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by
Isaac Leeser
"One
God, one law, one people."
In
all the vicissitudes which have passed over our scattered tribes, the
idea of one God was always present to them; they ever remembered that
the Creator, who revealed himself to their ancestor Abraham, is indeed
the same Power who governed all from the beginning, and directs every
thing that exists as best suits his unsearchable wisdom. History affords
no record that, since the destruction of the first temple; forgetfulness
of the Deity could ever be laid to the charge of Israel, or that they at
any one time adopted a belief in the existence of a divine Being other
than the Creator. This uniformity of opinion has been the bond of union
which constituted us one people in all our wanderings; for wherever we
met, the exclamation the "Lord is one" proved to the traveller
that he had indeed met a brother, who, like himself, sojourned among the
gentiles, conforming outwardly to their manners and customs, whilst the
heart within throbbed unitedly with all, who, like him, believed in the
same God and obeyed the same law, with the hope for the reunion of the
scattered elements of the once great nation which was called by the name
of Israel.
Differences
have, as is natural, sprung up among us at various times; persons have
disagreed regarding the interpretation of the law, and some have been
rigid observers of outward ceremonies, whilst others have esteemed them
of less importance. Yet these men differed honestly, and each party, in
endeavouring to prove that their views were the best suited to a liberal
interpretation of Scripture, accorded to the other an equal honesty of
purpose; as is clearly established by the well-known saying,אלו ואלו
דברי אלהים
חיים הם "Both opinions are
words of the living God."
There
was, no doubt, at times, a heated ardour exhibited in their
disputations, which, to the casual observer, may appear like bitterness;
but independently of the fact, that these ebullitions of temper are of
rare occurrence, it is only conformable to human nature, that men, in
differing with each other, will occasionally forget the courtesies of
life, for which forgetfulness they will ever afterwards feel the
sincerest regret. Besides all this, they actually never differed on the
great points of religion, on the fundamental articles of belief, on the
interpretation of the principal commandment, and in the exercise of
personal acts of piety which ought to distinguish the life of those who
know their duty, and feel their dependence on the bounty of God.
When,
therefore, the hour of danger came, when the Roman conqueror thundered
at the gates of the holy city, though dissension reigned within its
walls, every sword was turned against the foreign invader; and Sadducce
and his opponent, the priest and the soldier, all strove to prove that
they could die for their home and the law of their God if it was denied
unto them to live free in the land of their inheritance. Times passed
again over our captive race, and the disputes that erst shook the state
continued in the schools of the learned when elucidating the law which
was all that was left out of the wreck of their holy state; dissension,
as we hinted already, occasionally was witnessed among the defenders of
the faith; but still the union of the spirit was not wanting, and when
the edict of persecution burst like the terrific thunder over their
heads, there were no faint souls in the homes of Israel, and many fell
before the persecutor's uplifted sword, and those even who appeared
lukewarm in the holy cause were among the foremost to embrace the stake
sooner than forswear their trust in Israel's God.
What
was the cause of this spiritual union among men who had no apparent
community of interest? not a common language in their daily occupations!
nor a common country in which they could dwell? We may answer that it
was owing to the mercy of God, who wished to uphold a nation whom He had
once established as his own peculiar people; hence results the
astounding fact, that neither exterminating wars destroyed there
utterly, nor that a constant intercourse with the world produced that
mingling of the mind which is so fatal to the minority in all civil
societies. Yet as Providence always works by natural causes, though they
be often quite inadequate to the end they produce so in this instance
there were springs of action put in force long before the people of
Israel went into captivity. During their sojourn in the land of Egypt
already, they had a language which had not its birth among the sons of
Ham, but sprung from the speech of a nobler race, and was, perhaps, the
same tongue which belonged to the father of the human family. With this
language of Heber was connected the acknowledgment of the supreme
Creator
as the God of the world; and when after their redemption from slavery a
uniform law was superadded, given in the same language of Heber;
proclaiming the, same great truth of one God: the union of spirit was
perfected; and the children of Jacob stood before the world as one
people through their belief in one God, their possession of one law,
their knowledge of one speech.
Sinning,
or what is the same, a falling off from the course pointed out by the
law, was not unfrequently witnessed among them; but then at every step
they took they found out, to their sore cost, that no good can result
from a pursuit of sin, and every punishment, that followed in the wake
of transgression, made them constantly more sensible of the superior
excellence of the precepts which their law enjoined on them. They thus
were sent as captives into Assyria and Chaldea, and became familiar with
the domestic habits of the worshippers of idols, whose very images they
too had foolishly worshipped in their days of prosperity. For a time
they fancied, indeed, that their worldly, prosperity could be best
promoted by a course not unlike that of the heathens; as we read in
Jeremiah (44. 15-19): "Then all the men who knew that their wives
were offering incense unto other gods, and all the women that stood by,
a great multitude, even all the people that dwelt in the land of Egypt,
in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying, The word which thou hast spoken
unto us in the name of the Lord, we will not obey thee in. But we will
certainly do whatever we have resolved with our mouth, to burn incense
to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we
have done, we, and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities
of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, when we ate bread in plenty,
and were well, and saw no evil. But since we left off to burn incense to
the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have
wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by
famine." But when, according to the predictions of the prophet, the
downfall of the Egyptian empire was accomplished; when the Israelites,
who had never worshipped idols without some reverence for the God
Everlasting, saw the unmitigated horrors of paganism, the besotting
effects of an unmixed idolatry: they became effectually cured of a
hankering after false gods; and ever since that period, when the temple
was rebuilt under Ezra and Zerubbabel, the national sin of idolatry was
never witnessed among the sons of Israel.
What
thus, in human probability, would have led one to believe as conducive
to the destruction of the Mosaic system, became in the providence of God
the means of removing an inveterate evil, which punishments of an
aggravated kind had failed to accomplish during a residence of the
Israelites on their own soil for a space of about nine hundred years.
And with the destruction of the love for strange gods, the knowledge of
the law of their adored Father in heaven grew into a national study,
into an employment worthy of the chief of his people, and of the
conqueror before whom quailed they who had been the conquerors of the
world. And then, as a natural consequence, though their ancient language
had ceased to be the vernacular and familiar speech of the people in
their daily intercourse, and though it was found requisite to teach them
a portion of the word of God in the Chaldean tongue, (Daniel and Ezra in
part,) and to transcribe some of the prayers in this same cognate
dialect of the Hebrew: the people were referred, as an object worthy of
attainment, to acquire by study an adequate knowledge of the Hebrew, and
the law, the prophets and the greater part of the service of the temple
and Synagogue were ordered to be read in the ancestral language; thus
binding the Israelites not only to the law, but to the original language
of the law, in order that drinking each man of them out of the same pure
fount, they might not be compelled to receive the impressions which
religion requires through polluted channels, and to, avoid that great
evil, of the word of man being substituted, by arbitrary translations,
for the true unmixed word of God.
Moderns
have at times cast ridicule on the use of the Hebrew in our prayers,
because, as they tauntingly ask him who advocates the old paths, whether
he is not better acquainted with the language of England, or France, or
Germany, than with that of Palestine? Now, grant that the answer should
be what the "wise ones in their own conceit" would have it,
what does it prove, but that the modern Jews are not sufficiently
sedulous in what behoves them to know, not that this language is not
worth knowing, or not worth preserving. Besides, there is a radical
fallacy in such a mode of questioning. It may not be in the power of
every Israelite, we will even admit of the well-informed likewise, to
express himself as fluently in a language which is not spoken any more,
as in a dialect which receives daily a new polish or new variations and
turns which are not easily expressed in a language which has ceased to
be applied to things of daily occurrence; but this does not prove that
any one of the dead may not be better adapted for certain purposes than
the living languages; there may be causes why the former may have terms
of expression which the latter can only approximate; and the former may
have a perspicuity and elegance which we look for in vain in the latter.
Now precisely this is the case with the Hebrew. We are not able to
employ it to write upon chemistry or the modern art of war, or the new
inventions, with the same facility as we use English, French, or German;
but then it is a language, for all that, well understood by those who
make it their study, and it has a peculiar closeness of diction, a
richness of imagery which leaves our modern tongues far in the rear. But
above all, it is the repository of God's holy covenant; in it all our
laws and statutes, our ideas and opinions, our hopes and our history are
all originally contained; and then we know well enough, that with all
the care which the most honest men can bestow, errors will creep into
the best translations; and so great is the bias of fallible human mind,
that preconceived opinions will often sway the translator to detect
certain meanings in words which they evidently do not possess, and to
convey these to his readers, despite that he himself thinks that he
faithfully renders his author.
The
application of the foregoing will be easy enough. If we discard the
Hebrew, we must resort to a translation of the Bible-passages without
which our worship would be incomplete; and a translation presupposes an
authorized one; and this we never had among us, it was never attempted,
and what is more, it can never be admitted, so long as we have no
inspired translator to give us the true version of the words of the
inspired writers. To preserve the law, therefore, in its purity, we must
preserve the Hebrew, and to preserve this we must at all hazards retain
it in our worship, wherever attainable. We do not mean to say, that
persons unacquainted with the holy tongue should not be permitted to
pray in a language which they do understand; but this we will fearlessly
maintain, that the study of the Hebrew ought to be encouraged, and this
can best be done by leaving it, as it is the language of public worship;
we should prove its necessity, and thus urge our members to hasten to
acquire an adequate knowledge of what is of such essential service to
them.
Let
us sum up our ideas on the union of Israel. The possession of the law
and Scriptures in the language of Heber has proved the greatest benefit
to our existence as a nation; it has marked us Hebrews by a sacred
national tongue, just as our descent is traceable in our features; it
has preserved us from heresies which interpolations and mistranslation
into a strange dialect would necessarily have caused; it has screened us
against the frauds of designing impostors and against the slothfulness
of careless transcribers of the word of God. Ay, the very exclamation
Adonay Aychahd sounds differently from the LORD IS ONE, sublime and
striking as the last may be; there is a charm in the sounds of the
language of Israel, it well harmonizes with the latent feelings in our
soul; and it is a proper legacy to that nation whose members are the
living witnesses of God's unity, of his universal rule on earth.
Do
we now ask, What is the bond which invisibly unites the Israelites of
all lands? we shall be answered, It is the belief in one God, the
possession of one law, and the union of the spirits by the use of one
language, which, proving them one nation from one common descent, mark
them most fittingly as the proper descendants of those great names of
antiquity, who first professed themselves servants of the sole God, and
vowed unflinching obedience to that holy religion which this God, the
Creator of all, instituted as his sole will to stand unchanged to
everlasting.*
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