believe, with a perfect faith, that the Creator (blessed be His name!) rewards those who observe His commandments, and punishes those who transgress them. (12.) The Jew believes in the coming of the Messiah; and (13), in the resurrection of the dead.
The Jews in London are divided into three communities – the Reformed, the Ashkenasim, or Polish and German Jews, and the Sephardim, or Portuguese and Spanish. These latter pride themselves on their ancient descent, and especially on their nationality. Their Church, as we have said, is the oldest in London; their rabbi is Dr. Artom, and their service differs from that of the Ashhenasim in matters of detail not of faith. Of course both take their stand upon the Pentateuch, which they term the Torah or law, a portion of which is read every Sabbath; but, according to the rabbinists, Moses received two laws on Mount Sinai, one written, the other unwritten. This latter was transmitted down from generation to generation by word of mouth until after the destruction of Jerusalem, when it was committed to writing. This work is called Mishna, or repetition. In process of time it became a text-book in the schools of Palestine and Babylon, and lectures were delivered on it and comments made by rabbis more or less learned and devout. In course of time these comments and lectures were collected together into one work under the title of Gemara, completion. The Talmud, which means doctrine, contains the two. There are two Talmuds in existence. One contains the decisions of the Palestine rabbis, collected and published somewhere in the fourth century; the other contains similar decisions on the part of the learned divines of Babylon. The difference between the two is exclusively in the Gemara. The Babylonian Talmud is the one in common use. It is for this Talmud, long too much neglected by Christians, that the Jews have contended for ages, and it is for this Talmud an able writer, in an article in the “Quarterly,” which produced an immense sensation at the time, eloquently pleaded, much to the astonishment, most undoubtedly, of those bigoted ecclesiastics who, deeming the traditions of the Romanist Fathers equal in authority with the Bible, look down upon the older and truer traditions of the Talmud with the contempt which ignorance always cherishes for what it cannot or does not understand. Sentiments, as the learned Professor Hurwitz wrote, worthy of Plato have been described as rabbinical reveries, and their authors arraigned of impiety on no better grounds than what the detractors supplied by wantonly imposing their own literal sense on expressions evidently and unmistakeably figurative.
In the synagogue is the worship daily or weekly of the devout Jew performed, for the aim of that worship is to connect itself with the daily life. Dr. Arnold’s idea of the Church and State being synonymous – an idea as old as the judicious Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity – is undoubtedly in its origin Jewish. The officers of the synagogue are a complete political as well as religious administration. A synagogue forms a little world of its own. A volume would be requisite to tell of the officers of the synagogue and of their various duties. There is among them no separation into lay and secular. The community consists of three kinds of members – the Cohen or priest, the Levite, and the Israelite. A minister must often support himself, but his ministry never ceases. To the last hour of his life he maintains his ministerial character. “The rabbis are men of great learning; and now in the Jews’ College the students,” writes a report just received, “have the advantage of a careful and systematic clerical education, and an equally valuable advantage, an example of piety and earnestness in their teachers.”
The oldest synagogue in London is, as we have said, that of the Sephardim, in Bevis Marks. Let us go there first. All Jewish synagogues are alike; all the men keep their hats on, and wear a scarf round their shoulders, hanging down to their knees. At one time, in another respect, they were much alike – that was in the use of a service not understood by the people generally. All this is altered now. Within the last thirty years there has been a great change for the better. There are but few even of the poorest Jews who do not understand Hebrew.
The governing officers of the synagogue are the Wardens, the Treasurer, the Overseer, and the Elders. The clerical officers are the Chazan, or reader, and the Shama, or second reader, and clerk. The ark is always situated in the south-east end of the synagogue, to direct the worshipper towards Jerusalem. The ark contains the law, written on vellum, fastened to rollers, on the tops of which are little crowns of silver surrounded by bells. The rolling and unrolling of the Law is a ceremony carefully observed every Sabbath. In form the Bevis Marks synagogue much resembles one of our old Nonconformist places of worship before they were improved according to the requirements of modern taste. You pass into it from behind some raised benches, on which several stout old gentlemen are gesticulating with all their might. A little further on is the reading desk, where the reader, with his hat on, his scarf round his shoulders, is performing his appointed task – at one time singly, at another time with the energetic assistance of the whole house. The readers wear black gowns. The faces of the reader and the rabbi are alike turned to the ark, before which a lamp perpetually burns. Of course there never are pews, but benches, under which are lockers, in each of which the worshipper deposits his scarf and prayer-book. In the synagogues of the Ashkenasim the benches nearest the ark, where the chief rabbi stands, are considered the most honourable; but the Spanish and Portuguese Jews make no difference in this respect. In the evening the synagogue is lighted up by means of large tapers and old-fashioned gas-chandeliers. In the service all join with more or less fervour. It consists entirely of reading and singing prayers and certain portions of Scripture. No sermon or lecture, except on Sabbaths and festivals, is necessary or usual. The melodies used are ancient, and the reading is of a very peculiar character, and not to be confounded with chanting or intoning as known to Christians. Most of the congregation in Bevis Marks seem to keep time with their bodies, as the sound rises and dies away. Also every other sentence begins with a woah-wooah sound of a monotonous cast; but all seem to enjoy it, especially the little Hebrew lads, who make more noise than anybody else. Sometimes the people stand up, at other times they sit down – they never kneel; but the stranger realizes little solemnity while the service is performing, and many of the Jews are quite ready to enter into a little secular conversation, or, if need be – as we can testify from personal observation – to quarrel. The prayers are chiefly of a laudatory, a confiding, a grateful, reverent character, and in a style, as regards composition, indicative of a foreign origin. Indeed, all the time the service is performing – the principal one is on the Saturday morning, and very long – you feel as if you were a stranger, as if you had no business there; that to the hook-nosed, black-haired, dark-eyed men around, you are a poor pale-faced, flat-nosed Saxon, to be preyed on and victimized to any extent. Here and there you see a foreigner in the picturesque garb of the East, looking sad and solitary as if he really remembered Zion, as if he had walked along the shores of Galilee, rested beneath the shade of the cedars of Lebanon, or had drank of
“Siloa’s brook,
That flowed fast by the oracle of God.”
Occasionally a Jew will rush in, seize a prayer-book, and, shutting his eyes, gabble on at a prodigious rate as if he had started late and had to make up for lost time, and his repeated bowing to all points of the compass is, to the spectator, of a very perplexing character. In this quarter the Jews, as regards appearance, are not very wealthy, nor have many of them very clean hands, nor, except on certain occasions, are the synagogues very well filled. Here you fail to recognise the swell Jews of Margate and Ramsgate, of Brighton and the Boulevards, the fact being that the rich Jews, like the rich Christians, have gone further west; yet the Montefiores belong to Bevis Marks, and the Rothschilds to the great congregation in Duke’s Place. Such are the London synagogues, including, in addition to those we have already referred to, those in Fenchurch Street, St. Alban’s Place, Maiden Lane, Cutler Street, Islington, Portland Street, Bayswater, and others. But the reader will ask, What of the ladies? – most of our churches and chapels would look intolerably destitute without them. The answer is, all the duties of their worship depend entirely on the males. The Jewesses are allowed to sit in a gallery. At Bevis Marks you see they are there, that is all. Whether they are white or black, whether they listen or not, it is impossible to tell, as they are concealed behind a lattice-work almost as impervious to male eyes as those behind which, on the night of a debate, our House of Commons hides our British fair. In other synagogues their gallery is open, and they can see and
