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Here the Mishna and the Gemara were written. And here, to-day, two-thirds of the five thousand inhabitants are Jews, many of them living on the charity of their kindred in Europe, and spending their time in the study of the Talmud while they wait for the Messiah who shall restore the kingdom to Israel.
The Jewish religion is a concrete, unbroken mass of laws. The Jew is bounded on the east by law; on the north by law; on the west by law; on the south by law. There are set rules and laws that govern his getting up, his going to bed, his eating, drinking, sleeping, and praying. There is no phase of human relationship that is not covered by the Mishna and Gemara.
In his unflinching determination to get at the truth, he did not shrink from criticising Rashi and the Shulhan 'Aruk, and dared to interpret some parts of the Mishnah differently from the explanation given in the Gemara.
As up to that time the text of the Holy Scriptures had been made the basis of interpretation, giving rise to the most diverse inferences, so the rabbis now began to use the law book recently canonized as a new basis of interpretation, and to carry its principles to their utmost consequences. In this way originated first the "Palestinian Gemara."
But the fact that Saint Paul met Seneca's brother face to face, as well as the fact that the brother was willing to discuss right living, but had no time to waste on the Gemara and theological quibbles, is undisputed. It was the proud boast of Augustus that he found Rome a place of brick and left it a city of marble. Commercial prosperity buys the leisure upon which letters flourish.
'The illustrious Doctor Abarbanel, of Babylon, said Rabbi Maimon, 'gives one hundred and twenty reasons in his commentary on the Gemara to prove that they sunk under the earth at the taking of the Temple. 'No one reasons like Abarbanel of Babylon, said Rabbi Zimri. 'The great Rabbi Akiba, of Pundebita, has answered them all, said Rabbi Maimon, 'and holds that they were taken up to heaven.
The Talmud, from the Hebrew word signifying he has learned, is a collection of traditions illustrative of the laws and usages of the Jews. The Talmud consists of two parts, the Mishna and the Gemara. The Mishna, or second law, is a collection of rabbinical rules and precepts made in the second century.
The Gemara on the above Mishnahs gives the opinions of a large number of Rabbis, reporting also discussions in which they took part. The benedictions before and after the Shemang. M. Two benedictions are to be said before the morning shemang, and one after it. When the Shemang is rightly read.
Yet all the Jewish Laws are founded with an eye to a sanitary and hygienic good they are built on the basis of expediency. And that rule of the Gemara which provides that if you have gravy on the table, you can not also have butter, without sin, seems more of a move in the direction of economics than a matter of ethics.
When the history of the Jewish schools in the ages which immediately preceded and followed the birth of Christianity shall be written, no one will make any scruple of attributing to Hillel, Shammai, Gamaliel the maxims ascribed to them by the Mishnah and the Gemara, although these great compilations were written many hundreds of years after the time of the doctors in question.
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