Talmudists

“ The legal, religious and other decisions formulated in the pontifical communications of one generation usually became the venerated teaching of the next, and a new class of literature thus sprang into existence. (See Gaon.) Meanwhile, as the Babylonian schools decayed, Talmudic learning was assiduously pursued outside its oriental home, and some Babylonian Talmudists apparently reached the West. However, the fortunes of the Talmud in a hostile world now become part of the history of the Jews, and the many interesting vicissitudes cannot be recapitulated here. (See Jews, §§ 44 sqq.) ”

“ Only when it was necessary to die for the faith of their fathers did they show themselves heroic and full of courage; at other times their activity was expended on petty concerns. No new course was taken, not even at sight of the daily changes of the Christian world. The few who maintained themselves on the heights of science kept to the beaten track, served but to level it still more. The ruling idea was to elucidate old thoughts and old thinkers, and to write commentaries, yea, even super-commentaries. The Talmudists explained the Talmud, and the philosophical inquirers Maimuni's "Guide." ”

“ The extraordinary mental energy that had matured the Bible and the old writings in the first period, manifested itself in the second period in the encyclopedic productions of the Talmudists, in the religious philosophy of the middle ages, in Rabbinism, in the Kabbala, in mysticism, and in science. The spiritual discipline of the school came to mean for the Jew what military discipline is for other nations. ”

“ Now in most religious controversies discipline counts for more than belief. As Salimbene asserts of his own day: 'It was far less dangerous to debate in the schools whether God really existed, than to wear publicly and pertinaciously a frock and cowl of any but the orthodox cut.' But the Talmudists' antagonism to mysticism was not exclusively of this kind in the eighteenth century. Mysticism is often mere delusion. In the last resort man has no other guide than his reason. It is his own reason that convinces him of the limitations of his reason. ”

“ It was for this reason that the Babylonian rather than the Jerusalem Talmud became the fundamental possession of the Jewish race, its life's breath, its very soul. It was a family history for succeeding generations, in which they felt themselves at home, in which they lived and moved, the thinker in the world of thought, the dreamer in glorious ideal pictures. For more than a thousand years the external world, nature and mankind, powers and events, were for the Jewish nation insignificant, non-essential, a mere phantom; the only true reality was the Talmud. ”

“ The Talmud by no means restricts this love of one's enemies to members of one's own people. As man is bidden to pray to God for sinners (Sohar to Genesis, fol. 67) , so God says to Moses: “Israelite or Gentile, man or woman, slave or free, all are alike for you” (Jalkut, c. 20b) . In accordance with this, and in agreement with Levit. xix, 9, the Talmud commands them not to prevent the Gentile poor from gleaning in the fields (Gittin, c. 5) , and repeatedly represents Abraham the Israelite as a model of tolerance. ”

“ The Babylonian Talmud is especially distinguished from the Jerusalem or Palestine Talmud by the flights of thought, the penetration of mind, the flashes of genius, which rise and vanish again. An infinite fulness of thought and of thought-exciting material is laid up in the mine of the Talmud, not, however, in the shape of a finished theme which one can grasp at a glance, but in all its original freshness of conception. ”

“ Yet, even when the Shul'han Arukh will be forgotten, the Talmud will receive the respect and honor of all who love liberty, both mental and religious. It lives and will live, because of its adaptability to the necessities of every age, and if any proof were needed to show that it is not dead, the attacks that are with remarkable frequency made on it in Germany might be given as the strongest evidence. In its day the Talmud received, not the decisions, but the debates of the leaders of the people. ”

“ The interpretation of a difficult passage from the Talmud, or the coining of an epigram, is as food and wine to the wise old students, and there is not an ill in their lives that cannot be soothed or a blessing that cannot be acknowledged in a quotation from their beloved book. To watch them at their study and devotions undisturbed by the turmoil about them is to marvel at the faith which has enabled some of them to live more than one hundred years with no other interest in life than their God and their books. ”

“ His chief point for malicious attack was the Talmud, which he represented as the stronghold and storehouse for Jewish crime, stupidity, and superstition. He invented his examples to prove his rule. And the Talmud, for such an object, was well chosen. It is extremely easy to make assertions against a book which very few people can read. Those who were ignorant of the real contents of the Talmud naturally did not like to confess to their ignorance. Jews were an unpopular subject, and it looked so wise and dignified to agree in a condemnation which was apparently founded on much learned research. ”

“ The attacks on the Talmud have not been made by the enemies of the Jews alone. Large numbers of Jews themselves repudiate it, denying that they are Talmud Jews, or that they have any sympathy with it. Yet there are only the few Karaites in Russia and Austria, and the still fewer Samaritans in Palestine, who are really not Talmud Jews. ”

“ Among Christian peoples the Talmud is virtually unknown; to well-nigh every individual in the Christian nations it is but the shadow of a name, to the great majority scarcely even that; and yet the profound, the awful reverence for the Old Testament Scriptures which lives among all Christian folk, a reverence that often shades into a passionate love, though they guess it not, springs largely out of the teachings of that great Rabbinic book the Talmud, the very name of which so many have scarcely heard. ”

“ The keener intellects received wealthy brides as a reward for their mental exertions. Rich parents took pride in having sons-in-law educated in Talmudic schools, and sought for them at the fairs. The Polish Jews, by reason of this fervent zeal, acquired a Talmudic deportment, so to speak, which showed itself in every movement and every utterance, by ungraceful shrugging of the shoulders and a peculiar movement of the thumbs. Every conversation, whether of a perfectly indifferent nature or even upon matters of business, resembled a disputation upon the Talmud. ”

“ It breathes charity to all men. If we except a few items of coarseness, such as must occur in every legal code, it is all good; at least, it is never bad; it deserves all possible respect and even reverence. Such, in a condensed form, is the account of the Talmud which Deutsch asks us to accept.
But it cannot be admitted that the defects of the Talmud are trivial, any more than that the spirit of the Rabbins towards Christianity was tolerant. Nor can it be admitted that the Talmud owes nothing to the Christian Scriptures. ”

“ The one purpose and object of the Talmud, followed out with a changeless and restless industry by the doctors of the Mishnah and the Gemara, from the year 70 to nearly the close of the sixth century—that is to say, for a period of some five hundred years—was the Glorification of Israel. Law and legend, rule and tradition, massed together with rare skill, all dwell on this. The Jews, and only the Jews, were the people chosen by God. If they would but honour Him and serve Him faithfully they would in the end win the exceeding great and promised reward. ”

“ The study of the Talmud is the chief object of a learned education among our people. Riches, bodily advantages, and talents of every kind have indeed in their eyes a certain worth, and are esteemed in proportion; but nothing stands among them above the dignity of a good Talmudist. He has the first claim upon all offices and positions of honour in the community. If he enters an assembly,—he may be of any age or rank,—every one rises before him most respectfully, and the most honourable place is assigned to him. ”

“ We do not mean to ascribe any peculiar degree of folly to the rabbies. Persons calling themselves Christians have been just as foolish, have believed stories just as absurd, and have handed them down as religious truths. But then, we do not receive these legends as a part and parcel of our religion. We are as free to say of them, as of the Talmudic fables, that they are wicked falsehoods. But the modern Jews tell us that the Talmud is a divine book—that it contains their religion, and that without it Moses and the Prophets are unintelligible ”

“ If, as is the case, Oriental people are of a serious turn of mind, it is easy to understand that the Jews should have been still more so, since they were always objects of hatred and abhorrence. We find a touching allegory in the Talmud. Each time that a human being is created God orders his angels to bring a soul before his throne, and orders this soul to go and inhabit the body which is about to be born on earth. The soul is grieved, and supplicates the Supreme Being to spare it that painful trial, in which it only sees sorrow and affliction. ”

“ No one in this twentieth century who is not familiar with the Jewish Talmud and the earlier writings, can have the remotest conception of the thousand formalities, ceremonies, mummeries even, imposed upon the people of the church in the olden days. Later, ten volumes of the Talmud will be required to explain, to interpret, establish, and to write down the manner in which the commonest things of life might be done. ”

“ The Talmud preserved and promoted the religious and moral life of Judaism; it held out a banner to the communities scattered in all corners of the earth, and protected them from schism and sectarian divisions; it acquainted subsequent generations with the history of their nation; finally, it produced a deep intellectual life which preserved the enslaved and proscribed from stagnation, and which lit for them the torch of science. ”

“ It is dreadful to contemplate that some venerable rabbi, presiding over a yeshibah, in his anxiety to discover and communicate to others some new interpretation, should offer a perverted explanation of the Talmud, though he himself and every one else be fully aware that the true meaning is different. Can it be God's will that we sharpen our minds by fallacies and sophistries, spending our time in vain and teaching the listeners to do likewise? ”

“ The form of the prayer in the matter of its age may be in dispute; but back in the ancient and modern Talmud is the authorization of the practice: “He who wishes that his vows and oaths shall have no value, stand up at the beginning of the year and say: ‘All vows which I shall make during the year shall be of no value.’” That answers our reader’s question. This article does not say that all Jews thus deliberately assassinate their pledged word. It does say that both the Talmud and the prayer book permit them to do so, and tell them how it may be accomplished. ”

“ Amid its bitter enemies and weak friends the Talmud has suffered a martyrdom. Its eventful history is too well known to require detailing here. We feel that every attack on it is an attack upon the Jew. We feel that defence by the mere citation of phrases is useless and at the best weak. To answer the attacks made upon it through ludicrous and garbled quotations were idle. There is only one defence that can be made in behalf of the Talmud. ”

“ But a saviour was at hand for ‘Rabbi Talmud,’ as some of the most ignorant of all called it, actually believing, in their hot haste, that all this wickedness which they were called on to shudder at was contained in a man, and not in a book! ”

“ I prefer the “Kalewala” to any other theme you suggest. I might suggest many others, but none so vast, so grand, so multiform. Nothing in the Talmud like that. The Talmud is a Semitic work; but nothing Jewish rises to the grandeur of Arabic poetry, which expresses the supreme possibilities of the Semitic mind,—except, perhaps, the Book of Job, which is thought by some to have had an Arabian creator.
What you say about the disinclination to work for years upon a theme for pure love’s sake, without hope of reward, touches me,—because I have felt that despair so long and so often. ”

“ We are sure that every Israelite would be sadly offended at being told, that he does not worship the God of his fathers, but a strange god, invented by the imagination of the rabbles; and yet, if he worship the god of the Talmud, it is nothing but the truth. The god of the Talmud is certainly not the God of the Bible. Israelites are often shocked at the folly and wickedness of those whom they see falling down before stocks and stones; and yet, if they receive the oral law, and believe an a Deity who plays with Leviathan, &c., the object of their worship is not a whit more rational. ”

“ The Talmud is the witness to show how some of his countrymen, some of the bravest, some of the ablest, some of the most pious and saintly, and a host of unnamed faithful, were true to those ideals and clung to those hopes; and how, through good report and ill report, through shocks of disaster and the ruin of their state, ground down by persecution, or torn by faction, steadily facing enemies without and enemies within, they held on to the religion of Torah. They have not sought, and they certainly have not found, the praise of men for their steadfastness. ”

“ The Talmud insists upon the pre-existence of the soul, on the dogmas of Immortality and the Resurrection, it denies the doctrine of everlasting damnation; it excludes no human being from the world to come. And as the Talmud, continues Deutsch, although redacted at a later period, is, in point of time, prior to the New Testament, the beautiful maxims of the former cannot have been borrowed from the latter. ”