THE BIBLE
IS it a book, a world, a heaven?
Are those words, or flames, or shining stars,
Or burning torches, or clouds of fire
What is it, I ask ye—the Bible?
Who inspired those infinite truths?
Who spoke through the mouth of the prophet?
Who mapped out the highways of ages,
The glorious lines of the Scriptures?
Who planted the flowers of wisdom
In this sacred soil of the angels?
O dream of eternity—Bible—
O Light that is all and for ever.
MORRIS ROSENFELD, 1918.
THE SEPHER TORAH[65]
FOR any community of people to be, and to remain, Jewish, they must be brought up from their tenderest childhood to regard the Sepher Torah as the title-deed of their birthright and pedigree, which they are religiously to hand down unaltered from generation to generation. For is there a Jewish community anywhere, however safely domiciled, which has relinquished the Torah for even one generation and has survived that separation? The Jewish masses, though dispersed to the four winds of the world and mostly destitute of mere shelter—because tenacious of their creed, endure, true to themselves and to their past.
The Torah, therefore, is a fountain of life. In it is protection greater than in fortresses. Those who forsake the Torah, bringing it into disrepute and weakening the hold it has on us, are working at the destruction of the brotherhood that cradled and sheltered their fathers and forefathers through all the vicissitudes of the bygone ages, to whom they owe their own life and presence on earth.
W. M. HAFFKINE, 1917.