The Maccabaean

JEWISH lore abounds in occasional contradictions. On the one hand, the cultivation of the Torah is accompanied with length of days and riches and honor. On the other, the study and practice of the law is inseparably associated with poverty and suffering. Both are typical Jewish concepts, and they are by no means mutually exclusive. Rabbi Judah Hanasi is the ideal representation of the Jewish scholar and man of competence, examples of which in the past are met with from time to time. Hillel, until he became Nasi of Israel, and Rabbi Jochanan Hasandlar typified the more common combination of profound learning and intense penury.

In the course of time, learning with its companions of want and destitution, rather than knowledge with the delightful associates of power and competence, became the symbol of Jewish life. The people of the book were also the people that endured the thousand pangs that a nation of pariahs was bound to suffer. Any other nation similarly conditioned as were the Jews would have had to brave the trials and tragedies of a homeless race. However, we cannot go further in conjuring up anything like a counterpart of the history of the Jewish people. It was the Jews and no others who supplied to the sad side of human history the charm of pathos, the glory of sublime sorrow. But it was also the Jews who taught those amenable to instruction that oppression does not eternally vex even the most sorely buffeted of nations and that the superlative in human sorrow is, in the case of an ideally-purposed people, eventually indemnified with fulsome justice.

However this may be, the history of the Jews in the diaspora is characterized by weakness, which of course was strength of a very high order. For centuries power in the Jewish understanding was limited to the realm of the spirit, while in the world of human affairs weakness was the dominant Jewish attitude. The heroism of the countless Jews who bore the anguishes of the flesh can only be explained by the fact that the mental stamina of the nation was powerfully virile. No people was ever without its distinctive strength. In most cases, the power of nations was exemplified in the several gradations of brute force. Physical power was nearly always looked upon as the highest expression of national character. But one thing the nations lacked. They were destitute of reserves of spiritual vigor. Once their resources of physical might were exhausted, they succumbed. They could not mall back upon stronger defenses. For, if physical strength no longer avails, only spiritual potency, and that of a very high order, can save a people from utter loss. Illustrative of this fact are the powers of antiquity. Babylon, Assyria, Greece and Rome have all trodden the road that leads only to memory, in some instances faint and in others almost beyond recall. Not even Sparta, which cultivated mental fortitude together with physical valor, could survive the collapse of overwrought might. The strength of the ancient peoples was unspiritual. Only the Jews had learned the true value of spirituality. The steadfastness of the Jews endured and conquered because it had an eternal content, and that content was God and a pervasive moral system.

The emphasis laid upon the cultivation of the Jewish

spirit was logical and successful. Clearly enough, this surpassing structure of spirit could not have been built were it not for the almost complete disregard for the claims of the physical life. It was national necessity and not asceticism. Abnegation for its own sake was not a Jewish ideal. Self-preservation throughout the diaspora required constant spiritual vigilance, and there was neither sleeping nor slumbering. The Jews were the minute-men of the ages; their spiritual quivers were at all times filled. Theirs was the longest of warfares, the hardest and most uneven. Against the war of attrition practised by wily and hateful enemies was pitted the flaming consciousness of an aroused people, who knew that, regardless of the odds against them, their superior mental alertness, their stauncher godliness and their loftier spirituality would see them through. But all this was at the cost of the normal physical life. It could not be different. Sleekness of flesh does not consort with high and holy ardors. There could not be such a thing as physical perfection, or an approximation of it. For the Jews a strong mind in a strong body was an altogether fallacious thought, even if it were possible for them to develop muscle and sinew and cultivate strong bodies. They rather looked askance at physical sufh- ciency and strength. The full-cheeked Jew was regarded as an anomaly, incompatible with Jewish requirements and standards.

The diaspora was, as it remains to this day, a condition of abnormality. The Jews could not be like the rest of mankind even in matters of physique. Greatness of mind and spirit eliminated fulsomeness of body. The Jews contemned the body, not because they disliked the joys of health and comeliness and virility, but because their first concern was the nation as a whole, and throughout the exile the nation was maintained by the keenness of ith spiritual power. To this day in many quarters it is regarded as a sort of voluptuousness for a Jewish man of learning to be robust and of good physique and stature. If it is not considered self-indulgence, it is looked upon as an indication of a lowered moral intensity. And if a Jew persisted in his bodily vigor and completeness, he was very likely not a man of deep knowledge or elevated refinement.

The unloveliness of physical abundance found lodgment in the Jewish character. The Yeshiva Bahur who not of his own choosing showed something of corpulence suffered the prejudice of his fellows. He was an incongruity. The pale, frail-limbed lad, round-shouldered as a result of constant bending over the Gemara, was true to type. He was in consonance with the civilization of the Jews in the diaspora. He bespoke the method by which a nation of physical weaklings maintained its hold, a strong and imperious hold, upon time and history. The philosophy of physical weakness was ingrained in the Jewish consciousness.

The value of this philosophy of weakness must not be underestimated. It forced the Jewish people to look for strength in the realms of the mind. Jewish power was limited, and this limited power had to be intensively exploited in order to cope with the forces of the world. When the Jew on occasion found that he could no longer cherish