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And Isaac Abohab, an eminent Spanish rabbi, in his Menorath Hammaor gives other illustrations from the Talmud of the advocacy of special exceptions to the strict law of truthfulness, with a good purpose in view, notwithstanding the sweeping claim to the contrary by Hamburger.
Beyond this sphere the good man's services were not used by a body of shrewd ecclesiastics, as the inordinate length of an ordination sermon had ruined a dinner prepared for the court by "one of our intelligent and large-hearted laymen," and it is still pleasantly told how Saunderson was invited to a congregational soirée an ancient meeting, where the people ate oranges, and the speaker rallied the minister on being still unmarried and discoursed, as a carefully chosen subject, on the Jewish feasts, with illustrations from the Talmud, till some one burst a paper-bag and allowed the feelings of the people to escape.
They also differ from the majority of Hebrews in rejecting the Talmud, but I believe they have a Talmud of their own. Their place of worship is a small room almost under the ground, where we were permitted to see a very fine old copy of the Hebrew Scriptures, our Old Testament.
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 titbit. One such story in particular deserves attention. There are at least three versions of it.
In Lithuania the whole mental energy of the Jewish youth was absorbed by Talmudism. The synagogue served as a "house of study" outside the hours fixed for prayers. There the local rabbi or a private scholar gave lectures on the Talmud which were listened to by hosts of yeshibah bahurs. The great yeshibahs of Volozhin, Mir, and other towns sent forth thousands of rabbis and Talmudists.
As formerly with the Talmud, the Haskalah seemed, at the time of Mendelssohn, to be moving from the East westward, through the agency of the Slavonic Jews pouring perennially into Germany. Positions, from the lowly melammed's to the honorable chief rabbi's in prominent communities, were filled almost exclusively by them. The cause of Judaism seems to have been entrusted to them.
And so, to the solemn and Talmud teachings of Mosher and the wide-bosomed love of this mother who lavishly nurtured them, these sons, so identically pitched, grew steady of limb, with all the thigh-pulling power of their parents, the calves of their little legs already tight as fists.
The Bible and the Talmud direct emancipation only where the slave loses a limb; but Philo writes eloquently of the humanity of which man is deprived by the loss of sight; and he would apparently condemn the master who injured his slave more seriously to the full penalties of the ordinary law.
Apart from these direct references, the numerous points of correspondence between Philo's interpretations and those of the Talmud and later Midrash would compel us to admit a connection between Alexandria and Jerusalem. The break between the two schools did not show itself till after the time of Philo.
Being a sickly child, Mapu did not begin to study the elementary branches until he was five years old, an advanced age among people whose children were usually sent to the Heder at four, to spend years upon years there that brought no joy to the student as he sat all day long bent over the great folios of the Talmud, except the joy that comes from success in study.
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