The Book of Delight and Other Papers Part 6

After a twelve months' stay he became a "son of the city," a full member of the community. But in the Middle Ages, newcomers, as already said, were not generally welcome. The question of s.p.a.ce was one important reason, for all newcomers had to stay in the Ghetto. Secondly, the newcomer was not amenable to discipline. Local custom varied much in the details both of Jewish and general law. The new settler might claim to retain his old customs, and the regard for local custom was so strong that the claim was often allowed, to the destruction of uniformity and the undermining of authority. To give an instance or two: A newcomer would insist that, as he might play cards in his native town, he ought not to be expected to obey puritanical restrictions in the place to which he came. The result was that the resident Jews would clamor against foreigners enjoying special privileges, as in this way all attempts to control gambling might be defeated. Or the newcomer would claim to shave his beard in accordance with his home custom, but to the scandal of the town which he was visiting. The native young men would imitate the foreigner, and then there would be trouble. Or the settler would a.s.sert his right to wear colors and fashions and jewelry forbidden to native Jews. Again, the marriage problem was complicated by the arrival of insinuating strangers, who turned out to be married men masquerading as bachelors. Then as to public worship--the congregation was often split into fragments by the independent services organized by foreign groups, and it would become necessary to prohibit its own members from attending the synagogues of foreign settlers. Then as to communal taxes: these were fixed annually on the basis of the population, and the arrival of newcomers seriously disturbed the equilibrium, led to fresh exactions by the Government, which it was by no means certain the new settlers could or would pay, and which, therefore, fell on the shoulders of the old residents.

When we consider all these facts, we can see that the eagerness of the medieval Jews to control the influx of foreign settlers was only in part the result of base motives. And, of course, the exclusion was not permanent or rigid. In Rome, the Sefardic and the Italian Jews fraternally placed their synagogues on different floors of the same building. In some German towns, the foreign synagogue was fixed in the same courtyard as the native.

Everywhere foreign Jews abounded, and everywhere a generous welcome awaited the genuine traveller.

As to the travelling beggar, he was a perpetual nuisance. Yet he was treated with much consideration. The policy with regard to him was, "Send the beggar further," and this suited the tramp, too. He did not wish to settle, he wished to move on. He would be lodged for two days in the communal inn, or if, as usually happened, he arrived on Friday evening, he would be billeted on some hospitable member, or the Shamash would look after him at the public expense. It is not till the thirteenth century that we meet regular envoys sent from Palestine to collect money.

The genuine traveller, however, was an ever-welcome guest. If he came at fair time, his way was smoothed for him. The Jew who visited the fair was only rarely charged local taxes by the Synagogue. He deserved a welcome, for he not only brought wares to sell, but he came laden with new books.

The fair was the only book-market At other times the Jews were dependent on the casual visits of travelling venders of volumes. Book-selling does not seem to have been a settled occupation in the Middle Ages. The merchant who came to the fair also fulfilled another function--that of Shadchan. The day of the fair was, in fact, the crisis of the year. Naturally, the letter-carrier was eagerly received. In the early part of the eighteenth century the function of conveying the post was sometimes filled by Jewesses.

Even the ordinary traveller, who had no business to transact, would often choose fair time for visiting new places, for he would be sure to meet interesting people then. He, too, would mostly arrive on a Friday evening, and would beguile the Sabbath with reports of the wonders he had seen. In the great synagogue of Sepphoris, Jochanan was discoursing of the great pearl, so gigantic in size that the Eastern gates of the Temple were to be built of the single gem. "Ay, ay," a.s.sented an auditor, who had been a notorious skeptic until he had become a shipwrecked sailor, "had not mine own eyes beheld such a pearl in the ocean-bed, I should not have believed it." And so the medieval traveller would tell his enthralling tales. He would speak of a mighty Jewish kingdom in the East, existing in idyllic peace and prosperity; he would excite his auditors with news of the latest Messiah; he would describe the river Sambatyon, which keeps the Sabbath, and, mingling truth with fiction, with one breath would truly relate how he crossed a river on an inflated skin, and with the next breath romance about Hillel's tomb, how he had been there, and how he had seen a large hollow stone, which remains empty if a bad fellow enters, but at the approach of a pious visitor fills up with sweet, pure water, with which he washes, uttering a wish at the same time, sure that it will come true. It is impossible even to hint at all the wonders of the tombs. Jews were ardent believers in the supernatural power of sepulchres; they made pilgrimages to them to pray and to beg favors. Jewish travellers' tales of the Middle Ages are heavily laden with these legends. Of course, the traveller would also bring genuine news about his brethren in distant parts, and sober information about foreign countries, their ways, their physical conformation, and their strange birds and beasts. These stories were in the main true. For instance, Petachiah tells of a flying camel, which runs fifteen times as fast as the fleetest horse. He must have seen an ostrich, which is still called the flying camel by Arabs. But we cannot linger over this matter. Suffice it to say that, as soon as Sabbath was over, the traveller's narrative would be written out by the local scribe, and treasured as one of the communal prizes. The traveller, on his part, often kept a diary, and himself compiled a description of his adventures. In some congregations there was kept a Communal Note-Book, in which were entered decisions brought by visiting Rabbis from other communities.

The most welcome of guests, even more welcome than long-distance travellers, or globe-trotters, were the Bachurim and travelling Rabbis. The Talmudic Rabbis were most of them travellers. Akiba's extensive journeys were, some think, designed to rouse the Jews of Asia Minor generally to partic.i.p.ate in the insurrection against Hadrian. But my narrative must be at this point confined to the medieval students. For the Bachurim, or students, there was a special house in many communities, and they lived together with their teachers. In the twelfth century, the great academy of Narbonne, under Abraham ibn Daud, attracted crowds of foreign students.

These, as Benjamin of Tudela tells us, were fed and clothed at the communal cost. At Beaucaire, the students were housed and supported at the teacher's expense. In the seventeenth century, the students not only were paid small bursaries, but every household entertained one or more of them at table. In these circ.u.mstances their life was by no means dull or monotonous. A Jewish student endures much, but he knows how to get the best out of life. This optimism, this quickness of humor, saved the Rabbi and his pupil from many a melancholy hour. Take Abraham ibn Ezra, for instance. If ever a man was marked out to be a bitter reviler of fate, it was he. But he laughed at fate. He gaily wandered from his native Spain over many lands penniless, travelled with no baggage but his thoughts, visited Italy and France, and even reached London, where, perhaps, he died. Fortune ill-treated him, but he found many joys. Wherever he went, patrons held out their hand.

Travelling students found many such generous lovers of learning, who, with their wealth, encouraged their guests to write original works or copy out older books, which the patrons then pa.s.sed on to poor scholars in want of a library. The legend is told, how the prophet Elijah visited Hebron, and was not "called up" in the synagogue. Receiving no Aliyah on earth, he returned to his elevation in Heaven. It was thus imprudent to deny honor to angels unawares. Usually the scholar was treated as such a possible angel. When he arrived, the whole congregation would turn out to meet him. He would be taken in procession to the synagogue, where he would say the benediction ha-Gomel, in thanks for his safety on the road. Perhaps he would address the congregation, though he would do that rather in the school than in the synagogue. Then a banquet would be spread for him. This banquet was called one of the Seudoth Mitzvah, _i.e._ "commandment meals," to which it was a duty of all pious men to contribute their money and their own attendance.

It would be held in the communal hall, used mostly for marriage feasts.

When a wedding party came from afar, similar steps for general enjoyment were taken. Men mounted on horseback went forth to welcome the bride, mimic tournaments were fought _en route_, torch-light processions were made if it were night time, processions by boats if it were in Italy or by the Rhine, a band of communal musicians, retained at general cost, played merry marches, and everyone danced and joined in the choruses. These musicians often went from town to town, and the Jewish players were hired for Gentile parties, just as Jews employed Christian or Arab musicians to help make merry on the Jewish Sabbaths and festivals.

We need not wonder, then, that a traveller like Ibn Ezra was no croaker, but a genial critic of life. He suffered, but he was light-hearted enough to compose witty epigrams and improvise rollicking wine songs. He was an accomplished chess player, and no doubt did something to spread the Eastern game in Europe. Another service rendered by such travellers was the spread of learning by their translations. Their wanderings made them great linguists, and they were thus able to translate medical, astronomical, and scientific works wherever they went. They were also sent by kings on missions to collect new nautical instruments. Thus, the baculus, which helped Columbus to discover America, was taken to Portugal by Jews, and a French Jew was its inventor. They were much in demand as travelling doctors, being summoned from afar to effect specific cures. But they also carried other delights with them. Not only were they among the troubadours, but they were also the most famous of the travelling _conteurs_. It was the Jews, like Berechiah, Charizi, Zabara, Abraham ibn Chasdai, and other incessant travellers, who helped to bring to Europe aesop, Bidpai, the Buddhist legends, who "translated them from the Indian," and were partly responsible for this rich poetical gift to the Western world.

Looking back on such a life, Ibn Ezra might well detect a Divine Providence in his own pains and sorrows. So, Jew-like, he retained his hope to the last, and after his buffetings on the troubled seas of life, remembering the beneficent results of his travels to others, if not to himself, he could write in this faithful strain:

My hope G.o.d knoweth well, My life He made full sweet; Whene'er His servant fell, G.o.d raised him to his feet.

Within the garment of His grace, My faults He did enfold, Hiding my sin, His kindly face My G.o.d did ne'er withhold.

Requiting with fresh good, My black ingrat.i.tude.

There remain the great merchant travellers to be told about. They sailed over all the world, and brought to Europe the wares, the products, the luxuries of the East. They had their own peculiar dangers. Shipwreck was the fate of others besides themselves, but they were peculiarly liable to capture and sale as slaves. Foremost among their more normal hardships I should place the bridge laws of the Middle Ages. The bridges were sometimes practically maintained by the Jewish tolls. In England, before 1290, a Jew paid a toll of a halfpenny on foot and a full penny on horseback--large sums in those days. A "dead Jew" paid eightpence. Burial was for a long time lawful only in London, and the total toll paid for bringing a dead Jew to London over the various bridges must have been considerable. In the Kurpfalz, for instance, the Jewish traveller had to pay the usual "white penny" for every mile, but also a heavy general fee for the whole journey.

If he was found without his ticket of leave, he was at once arrested. But it was when he came to a bridge that the exactions grew insufferable. The regulations were somewhat tricky, for the Jew was specially taxed only on Sundays and the Festivals of the Church. But every other day was some Saint's Festival, and while, in Mannheim, even on those days the Christian traveller paid one kreuzer if he crossed the bridge on foot, and two if on horseback, the Jew was charged four kreuzer if on foot, twelve if on a horse, and for every beast of burden he, unlike the Christian wayfarer, paid a further toll of eight kreuzer. The Jewish quarter often lay near the river, and Jews had great occasion for crossing the bridges, even for local needs. In Venice, the Jewish quarter was naturally intersected by bridges; in Rome there was the _pons Judeorum,_ which, no doubt, the Jews had to maintain in repair. It must be remembered that many local Jewish communities paid a regular bridge tax which was not exacted from Christians, and when all this is considered, it will be seen that the Jewish merchant needed to work hard and go far afield, if he was to get any profit from his enterprises.

Nevertheless, these Jews owned horses and caravans, and sailed their own ships long before the time when great merchants, like the English Jew Antonio Fernandes Carvajal, traded in their own vessels between London and the Canaries. We hear of Palestinian Jews in the third century and of Italian Jews in the fifth century with ships of their own. Jewish sailors abounded on the Mediterranean, which tended to become a Jewish lake. The trade routes of the Jews were chiefly two. "By one route," says Beazley, "they sailed from the ports of France and Italy to the Isthmus of Suez, and thence down the Red Sea to India and Farther Asia. By another course, they transported the goods of the West to the Syrian coast; up the Orontes to Antioch; down the Euphrates to Ba.s.sora; and so along the Persian Gulf to Oman and the Southern Ocean." Further, there were two chief overland routes. On the one side merchants left Spain, traversed the straits of Gibraltar, went by caravan from Tangier along the northern fringe of the desert, to Egypt, Syria, and Persia. This was the southern route. Then there was the northern route, through Germany, across the country of the Slavs to the Lower Volga; thence, descending the river, they sailed across the Caspian. Then the traveller proceeded along the Oxus valley to Balkh, and, turning north-east, traversed the country of the Tagazgaz Turks, and found himself at last on the frontier of China. When one realizes the extent of such a journey, it is not surprising to hear that the greatest authorities are agreed that in the Middle Ages, before the rise of the Italian trading republics, the Jews were the chief middlemen between Europe and Asia. Their vast commercial undertakings were productive of much good.

Not only did the Jews bring to Europe new articles of food and luxury, but they served the various States as envoys and as intelligencers. The great Anglo-Jewish merchant Carvajal provided Cromwell with valuable information, as other Jewish merchants had done to other rulers of whom they were loyal servants. In the fifteenth century Henry of Portugal applied to Jews for intelligence respecting the interior of Africa, and a little later John, king of the same land, derived accurate information respecting India from two Jewish travellers that had spent many years at Ormuz and Calcutta. But it is unnecessary to add more facts of this type. The Jewish merchant traveller was no mere tradesman. He observed the country, especially did he note the numbers and occupations of the Jews, their synagogues, their schools, their vices, and their virtues.

In truth, the Jewish traveller, as he got farther from home, was more at home than many of his contemporaries of other faiths when they were at home. He kept alive that sense of the oneness of Judaism which could be most strongly and completely achieved because there was no political bias to separate it into hostile camps.

But the interest between the traveller and his home was maintained by another bond. A striking feature of Jewish wayfaring life was the writing of letters home. The "Book of the Pious," composed about 1200, says: "He that departs from the city where his father and mother live, and travels to a place of danger, and his father and mother are anxious on account of him; it is the bounden duty of the son to hire a messenger as soon as he can and despatch a letter to his father and mother, telling them when he departs from the place of danger, that their anxiety may be allayed." Twice a year all Jews wrote family letters, at the New Year and the Pa.s.sover, and they sent special greetings on birthdays. But the traveller was the chief letter-writer. "O my father," wrote the famous Obadiah of Bertinoro, in 1488, "my departure from thee has caused thee sorrow and suffering, and I am inconsolable that I was forced to leave at the time when age was creeping on thee. When I think of thy grey hairs, which I no longer see, my eyes flow over with tears. But if the happiness of serving thee in person is denied to me, yet I can at least serve thee as thou desirest, by writing to thee of my journey, by pouring my soul out to thee, by a full narrative of what I have seen and of the state and manners of the Jews in all the places where I have dwelt." After a long and valuable narrative, he concludes in this loving strain: "I have taken me a house in Jerusalem near the synagogue, and my window overlooks it. In the court where my house is, there live five women, and only one other man besides myself. He is blind, and his wife attends to my needs. G.o.d be thanked, I have escaped the sickness which affects nearly all travellers here. And I entreat you, weep not at my absence, but rejoice in my joy, that I am in the Holy City. I take G.o.d to witness that here the thought of all my sufferings vanishes, and but one image is before my eyes, thy dear face, O my father. Let me feel that I can picture that face to me, not clouded with tears, but lit with joy. You have other children around you; make them your joy, and let my letters, which I will ever and anon renew, bring solace to your age, as your letters bring solace to me."

Much more numerous than the epistles of sons to fathers are the letters of fathers to their families. When these come from Palestine, there is the same mingling of pious joy and human sorrow--joy to be in the Holy Land, sorrow to be separated from home. Another source of grief was the desolation of Palestine.

One such letter-writer tells sadly how he walked through the market at Zion, thought of the past, and only kept back his tears lest the Arab onlookers should see and ridicule his sorrow. Yet another medieval letter-writer, Nachmanides, reaches the summit of sentiment in these lines, which I take from Dr. Schechter's translation: "I was exiled by force from home, I left my sons and daughters; and with the dear and sweet ones whom I brought up on my knees, I left my soul behind me. My heart and my eyes will dwell with them forever. But O! the joy of a day in thy courts, O Jerusalem! visiting the ruins of the Temple and crying over the desolate Sanctuary; where I am permitted to caress thy stones, to fondle thy dust, and to weep over thy ruins. I wept bitterly, but found joy in my tears."

And with this thought in our mind we will take leave of our subject. It is the traveller who can best discern, amid the ruins wrought by man, the hope of a Divine rebuilding. Over the heavy hills of strife, he sees the coming dawn of peace. The world must still pa.s.s through much tribulation before the new Jerusalem shall arise, to enfold in its loving embrace all countries and all men. But the traveller, more than any other, hastens the good time. He overbridges seas, he draws nations nearer; he shows men that there are many ways of living and of loving. He teaches them to be tolerant; he humanizes them by presenting their brothers to them. The traveller it is who prepares a way in the wilderness, who makes straight in the desert a highway for the Lord.

THE FOX'S HEART

Pliny says that by eating the palpitating heart of a mole one acquires the faculty of divining future events. In "Westward Ho!" the Spanish prisoners beseech their English foe, Mr. Oxenham, not to leave them in the hands of the Cimaroons, for the latter invariably ate the hearts of all that fell into their hands, after roasting them alive. "Do you know," asks Mr. Alston in the "Witch's Head," "what those Basutu devils would have done if they had caught us? They would have skinned us, and made our hearts into _mouti_ [medicine] and eaten them, to give them the courage of the white man." Ibn Verga, the author of a sixteenth century account of Jewish martyrs, records the following strange story: "I have heard that some people in Spain once brought the accusation that they had found, in the house of a Jew, a lad slain, and his breast rent near the heart. They a.s.serted that the Jews had extracted his heart to employ it at their festival. Don Solomon, the Levite, who was a learned man and a Cabbalist, placed the Holy Name under the lad's tongue. The lad then awoke and told who had slain him, and who had removed his heart, with the object of accusing the poor Jews. I have not," adds the author of the _Shebet Jehudah_, "seen this story in writing, but I have heard it related."

We have the authority of Dr. Ploss for the statement that among the Slavs witches produce considerable disquiet in families, into which, folk say, they penetrate in the disguise of hens or b.u.t.terflies. They steal the hearts of children in order to eat them. They strike the child on the left side with a little rod; the breast opens, and the witches tear out the heart, and devour every atom of it. Thereupon the wound closes up of itself, without leaving a trace of what has been done. The child dies either immediately or soon afterwards, as the witch chooses. Many children's illnesses are attributed to this cause. If one of these witches is caught asleep, the people seize her, and move her so as to place her head where her feet were before. On awaking, she has lost all her power for evil, and is transformed into a medicine-woman, who is acquainted with the healing effects of every herb, and aids in curing children of their diseases. In Heine's poem, "The Pilgrimage to Kevlaar," the love-lorn youth seeks the cure of his heart's ill by placing a waxen heart on the shrine.

This is unquestionably the most exquisite use in literature of the heart as a charm.

Two or three of the stories that I have noted down on the gruesome subject of heart-eating have been given above. Such ideas were abhorrent to the Jewish conscience, and the use of the heart torn from a living animal was regarded as characteristic of idolatry (Jerusalem Talmud, _Aboda Zara_, ii, 41b). In the Book of Tobit a fish's heart plays a part, but it is detached from the dead animal, and is not eaten. It forms an ingredient of the smoke which exorcises the demon that is troubling the heroine Sarah.

I have not come across any pa.s.sage in the Jewish Midrashim that ascribes to "heart-eating," even in folk-lore, the virtue of bestowing wisdom.

Aristotle seems to lend his authority to some such notion as that I have quoted from Pliny, when he says, "Man alone presents the phenomenon of heart-beating, because he alone is moved by hope and by expectation of what is coming." As George H. Lewes remarked, it is quite evident that Aristotle could never have held a bird in his hand. The idea, however, that eating the heart of an animal has wisdom-conferring virtue seems to underlie a very interesting Hebrew fable published by Dr. Steinschneider, in his _Alphabetum Siracidis_. The Angel of Death had demanded of G.o.d the power to slay all living things.

"The Holy One replied, 'Cast a pair of each species into the sea, and then thou shalt have dominion over all that remain of the species.' The Angel did so forthwith, and he cast a pair of each kind into the sea.

When the fox saw what he was about, what did he do? At once he stood and wept. Then said the Angel of Death unto him, 'Why weepest thou?' 'For my companions, whom thou hast cast into the sea,' answered the fox. 'Where, then, are thy companions?' said the Angel. The fox ran to the sea-sh.o.r.e [with his wife], and the Angel of Death beheld the reflection of the fox in the water, and he thought that he had already cast in a pair of foxes, so, addressing the fox by his side, he cried, 'Be off with you!' The fox at once fled and escaped. The weasel met him, and the fox related what had happened, and what he had done; and so the weasel went and did likewise.

"At the end of the year, the leviathan a.s.sembled all the creatures in the sea, and lo! the fox and the weasel were missing, for they had not come into the sea. He sent to ask, and he was told how the fox and the weasel had escaped through their wisdom. They taunted the leviathan, saying, 'The fox is exceedingly cunning.' The leviathan felt uneasy and envious, and he sent a deputation of great fishes, with the order that they were to deceive the fox, and bring him before him. They went, and found him by the sea-sh.o.r.e. When the fox saw the fishes disporting themselves near the bank, he was surprised, and he went among them. They beheld him, and asked, 'Who art thou?' 'I am the fox,' said he. 'Knowest thou not,'

continued the fishes, 'that a great honor is in store for thee, and that we have come here on thy behalf?' 'What is it?' asked the fox. 'The leviathan,' they said, 'is sick, and like to die. He has appointed thee to reign in his stead, for he has heard that thou art wiser and more prudent than all other animals. Come with us, for we are his messengers, and are here to thy honor.' 'But,' objected the fox, 'how can I come into the sea without being drowned?' 'Nay,' said the fishes; 'ride upon one of us, and he will carry thee above the sea, so that not even a drop of water shall touch so much as the soles of thy feet, until thou reachest the kingdom. We will take thee down without thy knowing it. Come with us, and reign over us, and be king, and be joyful all thy days. No more wilt thou need to seek for food, nor will wild beasts, stronger than thou, meet thee and devour thee.'

"The fox heard and believed their words. He rode upon one of them, and they went with him into the sea. Soon, however, the waves dashed over him, and he began to perceive that he had been tricked. 'Woe is me!'

wailed the fox, 'what have I done? I have played many a trick on others, but these fishes have played one on me worth all mine put together. Now I have fallen into their hands, how shall I free myself? Indeed,' he said, turning to the fishes, 'now that I am fully in your power, I shall speak the truth. What are you going to do with me?' 'To tell thee the truth,'

replied the fishes, 'the leviathan has heard thy fame, that thou art very wise, and he said, I will rend the fox, and will eat his heart, and thus I shall become wise.' 'Oh!' said the fox, 'why did you not tell me the truth at first? I should then have brought my heart with me, and I should have given it to King Leviathan, and he would have honored me; but now ye are in an evil plight.' 'What! thou hast not thy heart with thee?'

'Certainly not. It is our custom to leave our heart at home while we go about from place to place. When we need our heart, we take it; otherwise it remains at home.' 'What must we do?' asked the bewildered fishes. 'My house and dwelling-place,' replied the fox, 'are by the sea-sh.o.r.e. If you like, carry me back to the place whence you brought me, I will fetch my heart, and will come again with you. I will present my heart to Leviathan, and he will reward me and you with honors. But if you take me thus, without my heart, he will be wroth with you, and will devour you. I have no fear for myself, for I shall say unto him: My lord, they did not tell me at first, and when they did tell me, I begged them to return for my heart, but they refused.' The fishes at once declared that he was speaking well. They conveyed him back to the spot on the sea-sh.o.r.e whence they had taken him. Off jumped the fox, and he danced with joy. He threw himself on the sand, and laughed. 'Be quick,' cried the fishes, 'get thy heart, and come.' But the fox answered, 'You fools! Begone! How could I have come with you without my heart? Have you any animals that go about without their hearts?' 'Thou hast tricked us,' they moaned. 'Fools! I tricked the Angel of Death, how much more easily a parcel of silly fishes.'

"They returned in shame, and related to their master what had happened.

'In truth,' he said, 'he is cunning, and ye are simple. Concerning you was it said, The turning away of the simple shall slay them [Prov. i:32].

Then the leviathan ate the fishes."

Metaphorically, the Bible characterizes the fool as a man "without a heart," and it is probably in the same sense that modern Arabs describe the brute creation as devoid of hearts. The fox in the narrative just given knew better. Not so, however, the lady who brought a curious question for her Rabbi to solve. The case to which I refer may be found in the _Responsa_ Zebi Hirsch. Hirsch's credulous questioner a.s.serted that she had purchased a live c.o.c.k, but on killing and drawing it, she had found that it possessed no heart. The Rabbi refused very properly to believe her. On investigating the matter, he found that, while she was dressing the c.o.c.k, two cats had been standing near the table. The Rabbi a.s.sured his questioner that there was no need to inquire further into the whereabouts of the c.o.c.k's heart.

Out of the crowd of parallels to the story of the fox's heart supplied by the labors of Benfey, I select one given in the second volume of the learned investigator's _Pantschatantra_. A crocodile had formed a close friendship with a monkey, who inhabited a tree close to the water side. The monkey gave the crocodile nuts, which the latter relished heartily. One day the crocodile took some of the nuts home to his wife. She found them excellent, and inquired who was the donor. "If," she said, when her husband had told her, "he feeds on such ambrosial nuts, this monkey's heart must be ambrosia itself. Bring me his heart, that I may eat it, and so be free from age and death." Does not this version supply a more probable motive than that attributed in the Hebrew story to the leviathan? I strongly suspect that the Hebrew fable has been pieced together from various sources, and that the account given by the fishes, viz. that the leviathan was ill, was actually the truth in the original story. The leviathan would need the fox's heart, not to become wise, but in order to save his life.

To return to the crocodile. He refuses to betray his friend, and his wife accuses him of infidelity. His friend, she maintains, is not a monkey at all, but a lady-love of her husband's. Else why should he hesitate to obey her wishes? "If he is not your beloved, why will you not kill him? Unless you bring me his heart, I will not taste food, but will die." Then the crocodile gives in, and in the most friendly manner invites the monkey to pay him and his wife a visit. The monkey consents unsuspectingly, but discovers the truth, and escapes by adopting the same ruse as that employed by the fox. He a.s.serts that he has left his heart behind on his tree.

That eating the heart of animals was not thought a means of obtaining wisdom among the Jews, may be directly inferred from a pa.s.sage in the Talmud (_Horayoth_, 13b). Among five things there enumerated as "causing a man to forget what he has learned," the Talmud includes "eating the hearts of animals." Besides, in certain well-known stories in the Midrash, where a fox eats some other animal's heart, his object is merely to enjoy a t.i.tbit.

One such story in particular deserves attention. There are at least three versions of it. The one is contained in the _Mishle Shualim_, or "Fox-Stories," by Berechiah ha-Nakdan (no. 106), the second in the _Hadar Zekenim_ (fol. 27b), and the third in the _Midrash Yalkut_, on Exodus (ed.

Venice, 56a). Let us take the three versions in the order named.

A wild boar roams in a lion's garden. The lion orders him to quit the place and not defile his residence. The boar promises to obey, but next morning he is found near the forbidden precincts. The lion orders one of his ears to be cut off. He then summons the fox, and directs that if the boar still persists in his obnoxious visits, no mercy shall be shown to him. The boar remains obstinate, and loses his ears (one had already gone!) and eyes, and finally he is killed. The lion bids the fox prepare the carca.s.s for His Majesty's repast, but the fox himself devours the boar's heart. When the lion discovers the loss, the fox quiets his master by asking, "If the boar had possessed a heart, would he have been so foolish as to disobey you so persistently?"

The king of the beasts, runs the story in the second of the three versions, appointed the a.s.s as keeper of the tolls. One day King Lion, together with the wolf and the fox, approached the city. The a.s.s came and demanded the toll of them. Said the fox, "You are the most audacious of animals. Don't you see that the king is with us?" But the a.s.s answered, "The king himself shall pay," and he went and demanded the toll of the king. The lion rent him to pieces, and the fox ate the heart, and excused himself as in the former version.

The _Yalkut_, or third version, is clearly identical with the preceding, for, like it, the story is quoted to ill.u.s.trate the Scriptural text referring to Pharaoh's heart becoming hard. In this version, however, other animals accompany the lion and the fox, and the scene of the story is on board ship. The a.s.s demands the fare, with the same _denouement_ as before.

What induced the fox to eat the victim's heart? The a.s.s is not remarkable for wisdom, nor is the boar. Hence the wily Reynard can scarcely have thought to add to his store of cunning by his surrept.i.tious meal.

Hearts, in folk-lore, have been eaten for revenge, as in the grim story of the lover's heart told by Boccaccio. The jealous husband forces his wife, whose fidelity he doubts, to make a meal of her supposed lover's heart. In the story of the great bird's egg, again, the brother who eats the heart becomes rich, but not wise. Various motives, no doubt, are a.s.signed in other _Marchen_ for choosing the heart; but in these particular Hebrew fables, it is merely regarded as a _bonne bouche_. Possibly the Talmudic caution, that eating the heart of a beast brings forgetfulness, may have a moral significance; it may mean that one who admits b.e.s.t.i.a.l pa.s.sions into his soul will be dest.i.tute of a mind for n.o.bler thoughts. This suggestion I have heard, and I give it for what it may be worth. As a rule, there is no morality in folk-lore; stories with morals belong to the later and more artificial stage of poet-lore. Homiletical folk-lore, of course, stands on a different basis.

Now, in the _Yalkut_ version of the fox and the lion fable, all that we are told is, "The fox saw the a.s.s's heart; he took it, and ate it." But Berechiah leaves us in no doubt as to the fox's motive. "The fox saw that his heart was fat, and so he took it." In the remaining version, "The fox saw that the heart was good, so he ate it." This needs no further comment.

Of course, it has been far from my intention to dispute that the heart was regarded by Jews as the seat both of the intellect and the feelings, of all mental and spiritual functions, indeed. The heart was the best part of man, the fount of life; hence Jehudah Halevi's well-known saying, "Israel is to the world as the heart to the body." An intimate connection was also established, by Jews and Greeks alike, between the physical condition of the heart and man's moral character. It was a not unnatural thought that former ages were more pious than later times. "The heart of Rabbi Akiba was like the door of the porch [which was twenty cubits high], the heart of Rabbi Eleazar ben Shammua was like the door of the Temple [this was only ten cubits high], while our hearts are only as large as the eye of a needle." But I am going beyond my subject. To collect all the things, pretty and the reverse, that have been said in Jewish literature about the heart, would need more leisure, and a great deal more learning, than I possess. So I will conclude with a story, pathetic as well as poetical, from a Jewish medieval chronicle.

A Mohammedan king once asked a learned Rabbi why the Jews, who had in times long past been so renowned for their bravery, had in later generations become subdued, and even timorous. The Rabbi, to prove that captivity and persecution were the cause of the change, proposed an experiment. He bade the king take two lion's whelps, equally strong and big. One was tied up, the other was allowed to roam free in the palace grounds. They were fed alike, and after an interval both were killed. The king's officers found that the heart of the captive lion was but one-tenth as large as that of his free companion, thus evidencing the degenerating influence of slavery.