrier against immoral acts.
The words, “Be ye holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” form significantly the introduction to the chapter on the love of man, the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus, placed at the very center of the entire Priestly Code. “Your self-sanctification sanctifies Me, as it were,” says God to Israel, according to the interpretation of this verse by the sages.1126 In contrast to heathendom, which deifies nature with its appeal to the senses, Judaism teaches that holiness is a moral quality, as it means the curbing of the senses. And in order to prevent Israel, the bearer of this ideal of holiness, from sinking into the mire of heathen wantonness and lust, the separation of the Jew from the heathen world, whether in his domestic or social life, was a necessity and became the rule and maxim of his life for that period. All the many prohibitions and commands had for their object the purification of the people in order to render the highest moral purity a hereditary virtue among them, according to the rabbis.1127
8. It is true that the accumulation of “law upon law, prohibition upon prohibition” by the rabbis had eventually the same injurious effect which it had exerted upon the priests in the Temple. The formal law, “the precepts learned by rote,” became the important factor, while their purpose was lost to sight. The shell smothered the kernel, and blind obedience to the letter of the law came to be regarded as true piety. It cannot be denied that adherence to the mere form, which was transmitted from the Temple practice to the legalism of the Pharisees and the later rabbinic schools with their casuistry, impaired and tarnished the lofty prophetic ideal of holiness. It almost seems as if the clarion notes of such sublime passages as that of the Psalmist,
[pg 352]no longer found its full resonance in the heart of Judaism. In the practice of external acts of piety religion became petrified and the spirit took flight. That which is of secondary importance became of primary consideration. This is the fundamental error into which the practice and the development of the Law in Judaism lapsed, and to which no careful observer can or dares close his eyes. Undoubtedly the Law, as it embraced the whole of life in its power, sharpened the Jewish sense of duty, and served the Jew as an iron wall of defense against temptations, aberrations, and enticements of the centuries. As soon as the modern Jew, however, undertook to free himself from the tutelage of a blind acceptance of authority and inquired after the purpose of all the restrictions which the Law laid upon him, his ancient loyalty to the same collapsed and the pillars of Judaism seemed to be shaken. Then the leaders of Reform, imbued with the prophetic spirit, felt it to be their imperative duty to search out the fundamental ideas of the priestly law of holiness, and, accordingly, they learned how to separate the kernel from the shell. In opposition to the orthodox tendency to worship the letter, they insisted on the fact that Israel's separation from the world—which it is ultimately to win for the divine truth—cannot itself be its end and aim, and that blind obedience to the law does not constitute true piety. Only the fundamental idea, that Israel as the “first-born” among the nations has been elected as a priest-people, must remain our imperishable truth, a truth to which the centuries of history bear witness by showing that it has given its life-blood as a ransom for humanity, and is ever bringing new sacrifices for its cause.
[pg 353]Only because it has kept itself distinct as a priest-people among the nations could it carry out its great task in history; and only if it remains conscious of its priestly calling and therefore maintains itself as the people of God, can it fulfill its mission. Not until the end of time, when all of God's children will have entered the kingdom of God, may Israel, the high-priest among the nations, renounce his priesthood.
1. Judaism differs from all the ancient religions chiefly in its intrusting its truth to the whole people instead of a special priesthood. The law which “Moses commanded us is an inheritance of the Congregation of Jacob,”1129 is the Scriptural lesson impressed upon every Jew in early childhood. As soon as the Torah passed from the care of the priests into that of the whole nation, the people of the book became the priest-nation, and set forth to conquer the world by its religious truth. This aim was expressed by all the prophets beginning with Moses, who said: “Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, that the Lord would put His spirit upon them.”1130 The prophetic ideal was that “they shall all know Me (God), from the least of them unto the greatest of them,”1131 and that “all thy (Zion's) children shall be taught of the Lord.”1132 After the people came to realize that the Law was “their wisdom and understanding in the sight of the peoples,”1133 they soon felt the hope that one day “the isles shall wait for His teaching,”1134 and confidently expected the time when “many peoples shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths, for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”1135 Once liberated from the dominance of the priesthood, religion [pg 355] became the instrument of universal instruction, the factor of general spiritual and moral advancement. In addition it endowed humanity with an educational ideal, destined to regenerate its moral life far more deeply than Greek culture could ever do. The object was to elevate all classes of the people by the living word of God, by the reading and expounding of the Scripture for the dissemination of its truth among the masses.
2. Those who define Judaism as a religion of law completely misunderstand its nature and its historic forces. This is done by all those Christian theologians who endeavor to prove the extraordinary assertion of the apostle Paul that the Jewish people was providentially destined to produce the Old Testament law and become enmeshed in it, like the silkworm in its cocoon, finally to dry up and perish, leaving its prophetic truth for the Church. This fateful misconception of Judaism is based upon a false interpretation of the word Torah, which denotes moral and spiritual instruction as often as law, and thus includes all kinds of religious teaching and knowledge together with its primary meaning, the written and the oral codes.1136 In fact, in post-Biblical times it comprised the entire religion, as subject of both instruction and scientific investigation. True, law is fundamental in Jewish history; Israel accepted the divine covenant on the basis of the Sinaitic code; the reforms of King Josiah were founded on the Deuteronomic law;1137 and the restoration of the Judean commonwealth was based upon the completed Mosaic code brought from Babylon by Ezra the Scribe.1138 This book of law, with its further development and interpretation, remained the normative factor for Judaism for all time. Still, from the very beginning the Law of the [pg 356] covenant contained a certain element which distinguished it from all the priestly and political codes of antiquity. Beside the traditional juridical and ritualistic statutes, which betray a Babylonian origin, it contains laws and doctrines of kindness toward the poor and helpless, the enemy and the slave, even toward the dumb beast, in striking contrast to the spirit of cruelty and violence in the Babylonian law.1139 In the name of the all-seeing, all-ruling God it appeals to the sympathy of man. These exhortations to tenderness increase in later codes of law under the prophetic influence, until finally the rabbis extended them as far as possible. They held that every negligence which leads to the loss of life or property by the neighbor, every neglect of a domestic animal, even every act of deceit by which one attempts to “steal” the good opinion of one's fellow-men, is a violation of the law.1140 Hence Rabbi Simlai, the Haggadist, said that from beginning to end the Law is but a system of teachings of human love,1141 while another sage tried to prove from the books of Moses that God implanted mercy, modesty, and benevolence in the souls of Israel as hereditary virtues.1142 In the same spirit Rabbi Meir described the law of Israel as the law of humanity, supporting his statement by a number of biblical passages.1143
3. But, as light by its very nature illumines its surroundings, so the Torah in the possession of the Jewish people was certain to become the light of mankind. First of all, the book of Law itself insists that the father shall teach the word of God to his children, using many signs and ceremonies that they may meditate on the works of God and walk in [pg 357] the path of virtue, and that the divine commands should be “in the mouth and in the heart of all to do them.”1144 It was made incumbent upon the high priest or king to read the Law at least once every seven years to the whole people assembled in the holy city for the autumnal festival,—men, women, children, and the sojourners in the gates,—so that it should become their common property.1145 This precept probably gave rise to the triennial and later the annual system of Torah reading on the Sabbath. But in addition to the book of Law the prophetic words of consolation were read to the people, a custom which originated in the Babylonian exile, and was continued under the name of Haftarah (“dismissal” of the congregation).1146 The seer of the exile refers to these prophetic words of comfort which were offered to the people on the Sabbath as well as other feasts and fasts: “Attend unto Me, O My people, and give ear unto Me, O My nation, for instruction (Torah) shall go forth from Me, and My right on a sudden for a light of the people.... Hearken unto Me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is My law; fear ye not the taunt of men, neither be ye dismayed at their revilings. For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool; but My favor shall be forever, and My salvation unto all generations.”1147 Moved by such stirring ideals, Synagogues arose in Jewish settlements all over the globe, and the book of the Law, in its vernacular versions, Greek and Aramaic, together with the words of the prophets, became the general source of instruction. In the words of the Psalms, it became “the testimony of the Lord, making wise the simple,” “rejoicing the heart,” “enlightening the eyes,” “more to be desired than gold.”1148 Nay more, the [pg 358] study of the Law became the duty of every man, and he who failed to live up to the precepts of the devotees of the Law, the Pharisean fellowships, was scorned as belonging to the lower class, am haaretz. Every morning the pious Jew, first thanking God for the light of day, followed this up by thanking Him for the Torah, which illumines the path of life. “The welfare of society rests upon the study of the Law, divine service and organized charity,” was a saying of Simon the Just, a high priest of the beginning of the third pre-Christian century.1149 Thus learning and teaching became leading occupations for the Jew, and the two main departments of Jewish literature, correspondingly, are Torah and Talmud, that is, the written Law and its exposition. Indeed, the highest title which the rabbis could find for Moses was simply “Moses our Teacher.” Nay, God Himself was frequently represented as a venerable Master, teaching the Law in awful majesty.1150
4. Later under the successive influence of Babylonian and Greek culture, the wisdom literature was added to the Prophets and the Psalms, giving to the whole Torah a universal scope, like that claimed for Greek philosophy. The Jewish love of learning led to an ever greater longing for truth by adding the wisdom of other cultured nations to its own store of knowledge. This motive for universalism became all the stronger, as the faith became more centered in the sublime conception of God as Master of all the world. As the God of Israel appeared the primal source of all truth, so the revealed word of God was considered the very embodiment of divine wisdom.1151 In fact, the men of hoary antiquity described in the opening chapters of Genesis were actually credited with being the instructors of the Greeks and other [pg 359] nations.1152 We read a strange story by a pupil of Aristotle that the great sage admired a Jew, whom he happened to meet, as both wise and pious, so that the little Jewish nation was often considered, like the wise men of India, to be a sect of philosophers.1153 Indeed, Judaism became a matter of curiosity to the pagan world on account of the Synagogue, which attracted them as a unique center of religious devotion and instruction, and especially because of the Bible, which was read and expounded in its Greek garb from Sabbath to Sabbath. The Jewish people raised themselves to be a nation of thinkers, and largely through association with Greek thought. For example, in the Greek translation of the Scriptures all anthropomorphic expressions are avoided. As the personal name of Israel's God of the covenant, JHVH, was replaced by the name Adonai, “the Lord,”1154 the universality of the Jewish God became still more evident. Thus the pagan world could find God in the Scriptures to be the living God who dwells in the heart and is sought by all mankind. The Jew became the herald of the One God of the universe, his Bible a book of universal instruction. Many of the heathen, without merging themselves into the community of the covenant people and without accepting all its particularistic customs, rallied around its central standard as simple theists, “worshipers of God,” or “they who fear the Lord,” according to the terminology of the Psalms.1155
5. An old rabbinical legend, which is reflected in the New Testament miracle of Pentecost, relates that the Ten Words of Sinai were uttered in seventy tongues of fire to reach [pg 360] the known seventy nations of the earth.1156 We are told that when the people entered Canaan, the words of the Law were engraved in seventy languages on the stones of the altar at Mount Ebal.1157 That is, the law of Sinai was intended to provide the foundation for all human society. One Haggadist even asserts that the heathen nations all refused to accept the Law, and if Israel also had rejected it, the world would have returned to chaos.1158 Israel was, so to speak, forced by divine Providence to accept the Law on behalf of the entire race. Hillel, under the Romanized reign of Herod, was fully conscious of this world-mission when he said: “Love your fellow creatures and lead them to the study of the Law.”1159
6. The outlook for the Jewish people, however, became darker and darker through its struggle with Rome. The fanatical Zealots entirely opposed the spreading of the knowledge of the Torah among those who did not belong to the household of Israel.1160 Then the Church sent forth her missionaries to convert the pagan world by constant concessions to its polytheistic views and practices. The seed sown by Hellenistic Judaism yielded a rich harvest for the Church, even though it was won at the sacrifice of pure Jewish monotheism. The Ten Words of Sinai, the Mosaic laws of marriage, the poor laws, and other Biblical statutes became the cornerstone of civilization, but in a different guise; the heritage of Judaism was transplanted to the Christian and Mohammedan world in a new garb and under a new name. Henceforth the Jew, dispersed, isolated, and afflicted, had to struggle to preserve his faith in its pristine purity. The very danger besetting the study of the Law during [pg 361] the Hadrianic persecutions, which followed the Bar Kochba revolt, increased his zeal and courage. “Devoid of the Torah, our vital element, we are surely threatened with death,” said Rabbi Akiba, applying to himself the fable of the fox and the fishes, as he defied the Roman edict.1161 The fear lest the Torah should be forgotten, stimulated the teachers and their disciples ever anew to its pursuit. The Torah was regarded as the bond and pledge of God's nearness; hence the many rabbinical sayings concerning its value in the eyes of God, which are frequently couched in poetic and extravagant language.1162 The underlying idea of them all is that Israel could dispense with its State and its Temple, but not with its storehouse of divine truth, from which it constantly derives new life and new youth.
7. One important question, however, remains, which must be answered: Has the Jewish people, shut up for centuries by the ramparts of Talmudic Judaism, actually renounced its world mission? In transmitting part of its inheritance to its two daughter-religions, has Judaism lost its claim to be a world-religion? The Congregation of Israel, according to the Midrash, answers this question in the words of the Shulamite in the Song of Songs: “I sleep, but my heart waketh.”1163 During the sad period of the Middle Ages, Judaism in its relation to the outer world slept a long winter-sleep, now in one land and now in another, but its inner life always manifested a splendid activity of mind and soul, exerting a mighty influence upon the history of the world. It was declared dead by the ruling Church, and yet it constantly filled her with alarm by the truths it uttered. The Jewish people was given over to destruction and persecution a thousand times, but all the floods of hatred and [pg 362] violence could not quench its flame. Its marvelous endurance constituted the strongest possible protest against the creed of the Church, which claimed to possess an exclusive truth and the only means of salvation. To suffer and die as martyrs by thousands and tens of thousands, at the stake and under the torture of bloodthirsty mobs, testifying to the One Only God of Israel and humanity, was, to say the least, as heroic a mission as to convert the heathen. Indeed, the Jew, in reciting the Shema each morning in the house of God, renewed daily his zeal and faith, by which he was encouraged to sacrifice himself for his sacred heritage.
8. But the cultivation of the Torah, obligatory upon every Jew, effected more even than the preservation of monotheism. Alongside of the Church, which did its best to suppress free thought, Islam provided a culture which encouraged study and investigation, and this brought the leading spirits in Judaism to a profounder grasp of their own literary treasures. Bold truth-seekers arose under the Mohammedan sway who had the courage to break the chains of belief in the letter of the Scripture, and to claim the right of the human reason to give an opinion on the highest questions of religion. The leading authorities of the Synagogue followed a different course from that of the Church, which had brought the Deity into the sphere of the senses, divided the one God into three persons, and induced the people to worship the image of Mary and her God-child rather than God the Father. They insisted on the absolute unity and spirituality of God, eliminated all the human attributes ascribed to Him in Scripture, and strove to attain the loftiest and purest possible conception of His being. It took a mighty effort for the people of the Law to reëxamine the entire mass of tradition in order to harmonize philosophy and religion, and invest the divine revelation with the highest spiritual character. This mental activity exerted a great influence [pg 363] upon the whole course of thought of subsequent centuries and even upon modern philosophy. Again Israel became conscious of his mission of light. Jewish thinkers, often combining rabbi, physician, and astronomer in one person, carried the torch of science and free investigation, directly or indirectly, into the cell of many a Christian monk, rousing the dull spirit of the Middle Ages and bringing new intellectual nurture to the Church, else she might have starved in her mental poverty.
The Jews of Spain became the teachers of Christian Europe. The forerunners of the Protestant Reformation sat at the feet of Jewish masters. Jewish students of the Hebrew language, scientifically trained, opened up the simple meaning of the Scriptural word, so long hidden by traditional interpretation. The Lutheran and the English translations of the Bible were due to their efforts, and thus also the rise of Protestantism, which inaugurated the modern era. Yet this intellectual revival, this wonderful activity of various thinkers among medieval Jewry, required a soil susceptible to such seeds, an atmosphere favorable to this intense search for truth. This existed only in the Jewish people, since the universal study of the Torah brought it about that “all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings” even while dense darkness covered the nations of the medieval world.
9. We must not underrate the cultural mission of the Jewish people, with its striking contrast to the New Testament point of view, which created monasteries and the celibate ideal, and thus discouraged industry, commerce, and scientific inquiry. Dispersed as they were, the Jewish people cultivated both commerce and science, and thus for centuries were the real bearers of culture, the intermediaries between East and West. While the Church divided mankind into heirs of heaven and hell, thus sowing discord and hatred, the little group of Jews maintained their ideal of an undivided [pg 364] humanity. But even their industrial and commercial activity had more than a mere economic significance. Forced upon the Jew by external pressure, it was favored by Jewish teaching as a means of promoting spiritual life. Not poverty and beggary, but wealth begotten by honest toil has the sanction of Judaism in accordance with the saying “Where there is no flour for bread, there can be no support for the study of the Torah.”1164 Moreover, the rabbis interpreted the verse, “Rejoice, O Zebulun, in thy going out, and thou, Issachar, in thy tents,”1165 as meaning that Zebulun, the seafarer, shared the profit of his commerce with Issachar, who taught the law in the tents of the Torah, that he, in turn, might share his brother's spiritual reward. Indeed, the Jew used his gains won by trade in the service of the promotion of learning, and thus his entire industry assumed a higher character. Our modern civilization, with its higher values of life, owes much to the cultural activity of the medieval Jew, which many leaders of the ruling Church still ignore completely. It is true that the hard struggle for their very existence kept the people unconscious of their cultural mission, and only now that they have attained the higher historical point of view can they exclaim with Joseph their ancestor: “As for you, ye meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.”1166 The fact is that Jewish commerce has been an important cosmopolitan factor in the past, and is still working, to a certain extent, in the same direction.1167
10. New and great tasks have been assigned by divine Providence to the Jew of modern times, who is a full citizen in the cultural, social, and political life of the various nations. [pg 365] These tasks are most holy to him as Jew, the bearer of a great mission to the world, which is embodied in his heritage, the Torah. However splendid may have been his achievements in the fields of industry and commerce, of literature and art, his own peculiar possession is the Torah alone, the religious truth for which he fought and suffered all these centuries past; this must forever remain the central thought, the aim of all his striving.1168 Every achievement of the Jewish people, every attainment in power, knowledge, or skill, must lead toward the completion of the divine kingdom of truth and justice; that for which the Jew laid the foundation at the beginning of his history is still leading forward the entire social life of man to render it a divine household of love and peace. In order that it may carry out the world mission mapped out by its great seers of yore, the Jewish people must guard against absorption by the multitude of nations as much as against isolation from them. It must preserve its identity without going back into a separation rooted in self-adulation and clannishness. Instead, the great goal of Israel will be reached only by patient endurance and perseverance, confidently awaiting the fulfillment in God's own time of the glorious prophecy that all the nations shall be led up to the mountain of the Lord by the priest-people, there to worship God in truth and righteousness. The Law is to go forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, as a spiritual, not a geographical center. This vision forms the highest pinnacle of human aspiration, rising higher and higher before the mind, as man ascends from one stage of culture to another, striving ever for perfection, for the sublimest ideal of life. This is characteristically expressed by the Midrash, which refers to the Messianic vision: “And it shall come to pass in the end of days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established as the top of the [pg 366] mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills.”1169 “One great mountain of the earth will be piled upon the other, and Mount Zion will be placed upon the top as the culminating point of all human ascents.” Taken in a figurative sense, in which alone the saying is acceptable, this means that all the heights of the various ideals will finally merge into the loftiest of all ideals, when Israel's one holy God will be acknowledged as the One for whom all hearts yearn, whom all minds seek as the Ideal of all ideals.