GREAT MEN OF JEWISH HISTORY
2 MOSES.
Have you ever thought how Israel began its life as a Nation? If you were told that we became a Nation while slaves, would it not surprise you? Yet you must remember, that when Jacob took his family to Egypt, Israel numbered but a handful, but when the Israelites returned to Canaan, they numbered thousands. They had become a Nation while in bondage to the Pharoahs.
They were even more sorely oppressed than the Egyptians, who were themselves slaves of their king. Though each Tribe had at its head a Patriarch (Elder), still he had no power to relieve them from their sufferings. Indeed, the only rulers they possessed were taskmasters of the Egyptians, who kept them at work by means of the lash.
A Nation they were, but without a leader, who could advise them and lead them united against their oppressors. In their despair they therefore called upon God for a deliverer, and one arose right in their own midst, but he did not grow up among them. Moses was torn from his family, yet he never forgot the bond that bound him to his people, Israel. It was the deep Jewish feeling that had been instilled in him at his birth that showed itself in his attack on the Egyptian. He sacrificed the pleasures of Pharoah's Court and chose exile to Median, rather than desert his own race and kin.
What a task this Levite had before him. Israel was held in bondage by a strong hand. Israel was not united, it was constantly making impossible demand, it was timid, weak, it mistrusted its Deliverer. It would have been impossible for any man to succeed in such an undertaking but for divine assistance and inspiration.
Yet Moses had been fully prepared for his task. He had been educated in the palace of Pharoah. He had learned the misery as well as the weakness of his people by his visits to the fields where they were occupied in the works of Pharoah. His life with Jethro had made him familiar
with the land where his people was to sojourn for forty years.
Moses will always be remembered as our Prophet, Lawgiver, and Deliverer. It was he who gave us the Ten Commandments, which have guided the World since. The Torah, which contains most of our Laws and the main principles of our religion, is the work of Moses.
But what particularly has preserved the life of the Jews was the existence for centuries of the Jewish Nation in Canaan. It was Moses who transformed us from a Nation into the Tribe of Priests and a Holy Nation. It as Moses who brought us out of Egypt and to the Promised Land. He was the first Zionist, the first Nation Builder. He is the Father of the Jewish Nation.
QUARRELSOME WATERS.
A few drops of oil accidentally fell into a pitcher of water, thereby causing great confusion and excitement in the pitcher. The waters began to quarrel among themselves concerning the visitors that were now with them, for they thought the oil intended to make its permanent home with them, and this displeased them very much.
"Please, dear brothers!" the drops of oil pleaded, "why do you quarrel so on account of us? Is the space too small to contain all, or is it below your dignity to have us in your midst? Are we not descendants of the olive?"
"True enough," the waters in the pitcher answered, "we certainly would feel honored to have you among us, provided you mix with and become like us. We cannot have you when you keep yourselves so separated from us; you always stay at the top of the pitcher, never thinking of coming down, and on account of your splendid appearance and your fragrance, that can be detected at a distance, we are all put to ridicule. People say that we are only drops of water and of little importance. No, you must leave us, for you are more powerful than we."