History of the Jews, Vol. 2 (of 6)

by Heinrich Graetz

In the same year a persecution of the Jews broke out with unprecedented rigor in the Babylonian countries. It was the commencement of a long series of bloody attacks which the Jews had to suffer at the hands of the last of the neo-Persian kings, and which rendered their position as sad as that of their co-religionists of the Roman Empire. Jezdijird III (440–457), unlike his predecessor of the same name, instituted a religious persecution of the Jews; they were forbidden to celebrate the Sabbath (456). The reason of this sudden change in the conduct of the Persian ruler towards the Jews, who had always been sincerely attached to him, is probably to be found in the fanaticism of the Magi, whose influence over many of the Persian monarchs was not less than that of the spiritual advisers of the eastern emperors over their masters. The Magi of this period appear to have learnt their proselytism and their love of religious persecution from the Christians. Besides this, Christianity had by its proselytism provoked the Magi to resistance. The Manicheans who had compounded Jewish, Christian, and Persian religious ideas into a medley of their own, made accusations of heresy as common in Persia as in the Roman Empire. Jezdijird persecuted both Manicheans and Christians. Sooner or later the light-worship of the Persians was bound to take offense at Judaism, and to place the Jews upon the list of its enemies. The chronicles are silent concerning the conduct of the Jews with regard to the prohibition of the celebration of the Sabbath; conscientious Jews, however, cannot have failed to obtain opportunities of evading it, and for this reason the names of no martyrs have survived this persecution. The constraint was continued about a year, as Jezdijird was killed a short time after; a civil war was carried on by his sons Chodar-Warda and Firuz for the possession of the crown.

Mar bar Ashi was the sole authority of this period; and although all his decisions, with the exception of three, received the force of law, he does not seem to have acquired any special repute in the Soranian Academy. He continued his father's work of completing the Talmudical collection, and included the latter's decisions therein. He and his contemporaries must have felt themselves all the more impelled to complete the work of compilation, as the persecution they had gone through made them feel that the future was precarious. Nothing more is known of Mar bar Ashi's character than a trait of conscientiousness, which stands out in strong contrast with Raba's partiality towards members of his own class. He relates as follows: "When an associate appears before me in court, I refuse to exercise the functions of my office, for I regard him as a near relation, and might involuntarily show partiality in his favor."

After Mar's death the Jews of the Persian Empire were the victims of a fresh persecution under Firuz (Pheroces, 457–484), which was far more terrible than that which had occurred under his father, Jezdijird. This persecution is said to have been occasioned by the desire for vengeance entertained by this monarch, who was swayed by the Magi against the whole Jewish community, because certain of them were said to have killed and flayed two Magi in Ispahan. As a punishment for this deed Firuz put to death half the Jewish population of Ispahan, and had the Jewish children forcibly brought up in the Temple of Horvan as worshipers of fire. The persecution extended also to the communities of Babylonia, and continued for several years, until the death of the tyrant. Mar-Zutra's son, Huna-Mari, Prince of the Captivity, and two teachers of the Law, Amemar bar Mar-Janka and Meshershaya bar Pacod, were thrown into prison, and afterwards executed (469–70). They were the first martyrs on Babylonian soil, and it is a significant fact that a Prince of the Captivity bled for Judaism.

A few years later the persecution was carried to a still wider extent; the schools were closed, assemblies for the purpose of teaching prohibited, the jurisdiction of the Jews abolished, and their children compelled to embrace the religion of the Magi (474).

The city of Sora seems to have been destroyed at this period. Firuz, whose system of persecution puts one in mind of Hadrian, invented a new means of torture, which had not occurred to that emperor, which was to remove the young from under the influence of Judaism, and to bring them up by force in the Persian religion. For this reason he was branded by the Jews of after times, like Hadrian, with the name of "the wicked" (Piruz Reshia). The immediate result of this persecution was the emigration of Jewish colonists, who settled in the south as far as Arabia, and in the east as far as India.

This emigration of the Jews to India is expressly marked as occurring about the time of Firuz's persecution. An otherwise unknown person, Joseph Rabban by name, who is recognizable as a Babylonian by reason of this title, arrived in the year 4250 of the Jewish era (490), with many Jewish families, on the rich and busy coast of Malabar; he must accordingly have started on his journey before this date, and therefore have emigrated under Firuz. Airvi (Eravi), the Brahmin king of Cranganor, welcomed the Jewish strangers, offered them a home in his dominions, and suffered them to live according to their peculiar laws, and to be ruled by their own princes (Mardeliar). The first of these chiefs was their leader Joseph Rabban, upon whom the Indian monarch conferred special rights and princely honors, to be inherited by his descendants. He was allowed, like the Indian princes, to ride upon an elephant, to be preceded by a herald, accompanied by a musical escort of drums and cymbals, and to sit upon a carpet. Joseph Rabban is said to have been followed by a line of seventy-two successors, who ruled over the Indo-Jewish colonists, until quarrels broke out among them. Cranganor was destroyed, many of the Jews lost their lives, and the remainder settled in Mattachery, a league from Cochin, which acquired from this fact the name of Jews'-town. The privileges accorded by Airvi to the Jewish immigrants were engraved in ancient Indian (Tamil) characters, accompanied by an obscure Hebrew translation, on a copper table, which is said to be extant at the present day.

As soon as the terrors of persecution had ceased with Firuz's death, the ancient organization was again restored in Jewish Babylonia; the academies were re-opened, principals appointed, and Sora and Pumbeditha received their last Amoraïc leaders—the former in the person of Rabina, the latter in José. These two principals and their assessors had but one end in view, the completion and termination of the work of compiling the Talmud begun by Ashi. The continual increase of affliction, the diminished interest which probably on that account was extended to study, the uncertainty of the future, all these causes forcibly suggested the completion of the Talmud. Rabina, who held office from 488 to 499, and José, who discharged the duties of principal from 471 to about 520, are expressly mentioned in the old chronicles as "the close of the period of the Amoraïm" (Sof Horaah). There is no doubt, however, that the members of the two academies, whose names have been preserved, also had a part in this work, and that they therefore are to be regarded as the last of the Amoraïm. The most important among them was Achaï bar Huna of Be-Chatim, near Nahardea (died 506), whose decisions and discussions are distinguished by characteristic peculiarities, and bear witness to a clear and sober mind, and to great keenness. Achaï was known and esteemed for these qualities beyond Babylonia. An epistle received by the Babylonian academy from Judæa, which, as far as is historically known, was probably the last addressed by the deserted mother-country to its daughter colony, speaks of him in terms of greatest reverence: "Neglect not Achaï, for he is the light of the eyes of the exiles." Even Huna-Mar, the Prince of the Captivity, must have possessed Talmudical acquirements, for the chronicle, which is by no means favorable to the princes of the Captivity, numbers him among this series of teachers of the Law, and concedes to him the title of Rabbi. His history, with which certain important events are connected, belongs to the following period.

In conjunction with these men, Rabina and José accomplished the completion of the Talmud, that is to say, they sanctioned as a complete whole the collection of all previous transactions and decisions which they had caused to be compiled, and to which no additions or amplifications were henceforward to be made. The definite completion of the Babylonian Talmud (called also the Gemara) occurred in the year of Rabina's death, just at the close of the fifth century (13th Kislev or 2nd December, 499), when the Jews of the Arabian peninsula were sowing the first seeds of a new religion and laying the foundations of a new empire, and when the Gothic and Frankish kingdoms were rising in Europe from the ruins of ancient Rome. The Talmud forms a turning-point in Jewish history, and from this time forward constitutes an essential factor therein.

The Talmud must not be regarded as an ordinary work, composed of twelve volumes; it possesses absolutely no similarity to any other literary production, but forms, without any figure of speech, a world of its own, which must be judged by its peculiar laws. It is extremely difficult to give any sketch of its character because of the absence of all common standards and analogies. The most talented could, therefore, hardly hope to succeed in this task, even though he had penetrated deeply into its nature, and become intimately acquainted with its peculiarities. It might, perhaps, be compared with the literature of the Fathers of the Church, which sprang up about the same time; but on closer examination even this comparison fails to satisfy the student. It is, however, of less consequence what the Talmud is in itself, than what was its influence on history, that is to say, on the successive generations whose education it chiefly controlled. Many judgments have been passed on the Talmud at various times and on the most opposite grounds. It has been condemned, and its funeral pyre has been ignited, because only its unfavorable side has been considered, and no regard has been paid to its merits, which, however, can be rendered apparent only by a complete survey of the whole of Jewish history. It cannot be denied, however, that the Babylonian Talmud is marred by certain blemishes, such as necessarily appear in every intellectual production which pursues a single course with inflexible consistency and exclusive one-sidedness. These faults may be classed under four heads. The Talmud contains much that is immaterial and frivolous, of which it treats with great gravity and seriousness; it further reflects the various superstitious practices and views of its Persian birthplace, which presume the efficacy of demoniacal medicines, of magic, incantations, miraculous cures, and interpretations of dreams, and are thus in opposition to the spirit of Judaism. It also contains isolated instances of uncharitable judgments and decrees against the members of other nations and religions, and finally it favors an incorrect exposition of the Scriptures, accepting, as it does, tasteless misinterpretations. The whole Talmud has been made responsible for these defects, and has been condemned as a collection of trifles, a well of immorality and falsehood. No consideration has been paid to the fact that it is not the work of any one author, who must answer for every word of it, or if it be, that that author is the entire Jewish nation. More than six centuries lie petrified in the Talmud as the fullest evidence of life, clothed each in its peculiar dress and possessing its own form of thought and expression: a sort of literary Herculaneum and Pompeii, unmarred by that artificial imitation which transfers a gigantic picture on a reduced scale to a narrow canvas. Small wonder, then, that if in this world the sublime and the common, the great and the small, the grave and the ridiculous, the altar and the ashes, the Jewish and the heathenish, be discovered side by side. The expressions of ill-will, which are seized upon with such avidity by the enemies of the Jews, were often nothing but the utterance of momentary ill-humor, which escaped from the teacher, and were caught up and embodied in the Talmud by over-zealous disciples, unwilling to lose a single word let fall by the revered sages. They are amply counterbalanced, however, by the doctrines of benevolence and love of all men without distinction of race or religion, which are also preserved in the Talmud. As a counterpoise to the wild superstitions, there are severe warnings against superstitious heathen practices, to which a separate section is devoted.

The Babylonian Talmud is especially distinguished from the Jerusalem or Palestine Talmud by the flights of thought, the penetration of mind, the flashes of genius, which rise and vanish again. An infinite fulness of thought and of thought-exciting material is laid up in the mine of the Talmud, not, however, in the shape of a finished theme which one can grasp at a glance, but in all its original freshness of conception. The Talmud introduces us into the laboratory of thought, and in it may be traced the progress of ideas, from their earliest agitation to the giddy height of incomprehensibility to which at times they attain. It was for this reason that the Babylonian rather than the Jerusalem Talmud became the fundamental possession of the Jewish race, its life's breath, its very soul. It was a family history for succeeding generations, in which they felt themselves at home, in which they lived and moved, the thinker in the world of thought, the dreamer in glorious ideal pictures. For more than a thousand years the external world, nature and mankind, powers and events, were for the Jewish nation insignificant, non-essential, a mere phantom; the only true reality was the Talmud. A new truth in their eyes only received the stamp of veracity and freedom from doubt when it appeared to be foreseen and sanctioned by the Talmud. Even the knowledge of the Bible, the more ancient history of their race, the words of fire and balm of their prophets, the soul outpourings of their Psalmists, were only known to them through and in the light of the Talmud. But as Judaism, ever since its foundation, has based itself on the experiences of actual life, so that the Talmud was obliged to concern itself with concrete phenomena, with the things of this world; so it follows that there could not arise that dream-life, that disdain of the world, that hatred of realities, which in the Middle Ages gave birth to and sanctified the hermit life of the monks and nuns. It is true that the intellectual tendency prevailing in the Babylonian Talmud, aided by climatic influences and other accidental circumstances, degenerated not infrequently into subtilty and scholasticism; for no historical phenomenon exists without an unfavorable side. But even this abuse contributed to bring about clear conceptions, and rendered possible the movement toward science. The Babylonian Amoraïm created that dialectic, close-reasoning, Jewish spirit, which in the darkest days preserved the dispersed nation from stagnation and stupidity. It was the ether which protected them from corruption, the ever-moving force which overcame indolence and the blunting of the mental powers, the eternal spring which kept the mind ever bright and active. In a word, the Talmud was the educator of the Jewish nation; and this education can by no means have been a bad one, since, in spite of the disturbing influence of isolation, degradation and systematic demoralization, it fostered in the Jewish people a degree of morality which even their enemies cannot deny them. The Talmud preserved and promoted the religious and moral life of Judaism; it held out a banner to the communities scattered in all corners of the earth, and protected them from schism and sectarian divisions; it acquainted subsequent generations with the history of their nation; finally, it produced a deep intellectual life which preserved the enslaved and proscribed from stagnation, and which lit for them the torch of science. How the Talmud made its way into the consciousness of the Jewish people, how it became known and accessible to distant communities, and how it became a stumbling-block to the enemies of Judaism, will be told in subsequent pages.