Hayye Sarah. Morais, Sabato. Philadelphia, PA. 1895 · Sabato Morais Digital Repository · Legacy Projects from Judaica DH at Penn Libraries

Title

Hayye Sarah. Morais, Sabato. Philadelphia, PA. 1895

Author

Morais, Sabato

Date Created

1895

Location(s)

United States -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia

United States -- Pennsylvania

Format

12 pages on 5 sheets

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?

Language(s)

English

Source

Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies

Sabato Morais Collection, Box 9, Folder 5

Has Format

https://colenda.library.upenn.edu/items/ark:/81431/p3dn40f13/manifest.json

Link to Colenda

https://colenda.library.upenn.edu/catalog/81431-p3dn40f13

Provenance

Transfer of Custody from the Hebrew Education Society, 10 March 1913.

Is Format Of

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/judaicadh/morais/main/TEI/SMBx9FF5_8.xml

content

S. MORAIS,
546 N. FIFTH STREET,
PHILADELPHIA, PA.

95
On Parashat Chayé Sarah
[Hebrew]

Brethren. Let no one imagine that my utter--ances proceed from ill-will or prejudice. I declare that I entertain no unkind feelings towards the rest of the world, who differs from my people on doctrin--al points. Views which I may, at times, have advanced during my ministration in the present capa--city, may have seemed to some a contradiction of the assertion which I make this moment, but I say it in all sincerity; I am fraternally disposed to--wards every creature, who bears the impress of the One Sovereign Creator. It should be re--membered, however, that I have a mission to per-form, and I understand that mission to be the elevation of Judaism. Hear me then. An error is held among all classes, which, like many errors that have become inveterate, it is extremely difficult to root out. If the error existed only among non-Israelites, I might abstain altogether from attending to it, for my voice does not reach further than the Synagogue. It is universally known that Christ--ians imbibe very early in life the idea that the creed by which they swear is spiritually superior to any other.

To convince them against a notion, grown with their growth would be more than an Israelite can anticipate. But the error is held by some who share with me descent and we would suppose principles also. The error is discussed by them with the confidence ari--sing from a full persuasion that it is not a mis--apprehension but a fact. Now in reading the section of this Sabbath, I was forcibly reminded of the injustice done to Judaism, even by persons who ought to understand it rightly and be ready to rebut argu--ments prejudicial to it. Yet, it is not unusual to hear Jews, and especially Jewesses, assert that the laws which govern us tend to lower the standing of women born in Israel; that, according to our books, wo--man has no value save as a kitchen drudge or a parlor sport. In contrast with that, the praises of the re--ligion of the man of Nazareth are sounded, for having liberated woman; for having delivered her from a moral bondage and raised her to equality in every respect with man. No clearer wrong can be committed than that of identifying Judaism with woman's enslavement, and crediting Christianity with woman's emancipation. I am perfectly aware that current literature has contributed immeasurably to the spreading

of that huge blunder, so that few stop to con--sider, whether an idea so very general is a reality, or a mere fiction. I was cut to the quick; deeply mortified by a recent criticism, which would create the impression that Jewish women in Mendelssohn's time embraced the dominant belief because our belief ostracized them. "Shades of our Moses IIi; our philoso--pher, our expositor, our defender! Rise not enwrapped in shame but clothed in honor. Silence the detractors. Tell that neither thy example, nor the teachings which thou didst promulgate led Henrietta Herz, Rachel Levin, and also thy own Henrietta and Dorethea and Recha away from the synagogue which thy life and writings have illustrated." No, my brethren, it was an irresistible ambition to shine, while oppression kept the Jew and Jewess forcibly in obscurity, that counselled the awful sin. It was a spirit of worldliness that prompted Abraham Men--delssohn to encourage his children to join the reli--gion of the majority, which he described as that repre-senting modern civilization. I open Moses Mendelssohn's most erudite introduction to his famous Pentateuch and read the following:

"The Lord brought to my acquaintance Solomon [?]. Him I charged to instruct one hour every day in the construction of the Hebrew language the only son I had then been left. May God strengthen that child that he may fear and worship his holy name." No, it was not Mendelssohn's surroundings and the religion he represented and sought to eternize, that robbed us of many. Antisemitism, which like the hydra has raised its monstrous head again and again in Germany, was the foul seducer. Now, I will not dispute that peoples who are positively or nominally Christ--ians have a right to claim a large share in modern civilization, but I deny that it is due to the faith, in which they were born. History protests against that untenable assertion. Civilization, as far as it goes, is the product of the press, the steam engine, the telegraph; it is the result of a closer intercourse among the nations of the earth. Practical science is a true civilizer. Edison is a promoter of civilization. Not Popes, not cardinals and bishops. Confining myself to the point from which I started, I insist that the New Testament, instead of improving upon the old, has lowered woman from the height in which our Bible has placed her.

Read what Saul of Tarsus, called St Paul, writes, and if you find me at fault, I shall publicly retract. That apostle, who enjoys unlimited authority in the church, who is indeed the real builder of the Church, in the course of his first letter to the Corintheans, asks that woman should always appear with her head covered, or, as the newly revised version puts it, veiled, in acknowledgment of her humbleness and her subordinate position to man. He further demands of woman not to be heard in the worship, resting satisfied to listen and seeking instruction at home from her hus--band. Addressing Timothy, on of his disciples, Paul, after having given some sensible directions to the women of his age how to dress when in a house of prayer, he repeats the same rule, as above, more emphatically and recommends that women should remain silent in the service and never be allowed to teach. My hearers know that owing to those rules, showing man's superiority, a maiden in the hour of marriage promises "to honor and obey" her husband. Contrast now Paul with Moses and the prophets. Notice the privileges which the women of Israel enjoyed, not alone to sing loudly and unin--cumbered by veils as our Miriam did on the safe shore of the Red Sea, and to pray like our Hannah before Eli the priest in the

Tabernacle at Shiloh, but to judge and poetize like our Deborah, to admonish and advise a crowned head, like our Huldah, and then say which of the two religions elevated and which lowered woman. I will grant that the first pages of the Pentateuch, in pre--dicting the effects of Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden, intimate the dependence of the wife on her husband, but in doing so, Holy Writ simply defines the mutual relations resulting from a marriage state. It does not mean to command obedience--a pledge which a woman in Israel never gives to the man of her preference. For, with us the matrimonial bond is not a bondage, but a Kiddushin, "a sanctification," the hallowing of the lies of those who contract it; or, as the Talmud more expressively terms it, Yoma de Hillula "a day of thanksgiving", when two beings will jointly endeavour to further the design of the Creator, building up homes on virtue, so that the aggregate of such homes may render society morally sound. To learn how beautifully this principle is illustrated in the Old Testament, one needs only open the book of Proverbs. For, there wisdom, industry, chastity, are invariably typified by the female sex. I may be told that though I should be able to defend the Hebrew

Scriptures from the charge of having degraded woman, I would find myself at a loss to free the Rabbis from that accusa--tion. Accordingly, I might be compelled to face scattered sentences in the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmud, reflecting on woman. A benediction, embodied in our ritual, might be cast into my teeth, and, heaven knows, what more might be quoted to terrify me into a detraction. Yet, I am bold enough to declare that I could cite from the same volumes as many sentences to the exaltation of woman; utterances describing her origin of domestic prosperity and of com--munal success. And I could moreover prove that the benediction so greatly condemned for thanking the Lord at not having been created a woman, does not imply the least disparagement; that it is simply and exclu--sively an acknowledgment of man's capacities to per-form more and heavier duties than the weaker sex. England which is no more what it was, regarding her Jewish inhabit--ants, in the days of my youth, when I sojourned there for a time, tried in vain to compel the Chief Rabbi to declare that benediction an insult, by erasing it from the liturgy. He resisted the pressure asserting with positiveness that no offence to the Jewess was intended by Rabbi Meir, the author thereof, the husband of the good and learned Beruria. But not to engage in a lengthy discussion, I shall submit

to the attention of my hearers simply a few remarks connected with incidents in our Parashah, elucidating the point which I have advanced. Sarah had died, whether from the shock of having suddenly received the news of the thrilling scene on mount Moriah, as some of the Sages allege, or from other causes, it is immaterial. What interests me now is the deep affection of the patriarch, exhibited alike in words and actions. He mourned for the wife who had followed him, when he had quitted home and kind--red, bent upon a heavenly mission. He wept over the devoted mother of his Isaac, but controlling his grief with mealiness, he looked for such a burial of Sarah, as might afford him a melancholy satisfaction. He would buy at whatever cost a separate spot, which he might visit and bedew with his tears. He could have accepted a generous offer and have had Sarah interred inexpensively among the Hittites, but he declined that token of respect. Of what value were his shekels of silvers or gold, in comparison with the woman he had now lost? His own dead one, as he repeatedly called her, her whom he longed to honor in her grave; the che--rished one he had loved and esteemed in his home?
Let us now change scene. Eliezer the unselfish servant, the noble steward, has succeed in his errand.

Rebecca is to become the wife of his master's son. The bride elect and the expectant groom meet. He takes her to his mother's tent, weds her, loves her and the sorrow stricken son finds in conjugal devotion, com--fort for the irreparable loss of her that gave him birth. How expressive the Hebrew sentence in its simplicity, how true to nature, and how illustrative of the religion that teaches its votaries to respect value woman as man's equal, to pay her respect above man's self. [Hebrew] A wide spread dispersion; a long residence among innumerable nationalities of different grades of civilization may have given rise in our midst to feelings and practices that ill-accord with the his--tory of our Bible, but such usages, where they exist, are of foreign origin--unJewish. Laws which the legis-lation of peoples, among the most enlightened of our days still retain, never stained our statute book. The whipping post was not resorted to in Judea even against a scold, and a shrew, as in Great Britain not many centuries ago. I cannot dismiss a subject interesting to me, without relating a significant legend. Says the Midrash. While Sarah lived a celestial shade overspread her tent; the bread she prepared for the family table never grew sour; the doors of her dwelling remained widely open, and

and a light kept perpetually bright. After Sarah departed, all had altered. For three years Isaac lamented the change in the parental home. But soon did things resume their former aspects. Rebecca came; her husband beheld again what he was wont to see in Sarah's time "And Isaac was comforted after his mother's death." You understand it. Woman's blessed influence was felt. Industry and con--tentment met, charity and pleasure kissed one another in the home of the righteous. Let those who charge the Hebrew scriptures with the sin of woman's enslave--ment and who rail at the Rabbis, ponder on what I have said, and judge between the laws of my people and the Testament of our detractors.

Identifier

p3dn40f13

identifier

SMBx9FF5_8