No. LI.
SLAUGHTERING OF MEAT, CONTINUED.
According to the confessions of the rabbies themselves, the time for the advent of Messiah is long since past, what is there then that prevents the Jews from believing in him, who came at the appointed time? The grand objection is, that the nation is still in captivity; they say that Messiah ought to have given them liberty. The answer to this objection is, that Messiah was willing, and is willing to this hour, to give them liberty, but that they will not have it. The very first condition of national liberty and independence is moral and intellectual emancipation. No nation was ever yet enslaved until the hearts and intellects of the people had first become the slaves of corruption or superstition—and no nation that hugs to its heart the chains of moral slavery, can ever be made free, nor could it retain its liberty if it got it. When Messiah came, therefore, as he found the Jewish nation already under the Roman yoke, the very first step was to endeavour to emancipate their hearts and minds, and to deliver them from that moral bondage, of which their national degradation was only a consequence. This first step Messiah immediately took—he protested against the superstitions of the oral law, and pointed them to the perfect liberty of God’s written Word. But the nation chose to retain the cause of their misfortunes, and to reject the overtures of deliverance. If therefore they are still in a state of national dependence, they must not cast the blame on God, and say that He suffered the time to pass away without fulfilling his promise; nor upon the Messiah, when they themselves refused to receive that without which no national liberty can possibly exist. They chose to give themselves, body and soul, as bond-slaves to the oral law, there was, therefore, no possibility of national redemption. It would require an act of omnipotent coercion, such as God does not employ, to make a nation free against its will. But perhaps the Jews of the present day will deny that they are in a state of moral and intellectual slavery. We refer them, in reply, to the numerous proofs already given in these papers, and especially the laws of שחיטה or slaughtering, upon which we have a few words to add. Where in all the world can a more wretched slave be found, than the man, who himself, together with his family, is ready to perish of hunger, and yet dare not partake of wholesome food, offered by the providence of God, because his rabbinical task-masters say, No? But now take another instance:—
כל טבח שלא בדק הסכין שלו ששוחט בה לפני חכם ושחט לעצמו בודקין אותה , אם נמצאת יפה ובדוקה מנדין אותו לפי שיסמוך על עצמו פעם אחרת ותהיה פגומה וישחוט בה , ואם נמצאת פגומה מעבירין אותו ומנדין אותו ומכריזין אל כל בשר ששחט שהוא טרפה ׃
“If a slaughterer, who has not had his slaughtering knife examined before a wise man consequently there never was, and never will be, any meat fit for the food of a Rabbinist. The Jews must therefore either give up the use of meat entirely, or they must give up the oral law.
If the oral law were uniformly severe, and everywhere required that its adherents should obtain the best possible evidence that their meat was properly slaughtered: or in case they could not obtain this evidence, that they should entirely abstain from meat, the consistency of the doctrine would in some measure justify, or at least excuse the credulity of the Jews. But this is not the case, its authors felt the inconvenience of their own doctrine, and therefore relaxed whenever it suited themselves. For instance, they say:—
הרי שראינו ישראל מרחוק ששחט והלך לו ולא ידענו אם יודע או אינו יודע הרי זו מותרת , וכן האומר לשלוחו צא ושחוט לי ומצא הבהמה שחוטה , ואין ידוע אם שלוחו שחטה אם אחר הרי זו מותרת , שרוב הטצויין אצל שחיטה מומחין הן ׃
“If we were to see an Israelite at a distance who had slaughtered a beast, and he was to go his way, and we were ignorant of the fact whether he understood the art or not, in that case the meat is lawful. And in like manner, if a man should say to his messenger, Go and slaughter for me, and should find the beast slaughtered, but it should not be certain whether his messenger, or another person, had slaughtered it, this also is lawful, for the majority of persons concerned in slaughtering are skilful.” (Ibid., c. iv. 7.) This relaxation shows how exceedingly inconvenient the doctrine was found, and how unwilling the doctors were to bear inconvenience themselves. No doubt cases often occurred in real life similar to those supposed. An Israelite travelling might come to a town in which lived a small congregation of Jews, and might wish to have some dinner, and would of course wish to have it of lawful meat. The only satisfactory way of obtaining it would be to go to the person who had slaughtered it, and examine him as to his competency, but he might be absent, if therefore he should be scrupulous, he would have to go without his dinner; and the same thing would happen to a rich man, who might send a messenger to a neighbouring town to have a beast killed for him. The messenger might send back the meat by some one else, and thus the owner would not have satisfactory evidence, that the rabbinic laws had been observed. Here again the man who was rich enough to do this, might have to go without his dinner, or to wait an inconvenient time. The oral law has therefore provided in this case that the meat is lawful for use without any further scruples. But this decision shows of how little real importance all these precepts about slaughtering are. If it be a sin to eat meat not properly killed, then it is also a sin to eat meat, when there is no satisfactory evidence of this fact. Whenever a man doubts about the right or wrong of any particular action, he is certainly wrong if he does it. But if it be certain that he may either do it or leave it undone without guilt, then that action cannot be sinful. And as the rabbies here affirm, that men may lawfully eat meat, concerning which they have no satisfactory evidence that it has been lawfully slaughtered, it follows that the rabbinic art cannot be of much value. Why then should a poor man be starved if he does not eat, or flogged if he does eat, meat slaughtered by a Gentile, when, if he had money to send a beast to be killed, he might eat what was sent back, even though he had no proof that the laws were kept? Indeed how are the poor and unlearned ever to know, that they eat lawful meat? If they were even to stand by, and see the operation performed, still, as being ignorant of the rabbinic laws, they could not understand, and must therefore take the matter entirely upon trust: and thus the mass of the nation, the unlearned and the women, are made the blind slaves of laws which they neither understand nor know; or rather of those who expound those laws, for how can it be said that a man transgresses that of which he does not know the right or wrong?
If the rabbies were all unanimous in their statement of what is and is not lawful, the unanimity might in some degree excuse the Jews for submitting to a yoke so grievous, and holding it that round the necks of their brethren. They might urge the uniformity of the tradition as a proof of its genuineness. But this cannot be pretended in the present case. To this very hour the rabbies themselves are not agreed as to what is, or what is not the oral law. We have just seen that if a man send a messenger to have a beast slaughtered, and afterwards find it slaughtered, that he may eat of it without asking any more questions. This is the general principle, but as soon as it comes to be applied in detail the rabbies differ. The Baal Turim thus states the difference:—
וכתב הרמב׳׳ם דוקא שמצאה בבית אבל מצאה בשוק או באשפה שבבית אסורה וכן כתב בעל העיטור וא׳׳א ז׳׳ל התיר אפילו באשפה שבבית ולא אסר אלא באשפה שבשוק וכן הרשב׳׳א ׃