Introduction.

The king, in Rabbi Jehudah ha-levi’s Cuzari, anxious to lead a good and religious life, was told by an angel who appeared to him in a dream that his heart was good, but his deeds were not acceptable. The purity and goodness of our heart certainly ennobles our deeds and gives them the stamp of sincerity and holiness, though they may not be marked by absolute perfection. But an inner voice, our conscience, does not allow us to be content with the goodness of the heart; we feel the necessity of seeking also perfection of words and deeds. We wish not only our heart but also our entire self to be good, so that our inner life and outer life, our feeling and thinking, our speaking and doing, may combine into one harmonious whole, which comes as near perfection as possible.

It has been shown above that one of the principles of faith which we confess is our belief in the Divine origin of the Torah, and in the obligatory character of its precepts. When we pray to God to make us understand the Torah we are not content with the mere knowledge of the words of the Law; we also seek God’s assistance to enable us “to obey, to observe, and to [[234]]perform” all that He has commanded us. Man’s nature is not the same in all individuals; one person finds special delight in the performance of this duty, another in the performance of that. Every one likes to devote his energies to that work for which he considers himself best qualified, and which promises to yield the best fruit. But this individual liking or aptitude must not mislead us into thinking that the Law is divided into important and unimportant precepts. So far as they represent the Will of the Almighty they are all alike, and equally demand our attention and our obedience. Thus the ‏קבלת עול שמים‎,[1] our unconditional submission to the Will of the Almighty as our King, is followed in our Service by ‏קבלת עול מצות‎,[1] the acknowledgment of the binding force of His precepts.

There are persons who question the wisdom and usefulness of the precepts; they call it legalism, and are opposed to the tendency of subjecting every act of ours to the control of the Law. They argue that legalism tends to weaken our regard for the Law, and trains hypocrites rather than true servants of the Lord. It is a bold assertion, but one that rests on imagination and prejudice. Is it possible that such a constant reminder of God’s presence as the Divine precepts supply should not have a beneficent influence over us, by making us feel encouraged by His presence when we are engaged in a good cause, and discouraged when we are about to do wrong? If persons are found who are [[235]]devout worshippers at one time and criminals at another, it only shows human weakness in the moment of trial in spite of good resolves and genuine devotion; and were it not for the effect of such devotion, the number of crimes would probably be far greater.

A truly pious man will never imagine that he may freely transgress one set of the precepts, if he strictly obeys another set; that he may, e.g., wrong his neighbour, and compensate for his sins by regular attendance at the place of worship, or by a strict observance of the dietary laws, or the laws of Sabbath and Festivals; or that he may freely break the latter, if only he is honest, just, and charitable. The precepts have all the same Divine origin; the all-wise and all-kind God, who has commanded us to walk in the way of justice and righteousness, has also ordained the Sabbath, given the dietary laws, and established the sacrificial service. He who selects some of the precepts and rejects the rest substitutes his own authority for that of the Almighty, and places his own wisdom above the wisdom of Him who gave us the Law.

“Be as zealous in the performance of an unimportant precept as of an important one,” is one of the maxims taught in the “Sayings of the Fathers.” A difference between precept and precept is here admitted, but only in so far as they seem to us more or less important, with regard to the good which their observance produces or the evil which is caused by their neglect. In case of a conflict of two duties we give the preference to that which seems to us more important. In times of religious persecution the question frequently arose how far resistance was necessary, and how far religious practice might [[236]]yield to physical force. The rule has been laid down, that when our life is threatened we may transgress any precept; but we must not allow ourselves, under any circumstances, to be forced to idolatry, murder, or adultery (‏עבודה זרה גלוי עריות ושפיכות דמים‎); we must prefer death to committing any of these sins. But in times of trouble and persecution the spirit of resistance is as a rule too strong to be kept within the strict lines of demarcation, and life is willingly and heroically sacrificed for any religious duty. This is not surprising, for every religious act which is chosen by the enemy as a test to prove the faithfulness or the faithlessness of the persecuted sect to its own religion, receives thereby the stamp of great importance.

Similar questions are also asked in times of peace, when some of our brethren reject the authority of the Oral Law, while others refuse even to recognise the authority of the Written Law, when some set aside the Divine precepts out of convenience, and others from principle, and still others from ignorance; when some limit their Judaism to the nominal membership of the Jewish race, and others to a negation of other creeds. Are all these Jews? Whatever the answer to this question may be from a practical, political, social, and communal point of view, the fact is that they are Jews. They may have forfeited certain privileges, they may be disqualified for certain religious offices, they may be dangerous to the religious peace of our family or community: they are notwithstanding Jews, and are bound to live in accordance with the Law which the Almighty has given to the Jews and for the Jews. Our Sages say: ‏אף על פי שחטא ישראל הוא‎, “Although a man may have sinned, he [[237]]is an Israelite still.” No theologian, Rabbi, or teacher, or Beth-din, or Sanhedrin, has the power of granting absolution, or telling those who break or reject any portion of the Divine precepts that they are not doing wrong. No human being has the authority to abrogate laws revealed by God. Why then, some may ask, do prophets and moralists, the Rabbis of the Talmud not excluded, single out ethical principles for special recommendation to their fellow-men, generally observing silence about the rest of the Divine commands? The answer is simple. The ethical principles and the Divine commandments embodying them are different in kind from the rest of the commandments. The latter are distinct, well defined, and the punishment for their transgression is fixed; they are unchangeable, and not capable of expansion.

The dietary laws, e.g., are exactly the same now as they were in the days of Moses. So also the laws concerning Sabbath. What was then prohibited by the Sabbath is prohibited still. The ethical principles, however, are capable of development, and the moral standard rises with the progress of civilisation. Hence the constant dissatisfaction of prophets, preachers, and teachers with the moral principles of their followers. They have a higher standard of morality, and strive to raise the moral consciousness of their generations to their own height.

It is, therefore, no wonder that the prophet Isaiah exhorts his brethren: “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil: learn to do well: seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow” (i. 16, 17). “He that walketh righteously, [[238]]and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from looking upon evil, he shall dwell on high,” &c. (Ibid. xxxiii. 15, 16). In the same sense the virtuous man is described by all prophets; also in Ps. xv. and Ps. xxiv.

R. Akiba says: “ ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’ (Lev. xix. 18) is an important principle in the Torah,” but at the same time he shows what importance he ascribes to all other principles and precepts of the Law by most carefully examining the details of every one of them alike. The great Hillel told the Gentile who desired to become a Jew: “ ‘Do not to thy neighbour what is hateful to you;’ this is our whole religion;” but that he did not ignore the remainder of the Torah, or consider it as not essential, is proved by the additional words: “The rest is its explanation; go and learn” (Babyl. Talmud, Sabbath, 31a). Hillel only gave the proselyte a lesson which would lead him to obey all the words of the Almighty.

Rabbi Simlai (Yalkut on Micah vi. 8) said: “Six hundred and thirteen commandments were given to Moses on Mount Sinai; David reduced them to eleven (Ps. xv.); Isaiah reduced them to six (xxxiii. 16, 17); Micah (vi. 8) to three; then Isaiah reduced them again to two (lvi. 1); and Habakkuk to one—Faith (ii. 4).” This Rabbi does certainly not mean to say that Isaiah cancelled some of the eleven virtues mentioned by David, or that Habakkuk only demanded Faith, and did not consider it essential that man should be righteous, truthful, &c. Rabbi Simlai intended only [[239]]to point out that by training ourselves in the practice of certain virtues, the fulfilment of all Divine precepts will be greatly facilitated.

All the commandments of the holy Torah are equally Divine. Laws concerning justice and humanity, and laws concerning Sabbath and Holydays, are equally introduced by the declaration, “And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying.” The commandments, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” and “A garment of diverse kinds, of linen and wool, shall not come upon thee,” stand side by side in the same paragraph. The equality of all the precepts as the expression of the Will of the Almighty is clearly set forth in the Law, in the frequent exhortations that the Israelites should obey all the precepts, whatever their nature may be, whether they be of the class of “statutes” or of “judgments,” or of any other class of Divine commands. (Comp. Exod. xv. 25, 26; Lev. xxvi. 15, 43; Num. xv. 39, 40; Deut. iv. 1, 5, 8, &c.)

As to the various terms employed in the Pentateuch to designate the Divine precepts: words (‏דברים‎), commandments (‏מצוות‎), statutes (‏חקים‎), judgments (‏משפטים‎), and laws (‏תורות‎), they may be considered as synonyms signifying similar things. But even synonyms are as a rule distinguished from each other by a certain variation in their meaning, especially when the terms occur in one and the same sentence. A definition of these terms is not given in the Pentateuch or in the Bible; from the context, however, in which they occur the following distinction may be drawn:—

‏חק‎ or ‏חקה‎, “statute,” is applied to those laws which are absolute and do not depend on certain conditions, [[240]]whilst mishpat, “judgment,” is a law the performance of which varies according to circumstances. Thus the Paschal sacrifice is called chukkah, and must absolutely be performed, whilst the civil laws concerning slaves, damages, &c., are mishpatim, because cases of slavery or damages need not occur, and the respective precepts are then not carried into effect. In a similar manner Jewish theologians divide the Divine precepts into ‏מצות שמעיות‎ and ‏מצות שכליות‎ precepts which our duty of obedience to God makes us perform, and precepts which, without distinct Divine command, our own reason would impel us to do.—The other terms, mitsvah, “commandment,” and mishmereth, “charge,” are used in a general sense, the former in reference to the Giver of the law, and the latter in reference to those to whom it is addressed.

The division of the precepts into ‏שמעיות‎ and ‏שכליות‎ is a vague one, and the line of demarcation will be moved farther to the one side or the other, according to the judgment exercised by the interpreter. Of greater importance is the division into positive and negative precepts, commandments, and prohibitions, ‏מצות עשה‎ and ‏מצות לא תעשה‎. The prohibitions are of two kinds: such as admit of amends being made for their transgression and such as do not admit: ‏שיש בה קום עשה‎ and ‏שאין בה קום עשה‎.

The number of the commandments is, according to Rabbi Simlai, 613 (‏תר״יג‎), and in some editions of the Pentateuch the number of each commandment has been noted in the margin. Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, in the introduction to his Mishneh-torah, enumerates the 613 mitsvoth. They are also contained in liturgical [[241]]compositions, called ‏אזהרות‎ “exhortations,” or “precepts,” such as are met with in the Machzor for the Feast of Weeks.

Maimonides, in “The Guide” as well as in Mishneh-torah, treats of the precepts of the Torah under the following fourteen heads: (1) Fundamental principles of our faith;[2] (2) Divine worship; (3) Sabbath and festivals; (4) Marriages; (5) Forbidden food and forbidden relations of the sexes; (6) Vows; (7) Agriculture; (8) The Temple and the regular sacrificial service; (9) Occasional sacrifices; (10) Cleanness and uncleanness; (11) Compensation for damages; (12) Transfer of property; (13) Contracts; (14) Administration of the law.

Another theologian, Rabbenu Jakob, divided the code of laws into four sections: (1) Divine worship, Sabbath, festivals, and fasts; (2) Things forbidden and things permitted in satisfying our bodily desires; (3) Marriages; (4) Civil laws.

The latter work was recast by Rabbi Joseph Caro, [[242]]and in the new form, with the new title Shulchan Aruch, it has become the standard work of Jewish law and life, and its authority has been recognised and upheld by Jews in the East and the West. Annotations (‏הגהות‎) were added by Rabbi Moses Isserles, but his opinion, when differing from that of Rabbi Joseph Caro, was only accepted by the Polish and German Congregations, not by the Sephardim.

Rabbi Joseph Caro, Rabbenu Jakob, and Maimonides appear, in their respective codes, not as legislators but as compilers. The Torah and the Talmud were the sources from which they all drew their laws. But laws, minhagim or customs, and institutions (‏תקנות‎) of a post-Talmudic date were not neglected. Questions arising in the course of time, through new and changed conditions of life, are, as a rule, discussed and decided in notes and commentaries on the Shulchan Aruch. There are also numerous special works on such occasional questions; they are called “Responsa” (‏תשובות‎ “Answers,” or ‏שאלות ותשובות‎ “Questions and Answers”), and the importance attributed to them varies according to the reputation of the respective authors.

What is the object of the Divine laws? This is a question that naturally rises in the minds of those to whom they are addressed. But the question has been anticipated by Him “who knoweth the thoughts of the sons of man,” and the answer is found in clear and distinct words in the fountain of living waters, the Torah, that never fails to satisfy our thirst for truth: “Thou shalt keep his statutes and his commandments which I command thee this day, that it may be [[243]]well with thee and thy children after thee” (Deut. iv. 40). “And now, O Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul: to keep the commandments of the Lord and his statutes which I command thee this day, for thy good” (ibid. x. 12, 13). It is for our benefit, for our well-being, that the laws were revealed to us; they serve to make us good and happy; they train us in the mastery over our appetites and desires, in the practice of charity and justice, and in the conception of noble, pure, and lofty ideas, and bring us nearer and nearer in perfection the Being in whose image and likeness we have been created.

What share each individual precept has in the attainment of this end we cannot state with certainty, because in the Torah the reason and purpose of each precept is, with very few exceptions, withheld from us. In many cases our reflection on the nature of a special law, or on the context in which it occurs in the Pentateuch, leads to a discovery of some reason for it. But, whatever reason we may thus discover, we must not lose sight of the fact that it is we who have found it, we whose knowledge is imperfect, and that we or others might in future discover a better reason. If we, e.g., find that certain dietary laws serve to train us in temperance, and see that the virtue of temperance is frequently recommended in the Bible, we may well obey these dietary laws, and strive to be temperate in every respect in accordance with the spirit we detect in them. It would, however, be a gross error if, believing [[244]]the training in temperance to be their only object, we assumed that we could neglect them, and attain the same object by substituting our own insufficient knowledge and imperfect reason for the Will and Wisdom of the most perfect Being. Moralists, our teachers and preachers of ancient and modern times, have found in these precepts an inexhaustible treasure of lessons exhorting to virtue and warning against vice, and the great variety of inferences thus drawn from the same source proves the error of those who imagine that their own exposition is the only right one. Whatever reason we assign to a religious precept, and whatever wholesome lesson we derive from it, our first duty towards the commandment, and towards Him who commanded it, is strict and unconditional obedience.

Maimonides, who may be considered as the representative of the school which seeks to establish a rational explanation for all precepts, admits that the reason we may assign to any of the commandments cannot affect their validity and immutability, and we are bound to obey them, although the supposed reason may be of a local or temporary character. According to Maimonides, the object of the Law is to promote the well-being of our body and the well-being of our soul; and every commandment has therefore some bearing upon one of the following three things: the regulation of our opinions, the removal of sin, or the teaching of good morals. He does not except the “statutes” from this rule, but confesses that in a few cases he is unable to show clearly the relation of the commandment to any of these objects. He also restricts the principle of rational interpretation to the main element in each commandment, [[245]]and does not apply it to its details; the latter, as a rule, do not demand an explanation. He says:—

“The general object of the Law is twofold: the well-being of the soul and the well-being of the body” (Guide, iii. 27). “I am prepared to tell you my explanations of all these commandments (the so-called chukkim or “statutes”), and to assign for them a true reason supported by proof, with the exception of some minor rules and of a few commandments. I will show that all these and similar laws must have some bearing upon one of the following three things, viz., the regulation of our opinions or the improvement of our social relations, which implies two things: the removal of wrong-doing and the teaching of good morals” (ibid. xxviii.). “The repeated assertion of our Sages that there are reasons for all commandments, and the tradition that Solomon knew them, refer to the general purpose of the commandments, and not to the object of every detail. This being the case, I find it convenient to divide the six hundred and thirteen precepts into classes; each class to include many precepts of the same kind. I will first explain the reason of each class of precepts, and show their common object, and then I shall discuss the individual commandments and expound their reasons. Only very few will be left unexplained, the reason for which I have been unable to trace unto this day. I have also been able to comprehend in some cases even the object of many of the conditions and details of the laws as far as it can be discovered” (ibid. xxvi.).

“It is also important to note that the Law does not take into account exceptional circumstances; it is not based on conditions which rarely occur.” “We must [[246]]therefore not be surprised when we find that the object of the Law does not fully appear in every individual case.” “From this consideration it follows that the Law cannot, like medicine, vary according to the different conditions of persons and times. Whilst the cure of a person depends on his particular constitution at the particular time, the Divine guidance contained in the Law must be certain and general, although it may be effective in some cases and ineffective in others. If the Law depended on the varying conditions of man, it would be imperfect in its totality, each precept being left indefinite. For this reason, it would not be right to make the fundamental principles of the Law dependent on a certain time or a certain place. On the contrary, the statutes and the judgments must be definite, unconditional, and general, in accordance with the Divine words: ‘As for the congregation, one ordinance shall be for you and for the stranger’ (Num. xv. 15). They are intended, as has been stated before, for all persons and for all times” (ibid. xxxiv.).

In the present treatise our religious duties will be expounded under the following seven heads:—

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[[Contents]]

I. The Ten Commandments. ‏עשרת הדברות‎

The “Ten Words” are distinguished from all other lessons of the Torah both on account of their intrinsic value and on account of the extraordinary manner in which they have been revealed by the Almighty on Mount Sinai. They form the contents of “the covenant which God made with us” (Deut. v. 3).

But it must not be forgotten that they are not the only Divine commandments. When, therefore, Moses repeated them before his brethren in the plain of Moab, he prefaced it by the exhortation: “Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the judgments which I speak unto you to-day, and learn them and keep them to do them” (ibid. 1); and after he had finished reciting them he reminded the Israelites how they received the Ten Commandments from the midst of the fire, and how they prayed that further commandments should be given to them through Moses; adding that the Almighty, in compliance with their petition, said to him: “Stand thou here with me, and I will tell thee the whole commandment, both the statutes and the judgments which thou shalt teach them” (ibid. 28).

“And God spake all these words, saying:”

First Commandment.

“I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”

The Israelites who now stood round Mount Sinai [[248]]and heard the voice of God saying, “I am the Lord thy God,” were the same who a very short time before had been slaves in Egypt; they were delivered from slavery, and saw their cruel taskmasters perish in the waves of the Red Sea. Pharaoh, the king of the Egyptians, and his people had believed that they were the masters of the Israelites, and that they could do with them as they pleased. And Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should listen to his voice? I know not the Lord, nor will I let Israel go.” It has now been shown that Pharaoh and his people were not the true masters; that there was a higher Being that ruled over all men, over kings and their peoples. After the Israelites had crossed the Red Sea, they sang with Moses: “This is my God, and I will praise him, the God of my father, and I will exalt him.” They all felt that their liberty was not obtained by human strength and skill; that there must be a higher Being who is All-powerful, All-wise, and All-good; and that it was He who freed them, and punished the wicked Egyptians by whom they had been kept in slavery. What the Israelites at first felt in their hearts they were now, when standing round Sinai, taught by God Himself, in plain, clear, and intelligible words: “I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”

This is the first commandment; it is only one commandment, but it contains several important lessons:—

1. God has shown great kindness to our nation; we Jews must therefore more than other people show ourselves grateful to Him, love Him as our Deliverer [[249]]and Benefactor, and do willingly all that He commands us to do.

2. When we are in trouble we must trust in God, pray to Him, and hope that He will help us when our fellow-men cannot do so. When they give us up as lost we need not despair; for the Almighty can help where human wisdom and power are insufficient.

3. The wicked may for a time succeed in doing wrong, whilst the good and just suffer; but this does not last for ever. There is a Master above all of us, who in due time punishes the wicked and saves the good.

Second Commandment.

“Thou shall have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them, for I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing loving-kindness to the thousandth generation of them that love me and keep my commandments.”

There are no other gods in existence; it is impossible for us to have other gods. There is only one God, as we repeatedly declare, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.” The commandment is nevertheless not superfluous. There have been whole nations, and there are still people, who, in their ignorance [[250]]and folly, attribute Divine power to things that have no Divine power, and who give the name of god to things that are not gods. Such people are called heathens, idolaters, or idol-worshippers. The second commandment forbids us to do any such thing.

It was the custom in some countries to worship the king, either during his lifetime or after his death, as a Divine being; it is still the custom in some countries to pray to departed saints. All this our holy religion forbids us to do. We must respect our king, we must honour the memory and the name of good men, but only as human beings, not as gods; we may not deify them. As to our prophets, our great men, the Patriarchs, the kings, their names are a pride unto us, their memory a blessing, ‏זכרונם לברכה‎—they are honoured by us as human, mortal beings: they are not worshipped. When we visit the graves of those near and dear to us, and honour their memory by reflecting on their virtues, when we revere those holy men who have devoted their lives to the service of God, or the martyrs who have sacrificed their lives for the sanctification of the Name of God (‏קדוש השם‎), we do not endow them with Divine attributes, and do not offer up any prayer to them.

The second commandment, in forbidding all kinds of idolatry, includes the following prohibitions:—

The words, “For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God,” are to be understood in a figurative sense; we cannot say of God that He is jealous, in the literal sense of the word. It is only because we call a person jealous who is anxious that no one else shall enjoy the same right or privilege as he enjoys, that we apply the term “jealous” figuratively to God, because He does not concede Divine worship and service to any other being. He demands of His worshippers that they serve Him alone and none besides.

Those who break this commandment “hate God,” and will surely receive their punishment. He “visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children upon the third and upon the fourth generation.” The bad example set by a man frequently corrupts his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. In that case they will all receive their punishment, and there is no excuse for them, that they were misled by the bad example of their father or their forefathers. A bad example must not be followed, even if it be set by those whom we love dearly.

The good example of a man should always be followed, and his good deeds bear good fruit and are the source of blessing even long after his death. For to those that love God and keep His commandments God “showeth mercy even to the thousandth generation.” [[252]]

Third Commandment

“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold, him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.”

We pronounce the name of God when we read the Bible, when we pray, when we take an oath, or when we speak of God’s wisdom, power, and goodness. We take the name of God in vain when we read the Bible without attention, or pray without devotion, or take an oath without necessity or contrary to truth. When we utter the name of God we must bear in mind that it is the name of the most Holy and most Perfect Being that we are pronouncing; that it is a privilege to us to be allowed and to be able to pronounce it.

The more we meditate on the greatness and holiness of God, the more careful should we be “not to utter the name of God in vain.” We should guard ourselves from falling into the bad habit of uttering it thoughtlessly to no purpose whatever. Many people are heard to exclaim every minute, “O God,” or similar phrases. To them the sacredness of the name is entirely lost, and they are no longer reminded by it of the holiness of Him who is designated by that name. Still greater is the thoughtlessness of those who swear by God without any necessity. In swearing by God we call upon God to bear witness that our words are true. But such a testimony is only required when our statement is not believed. If we swear before we know whether we are believed or not, we indicate that, according to our estimate of ourselves, we are not [[253]]trustworthy, and it has often been observed as a fact that those who swear most are least to be believed. The worst of all forms of swearing is to swear falsely, that is, to swear that something is the case without knowing that it is true, or knowing that it is not true. This is a terrible crime, and is called “the profanation of God’s name,” ‏חלול השם‎.

There is still another kind of ‏חלול השם‎ “profanation of God’s name:” if we Jews who are called by His name, the people of the Lord, or children of the Lord, bring contempt upon God’s people by disgraceful conduct, we profane the name of God. We sanctify it by noble and generous deeds; by leading a pure and blameless life we cause a ‏קדוש השם‎ “sanctification of the name of God.”

The third commandment forbids us—

The additional sentence, “for he will not hold him guiltless who taketh his name in vain,” is to remind us that it is against God the Omniscient that we sin in breaking this commandment. God knows our innermost thoughts, whether we think of what we utter or not; whether we are convinced of what we declare on oath or not. He will punish us if we break His commandments, although we may be able [[254]]to conceal our sins from men and escape condemnation by a human tribunal.

Fourth Commandment.

“Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath unto the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is therein, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.”

The Sabbath day, that is, the day of rest, is to be kept holy. In two ways it should differ from other days; it is to be a day of rest and also a holy day. We keep it as a day of rest by not doing on it any kind of work; we keep it as a holy day by devoting the greater part of it, since we are free from our ordinary occupation, to prayer and to reading the Bible.

We are thankful to God for having commanded us to keep the Sabbath, and give expression to our feeling of gratitude in our prayers, especially at the beginning and the end of the Sabbath; thus, on Friday evening, before the meal, we praise God for sanctifying the Sabbath by a prayer called Kiddush, “sanctification,” and on Sabbath evening, after the close of the Sabbath, we recite the Habhdalah, in which God is praised for the distinction made between Sabbath and the six week-days. [[255]]

The Israelites were told to remember the Sabbath day; that is, the well-known day of rest, the same day which was instituted as a day of rest in connection with the manna. On five days they collected one omer of the manna, on the sixth day two omers for each person; on the seventh day no manna was collected nor was any found, and the Israelites were commanded to bake and to cook on the sixth day not only for the sixth day, but also for the seventh, on which day baking and cooking was not to be done. This same seventh day we are told in the fourth commandment to remember to keep holy, that we should not forget it, or choose another day instead of it. It is the same seventh day on which God rested after the six days of the Creation, and which “he blessed and sanctified.”

It is to be a day of rest not only for ourselves; we must not have work done for us by our children, or by our servants, or by strangers; even our cattle must rest. After six days of work we enjoy the blessing of one day’s rest, and are rendered more fit to work another six days. The harder we work on six days, the more welcome is the rest of the seventh day to us. When Moses repeated the commandments, he laid special stress on the rest of the servants, reminding the Israelites that they themselves had once been slaves, and must therefore recognise the necessity of granting a day of rest to their servants.

It is not to be a day of mere idleness. Complete idleness leads to evil thoughts and evil deeds. Whilst our body rests our mind should be occupied with holy [[256]]thoughts; we should commune with God, reflect on His works, learn from them the power, wisdom, and goodness of God, study the Word of God, listen to the instruction of our teachers and preachers, and altogether try to raise ourselves into a loftier sphere.

On the day of rest we reflect on the works of God, on the work of Creation which He completed in six days, and thus by keeping the Sabbath we testify to our belief in God as the Creator of the Universe. On this account it is that the Creation is referred to in this commandment as the reason why rest was enjoined for the seventh day. “For in six days,” &c.

“Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day;” the rest on the seventh day is a blessing to those who have worked hard during the preceding six days; it is a blessing to those who spend the Sabbath in a proper manner. “And he hallowed it” by giving man an opportunity to sanctify himself by more frequent communion with the Most Holy.

The fourth commandment tells us—

Fifth Commandment.

“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”

The strongest desire that animates a father and a mother is to see their children good and happy. [[257]]From the first day of their existence children are guarded by the watchful eyes of their parents that no evil may befall them. How delighted are father and mother when they notice the progress of their child in health and strength, in heart and soul! What an amount of trouble and anxiety parents undergo when they see their child suffering! No sacrifice is too great for them so long as it ensures the child’s well-being. It is painful to them to be compelled to deny their child anything, or to rebuke or to punish it. To this they are impelled only by the anxiety for the welfare of the child. The mutual affection between parent and child is one which nature has implanted. Without it the home would be the dwelling of misery and misfortune; with it comfort and happiness flourish therein. The loving parents have pleasure in whatever they do for the benefit of the child, and the affectionate child is delighted with the goodness of its parents.

“Honour thy father and thy mother,” says the Almighty to us. How does a child honour father and mother? In the eyes of the child father and mother must be the king and the queen of the house, however small that may be. Every word that comes from their mouth, every desire that they express, must be regarded as of the greatest importance, and be well remembered by the child. When the king or the queen speaks, all present stand and listen respectfully; their words are read by every one with the greatest interest. So it must be with the words of our parents. Whenever they tell us to do or not to do a thing, obedience is a blessing to us; disobedience is the chief cause of all misery and trouble. We feel pleasure and honour in [[258]]being able to do something that gratifies our parents, and we like to give them at times some material token of our affection. The best present we can give them is a good heart, sincere love that prompts us to avoid everything that would grieve them, and to do everything we can to give them pleasure and to make them happy.

This is one of the few laws the reward of which is distinctly stated, “That thy days may be long upon the land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” We can easily understand the good effect of keeping the fifth commandment. Pleasure and contentment contribute a good deal to the health and well-being of man, whilst anger, trouble, and dissatisfaction produce ill-health and weakness. The mutual affection between parent and child is therefore the cause that the days of both the parents and the children are prolonged, and the harmony and happiness of the house firmly established. The blessing attending children’s obedience and love towards their parents does not end here. The whole State consists of small homes and families, and the greater the well-being of the individual homes, the greater is the well-being of the whole country. Thus the child by acting in accordance with this Divine commandment contributes its share towards the prosperity of the whole country.

When our parents are not present, we should, out of love towards them, obey those who take their place, as, e.g., our elder brothers or sisters, our guardians, and our teachers, since all these only do what the parents would themselves like to do were the opportunity granted them.

We are bound to honour our parents not only so [[259]]long as we are under their care and live in their house, but also when we have left our parents’ home, and have become independent. Even when they have become old, weak, and poor, and we support them, we must not forget the natural relation between parent and child, and the honour due to parents from their children must still be shown to them. When they have departed from this life, and we are no longer able to show our feeling of love and respect in the usual way, we must honour their name and memory, and hold in respect the wishes and commands which they expressed when still alive. Death is no bar to true love and sincere affection.

Thus we obey the fifth commandment—

Sixth Commandment.

“Thou shalt not murder.”

Murder is a most terrible thing; we shudder at the sound of the word, even at the mere idea of it. We wonder how it is possible that a person should be so wicked, so cruel, and so unnatural as to take the [[260]]life of another human being! One who can do such a thing must have lost all human feeling, and is rather a brute than a being created in the image of God. But, unfortunately, there have been and there are such wicked people. We read in the Bible that a dispute arose between the two sons of Adam, and the one, Cain, slew the other, Abel. He repented it, but he could not restore to his brother the life which he had taken. The severest punishment is therefore inflicted on those who have committed this crime.

This commandment and those which follow it have their root in the principle, “Love thy fellow-man as thyself,” applied to the life (sixth commandment), the home (seventh commandment), the property (eighth commandment), and the honour of our fellow-man (ninth commandment). We wish to enjoy life as long as possible; it must therefore be our desire to see our fellow-man enjoy the longest possible life. But we must not rest satisfied with the mere desire. An earnest desire is followed by acts dictated by it. We must try our utmost, even as we do with regard to ourselves, to preserve the life of our fellow-man. We have, e.g., seen before how by obeying the fifth commandment we lengthen not only our own life, but also that of our parents, whilst by breaking this law we shorten their life as well as our own.

By supporting the poor and nursing the sick we may be the means of increasing a human life by many days or even years, whilst by neglecting the duty of charity we neglect to save the life of our fellow-man when it is in our power to do so.—Another instance of criminal neglect it would be if a person saw another [[261]]in actual danger of life, and did not try everything in his power to save him.

Without having directly broken the sixth commandment, without having taken the life of our neighbour by violence, we may still be guilty of having shortened his life and caused his untimely death. Talebearers and slanderers, e.g., often undermine the peace and happiness of an individual, and even of a whole family, and sow the seed of misery and ruin where well-being and prosperity seemed well established.

The sixth commandment enjoins that we should respect the life of our fellow-man, and forbids us therefore—

Seventh Commandment.

“Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

The institution of marriage is of very ancient date. When Eve had been formed out of the rib of Adam, and was brought to him, he exclaimed, “She is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” and the account of the first marriage concludes thus: “Therefore man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh” (Gen. ii. 24). Every married couple, husband and wife, bind themselves by a solemn promise to be true and faithful to each other, to remain throughout life united in love [[262]]and affection, and to establish a home founded on purity and sanctity. Adultery is the breaking of this promise. That love and affection which unites man and wife cannot be shared by a third person without involving a breach of the seventh commandment.

Jewish homes have always been distinguished by sanctity and purity. In order to retain this distinction it is necessary that we should be trained in this virtue from our childhood. Our language must be pure and holy; unclean and indecent expressions must never be uttered in our homes, either by the old or by the young. The purer our speech is, the more sanctified will our heart be. Bad society often corrupts the heart of the young through bad example in words and conduct. It is therefore essential that immoral persons should not come in contact with our children; that everything that is contrary to the virtue of modesty (‏צניעות‎) should be rigorously excluded from Jewish homes.

The seventh commandment forbids:—

Eighth Commandment.

“Thou shalt not steal.”

We do not like that any one should take a part of our property without our knowledge or consent. An old saying of the Rabbis teaches: “Let the property [[263]]of thy neighbour be as dear in thy eyes as thine own” (Aboth ii. 12); that is to say, as you do not wish a diminution or destruction of what is yours, so you must not cause a diminution or destruction of what belongs to your neighbour.

By secretly taking anything for ourselves that does not belong to us, we steal, and break the eighth commandment.

This commandment has also a wider sense, and forbids every illegal acquisition of property, whether it be directly by theft or robbery, or by cheating, by embezzlement or forgery. Property acquired by any of these or similar means may be considered as stolen property, and is by no means a blessing to him who possesses it. Even if human justice does not reach the evil-doer, he is watched by an All-seeing Eye, and will in due time receive his full punishment.

This commandment prohibits:—

Ninth Commandment.

“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.”

It gives us pain to hear that others speak ill of us. “Let the honour of thy neighbour be as dear to thee as thine own” (Aboth ii. 10). We must therefore not speak ill of our neighbour. But it is not only the speaking ill of others that this commandment forbids; we must not say of our fellow-man anything that is not true. If we are called as a witness in a [[264]]court of justice, we must be most careful that every word we utter be perfectly true. We must weigh our words well and guard ourselves against stating as facts things about which we are not quite certain. If we are careless we may become false witnesses, and may even be guilty of perjury.

The consequences of false evidence are of a very grave nature; it misleads the judge, perverts justice, ruins innocent people; and the false witness himself—whether he sinned with intention or by carelessness—will not escape punishment.

God declared through the mouth of the prophet Zechariah (v. 4): “I will bring forth the curse, saith the Lord of hosts, and it shall enter into the house of the thief and into the house of him that sweareth falsely by my name; and it shall remain in the midst of his house, and shall consume it, with the timber thereof and the stones thereof.”

In order to guard ourselves against the possibility of such a crime, we must train ourselves in speaking the exact truth in everything, however trifling it may appear to us. Even in their play children must be careful in what they utter. Idle talk, gossip, frequently leads us to speak of our neighbours what is not in harmony with facts. Though we may believe it to be harmless and to have no evil consequence, it has in reality very pernicious results; for we get into the habit of being careless about our words, and of ignoring the line that parts truth from falsehood, and when we have then to speak on more important things, or even in a court of justice, we may prove ourselves equally careless. There is a proverb (Prov. xix. 5): [[265]]“A faithful witness is he who doth not lie, but he who uttereth lies will be a false witness;” i.e., the conduct of a witness with regard to truth in ordinary and less important utterances is a test of his trustworthiness in more important matters.

The ninth commandment—

Tenth Commandment.

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours house; thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.”

The coveting which the tenth commandment forbids is the root from which the crimes forbidden in the four preceding commandments spring. Coveting is a desire to possess what we cannot get in an honest and legal manner. An instance of such coveting is the desire of Ahab to possess the vineyard of Naboth. It must have been more than an ordinary desire, for it led him to most wicked acts (1 Kings xxi.).

It is not every desire that is prohibited. If we see a thing that pleases us, we begin to feel a desire for its possession. Our reason must then step in and tell us whether we can obtain it in an honest way or not. In the latter case we must conquer our desire and suppress it, lest it obtain the mastery over us.

We must work and try to make progress. We cannot be blamed if we are not quite content with our [[266]]present condition, and wish to improve it. Without such a desire all industry and progress would disappear. But we must consider that the improvement of our material condition, the increase of our property, is not the whole mission of man. We must not forget that we have a higher mission: to improve our heart and our moral conduct, and to make ourselves worthy of being called “the children of God.” The increase of our property must not impede the progress of the purity and goodness of our heart.

The tenth commandment—

Note 1.—There is another way of enumerating the Ten Commandments, namely, to combine the first and the second into one, and to divide the tenth into two. The Masoretic text seems to point in this direction; for there is no pause between the first and the second commandments, while there is one in the middle of the tenth. The inference from the Masoretic text, however, is not quite certain. It is possible that the first two commandments were joined closely together in order to separate more pointedly those commandments in which God speaks of Himself in the first person from those in which He speaks of Himself in the third person; or, to use the words of the Midrash, to separate the first two, which the Israelites heard directly from God, from the rest, which they heard through Moses. The last commandment was, on account of its great importance, given in two different forms. In the first the general term “house” is employed; in the second the various elements constituting the “house” are enumerated instead. The two forms of the commandment are separated by the [[267]]sign of a pause, because each of them is complete in itself. Tradition supports our division of the Decalogue. “I am” (‏אנכי‎) and “Thou shalt not have” (‏לא יהיה לך‎) are mentioned in Talmud and Midrash, also in Targum, as two distinct commandments. According to Philo (On the Ten Comm.) and Josephus (Antiq. III. v. 5), the verse, “Thou shalt have … before me” belongs to the first commandment.

The text of the Decalogue, as repeated by Moses in the plain of Moab (Deut. v. 6–8), differs from the original (Exod. xx. 2–14). One of the differences, the first word of the fourth commandment—‏זכור‎, “Remember,” in Exodus, and ‏שמור‎, “Observe,” in Deuteronomy—is pointed out in Midrash and Talmud, and also in the hymn for the Eve of Sabbath, beginning, “Come, my friend” (‏לכה דודי‎). Tradition explains the first expression as referring to affirmative commandments, and the second to prohibitions; it further teaches that “both expressions were spoken by God simultaneously;” that is to say, the fourth commandment in Deuteronomy, though different in form, does not imply anything that has not been revealed by God on Mount Sinai. The same applies to all points of difference.

Why did Moses introduce the alterations? Ibn Ezra, in his Commentary on the Decalogue, is of opinion that the question need not be asked, or answered if asked, because in the repetition of a Divine message the original words may be changed so long as the sense remains intact. But the addition of the phrase, “as the Lord thy God commandeth thee” in two cases, and the reference to the deliverance from Egyptian servitude, substituted (in Deut.) in the fourth commandment for the reference to the Creation (in Exod.), lead us to think that the changes were not introduced unintentionally or without any purpose. The repeated Decalogue is a portion of an address in which Moses exhorted a new generation in the plains of Moab to obey the Divine Law. It is, therefore, not unlikely that he made additions [[268]]and alterations for the sake of emphasis, where he noticed a certain laxity among those whom he addressed. Having come in contact with heathen nations and observed their rites in connection with their sacred days, the Israelites may have been inclined to imitate them; they were therefore exhorted to sanctify the Sabbath in the way God commanded; hence also the more emphatic “Observe,” ‏שמור‎.—A similar reason may have caused the addition of the same phrase, “as the Lord, &c.,” to the fifth commandment. The participation of a portion of the Israelites in the licentious feasts of the Moabites and Midianites disturbed the peace of their homes and loosened the sacred family tie. Moses therefore points to the Divine origin of the law commanding obedience to parents, and also emphasises the blessings which it will yield by adding the words, “and in order that it may be well with thee.”—The change of circumstances has also caused another alteration in the fourth commandment. During the forty years which the Israelites were compelled to spend in the wilderness, they almost forgot the condition of their former servitude; the new generation did not know it at all, and they grudged their slaves the one day of rest in the week. They were therefore reminded of their servitude in Egypt, and were asked to remember it in order that they might, out of gratitude to the Almighty, keep the Sabbath as He commanded them.

Another indication that changed circumstances caused the alterations is noticed in the tenth commandment. Having arrived at the border of Palestine, the Israelites were about to take possession of houses and fields, and two and a half tribes were already in possession of landed property. The term “house” (‏בית‎), which at first denoted “the home” or “the household,” including the wife, was now in the minds of the people chiefly “a permanent building.” “The wife,” the centre and the chief element in the home, was therefore substituted for “the house” in the first part of [[269]]the commandment, and vice versâ, “the house” for “the wife” in the second part, where appropriately “nor his field” has been added.—The substitution of “Thou shalt not desire” (‏לא תתאוה‎) for the original “Thou shalt not covet” (‏לא תחמוד‎) may have been intended to teach the Israelites that all kinds and degrees of desire were forbidden, and to remind them of the consequences of desire which they had experienced at “the graves of the desire” (‏קברות התאוה‎ Num. xi.).—One more important alteration is to be noticed, the conjunctive “and” (‏וְ‎) before the seventh and the following commandments, which served to create in the minds of the hearers the idea that the crimes forbidden in the second part of the Decalogue are to some extent connected, and that he who broke one of these commandments was likely to break the others also. We are thus bidden to be on our guard, and to take good care that none of them be violated by us.

Note 2.—Ibn Ezra, in his Commentary on Exodus xx. 9, says: “Rabbi Jehudah ha-levi asked me why it is said in the Decalogue, ‘who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage,’ and not ‘who created heaven and earth.’ My answer was as follows: Know that those who believe in God have not all the same kind of faith. Some believe because they were told of His existence by others; those who believe in God because the holy Torah teaches this belief possess a higher degree of faith. If an unbeliever argues with either of these, they are not able to refute his argument. Those, however, who study sciences—Astronomy, Botany, Zoology, and Anthropology—learn to understand the works and the ways of God, and from these the Creator Himself. The words ‘I am the Lord thy God’ can only be understood by the wise and intelligent of all nations. For they all see that God has made heaven and earth. But there is this difference: the Israelites believe that the Creation has taken place five thousand years ago: non-Israelites assume that God has been continually creating [[270]]from eternity. Now, God wrought signs and wonders in Egypt by which He delivered the Israelites out of Egypt, and thus showed them His Divine justice and goodness. In reference to these miracles it is said, ‘Thou hast been shown to know that the Lord is God;’ all Israelites, wise and simple, equally witnessed His miracles. The beginning of the Decalogue, therefore, ‘I am the Lord thy God,’ is well understood by the wise; but for the rest of the nation the words ‘who brought thee out,’ &c., have been added, in order that all without exception should understand it.”

Note 3.—Don Isaac Abarbanel, in his Commentary on Exodus xx., says: “The Ten Commandments are distinguished from the other Divine precepts in three things: they were directly communicated by God to the Israelites, not through a prophet; they were revealed to a whole nation at once; and they were written on the two tables of stone by the finger of God. Such distinction necessarily indicates a greater intrinsic value of the Ten Commandments. My opinion is therefore that they are laws of a general character, and principles including all the 613 precepts which the Holy One, blessed be He, gave to His people. E.g., love and worship of God. sanctification of His Name, submission to His judgment, fear of God, reverence of His sanctuary, and other duties towards God; Passover, Tabernacles, Tefillin, Mezuzah, and such other precepts as are ‘a memorial of the departure from Egypt;’ the separation of the first-born, tithes, &c.—all these duties are implied in the first commandment. Also Rabbi Levi ben Gershon and the Gaon Saadiah assume that all the 613 precepts are implicitly contained in the Decalogue. Although all precepts involving practice (‏מצוות מעשיות‎) are implied in the Decalogue, and even allusions to each one of the thirteen principles of faith may be discovered in it, there is no precept concerning our faith. It has already been proved by Rabbi Chisdai that by the Divine commands we are either [[271]]told to do a certain thing, or told not to do a certain thing; but what we have to believe or not to believe the Almighty taught us through signs, wonders, and revelation. The words ‘I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage,’ teach a certain truth, a principle from which many of the 613 precepts may be derived, but which is in itself no commandment.—The Decalogue (‏עשרת הדברים‎) must therefore not be understood as designating ten commandments, but ‘ten words’ or ‘ten paragraphs’ indicated in the Hebrew text by the pauses, or spaces left between two paragraphs.

“The ‘ten words’ were written on two tables, five on each. The first five, containing positive and negative precepts, with the announcement of reward and punishment, were exclusively addressed to the Israelites. The latter five are simple prohibitions without any mention of punishment; because they were addressed to man as man, and include only such laws as are also suggested to him by human reason, without direct revelation.”

Rabbi R. S. Hirsch, in his Commentary on Exodus xx., says in reference to the first commandment: “As this verse is not understood as a mere declaration, but as a commandment (‏מצוה‎), it does not say ‘I am thy God,’ but ‘I, the Lord, shall be thy God,’ and thus contains as the foundation of all our duties towards God an exhortation to acknowledge the sovereignty of God, ‏קבלת עול מלכות שמים‎.

“The so-called ‘belief in the existence of God,’ as ancient and modern theologians generally express this idea, differs widely from that which underlies this fundamental doctrine of Judaism. The truth which affords me the foundation of a Jewish life is not the belief that there is a God, or that there is only one God, but the conviction that this One, Only, and true God is my God; that He has created and formed me, has placed me here, and given me certain duties; that He constantly makes and forms me, preserves, protects, [[272]]directs, and guides me; not the belief that I, an accidental product of the Universe whose First Cause He was millions of years ago, am through a chain of thousands of intervening beings related to Him, but the belief that every moment of my existence is a direct personal gift from the Almighty and All-good, and that every moment of my life ought to be spent in His service; not the knowledge that there is a God, but the recognition of God as my God, as the sole Cause of my fate, and my sole Guide in all that I do, gives me the foundation for my religious life. The response to the exhortation, ‘I shall be thy God,’ is ‘Thou art my God.’ ”

Note 4.—The importance attached to the Decalogue may be gathered from the various attempts made, on the one hand, to classify the Divine laws according to the Ten Commandments, showing that the latter contain all the 613 precepts; and, on the other hand, to find in such important passages as the Shema and Leviticus xix. a parallel for each of the Ten Commandments. (Jerus. Talm. Ber., chap. i.; Rabboth, Vayyikra ad locum.)

[[Contents]]

II. General Moral Principles.

The Ten Commandments, flowing as it were from the one source, “I am the Lord thy God,” branch off in all directions, and penetrate all man’s relations, guide him in his conduct towards God, towards his fellow-men and towards himself, and teach him how to rule his thought, his speech, and his actions. When the Almighty proclaims to us, “I am the Lord thy God,” we willingly respond, “Thou art my God.” But this declaration involves also duties on our part, the fulfilment of which is the natural consequence and the verification of our response. If our words, “Thou [[273]]art my God,” come from our hearts, and are not empty sounds, uttered merely by the lips, we must be conscious of the duties they impose on us. These are:—

A. Duties towards God.

(a.) Duties of the Heart.

1. Fear of God. ‏יראת השם‎—The true knowledge of God, of His Wisdom and Greatness, as visible in His works, leads us to fear God; that is, to fear doing anything that might displease Him and make us unworthy of His love. It is not a fear that terrifies us and drives us away from His presence; on the contrary, it draws us nearer to Him, and causes us to try to become more and more worthy of His love.

“And now, O Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee but to fear the Lord thy God?” (Deut. x. 12).

“If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this name which is to be honoured and revered, the Lord thy God; then the Lord will make thy plagues wonderful” (Deut. xxviii. 58).

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov. i. 7). [[274]]

“The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord” (Ps. cxi. 10).

“The fear of the Lord is to hate evil” (Prov. viii. 13).

“The fear of the Lord prolongeth days” (Prov. x. 27).

“Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man” (Eccles. xii. 13).

“He who possesses learning but is without fear of God, resembles a treasurer who has the key for the inner door, but not for the outer one” (Babyl. Talm. Sabb. 31b).

“Everything is in the hand of God except the fear of God” (Babyl. Talm. Ber. 33b).[3]

2. Love of God. ‏אהבת השם‎—The true fear of God is associated with the love of God. The latter means the constant longing for communion with Him, feeling happy and joyful when with Him, but unhappy and miserable when without Him. Love of God creates in us an anxiety to do everything in our power that might please the Almighty. He who is filled with love of God is ‏חסיד‎, pious; he does not rest content with doing what he is commanded, but anxiously seeks the opportunity of fulfilling a Divine command; he is ‏רודף אחר המצות‎, “eager in the pursuit of Mitsvoth.” The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge, but love of God is the aim and end of all our religious thinking and striving.

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” (Deut. vi. 5). [[275]]

“The Lord preserveth all those who love him (Ps. cxlv. 20).

“Thou wilt show me the path of life. In thy presence is fulness of joy; in thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. xvi. 11).

“As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God” (Ps. xlii. 2).

“Blessed are they who dwell in thy house: they will be still praising thee” (Ps. lxxxiv. 5).

“The desire of our soul is to thy name, and to the remembrance of thee” (Isa. xxvi. 8).

“I will rejoice in the Lord; I will joy in the God of my salvation” (Hab. iii. 18).

3. Gratitude towards God.—All that we possess, the very breath we breathe, is a present received at the hands of the Almighty. Whatever success we desire to achieve, whatever undertaking we desire to accomplish, we must ourselves first strive for it to the utmost of our power, and this done, we may hope for the Divine blessing. When we have attained what we sought, we are warned against believing that “our power and the strength of our hand hath gotten us this wealth.” We are to “remember the Lord our God, for it is he that giveth us power to get wealth” (Deut. viii. 17–18).

“For all things come of thee, and of thine own hand have we given thee” (1 Chron. xxix. 14).

“Whoso offereth the sacrifice of thanksgiving glorifieth me” (Ps. l. 23).

“Though all sacrifices should cease, the sacrifice of thanksgiving will never cease” (Vayyikra Rabba ix.).

4. Reverence for His Name.—The more we fear and love God, the deeper and the more intense is our feeling [[276]]of reverence for everything which is connected in our thoughts with the name of the Almighty. Whenever we enter a place dedicated to His worship, or open the Book that bears His name, or celebrate the days set apart as “seasons of the Lord,” this feeling of reverence overcomes us, and finds expression in our conduct. The reverence for the name of God impels us also to respect ministers and teachers who spend their life in spreading the knowledge of God and His Will.

“How awful is this place! this is none other but the house of God” (Gen. xxviii. 17).

“I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercy: and in thy fear will I worship toward thy holy temple” (Ps. v. 8).

“When I will publish the name of the Lord, ascribe ye greatness unto our God” (Deut. xxxii. 3).

5. Obedience to the Will of God.—Whatever the Almighty, whom we love and fear, bids us do, we not only do, but find pleasure in doing.

“To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry” (1 Sam. xv. 22, 23).

“But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people” (Jer. vii. 23).

“Thy statutes have been my song in the house of my pilgrimage” (Ps. cxix. 54).

“Thy testimonies have I taken as an heritage for ever: for they are the rejoicing of my heart” (Ps. cxix. 111).

“Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine [[277]]ears hast thou opened; burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I come with the volume of the book written for me: I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is written within my heart” (Ps. xl. 7–9).

6. Faith and Confidence in God.—God is All-kind, All-wise, and All-powerful. The Lord is good to all, and His mercy is over all His creatures: He wills that which is good for us. Being All-wise, He knows best what is good for us, and by what means it can be attained; being All-powerful, He can always carry His Will into effect. He is, therefore, the only Being to whom we can safely entrust ourselves everywhere and always. In His words and commands, exhortations and warnings, we have the best and surest guide through life. Our confidence in God causes us to turn to Him for help in time of need, and for comfort in time of sorrow.

“Into his hand I commend my spirit, when I sleep and when I wake; and with my spirit my body also: the Lord is for me, and I shall not fear” (Daily Prayers, Morning Service).

“Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is” (Jer. xvii. 7).

“Trust in the Lord, and do good” (Ps. xxxvii. 3).

“Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart; and wait on the Lord” (Ps. xxvii. 14).

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” (Ps. xxiii. 1).

7. Resignation to the Will of God.—Trusting in God’s goodness, we are contented with the lot which [[278]]He determined for us. When we are prosperous we hope for His protection, lest we become corrupted and unworthy of His goodness; when we fail, faith in God will keep us from despair and encourage us to fresh attempts; when misfortune befalls us which it is impossible for us to remedy, we resign ourselves unto His Will, and say, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away! blessed be the Name of the Lord!”

“My flesh and my heart failed; but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever” (Ps. lxxiii. 26).

“I am in a great strait: let us fall now into the hand of the Lord; for his mercy is great” (2 Sam. xxiv. 14).

“We are bound to bless God in evil even as we bless Him in good fortune. It is written: ‘And thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might’ (Deut. vi. 5); love Him with all thy soul or life—i.e., even though for His sake thou risk thy life; and with all thy wealth—that is, whatever measure He metes out to thee, acknowledge with exceeding gratitude”[4] (Mishnah Berachoth ix. 5).

(b.) Duties towards God: In Speech.

The feelings of fear and love of God, of reverence, obedience, faith, gratitude, and resignation, must also [[279]]find adequate expression in our speech. God, the Omniscient, knows our thoughts and sentiments, and there would be no necessity for giving them an outward expression, if we only intended thereby to make them known to the Almighty. But as in our relations to our fellow-men—e.g., to our parents or to our children—we frequently, in obedience to an irresistible impulse, communicate to them in words what we think and what we feel, even when convinced that we only tell them things well known to them already, so we address the Almighty, who is everywhere near unto us, and listens to our speech, although our wishes are known to Him before we utter them, and our innermost feelings are open before Him before we express them in words. We are aware that there is an immeasurable difference between the Divine Being and earthly creatures like ourselves. We know that He is not subject to human weaknesses, and that the audible sound of words cannot move Him more than the thoughts and feelings that prompt the words to come forth. And yet the mere communion of our heart with our Creator does not satisfy us; we feel ourselves impelled by some inner force to give it an outward expression. Besides, there is a constant interaction between our thoughts and our spoken words. Thoughts and feelings that remain unspoken, are seldom permanent: we soon cease to be conscious of them ourselves, and they often disappear without leaving any trace behind them, whilst sentiments and ideas expressed in spoken words become strengthened and take a deeper and firmer root in our hearts. The relationship between our lips and our heart is therefore [[280]]of mutual benefit to both: the words uttered with the lips receive their value and importance from the heart, and the emotions of the heart derive strength and support from the lips.

1. Prayer.—All our feelings and sentiments towards the Almighty, our love and fear, faith and confidence, gratitude and resignation, find in Divine worship their due expression. When our soul is full of the love of God, and yearns for His presence, we call upon Him in hymns and songs of praise, and He is “nigh to all them who call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth” (Ps. cxlv. 18).

“I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have any being. Let my meditation be sweet unto him: I will rejoice in the Lord” (Ps. civ. 33, 34).

“Praise ye the Lord: for it is good to sing praises unto our God; for it is pleasant, and praise is comely” (Ps. cxlvii. 1).

“I will bless the Lord at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth” (Ps. xxxiv. 2).

“O Lord, open my lips; and my mouth shall show forth thy praise” (Ps. li. 17)

Our desire to please Him whom we love sincerely, our longing for an opportunity to do what is good in His eyes, ought not to remain hidden and silent. The sooner and the more frequently we give expression to these wishes in audible words, the sooner do they become realised, and the sooner are the promptings of our heart followed by deeds.

“With my lips have I declared all the judgments of thy mouth” (Ps. cxix. 13). [[281]]

“How sweet are thy words unto my palate! yea, sweeter to my mouth than honey” (Ps. cxix. 103).

“Let my tongue sing of thy word; for all thy commandments are righteousness” (Ps. cxix. 172).

We fear lest we offend and displease Him by our words or acts; we recall to our mind the holiness of a God “who has no pleasure in wickedness, and with whom evil shall not sojourn” (Ps. v. 5); we not only meditate on the Holy One, but speak and sing of Him. Our meditation finds expression in songs on the holiness of God, and these songs again supply fresh material for meditation; we thus hope to fence and guard our heart against the intrusion of anything unworthy of the presence of the Most Holy.

“Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? and who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart” (Ps. xxiv. 3, 4).

“I will wash mine hands in innocency; so will I compass thine altar” (Ps. xxvi. 6).

Our weakness and helplessness in many conditions of life fill us with trouble and care. When we enjoy good health, we fear a change might take place; in possession of wealth, we are in anxiety: it might be taken from us. The pleasures of home and family we know to be but temporary: how soon may sorrow visit us there! From all these fears and anxieties we seek and find refuge in Him, who is “a stronghold to the weak, a stronghold in times of trouble” (Ps. ix. 10). We tell Him confidently all the troubles and cares of our heart, as we would do to a friend who is always willing and ready to help us. We have faith in God, and therefore we approach Him [[282]]with our petitions; and when we have poured forth our heart before the All-merciful we feel more at ease, and our faith and confidence have gained in strength.

“He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honour him” (Ps. xci. 15).

“When they have cried unto the Lord in their trouble, he will save them out of their distresses” (Ps. cvii. 6).

“Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live. When I find trouble and sorrow, then will I call upon the name of the Lord. When I take the cup of salvation, then will I call upon the name of the Lord” (Ps. cxvi. 2, 4, 13).

“What sufferings may be called chastisements of love? Such as do not prevent us from prayer” (Babyl. Talm. Ber. 5a).

“Even when the edge of the sword touches already a man’s neck, even then he must not abandon his faith in praying to God” (Babyl. Talm. Ber. 10a).

“ ‘I was asleep, but my heart was awake;’ I have no sacrifices, but I have ‘Shema’ and ‘Prayer’ ” (Shir ha-shirim Rabba on v. 2).

“ ‘Hope in the Lord,’ and pray again” (Rabboth, Deuter., chap. ii.).

Our Rabbis teach, “Prayer is good for man both before his fate has been decreed and after it has been decreed” (Babyl. Talm. Rosh-hashshanah, p. 16a). But at the same time we are warned against impatiently expecting and demanding an immediate effect from the words uttered by our lips, however devoutly they may have been spoken. Such expectation—denounced in [[283]]the Talmud as ‏עיון תפלה‎[5]—would indicate our confidence in the wisdom of our petition, whilst confidence in the wisdom and goodness of God would suggest that “the Lord will do what is good in his eyes.”

We give expression to our feelings of gratitude towards our benefactor by acknowledging the fact, that whatever we enjoy, we are enabled to enjoy through His kindness. The various blessings formulated by our Sages serve a double purpose: first, they facilitate the expression of our feelings; secondly, they remind us of the presence of the Almighty, and of His goodness in providing for us and all His creatures. From the time we awake in the morning till the evening when we lie down to sleep, there is not a moment that does not bring to our knowledge some Divine act of kindness towards us. In the morning we perceive the benefit of light, in the evening we have reason to welcome the blessing of repose it brings with it, while the interval between the two periods constantly reveals to him who does not wilfully shut his eyes the hand of Him “who is good, and whose loving-kindness endureth for ever.”

“I will give thanks to thee, for thou hast answered me, and art become my salvation” (Ps. cxviii. 21).

“I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanks giving” (Jon. ii. 10).

“Though all prayers were to be discontinued, [[284]]prayers of thanksgiving will never be discontinued” (Vayyikra Rabba, chap. ix.).

When things happen which are not pleasant to us, which give us pain and sorrow, we ought to consider that the plans of God are different from our plans, and His ways from our ways, and what He wills is better for us than our own wishes. With resignation, without murmuring, we ought to utter words of praise and thanks to the Almighty.

“The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job i. 21).

“Learn to say, ‘Whatever the Almighty does, is done for our good’ ” (Babyl. Talm. Ber. 60b).

Public Service.—Man has a natural desire to communicate his sentiments to his fellow-men, and finds a certain pleasure or relief in knowing that others share in his joys and sorrows. The same is the case with regard to his sentiments towards the Most High. If, yearning for communion with God, we fervently appeal to Him in solitude, where we are undisturbed by the intrusion of any other person, it will not be long before we shall feel ourselves in the very presence of Him who is “nigh to all those who call upon him in truth.” Standing before the Almighty, the Creator and Master of the whole Universe as well as of ourselves, we should like all nature to join in His praises, and we summon the inhabitants of the heavens above, His angels and hosts, sun, moon, and all the stars of light; and the dwellers on earth below, inanimate and animate, irrational and rational, kings with their peoples, to come and to praise the name of God (Ps. cxlviii.). Such moments of solitary devotion are very precious, and [[285]]are by no means to be despised. But they are not frequent, and not always successful. Public worship has this advantage, that the object of our meeting, the holiness of the place, and the union in a worship with our fellow-men combine to create, maintain, or intensify our devotion. Although each one has his individual wants, joys, and sorrows, there are many wants, joys, and sorrows which we have all in common, and concerning which we may in common give expression to our feelings in prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.

“Bless ye the Lord in congregations” (Ps. lxviii. 27).

“If ten pray together, the presence of God is with them” (Babyl. Talm. Ber. 6a).

“ ‘But as for me, my prayer is unto thee, O Lord, in an acceptable time’ (Ps. lxix. 14): which is the acceptable time? The time of public worship” (Babyl. Talm. Ber. 8a).

2. Study of the Law (‏תלמוד תורה‎).—Another way of employing speech in the service of the Lord is the reading and the study of the Word of God: the Holy Scriptures and their Commentaries. Our love and reverence of God ought to induce us frequently to consult the book which contains His commandments, and which He has given us as a guide and companion. Even if we derived no further benefit than the consciousness of having spent some time in reading His Word revealed to us by the mouth of the Prophets, the time thus spent would not be wasted. But we derive a further advantage. It is impossible to imagine that our devoting a certain time, however short it may be, to the reading of the words of the Most Holy should have no purifying influence upon us, provided [[286]]we approach the book before us with due reverence, and with the intention to be guided by its teachings.

Joshua, when placed at the head of the nation, is exhorted by the Almighty as follows: “This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein” (Joshua i. 8).

“As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the Lord: my spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and for ever.” (Is. lix., 21)

3. Teaching.—The gift of speech is of service also in communicating our thoughts, feelings, and convictions to our fellow-men. They who are able to read the Word of God and to understand it, ought to read and expound it to those who are less favoured; they who feel the presence of God, and comprehend His holiness, goodness, and unity, ought to direct the hearts of their brethren to God, His words and works. It is a special duty and privilege of the Jew to proclaim and teach the Existence and the Unity of God—‏יחוד הבורא‎.

“And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down and when thou risest up” (Deut. vi. 7).

“Happy are we! how goodly is our portion, and how pleasant is our lot, and how beautiful our heritage! Happy are we who early and late, morning and [[287]]evening, twice every day, declare, ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One’!” (Daily Prayers, Morning Service).

4. Reverence of the Name of God.—The mention of the name of God ought to make us most careful about that which we utter in connection with it. If a person makes a promise or statement on oath carelessly or with levity, he shows that he has no reverence of the name of God; no fear of God. It is only through such irreverence that a person is capable of breaking the third commandment. Blasphemy, a sin treated in the Bible as a capital crime, has likewise its source in want of due reverence of God’s name. In order to preserve and strengthen that reverence we must avoid pronouncing the Divine name too frequently. Hence arose the custom of substituting such words as ‏השם‎ “the Name,” ‏המקום‎ “the Omnipresent,” for the names of God, and employing in ordinary writing letters like ‏ה‎ or ‏ד‎ or ‏יי‎ instead of any of the Divine names. In writing single letters instead of the full names we also intend to guard ourselves against causing irreverence towards the name of God; as our writing is frequently destroyed or liable to be thrown among the refuse. This precaution, dictated by a feeling of reverence for God and His name, serves at the same time to strengthen that feeling.[6]

From the same reason, the word which is exclusively [[288]]used as a name of God, the Tetragrammaton,[7] was rarely pronounced, and in reading the Bible the word Adonai, “My Lord,” is substituted wherever it occurs. It was only pronounced in the Temple by the High-priest on the Day of Atonement, in the Confession of Sins, and in the Prayer for Forgiveness; and by the ordinary priests when they blessed the people in accordance with the Divine precepts (Num. vi. 24–26). Since the destruction of the Temple the Tetragrammaton has not been pronounced, and thus it has come about that the right pronunciation of the word is at present unknown.

5. The consciousness that we frequently address the Almighty with our lips, and read His Holy Word, ought to make us strive for the utmost purity and holiness in our speech. When the prophet Isaiah, in a Divine vision, perceived the majesty of the Most High, and heard the sound of His ministering angels proclaiming His holiness, a sense of his own failings forced even from this chosen messenger of God the confession, “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man, unclean in lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people unclean in lips, for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (Isa. vi. 5).

Duties towards God: In our Actions.

Rabbi Jose teaches, “Let all thy deeds be in the service of heaven,” ‏כל מעשיך יהיו לשם שמים‎ (Sayings of the Fathers, ii. 12).

The feeling of love and fear of God which fills our [[289]]heart and soul, and to which we frequently give expression in words, must also be visible in our actions. Our whole life must be devoted to His service, and ought to be one continuous worship of God. Every act of ours must aim at the sanctification of His name. He has revealed unto us His Will, and shown us the way in which we should walk; unconditional submission to His guidance and strict obedience to His command should distinguish the people of the Lord. True love of God and faith in His goodness make us “bold as a leopard, light as an eagle, swift as a stag, and strong as a lion to carry out the will of our Father in heaven” (Sayings of the Fathers, v. 20). For what could be the value of our professions of love for God, if we refused to listen attentively to His voice, to walk in the way He has prepared for us, or to observe His statutes? From this point of view we may consider all our duties as duties towards God, since their fulfilment implies obedience to His Will. But there are certain duties which chiefly or exclusively concern our relations to God. Such duties are: the observance of Sabbath and Festivals, providing reminders of God’s Presence, establishing and supporting Public Worship, sanctifying God’s Name (‏קדוש השם‎), and imitating His ways. Of these duties, the first three will be fully treated in special sections.

The sanctification of God’s Name is a duty incumbent on all mankind, but it is incumbent on us Jews in a higher degree, for we are called the people of the Lord, the chosen people, a holy nation, and a kingdom of priests. We sanctify the name of God by remaining faithful to Him and to His Word, resisting every kind [[290]]of force or temptation to turn us away from our faith, making sacrifices for our holy religion, and conducting ourselves in such a manner that our fellow-men may become convinced that the tree of our Law bears good and holy fruit. Every action that brings disgrace upon us as Israelites, and causes our neighbours to despise “the people of the Lord, who profess to be the guardians of the revealed Torah,” is ‏חלול השם‎ “Profanation of the Name of God.” “And ye shall not profane my holy name, but I will be hallowed among the children of Israel” (Lev. xxii. 32).

“Profanation of the name of God is a greater sin even than idolatry” (Babyl. Talm. Sanhedrin 106a).

Imitating the Ways of God.—We know that God is perfect, and that all His ways are perfect; we are conscious also of our weakness and of the impossibility of ever becoming perfect. But this conviction must not deter us from seeking perfection as far as our nature permits it, or from setting before us the ways of God as an example for us to follow, as the aim which should direct the course of our life, the balance in which to weigh our actions, and the test by which to determine their value.

“Ye shall be holy; for I, the Lord your God, am holy” (Lev. xix. 2).

“I set the Lord always before me” (Ps. xvi. 8).

“ ‘Ye shall walk after the Lord your God’ (Deut. xiii. 5). Is it possible for man to walk after the Lord? Has it not been said, ‘The Lord thy God is a consuming fire’? (ibid. iv. 24). The meaning of the verse, however, is this: Follow the ways of God: He clothes the naked, as we are told, ‘And the Lord God [[291]]made coats of skin for Adam and his wife’ (Gen. iii. 21); do the same. He visits the sick, as is indicated in the words, ‘And God appeared to him in the plain of Mamre’ (ibid. xviii. 1); you must also visit the sick. He comforts the mourners, as appears from the passage, ‘And it came to pass after the death of Abraham, that God blessed his son Isaak’ (ibid. xxv. 11); do the same, and comfort mourners,” &c. (Babyl. Talm. Sotah 14a).

It may happen that we are sometimes disposed to exclude a fellow-man from our brotherly love. It would be against human nature to love those who have hurt or wronged us. But, on the other hand, we are taught that we must keep our heart free from feelings of revenge and hatred. If an offence has been committed against us by our brother, the Law directs us as follows: “Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart; thou shalt surely reprove thy neighbour, and not bear sin against him. Thou shalt not revenge, and thou shalt not keep a grudge against the children of thy people, but love thy fellow-man like thyself: I am the Lord” (Lev. xix. 17, 18). The traditional interpretation illustrates revenge and grudge in the following way: If your neighbour, after having been unkind to you, is in need of your assistance, and you refuse it on the ground of his want of kindness towards you, you are guilty of revenge; if you grant him his request, but at the same time remind him of his unkind conduct, you are guilty of “bearing a grudge against your neighbour.” (Sifra, ad locum.) [[292]]

B.—Duties towards our Fellow-creatures.

(a.) Duties towards our Fellow-men in General.

“Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us?” (Mal. ii. 10). “Thou shalt love thy fellow-man as thyself” (Lev. xix. 18). These are the sentiments which, according to the Will of God, ought to guide us in our relation to our fellow-men. When, therefore, a Gentile came to Hillel and asked him to explain to him in one moment the duties which Judaism enjoins on its adherents, he replied, “What is displeasing to thee, that do thou not to others. This is the text of the Law; all the rest is commentary; go and learn” (Babyl. Talm. Shabbath 31a). In a different form this idea has been expressed by Rabbi Akiba and by Ben-Azai, who respectively quoted as a fundamental principle of the Law, “Love thy neighbour as thyself,” and “This is the book of the generations of man; in the day that God created man, he made him in the likeness of God” (Yalkut on Gen. v. 1).

From this principle we derive the following general maxims with regard to our neighbour’s (1) life and health, (2) property, (3) honour, and (4) well-being:—

1. Life and Health of our Fellow-man.—Life is a precious treasure which the Almighty has given us; if it is once taken from us, no man is able to restore it. Among the first lessons revealed to man in Scripture is the value of the life of a human being, created by God in His own likeness, and when the first murder had been committed, God said to the murderer, “What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood is heard that crieth unto me from the [[293]]ground” (Gen, iv. 10). The first commandment in the second section of the Decalogue is directed against this crime: “Thou shalt not murder.” The significance of these words, the general lessons implied in this commandment, and the extent to which a person, though not an actual murderer, may become guilty of having broken this commandment, have already been explained in the chapter on the Ten Commandments (p. 261). It has been shown how the sixth commandment forbade—

2. The Property of our Neighbour.—The eighth commandment in its wider sense comprehends all our relations to our neighbour’s property. It prohibits, as has been shown above (p. 263), the appropriation of anything that belongs to our neighbour—

Our Sages teach: “Let the property of thy fellow-man be as dear to thee as thine own” (Aboth ii. 12); i.e., you do not like to see your own property damaged, diminished, or destroyed; so it would be wrong if you were to cause loss and ruin to your fellow-man, whether you did it directly or indirectly.[8] Let every [[294]]one enjoy the labour of his hands; partake of the gifts of the earth and the Divine blessings as much as his physical and mental powers enable him to do in a righteous manner.

It is not only direct illegal appropriation of our neighbour’s goods that is condemned as theft or robbery; it is equally wicked to buy things which one knows to have been stolen by others.[9] He who does it is worse than the thief; for, whilst the latter injures only the person whom he robs, the former encourages and corrupts the thief, hardens his heart, helps to silence the voice of his conscience, and thus obstructs the way to repentance and improvement.

There are transactions which are legal and do not involve any breach of the law, and which are yet condemned by the principles of morality as base and disgraceful. Such are all transactions in which a person takes advantage of the ignorance or embarrassment of his neighbour for the purpose of increasing his own property. Usurers frequently belong to this low and heartless class of society. The worst thing, however, they do is, that they plan the ruin of others; in many cases they bring about disaster by inducing young and inexperienced persons to borrow money and to spend it in luxuries, or increase the embarrassment of the distressed by charging exorbitant interest and imposing cruel conditions, which make it impossible for those who have once fallen into the hands of usurers to free themselves from their bondage. [[295]]

It makes no difference whatever whether the victim be a Jew or a non-Jew; the transaction is equally condemnable, and the usurer equally wicked. This statement would be superfluous, were it not for the misunderstanding that exists both among some of our co-religionists and among non-Jews with regard to the principle it involves. Great stress is laid in the Pentateuch on the prohibition of taking interest for advances of money or articles of food. “And if thy brother be waxen poor and fallen in decay with thee, then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger or a sojourner, that he may live with thee. Take thou no interest of him, or increase: but fear thy God, that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase. I am the Lord your God,” &c. (Lev. xxv. 35–38; comp. Exod. xxii. 24).—It is one of the characteristics of the pious who is worthy to “abide in the tabernacle of God,” that “he putteth not out his money to usury” (Ps. xv. 5).

The strict prohibition to take interest on advances of money or goods served a twofold purpose. In the first place, the surplus money of the wealthy was to be employed in disinterested charity. Secondly, labour and activity, both physical and mental, were to be the sources of income and wealth for the individual as well as for the whole nation; money without labour was not to bear any fruit or produce any increase.

An exception from this law was made for the benefit of the stranger. The inhabitants of a town or a country who lived in the midst of their relatives, friends, and countrymen could, as a rule, be trusted to [[296]]return the loan in due time. If they were not known themselves, they could find persons who would recognise them or even offer themselves as security for them. It was different with the stranger (‏הנכרי‎) “who came from a far land” (Deut. xxix. 21); he was not known; he was, as a rule, without friends; he had none to offer security for him.[10] When in need, therefore, he would be unlikely to obtain a loan, if the lender were not permitted in such cases to take interest as compensation for risking the capital itself. The same reason explains also a second exception made in the law with regard to a stranger when a debtor. The payment of old debts is, as a rule, a great hardship to the insolvent, especially at a time when the benefit derived from the loan has already been forgotten. It was therefore ordained that every seven years a remission of all debts should take place. The debtor that lived in the country could easily be urged or forced to pay his debts, and the creditor could safely expect that he would receive his money before the year of release began. This was not the case with the stranger, who might with impunity keep out of sight for some time before the beginning of the seventh year: a circumstance that increased the uncertainty of the repayment, and would have rendered it almost impossible for a stranger to enjoy the benefit of a loan in times of temporary embarrassment, but for the exception made in his case from the law commanding the remission of all debts in the seventh year. [[297]]

We see here a difference made in our duties towards our fellow-men between an Israelite and a stranger, but solely for the benefit of “the stranger.” At present, when the original relation between the Israelite and the stranger has ceased, the spirit of charity and justice towards the stranger (‏נכרי‎) or non-Jew, which is the basis of this law, must continue to regulate our intercourse with our neighbours, and if the non-Jew would recognise the prohibition of taking interest as equally binding upon him as upon the Jew, the latter would not be allowed to take any kind of interest from a non-Jew. At all events, if any of our co-religionists take this law as a pretext for imposing upon their non-Jewish fellow-men, and injuring and ruining them by exorbitant usury, they pervert alike the letter and the spirit of the Divine command; they do not act in a Jewish spirit, and instead of being members of a holy nation or the people of the Lord, they are guilty of ‏חלול השם‎, the profanation of the name of God, and do not deserve to be honoured by the name of Jews.

Denunciations are sometimes levelled against the Jews, on account of the misdeeds of some individuals, as cruel usurers. Those non-Jews who would take the trouble of thoroughly studying Jews and Judaism would soon discover the error and the baselessness of such denunciations. Judaism has never sanctioned usury, but, on the contrary, always condemned it.[11]

With regard to the property of our neighbour our Sages expressed the following maxim:—

“There are four characters among men: he who [[298]]says, ‘What is mine is mine and what is thine is thine,’ his is a neutral character; some say this is a character like that of Sodom; he who says, ‘What is mine is thine and what is thine is mine’ is a boor; he who says ‘What is mine is thine and what is thine is thine’ is a saint; he who says ‘What is thine is mine and what is mine is mine’ is a wicked man” (Aboth v. 10).

We are not only commanded to abstain from injuring our neighbour with regard to his property, but we are exhorted to protect it as far as lies in our power. “If thou meetest the ox of thine enemy or his ass going astray, bring it back to him” (Exod. xxiii. 4). “Thou shalt not see thy brother’s ox or his sheep go astray, and hide thyself from them: thou shalt surely bring them again unto thy brother” (Deut. xxii. 1). “Thou shalt not see thy brother’s ass or his ox fallen down by the way, and hide thyself from them: thou shalt surely help him to lift them up again” (ibid. ver. 4).

3. The Honour of our Fellow-man.—“Let the honour of thy fellow-man be as dear to thee as thy own” (Aboth ii. 10). We are very sensitive about our own honour; and many of us—nay, all right-minded persons—are more anxious for the good name acquired through integrity of character than for the safety of their property. We must be equally sensitive about the honour of our fellow-man, and take good care lest we damage his repute by falsehood, slander, or spreading evil reports in apparently innocent gossip. An evil tongue (‏לשון הרע‎) is a serious failing from which few are exempt; even if a person is not guilty of the sin of evil speech, he does not entirely escape “the dust [[299]]of the evil tongue” (Babyl. Talm. B. Bathra 165a). Calumny, it is said, kills three—the slanderer himself, him who listens, and the person spoken of. We therefore add to the Amidah the words: “My God, guard my tongue from evil, and my lips from speaking guile;” and in one of the Psalms we read: “Who is the man that desireth life, and loveth days, that he may see good? Keep thy tongue from evil and thy lips from speaking guile” (Ps. xxxiv. 13, 14).

Our Sages are very severe against those who attack the honour of their fellow-men. In one passage it is said: “Whoever causes by offensive words the face of his fellow-man to turn pale is almost guilty of shedding blood” (Babyl. Talm. B. Metsia 58b). Another passage runs thus: “Rather let a man throw himself into a furnace than publicly offend his fellow-man” (ibid. 59a).

The Law does not only forbid the utterance of evil reports, but also the encouragement given to the tale-bearer by listening to his stories. “Thou shalt not take up a false report” (Exod. xxiii. 1). In the Book of Proverbs the evil consequences of listening to slander are thus depicted: “If a ruler hearkeneth to falsehood, all his servants are wicked” (Prov. xxix. 12). “He who giveth heed to wicked lips causeth evil-doing; he who giveth ear to a mischievous tongue feedeth lies” (ibid. xvii. 4).

When we hear evil reports about our neighbour, we should try to defend him; when we are convinced that he has done wrong, we must rebuke him, lead him back to the right way, and not utterly reject him; we may still find some redeeming feature in his character that makes it worth our while to save him. [[300]]Thus Joshua, the son of Perachjah, teaches us: “Judge every man favourably” (Aboth i. 6); that is, if you are uncertain as to a man’s faults, let him have the benefit of the doubt. When we criticise our neighbour’s character—and idle gossip frequently leads to this practice—we are too often inclined to dwell upon his weak points—his vices—and to pass over his merits in silence; but we ought to consider how little we should like to see the same treatment applied to ourselves. Another fault of ours is to judge the doings of other people without fully understanding all the circumstances and the causes that led to such actions. Hillel said, “Do not judge thy neighbour until thou hast come into his place;” that is, do not pass judgment upon your neighbour before you are able to place yourself in his position, and to say with certainty what, you would have done under the same circumstances. The Law forbids us to use divers weights and divers measures in our business transactions, lest we damage the property of our neighbour; equally unlawful is the use of one kind of weights and measures for weighing our own words and deeds, and another kind for weighing the words and the deeds of others, to the injury of our fellow-man’s name and repute. Contrary to the usage of courts of justice, our neighbour’s words and deeds are generally reported by us, interpreted, tried and condemned in his absence, when he is unable to defend himself, to show his innocence, or to prove the falsehood of the report, the error of the interpretation, and the injustice of the trial and the condemnation.

The perversity of such conduct is evident, especially [[301]]in the case of the departed. The prohibition, “Thou shalt not curse the deaf” (Lev. xix. 14) has been interpreted to apply to all kinds of slander about those absent or dead. Our respect for the memory of the dead is expressed in the Latin maxim, “De mortuis nil nisi bonum;” or in the Hebrew, ‏אחרי מות קדשים אמור‎[12] “After their death say of them ‘saints.’ ” Similar maxims are the following: “We must not refute the lion after his death;” ‏מיתה מכפרת‎ “Death atones for all offences.”

4. The Well-being of our Fellow-man.—The duties expounded in the above are of a negative character. The commandment, “Love thy neighbour as thyself” implies also certain positive duties, which are comprehended in the terms, ‏צדקה‎ and ‏גמלות חסד‎ “charity.”

The literal meaning of the term tsedakah is “righteousness,” but it occurs also frequently in the sense of “charity;” and we may infer from this that charity was to the Hebrew a mere act of righteousness. In the Book of Daniel and in post-Biblical Hebrew tsedakah is “alms,” and distinguished from gemilluth-chesed, “charity.” The former is given to the poor; the latter to poor and rich alike: tsedakah, consisting of money or things that can be purchased for money, is a duty chiefly incumbent on the wealthier class; gemilluth-chesed, consisting of personal acts of kindness, is a virtue that can be acquired and practised by every one, whether he be poor or rich; and whilst tsedakah can only be given to those that live, gemilluth-chesed can be shown even to the departed. [[302]]When Jacob asked his son for a burial in the cave of Machpelah, he relied on his son’s ‏חסד ואמת‎, “Kindness and truth;” and the Midrash adds the remark, “Kindness shown to the dead is an act of true love, as there can be no prospect of gratitude or repayment.”

The principal kinds of ‏גמלות חסד‎ are the following:—

Charity (tsedakah) in its narrower sense, as a duty towards the poor, includes—

There are generally associations formed for the various branches of gemilluth-chesed, the number of which grows, especially in large towns, with the increase of misery. It is our duty to support such institutions, as combined action is in most cases more practical and productive of good result. But the existence of public institutions, and our support given to them, by no means exempt us from assisting individually those who apply to us for help. We must be judicious in our charitable acts, lest we nurse poverty and promote imposture. But, on the other hand, we must not be over cautious, and must not unduly suspect every applicant for assistance as guilty of idleness or other vices, lest by refusal or hesitation to help we become guilty of neglect, when by prompt action we might save from utter ruin a person or a whole family well worthy of our sympathy. In this regard we are warned by King Solomon: “Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of [[305]]thine hand to do it. Say not unto thy neighbour, Go, and come again, and to-morrow I will give; when thou hast it by thee” (Prov. iii. 27, 28).

(b.) Special Duties towards our Fellow-men.

1. Children towards their Parents.—“Honour thy father and thy mother” is one of the Ten Words which God spoke to the Israelites on Mount Sinai. The child honours his parents by considering them as his superiors, as endowed with authority over him, and entitled by experience to be his guides and instructors; by listening respectfully when they speak to him, and by speaking with reverence when he speaks of or to them.

The love of parents towards their child should find an echo in the heart of the latter.

The child’s love of his parents finds expression in willing, cheerful obedience; in the endeavour to do everything that pleases them, in the sacrifice made for the purpose of giving them pleasure, in the assistance given them when, through age, sickness, or misfortune, they are in need of aid.

The parents’ duty towards the child is to do everything that true love demands, for his physical, moral, and intellectual well-being.

With regard to the child’s duty towards his parents the following verses from Proverbs may be noticed:—

“The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it” (xxx. 17). [[306]]

“Whoso robbeth his father or his mother, and saith, It is no transgression, the same is the companion of a destroyer” (xxviii. 24).

“Whoso curseth his father or his mother, his lamp shall be put out in obscure darkness” (xx. 20).

“He that wasteth his father and chaseth away his mother is a son that causeth shame, and bringeth reproach” (xix. 26).

“The glory of children are their fathers” (xvii. 6).

2. All other special duties towards our fellow-men may be divided into (i.) Duties towards our equals; (ii.) Duties towards our superiors and towards our inferiors.

(i.) Duties towards our Equals.

(1.) A bond of friendship frequently exists between equals.

Friends have certain duties to fulfil towards each other. It is expected that friends should have faith in their mutual friendship. “As in water face answereth to face, so in the heart man answereth to man” (Prov. xxvii. 19). As the water reflects the face of him who looks into it, so the heart of man reflects the friendship and faithfulness of him who has penetrated into it. Our estimation of our friend’s feeling toward us is the measure of the genuineness and value of our own friendship towards him.

Disinterestedness is an essential condition of genuine friendship. Every service we render to our friend must be prompted by the desire to be of use to him. [[307]]and not to advance our own interest. If any other motive enters our mind, if we speculate on his gratitude, and think that our kindness must eventually be returned with interest, we have no knowledge or feeling of friendship. Thus our Sages declare, “Friendship dictated by a selfish motive comes to an end together with the speculation; but friendship which is not based on any selfish motive comes never to an end. An instance of the first kind is the friendship between Amnon and Tamar (2 Sam. xiii.); of the second kind, the friendship between David and Jonathan (1 Sam. xviii.)” (Aboth v. 16).

Friends bound to each other by genuine and sincere love find great pleasure in the fulfilment of the duties involved in friendship. They do not hesitate to bring sacrifices for each other’s well-being; they evince heartfelt sympathy for each other in good and evil fortune.

All the duties of charity—gemilluth chesed—which we owe to our fellow-men in general, apply with increased force when our fellow-man is also our friend. One of these duties demands our special attention, because it is frequently neglected through human weakness: truthfulness and openness. Flattery, objectionable as it is in every case, is most detestable between friends. We must encourage our friends by kind words, and acknowledge their merits, but we must not spoil them by undue flattery. If, on the other hand, we discover errors or vices in our friend, it is our duty to communicate to him openly our opinion, and to do all that is in our power to bring him back to the path of righteousness and truth. [[308]]“Thou shalt surely rebuke thy friend, and not suffer sin upon him” (Lev. xix. 17).

Friendship is mostly formed without premeditation, and without any aim; we are friends, we do not know how and why; some similarity in our character, in our talents, in our views, in our successes and failures, or in our fortunes and misfortunes, draws us together, and we become friends before we are aware of the fact. But as far as we have control over our feelings we ought to be careful not to plunge into friendship without knowing something of the character and the tendencies of those with whom we are to associate ourselves in such close relationship. In Proverbs we are told, “Make no friendships with an angry man, and with a furious man thou shalt not go” (xxii. 24). Ben-sira (vi. 6) exhorts us, “If thou wouldst get a friend, prove him first, and be not hasty to credit him.” Our Sages say, “It is easy to make an enemy; it is difficult to make a friend” (Yalkut on Deut. vi. 16).

The acquisition of a true friend is by no means an easy task. But it is a task that cannot be dispensed with. Persons who enjoy a life spent in loneliness uncheered by friendship are exceptions to the rule; such a life is miserable, and the climax of all the evils complained of by Heman the Ezrahite (Ps. lxxxviii. 19) is: “Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and darkness is mine acquaintance.” Job in his great sufferings longs for “the love which is shown to the unhappy by his friend” (Job vi. 14).

Friendship being one of our most valuable possessions, it must be well guarded and cultivated, lest it be lost or weakened. “Thine own friend and thy [[309]]father’s friend, forsake not” (Prov. xxvii. 10). “Let thy foot be seldom in thy friend’s house, lest he be weary of thee, and so hate thee” (ibid. xxv. 17).

True friendship can be extended only to a few; but those who are not our friends need not be our enemies. They are all our fellow-men, and our conduct towards them is to be guided by the principle, “Love thy fellow-man as thyself.” We are distinctly commanded, “Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart” (Lev. xix. 18), “brother” having here the same meaning as fellow-man. Enmity, like friendship, comes frequently unawares; we dislike or even hate a person without knowing why. But it is our duty, as soon as such an ill-feeling has stolen into our heart, to search for its origin; and this being done, we shall generally feel ashamed of having allowed our heart to be invaded by such an unworthy intruder. We must keep away from evil-doers, and not associate with wicked people; but this is a very different thing from hating our neighbour. The pious wish, “May sinners cease to exist, and the wicked be no more” (Ps. civ. 35), is explained in the Talmud in the words of Beruria, daughter of Rabbi Meir, as follows: “May sins cease to exist, and the wicked will be no more.” We often conceive just indignation at the misdeeds of our neighbours, and cannot well separate the doer from the deed. But we ought in such cases of indignation to examine ourselves, whether the source of our indignation is pure, or has its root in selfishness. Such an analysis of our motives would soon purify our heart of all ill-feeling.

In our conduct towards those whom we consider our [[310]]enemies, or who consider us their enemies, we must show forbearance and a desire to offer or to seek forgiveness, according as we are the doers or the sufferers of wrong. Self-love and self-esteem, if not kept within due limits, easily produce feelings of revenge. Without entirely suppressing human nature, we are bound to control our feelings, and to let love of our fellow-men in all conditions occupy the first place in our heart. We are taught by our Sages, “He who is forbearing, receives also pardon for his sins” (Babyl. Talm. Yoma 23a); “Be of the persecuted, and not of the persecutors” (ibid. Baba Kama 93a); “To those who being offended do not offend, being insulted do not insult, the verse applies: ‘And they who love him shall be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might’ ” (Judges v. 31; Babyl. Talm. Shabbath 88b).

(2.) Man and wife are united by the holy bond of marriage. They owe to each other love, faithfulness, confidence, and untiring endeavour to make each other happy. The neglect of these duties turns a happy home into an abode of misery and wretchedness.[14] The last of the prophets, Malachi, rebuking such neglect, says: “The Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously, yet is she thy companion and the wife of thy covenant.”

(3.) As citizens of a State we must take our proper share in all work for the welfare of the State. When the State is in danger we must evince patriotism, and must not withdraw ourselves from those duties which, under [[311]]such circumstances, devolve upon every citizen. All our means, our physical and intellectual faculties, must be at the disposal of the country in which we live as citizens. Thus Jeremiah exhorts his brethren in Babylonia: “Build ye houses and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them; … and seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the Lord for it: for in the peace thereof shall you have peace” (Jer. xxix. 5, 7). Similarly we are taught, “Pray for the welfare of the government” (Aboth iii. 2).[15]

An important dictum of Samuel, a Rabbi famous for his decisions in questions of civil law, is accepted in the Talmud as law: “The law of the State is binding upon us,” ‏דינא דמלכותא דינא‎ (Babyl. Talm. Baba Kamma 113a). It is, according to the teaching of the Talmud, incumbent upon us, as citizens of the State, to obey the laws of the country. There is no difference between Jews and their fellow-citizens with regard to the duty of loyalty. It is only in case of an attempt to force us aside from our religion that we are not only justified in resisting and disobeying laws framed with this intention, but we are commanded to do so. But in the absence of such intention, we must fulfil all those duties which devolve upon all citizens alike—such as military service in countries that have general conscription—although such obedience may carry with it a breach of some of the laws of our religion. On the contrary, evasion and desertion [[312]]of all national obligations is a serious offence against our holy Law.

(4.) As members of the same religious community, we must unite in working for the well-being of the whole body. “Do not separate thyself from the congregation” (Aboth ii. 4) is a principle taught by the great Hillel. A Jew who violates this principle, and keeps aloof from his brethren, unwilling to take his share of the communal burdens, is guilty of a serious dereliction of duty, and is set forth in the Talmud as an example of most disgraceful conduct. “When your brethren are in trouble, do not say, ‘I have my home, my food and drink; I am safe.’ If you ever were to think so, the words of the prophet would apply to you: ‘Surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till you die’.” “He who does not join the community in times of danger and trouble will never enjoy the Divine blessing” (Babyl. Talm. Taanith, p. 11a); “He who separates from the ways of the community has no portion of the world to come,” ‏הפורש מדרכי צבור אין לו חלק לעולם הבא‎ (Maim., Mishneh-torah, Hilchoth Teshubah iii. 6).

(5.) As to members of another community, we have to show due regard for their religious convictions, and not to wound their feelings in respect of anything they hold sacred. Respect for the religious feelings of our fellow-men will increase their regard for our own religion, and evoke in them the same consideration for our religious feelings. All our duties towards our fellow-men are equally binding upon us whether in relation to members of ether faiths or of our own. [[313]]

(6.) Employers and employed, sellers and buyers, must act towards each other with the strictest honesty. In cases of dispute a friendly explanation or discussion is more likely to promote the interest of both parties than mutual animosity. Each party must bear in mind that prosperity depends on the co-operation of the other party, and not on its ruin.

Note.—We meet in the Talmud and works based on the Talmud with dicta which seem at first sight to exclude Gentiles (‏עכו״ם‎, ‏נכרי‎ or ‏גוי‎) from our duty of love towards our fellow-men. This, however, was never intended. Sayings of this kind originated in days of warfare between the oppressor and the oppressed, and were an outburst of feelings of pain and anger, caused by an enemy who was not restrained from tyranny and cruelty by any sense of justice and humanity. But this state of affairs has ceased, and such sayings have since entirely lost their force and meaning, and are practically forgotten. Some of these passages have been removed from the Talmudical works by hostile censors; but having led, and being still likely to lead, to errors or misunderstanding, less on the part of Jews than of non-Jewish readers, they ought to be eliminated in future editions of any of these works by Jewish censors, especially as the notices on the first page of the books, that the terms ‏גוי‎, ‏עכו״ם‎ or ‏נכרי‎ do not apply to our non-Jewish neighbours at the present day, appear to have proved ineffectual against calumny and persecution.

(ii.) Duties to our Superiors and Inferiors.

Although we are all equally children of one God, and before the Most High all our petty differences disappear, His infinite wisdom willed it that there should be a certain degree of inequality among His creatures; that some men should be wise, others simple; some talented, others less skilful; some strong, others weak; some high, others low; some imperious, others [[314]]submissive; some rulers, others subjects; some fit to guide, and others only fit to be guided. This inequality is the source of certain special duties between man and man. “Be submissive to your superior, agreeable to your inferior, and cheerful to every one” (Aboth iii. 12).

(1.) The teacher who patiently strives to benefit his pupils by his instruction and counsel has a just claim on their respect. It is in the interest of the pupils themselves to regard their teacher as a friend, to have confidence in him, and faith in his superiority. It is themselves they benefit most if they lighten the labours of their teacher by due attention and obedience, and themselves they injure most, if by want of proper respect they render his task difficult and disagreeable.

On the other hand, it is the duty of the teacher to try to win the respect and the affection of the pupils by conscientiousness in his work, by patience and forbearance, by kindness and justice, by genuine interest in the progress and welfare of those entrusted to his care, and, above all, by a pure, good, and noble life.—The pupils owe much to their teachers, but the latter also owe something to their disciples. “Much have I learnt from my teachers, more from my fellow-students, most from my pupils,” is a well-known Talmudical saying (Babyl. Talm. Taanith 7a). Of the priest, who in ancient time used to be the principal teacher, the prophet Malachi says: “The priest’s lips shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law at his mouth; for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts” (Mal. ii. 7). Rabbi Jochanan, in commenting [[315]]on these words, said, “If the teacher is like the messenger of the Lord, i.e., leads a pure life in the service of the Lord, then people shall seek instruction at his mouth; if not, they cannot be instructed by him in the Law” (Yalkut ad locum).—“Let the honour of thy disciple be as dear to thee as thy own, and the honour of thy colleague as dear as the fear of thy teacher, and the fear of thy teacher as dear as the fear of Heaven” (Aboth iv. 15).—“He who has been taught something by his neighbour, whether it be a chapter, a law, a verse, a phrase, or a letter, owes him respect. Thus David, who only learnt two things from Ahitophel, called him ‘teacher, chief, and friend’ ” (ibid. vi. 3).

Reverence is shown by a pupil to his teacher, not only by outward signs of respect, but also by refraining from opposing him, his teaching, or his decisions (Maimonides I. Hilchoth Talmud torah v. 1). A pupil who altogether relinquishes the teaching of his master is to the latter a source of intense grief.—Among the outward signs of regard for the teacher we find the ancient custom or rule to pay a visit to the teacher on the three festivals: Passover, Feast of Weeks, and Tabernacles (ibid. v. 7).

(2.) Master and Servant.—The relation between master and servant is legally regulated by the same rules as that between employer and employed. Strict honesty in the fulfilment of the duties undertaken by either party is the basis of a good understanding between master and servant. The former must not exact from the latter more than was agreed upon, and the latter must not fail to perform all that he has undertaken [[316]]to do. The relation between master and servant can be made more pleasant on both sides, if they are sensible enough to recognise their mutual obligations. On the part of the master, it is necessary that he should consider his servant as a human being like himself, who has a right to expect due reward for faithful service. A treatment of the servant from this point of view inspires him with a feeling of regard and attachment for his master, which finds expression in good and honest service. The servant will feel comfortable in his work, and be convinced that to be a servant is no degradation.—“Thou shalt not defraud an hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren or of thy strangers that are in the land within thy gates” (Deut. xxiv. 14).

(3.) Rich and Poor.—“The rich and poor meet together: the Lord is the maker of them all” (Prov. xxii. 2). Those who are fortunate enough to possess more than is wanted for the necessities of life, are expected to spend part of the surplus in relieving those who possess less than they require for their maintenance. Sympathy towards the poor and needy is the duty of the rich; gratitude towards the generous and benevolent is the duty of the poor. But the rich must by no means make their gifts dependent on the signs of gratitude on the part of the poor; they must even avoid eliciting expressions of thanks, as these lead too often to flattery, hypocrisy, and servility. The rich find ample reward for their benevolence in the joyous feeling that Providence has chosen them as the means of diminishing the sufferings, the troubles, and the cares of some of their fellow-men. [[317]]

(4.) The following have a just claim on our respect:—

Learned Men (‏תלמידי חכמים‎), who, even if not directly our teachers, in many ways benefit us by their learning. “It is a great sin to despise or to hate the wise: Jerusalem has chiefly been destroyed as a punishment for the contempt shown for the learned; as it is said (2 Chron. xxxvi. 16), ‘They mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people till there was no remedy’ ” (Maimonides, l. c. vi. 11). “He who despises talmide-chachamim,” says Rab, “has no remedy for his disease” (Babyl. Talm. Shabbath, 119b), and belongs to those who forfeit their portion in the world to come (‏אין להם חלק לעולם הבא‎, ibid., Sanhedrin 90).

The Aged.—“Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God” (Lev. xix. 32). The Bible illustrates, in the history of Rehoboam (1 Kings xii.), the evil consequences of the contempt shown by this king to the words of the old men.—“With the ancient is wisdom, and in length of days understanding” (Job xii. 12). “The building of the young is destruction; the destruction of the old is building” (B. T. Megillah 31b).[16]

Great men who have accomplished great works in the interest of mankind, and have thus merited the gratitude of all.

The great men of our nation, their works and the institutions founded by them at various periods of our [[318]]history. “Do not despise thy mother, though she hath become old” (Prov. xxiii. 22). The feeling of piety and reverence towards our Sages and Teachers of former generations, and towards institutions of ancient times that have come down to us, is an essential element in our inner religion (‏חובות הלבבות‎).

The magistrates, judges, and statesmen, who devote their time, their talents, and their energy to promoting the well-being of the State.

The Head of the State.—“Fear the Lord, O my son, and the king, and do not mix with rioters” (Prov. xxiv. 21).

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(c.) Kindness to Animals.

“Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Gen. i. 28 and ix. 2, &c.; comp. Ps. viii. 7, &c.). Thus spake the Creator to the first man. He gave him a right to make use of the animals for his benefit; and man makes the animals work for him; they serve him as food, provide him with clothing and other necessary or useful things. In return for all these services the animals ought to be treated with kindness and consideration. It is a necessity to force certain beasts to work for us, and to kill certain animals for various purposes. But in doing so we must not cause more pain than is absolutely necessary. It is a disgraceful act to give pain to animals merely for sport, and to enjoy their agony. Bullfights and similar spectacles are barbarous, and tend to corrupt and brutalise [[319]]the heart of man. The more we abstain from cruelty to animals, the more noble and loving is our conduct likely to be to one another. “A righteous man regardeth the feelings of his beast, but the heart of the wicked is cruel” (Prov. xii. 10).

The following are instances of kindness to animals enjoined in the Pentateuch:—

“Ye shall not kill an animal and its young on one day” (Lev. xxii. 28).

“If a bird’s nest happen to be before thee on the way upon the earth or upon a tree, with young ones or eggs, thou shalt not take the mother with the young. Let the mother go away; then thou mayest take the young ones, in order that it may be well with thee, and thy days be long” (Deut. xxii. 6, 7).

“Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn” (ibid. xxv. 4).

In the Talmud we have the following saying in the name of Rab:—“We must not begin our meal before having given food to our cattle; for it is said, ‘And I will give you grass in thy field for thy cattle,’ and after that ‘thou shalt eat and be full’ ” (Deut. xi. 15; Babyl. Talm. 40a).

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C.—Duties to Ourselves.

Our duties to ourselves are to a great extent included in our duties towards God and towards our fellow-men, because these likewise tend to promote our own well-being.

The fundamental principle of our duties towards [[320]]ourselves is to make the best use of the gifts which the kindness of God has bestowed upon us.

1. Life and health are precious gifts received by us at the hands of Divine Providence. We must therefore guard them as valuable treasures, and must not endanger them without absolute necessity. On the contrary, as much as lies in our power, we must improve our health and preserve our life. Food and bodily enjoyment, however pleasant for the moment, must be let alone if they are injurious to health. If we find ourselves inclined to exceed the right measure in the enjoyment of a thing, it is advisable to turn, for a while at least, to the other extreme and avoid that enjoyment altogether. Thus persons that are easily misled to excess in drink should become total abstainers from drink. But in ordinary cases the golden mean is preferable, especially for us Jews who are trained by the Dietary Laws, and by other precepts, to have control over our appetites. We are not commanded to be ascetics and to lead a gloomy, miserable life. On the contrary, we are frequently told in the Pentateuch, “And ye shall rejoice before the Lord your God.” The Psalmist exhorts us to “serve the Lord with gladness; to come before his presence with singing” (Ps. c. 2). “He who doeth good to his own soul is a man of love; and he who troubleth his own flesh is a cruel man” (Prov. xi. 17); i.e., he who does good to himself is of a cheerful disposition, and is likely to do good to others; but he who deprives himself of enjoyments is often also cruel to his fellow-creatures. The Nazirite had to bring a sin-offering after the expiration of the period of his [[321]]vow. “What sin has he committed?” was asked. The answer is given in the Talmud by Samuel: “Because he deprived himself of wine;” and the Rabbi further infers from this, that it is prohibited to impose a voluntary fast upon oneself. Rabbi Eleazar, however, thinks that the vow of a Nazirite is a praiseworthy act, and his view found many followers, especially in the Middle Ages. Abraham Ibn Ezra, e.g., explains that the sin of the Nazirite consists in not prolonging the state of Naziritism. But, however different their opinions may be theoretically, all agree that no voluntary fast should be undertaken, if it endangers the health of the faster, changes cheerfulness into sadness, and disables him from doing necessary or useful work.

2. Wealth, if acquired in an honest manner, by hard work, is conducive to our well-being. But in our search for wealth we must bear in mind that it is not an end in itself, but serves only as a means of securing our well-being. Koheleth tells us, what experience endorses, that there are “riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt” (Eccles. v. 12). It is true we must struggle for the means of our existence. But in the struggle for wealth we must not entirely suppress the claims of our moral and intellectual wants, and if we were to suppress them, we should only work for our own ruin. “Two things have I required of thee; deny me them not before I die: Remove far from me vanity and lies; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor, and steal, [[322]]and take the name of my God in vain” (Prov. xxx. 7–9). To this golden mean we should adhere. It is our duty to seek an honest livelihood, but we are told, “Labour not to be rich: cease from thine own wisdom” (Prov. xxiii. 4). One of the various duties of parents towards their children is to take good care that they learn a trade, and “he who does not teach his son a trade,” say our Sages, “is as guilty as if he directly taught him to rob” (Babyl. Talm. Kiddushin, p. 29a).

There is an erroneous opinion abroad, that commerce is more congenial to Judaism than handicraft. In our Law no trace of such preference is noticeable; on the contrary, agriculture was the principal occupation of the Israelites. “When thou eatest the labour of thine hands, happy art thou, and it is well with thee” (Ps. cxxviii. 2). “Love work, and hate lordship” is a well-known lesson of the sayings of the Fathers (Aboth i. 10). Bible and post-Biblical literature equally teach us the lesson that our comfort and happiness do not depend on the amount of wealth we have amassed, but on the degree of contentment our heart has acquired. “Sweet is the sleep of the labourer, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep” (Eccles. v. 11).

Industry is one of the sources of human happiness; but the blessing of industry is easily lost, if it is not combined with thrift and temperance. In days of prosperity we must bear in mind that days of misfortune may come; we must, so far as we can, provide for them, so that we may be able to hold out “till the storm has passed.” Temperance is inseparable from thrift [[323]]and industry. Intemperance not only consumes the products of thrift and industry, but in course of time destroys these very sources of our prosperity. Even with regard to Sabbath, in honour of which some degree of comfort and even of luxury may be indulged in, the principle is laid down: “Treat thy Sabbath like an ordinary day, if additional expense is likely to make thee dependent on charity” (Babyl. Talm. Shabbath 118a).

3. Knowledge.—God has made man “a little lower than the angels, and has crowned him with glory and honour” (Ps. viii. 6); He has endowed him with the faculty of acquiring knowledge: “There is a spirit in man, and an inspiration of the Almighty, that gives him understanding” (Job xxxii. 8). It is our duty to cultivate this faculty, to nurse it with all possible care, that it may grow, produce beautiful blossoms, and bear goodly fruit. The training must begin very early, at an age in which we are entirely dependent on the assistance and guidance of others. Parents, to whom the Almighty has entrusted the care of their children, are therefore commanded to provide for their education; and as parents are not always capable of doing this, the duty devolves on the community or on the State. Every civilised country has its schools, colleges, and seminaries for the development of the intellectual and moral faculties of its inhabitants, and as these institutions increase in number and efficiency, the prosperity of the nation grows in like proportion. But the success of these educational institutions, however well provided they may be with an excellent teaching staff and the best appliances, depends on the regular and punctual attendance of the children, their attention, [[324]]and their industry. It is the duty of parents to see, as far as it is in their power, that these conditions be fulfilled. Among the various branches of knowledge we seek to acquire, there is one branch of paramount importance, the absence of which would make all other knowledge valueless: it is—

4. Moral and Religious Training.—“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and correction” (‏חכמה ומוסר‎ Prov. i. 7). The author of the Book of Proverbs teaches that knowledge must be combined with ‏יראת השם‎ “fear of God;” and that it is a perverse idea to separate wisdom (‏חכמה‎) from moral training (‏מוסר‎), and to seek knowledge (‏דעת‎) without the fear of the Lord (‏יראת ה׳‎). Our Sages teach us that our training should include both fear of God and wisdom. “If there is no wisdom, there is no fear of God; and in the absence of the latter there is no wisdom” (Aboth iii. 17). Fear of the Lord, however, and fear of sin must have precedence. Rabbi Chanina, son of Dosa, says: “If a man’s wisdom is preceded by fear of sin, his wisdom is well established; if the fear of sin is preceded by wisdom, his wisdom is not well established” (ibid. 9).

The result of our training must be the acquisition of good manners and noble principles. Avoid extremes, and hold to the golden mean, is an excellent rule that leads us safely through the various conditions of life and wards off many troubles and dangers. The following examples may serve as an illustration of this rule: Do not ignore your own self; let self-love and self-respect influence your conduct; but these must not be allowed to develop into selfishness [[325]]and arrogance. Look after your own interests, but do not consider them as the supreme rulers of your actions. Be self-reliant, and keep equally far from self-conceit and self-distrust. Haughtiness and self-contempt are extremes to be avoided: be modest. When wronged or insulted by your neighbour, be neither callous nor over-sensitive; ignore insult and wrong in most cases, forgive them readily in others, and resent them only when forced to do so. In disputes and discussions be neither weak nor obstinate: be firm. Be neither passionate nor indifferent: be calm. Do not trust every one, lest your credulity mislead you; do not suspect every one, lest you become misanthropic: be discreet. Do not seek danger, nor fear it; but be prepared to meet it with courage. Be temperate in eating and drinking, and avoid both excess and needless privation. In spending your earnings show neither niggardliness nor recklessness: be economical. Work, but not in such a manner as to ruin your health. As to your future, be neither too sanguine in your hopes, nor despondent: do your duty, and trust in God.

There are, however, exceptions from this rule; for in certain cases there is only the choice between two extremes. Such is Truthfulness. It is our duty to approach nearer and nearer the extreme of this virtue, and to consider the least deviation from it as vice. From our earliest youth we should train ourselves in the practice of this virtue. Every word that we desire to utter should be well examined before it passes our lips. We must be on our guard that nothing should escape our lips that is not in harmony with what we [[326]]feel or think. In small matters as well as in important things truthfulness must be the principle which guides us in our utterances. “The lips of truth shall be established for ever, but for a moment only the tongue of falsehood” (Prov. xii. 19). “Keep thee far from a word of falsehood” (Exod. xxiii. 7). “Falsehood,” say our Sages, “has no legs to stand upon; whilst ‘truth’ is declared to be the seal of the Holy One, Blessed be He” (‏אמת חותמו של הקב״ה‎).

Our moral and religious training is based on the Word of God, on the Torah, and the study of the Torah, ‏חלמוד תורה‎, is an essential element in Jewish education. The term Torah is to be understood in no narrow sense, but as including the written and the oral Law, all the books of the Holy Writings, and such works as have from time to time been composed for the purpose of facilitating and promoting the study of the Torah. The importance of this duty has been recognised from ancient times, and Jewish congregations, before building a synagogue, made provision for the religious education of the young and for the study of the Law, by establishing schools and colleges (‏בית ספר‎ or ‏בי רב‎ and ‏בית המדרש‎).

Talmud-torah is one of those duties to which no measure was fixed (‏אשר אין להם שיעור‎ Mishnah Peah i. 1). Whenever we can find time and leisure, we ought to turn to the Word of God, every one according to his capacity and his opportunities. The readings from the Torah, both the written and the oral, which form part of our Service, have been introduced for the purpose of facilitating for the general public the fulfilment of the duty of Talmud-torah. [[327]]

The study of the Law and the regular and punctual attendance at the Beth-hammidrash belong to those religious acts which “bear fruit here on earth and procure bliss in the future life” (ibid.). Our Sages exhort us in various sayings to devote ourselves earnestly to the study of the Torah. The object of this study is, in the first instance, to enable us to live in accordance with His Commandments; secondly, to purify our thoughts by turning them from common, ordinary things to higher and loftier subjects; for while we are reading the Divine messages and reflecting on them, we move in a purer atmosphere and must be inspired with holy and noble thoughts.

The book which is expected to produce these results must be approached “with awe, with meekness, with cheerfulness, and with purity” (Aboth vi. 6). Our intention must be to be instructed and guided by what we read. We must not presume to criticise the Divine decrees therein recorded. If we meet with passages that strike us as strange or objectionable, we may be sure that we have not yet comprehended the true sense of the Divine words. Modesty must cause us rather to assume shortcomings on our part than to find fault with the Holy Writings. “Turn it over, and read it again and again; for all is in it, and behold everything through it; and even when old and weak, cleave to it, and do not move away from it; for there is no better guide for thee than this one” (Aboth v. 22). There is one great advantage in the study of the Torah; it constantly supplies us with one of the best means of promoting our moral training, viz., with good company.

The society in which we move and the persons [[328]]with whom we associate are an important factor in the formation of our character. Bad companions corrupt us, and lead us to ruin; good companions improve our moral conduct by their example and not rarely by their words. “If one joins mockers, he will be a mocker; if he joins the lowly, he will show grace” (Prov. iii. 34). “Keep away from a bad neighbour; do not associate with the wicked, and do not believe thyself safe from evil” (Aboth i. 7). In our daily prayers we ask God for His assistance in our endeavour to act according to this principle.

The aim and end of all our moral training must be to keep our mind pure from evil thoughts, to make our heart the seat of noble and lofty desires; to accustom our tongue to the utterance of that which is good and true, and to lead a pure, honourable, and godly life. If we succeed, we establish our well-being during our life on earth, and secure Divine blessing for our soul in the future world.

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