"Paths of Pleasantness"
The Study of the Jewish Law
By David Werner Amram
"Her paths are paths of pleasantness, and all her ways are peace. She is a tree of life to those that lay fast hold on her, and happy is every one that retaineth her."—Prov. 3:17, 18.
DAVID WERNER AMRAM (born in Philadelphia, 1866), educated at the University of Pennsylvania, has been Lecturer and since 1912 Professor of Law in the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Professor Amram has published books and articles not only on common law topics but on interesting subjects in Jewish legal lore and belles-lettres, among his books being: "The Jewish Law of Divorce," "Leading Cases in the Bible," and "The Makers of Hebrew Books in Italy."
ONE of the methods by which the Jewish people managed to survive endless misery and persecution during eighteen centuries of dispersion and protect themselves from the continuous bombardment of their social and moral citadels was by taking refuge in the study of the law. The study and observance of the law, both civil and religious, saved the Jews from degeneration and vulgarization, and preserved for them the humanizing memories of the thoughts and deeds of their forebears. Through their common interest in the law and its study they kept in touch with one another throughout the lands of their dispersion, they kept alive their feeling of brotherhood and the memory of their ancient independence, and translated this memory into a hope for the re-establishment of the State, a hope which has never died.
"The People of the Law"
THE term "the people of the law" has often been applied to the Jews in the opprobrious sense that they are a people who deal according to hard and strict rules, untouched by the qualities of love and mercy.
Properly understood, however, the term "the people of the law" is a title of honor, one of which we may well be proud. As used in our literature and by our people, "law" signifies something more than civil and criminal jurisprudence. It is our word "Torah," meaning doctrine, teaching, including not only what is generally known as law but also what is known as ethics. The people of the law is the people that studies the great thoughts of its great men of all times, and adopts them as rules of life which it becomes a duty and a pleasure to obey. The people of the law is the people that in the midst of a world of chaos in which nation fought nation with the weapons of death, sat in communion with a past world from which came such messages as this: "Attend to me, O my people: and give ear unto me, O my nation: for a law shall go forth from me, and I will make my judgment to rest for a light to the peoples. . . . . Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law; fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye dismayed at their revilings. For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool: but my righteousness shall be forever and my salvation unto all generations." Righteousness was the aspect of Deity that appealed to the second Isaiah, and it was he that spoke words of comfort to our people in all the days of their endless tribulations. The certain faith in the ultimate success of right sustained them throughout the centuries and constitutes their strength to-day. This is the law that was handed down to them from of old, the law of right, which though often broken, often forgotten, was always found again and cherished as the one thing worth while in a world torn by the brutal instincts in man—instincts which the law had chained and sought to make harmless.
So we may well cling to our title of the people of the law, remembering that it does not mean merely Nomos, as the Hellenized Jews mistranslated Torah, but legal and ethical doctrine and knowledge in its broadest sense, and that it is the people of the law that have always shown their love of knowledge and found it "a tree of life to those that lay fast hold on it." Some ancient Jewish mystic said that the sword and the book came out of heaven together and Israel had to choose. Israel did choose and thereafter dreamed of days when swords would be beaten into ploughshares.
How the Heritage of the Law Was Preserved
THE reading of the law has since time immemorial been an established part of the synagogue service, thus educating the people to know their law, the very phrases of which by constant reference and repetition became part of their daily vocabulary. The origin of this custom of reading the law in the synagogue may probably be found in the Biblical references to the great convocations when King and scribe read the law to the assembled people.
The effect of the dispersion of the Jews was to give a peculiar sacredness to the law as the sole heritage of their earlier and happier days. In most of the lands of their dispersion, the Jews dwelt a race apart, separated from the rest of the community by mutual prejudices and antagonisms. The soil on which they dwelt was so far as ultimate overlordship was concerned the land of the stranger, but nevertheless in a very definite and special sense it was the Jews' own land. For it was a land in which the law of the stranger was not the law. The law of the land of their dispersion was not the law of the owner of the soil but the law of the Jews. In this sense the Ghettos of Italy and the Gassen of Germany were not so much Italian and German soil as they were Jewish. As by the modern fiction of extraterritoriality the home of an Ambassador is considered part of his own national territory, so these exclusively Jewish settlements were colonies of Judæa planted on foreign soil. They were separated from the rest of the land by visible or invisible walls, and within these walls, hardly touched by the influences that were at work shaping the life around them, the ancient law of the Jews was preserved and handed down from generation to generation. Hence during the Middle Ages the student of the law became the most important member of the community, and all the energy of the community that was not required to outwit the constant menace of brutal force and religious persecution was devoted to the cultivation of the law and of the literature that it gave rise to.
It should be noted, however, that since the beginning of the Talmudic period, the civil law developed in certain directions only, because after all the Jewish people had no land of their own in the usual sense and no central authority and were constantly moving from place to place, always subject to persecution. Some branches of their law were entirely neglected and others abnormally developed.
The Schools of the Law
IN the Talmudic period, the judges, members of the Synhedrion, and professors of the law schools, received a long professional training. The course of study lasted seven years, at the end of which, having passed their examination successfully, the graduates were eligible to assignment as judges in the lower courts, from which they were promoted to act as associate judges in the great Synhedrion and eventually might hope to attain the dignity of full synhedrial membership. These judicial dignitaries were obliged to be well versed in the languages, law and customs of the contemporary peoples, especially in the laws of the Greeks and Romans. Great academies of the law flourished in Palestine and still greater ones in Babylonia, the latter eventually supplanting the former. These academies called for the enthusiastic encomium of one Talmudist who said, "God created these academies in order that the promise might be fulfilled that the word of God should not depart from Israel's mouth."
The law students met twice a year in assembly for examination. Their studies were pursued at home, except in the months of Elul and Adar when they went up to the Assembly. Here they were arranged in classes and under the direction of their masters heard lectures and discussed the subject matter presented to them topically. At these Assemblies actual questions of law were submitted from Jewish communities all over the Jewish world, and the solutions to these problems were prepared and forwarded by the great masters. In addition to these professional schools there were everywhere general schools or, as we might say, high schools connected with the synagogues. It is a tribute to the importance that was ascribed to the high schools in later generations that their origin was projected back to the days of the Flood when Shem and Eber established a law school in which subsequently Isaac, Jacob, and Rebecca heard lectures. It will be noted that according to this bit of folklore Rebecca was the first woman law student. The same fancy which invented this most ancient of the schools, also invented the law school which Judah built for Jacob in Egypt, and the school established by Moses in which he and Aaron were the professors and Joshua was the janitor.
The Study of the Law "the Chief End of Man"
THE fancy of the people associated nearly all of its great men with the study of the law. The entire tribe of Issachar was said to have devoted itself to the study of the law, the merchant tribe of Zebulon furnishing the means of support. God himself, according to another mystic, was a professor in the celestial law school in which He taught the law to the souls of all the righteous, in that heaven which they conceived of as a place where the law might be perpetually studied; and even while the Temple was still standing and sacrifices were being offered, the Jewish teachers used to say that God does not require burnt offerings but the study of His law.
From all of these traditions it will be seen that to the ancients the study of the law was the chief end of man. The Jew never considered ignorance to be bliss and has little sympathy with the religious ideal of many non-Jewish people that religion is more important than knowledge. One of the great masters even went so far as to say that the ignorant man cannot be pious. It was Simon the Just, one of the survivors of the Men of the Great Synagogue, who said that the world stands upon three things, the law, the service of God, and charity, and he put the law first, for the first duty of a man is to observe the law. He must be just before he can be charitable.
At one time it was sought to place some limitations upon the right to become a student of law, and herein the schools of Hillel and Shammai differed. Hillel was the democrat who held that all persons, without exception, should enjoy the privilege of studying law; Shammai was the intellectual aristocrat who sought to limit this privilege to those who were wise, modest, of ample means and of goodly parentage, thereby establishing rules similar to those that obtain in the best modern law schools, which require a collegiate education as a preliminary to admission; but Shammai went further in that he required the students to be wise and modest as well as persons of good breeding and of ample fortune. Just how many of our modern law students could meet these requirements is a question upon which I have no statistics. On this very matter of the proper qualifications for admission to the privilege of studying law, we have heard much in our time. Perhaps a contribution to the subject from the old and somewhat neglected Code of the Mishnah would not be inappropriate. The Mishnah says:
"Eight and Forty Qualifications for the Law"
"THE law is greater than priesthood and royalty, for royalty is acquired by thirty qualifications, priesthood by four and twenty, but the law by eight and forty, and they are as follows: Study, attention, utterance, understanding, reverence, veneration, modesty, cheerfulness and purity, service of the wise, choice of associates, debate with fellow students, deliberation in study of Bible and Mishnah, a minimum of business, a minimum of worldly pursuits, a minimum of pleasure, a minimum of sleep, a minimum of talk, a minimum of jesting, forbearance, kindliness, faith in the wise, resignation in suffering, knowing one's place, satisfaction with one's lot, bridling one's words, refraining from self-complacency, amiability, loving the Creator, loving His creatures, loving righteousness, loving equity, loving reproof, eschewing worldly honor, not being puffed up by learning nor delighting in laying down the law, helping one's neighbor bear the yoke, inclining toward a favorable judgment of others, steadfast in the truth, steadfast for peace, concentration in study, asking, answering, listening, enlarging, learning with a view to teach, learning with a view to act, enabling one's teacher to become wiser, thoroughly understanding what one hears, and repeating every dictum in the name of him who uttered it." I recommend this list of qualifications to the consideration of modern teachers and students as well as to those who are concerned with the preparation of a code of legal ethics for the profession.
The Jews loved the law and respected it and they honored its expounders and administrators. They do not believe that the world can be made over or made better by any man or by any preaching. They are by instinct conservative, holding on with tenacity to the ideas and institutions that have grown up in past times and that are expressions of the needs of society and of its adjustment to the forces that play upon it. This is why the law, which is the embodiment of these conservative forces, meets with their respect and allegiance, why its study was cultivated with such zeal in the past, and why in our own day it still finds so large a percentage of votaries among the sons of our people.
