Studies in Judaism, First Series

by S. Schechter

The day was already drawing to its close, and, by a marvellous coincidence, I arrived at the synagogue just as the congregation was intoning the words: “The Lord is one, and His name is one to His renown and glory.” Here was sound, simple exegesis, though sadly lacking in the illustrative matter in which the Vatican is so rich. But what need was there of any real or artificial “aid to the believer,” in the presence of such a living faith, as enabled this little community to maintain its protesting position in the teeth of the mistress of the world! And this even at a time, when it only required a hint from the successors of the old Roman Emperors to make the whole world renounce its right of thinking and judging, and, were we to believe Herr Janssen, even to feel perfectly happy in this torpor.

But, by the way, are our own times much better? As I write these lines (October 1893) I hear that a Bill has been brought into the German Diet, asking that the Talmud should be submitted to a Commission (which en passant, has been sitting in unbroken session in that country since the days of Pfefferkorn in the fifteenth century) with the purpose of examining its contents, while in the Vatican the very pupils of Loyola are offering every convenience [pg 331] and comfort to the student who should care to devote his time to Rabbinic literature. Does not the work of a great number of our poets, historians, theologians, and so-called seers in this blessed century of ours, in many respects prove but a strained effort to destroy the few humanitarian principles which were established a few generations ago, as well as to deify every brutal warrior who was successful in his day? Again, is the national idea so much sublimer, so much grander, than that of a universal religion, that we would willingly permit the former to employ the means which have been denied to the latter as inhuman and barbarous? Every age has its own idolatry, and the eternal wandering Jew will always be the chosen victim of the Moloch in fashion.

Let us, however, return to the synagogue, which withstood many a cruelty, both ancient and modern. The place where the synagogue stands is near the Ghetto, now called Piazza di Scuola. It is, besides a few other communal houses, the only building left there,—all those narrow, dirty, and typhoid-breeding streets which formed the old Ghetto having been demolished by a sage and humane government, which by this action wiped out the last stain from its history. There, on this vast blank is the synagogue, a comparatively small, insignificant building, laden with heavy age and looking down on her children whom she has been nursing, consoling, and protecting for centuries, but who, now grown old, have forsaken her and scattered to all the ends of the city. Of all her former acquaintances there appears to be left only father Tiber, who would seem to be murmuring to her many an old tale of the times before she was called into existence. And if he listened to the special prayers [pg 332] recited within her walls by the deputies of the Jewish communities, when preparing themselves to go to the court of the Pope, the Tiber heard many a sigh and cry, wrung out from the heart of a Jewish captive who, preferring death to slavery even under the masters of the world, found his last repose in its waters. But insignificant as this synagogue appears, she proved the spiritual bulwark against all the attacks of the time, and you admire her brave resistance all the more when you look at that multitude of churches and cloisters in the closest vicinity of the Ghetto, impressing you as so many intrenchments, all directing their missiles and weapons against this humble, defenceless building, threatening it with death and destruction. One of these churches, probably founded by some Jewish convert, who gained in it both salvation and a good living, bears on its gates in Hebrew letters the inscription: “I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in the way that was not good, after their own thoughts. A people that provoketh me to anger continually to my face” (Isaiah lxv. 2, 3). Menace is followed by persuasion, the cited verses being accompanied by the Latin words: “Indulgentia plenaria quotodiana perpetua pro vivis et defunctis.” Theologians who like to quarrel most about things they can know least, have for ages discussed the question, whether prayers for the dead are of any use; here the matter is decided by a simple advertisement. It is not to be denied that one would enjoy the fortunes accumulated by one's late sinner of an uncle all the better for being sure that a few pennyworths of prayer enable the legatee to make one's benefactor in Hades comfortable and happy.

The thought is very consoling indeed, and it is not to be wondered at that the Roman synagogue could not entirely withstand its temptations, and introduced into the offering-blessing after one is called up to the Torah, the words: “To the advancing of the soul of the departed.” Of course much of this tendency may be attributed to the Ford Jabbok,[266] which was and is still very popular in that country; but the fact that the author of this Jewish “Book of the Dead” was an Italian (from Modena), shows clearly that there was some Catholic influence at work, from which even the fellow-countrymen of Azariah de Rossi and Judah Messer Leon could not entirely emancipate themselves.

I ought to have spoken of Roman synagogues, since the building in the Ghetto to which I have been constantly alluding comprises four prayer-houses devoted to Spanish and Italian rites. It says much for Roman Judaism, that they did not consider ritual differences of such importance as to prevent them from forming one community for all charitable and congregational purposes. In Verona and in Modena some congregations even retained the German rite, which their ancestors who immigrated from the Rhine provinces brought with them, whilst they accepted the Spanish pronunciation. I wish that the Anglo-Jewish community could see their way to imitate their example. Not that I think for a moment that the Spanish pronunciation is more correct than the German. Each system has its own mistakes and corruptions; and it is more than probable that the prophet Isaiah, or even the author of Ecclesiastes, would be as little able to follow the prayers in Bevis Marks as in Duke's Place. But since the non-Jewish scientific world has, though only by pure [pg 334] accident, accepted the Spanish way of reading the Hebrew, I should like to see this trifling difference of Baruch over Buruch at last disappear, by pronouncing the camets-vowel a instead of o, and accepting similar little changes, which are of no real importance to us.

The inside of these synagogues is even more simple than their outside. I was told that the synagogue which was burned down last winter, and which also formed a part of this building, could boast of many fine decorations and carvings, etc., but I could observe nothing of the kind in the synagogues I had occasion to frequent. Nor is there much of natural decorum in them, and they reconcile one perfectly to the worst of the Small Synagogues elsewhere. I venture to think that in this respect, too, we have to recognise Catholic influence. It was, I think, one of the leaders in the Oxford Movement who expressed his delight at seeing in Italy a woman poorly-dressed coming into the church, who, after putting down the basket from her back, kneels before one of the many altars and says her prayers. A good deal of this familiarity in the place of worship may also be noticed in the Roman synagogues, where I have seen a woman come into the partition for men, notwithstanding their having a separate gallery, without bonnet or hat on her head, and with an infant in her arms, and listen there to the prayers, till she walked home with her husband. The other people were also very restless, coming and going often, whilst, as soon as the reading of the Law was over, the greater part of the worshippers left the synagogue. It was not a very delightful sight. A minus of decorum does not always mean a plus of devotion; just as little as a maximum of respectability and stiffness are to be taken as signs of true piety.

It is not uninteresting to notice that the Roman synagogue, in spite of its old traditions, did not entirely shut itself against modern reforms. Among them there is that of “calling up the people to the Torah” by the simple formula, “Let the Priest” (or “the Levite”) “step forth,”[267] and so on, not mentioning either names or titles, which I should like to recommend most strongly to our congregations. I hope that no man will suspect me of such heresy as that of questioning the wisdom of the Synagogue Regulations. But I am inclined to think that the business of conferring the degrees of Rabbi, “Associate” or “Master,” does not exactly fall within the sphere of activity of the Wardens. The matter could only be decided by a proper Board of examination. As the Council is not provided with such a Board, nor is every aspirant to this honour prepared to undergo the examination required, the wisest course would be to give up titles altogether, calling up all people alike in the way indicated.

The robes the ministers wear (somewhat similar to those of the Greek clergy), are probably also an innovation of modern date,—the old orthodox Rabbis looking at any special vestment for the Preacher or Reader with the same feeling of disgust which the old Puritans entertained for surplice or mitre. But the principle of “The Beauty of Holiness” proved too strong for resistance, and it was only a pardonable vanity when the reformers applied it to their own persons; “Vanity of vanities,” saith the preacher, so often, that he gets rather to like it. This vanity is greatly redeemed by the fact that the preacher does not grudge his uniform to his humbler brother, the beadle, who is in most cases to be distinguished from the officiating ministry only by the brass-plate on his breast, [pg 336] on which the word “Servant” is engraved. Considering the great confusion arising from the meaningless “Reverend” and the universal white neck-tie, such a label, indicating the proper office of the bearer, might, perhaps, prove as useful among the English Jews as it is among the Jews of Rome.

It was with a pupil of the Rabbinical College, in company with his friends, that I took my first walk through ancient Rome. I felt attracted to him by his striking face of that peculiar fine Jewish type, which is more common among the Jews in the East than among us. And when he was reading the lesson from the Prophets in the synagogue, where I made his acquaintance, he reminded me of that Jewish boy with bright eyes, black curls, and features strikingly beautiful walking as a captive from Jerusalem through the streets of Rome some seventeen centuries ago, whose proficiency in the words of Isaiah caused his redemption. It would be an exaggeration to say that my companion's remarks were very instructive from an artistic point of view. Being born and bred in Rome, he passed with utter indifference many objects which we are bidden to admire, whilst at others he actually shouted out “Image,” or made some other prosaic remark. But in a country where one is determined to play the heathen for so many weeks, to worship superannuated deities, to get into raptures at every reminiscence of superseded and vanishing religions, and to be delighted at the sights of “greasy saints and martyrs hairy,” there can be no great harm in being called back to one's true nature.

The feelings crowding upon one, when entering that part of the ancient city which probably was in the mind of the Rabbis when they spoke of “Guilty Rome,” are [pg 337] of a conflicting nature. Every stone and every brick there saw the humiliation of Israel, in every theatre and every circus the Jew served as a comic figure, and was held up to ridicule, whilst there was, perhaps, hardly a single lane or gate through which those who resented the yoke of the “anti-Semites of Antiquity” did not pass, in order to “be butchered to make a Roman holiday.” What concerns a Jew most in this perished world of ruins, and at the same time causes him the deepest grief, is the triumphal arch of Titus, “commemorating the defeat of the Jews, and dedicated to him by his successor, Domitian.” Enough has been said and written about it both by antiquarians and theologians, the former admiring the workmanship of the reliefs, the latter perceiving in it a proof of the fulfilment of the well-known passages in the New Testament about the destruction of the Temple, which came to pass in spite of the efforts made by Titus to save it. Those who have read Bernay's essay on the “Chronik des Sulpicius Severus” know that the behaviour of “the delight of the human species” on that occasion is rather open to doubt, and it is more probable that, instead of trying to rescue it, he commanded that it should be set on fire. Josephus, who witnessed the shame of his compatriots and co-religionists, has left us a full account of the triumphal procession. Only a flunkey like Josephus could maintain that calm indifference with which he describes the events of the “bitter day,” the perusal of which makes one's blood boil. His description fairly agrees with the famous relief on the arch, showing that part of the procession in which the table with the shewbread, the candlestick with the seven lamps, and the golden trumpets figure as the chief objects. [pg 338] The only thing which we miss is the “Law of the Jews,” which, according to Josephus, was carried in the triumph as “the last of all the spoils.” Was it only an oversight of the artist, or had he no place for it, or is it Josephus who committed the error, mistaking some other object for the Scroll of the Law? I dearly hope that this last was the case, and that Heine was under the impulse of a true and real and poetic inspiration when he wrote (speaking of the Holy Scripture to which he owed his conversion): “The Jews, who appreciate the value of precious things, knew right well what they did when, at the burning of the second temple they left to their fate the golden and silver implements of sacrifice, the candlesticks and lamps, even the breastplate of the High Priest adorned with great jewels, but saved the Bible. This was the real treasure of the temple, and, thanks be to God! it was not left a prey to the flames, nor to the fury of Titus Vespasian, the wretch, who, as the Rabbi tells us, met with so dreadful a death.”