The Book of Delight and Other Papers Part 12

THE MYSTICS AND SAINTS OF INDIA

A book by Professor J.C. Oman, published not long ago, contains a clear and judicially sympathetic account of Hinduism. The sordid side of Indian asceticism receives due attention; the excesses of self-mortification, painful posturings, and equally painful impostures are by no means slurred over by the writer. And yet the essential origin of these ascetic practices is perceived by Professor Oman to be a pure philosophy and a not ign.o.ble idealism. And if Professor Oman's a.n.a.lysis be true, one understands how it is that, though there have always been Jewish ascetics, at times of considerable numbers and devotion, yet asceticism, as such, has no recognized place in Judaism. Jewish moralists, especially, though not exclusively, those of the mystical or Cabbalistic schools, p.r.o.nounce powerfully enough against over-indulgence in all sensuous pleasures; they inculcate moderation and abstinence, and, in some cases, where the pressure of desire is very strong, prescribe painful austerities, which may be paralleled by what Professor Oman tells us of the Sadhus and Yogis of India. But let us first listen to Professor Oman's a.n.a.lysis (p. 16):

"Without any pretence of an exhaustive a.n.a.lysis of the various and complex motives which underlie religious asceticism, I may, before concluding this chapter, draw attention to what seem to me the more general reasons which prompt men to ascetic practices: (1) A desire, which is intensified by all personal or national troubles, to propitiate the Unseen Powers. (2) A longing on the part of the intensely religious to follow in the footsteps of their Master, almost invariably an ascetic.

(3) A wish to work out one's own future salvation, or emanc.i.p.ation, by conquering the evil inherent in human nature, i.e. the flesh. (4) A yearning to prepare oneself by purification of mind and body for entering into present communion with the Divine Being. (5) Despair arising from disillusionment and from defeat in the battle of life. And lastly, mere vanity, stimulated by the admiration which the mult.i.tude bestow on the ascetic."

With regard to his second reason, we find nothing of the kind in Judaism subsequent to the Essenes, until we reach the Cabbalistic heroes of the Middle Ages. The third and the fourth have, on the other hand, had power generally in Jewish conduct. The fifth has had its influence, but only temporarily and temperately. Ascetic practices, based on national and religious calamity, have, for the most part, been prescribed only for certain dates in the calendar, but it must be confessed that an excessive addiction to fasting prevails among many Jews. But it is when we consider the first of Professor Oman's reasons for ascetic practices that we perceive how entirely the genius of Judaism is foreign to Hindu and most other forms of asceticism. To reach communion with G.o.d, the Jew goes along the road of happiness, not of austerity. He serves with joy, not with sadness. On this subject the reader may refer with great profit to the remarks made by the Reverend Morris Joseph, in "Judaism as Creed and Life,"

p. 247, onwards, and again the whole of chapter iv. of book iii. (p. 364).

Self-development, not self-mortification, is the true principle; man's lower nature is not to be crushed by torture, but to be elevated by moderation, so as to bear its part with man's higher nature in the service of G.o.d.

What leads some Jewish moralists to eulogize asceticism is that there is always a danger of the happiness theory leading to a materialistic view of life. This is what Mr. Joseph says, and says well, on the subject (p. 371):

"And, therefore, though Judaism does not approve of the ascetic temper, it is far from encouraging the materialist's view of life. It has no place for monks or hermits, who think they can serve G.o.d best by renouncing the world; but, on the other hand, it sternly rebukes the worldliness that knows no ideal but sordid pleasures, no G.o.d but Self. It commends to us the golden mean--the safe line of conduct that lies midway between the rejection of earthly joys and the worship of them. If asceticism too often spurns the commonplace duties of life, excessive self-indulgence unfits us for them. In each case we lose some of our moral efficiency. But in the latter case there is added an inevitable degradation. The man who mortifies his body for his soul's sake has at least his motive to plead for him. But the sensualist has no such justification. He deliberately chooses the evil and rejects the good.

Forfeiting his character as a son of G.o.d, he yields himself a slave to unworthy pa.s.sions.

"It is the same with the worldly man, who lives only for sordid ends, such as wealth and the pleasures it buys. He, too, utterly misses his vocation. His pursuit of riches may be moral in itself; he may be a perfectly honest man. But his life is unmoral all the same, for it aims at nothing higher than itself."

Thus Professor Oman's fascinating book gives occasion for thought to many whose religion is far removed from Hinduism. But there is in particular one feature of Hindu asceticism that calls for attention. This is the Hindu doctrine of Karma, or good works, which will be familiar to readers of Rudyard Kipling's "Kim." Upon a man's actions (Karma is the Sanskrit for action) in this life depends the condition in which his soul will be reincarnated.

"In a word, the present state is the result of past actions, and the future depends upon the present. Now, the ultimate hope of the Hindu should be so to live that his soul may be eventually freed from the necessity of being reincarnated, and may, in the end, be reunited to the Infinite Spirit from which it sprang. As, however, that goal is very remote, the Hindu not uncommonly limits his desire and his efforts to the attainment of a 'good time' now, and in his next appearance upon this earthly stage" (p. 108).

We need not go fully into this doctrine, which, as the writer says elsewhere (p. 172), "certainly makes for morality," but we may rather attend to that aspect of it which is shown in the Hindu desire to acc.u.mulate "merits." The performance of penances gives the self-torturer certain spiritual powers. Professor Oman quotes this pa.s.sage from Sir Monier Williams's "Indian Epic Poetry" (note to p. 4):

"According to Hindu theory, the performance of penances was like making deposits in the bank of Heaven. By degrees an enormous credit was acc.u.mulated, which enabled the depositor to draw on the amount of his savings, without fear of his drafts being refused payment. The power gained in this way by weak mortals was so enormous that G.o.ds, as well as men, were equally at the mercy of these all but omnipotent ascetics, and it is remarkable that even the G.o.ds are described as engaging in penances and austerities, in order, it may be presumed, not to be undone by human beings."

Now, if for penance we subst.i.tute Mitzvoth, we find in this pa.s.sage almost the caricature of the Jewish theory that meets us in the writings of German theologians. These ill-equipped critics of Judaism put it forward seriously that the Jew performs Mitzvoth in order to acc.u.mulate merit (Zechuth), and some of them even go so far as to a.s.sert that the Jew thinks of his Zechuth as irresistible. But when the matter is put frankly and squarely, as Professor Monier Williams puts it, not even the Germans could have the effrontery to a.s.sert that Judaism teaches or tolerates any such doctrine.

Whatever man does, he has no merit towards G.o.d: that is Jewish teaching.

Yet conduct counts, and somehow the good man and the bad man are not in the same case. Judaism may be inconsistent, but it is certainly not base in its teaching as to conduct and retribution. "Be not as servants who minister in the hope of receiving reward"-this is not the highest level of Jewish doctrine, it is the average level. Lately I have been reading a good deal of mystical Jewish literature, and I have been struck by the repeated use made of the famous Rabbinical saying of Antigonos of Socho just cited. One wonders whether, after all, justice is done to the Hindus. One sees how easily Jewish teaching can be distorted into a doctrine of calculated Zechuth. Are the Hindus being misjudged equally? Certainly, in some cases this must be so, for Professor Oman, with his remarkably sympathetic insight, records experiences such as this more than once (p. 147). He is describing one of the Jain ascetics, and remarks:

"His personal appearance gave the impression of great suffering, and his attendants all had the same appearance, contrasting very much indeed with the ordinary Sadhus of other sects. And wherefore this austere rejection of the world's goods, wherefore all this self-inflicted misery? Is it to attain a glorious Heaven hereafter, a blessed existence after death? No!

It is, as the old monk explained to me, only to escape rebirth--for the Jain believes in the transmigration of souls--and to attain rest."

Other ascetics gave similar explanations. Thus (p. 100):

"The Christian missionary entered into conversation with the Hermit (a Bairagi from the Upper Provinces), and learned from him that he had adopted a life of abstraction and isolation from the world, neither to expiate any sin, nor to secure any reward. He averred that he had no desires and no hopes, but that, being removed from the agitations of the worldly life, he was full of tranquil joy."

VI

LOST PURIM JOYS

It is scarcely accurate to a.s.sert, as is sometimes done, that the most characteristic of the Purim pranks of the past were children of the Ghetto, and came to a natural end when the Ghetto walls fell. In point of fact, most of these joys originated before the era of the Ghetto, and others were introduced for the first time when Ghetto life was about to fade away into history.

Probably the oldest of Purim pranks was the bonfire and the burning of an effigy. Now, so far from being a Ghetto custom, it did not even emanate from Europe, the continent of Ghettos; it belongs to Babylonia and Persia.

This is what was done, according to an old Geonic account recovered by Professor L. Ginzberg:

"It is customary in Babylonia and Elam for boys to make an effigy resembling Haman; this they suspend on their roofs, four or five days before Purim. On Purim day they erect a bonfire, and cast the effigy into its midst, while the boys stand round about it, jesting and singing. And they have a ring suspended in the midst of the fire, which (ring) they hold and wave from one side of the fire to the other."

Bonfires, it may be thought, need no recondite explanation; light goes with a light heart, and boys always love a blaze. Dr. J.G. Frazer, in his "Golden Bough," has endeavored, nevertheless, to bring the Purim bonfire into relation with primitive spring-tide and midsummer conflagrations, which survived into modern carnivals, but did not originate with them. Such bonfires belonged to what has been called sympathetic or homeopathic magic; by raising an artificial heat, you ensured a plentiful dose of the natural heat of the sun. So, too, the burning of an effigy was not, in the first instance, a malicious or unfriendly act. A tree-spirit, or a figure representing the spirit of vegetation, was consumed in fire, but the spirit was regarded as beneficent, not hostile, and by burning a friendly deity the succor of the sun was gained. Dr. Frazer cites some evidence for the early prevalence of the Purim bonfire; he argues strongly and persuasively in favor of the identification of Purim with the Babylonian feast of the Sacaea, a wild, extravagant baccha.n.a.lian revel, which, in the old Asiatic world, much resembled the Saturnalia of a later Italy. The theory is plausible, though it is not quite proven by Dr. Frazer, but it seems to me that whatever be the case with Purim generally, there is one hitherto overlooked feature of the Purim bonfire that does clearly connect it with the other primitive conflagrations of which mention was made above.

This overlooked feature is the "ring." No explanation is given by the Gaon as to its purpose in the tenth century, and it can hardly have been used to hold the effigy. Now, in many of the primitive bonfires, the fire was produced by aid of a revolving wheel. This wheel typifies the sun. Waving the "ring" in the Purim bonfires has obviously the same significance, and this apparently inexplicable feature does, I think, serve to link the ancient Purim prank with a long series of old-world customs, which, it need hardly be said, have nothing whatever to do with the Ghetto.

Then, again, the most famous of Purim parodies preceded the Ghetto period.

The official Ghetto begins with the opening of the sixteenth century, whereas the best parodies belong to a much earlier date, the fourteenth century. Such parodies, in which sacred things are the subject of harmless jest, are purely medieval in spirit, as well as in date. Exaggerated praises of wine were a foil to the sobriety of the Jew, the fun consisting in this conscious exaggeration. The medieval Jew, be it remembered, drew no severe line between sacred and profane. All life was to him equally holy, equally secular. So it is not strange that we find included in sacred Hebrew hymnologies wine-songs for Purim and Chanukah and other Synagogue feasts, and these songs are at least as old as the early part of the twelfth century. For Purim, many Synagogue liturgies contain serious additions for each of the eighteen benedictions of the Amidah prayer, and equally serious paraphrases of Esther, some of them in Aramaic, abound among the Genizah fragments in Cambridge. Besides these, however, are many harmlessly humorous jingles and rhymes which were sung in the synagogue, admittedly for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the children, and for the child-hearts of adult growth. For them, too, the Midrash had played round Haman, reviling him, poking fun at him, covering him with ridicule rather than execration.

It is true that the earliest ritual reference to the wearing of masks on Purim dates from the year 1508, just within the Ghetto period. But this omission of earlier reference is surely an accident, In the Babylonian Sacaea, cited above, a feature of the revel was that men and women disguised themselves, a slave dressed up as king, while servants personated masters, and vice versa. All these elements of carnival exhilaration are much earlier than the Middle Ages. Ghetto days, however, originated, perhaps, the stamping of feet, clapping of hands, clashing of mallets, and smashing of earthenware pots, to punctuate certain pa.s.sages of the Esther story and of the subsequent benediction.

My strongest point concerns what, beyond all other delights, has been regarded as the characteristic amus.e.m.e.nt of the festival, viz. the Purim play. We not only possess absolutely no evidence that Purim plays were performed in the Ghettos till the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the end of the Ghettos was almost within sight, but the extant references imply that they were then a novelty. Plays on the subject of Esther were very common in medieval Europe during earlier centuries, but these plays were written by Christians, not by Jews, and were performed by monks, not by Rabbis. Strange as it may seem, it is none the less the fact that the Purim play belongs to the most recent of the Purim amus.e.m.e.nts, and that its life has been short and, on the whole, inglorious.

Thus, without pressing the contention too closely, Purim festivities do not deserve to be tarred with the Ghetto brush. Is it, then, denied that Purim was more mirthfully observed in Ghetto days than it is at the present day?

By no means. It is unquestionable that Purim used to be a merrier anniversary than it is now. The explanation is simple. In part, the change has arisen through a laudable disinclination from pranks that may be misconstrued as tokens of vindictiveness against an ancient foe or his modern reincarnations. As a second cause may be a.s.signed the growing and regrettable propensity of Jews to draw a rigid line of separation between life and religion, and wherever this occurs, religious feasts tend towards a solemnity that cannot, and dare not, relax into amus.e.m.e.nt. This tendency is eating at the very heart of Jewish life, and ought to be resisted by all who truly understand the genius of Judaism.

But the psychology of the change goes even deeper. The Jew is emotional, but he detests making a display of his feelings to mere onlookers. The Wailing Wall scenes at Jerusalem are not a real exception--the facts are "Cooked," to meet the demands of clamant tourists. The Jew's sensitiveness is the correlative of his emotionalism. While all present are joining in the game, each Jew will play with full abandonment to the humor of the moment. But as soon as some play the part of spectators, the Jew feels his limbs growing too stiff for dancing, his voice too hushed for song. All must partic.i.p.ate, or all must leave off. Thus, a crowd of Italians or Southern French may play at carnival to-day to amuse sight-seers in the Riviera, but Jews have never consented, have never been able, to sport that others might stand by and laugh at, and not with, the sportsmen. In short, Purim has lost its character, because Jews have lost their character, their disposition for innocent, unanimous joyousness. We are no longer so closely united in interests or in local abodes that we could, on the one hand, enjoy ourselves as one man, and, on the other, play merry pranks, without incurring the criticism of indifferent, cold-eyed observers. Criticism has attacked the authenticity of the Esther story, and proposed Marduk for Mordecai, and Istar for Esther. But criticism of another kind has worked far more havoc, for its "superior" airs have killed the Purim joy. Perhaps it is not quite dead after all.

VII

JEWS AND LETTERS

The jubilee of the introduction of the Penny Post into England was not reached till 1890. It is difficult to realize the state of affairs before this reform became part of our everyday life. That less than three-quarters of a century ago the scattered members of English families were, in a mult.i.tude of cases, practically dead to one another, may incline one to exaggerate the insignificance of the means of communication in times yet more remote. Certainly, in ancient Judea there were fewer needs than in the modern world. Necessity produces invention, and as the Jew of remote times rarely felt a strong necessity to correspond with his brethren in his own or other countries, it naturally followed that the means of communication were equally _extempore_ in character. It may be of interest to put together some desultory jottings on this important topic.

The way to Judea lies through Rome. If we wish information whether the Jews knew anything of a regular post, we must first inquire whether the Romans possessed that inst.i.tution. According to Gibbon, this was the case.

Excellent roads made their appearance wherever the Romans settled; and "the advantage of receiving the earliest intelligence and of conveying their orders with celerity, induced the Emperors to establish throughout their extensive dominions the regular inst.i.tution of posts. Houses were everywhere erected at the distance only of five or six miles; each of them was constantly provided with forty horses, and by the help of these relays it was easy to travel a hundred miles a day along the Roman roads. The use of the posts was allowed to those who claimed it by an Imperial mandate; but, though originally intended for the public service, it was sometimes indulged to the business or con-veniency of private citizens." This statement of Gibbon (towards the end of chapter ii) applies chiefly, then, to official despatches; for we know from other sources that the Romans had no public post as we understand the term, but used special messengers (_tabellarius_) to convey private letters.

Exactly the same facts meet us with reference to the Jews in the earlier Talmudic times. There were special Jewish letter-carriers, who carried the doc.u.ments in a pocket made for the purpose, and in several towns in Palestine there was a kind of regular postal arrangement, though many places were devoid of the inst.i.tution. It is impossible to suppose that these postal conveniences refer only to official doc.u.ments; for the Mishnah (_Sabbath_, x, 4) is evidently speaking of Jewish postmen, who, at that time, would hardly have been employed to carry the despatches of the government. The Jewish name for this post was _Be-Davvar_, and apparently was a permanent and regular inst.i.tution. From a remark of Rabbi Jehudah (_Rosh ha-Shanah_, 9b), "like a postman who goes about everywhere and carries merchandise to the whole province," it would seem that the Jews had established a parcels-post; but unfortunately we have no precise information as to how these posts were managed.

Gibbon's account of the Roman post recalls another Jewish inst.i.tution, which may have been somehow connected with the _Be-Davvar_. The official custodian of the goat that was sent into the wilderness on the Day of Atonement was allowed, if he should feel the necessity--a necessity which, according to tradition, never arose--to partake of food even on the fast-day. For this purpose huts were erected along the route, and men provided with food were stationed at each of these huts to meet the messenger and conduct him some distance on his way.

That the postal system cannot have been very much developed, is clear from the means adopted to announce the New Moon in various localities. This official announcement certainly necessitated a complete system of communication. At first, we are told (_Rosh ha-Shanah_, ii, 2), fires were lighted on the tops of the mountains; but the Samaritans seem to have ignited the beacons at the wrong time, so as to deceive the Jews. It was, therefore, decided to communicate the news by messenger. The mountain-fires were prepared as follows: Long staves of cedar-wood, canes, and branches of the olive-tree were tied up with coa.r.s.e threads or flax; these were lighted as torches, and men on the hills waved the brands to and fro, upward and downward, until the signal was repeated on the next hill, and so forth.

When messengers were subst.i.tuted for these fire signals, it does not appear that they carried letters; they brought verbal messages, which they seem to have shouted out without necessarily dismounting from the animals they rode. Messages were not sent every month, but only six times a year; and a curious light is thrown on the means of communication of the time, by the legal decision that anyone was to be believed on the subject, and that the word of a pa.s.sing merchant who said that "he had heard the New Moon proclaimed," was to be accepted unhesitatingly. Nowadays, busy men are sometimes put out by postal vagaries, but they hardly suffer to the extent of having to fast two days. This calamity is recorded, however, in the Jerusalem Talmud, as having, on a certain occasion, resulted from the delay in the arrival of the messengers announcing the New Moon.

Besides the proclamation of the New Moon, other official doc.u.ments must have been despatched regularly. "Bills of divorce," for instance, needed special messengers; the whole question of the legal position of messengers is very intimately bound up with that of conveying divorces. This, however, seems to have been the function of private messengers, who were not in the strict sense letter-carriers at all. It may be well, in pa.s.sing, to recall one or two other means of communication mentioned in the Midrash. Thus we read how Joshua, with twelve thousand of his warriors, was imprisoned, by means of witchcraft, within a sevenfold barrier of iron. He resolves to write for aid to the chief of the tribe of Reuben, bidding him to summon Phineas, who is to bring the "trumpets" with him. Joshua ties the message to the wings of a dove, or pigeon, and the bird carries the letter to the Israelites, who speedily arrive with Phineas and the trumpets, and, after routing the enemy, effect Joshua's rescue. A similar idea may be found in the commentary of Kimchi on Genesis. Noah, wishing for information, says Kimchi, sent forth a raven, but it brought back no message; then he sent a dove, which has a natural capacity for bringing back replies, when it has been on the same way once or twice. Thus kings train these birds for the purpose of sending them great distances, with letters tied to their wings.

So we read (_Sabbath_, 49) in the Talmud that "a dove's wings protect it,"

i.e. people preserve it, and do not slay it, because they train it to act as their messenger. Or, again, we find arrows used as a means of carrying letters, and we are not alluding to such signals as Jonathan gave to David.

During the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans, the Emperor had men placed near the walls of Jerusalem, and they wrote the information they obtained on arrows, and fired them from the wall, with the connivance, probably, of the philo-Roman party that existed within the doomed city.

In earlier Bible times, there was, as the Tell-el-Amarna bricks show, an extensive official correspondence between Canaan and Egypt, but private letter-writing seems not to have been resorted to; messages were transmitted orally to the parties concerned. This fact is well ill.u.s.trated by the story of Joseph. He may, of course, have deliberately resolved not to communicate with his family, but if letter-writing had been usual, his brothers would naturally have asked him--a question that did not suggest itself to them--why he had never written to tell his father of his fortunes. When Saul desired to summon Israel, he sent, not a letter, but a mutilated yoke of oxen; the earliest letter mentioned in the Bible being that in which King David ordered Uriah to be placed in the forefront of the army. Jezebel sends letters in Ahab's name to Naboth, Jehu to Samaria. In all these cases letters were used for treacherous purposes, and they are all short. Probably the authors of these plots feared to betray their real intention orally, and so they committed their orders to writing, expecting their correspondents to read between the lines. It is not till the time of Isaiah that the references to writing become frequent. Intercourse between Palestine on the one hand and Babylon and Egypt on the other had then increased greatly, and the severance of the nation itself tended to make correspondence through writing more necessary. When we reach the age of Jeremiah, this fact makes itself even more strongly apparent. Letters are often mentioned by that prophet (xxix. 25, 29), and a professional cla.s.s of Soferim, or scribes, make their appearance. Afterwards, of course, the Sofer became of much higher importance; he was not merely a professional writer, but a man learned in the Law, who spread the knowledge of it among the people. Later, again, these functions were separated, and the Sofer added to his other offices that of teacher of the young. Nowadays, he has regained his earlier and less important position, for the modern Sofer is simply a professional writer. In the time of Ezekiel (ix. 2) the Sofer went abroad with the implements of his trade, including the inkhorn, at his side. In the Talmud, the scribe is sometimes described by his Latin t.i.tle _libellarius_ (_Sabbath_,11a). The Jews of Egypt, as may be seen from the a.s.souan Papyri, wrote home in cases of need in the time of Nehemiah; and in the same age we hear also of "open letters," for Sanballat sends a missive of that description by his servant; and apparently it was by means of a similar letter that the festival of Purim was announced to the Jews (Esther ix., where, unlike the other pa.s.sages quoted, the exact words of the letter of Mordecai are not given). The order to celebrate Chanukah was published in the same way, and, indeed, the books of the Apocrypha contain many interesting letters, and in the pages of Josephus the Jews hold frequent intercourse in this way with many foreign countries. In the latter cases, when the respective kings corresponded, the letters were conveyed by special emba.s.sies.

One might expect this epistolary activity to display itself at an even more developed stage in the records of Rabbinical times. But this is by no means the case, for the Rabbinical references to letters in the beginning of the common era are few and far between. Polemic epistles make their appearance; but they are the letters of non-Jewish missionaries like Paul. This form of polemical writing possessed many advantages; the letters were pa.s.sed on from one reader to another; they would be read aloud, too, before gatherings of the people to whom they were addressed. Maimonides, in later times, frequently adopted this method of communicating with whole communities, and many of the Geonim and other Jewish authorities followed the same plan. But somehow the device seems not to have commended itself to the earliest Rabbis. Though we read of many personal visits paid by the respective authorities of Babylon and Palestine to one another, yet they appear to have corresponded very rarely in writing. The reason lay probably in the objection felt against committing the Halachic, or legal, decisions of the schools to writing, and there was little else of consequence to communicate after the failure of Bar-Cochba's revolt against the Roman rule.

It must not be thought, however, that this prohibition had the effect we have described for very long. Rabbi Gamaliel, Rabbi Chananiah, and many others had frequent correspondence with far distant places, and as soon as the Mishnah acquired a fixed form, even though it was not immediately committed to writing, the recourse to letters became much more common.

Pupils of the compilers of the Mishnah proceeded to Babylon to spread its influence, and they naturally maintained a correspondence with their chiefs in Palestine. Rab and Samuel in particular, among the Amoraim, were regular letter-writers, and Rabbi Jochanan replied to them. Towards the end of the third century this correspondence between Judea and Babylon became even more active. Abitur and Abin often wrote concerning legal decisions and the doings of the schools, and thereby the intellectual activity of Judaism maintained its solidarity despite the fact that the Jewish people was no longer united in one land. In the Talmud we frequently read, "they sent from there," viz. Palestine.

Obviously these messages were sent in writing, though possibly the bearer of the message was often himself a scholar, who conveyed his report by word of mouth. Perhaps the growth of the Rabbi's practice of writing responses to questions--a practice that became so markedly popular in subsequent centuries--may be connected with the similar habit of the Roman jurists and the Christian Church fathers, and the form of response adopted by the eighth century Geonim is reminiscent of that of the Roman lawyers. The substance of the letters, however, is by no means the same; the Church father wrote on dogmatic, the Rabbi on legal, questions.

Between the middle of the fourth century and the time of the Geonim, we find no information as to the use of letters among the Jews. From that period onwards, however, Jews became very diligent letter-writers, and sometimes, for instance in the case of the "Guide of the Perplexed" of Maimonides, whole works were transmitted in the form of letters. The scattering of Israel, too, rendered it important to Jews to obtain information of the fortunes of their brethren in different parts of the world. Rumors of Messianic appearances from the twelfth century onwards, the contest with regard to the study of philosophy, the fame of individual Rabbis, the rise of a cla.s.s of travellers who made very long and dangerous journeys, all tended to increase the facilities and necessities of intercourse by letter. It was long, however, before correspondence became easy or safe. Not everyone is possessed of the postmen a.s.signed in Midrashim to King Solomon, who pressed demons into his service, and forced them to carry his letters wheresoever he willed.

Chasdai experienced considerable difficulty in transmitting his famous letter to the king of the Chazars, and that despite his position of authority in the Spanish State. In 960 a letter on some question of Kasher was sent from the Rhine to Palestine--proof of the way in which the most remote Jewish communities corresponded.

The question of the materials used in writing has an important bearing on our subject. Of course, the ritual regulations for writing the holy books, the special preparation of the parchment, the ink, the strict rules for the formation of the letters, hardly fall within the province of this article.

In ancient times the most diverse substances were used for writing on.

Palm-leaves (for which Palestine of old was famous) were a common object for the purpose, being so used all over Asia. Some authorities believe that in the time of Moses the palm leaf was the ordinary writing-material.

Olive-leaves, again, were thick and hard, while carob-leaves (St. John's bread), besides being smooth, long, and broad, were evergreen, and thus eminently fitted for writing. Walnut sh.e.l.ls, pomegranate skins, leaves of gourds, onion-leaves, lettuce-heads, even the horns of cattle, and the human body, letters being tattooed on the hands of slaves, were all turned to account. It is maintained by some that leather was the original writing-material of the Hebrews; others, again, give their vote in favor of linen, though the Talmud does not mention the latter material in connection with writing. Some time after Alexander the Great, the Egyptian papyrus became common in Palestine, where it probably was known earlier, as Jewish letters on papyrus were sent to Jerusalem from the Fayyum in the fifth century B.C.E. Even as late as Maimonides, the scrolls of the Law were written on leather, and not on parchment, which is now the ordinary material for the purpose. That the Torah was not to be written on a vegetable product was an a.s.sumed first principle. The Samaritans went so far as to insist that the animal whose hide was needed for so holy a purpose, must be slain Kasher. Similarly with divorce doc.u.ments. A Get on paper would be held legal _post factum_, though it is not allowed to use that material, as it is easily destroyed or mutilated, and the use of paper for the purpose was confined to the East. Some allowed the Book of Esther to be read from a paper copy; other authorities not only strongly objected to this, but even forbade the reading of the Haftarah from paper. Hence one finds in libraries so many parchment scrolls containing only the Haftarahs.