CHAPTER XVI.

THE WOMEN OF ISRAEL.

PRESENT CONDITION OF JEWISH FEMALES-LEARNED WOMEN OF FORMER TIMES-GRACE AGUILAR-INTERESTING FEMALE CON

VERTS-CONCLUSION.

'BLESSED art thou, O Lord our God! King of the world, that thou hast not made me a heathen. Blessed art thou, O Lord our God! King of the world, that thou hast not made me a slave. Blessed art thou, O Lord, our God! King of the world, that thou hast not made me a woman:** such is the morning thanksgiving of the Israelite; the women say, 'Blessed art thou, O Lord our God! King of the world, that thou hast made me according to thy will. Amen.' May such a spirit truly animate the daughters of Zion: for while to be a heathen implies the absence of the knowledge of the will of God, to be a slave some hindrance in performing it, to be a woman implies no condition in

* See the morning service in the Tephilloth or forms of prayers, for Synagogues and families.

consistent with true wisdom, fervent devotion, and faithful obedience.

The yoke of Talmudical laws, and Rabbinical superstitions, has pressed very heavily upon the women of Israel. The same just condemnation which sentenced man to labour, sentenced woman to be subject to man: but no where in the laws of their God, could the Rabbins have found any justification for those oppressive enactments whereby they have bowed down the spirit and the soul of woman.

The Talmud says, learning is not fit for woman; nor religion either, it would appear. Before marriage, it is said, that they are declared to have nothing to do with religion, or the observance of any of the commandments: this is stated upon authority, but it is scarcely possible to believe it, * unless by commandments, is meant solely the Talmudical observances. After marriage, almost the only religious duties required from them is to light the sabbath-lamps, in order to atone for the crime committed by their mother Eve't in extinguishing the light of the world, and to bless the sabbath bread, when they take a small piece of dough, repeat a prayer over it, and throw it into the fire. When they light the lamps, they spread both their hands toward it and say, 'Blessed art thou, O Lord our God! King of the universe, who hast sanctified us with thy precepts, and commanded us to light the

* See Obligations of Christians to attempt the conversion of the Jews, page 32. London, 1813. See also Levi's Ceremonies of the Jews, pp. 219, 220, &c. &c.

+ David Levi, pp. 8, 9.

sabbath lamps.' *

Severe temporal judgment is threatened if they should neglect these duties.

Nor are there wanting great names among the children of their people, to uphold this system. It is expressly maintained upon the authority of Maimonides, that fathers are bound to instruct their sons in the knowledge of the law, but not their daughters: and that women are neither obliged to learn the law themselves, nor required to teach it to their children. Indeed the one exemption is of course a necessary consequence of the other, as an ignorant woman is not likely to make a wise mother. The learned Abarbanel contends, that when the Scripture says, "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him," it is not to be understood of the man and woman, but of the man only; and he labours to prove women to be inferior beings.

A modern Jewish writer † has endeavoured to repel, as a calumny, the charge, that women are degraded by the Talmud from their proper position: but his arguments are of no weight. In the first place he repudiates the charge as being contrary to the spirit of the

Respecting the making of these wicks and the oil required for them, the Talmud furnishes the most particular directions. They are lighted before sunset, and one, at least, with seven cotton wicks in allusion to the number of days in a week, is to be lighted in each house. He who extinguisheth the lamp because he is afraid of Gentiles, of robbers, of an evil spirit, or that the sick may sleep, is free; but if his intention is to save his lampoil or wick he is guilty. Some Rabbins are said to differ from this.

The translator of Mendelsohn's Jerusalem. See Voice of Jacob, 19th of Iyar, A.M. 5602. (April 29, 1842.)

Y

Bible; in which we are fully agreed; in the covenant made by the Lord with Israel, the women are expressly included, Deut. xxix. 11, 12. The commandments which enjoined filial obedience, and bestowed parental authority, were as ample towards the mother as towards the father, and the curses threatened to the disobedient respected one parent as much as the other. In the character of wife as well as mother, the Old Testament Scriptures preserved the woman from degradation; she was associated with man as his companion and friend, Mal. ii. 14-16. From her as well as from him were the offerings for the service of the tabernacle accepted, Ex. xxxv. 25. Permitted, though not enjoined, we see her on solemn occasions accompanying his steps to the sanctuary of the Lord, and offering herself, her first-born to His service: (1 Sam. i. 24; Luke ii. 22.) nor can it be necessary to advert to the number of Hebrew women to whom is accorded the blessed privilege of an honourable mention in the records of Scripture.

Passing over therefore every argument drawn from the Bible, as irrelevant to the subject of the present position of women among the Jews, as it is incontrovertibly known that the Scriptures are not among the Rabbinists the rule either of faith or life, it is only necessary to advert to what the writer says in justification of the Talmud upon the subject. He acknowledges first that the Talmudists expressly say and establish as a maxim, Whoever teaches his daughter Thora, (the law) teaches her folly;' and proceeds to argue that such knowledge is unsuitable to the

calling of a woman: the Talmud is the inclosure of almost all knowledge, moral and religious, apparently among the Jews, therefore their literature and religion is such, as necessarily to condemn women to absolute ignorance, and therefore necessarily to retard their own progress in the enjoyment of that more advanced state of knowledge which is beginning to dawn over the world. But that the maxim of the Talmud evidently relates, not only to the exposition of the Mosaic and ceremonial law, but to all knowledge, or, at all events that it has been received and acted upon in that light, is evident from the want of education among the daughters of Israel, especially on the continent. They are taught to pronounce Hebrew so as to read the prayers, but they are never taught the meaning; that sacred language which one of the more favoured among them* has called the 'silver link,' which binds to his brethren every wandering Jew under the canopy of heaven, has become but a sound for them. out from the faintest knowledge of the law or its requirements, interdicted from Gentile languages and Gentile learning, their resource is in those follies, which the natural desire of knowledge in the human mind leads it to feed upon, when its proper aliment is withheld; as those shut up in a beseiged town, subsist upon that food which, in other circumstances, they would reject with abhorrence.†

* Grace Aguilar.-See her Spirit of Judaism.

Shut

See Dr. M'Caul's account of R. Jacob's Commentary on the Pentateuch and Haphtoroth,' or weekly portions of the Prophets, usually known by the title Tsennorennah,' or the Weiber Chumash, the Woman's Pentateuch. This book, which is a com