An historical lecture · Sabato Morais Digital Repository · Legacy Projects from Judaica DH at Penn Libraries

Title

An historical lecture

Author

Morais, Sabato

Location(s)

United States -- Pennsylvania -- Philadelphia

United States -- Pennsylvania

Format

23 pages on 25 sheets

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

Language(s)

English

Source

Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies

Sabato Morais Collection, Box 13, Folder 1

Has Format

https://colenda.library.upenn.edu/items/ark:/81431/p3pv6bs8d/manifest.json

Link to Colenda

https://colenda.library.upenn.edu/catalog/81431-p3pv6bs8d

Provenance

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

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content

An historical lecture
Delivered
Before the Y. M. H. A.

Ladies & Gentlemen. Ladies and Gentlemen. With gratitude to all who labor for the revival of Jewish literature, as one of the means, by which to reawaken a sense of dependence upon the Director and Preserver of Israel, and to ensure a promote practical reverence for the laws He prescribed, I accepted the task assigned ot me by the Association I have now the honor to address. The period of history in which the land of our fathers, struggled, in vain, against the colossal power of Babylon, the events that happened during the sojourn of the Palestinian exiles in Chaldea, and the restoration of from the cap--tivity by the edict of a Persian King, form the subject of on which I have been requested to speak. The mind of my audience will readily suggest the necessity of dispensing with any introductory remarks, and of condensing the theme--with--out rendering it obscure--so that it may not exceed a reasonable time, during which I may hope to obtain a patient hearing. 24 centuries ago ¶ Twenty four centuries ago, a foreign embassy arrived at Jerusalem. It was headed by the son of a Ruler, bearing letters and gifts. These were designed to express sentiments of high regard for the man, who sat upon the throne of Judah. In the [?] of his days, Hezekiah had been suddenly compassed with by the shadows of death. But he prayed for life, and God granted it.

The distinguished personages he greeted, had received from their royal master, Baladan King of a distant country, called Babylon, the charge of offering congratulations and tokens of friendship to the monarch providentially restored to health. Hezekiah fully deserved the honor, but he overestimated it. Nor did he penetrate into the political motives, which had, in all likelihood, actuated the Ruler who paid, the Sovereign of a far-off nation, respect, in so signal a manner. Elated at the idea of receiving at his court envoys who had travel--led, for his sake, from the banks of the Euphrates to the hills of Moraih, he made a grand display of all the riches he possessed. But what had escaped the discernment of the King of Judah, the prophet of Judah, would seem to have clearly detected. Babylon had come to search how far to what extent could Palestine be utilized, to use a modern phrase, either as an ally or as a subjugated province. Isaiah's broad looks must have peered into the ambitious schemes of a tributary of Assyria, and he rebuked Hezekiah for having allowed his vanity to overreach his sagacity discretion. "That very power," said the divinely illumined mentor, "that very power which now flatter my pays thee so extraordinary you a compliment will, one day, plunder the property you wealth thou hast exhibited, and ruin overthrow ruin the land it has surveyed."

Babylon dear hearers!, like so many Eastern countries, had been brought to a state of vassallage, by the all-sweeping Assyria. But, she that prided herself on her founder, the mighty Nimrod, and on her former greatness, could not tamely stoop to the Conqueror. She studied the opportunities enabling her to master sufficient strength, so as to deal a staggering blow at her liege lord, and thus regain supremacy. Hezekiah did not live to see that run of the political wheel, by which Babylon rose high, was lifted to its former height; but the prediction of Isaiah was too received, unhappily, received a literally fulfilment. How often we mortal beings pray for short-sighted mortals petition for that which eventuates in a disasters! Better would it have been, humanely speaking, if the disease, which had once prostrated the monarch of Judah, had carried him to the grave. His dominions would not have been then in--herited by a young child, whose surroundings and edu--cation shaped him into an incarnate fiend. For, Menasseh grew to be the open enemy of his father's religion; a scourge to his people, the cause of exposing the country, through its weakness, to the incursions of aggressive Assyria, and of preparing paving the way for to its total overthrow, by re--suscitated Babylon.

Menasseh having ascended the throne when only twelve years of age, was, doubtless, brought up among tampered with by individuals opposed to the rigorous measures which Hezekiah adopted, to reinstate the worship of the One indivisible God upon Mosaic principles. Disappointed because they could not enjoy lucrative offices as priests of the altars raised heretofore in every city; foiled, perhaps, in the attempt of indulging into the immoral wanton diversions of neighboring heathens, they resolved that the new king should be of quite a different stamp from his predecessor. How they succeeded, history could not tell with more fearful significance, than by saying declaring that Menasseh led his subjects to do more evil than the nations Canaanitish tribes, whom the Lord destroyed before the children because of their crimes of Israel, had ever done; and, again, that Menasseh shed so much innocent blood, as to fill Jerusalem with it, from one end to the other. Even if his son Amon had copied his grand-Sire instead of having adhered so closely to the destructive policy of his father, little good could have been achieved. For over half a century, Judah had been sinking into dissolution. To restore it to a nor-mal state, it needed a greater upheaval, than the efforts of a single man, however influentially strong and thoroughly patriotic, could might possibly create.

If the endeavours of one person could have effected a lasting change, surely those made by Josiah would surely have brought about a glorious regeneration. For, we may search look among the annals of the sacred canon, and we will not find his equal for the unabated energy with which he blotted out every vestige of idolatry, for the unsparing (some my term it fierce) determination of searching and rooting out the adherents of debauching polytheism, for his religious ardor in de--claring the supremacy of the book of the Law, which Helkiah the priest had found, neglected in its original genuineness, in a spot, where contributions for the repairing of the Temple had been de--posited. But too enervated had the people become, to maintain itself by the moral force of its superior tenets. The whizzing of the arrow, which struck Josiah at Meggido, when, fearing an invasion, he opposed the march of Pharaoh Necho's army against the Assyrians, was the herald of the nation's fall. Well might Jeremiah, the plaintive bard of Israel mourn over the event. He O bewail the demise of personified Righteousness. He could see the fatal consequences of that event looming at a distance high. And how he, the devoted patriot, strove to mitigate, at least, the evils arising form foreign subjugation, and to prevent the horrors of war, and a protracted exile, none that have a heart to feel can read without tears and weep not.

Already Twenty three years, he exclaimed "I have I already been speaking to you early and late, but you would not listen"......"I said, pray turn away, I pray, each of you from his evil way course and wrong doing, and stay that you may abide in the land, which the Lord gave unto you and your fathers." ¶ But Joachaz the son of Josiah, madly rushed into the arms of destruction. Bent upon oppressing his subjects, he may have very possibly have so alienated their latter affection, that tey did not offer sufficient resistance against the army of Necho. They may have even welcomed the change, which the King of Egypt imposed upon them. For having carried Joachaz captive, after the short reign of three months, he replaced the deposed ruler by an older brother. But it was a change, not an improvement. Joachim yeilded himself to vice and sin. He turned the capital of his kingdom into a hot-bed of depravity. No one dared, without jeopardizing his life, to raise a voice against the enormities committed. A prophet, Uriah by name, whose lips condemned what his noble nature hated, was brought back from Egypt, whither he had fled, and executed. Jeremiah, the type of the man he dolefully mournfully describes in the third chapter of the book of lamentations, of the him man that gives his cheecks to the striker smiter, and who is filled with contempt;

Jeremiah buffetted and cursed, cast into the mire and imprisoned, still excited an reverential awe, undefinable dread. Neither the iniquitous Jajachim, nor his wily successor Zedekiah found courage to put him to death. silence him by with a stroke of the sword. He lived to witness in all its horror terrific truth, the fulfilment of what Isaiah had predicted, and he himself had tried striven in vain to avert or to temper down alleviate.
¶ Observe my hearers! the scene has been shifted by an invisible hand. It is not Assyria that boastingly exclaims "I can reach with my numerous chariots the sides of the summit of Lebanon, and hue down its loftiest cedars." It is not Nor is it Egypt that imperiously cries "Come up ye horses steeds, raise a maddening noise ye chariots, let the mighty men advance ,the Ethiopians and the Lybians who seize don grasp the shiled, the Lydians, that skilfully handle the bow".....will destroy a city and those who dwell therein". Both powers have been shorn of their glory. The allied armies of Nabopolassar the Chaldean, and of Darius, or Cyascares, of Media have entered the famous Nineveh and brought it low razed it to the ground. And at Carchemith, or Circaeium by the Euphrates, the mis-tress of the Nile, outwitted and routed had was constrained to renounce her pretentions on Palestine. The land of the patriarchs lies now at the mercy of Babylon terrific the whilom obsequious well wisher of a sovereign of Judah, of Babylon now fearful terrific in the consciousness of her resurrected power.

A heavy tribute must be paid, or the enfeebled nation must bristle up and fight the foreigner to the bitter end. The [?]-hearted Jojachim promises to surrender his independence, and forward the annual impost to the city of prodigious walls; but straining his looks for the assistance of Egyptian horses and chariots and warriors expected, he soon plays false. Jeremiah exhorts to fidelity. He is jeered at. "No fidelity needs be kept to the a detested foe." The prophet points with unerring finger to the two-edged sword hanging over the head of the whole nation. He is branded with the stigma of disloyalty. "That sword will yet be shattered into fragments." Eleven years of an storing ignominous reign terminate with the death of the king, whose profligacy and dishonesty have dragged the country to the verge of ruin. a precipice. Happy he that dies is summoned hence before the giant of the North has girded his loins. For, the son of Jojachim has scarcely mounted the throne, when Nebuchadnezzar tears him away and chains his body into a Babylonian prison." As I live, saith the Lord, though Coniah the son of Jojakim King of Judah were the signet upon my right-hand, yet would I pluck him thence."....."O land, O land, O land, hear the word of the Lord."....."Write ye this man for as a desolate being, a man that can never prosper..".

Zedekiah recorded in Holy Writ as the last king of Judah, would not have been so reckoned, but for his judgment which was glaringly weak, and for his will which was exceedingly wicked. Having received his royal ap--pointment as a gift from the mighty Ruler of Chaldea, he should not have broken faith. He should ought to have exercised his authority--that shadowy authority still left--, to collect the tax and forward the stipulated sum to the redeem his pledge. exactor But the rich smarting under the demand for large contributions, advised counselled rebellion; fulsome courtiers, assuming the garb of prophets, predicted a splendid future to Judah, when Ophrah, who weilded the sceptre in Mizraim, would furrow the Mediterranean waves sea and bring across his redoutable cavalry host. But Egypt, had Sennacherib deridingly but justly said "is a broken reed, whosoever leans upon it, will have his hand bored through." Egypt, had, the true far-sighted prophet, written, "is a man and not a God." It cannot withstand the thunder of war: Nebuchadnezzar. The helper and the helped must inevitably succomb thereto.

If there is aught that can redeem atone, in a measure for the culpable folly of the last King of Judah and his mis--guided subjects, it is the heroic resistance offered; that superhuman effort to force the assailant back by enduring hunger and thirst rather than unfasten with darstardly hand the gates through which he might make his victorious entry. If there is aught that can atone for expiate for the sins of Zedekiah and his ill-advisers, it is the shocking death they suffered. For the princes of Judah were butchered at Reblah--, a town where the general of the invaders held his seat [?] stallion--and their king (horrible to recount!) had the sight of those eyes, which were first made compelled to see, the slaughter of the royal household, cruelly put out. and he was left In that pitiable condition state was he left long to pine away in a prison cell in the dreariness of a dungeon. The land of promise had now, literally--as the great she--herd of Israel told it who had stood on the top of Sinai told it ages before, cast out her inhabitants because of their defilements. A very small residue in a very lowly condition was allowed to remain, under the vigilance of a governor chosen by the Babylonians. Jeremiah the large-hearted patriot-- chose very unlike the Jewish polished but selfish [?] of the second captivity dispersion of Israel--preferred privations on his native soil, rather than to the en-joyment of proferred honors in a foreign country.

Guidaleah the son of a sainted Hebrew, who had, upon one occasion, saved the life of the prophet, doubt--less intended to benefit by the association of the ser--vant of God, and to abide by commit his resolve inspired judgment. He would meant to govern the few of his coreligionists, committed to his guardianship, uprightly and fraternally. ¶ It is known to all how foul treachery thwarted noble Guidaleahs the honest man's designs; how a certain Ishmael, a descend--ant of royalty, incited by envy--a passion fanned into blaze by the king of the Ammonites--, pitilessly slew the unsuspecting governor, and all the Judeans stationed with him at Miazpah. I will not detain my hearers with the description a narrative of the pursuit of the murderer and his accomplices, made by Johanan son of Kareah; of the unwise decision taken afterward subsequently by the latter, and a band of fugitives, to seek a home in Egypt, and drag thither every remnant of the tribes, dwelling in Palestine. But I cannot suffer the illustrious personage, who has stood before my mental vision, while essaying to draw an faint outline of the events which wrought the first disso--lution of our nationality I cannot suffer the glorious tried patriot to vanish from sight, without casting after him a lingering look.

Jeremiah, the man of sorrow, the poet of our woes. I see him yet: his countenance radiant with a light divine. A multitude crazed with terror at the bare name of Babylon, have torn him from the spot, whose very stones he cherished. He is carried to Daphne.....What does the immortal exile hold in his hand? He heaps up stones against the portals of Pharaoh's palace. "Upon these," he exclaims "shall Nebuchadnezzar raise his throne...The men of Judah who would go to Egypt, and then offer incense to idols, will die by sword and by famine, till they have been consumed." It is the outburst of a righteous indigna-tion. He that has given vent to it now disappears. History is silent touching the end of that hero of the olden faith. Tra--dition does not point to the grave which has mouldered into dust that heart ever-throbbing with love for a Law despised and trampled on. But a residue of his disciples exist, who have embalmed the Seer in their tenderest thoughts. Annually they undertake a pilgrimage. Upon the recurrence of the inauspicious ninth of Ab, on which Jere--miah beheld the Sanctuary, where the Divinity hovered above the Che--rubim, a prey to devouring flames, they bend low to listen to his plaintive strains. When they hear how through all tribulations the mercies of the Lord to Israel have been unending, they feel that the consolatory words are a newly received message from the Sacerdotal Bard of Anathoth to to the tribes he p reproved, but for whom he yearned with all the depth of his great soul.

Yes, O Israelites! dear coreligionists! The loving-kindness of God has been marvellously exhibited in the captivity of His chosen witnesses, not less than in their deliverance from thraldom. It became essential for the stability of Mosaism among its heirs, and for the developping of the principles destined to permeate society, that Judah should be plucked off from whence it was first rooted in, and be transplanted into a foreign soil. The atmosphere in which the moral life of Judah breathed, had become tainted with pestilential in--fluences. Polytheism and its disintegrating organs, were busy at work to put out extinguish that existence. True: Babylon also reeked with the fumes of oblations poured out at the shrine of false deities, but the exiles many among the captives turned away, not to inhale the air which wafted no longer the frangrance of Carmel and Lebanon. They sought the solitary banks where the Euphrates and the Tigris lay flowed, and upon the weep--ing willows they hung the harp, whose strings once responded to the songs of Zion.
The lapse of time, which intervened between the first disper--sion and the restoration had not had a Josephus. It is an historical gap, waiting for an able hand which can fill it.

The Association that has assigned to me that task, has greatly overrated my capacities. I cannot throw any light upon that point. I have diligently con--sulted authors within my reach, but I have learnt nothing positive, nothing deserving to be presented as facts, be--cause bearing the signet of truth seal of an incontestable authority. It may, however, be deduced from the writings of Ezekiel, who probably was taken young to Babylon and who lived and died there, that the captives exiles were allowed certain districts to dwell in, that they were governed by their own laws, that their chiefs and elders did not always set an example of piety, but that the teachings of the fearless Seer and his bold oratory must have created an healthful impression. It can scarcely be disputed, at all events, that Chaldea was the laboratory set apart by the Almighty Artificer to remould the minds of corrupt Judah. There, was ido--latry against at which Jeremiah had levelled, to no purpose, the fire of his inspired eloquence, finally melted. Without instancing what is related of Daniel and his three asso--ciates, it is evident that the bulk of the population of Judeans, grown to be very quite numerous, was being weaned away from polytheism, and won over to the Monotheistic idea, which is the central pillar of the religion of Moses.

The circumstance incident which gave origin to the feast of Purim,--posterior, of course, to the time of which I now speak shows how fealty to the once abandoned belief had taken a fast hold of the multitude. Every one can recall the charge of the wicked Agagite to. He before his royal patron. "There is a people scattered in all the provinces of thy kingdom, whose laws differ from those of any people." I have said the bulk, and not all, because the unscrupulousness of some to contract marriages intermarry with heathens women, would denote in them a culpable indifference to the results of such matrimonial alliances. Still Babylon was confessedly a school of lasting reformation, Babylon the flatterer seemingly [?] pseudo friend of Judah, Babylon the destroyer of Judah, was made by the invisible Ruler of human events to effect His will in Israel, and through Israel in the world at large. The question But not in the Babylon under the dynasty of that Sovereign, who walking through a majestic palace, applauded his own might prowess and glory, was the working of a potent Judaism manifested. The race of Nebuchadnezzar made room for another, more in sympathy with the creeds enunciated by Mosaism.

At Belshazzar's impious banquet the feat went forth. The idols of Babylon, will e cast to the moles and to the bats. Fire-worship, symbolic of an all-vivifying Spirit, said to have been followed in Media and Persia at an early date--, was a marked improvement on the deification of nature material sensual objects. Cyrus, who after the death of Cyascares the second, or Darius, his uncle and father-in-law, placed upon his head a double crown, may have discovered some analogy between his belief and that of his Judean subjects. He may have been shown by the latter, the passage in Holy Writ, which announced the rising of the Eastern Conqueror before whom Bel and Nebo, the idols deities of the Chaldeans would crouch. He may have felt exalted on seeing his name adorned with the title of Messiah, the Restorer of the house of the uncreated spirit, and the Deliverer of men who adored One Eternal God. We are too far from the time, to judge with precision, touching the motives which led Cyrus to issue his famous edict. But the circumstance that scarcely fifty thousand of those for whom it was issued, in whose behalf it had been promulgated, availed themselves of it, has a significance. It brings home to forces the conviction upon the mind the conviction that the Perso-Medican King gave early evidences of favoring the immense Jewish population scattered through his empire, and that they was on their part, were loth to change habitation.

Hence we read that when the chiefs of Judah and Benjamin, and the Priests and Levites, together with all who felt disposed to take possession again to the ancient heritage, entered into arrangements to that effect, they were supplied with silver and gold and voluntary offerings for the future sanctuary by those around, whom I understand to be the Hebrews of settled in various localities. Gladly they parted with some of their substance to promote a righteous object, but the liberal sentiments of the new Ruler, had inspired the hope that the land of exile would offer them rest, and the free exercise of the religion endeared by trials, therefore and there and in the midst of that transformed Babylon would they cast their lot. I advance it as my own opinion--and let it be considered as such;--I hold that the aged among the Judean Community, who still longed to revisit the sacred spot they had stood upon in their childhood, kindled up aroused the enthusiasm, which urged a portion of their younger brethren to undertake a fatiguing distant journey and the difficult arduous mission of raising the Temple from its ruins. I fancy that I am supported in my theory by the Scriptural sentence which says that "many of the priests and Levites and chiefs of the families, the old people [Hebrew] Hazzekenen who had seen the first house; when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes--wept with a loud voice."

And I am farther sustained by a chronology which makes Jeshua the priest, and makes Zerubabel the prince of Judah, and beyond question Jeshua the priest, the immediate descendants of the parents whom Nebucadnez--zar had transported to Babylon.
But of those two illustrious personages, had passed a stage of life, in which bodily vigour is revealed in an un--bending form, they evinced no sign of decrepitude. Strong they were in the will to resist obstacles, and to bring the whole force of their moral character to bear upon the work of reconstruction. Palestine, though formerly a dependency of Babylon, submitted, no doubt, to the Persian victor, and the Judeans did not experience much difficulty in establishing their claims to its possession. But neighboring tribes looked, with jealousy, upon the return of the exiles. From the hour that the leaders had rallied the adherents of the Mosaic legislation round a common altar, hostilities began. Harassed and distracted in their endeavours, Zerubabel and Jeshua still labored for the realization for the promotion of the national project cause. Shortly after their arrival, they convened a general assembly in a provisionary Tabernacle, and enforced obedience to the laws, by the observance of the solemn festivals which occur in Tishri.

They set about preparing materials for the re-edi--fication of the Temple, and in the month of Heshvan of the following year, was the corner stone thereof laid at the sound of music, and psalmody.
Here, with your permission, I stop. Not because the task assigned to me is, by any means, complete, but because to proceed farther would be to enter a feild of literature vast and rich, from which I could not gather a single flower, without wrongfully depriving you of much that my reason and feelings urge me to offer. For, to speak becomingly of the Haggai and Neheme Zechariah, of Ezra and Nehemiah, of the stirring times and events and adversities they shaped into a noble end; to point to that con-stellation of human excellencies--the men of the Great Synod-- from whom we obtained the unquenchable light, which illu--mined the path of Israel in the gloomiest days of persecution, and which will ever shed its splendor around us; to fittingly relate, I say, what we owe our immortal predecessors, whom the Talmud declares to have restored to the religion of the Hebrews its priceless diadem, would be to describe the de-velopping of ideas inherent in Judaism, but mirrored in institutions most wise and supremely beneficial. In a word: it would be to delineate the history of the traditions,

which have breathed into us a new and never-dying existence.
But as I am addressing an Association, that has taken the initiative towards carrying out an object, which our good preceptors of old, considered of vital importance, I must ex--hibit to view the latent power by which a lasting reform--ation was effected in the days of the worthies just mentioned. Jeremiah spent all the energies of his soul; all the glowing spirit of prophecy, in endeavouring to convince his contempo--raries that Idolatry is folly; that Immorality is dangerous. He did not succeed. But before a century had glided by since the patriot had so preached, a generation had arisen, that not alone had discarded Polytheism and its debasing incitements, but that was ready to stake life and substance for the sake of God's Unity and the Prophet's pure teachings. What had created a change so wonderful? Schools and Synagogues, O Israelites! two institutions, which I, using a homely metaphor, call the two sinewy arms wherewith Ju-daism works for its living, and deprived of which it must die of starvation. Schools and Synagogues must have seen their first dawn in Babylon. Not schools of prophets for an intellectual Aristocracy; not a central

place of worship with its imposing grandeur of Priestly vestures and Levitish choruses for an occasional national convocation of national character; but popular establishments, where young and old, the grand sire and the matron could go with frequency and there be inspirited to fight the seduct--ions which gentilism offered.
Without admitting in all particulars, the Rabbincial legend--ary respecting the house of prayer, set up by the son of King Jojachim and his fellow-captives, and about the col--lege of Ezra that stood close by it, we may perceive in the fervor of the fifty thousand who returned to the holy land, and in their assent to the measures adopted by the noble scribe at their head, the influences of religious culture more diffused than in former ages. And thus it is that the Association I have the honor to address must further with assiduity. We Israelites are not so Puritanic as to exlu exclude light diversions, as the temptations of a spirit of dark--ness. We are allowed, and even encouraged to gratify our feelings, while enlightening our minds, but we cannot be true to our faith, true to ourselves, if we make the knowledge of Jewish history, and literature secondary to the pleasures of the hour.

I judge it to be the principal mission of such organizations as this, to breed a race of Jews, who will acquire by serious studies, by a thorough un--derstanding of the stages through which Judaism has passed to be cleansed from the dross with which heathenism tarnished its splendour, a race of Jews who will acquire by sacred learning a loftier conception of their duty to mankind even now, as God's chosen apostles of Truth. And I watch with lively interest the doings of the Young Men's Hebrew Association of Philadelphia. I hail the intro--duction of instructive lectures, and I thank my Brethren for the patient hearing they have accorded granted me this evening.

Identifier

p3pv6bs8d

identifier

SMBx13FF1