Yithro. Morais, Sabato. Philadelphia, PA. Undated
- Title
- Yithro. Morais, Sabato. Philadelphia, PA. Undated
- Author
- Morais, Sabato
- Format
- 8 pages on 4 sheets
- Language(s)
- English
- Source
- Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies
- Sabato Morais Collection, Box 9, Folder 13
- Has Format
- https://colenda.library.upenn.edu/items/ark:/81431/p3rv0dm1z/manifest.json
- Link to Colenda
- https://colenda.library.upenn.edu/catalog/81431-p3rv0dm1z
- Provenance
- Transfer of Custody from the Hebrew Education Society, 10 March 1913.
- Is Format Of
- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/judaicadh/morais/main/TEI/SMBx9FF13_5.xml
- content
-
On the observance of the Sabbath
For Sabbath Itrò
I have read with emphasis; nay: I have chanted. It is not hypocrisy to pay a passing compliment to what is constantly despised? Israelites. In sorrow and not in anger, do I speak. My lay brethren have joined hands in digging a pit dark and deep, and some of our clergymen have put on their canonicals to perform the funeral obsequies. The object to be cast in its that which I have sung for. Not a song but a dirge it should have been. I ought to have suppressed the passage, or to have recited it mourn--fully. For the fourth commandment--the central Jewish figure in the Decalogue--is all but dead. My hear sinks within me, when I think that my house is built on the grave of my religion. Why pay a teacher to pray and preach, when the sanctity of the Sabbath, he is bound to uphold, has been pu--blicly declared by his constituents, an impossibility? Call it treason in a Rabbi to divest our queen of her crown and place it on the head of her rival. It is, in all truth, foul treason to one's trust to transfer the halo with which the creating God encircled the day,
typical of the completion of His handiwork, to a day symbolical of the pretended resurrection of a man-god. Yet, who can deny what treacherous mi--nisters declaim on their pulpits? Hear it: Our children will be raised grow in ignorance of Judaism, because the voice which resounds in the Synagogue can never reach their ears, so long as it is echoed forth on Saturdays, while the chiming of the church bell on Sundays, invites them within the pale of Christendom. Gloomy is the contemplation of the future of those who have children, and most gloomy to the God-fearing, whose offspring spurn the idea of idling away an existence, which may earn for them a competence and civic or political honors. They may be high spirited and conscious of their abilities to rise by their earnest exertions. What an alternative on the very threshold of their manhood? To reach attain the objects end of their aspiration, they must overstep the limits set by the heavenly Lawgiver! Parental education, early surroundings may have inspired reverence for the enunciation of Sinai. The Sabbath lights, the hymns and pslams, the choicer meal at the family
board may have left a profound impression. But interest is a motive power, impelling on with a force almost irresistible, even when the sentiments raise power- strong -ful obstacles. How many who trembled at the thought of sitting behind the desk, of handling the pen, or the meteyard or the chisel on the Sabbath, finally yeilded to an ambition, which I scarcely dare stigmatise as unholy! For, just as the revealed Word is the ema--nation of Supreme wisdom, so is the natural impetus that leads us to give our faculties full scope, a fiat from the Eternal. Must I check that impulse? Yes: I must curb it among my own, though to do so it may entail privations and sore trials. Honestly; fidelity to my trust demands it at my hands; but can I demand it of others? Can I say to yonder youth: thou art endowed with exceptional talents; they will develop brightly by appliances brought to hear thereupon, but thou must not go in quest of them, because the sa--credness of the seventy day forbids it? And would I indeed be heeded, were I to speak thus in the face of a pressures tremendous in their its character?
I am not so presumptuous as to believe that what weighs heavily upon my mind, does not occupy that of some among my coreligionists. I know fathers and mothers, who shed scalding tears the first Sabbath that, after long and painful struggles, they said to their aspiring sons: "go, work, it cannot be helped." Those words were thrusts in their heart's core; but a choice was to be made between a life of inactivity and the violation of the fourth commandment. That sons have sought employment among those, who like himself, are sworn to stand by the covenant, but Alas! where one may have admired his principles, hun--dreds had only cold pity for his qualms of conscience. For it is a notorious fact, that no religious sympathy is shown to the consistent Jew by his brother Jew of America. Only a few days since, I casually met a young Israelite, whom I did not recognize. He gave me his name, and said that he had attended synagogue and the Sunday School. The lessons early imbibed have not been were not forgotten, but their application had grown to be beyond his control. He was in humble circumstances. To provide for himself, and aid
those who have a claim on his assistance, he felt compelled to set aside what he was taught to consider essential to the maintenance of his faith. He had strenuously endeavoured to avoid that issue by asking his coreligionists to allow him the pri--vilege of following up his convictions, but he dis--covered that he could preserve the latter, only at the sacrifice of a livelihood. Who will cast the first stone upon that Sabbath breaker? Not I, who have the deepest commiseration for the poor, fearfully tempted to transgress. But with the rich I contend. If those of my race who possess influence in commercial circles and in the money market, were to enter into a covenant of righteousness, and, forming themselves into a committee of the whole, were to carry out this motion: "Whereas the Law of Sinai is imperilled by our recklessness, and whereas by reason of it our children walk on the brink of apostasy, there--fore be it resolved that the Sabbath shall be kept by us henceforth and always on the day which the Creator stamped with the seal of heaven": If those who have gathered tens even hundreds of thousands more than they actually need,
were so united in a holy bond, a fresher and enduring life would be allotted to Judaism in America. That resolution would shed greater glory upon our name, than even the endowing of beneficial institutions. "The most splendid bequest of the wealthy is their giving to God, what belongs to God." This Such was my remark to a well-meaning Israelite, who believed that posthumous charities cover a multitude of sins. Benefi--cence is a most noble trait, but the Almighty knows how far we are able to extend it. He will not reckon a sin it a crime our dispensing it in small measures a crime, when we cannot, in justice to our families, distribute it largely, but He will surely visit upon us the iniquity of having deliberately defied His expressed will. For so it is written: Verily ye shall keep the Sabbaths, for it is holy unto you. Whoso- a sign between Me and between -ever profanes it shall be put to death, for you through your generations....Whosoever does any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among the people....Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath throughout their generations
as an everlasting covenant" The question now lies between belief and disbelief. They who regard the utterances of Sinai as a breathing of the Most High, as a fiat imprescriptable, should seek every means imaginable to give it perpetuity. Those who look upon the promulgation from the pinnacle of Horeb as a fiction, may proceed to break the fourth, with the same indifference as they will violate the third, when they curse and blaspheme, and the sixth eighth, when they deal fraudulently, and all the Decalogue whenever it suits their material interests insatiable greed of gain or carnal longings. You have not, I trust, made a league with the im--pious. You have not taught your minds to dis--card as an imposture what our fathers inherited, as a heaven-imparted truth. I ask then that you will ponder on my humble words and act consistently with your professions. I ask it in the name of Moses and the prophets; I ask it for the sake of the house of our Lord; I ask it principally in the spiritual interest of our children, whose happiness here and hereafter is our ardent wish and fervent prayer. (Here followed a prayer) - Identifier
- p3rv0dm1z
- identifier
- SMBx9FF13_5
Part of Yithro. Morais, Sabato. Philadelphia, PA. Undated
Morais, Sabato, “Yithro. Morais, Sabato. Philadelphia, PA. Undated”, Sabato Morais Digital Repository, accessed September 16, 2024, https://judaicadhpenn.org/legacyprojects/s/morais/item/91387