ISRAEL IMMORTAL
THUS saith the Lord, Who giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, Who stirreth up the sea, that the waves thereof roar; the Lord of hosts is His name: If these ordinances depart from before Me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before Me for ever.
JEREMIAH 31. 35, 36.
THE sun and moon for ever shine—by day
And night they mark the Eternal’s high design.
Changeless and tireless, speeding on their way,
The sun and moon for ever shine.
Symbols are they of Israel’s chosen line,
A nation still, though countless foes combine;
Smitten by God and healed by God are they:
They shall not fear, safe ’neath the Rock divine,
Nor cease to be, until men cease to say,
The sun and moon for ever shine.
YEHUDAH HALEVI, 1150.
(Trans. Alice Lucas.)
THE life of man is numbered by days,
The days of Israel are innumerable.
ECCLESIASTICUS 37. 25.
KINGDOMS arise and kingdoms pass away, but Israel endureth for evermore.
MIDRASH.
THE ETERNAL RIDDLE[13]
ISRAEL, my people,
God’s greatest riddle,
Will thy solution
Ever be told?
Fought—never conquered,
Bent—never broken,
Mortal—immortal,
Youthful, though old.
Egypt enslaved thee,
Babylon crushed thee,
Rome led thee captive,
Homeless thy head.
Where are those nations
Mighty and fearsome?
Thou hast survived them,
They are long dead.
Nations keep coming,
Nations keep going,
Passing like shadows,
Wiped off the earth.
Thou an eternal
Witness remainest,
Watching their burial,
Watching their birth.
Pray, who revealed thee
Heavens great secret:
Death and destruction
Thus to defy?
Suffering torture,
Stake, inquisition—
Prithee, who taught thee
Never to die?
Ay, and who gave thee
Faith, deep as ocean,
Strong as the rock-hills,
Fierce as the sun?
Hated and hunted,
Ever thou wand’rest,
Bearing a message:
God is but one!
Pray, has thy saga
Likewise an ending,
As its beginning
Glorious of old?
Israel, my people,
God’s greatest riddle,
Will thy solution
Ever be told?
P. M. RASKIN, 1914.
THE SECRET OF ISRAEL’S IMMORTALITY[14]
WHAT has prevented this constantly migrating people, this veritable Wandering Jew, from degenerating into brutalized vagabonds, into vagrant hordes of gipsies? The answer is at hand. In its journey through the desert of life, for eighteen centuries, the Jewish people carried along the Ark of the Covenant, which breathed into its heart ideal aspirations, and even illumined the badge of disgrace affixed to its garment with an apostolic glory. The proscribed, outlawed, universally persecuted Jew felt a sublime, noble pride in being singled out to perpetuate and to suffer for a religion which reflects eternity, by which the nations of the earth were gradually educated to a knowledge of God and morality, and from which is to spring the salvation and redemption of the world.
Such a people, which disdains its present but has the eye steadily fixed on its future, which lives as it were on hope, is on that very account eternal, like hope.
H. GRAETZ, 1853.