The Book of Delight and Other Papers
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Israel Abrahams >> The Book of Delight and Other Papers
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When we consider all these facts, we can see that the eagerness of the
medieval Jews to control the influx of foreign settlers was only in part
the result of base motives. And, of course, the exclusion was not permanent
or rigid. In Rome, the Sefardic and the Italian Jews fraternally placed
their synagogues on different floors of the same building. In some German
towns, the foreign synagogue was fixed in the same courtyard as the native.
Everywhere foreign Jews abounded, and everywhere a generous welcome awaited
the genuine traveller.
As to the travelling beggar, he was a perpetual nuisance. Yet he was
treated with much consideration. The policy with regard to him was, "Send
the beggar further," and this suited the tramp, too. He did not wish to
settle, he wished to move on. He would be lodged for two days in the
communal inn, or if, as usually happened, he arrived on Friday evening, he
would be billeted on some hospitable member, or the Shamash would look
after him at the public expense. It is not till the thirteenth century that
we meet regular envoys sent from Palestine to collect money.
The genuine traveller, however, was an ever-welcome guest. If he came at
fair time, his way was smoothed for him. The Jew who visited the fair was
only rarely charged local taxes by the Synagogue. He deserved a welcome,
for he not only brought wares to sell, but he came laden with new books.
The fair was the only book-market At other times the Jews were dependent on
the casual visits of travelling venders of volumes. Book-selling does not
seem to have been a settled occupation in the Middle Ages. The merchant who
came to the fair also fulfilled another function--that of Shadchan. The day
of the fair was, in fact, the crisis of the year. Naturally, the
letter-carrier was eagerly received. In the early part of the eighteenth
century the function of conveying the post was sometimes filled by
Jewesses.
Even the ordinary traveller, who had no business to transact, would often
choose fair time for visiting new places, for he would be sure to meet
interesting people then. He, too, would mostly arrive on a Friday evening,
and would beguile the Sabbath with reports of the wonders he had seen. In
the great synagogue of Sepphoris, Jochanan was discoursing of the great
pearl, so gigantic in size that the Eastern gates of the Temple were to be
built of the single gem. "Ay, ay," assented an auditor, who had been a
notorious skeptic until he had become a shipwrecked sailor, "had not mine
own eyes beheld such a pearl in the ocean-bed, I should not have believed
it." And so the medieval traveller would tell his enthralling tales. He
would speak of a mighty Jewish kingdom in the East, existing in idyllic
peace and prosperity; he would excite his auditors with news of the latest
Messiah; he would describe the river Sambatyon, which keeps the Sabbath,
and, mingling truth with fiction, with one breath would truly relate how he
crossed a river on an inflated skin, and with the next breath romance about
Hillel's tomb, how he had been there, and how he had seen a large hollow
stone, which remains empty if a bad fellow enters, but at the approach of a
pious visitor fills up with sweet, pure water, with which he washes,
uttering a wish at the same time, sure that it will come true. It is
impossible even to hint at all the wonders of the tombs. Jews were ardent
believers in the supernatural power of sepulchres; they made pilgrimages to
them to pray and to beg favors. Jewish travellers' tales of the Middle Ages
are heavily laden with these legends. Of course, the traveller would also
bring genuine news about his brethren in distant parts, and sober
information about foreign countries, their ways, their physical
conformation, and their strange birds and beasts. These stories were in the
main true. For instance, Petachiah tells of a flying camel, which runs
fifteen times as fast as the fleetest horse. He must have seen an ostrich,
which is still called the flying camel by Arabs. But we cannot linger over
this matter. Suffice it to say that, as soon as Sabbath was over, the
traveller's narrative would be written out by the local scribe, and
treasured as one of the communal prizes. The traveller, on his part, often
kept a diary, and himself compiled a description of his adventures. In some
congregations there was kept a Communal Note-Book, in which were entered
decisions brought by visiting Rabbis from other communities.
The most welcome of guests, even more welcome than long-distance
travellers, or globe-trotters, were the Bachurim and travelling Rabbis. The
Talmudic Rabbis were most of them travellers. Akiba's extensive journeys
were, some think, designed to rouse the Jews of Asia Minor generally to
participate in the insurrection against Hadrian. But my narrative must be
at this point confined to the medieval students. For the Bachurim, or
students, there was a special house in many communities, and they lived
together with their teachers. In the twelfth century, the great academy of
Narbonne, under Abraham ibn Daud, attracted crowds of foreign students.
These, as Benjamin of Tudela tells us, were fed and clothed at the communal
cost. At Beaucaire, the students were housed and supported at the teacher's
expense. In the seventeenth century, the students not only were paid small
bursaries, but every household entertained one or more of them at table. In
these circumstances their life was by no means dull or monotonous. A Jewish
student endures much, but he knows how to get the best out of life. This
optimism, this quickness of humor, saved the Rabbi and his pupil from many
a melancholy hour. Take Abraham ibn Ezra, for instance. If ever a man was
marked out to be a bitter reviler of fate, it was he. But he laughed at
fate. He gaily wandered from his native Spain over many lands penniless,
travelled with no baggage but his thoughts, visited Italy and France, and
even reached London, where, perhaps, he died. Fortune ill-treated him, but
he found many joys. Wherever he went, patrons held out their hand.
Travelling students found many such generous lovers of learning, who, with
their wealth, encouraged their guests to write original works or copy out
older books, which the patrons then passed on to poor scholars in want of a
library. The legend is told, how the prophet Elijah visited Hebron, and was
not "called up" in the synagogue. Receiving no Aliyah on earth, he returned
to his elevation in Heaven. It was thus imprudent to deny honor to angels
unawares. Usually the scholar was treated as such a possible angel. When he
arrived, the whole congregation would turn out to meet him. He would be
taken in procession to the synagogue, where he would say the benediction
ha-Gomel, in thanks for his safety on the road. Perhaps he would address
the congregation, though he would do that rather in the school than in the
synagogue. Then a banquet would be spread for him. This banquet was called
one of the Seudoth Mitzvah, _i.e._ "commandment meals," to which it was a
duty of all pious men to contribute their money and their own attendance.
It would be held in the communal hall, used mostly for marriage feasts.
When a wedding party came from afar, similar steps for general enjoyment
were taken. Men mounted on horseback went forth to welcome the bride, mimic
tournaments were fought _en route_, torch-light processions were made if it
were night time, processions by boats if it were in Italy or by the Rhine,
a band of communal musicians, retained at general cost, played merry
marches, and everyone danced and joined in the choruses. These musicians
often went from town to town, and the Jewish players were hired for Gentile
parties, just as Jews employed Christian or Arab musicians to help make
merry on the Jewish Sabbaths and festivals.
We need not wonder, then, that a traveller like Ibn Ezra was no croaker,
but a genial critic of life. He suffered, but he was light-hearted enough
to compose witty epigrams and improvise rollicking wine songs. He was an
accomplished chess player, and no doubt did something to spread the Eastern
game in Europe. Another service rendered by such travellers was the spread
of learning by their translations. Their wanderings made them great
linguists, and they were thus able to translate medical, astronomical, and
scientific works wherever they went. They were also sent by kings on
missions to collect new nautical instruments. Thus, the baculus, which
helped Columbus to discover America, was taken to Portugal by Jews, and a
French Jew was its inventor. They were much in demand as travelling
doctors, being summoned from afar to effect specific cures. But they also
carried other delights with them. Not only were they among the troubadours,
but they were also the most famous of the travelling _conteurs_. It was the
Jews, like Berechiah, Charizi, Zabara, Abraham ibn Chasdai, and other
incessant travellers, who helped to bring to Europe AEsop, Bidpai, the
Buddhist legends, who "translated them from the Indian," and were partly
responsible for this rich poetical gift to the Western world.
Looking back on such a life, Ibn Ezra might well detect a Divine Providence
in his own pains and sorrows. So, Jew-like, he retained his hope to the
last, and after his buffetings on the troubled seas of life, remembering
the beneficent results of his travels to others, if not to himself, he
could write in this faithful strain:
My hope God knoweth well,
My life He made full sweet;
Whene'er His servant fell,
God raised him to his feet.
Within the garment of His grace,
My faults He did enfold,
Hiding my sin, His kindly face
My God did ne'er withhold.
Requiting with fresh good,
My black ingratitude.
There remain the great merchant travellers to be told about. They sailed
over all the world, and brought to Europe the wares, the products, the
luxuries of the East. They had their own peculiar dangers. Shipwreck was
the fate of others besides themselves, but they were peculiarly liable to
capture and sale as slaves. Foremost among their more normal hardships I
should place the bridge laws of the Middle Ages. The bridges were sometimes
practically maintained by the Jewish tolls. In England, before 1290, a Jew
paid a toll of a halfpenny on foot and a full penny on horseback--large
sums in those days. A "dead Jew" paid eightpence. Burial was for a long
time lawful only in London, and the total toll paid for bringing a dead Jew
to London over the various bridges must have been considerable. In the
Kurpfalz, for instance, the Jewish traveller had to pay the usual "white
penny" for every mile, but also a heavy general fee for the whole journey.
If he was found without his ticket of leave, he was at once arrested. But
it was when he came to a bridge that the exactions grew insufferable. The
regulations were somewhat tricky, for the Jew was specially taxed only on
Sundays and the Festivals of the Church. But every other day was some
Saint's Festival, and while, in Mannheim, even on those days the Christian
traveller paid one kreuzer if he crossed the bridge on foot, and two if on
horseback, the Jew was charged four kreuzer if on foot, twelve if on a
horse, and for every beast of burden he, unlike the Christian wayfarer,
paid a further toll of eight kreuzer. The Jewish quarter often lay near the
river, and Jews had great occasion for crossing the bridges, even for local
needs. In Venice, the Jewish quarter was naturally intersected by bridges;
in Rome there was the _pons Judeorum,_ which, no doubt, the Jews had to
maintain in repair. It must be remembered that many local Jewish
communities paid a regular bridge tax which was not exacted from
Christians, and when all this is considered, it will be seen that the
Jewish merchant needed to work hard and go far afield, if he was to get any
profit from his enterprises.
Nevertheless, these Jews owned horses and caravans, and sailed their own
ships long before the time when great merchants, like the English Jew
Antonio Fernandes Carvajal, traded in their own vessels between London and
the Canaries. We hear of Palestinian Jews in the third century and of
Italian Jews in the fifth century with ships of their own. Jewish sailors
abounded on the Mediterranean, which tended to become a Jewish lake. The
trade routes of the Jews were chiefly two. "By one route," says Beazley,
"they sailed from the ports of France and Italy to the Isthmus of Suez, and
thence down the Red Sea to India and Farther Asia. By another course, they
transported the goods of the West to the Syrian coast; up the Orontes to
Antioch; down the Euphrates to Bassora; and so along the Persian Gulf to
Oman and the Southern Ocean." Further, there were two chief overland
routes. On the one side merchants left Spain, traversed the straits of
Gibraltar, went by caravan from Tangier along the northern fringe of the
desert, to Egypt, Syria, and Persia. This was the southern route. Then
there was the northern route, through Germany, across the country of the
Slavs to the Lower Volga; thence, descending the river, they sailed across
the Caspian. Then the traveller proceeded along the Oxus valley to Balkh,
and, turning north-east, traversed the country of the Tagazgaz Turks, and
found himself at last on the frontier of China. When one realizes the
extent of such a journey, it is not surprising to hear that the greatest
authorities are agreed that in the Middle Ages, before the rise of the
Italian trading republics, the Jews were the chief middlemen between Europe
and Asia. Their vast commercial undertakings were productive of much good.
Not only did the Jews bring to Europe new articles of food and luxury, but
they served the various States as envoys and as intelligencers. The great
Anglo-Jewish merchant Carvajal provided Cromwell with valuable information,
as other Jewish merchants had done to other rulers of whom they were loyal
servants. In the fifteenth century Henry of Portugal applied to Jews for
intelligence respecting the interior of Africa, and a little later John,
king of the same land, derived accurate information respecting India from
two Jewish travellers that had spent many years at Ormuz and Calcutta. But
it is unnecessary to add more facts of this type. The Jewish merchant
traveller was no mere tradesman. He observed the country, especially did he
note the numbers and occupations of the Jews, their synagogues, their
schools, their vices, and their virtues.
In truth, the Jewish traveller, as he got farther from home, was more at
home than many of his contemporaries of other faiths when they were at
home. He kept alive that sense of the oneness of Judaism which could be
most strongly and completely achieved because there was no political bias
to separate it into hostile camps.
But the interest between the traveller and his home was maintained by
another bond. A striking feature of Jewish wayfaring life was the writing
of letters home. The "Book of the Pious," composed about 1200, says: "He
that departs from the city where his father and mother live, and travels to
a place of danger, and his father and mother are anxious on account of him;
it is the bounden duty of the son to hire a messenger as soon as he can and
despatch a letter to his father and mother, telling them when he departs
from the place of danger, that their anxiety may be allayed." Twice a year
all Jews wrote family letters, at the New Year and the Passover, and they
sent special greetings on birthdays. But the traveller was the chief
letter-writer. "O my father," wrote the famous Obadiah of Bertinoro, in
1488, "my departure from thee has caused thee sorrow and suffering, and I
am inconsolable that I was forced to leave at the time when age was
creeping on thee. When I think of thy grey hairs, which I no longer see, my
eyes flow over with tears. But if the happiness of serving thee in person
is denied to me, yet I can at least serve thee as thou desirest, by writing
to thee of my journey, by pouring my soul out to thee, by a full narrative
of what I have seen and of the state and manners of the Jews in all the
places where I have dwelt." After a long and valuable narrative, he
concludes in this loving strain: "I have taken me a house in Jerusalem near
the synagogue, and my window overlooks it. In the court where my house is,
there live five women, and only one other man besides myself. He is blind,
and his wife attends to my needs. God be thanked, I have escaped the
sickness which affects nearly all travellers here. And I entreat you, weep
not at my absence, but rejoice in my joy, that I am in the Holy City. I
take God to witness that here the thought of all my sufferings vanishes,
and but one image is before my eyes, thy dear face, O my father. Let me
feel that I can picture that face to me, not clouded with tears, but lit
with joy. You have other children around you; make them your joy, and let
my letters, which I will ever and anon renew, bring solace to your age, as
your letters bring solace to me."
Much more numerous than the epistles of sons to fathers are the letters of
fathers to their families. When these come from Palestine, there is the
same mingling of pious joy and human sorrow--joy to be in the Holy Land,
sorrow to be separated from home. Another source of grief was the
desolation of Palestine.
One such letter-writer tells sadly how he walked through the market at
Zion, thought of the past, and only kept back his tears lest the Arab
onlookers should see and ridicule his sorrow. Yet another medieval
letter-writer, Nachmanides, reaches the summit of sentiment in these lines,
which I take from Dr. Schechter's translation: "I was exiled by force from
home, I left my sons and daughters; and with the dear and sweet ones whom I
brought up on my knees, I left my soul behind me. My heart and my eyes will
dwell with them forever. But O! the joy of a day in thy courts, O
Jerusalem! visiting the ruins of the Temple and crying over the desolate
Sanctuary; where I am permitted to caress thy stones, to fondle thy dust,
and to weep over thy ruins. I wept bitterly, but found joy in my tears."
And with this thought in our mind we will take leave of our subject. It is
the traveller who can best discern, amid the ruins wrought by man, the hope
of a Divine rebuilding. Over the heavy hills of strife, he sees the coming
dawn of peace. The world must still pass through much tribulation before
the new Jerusalem shall arise, to enfold in its loving embrace all
countries and all men. But the traveller, more than any other, hastens the
good time. He overbridges seas, he draws nations nearer; he shows men that
there are many ways of living and of loving. He teaches them to be
tolerant; he humanizes them by presenting their brothers to them. The
traveller it is who prepares a way in the wilderness, who makes straight in
the desert a highway for the Lord.
THE FOX'S HEART
Pliny says that by eating the palpitating heart of a mole one acquires the
faculty of divining future events. In "Westward Ho!" the Spanish prisoners
beseech their English foe, Mr. Oxenham, not to leave them in the hands of
the Cimaroons, for the latter invariably ate the hearts of all that fell
into their hands, after roasting them alive. "Do you know," asks Mr. Alston
in the "Witch's Head," "what those Basutu devils would have done if they
had caught us? They would have skinned us, and made our hearts into _mouti_
[medicine] and eaten them, to give them the courage of the white man." Ibn
Verga, the author of a sixteenth century account of Jewish martyrs, records
the following strange story: "I have heard that some people in Spain once
brought the accusation that they had found, in the house of a Jew, a lad
slain, and his breast rent near the heart. They asserted that the Jews had
extracted his heart to employ it at their festival. Don Solomon, the
Levite, who was a learned man and a Cabbalist, placed the Holy Name under
the lad's tongue. The lad then awoke and told who had slain him, and who
had removed his heart, with the object of accusing the poor Jews. I have
not," adds the author of the _Shebet Jehudah_, "seen this story in writing,
but I have heard it related."
We have the authority of Dr. Ploss for the statement that among the Slavs
witches produce considerable disquiet in families, into which, folk say,
they penetrate in the disguise of hens or butterflies. They steal the
hearts of children in order to eat them. They strike the child on the left
side with a little rod; the breast opens, and the witches tear out the
heart, and devour every atom of it. Thereupon the wound closes up of
itself, without leaving a trace of what has been done. The child dies
either immediately or soon afterwards, as the witch chooses. Many
children's illnesses are attributed to this cause. If one of these witches
is caught asleep, the people seize her, and move her so as to place her
head where her feet were before. On awaking, she has lost all her power for
evil, and is transformed into a medicine-woman, who is acquainted with the
healing effects of every herb, and aids in curing children of their
diseases. In Heine's poem, "The Pilgrimage to Kevlaar," the love-lorn youth
seeks the cure of his heart's ill by placing a waxen heart on the shrine.
This is unquestionably the most exquisite use in literature of the heart as
a charm.
Two or three of the stories that I have noted down on the gruesome subject
of heart-eating have been given above. Such ideas were abhorrent to the
Jewish conscience, and the use of the heart torn from a living animal was
regarded as characteristic of idolatry (Jerusalem Talmud, _Aboda Zara_, ii,
41b). In the Book of Tobit a fish's heart plays a part, but it is detached
from the dead animal, and is not eaten. It forms an ingredient of the smoke
which exorcises the demon that is troubling the heroine Sarah.
I have not come across any passage in the Jewish Midrashim that ascribes to
"heart-eating," even in folk-lore, the virtue of bestowing wisdom.
Aristotle seems to lend his authority to some such notion as that I have
quoted from Pliny, when he says, "Man alone presents the phenomenon of
heart-beating, because he alone is moved by hope and by expectation of what
is coming." As George H. Lewes remarked, it is quite evident that Aristotle
could never have held a bird in his hand. The idea, however, that eating
the heart of an animal has wisdom-conferring virtue seems to underlie a
very interesting Hebrew fable published by Dr. Steinschneider, in his
_Alphabetum Siracidis_. The Angel of Death had demanded of God the power to
slay all living things.
"The Holy One replied, 'Cast a pair of each species into the sea, and
then thou shalt have dominion over all that remain of the species.' The
Angel did so forthwith, and he cast a pair of each kind into the sea.
When the fox saw what he was about, what did he do? At once he stood and
wept. Then said the Angel of Death unto him, 'Why weepest thou?' 'For my
companions, whom thou hast cast into the sea,' answered the fox. 'Where,
then, are thy companions?' said the Angel. The fox ran to the sea-shore
[with his wife], and the Angel of Death beheld the reflection of the fox
in the water, and he thought that he had already cast in a pair of foxes,
so, addressing the fox by his side, he cried, 'Be off with you!' The fox
at once fled and escaped. The weasel met him, and the fox related what
had happened, and what he had done; and so the weasel went and did
likewise.
"At the end of the year, the leviathan assembled all the creatures in the
sea, and lo! the fox and the weasel were missing, for they had not come
into the sea. He sent to ask, and he was told how the fox and the weasel
had escaped through their wisdom. They taunted the leviathan, saying,
'The fox is exceedingly cunning.' The leviathan felt uneasy and envious,
and he sent a deputation of great fishes, with the order that they were
to deceive the fox, and bring him before him. They went, and found him by
the sea-shore. When the fox saw the fishes disporting themselves near the
bank, he was surprised, and he went among them. They beheld him, and
asked, 'Who art thou?' 'I am the fox,' said he. 'Knowest thou not,'
continued the fishes, 'that a great honor is in store for thee, and that
we have come here on thy behalf?' 'What is it?' asked the fox. 'The
leviathan,' they said, 'is sick, and like to die. He has appointed thee
to reign in his stead, for he has heard that thou art wiser and more
prudent than all other animals. Come with us, for we are his messengers,
and are here to thy honor.' 'But,' objected the fox, 'how can I come into
the sea without being drowned?' 'Nay,' said the fishes; 'ride upon one of
us, and he will carry thee above the sea, so that not even a drop of
water shall touch so much as the soles of thy feet, until thou reachest
the kingdom. We will take thee down without thy knowing it. Come with us,
and reign over us, and be king, and be joyful all thy days. No more wilt
thou need to seek for food, nor will wild beasts, stronger than thou,
meet thee and devour thee.'
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