6. I believe, with a perfect faith, that all the words of the prophets are true.
7. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the prophecy of Moses our instructor (may his soul rest in peace!) was true, and that he excelled all the sages that preceded him or they who may succeed him.
8. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the law which we have now in our possession is the same law which was given to Moses by our instructor.
9. I believe, with a perfect faith, that this law will never be changed, that the Creator (blessed be His name!) will never give us any other law.
10. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the Creator (blessed be His name!) knoweth all the actions and thoughts of mankind, as it is said, “He fashioneth their hearts, and knoweth all their works.”
11. I believe, with a perfect faith, that the Creator (blessed be His name!) rewards those who observe His commandments, and punishes those who transgress them. (12.) The Jew believes in the coming
of the Messiah; and (13), in the resurrection of the dead.
The Jews in London are divided into three communities—the Reformed, the Ashkenasim, or Polish and German Jews, and the Sephardim, or Portuguese and Spanish. These latter pride themselves on their ancient descent, and especially on their nationality. Their Church, as we have said, is the oldest in London; their rabbi is Dr. Artom, and their service differs from that of the Ashhenasim in matters of detail not of faith. Of course both take their stand upon the Pentateuch, which they term the Torah or law, a portion of which is read every Sabbath; but, according to the rabbinists, Moses received two laws on Mount Sinai, one written, the other unwritten. This latter was transmitted down from generation to generation by word of mouth until after the destruction of Jerusalem, when it was committed to writing. This work is called Mishna, or repetition. In process of time it became a text-book in the schools of Palestine and Babylon, and lectures were delivered on it and comments made by rabbis more or less learned and devout. In course of time these comments and lectures were collected together into one work under the title of Gemara, completion. The Talmud, which
means doctrine, contains the two. There are two Talmuds in existence. One contains the decisions of the Palestine rabbis, collected and published somewhere in the fourth century; the other contains similar decisions on the part of the learned divines of Babylon. The difference between the two is exclusively in the Gemara. The Babylonian Talmud is the one in common use. It is for this Talmud, long too much neglected by Christians, that the Jews have contended for ages, and it is for this Talmud an able writer, in an article in the “Quarterly,” which produced an immense sensation at the time, eloquently pleaded, much to the astonishment, most undoubtedly, of those bigoted ecclesiastics who, deeming the traditions of the Romanist Fathers equal in authority with the Bible, look down upon the older and truer traditions of the Talmud with the contempt which ignorance always cherishes for what it cannot or does not understand. Sentiments, as the learned Professor Hurwitz wrote, worthy of Plato have been described as rabbinical reveries, and their authors arraigned of impiety on no better grounds than what the detractors supplied by wantonly imposing their own literal sense on expressions evidently and unmistakeably figurative.
In the synagogue is the worship daily or weekly of the devout Jew performed, for the aim of that worship is to connect itself with the daily life. Dr. Arnold’s idea of the Church and State being synonymous—an idea as old as the judicious Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity—is undoubtedly in its origin Jewish. The officers of the synagogue are a complete political as well as religious administration. A synagogue forms a little world of its own. A volume would be requisite to tell of the officers of the synagogue and of their various duties. There is among them no separation into lay and secular. The community consists of three kinds of members—the Cohen or priest, the Levite, and the Israelite. A minister must often support himself, but his ministry never ceases. To the last hour of his life he maintains his ministerial character. “The rabbis are men of great learning; and now in the Jews’ College the students,” writes a report just received, “have the advantage of a careful and systematic clerical education, and an equally valuable advantage, an example of piety and earnestness in their teachers.”