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THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

Beautiful

" Zeba'am " by n6ajuo£, a rendition which could easily be read into the original by a slight change of the Masoretic " zeba'am " into " zebyonam " (their beauty, R. II. 11a). Moreover, it is more than likely that in Gen. i. 2 the rendition of the Hebrew "tohu wa-

ive to the eye,'' with the underlying suggestion of the "desirability" of the object (Gen. ii. 9), tilecorresponding noun "hemed" being used in com-

bohu

sirability,"

ilar

" by "aoparog nai anaTacwevaToc;" is due to simPlatonic influences (compare Siegfried, " Philo,

pp. 8, 9). In rabbinical Ilaggadot many instances occur of similar Platonizing interpretations, worked out according to the general method of haggadic exegesis through appeal to the letters of text, but withal proofs of the influence attained in the thinking of the rabbinical homilists by the conception of Creation as a process of unfolding beauty. Some of these analogies have been adduced by Siegfried (I.e. pp. 148,

Creation

a

Work

of

Beauty.

149).

those cited credited to

More characteristic than by him is the following, Judah ben Ila'i When

God was about



to create the world,

He

consulted the Torah as one would an artist or architect, and then carried into effect His preconceived ideal Creation (Tan., Bereshit, 5 [ed. Buber, p. 4); Gen. R. i.]. The construction of the Tabernacle and the making of the utensils it contained are in the same manner likened to the procedure which an artist confronted with a similar task would adopt. Heavenly patterns descended within the vision of Moses and these he copied in the practical execution of the command (compare among others Yalk. Cant. 369). The assumption in Ab. R. N. xiii. that when Moses was preparing to erect the " Mishkan " he refused to confer with the princes of the tribes, rests on the notion that as the plan had been divinely unfurled there was no necessity for discussing the work of mortals. How far the Platonic theory of beauty influenced Aristotle is a moot question. One might rind in the Jewish Aristotelians notably Maimonides indications of an appreciation of the beautiful. The opening discussion in the "Moreh " on the significance of

,

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" zelem " as distinct from " demut " would seem to have a place in this interesting though perilous, because doubtful, chapter of Jewish speculation. At any rate, it is plain that the absolute denial to the Jewish mind of the capacity to appreciate and realize the beautiful can for good reasons be relegated to the lumber-room of prejudices. Granted that the principal anxiety of the Jewish conscious-

ness

lies in

the plane of the religiously ethical, the

artistically beautiful, or esthetics, can not be located

There are points of intersection between the two. In his quest for the harmonies of life, the Greek evolved also a theory of the harmonies of character and conduct of no mean range or depth. And, on the other hand, the Hebrew, in his zeal for the discovery of the divinely and eterThe nally true and righteous, could not but Beautiful perceive that Creation moved to a rhythm of divinely ordered harmonies. in the Hebrew The vocabulary of Judaism does not lack terms connoting both the beauty Vocabulary. of the body and that of the soul. Thus " yafeh " applied to men, animals, things, and countries signifies " beautiful in general outward appearance " " nehmad " denotes " attractin another plane.

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binations (Isa. xxxii. 12; Ezek. xxiii. 6; Amos v. 11);. "naweh," from the verb "iwah," also denotes "de-

hence "beauty "; "tob march" signifies, "good in appearance," hence "comely." The Hebrew also employs paraphrases with nouns

for instance, " 'ez

hadar

"

denotes

or splendor."

"

a tree of beauty

—

Other combinations with " 'hen" for instance, " baimply beauty not so much of the body as.

— of the soul — grace. 'alat 'hen "

In the common proverbial collon quial language of the Jews to the present day, " 'hen is employed to characterize that undefinable something which goes far to render its possessor beloved Loveliness is also expressed in"no'am." of men. "' Besides, the words " yofl, " " shef er, " " hadar, " " hod (splendor), "hesed" (love), "kabod" (honor) are used

and and beauty. The highest degree of personal charms or local attractiveness is expressed by "miklal yofi." In the Talmud not only is the same appreciation of beauty shown by the use of these and similar terms as a glance at the various Hebrew and Talmudical dictionaries shows; the Greek word for " beautiful " («a/Wf) gave rise also to the verb " kalles " to indicate various manifestations of physical

spiritual gracefulness

—

(D7p), to declare as beautiful; that

is,

to praise

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but it is enjoined as a rule "to offer up a benediction on seeing beautiful creatures or beautiful trees" (Ber. 586; Tan., Pinhas, 10).

While the Greeks applied the golden mean of proportion and harmonious relations to art, and the Jew as Maimonides counsels, and others tacitly pracconstrued his rule of conduct on the realitised zation of the law of moderation, still the eyes of the Jew were not blind to the beauty which laughed out upon him from God's own world. There have been times when the Jew was in conscious and fanatic revolt against the Greek ideal. The Maccabean struggle and that against Rome could not but react in favor of a rigid and unrelenting hostility to whatever in the least smacked of concessions to Greek or Roman conceits. The athletic games of the gymnasium, the divine honors paid to the images of the emperors, naturally carried the pendulum of Jewish thought to the opposite pole. The result was that, for a while at least, attention to physical culture (of the bod}r ) fell under the ban also sensible appreciation of the difference between idolatry and sculpture came nigh to be impossible. Nevertheless, evidence abounds that beauty of the body, both in men and in women, was regarded as a distinction to gain which was worthy of the ambition of the best. At all events, it is certain that the art of ornamenting the body was highly developed among the Jews at a comAppreparatively early period. The third ciation of chapter of Isaiah shows that the bouPhysical doir of the Hebrew woman was well Beauty, provided with the things she deemed needful to enhance her charms. Other passages prove that house and home were richly embellished (see Nowack, "Hebraische Archaologie," passim).

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