Those who know the codes of the Talmud and of the Safed School, which are still, despite certain petty struggles, the life-light of Judaism, will have no trouble in replying. A people whose highest ideas of religious existence are the superstitious sanctification of Sabbath, the washing of hands, the blowing of ram’s horns, the saving rite of circumcision, and the thousand external functions compensating for moral delinquencies, with Abraham sitting at the gate of Hell to keep it closed for Jews; a community which would declare marriage impossible to some twelve millions of Gentiles, forbid them the Sabbath, and sentence to death every “stranger” reading an Old Testament; which would have all the Ger who are not idolaters without religion, whilst forbidding those whom it calls “idolaters” (the Christians) to exercise the commonest feelings of humanity; which would degrade and insult one-half of humanity, the weaker sex, and which would sanction slavery, and at the same time oppress and vilify its slaves by placing them on a level with oxen and asses; a faith which, abounding in heathen practices, would encourage the study of the Black Art, would loosen every moral obligation, would grant dispensations to men’s oaths, and would sanction the murder of the unlearned; a system of injustice, whose Sanhedrins, at once heathenish and unlawful, have distinguished themselves only for force and fraud, for superabundant self-conceit, for cold-blooded cruelty, and for unrelenting enmity to all human nature,--such conditions, it is evident, are not calculated to create or to preserve national life. The civilized world would never endure the presence of a creed which says to man, “Hate thy neighbour unless he be one of ye,” or of a code written in blood, not in ink, which visits the least infractions of the Rabbinical laws with exorcism and excommunication, with stoning and flogging to death.[31] A year of such spectacles would more than suffice to excite the wrath and revenge of outraged humanity; the race, cruel, fierce, dogged, and desperate as in the days of Titus and Hadrian, would defend itself to the last; the result would be another siege and capture of Jerusalem, and the “Chosen People” would once more lie prostrate in their blood and be stamped out of the Holy Land. Briefly, it is evident that nothing but Russian preponderance in Syria and Palestine prevents its being reoccupied by its old intolerant and persecuting owners,[32] and that to these the greatest possible misfortune would be the granting of their daily, weekly, and yearly prayer-- _Next year may we meet at Jerusalem._ FOOTNOTES: [25] In consequence of the accident which occurred to Jacob (Gen. xxxii.) his descendants still abstain from the hind-quarters of the few beasts left to them by Leviticus xv. [26] Gaon means a learned man: had he not some other name? [27] [Rabbenu Tam was the most distinguished disciple of the renowned R. Rashi (1040-1105 A.D.).]