Lecture 24. Morais, Sabato. Philadelphia, PA. Undated · Sabato Morais Digital Repository · Legacy Projects from Judaica DH at Penn Libraries

Title

Lecture 24. Morais, Sabato. Philadelphia, PA. Undated

Author

Morais, Sabato

Location(s)

United States -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia

United States -- Pennsylvania

Format

10 pages on 4 sheets

Rights

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

Language(s)

English

Source

Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies

Sabato Morais Collection, Box 12, Folder 4

Has Format

https://colenda.library.upenn.edu/items/ark:/81431/p3m32nv6b/manifest.json

Link to Colenda

https://colenda.library.upenn.edu/catalog/81431-p3m32nv6b

Provenance

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

Is Format Of

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/judaicadh/morais/main/TEI/SMBx12FF4_4.xml

content

Post-Biblical Lecture
24th

Several weeks ago in looking back to the state of our forefathers in Judea, we saw Herod their King in high spirits. The rebuilding of the Temple had been finished with a magnificence surpassing even that of Solomon's. Herod thought that the dazzling splendor of such an edifice de--dicated to Israel's God, had blinded our people to the unpardonable faults vice of his character; that the ineffaceable crimes he had committed against the house of the Asmoneans, had been washed away by the blood of burnt-offerings. In that hope, he left for Rome, where his two sons Alexander and Aristobulus Aristobulus were being educated, and brought the youths along to Jerusalem. The reception which those children of the unhappy Marianne met was an outburst of popular affection. Their father noticed the welcome, but did not appear jealous; his sister Salome noted it down, but with a pen dipped in gall. That wretched vile woman cared nothing that her own daughter Berenice had been given in marriage to Aristobulus. The same hatred which she had shown to Marianne and which had unjustly consigned the latter to the death of a criminal, she

nurtured against her two sons. It was a fear that if f either got rose into power, she would be made to suffer for her past offences, which stirred her up to plan conspiracies. She took into her secrets, her wicked brother Pheroras, and both succeeded in persuading Herod that his two sons bore him grudge because of the execution of their mother. That the youths may not have forgotten the sad fate of their maternal parent and that of her unfortunate relatives, is scarcely to be wondered at, but that because of it they designed to kill their father was rank falsehood. Herod believed credited it, for, "conscience does make cowards of us all" of us", wrote the greatest of English poets. To spite his two sons of Maccabean blood, he recalled to the royal courts, an older son whom he had by an Idumean wife before he married Marianne. Antipater was his name, and like his name's sake--Herod's father--he was an adept in cunning and knavery. Him Herod declared his successor to the throne, and sent to Rome The two sons of Marianne could not to have him instructed in all branches of learning. The two sons of Marianne could not look upon such partiality with unconcern. They complained of it among supposed friends, and there by exag--gerations and untruths made Herod believe that his life was

in imminent danger. Upon that, he set off for Italy, and summoned Alexander and Aristobulus before Au--gustus Caesar. The Roman emperor discovered that the sons of Marianne had been indiscreet in their talk speaking, but not guilty of attempting a parricide. A reconciliation took place, and the king of the Jews, who was always tossed on a sea of uncertainties, promised that at the death of Antipater, Alex--sander and Aristobulus should share the kingdom between them--a resolution not at all calculated to promote peace. Herod finding his home a prey to bitter quarrels, tried to divert his mind by indulging in public amusements. Having built a city which he called Cesarea, with great magnificence, he introduced there Greek and Roman games--circuses for gladiators, theatres for Athletes and for dancers. He also married Jewish and foreign women to the number of eight, and it is told that being unable to meet the extravagant expenses caused he by his mania for building, and for entertaining his most sumptuously strangers visiting Judea and bestowing costly gifts on Romans, he ransacked tried to impiously tried to open the grave of King David, which was reported to to contain treasures of silver and gold, and ransack it & rob it.

But to Herod Herod's house was still a guilded grave. To him might be applied the sentence of Micah: "Trust not in a friend, rely not on a con--fidant, keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lies in thy bosom, for the son dishonors the father, the daughter rises against her mother, the daughter in law against her mother in law, a man's enemies are the men of his own house." Salome Pheroras, Antipater and other members of that iniquitous family never ceased to poison the mind of the king by letters if not they could not reach him by words. And they succeeded in weaving a net into which the two sons of Marianne were inextricably caught. The unnatural Herod having extolled false confessions by means of tortures, convened a mock tribunal, and had Alexander and Aristobulus condemned to be strangled. Thus a last remnant of the illustrious Asmoneans was rooted out, and its destroyer was a parent who tore out of his breast every human instinct, to let ferocity lodge therein. Marianne's children may have lacked prudence; they may have spoken too candidly to their grievances, but was it an actual crime to complain that their ever suspecting father had raised above them the son of an Idumean woman? Was it a sin to be loved by a people who remembered their noble birth and extraction?

Or should the beauty of their persons have been accounted an offence? Had they deceived their father, as the infamous Antipater deceived him? Alexander and Aris--tobulus died the victims of an irreconcilable hatred, but their blood and vengeance from out of the ground which opened to receive their corpse. Wherever Herod turned he saw treason and or sedition. He detected discovered it in his people and in one of his wif wives, in his brother, in his sister, in his favorite son. For Antipater grew impatient of waiting to mount up the throne for his father's natural death. to mount the throne and By a combination of plots, which he thought could never be unravelled, he prepared had a poison prepared to be mixed in Herod's food. The traitor imagined, perhaps, that he was beyond detection for being in Rome at the time, but the book of truth has taught that "there is no darkness nor shad--ow of death wherein the workers of iniquity can hide them--selves." Antipater was sent for, and to throw him off his guard, Herod pretended that his services were greatly needed at home. On his arrival at Jerusalem, he perce read his doom in the ominous silence which attended his entry. The vile f hypocrite attempting to kiss his father was motioned back, and charged with having occasioned the condemnation of his brothers, and with stealthily endeavouring to become a parricide.

Summoned before a tribunal, he made protestations of love and loyalty, called God as a witness, of his innocence, struck his breast and wept aloud, but the proofs of his contemplated crime were too strong and too numerous. Having deprived him of his right of succession to the kingdom, Herod had him enchained in a tower, awaiting for a letter of Augustus Caesar, sanctioning the execution of the rebellious son.
Meanwhile grief, vexation, debauch and old age told severely on the wretched king. He brew hopelessly ill, and as his scik--ness was of a nature insufferably virulent he would have committed suicide, if not prevented by a relative. Antipater ex--pecting to hear every moment of his father's death, entreated the prison's guard keeper to set him to liberty, promising a large reward, but the man reported the proposition and the offer, and Herod ordered his son's instant decapitation. Nor was only the atrociously wicked Antipater that lost forfeited his life towards the end of the king's career. A number of Pharisees, and among them two distinguished and revered Sages Judah & Matthias who, profitting of the desperate condition of Herod tore down the Roman Eagle which he had placed on the top of one of the Temple's gates, were burnt alive.

Knowing moreover that his demise would be a source of joy to the nation when he had tyrannized over and outraged, he ordered that the most noted among his subjects should be shut up in a circus, and he bid Salome and his sister and her third husband Alexis, to have them slaughtered as soon as he expired. In that manner Jews would be compelled to mourn and lament, whereas they might otherwise have felt happy. After having made new dispositions about succession, dividing the country among three sons, Archelaüs and Herod Antipas of a Samaritan woman, and Phillip of another, he died in the seventieth year of his age, and the thirty seventh, since he had been chosen king of Judea by the grace of the Roman senate.
It is has been my painful task to dwell somewhat on the character of a man deserving of the detestation of all good people, and specially of every Jew. A proper understanding of post--biblical events, demanded at my hands to that I should follow that course. Still I make cannot dismiss the unpleasant subject, without making adding a few observations. If we measure one's greatness by the number of battles successfully fought, of the splendid cities he built, of the rich treasures he ammassed

of the treaties he concluded with dreaded republics and empires, then Herod the Idumean can claim the title of "great" by which he is designated. For few potentates excelled him in military bravery; in the ability to plan the extension of territories and the erection of temples; in the art of of filling his royal treasury with countless gold, and in the munificence of presents to his allies friends and allies. But if a king's greatness is gauged by the his capacity of to rendering the country happy through the prevalence of peace, through internal improvements conducive to the comfort of the masses, through a limitation of taxes, making the laborer enjoy his earnings, and through the preservation of national laws and customs, then Herod is little and meanly low indeed. For he began his career by waging war against all who opposed his arbitrary schemes, he proceeded by defying the authority of the Sanhedrin, by scandalising our fathers with his learning to heathen habits and practices, by extorting money to gratify his mania for enlarging his dominions, and because he knew that his descent from a people, always inimical to the Jews, and his having supplanted the offspring of a family whom the Jews fondly loved and venerated, rendered him an object

of abhorrence, he killed one by one the members of that illustrious household. He turned his home into a chamber of horrors, his metropolis into a vast dungeon, and too wicked or too weak to shake off a hateful yoke, he tied Judaism to the conquering chariot of pagan Rome. Herod was not altogether destitute of generous impulses--for the worst of beings have been supplied by nature with kindly sentiments--but an am--bition which knew no bounds stifled all other feelings, and con--verted him into a monster. I cannot conclude my narrative of the life of that detestable ruler of our people more fittingly than with the words of a distinguished French writer of our own faith." "The epithet of great which history has given him, is a bitter sarcasm. His greatness consisted in being a magnificent slave dragging golden cha fetters, and that greatness culminated in delivering his people to despair for which issue he himself dug opened an abyss that swallowed it up completely."

Identifier

p3m32nv6b

identifier

SMBx12FF4_4