Mishpatim. Morais, Sabato. Philadelphia, PA. 1896 · Sabato Morais Digital Repository · Legacy Projects from Judaica DH at Penn Libraries

Title

Mishpatim. Morais, Sabato. Philadelphia, PA. 1896

Author

Morais, Sabato

Date Created

1896

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 9, Folder 14

Has Format

https://colenda.library.upenn.edu/items/ark:/81431/p3rf5m17g/manifest.json

Link to Colenda

https://colenda.library.upenn.edu/catalog/81431-p3rf5m17g

Provenance

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

Is Format Of

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/judaicadh/morais/main/TEI/SMBx9FF14_1.xml

content

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

96
On Haftorath Mishpatim

42

The present Jewish year is almost exceptional. Unless the year is happens to be bissextile, when an additional month is in--troduced, so as to equalize, after a cycle of nineteen years, the lunar with and the solar years, the Parashah read designated for this morning, has for its corresponding Haftorah, what bears some resemblance to the ordinance of Shekahim. I mean that we read about the action of King Joash, who invited the priests to collect silver enough for repairing the Temple. And as in olden times, every Israelite was in duty bound to give, before in Adar before Nis[s]an set in entered, one half shekel for the support of the Temple Jerusalem sanctuary, we ordinarily peruse a prophetic section, recalling in part that ancient ordinance commandment. This year, as it very rarely happens occurs, Sabbath Shekahim, is, according to by a Rabbinical arrangement, defferred to next Sabbath. To day, the Haftarah is of an entirely different character. We hear Jeremiah speak. The man of God raises the uplifts his voice in sounds of admonition denunciation. He summons to before the bar of outraged justice, the sinners of his century days. The priestly We may admit that the sacerdotal Seer, who received a Divine mission in when the days of his a mere only a youth, as he said it [Hebrew] had not learned to rise al--ways in grandeur of style as Isaiah ever arose, though occasionally he does match the prince of oratory

in language surpassingly sublime majestic--but surely in pathos and in strains, melting the heart with compassion, Jeremiah stands almost alone unique. But And so long as we value abnegation above deception egotism he must remain the dearest among the prophets, candor above deception, sincerity above cringing adulation who succeeded the son of Amram; the dearest to Jewish us hearts by reason of his sufferings long endured not to dishonor the God who had sent him to on a message of correction [Hebrew] [Hebrew] "I had said," he exclaims, "I had said, I will not men--tion Him; I will not speak any more in His name, but a burning fire was ablaze in my heart; shut up within my bones--I could not overcome it." Aye: he Jeremiah did burn with zeal for the cause he has espoused--the defense of right against might. Yet he bore he was made to public he became the target of public contempt because of his the zeal he displayed Glowing with patriotism, still weak and he still felt the iron of wicked rulers with and their misguided subjects, branded him nevertheless with the stigma of treason. He who had entered into a solemn covenant with Truth, was publicly maligned and, accused of lying. He was struck and enchained and dragged thrust into dungeons, like a culprit. But he continued, in all reality, to the very last, what the first vision vouchsafed to him had predicted [inserted above: [Hebrew]]--an iron pillar, a brazen wall against the whole corrupt land, against kings and their sycophants, fluttering lying

prophets; unchangeable in his devotion to the inherited Sinaic faith. And when the sad hour arrived the hour which his illumined vision had foreseen ,when the enemy foe battered down the gates of Jerusalem; cast the all-consuming brand torch into the Holy of Holies; scattered Judah throughout Chaldea, where penitent exiles f hanging sat weeping with their harp hung on the willows, Jeremiah offered refused ease and comfort offered him by the mighty Nebuchadnezzar far from the soil he loved, choosing instead to abide among the ruins of Judea, whose stones he held dear, and whose dust he cherished. Only force, brutal force exercised by the overbearing few, who trusted treacherous Egypt, could compel the plaintive bard of our woes, to pour forth lamentations in the streets of Daphine and Memphis, whither he had been violently dragged.
The subject of his complaint in the Haftarah, which we have read to day, is the iniquity of the rich against the poor. All will remember that immediately that immediately after the delivery of the Decalogue, which is the Magna Charta of all civilization, Moses was asked directed by God, to lay down ordinances statutes concerning persons kept in slavery.

Most pitiful among heathens was the condition of such. Suffice to read the history of antiquity to be horrified at the cruelties perpetrated against the Helots in Sparta, the Bythemins in Byzantium, where the fear of a revolt by the bondmen, occasioned merciless slaugh- massacres ters and not infrequently jealousy of too great an increase, incited the masters to fiendish persecutions. Hebrews who had suffered terribly for during successive ages in galling bondage thraldom, were commanded to treat slaves very considerately. Repeatedly has Moses em-phasized the obligation of keeping in mind engraving on the tablets of our mind the fact that we also had been bound in fettered in bondage thraldom accordingly, It the deliverance from Egypt is our molto whether we greet the Sabbath day on the cup of wine, whether we hail the Passover; at almost nearly all our religious ceremonies, [Hebrew is echoed forth. A tradition which stands uncontradicted unrefuted, teaches that only extreme poverty--an impossibility in Israel, so long as the ordinances of Moses were carried out--or the commission of a theft so to working subjecting the guilty one to work in servitude in order to make a restitution, could consign a He--brew to slavery. The Rabbis dwell dictate at great length on that topic and justly conclude that to bring a Jewish slave to one's home is to buy a master, [Hebrew] so exceedingly thoughtful must the owner have shown himself, in order so as not unnecessarily to to wound feelings and reduce a fellow religionist to abject humiliation.

Non-Jewish slaves, who were mostly, were prisoners of war atrociously dealt with, must have sought the territory of Israel as a place of safety, for Moses had give left the following injunction "Thou shalt not deliver to his master, a slave who shall have escaped to thee from his master. He shall dwell with thee, in thy midst, of thee, in the place which he shall choose, within one of thy gates, where he likes best, thou shalt not oppress him." Even when bought to labor in the house and in the field, the his treatment was mild in doors; kind abroad; privileged was that human being to share with his master, the Sabbath rest and the pleasures of the sacred festivals. with his master. The Sabbatical year entitled that bondman him moreover to the spontaneous growth of the soil, in common with those born in Israel, for so it is written: "The (product of the) Sabbath of the land shall be unto you for food, even nay, for thee, and for thy man-servant, and for thy maid-servant and for thy hired laborer and for thy strangers that sojourn with thee." You must I recall with pride what was found the noble boast sentiments of the righteous Job. If I despise the cause of my man-servant or maid-servant, when they contend with me, what would I do when God rises, what could I answer, when He searches me. Did He not who made me, make him born of woman?"

And the Talmud has recorded the action of Rabbi Gam--bil who, contrary to the prevailing usage, sat mourn--ing to receive the condolence over the loss of his worthy trusty sa slave [Hebrew]. Aye: the written and the oral Law, both have humanity as their found--ation stone, kindness and forbearance as sustaining pillars. But the contemporaries of Jeremiah had forgotten all religion; they had entered into a league with irredeemable perversity. Their degeneracy offended the God of Sinai, filled His prophet with right--eous anger. King Zedekiah, the last ruler of Judah, trembling perhaps at the impending fate doom, may have heeded the admonition of the Seer, who pointed ot the sword unsheathed for the slaughter. He may have, for a time, have proclaimed the binding force of the Mosaic behests, and have loosened the shackles which inhumanity bound pressed Jews and Jewesses in bondage. But soon he relapsed into his rebellion wicked ways against the Torah. His high officials and his [?] vile partisans, the wealthy, may have gladly copied the royal inequity. Then it was that Jeremiah, denounced the brutality. He quoted Moses as in our Parashah; portrayed the Nemesis advancing with rapid strides to avenge God's word; rebuked wealthy opulent sinners, chiefs and princes who had consigned plunged Judea to perdition. into a pit of corruption.

You have heard his language: Thus saith the Lord; Ye have not hearkened unto me, to proclaim liberty, every man to his brother, and every man one to his neigh--bor; behold, I proclaim unto you a liberty, saith the Lord (to the liberty be delivered) to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine, and I will make you to be tossed to and fro along all the kingdoms of the earth.......... the princes of Judah and the princes of Jerusalem the officers and the priests....and Zedekiah King of Judah and his princes will I give into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of them that seek their life and into the hand of the King of the Babylon's army."
But the soul that reproached so fearfully in an out--burst of burning zeal for the Lord and His forsaken command, grieved to the core at the contemplation of the ap-proaching calamity. [Hebrew] "Oh! that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of m the daughters of my people" And in that volume which none other, but the man who saw affliction by the rod of God's wrath, could have traced penned; in the book of lamentations, Jeremiah strikes notes that pierce thrill every fibre of our being. "O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river

day and night, give thyself no respite; let not the apple of thine eye cease. Arise, cry in the night, at the beginning of the watches, pour out thy heart like water before the face of the Lord; lift up thy hands toward Him for the life of thy babes, that faint for hunger at the top of every street....See O Lord and behold, to whom thou hast done thus!" But let not what I have quoted, deceive any into the belief that the priest of Anathoth has gained immortality only as the elegist of our owes woes. There were moments in which the spirit of God uplifted him into the heights of prophetic ecstasy. Then Jeremiah sung of a future streaming with Joys; then he depicted God's return, drawn anew to the elect by the chords of a love everlasting, then he saw the virgins of Israel go forth with timbrels among midst the merry dancers. Lo! He looks again and beholds Samariah-mountains bedecked with vineyards, the planters shouting for gladness, the tower-watchers calling all to Zion, then Rachel's sobbings cease. The mother greatly cherished is glorified by glories again over the restoration of her children to the ancestral heritage. For that the faithful in Israel pray and bend low to the knee before the saving Lord in all the countries of their dispersion, may the redeemer come to Zion.

Identifier

p3rf5m17g

identifier

SMBx9FF14_1