Halacha

“ And the authority of Halachah was the will of God. It is easy to pick out from the Mishnah [103] instances of minute regulation upon points of no apparent importance—such, for instance, as the rules for dealing with an egg laid upon the Sabbath. If a Pharisee were challenged upon that, or any similar case, he would say: "The Torah, the divine revelation, extends over the whole of life; and its principles, when drawn out and applied to that particular case, yield the results stated in the Halachah, bearing thereon. ”

“ And, so far as the Torah consisted of precepts, positive and negative, the "hedge" was of the nature of warnings whereby a man might be saved from transgression before it was too late. The detailed mass of precept elaborated in the course of centuries, known as the Halachah (see Chapter II.) or rule of right conduct, and finally embodied in the Talmud, was part of the Torah itself made explicit, the divine teaching so far as it related to such and such departments of conduct. ”

“ But the Halachah, as the reader will wish to [101] remind me, came very much more closely home to the Jew than a code of civil and criminal law could do. It was the rule of his private and domestic life, it defined his conduct both towards God and his fellow-man. Certainly it did. And the Pharisee would say, "Why not? Do I not need to serve God in everything I do, however small? And if the Torah can teach me exactly—yes, very exactly—what is most pleasing to Him, shall I not thankfully receive that teaching, and the more of it the better?" ”

“ That I take to be the theory of the Haggadah, the explanation which a Haggadist would give of the reason for his peculiar treatment of Scripture. Haggadah, like Halachah, is a natural, perhaps even a necessary, development of a religion of Torah. Both are [243] integral parts of Torah; and a thorough understanding of the nature and function of each is necessary for the understanding of the whole. Halachah and Haggadah, together with the personal spiritual life of the individual, cover the whole field of the religious consciousness of the Pharisee. ”

“ Like the heathen Christians, the Nazarenes reviled the Jews and their ways. As the written Law was holy to them also, they directed their shafts against the study of Halachas amongst the Tanaites, who in those days were the very life of Judaism. In Jewish-Christian, as in Jewish circles, men were accustomed to view all events from the point of view of Holy Writ, and to draw counsel from the explanations and references in the prophecies. ”

“ A well-known prayer, still used in the liturgy, runs thus:—"Blessed art Thou, O Lord, our God, King of the world, that Thou hast not made me a Gentile ... a slave ... a woman." Much scorn has been poured out upon those who have offered that prayer, as if it were nothing but the utterance of arrogant vainglory. But, however it may sound to Gentiles, what the Jews meant, and mean, by it is this, that God is thanked for having given in the Torah the opportunity of serving Him, in the "Mitzvōth," which were not enjoined upon Gentiles, slaves, or women. ”

“ When now the apostle of God was speaking with these men and calling on them to believe in God, they said one to another: “Know surely that this is the Prophet, of whom the Jews have warned us; come let us now make haste and be the first to join him.” So they embraced Islam, and said to him, “Our countrymen have long been engaged in a most bitter and deadly feud with one another; but now perhaps God will unite them together through thee and thy teaching. Therefore we will preach to them and make known to them this religion, that we have received from thee.” ”

“ We acknowledge the unity and eternity of God, and that all men are derived from Adam-Noah. We absolutely reject embodiment, and if any element of this appears in the Writ, we explain it as a metaphor and allegory. At the same time we maintain that our Book is the Speech of God, being a miracle which we are bound to accept for its own sake, since no one is able to bring anything similar to it, or to one of its verses. Our prophet is the Seal of the prophets, who abrogated every previous law, and invited all nations to embrace Islam. ”

“ Divine revelation of principles and prohibitions in the Hebrew Scriptures form the basis of Jewish law, or halakhah, which is a key component of the faith. While there are extensive traditions of Jewish halakhic and theological discourse, there is no final dogmatic authority in the tradition. Local communities have their own religious leadership. ”

“ The keynote of prophetic religion of the Jewish prophets was holiness of life and purity of heart. Love and mercy shown by men, one to another, make up the acceptable worship of the Holy One of Israel. To place the Master of Nazareth by their side can surely be no dishonor to him, nor can it dim the luster of his name. If he has added to their spiritual bequests new jewels of religious truth, and spoken words which are words of life, because they touch the deepest springs of the human heart, why should we Jews not glory in him? ”

“ Among the chief attempts to codify the halakha were the Great Rules (Halakhoth Gedoloth) of Simon Kayyara (9th century) , based on the letters written by the Gaonim, the heads of the Babylonian schools, to Jewish inquirers in many lands, the work of Jacob Alfassi (1013–1103) , the Strong Hand of Maimonides (1180) , and the Table Prepared (Shulḥan Aruch) of Joseph Qaro (1565) , which from its practical scope and its clarity as a work of general reference became the universal handbook of Jewish life in many of its phases. ”

“ Now, legality is nothing more nor less than Judaism. It is seeking salvation after the pattern of the Old Testament, and not after that of the New. It is a matter of works, and not a matter of faith. It inquires “What good thing shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?” It is the child of the bondwoman and not that of the free. It is Ishmael and not Isaac. It is Sinai and not Calvary.
And so it happens that many Christians are simply good Jews. They may even possess circumcised hearts, and may yet serve the Lord in the spirit of bondage, as did good Jews of old. ”

“ Likenesses between Islam and Judaism.—There was a kinship of religious thought, as well as of language and of race, between the Arab and the Jew. The Unity of God is the first principle of Islam as it is of Judaism. Abraham and Moses are the heroes of the Koran as of the Pentateuch, and the covenant of Abraham and the dietary laws of Moses are enjoined by Mahomed on his followers.
5. Differences between Islam and Judaism.—But there were differences too, and these of a very vital sort. ‘Allah was God.’ That doctrine of the new faith, the Jews, worshippers of One, might agree with. ”

“ This reminded me of something I had once heard concerning the arguments of a Rabbi who sojourned with the King of the Khazars. The latter, as we know from historical records, became a convert to Judaism about four hundred years ago. To him came a dream, and it appeared as if an angel addressed him, saying: 'Thy way of thinking is indeed pleasing to the Creator, but not thy way of acting.' Yet he was so zealous in the performance of the Khazar religion, that he devoted himself with a perfect heart to the service of the temple and sacrifices. ”

“ Next year twelve new converts were made from persons who had come to see the Prophet from Medina. They returned as missionaries of Islam, and Islam spread rapidly in Medina from house to house and from tribe to tribe. The Jews looked on in amazement at the people whom they had in vain endeavoured from generations to convince of the errors of polytheism, and to dissuade from the abominations of their idolatry, suddenly of their own accord casting away idols and professing belief in the one True God. ”

“ Christianity is an impiety, if it is true that Judaism is a religion which has really emanated from a holy, immutable, omnipotent, and foreseeing God. The religion of Christ supposes either defects in the law which God himself had given by Moses, or impotence or malice in the same God, who was either unable or unwilling to render the Jews such as they ought to have been in order to please him. Every new religion, or reform of ancient religions, is evidently founded upon the impotence, inconstancy, imprudence, or malice of the Divinity. ”

“ Thus these visions reveal the hopes that inspired certain of the Jewish race in its period of supreme trial: the belief that Jehovah through his angel would speedily overthrow the power of the heathen persecutor, that he would establish a universal kingdom in which his own people should have chief place, and finally that even the bonds of death would not hold those who had died for the law. Thus at last out of this struggle Judaism emerged with a new-found faith in individual immortality. ”

“ This will is contained in Revelation, in the Torah; God revealed it to man, not on His own account, for He is rich, sufficient unto Himself, and without wants, but to promote man's happiness in the world beyond. The first duty of man, of the Jew, the servant of God, is to cultivate his mind and acquire wisdom and understanding, so that he may honor God in a worthy and spiritual manner, and gain the bliss of future happiness. Ibn-Zadik also remarks that the rites of Judaism, such as the observance of the Sabbath, are consonant with sense and divine wisdom. ”

“ A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit. And if the fruit be good, then, in the one case as in the other, the tree must be good. No adverse opinion of the Judaism which has suffered and survived, and which, be it remembered, is the Judaism of the Pharisees, can be justified in face of the witness of Israel to the faith once delivered to its saints.
There is further to be considered the fact that before the time of Paul, and indeed ever since, the Pharisees had for their spiritual nourishment the Scriptures of the Old Testament, including the prophecies and the Psalms. ”

“ Judaism was a religion of a temple, of sacrifices, of a sacrificial priesthood: Christianity is a religion in which the Spirit of God
"Doth prefer
Before all temples the upright heart and pure."
It is a religion in which there is no more sacrifice for sin, because the one perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction, has been consummated for [Pg 219] ever. It is a religion in which there is no altar but the Cross; in which there is no priest but Christ, except so far as every Christian is by metaphor a priest to offer up spiritual sacrifices which alone are acceptable to God. ”

“ If Jesus fastened on the most esoteric, the most spiritual doctrines of Judaism, bringing, from the depths of the sanctuary, the most abstruse metaphysics, to construct from it a religion for the million, imperiling, by the abuse of this esoteric theology, the very unity of God--that popular Monotheism which checked the nights of every audacious spirit--imperiling this, we say, by his theory of persons,--it is quite the opposite defect that we have in primitive Islamism. ”

“ No country is fully governed by halakha, but Jewish people may decide to settle disputes through Jewish courts and be bound by their rulings. Canon law is not a divine law as such because it is not found in revelation. It is viewed instead as human law inspired by the word of God and applying the demands of that revelation to the actual situation of the church. Canon law regulates the internal ordering of the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Anglican Communion. ”

“ Every one should, as far as he was able, observe the religious precepts of Judaism, and turn himself in prayer to his God, and whoever was prevented from praying in the prescribed form should, at least, say a short prayer in Hebrew three times a day. Like the Jews who had been forced to baptism under the Spanish Visigothic kings, those who had been converted under compulsion453 to Islam now exhorted one another to remain faithful to their ancient religion. ”

“ The Jews represented the relation of man to God in terms of Torah, in the knowledge of divine truth therein contained, and in filial obedience to God whose precepts were recorded in it. They found, on the lines of Torah, the ground of faith in God and present communion with Him; and while they always hoped to learn more of the contents of revelation—to be shown "wonderful things out of the Torah,"—and while they aspired to a closer walk with God, they never felt that the Torah needed to be replaced by any other means of revelation and communion, as being itself only partial and defective. ”

“ Starting from this point, the religious philosopher, Jehuda Halevi, has an easy task to unfold proofs of the truth and divine character of Judaism. Philosophy discards God and religion entirely, not knowing what place to assign to them in the world. Christianity and Islam turn their backs on reason, for they find reason in opposition to the cardinal doctrines of their religions. ”

“ At the same time it gave rise also to ritualistic piety, which, while tenaciously clinging to the traditional practice of the law, fostered hair-splitting casuistry and caused the petrifaction of religion in the codified Halakah. As doctrine it impressed its ethical and humane idealism upon the people, lifting them far above the narrow confines of nationality, and making them a nation of thinkers. Hence their eagerness for their mission to impart the wisdom stored in their writings to all humanity as its highest boon and the very essence of divine wisdom. ”