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    The Wisdom of Israel
    The Wisdom of Israel
    The Wisdom of Israel
    Ebook69 pages48 minutes

    The Wisdom of Israel

    By Edwin Collins

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    "The Wisdom of Israel" is an anthology collection of the Jewish wisdom literature of the Talmud and Midrash from ancient times up to the 19th century.The book covers different themes, such as wisdom, justice, charity, and love. The aim of the book is to present the wisdom of Jewish culture and to provide readers with insights into the moral and ethical values that have guided Jewish life for centuries. Why God Permits Idolatry The Lamp that Goes Out when its Light is Done, and the Figs that are Gathered in their Due Season The Labourers in the Vineyard The Likeness of a Palm-Tree The Tutor and the Naughty Princeling Those Nearest The Heritage of the Unborn Prince The Traveller and the Tree in the Desert Better Feed the Poor than Entertain the Angels The Sand, and the Furnace that Purifies The Stars are not envious! The King Talks with all His Servants, Small and Great The Pavilion of the King's Daughter The Greedy Prince: The Vine is not Watered with Wine The Potter and his Wares: The Trials of the Righteous The Education of the Prince The Induction Robe of the Elder The King and the Weary Travellers: The Righteous know what is in Store Equality of all Before God: and the Parable of a Princess Attacked by Robbers The Father and his Son: The Bath and the Ocean The Tutor who Corrupted the King's Son The After-Life, and the Banquet of the King Many Mansions in the Life to Come The Labourers in the Garden The Old Man and the Acorn The Wise and the Foolish Guests at the King's Feast The Briar Rose that Saved the Trees The Two Pilots R. Judah as Prototype of the Ancient Mariner The Likeness of the King Revelations of Mercy and of Punishment The Citizen Married to the King's Daughter The Father's Voice The Parable of the Two Ships The Child who Questioned though Carried by his Father The King's Son without Rations The Poor Woman's Mite He who Reproacheth the Poor Insults his Maker The Voiceless Deeps that Praise the Lord: The Parable of the Mutes who Praised the King
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSharp Ink
    Release dateOct 27, 2023
    ISBN9788028320300
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      The Wisdom of Israel - Edwin Collins

      INTRODUCTION

      Table of Contents

      THE extracts from the Midrash Rabboth and the Babylonian Talmud, given in this little vol., are not the work of one or two authors, or of one age. They belong rather to the speech and feeling of a whole nation than to its literature, properly so called. At first, impromptu utterances, or composed to be spoken in the course of sermons, popular addresses, the speeches of honoured rabbis at marriage feasts or in the houses of mourners, or in the rabbinic assemblies of Palestine and Babylon, these and thousands of similar parables, fables, legends, and more or less poetic playings of fancy around the facts of life, or round the popular thought and knowledge of their time and place of origin, lived in the mouths of the Jewish people, like the folk-lore and folksongs of other nations, and were orally transmitted from generation to generation for hundreds of years before being included in the compilations where we now find them, and in other works now no longer extant. Their survival, and their place in rabbinic literature, they owe to the fact that everything was brought into relation with the Bible or with the traditional laws of Israel; so that they became a part of the Midrash or study of Revelation.

      The terms Midrash and Talmud mean this study and interpretation of Scripture, especially of the Mosaic Law, together with its application to the changing conditions—mental and material—of the Jewish people. So widely inclusive and so many-sided was this Study of the Law, which formed the chief mental activity of the Jewish people from the times of Ezra and Nehemiah until long after the final redaction of the Talmud in the 5th century, that there is hardly a single subject of modern secular study that was not dealt with—at least incidentally; for life, as a whole, was meant to be regulated by the Mosaic Law. Says Zunz in his Gottesdienstliche Vorträge, still the chief authority on the subject:—"Whoever applied himself profitably to, the various branches of Midrash was a jurist, a theologian, a man knowing in the ways of the world, a linguist, an orator—and if nothing was to be neglected, he must have no slight acquaintance with history, natural science, and astronomy. As a matter of course, specialization became necessary. But the oldest subdivision of this Study of the Law" is twofold:—into (a) Halacha—practical rule of life, judicial decisions, the results and finished products of Midrash; and (b) Agadah—that which is spoken, and placed before the hearer, not as binding and having authority to guide him, either in practical life or in belief, but as presenting a vivid picture of ethical truth, of beauty, or of thought, linking the less obvious meanings of Scripture with the newer ideas and with the customs of non-Jewish peoples, and providing for the spiritual or moral needs of the moment.

      The Halacha was the transmission of the Mosaic Law in its application to material life; to civil and criminal law, practical hygiene, religious ceremonial, marriage and divorce, practical morality, the daily conduct of individuals and of the nation in every conceivable relation with each other, with the forces of nature, and with other nations of the world. Halacha claimed to be an exact and literal interpretation of the letter and spirit of the law given at Sinai, only modifying its details in so far as traditions dating from Moses and the prophets had provided for such modification, or where, hidden beneath the letter of Scripture, hints could be discovered, showing that its spirit actually demanded such modifications in foreseen changed conditions. Differences of opinion on Halacha must be discussed in the schools that combined the functions of a university and a parliament.

      Not so the Agadah. Herein was room, and full liberty, for the freest play of individual thought and fancy. As in Halacha, everything must be referred in some way to the Scripture. But here there was no obligation to interpret the revealed word strictly in accordance with its real meaning. As often as not it is

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