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by
Isaac Leeser
O
God of Israel hear! Father of truth, listen to the words of our prayer;
Thou who ever hearest, Thou who ever art attentive to the entreaties of
thy children. And if even we are guilty in thy eyes, do not avert thy
view from us, do not close up thy ear, but regard us with favour, and
forgive our iniquities, and accept our prayer, though it proceed from
polluted lips. For where is the one that is pure in thy sight? where the
heart that is not laden with guilt? Were it then that Thou wouldst judge
only to condemn, all would needs meet the awful doom of thy displeasure.
In this confidence do we then approach Thee, not denying our guilt, not
hiding our transgressions, but as humble suppliants of mercy which we
have rejected, as petitioners for grace which we do not deserve. O hear
us, then, in this hour! and let us experience in our inward heart the
consolation of thy mercy and thy truth, which guide thy servants
securely upon the dark path of life’s troubled ocean, which have
preserved Israel from the snares which have beset them from their origin
as a people. Save us, Father! save us from our own perverseness; save
thy heritage from the evil that is in their own souls; purge thy
household from those who bring destruction into it, and single out those
who are true to thy will as thy peculiar treasure, as the brilliant
jewels whose light shineth for ever in the diadem of majesty that
encircleth thy glory. Be it also thy will to let the truth of their
sinfulness be made manifest to the sinners of Israel, that they may
return unto Thee with a pure repentance, a repentance in which there is
no love for past iniquity, which abhors the evil which was perpetrated
in the days when the soul slumbered darkly, unconverted to thy law,
untouched by thy light. So that thy kingdom may be established over us
all, and we indeed be called thy people, the first of thy fruit, holy
unto thy service. Amen.
Brethren,—
In
the days when the crown of our head was struck to the ground, at the
time that, exhausted with slaughter, sunk fainting the weary sons of
Zion, those who had been spared, and they were indeed few from many,
felt inwardly that it was not the prowess of the enemy which had
prevailed over them, but the weight of their iniquities which paralysed
their arm and blunted their sword; and thus they conceived it their duty
to humble themselves, before the Judge who had made them conscious of
their guilt, and to return to the Father whose favour they had blindly
rejected. Now in what did the sin of our forefathers of the first temple
consist? It was in chief sensuality which had led them captive; they
followed the customs of the heathen, which were interdicted in the law,
and their very idolatry was greatly owing to the freedom from restraint
which they coveted, that they might be like the other nations around
them. Of the correctness of this view, the denunciations of the prophets
are the best evidence which we can have, and they speak in eloquent
language of the derelictions of the men of those times. When, therefore,
the evil which had been threatened did actually befall us: it was at
once felt that it was a natural consequence of the long series of
Israel’s transgressions; just as the convulsions of poison are the
natural result of swallowing the substances that are inimical to human
existence. That there always was known among us a remedy against the
death of the soul, as soon as she found herself stumbling through sin,
and this antidote is the system of repentance which was revealed to us,
from time to time, by the prophets of the Lord. These have taught us,
not alone that a man should forsake his evil way and return to the Lord,
in words and thoughts; but that he should curb within himself the
propensities to carnal indulgence, not to mortify the flesh, but to
elevate the spirit. And indeed when the flesh becomes weak, and
lassitude creeps over the bodily organs, the high enjoyment in things
merely of this life is greatly blunted, and the sinkings of a mortal’s
nature will then impress themselves upon his conviction; and he will
feel that the spirit needs some other source of tranquillity than the
constant round of enjoyments and pleasurable engagements which are so
much prized by the world at large; especially will this be the case if
this mortification of the body is done from a premeditated resolve, in
order to curb desire, and to avoid causes of sinful temptation. Fasting,
therefore, and abstinence from pleasure are proper remedies against the
too greedy indulgence in perishable things, against the over-anxiety to
live for this life only. In addition to this, when we are engaged in
such an act of active penance, we are paying, so to say, in kind for the
evil before perpetrated; and, by subduing our desires, we become fit to
re-enter the path of righteousness which we have forsaken. But Israel
had, at the destruction of Jerusalem, not sinned alone as individuals,
for the nation also had violated the law; the roads to Jerusalem were
not trod during ages of prosperity by those who hastened up to the house
of God to offer there devotion and sacrifices; the mad and frantic
orgies of heathen worship had enchained the multitude; and, in addition
to this, the courts of justice were converted into tribunals that looked
with indifference upon infringements of religion, and did not pronounce
judgment to restore to their rights those of the people who were
suffering unjustly the tyranny exercised over them by the proud and
wealthy, who considered their strong hand all-sufficient for them in
their dealings with their fellow-men.
When
now our fathers awoke from their long mental slumber, and saw how their
guilt had destroyed the sanctuary, ruined their cities, overthrown their
government, and surrendered multitudes to famine and slaughter: they did
not ascribe all this to fortuitous circumstances, to the accidental
prevalence of their enemies over them, but to the effects of divine
wrath, to the withdrawal of the favour of God, which had thus left them
an easy prey to those who devoured them in all their dwellings. Thus
admonished, they aroused themselves to thought, they evoked the energy
of their mind to reflection, and catered into a covenant with themselves
to forego the pleasures of this world, only to be led back to the safe
guidance of their blessed but neglected religion. They thus met in their
places of dispersion, and poured out their hearts before God, abstained
on stated days as one man from carnal enjoyment, and asked, as a
community, for mercy, because as a community they had transgressed. And
well did they choose to act thus; no matter where the Israelite lived,
if alone in the midst of a heathen community, or in the fellowship of
numerous believers, on one and the same day he called with his dispersed
brethren on the honoured and fearful Name, that He might have compassion
of Zion, and visit again his people in mercy. And thus acting, he was
reminded that there was something else to live for than the fleeting
hour; that the Israelite’s resting-place was not the land of his
captors, nor this earthly state the final abode of his spirit. He was
reminded, when fasting for the misfortunes which befell our fathers in
their obduracy, that sinfulness is a state of warfare against the Deity;
that long indulgence, the withholding of retribution, is no sign of
exemption, no token that the Lord has overlooked to let his violated
will be avenged on the transgressor, and that it is best therefore for
man to bear the sweet burden of religion in his youth, that he submit
whilst it is yet time to listen to the breathings of divine instruction
which is preached to him from a thousand sources, all appealing to him
to walk in the path of life and earn for himself everlasting salvation.
He was reminded when he entered into the house of prayer, where other
sons of Israel wept and mourned for Zion, that he and they had lost a
country lovely in its products, blessed by the overshadowing providence
of the Creator; that they had lost in the day of strife that for which
the patriot’s heart beats high—the sovereignty and independence of
their native land;—that through this they were compelled to forego the
worship of the King in glory in his sanctuary, which He had chosen for
the dwelling of his name, and that they were compulsory sojourners far
from their loved heritage, and that they could not be united again as
one people in any other spot, no matter how large the land, or fertile
the soil, except in that small margin of the great ocean which the Lord
had given to Abraham. He was reminded, when his soul fainted within him,
that the earth one day must fade from his view, that he must then leave
what his heart clung to as a legacy to those who laboured not for it,
and that of all his toil there will be nothing left to him as his own
save the labours of righteousness and the acquisition he may have made
in the knowledge of the law of God. And who can aver that a day of
penitence, passed with such feelings, which induced man to survey the
past, the present, and the future, could have been otherwise than
wholesome in its influence? It taught the Israelite to abhor the sin
which banished his fathers from their home; it admonished him to regard
with kindness those who like him were wanderers over the face of the
earth, and it breathed into him hopes to look forward to the restoration
of the good things taken from him by the loss of fatherland, and then it
bade him look upward unto his Father in heaven as the final rest of his
soul, in whose presence all the acts, words, and thoughts of life would
ultimately see their final perfection.
To
those therefore who felt for their religion and its departed glory, the
fasts of Israel have always been seasons sacred to the memory of the
past, and incentives to hope for the future. And not alone this,—the
true believers felt in humbling themselves before God, that in all their
trials HE would be with them to preserve them from annihilation.
Whenever then calamities thickened around us, when the wrath of man
burnt fiercer than the lightnings of heaven: the servants of the Lord
forgot not the presence of their Almighty Redeemer, and they resumed the
pious course of their fathers, and they went in fasting and prayer unto
the house of assembly; and if even in the dungeon, they lifted up there
the heart and soul above the cares and sorrows of their existence; and
they obtained enlargement; not always, it is true, in a deliverance from
earthly sorrows, for many a holy spirit succumbed in the body to the
sufferings which passed over us like mighty streams, but in the
exaltation which was vouchsafed to them over these very sorrows, in the
light which beamed through the bars of their prison-houses, in the
fortitude which bade them walk to the burning stake, triumphant in their
faith more than the warrior in the day of victory. And thus were the
Israelites upheld through ages, when suffering seemed to be the only
heirloom bequeathed to them from the heroes of antiquity, when all their
ancestral glory was only an additional incentive to heap upon them, the
unoffending and unresisting sufferers, the scorn, the hatred of an
infuriated world. O, in those days it was a holy thing for the sons of
Jacob to dwell with a melancholy pleasure upon the recital of ancient
glory; it was then, with hearts overflowing with gratitude, that they
reverted back to the days when Israel was a child,—when God loved him
for the righteousness of the fathers, the great names of ancient times,
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,—when He saw his affliction in the land of
Mitzrayim, and sent his messenger Moses to afflict Pharaoh with mighty
wonders, to divide for his armies the waters of the Red Sea,—when He
sent down his glory to the top of Mount Sinai, to teach his first-born
wisdom and truth. Yes, these were themes of a glorious past for
suffering believers; in these recollections they could revel,—no
stranger could therein disturb their joy; no one alien to the family of
Jacob could claim aught in this heavenly delight. And though they might
be scorned by the proud and thoughtless rulers of the earth: they felt
that all the light which these enjoyed was first taken from their law;
and they could point to deeds of mercy, wrought in their behalf, such as
the Creator alone could produce. They possessed also a system of faith
and actions which man could never have invented, which could and did
spring from the wisdom of God alone. And thus they could well bear with
the deprivations of the present, in their constant living in the days of
a long past antiquity, an antiquity nevertheless full of youthful
vigour, and felt by its acting upon and influencing every age which
followed its predecessor, as must be the case with those laws and
ordinances which the Lord himself instituted as the unquenchable light
of the world. But not the past alone was to them a source of joy and
comfort; the future likewise opened to them a brilliant and pleasant
destiny. Let other nations enjoy the moment, the glitter of royalty, the
applause of triumph of principles or of arms; let associations glorify
themselves over the victory which their mind has obtained over the
opinions of others; the Israelites had far more to look forward to—a
regeneration of the world by their acts and sufferings. True they had no
king of their own to lead their armies to battle; they had no share in
the government of the world; they were aliens in every land; their
principles were a passport to oppression; their learning was contemned,
and the portals of the temple of science was shut against them; as
unclean, as affected with leprosy, were the gates of cities closed to
bar their entrance; but what could all these hardships effect? Could
they stifle the spirit of God that breathed hope and consolation in
them? No; they felt, that the word of the Lord had gone forth to call
unto himself a chosen servant from the seed of Israel, the divinely
endowed prince, whom they looked forward to with hope and fear; the
chief, unto whom nations should flock to inquire, What has the Lord
spoken? who is to rule, not by the potency of human prowess, but by the
spirit of God that is to instruct him in all things; and they were
insured, from their faith in divine promises, that at his coming there
would be an end to warfare and strife; that the idols would utterly be
banished from the earth; that errors would be annihilated before the
triumphant progress of truth, and that in those days, the religion
revealed on Sinai would not be a token of oppression to its professors,
but a light unto salvation to all who would seek its wisdom, to each son
of man who may come forward to drink of the fountain opened to all lips
by the manifestation of the divine power. And they also believed that
each one could contribute by his own acts to the speedy approach of this
glory; for as all had an equal share in the redemption from Egyptian
bondage, and as all were equally present in their ancestors at the
annunciation of the law from Horeb: all leave the same interest in and
can therefore be equally active for the good which the Lord has spoken
of for Israel. Whenever then the stated fasts came round, whether the
day was long or short, the faithful assembled, and, in the language of
Palestine, they implored the Lord of their fathers to remember them all
in his loving kindness, and to restore his glory to his house at
Jerusalem, and to bless his people with the light of his countenance, by
sending them his messenger of peace, the redeemer, who is to feed them
securely on the mountains of the land of Israel. In this manner, have
these days of observance, first instituted by the prophets, come down to
our own times, full of meaning and high significance, not as periods for
a senseless affliction of the body, but as days of commemoration, of
repentance, of prayer, and of renewed hope.
Hitherto,
brethren, the Lord has been our Shield; and though often passing through
the waters of tribulation, we have been preserved to transmit to those
who may come after us the recollections of the past, the duties of the
present, and the hopes of the future. But some men of the day, who only
see what passes before their eyes, who are too worldly to look back upon
the past, and have no faith in the future; may say, perhaps, in their
presumption, “What need we to afflict ourselves about long past
events? what is unto us the destruction of Jerusalem? what the
scattering of Israel? In times indeed when we were scorned, it was well
enough to fast and weep; but now our condition is improved—we are now
equals with other men; the present is ours as well as the gentiles’;
we cannot keep up recollections of past injuries, we wish to forgive, to
forget, secure in our rights, careless about the future.” There are
men who argue thus, if arguing it can be called; worldlings, who see not
that such liberty as we enjoy is at best but the gift of Providence,
granted us for the time, not the result of a radical change in the
history of the world; that persecution in all its horrors may not come
again to terrify us in the city, to pursue us in the field. “The
present is ours,” say these men. Alas! Israel is yet suffering; the
present is not ours: would to Mercy it were so. Here, in this land, we
are untrammelled in the exercise of our religion; there are no inquiries
made by law; “why we believe as we do.” But there are many other
lands where the Jew is as much a slave as during the times of the
crusaders. There is, it is true, a different spirit in the persecutions;
it was then the infuriated masses that travelled from city to city to
destroy the infidels, the enemies of their religion, as they called us;
whereas now no one is capitally punished for his belief; but for all
that, there is no freedom for Israel. In many countries we are
restricted to filthy, narrow streets, beyond which a Jew cannot dwell;
in others we are limited to certain pursuits, whilst all the nobler
professions are interdicted to us; in others, the number of those who
are permitted to marry is based upon the proportion of married persons
who have died, and left the right of protection as an inheritance to
their successors; and in others—But what good can result to recount
all the sorrows of our people at the present day? Are not our ears
constantly pained at hearing the acts of tyranny which are perpetrated
in civilized Europe, or barbarous Asia and Africa, by the rulers and
people? and where is our power to resist this evil? “The present is
ours;” yea, as always, a present of suffering; and wo to those who
depend upon the march of intellect to put a stop to these cruelties!
Only the good Father, who chastiseth us to be his servants, can end all
this anguish. But well is it for us to be so reminded that we are the
humble of the earth, that our heart may not wax proud and forget what is
due to our God and his law. How many would there be ready to throw off
the burdensome duties that confine them within the narrow limits of the
law; but they are ever and anon reminded that the blood of Jacob flows
in their veins; and with every renewed account of oppression that
reaches them, their pride in their name is aroused, they feel that they
are brothers of the oppressed, that they have yet an interest in those
whom oceans and mountains divide from their sight.
But
there are other men who are tired of their separate national existence,
who feel the name of Jew a disgrace, who would gladly lose their
nationality among the nations of the earth for the simple boon of civil
liberty. They desire to be known as Frenchmen, Germans, or Englishmen;
they wish not to see the restoration of the captives of Israel to the
holy land, content to remain in a severed state, “like the fragments
of a mighty ship, floating upon the vast ocean.” They cannot deny that
they were once a people, that they are disjointed members of this former
state; but talk to them of a restoration, that these disjointed limbs
should form again one homogeneous body: and they will say, with
derision, that they desire to see no such restoration. Well might a
prophet, in the bitterness of spirit, call out over the degeneracy of
his age:
העבד
ישראל אם
יליד בית הוא
מדוע היה לבז
“Is Israel a servant,
or one born to service in the house? why hath he been given to
plunder?”—Jeremiah 2:14.
Yes,
are we slaves to the world at large? were we born bondmen to every
nation under the sun, that we should be always ready to be plundered by
whomsoever will stretch forth his hand against us? Is that our
aspiration for liberty, that we should be content with the measure of
freedom which we can enjoy in each state? I know how to appreciate
liberty; my heart too throbs with emotions of thankfulness that I can
travel hither and thither, write and speak, worship and pray, govern and
be governed, like every freeman in the land. But despite of this, I am
an Israelite, and gladly would I see a state restored under God, and by
his guidance, where the laws administered would be the biblical laws,
where the Jew would not and need not receive his rights as a favour,
where there would be no talk of toleration, where there would be no fear
of abridgement of privileges, where, in short, the Israelite would be
free, not because the stranger grants it, but because his laws, his
religion, his faith, constitute him a part and parcel of the state
itself. Under the best circumstances, in the freest country under the
sun, the Jews are subject to disqualifications, not from the laws of the
country, perhaps, but from the circumstances of their religion
disqualifying them naturally from participating in all offices, or
engaging actively in commerce, upon equal terms with others, if they
wish to live in strict conformity to their faith. Every one of you can
answer for himself whether this is so or not. It is true, every one is
bound to sacrifice his worldly gains when his duty clashes therewith.
But there are unfortunately too many who cannot resist temptation, and
who yield their spiritual welfare for so much gain or so much
distinction. To say, therefore, that a state of restoration is not
desirable to us, is asserting that it is preferable to expose us to
constant diminutions, to the caprice of nations, and the will of
tyrants, to the end of time. Surely such cannot be the will of God;
surely this cannot be the hopes which the prophets have inspired us
with. We may in the mean time be good citizens, faithful to the laws of
the land, where they clash not with the superior obligations we owe to
the Bible; but let us never relinquish the hope, that, if not in our own
day, still the time may come when the Lord will have mercy on his land,
restore his people, rebuild his temples, where we all may worship as
freemen, as Israelites, as servants alone of God, as the children of
those with whom the Lord made a covenant that He would bless them with
his everlasting favour, and that through them and their seed all the
earth may be blest.
Let
us, then, even the men of this country, and of this age, join with our
brothers in lands where oppression yet lies heavily upon them, and fast
on the days consecrated to our fallen glory, and not weary with fraying
unto Him who is enthroned in heaven that he may not forsake his people,
but bless them with the outpouring of his spirit, and guide them unto
himself by penance and good deeds, that they may be found worthy in his
eyes, and be blessed with all the good which He has promised them
through his servants, the prophets, when the walls of Jerusalem are
built again, and his spirit dwells anew in his temple between the wings
of the cherubim. Amen.
Friday,
August 1st, Tamuz 27th, 5605.
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