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None of his wise men could explain this mystery and so Alexander sought out a Jew among his soldiers, one who had been a student with the rabbis. Taking a handfull of earth the Jew placed it over the eyes and the skull was then as light as air. "The meaning is plain," said the Jew. "Not until the human eye is covered with earth in the grave is it satisfied.
"I think," he observed musingly, "that God is more pleased with this incense of mine than with all the prayers of all the Rabbis." This shocked even me, fascinated though I was. Never had I met such a man in all Israel. I shook my head in half-serious reproof. "You are a sinner," I said. "Nay, is not smoking pleasurable? To enjoy aright aught in God's creation is to praise God.
I shall ever remember with gratitude the assurances your Excellency gave me, that the Russian Government was anxious to promote only such education as is based upon pure religion; that it did not entertain sentiments inimical to the Jewish faith; that on the contrary the Government was anxious to institute with respect to the Israelites such measures as would tend to prove to them the paternal kindness of His Majesty; and that for this reason the Government had called together a Committee of Chief Rabbis, eminent for their piety, in order to gain the perfect confidence of all their brethren.
The Jewish rabbis had their Cabala, which sprang up in Alexandria, a system of philosophy founded on the mystic meaning of the words and the actual letters of the text of Scripture, which some said was given by the angel Ragiel to Adam in Paradise, by which Adam talked with angels, the sun and moon, summoned spirits, interpreted dreams, healed and destroyed; and by that book of Ragiel, as it was called, Solomon became the great magician and master of all the spirits and their hoarded treasures.
Secretaries of State, Ambassadors, Congressmen, distinguished rabbis and churchmen, and other people of eminence attained His presence, among whom were such figures as Dr. D. S. Jordan, President of Leland Stanford University, Prof. Jackson of Columbia University, Prof. Jack of Oxford University, Rabbi Stephen Wise of New York, Dr.
There were Roman soldiers, with very partial knowledge of what they were doing, and whose only feeling was that of entire indifference; and there were Jewish Rabbis, Pharisees, Priests, and people, who knew a little more of what they were doing, and whose feeling was derision and scorn.
What if the Jehovah of the old Scriptures were not merely the national patron of the children of Abraham, as the Rabbis held; not merely, as Philo held, the Divine Wisdom which inspired a few elect sages, even among the heathen; but the Lord of the whole earth, and of the nations thereof?
The governor of Moghilev instructed the police of his province to impress the local Jewish population with the necessity of "polite manners," in the sense of a more reverent attitude towards the representatives of Russian authority. In compliance with this order, the district chiefs of police compelled the rabbis to inculcate their flock in the synagogues with reverence for Russian officialdom.
Graetz, VI, p. 240, also Joseph Jacob's Angevin Jews, p. 111. R. Asher was one of a group of pious Rabbis known as Perushim who might be styled Jewish monks. Aegidius was much resorted to in the Middle Ages. The Jews of Beaucaire, and the neighbourhood, enjoyed the patronage of Raymond V, Count of Toulouse, called by the Troubadour poets "the good Duke." See Graetz, VI, note I, p. 401.
The religious reforms introduced by the German Rabbis have but had the effect of drying up the springs of poetry in the religion, and as for the compromise between faith and life, extolled and urged by Lilienblum, it is only a futile phrase.
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