Page:The old paths, or The Talmud tested by Scripture.djvu/401

 commit no sin. These are the persons who are most guilty in looking upon the misery of their poor brethren without pity or concern and without an effort to deliver them. The rabbinic zealot who would persecute his brother for eating meat not slaughtered according to rabbinic precept is in comparison innocent. He conscientiously thinks that he is doing right; but for the man, who himself openly transgresses the oral law, and yet sees the faces of his brethren ground by that system, without a sentiment of pity, there is no excuse. If he had the common feelings of humanity, he would rise up, fearless of all consequences, and cry out with all his might against those principles which have been and are the curse of his nation. He would stand forth as the advocate and defender of the poor—yea, and he would have God's blessing. But so long as this class of anti-rabbinic Jews remain silent, whether from fear or from interest, or from indifference, let them not boast of their superior light. Let them not look with self-complacency on the poor victims of superstition. They are themselves less respectable and more guilty. They are conniving at what they know to be falsehood. They are with their eyes open consenting to oppression and starvation. They are, by their silence, helping to strengthen and confirm a system of anti-social intolerance, which has been the source of all the calamities which their nation has endured for eighteen centuries. What can be more pernicious than to teach the ignorant that the food which their neighbours eat is carrion, so unfit for the nourishment of a Rabbinist that he ought to die, and suffer his family to die of want, rather than eat it? Is it likely to produce kindly feeling on either side, considering that the mass of mankind is not actuated by the dictates of reason or the precepts of the Bible? On the one side it is likely to produce proud contempt, and on the other a spirit of retaliation. Every Jew that wishes well to his nation, and knows that these rabbinic principles are false, is bound to protest against them. He ought not to be a poor selfish thing, insensible to the wants and the sufferings of others, but should do what in him lies, to assert what he knows to be the truth. And is it necessary to remind such of the misery which these rabbinic principles are still working in every part of the world? Here in London the poor are suffering. In the various towns of England many Jews are suffering. In some places a single Jewish family is found, generally poor, and the father ignorant of the rabbinic art of slaughtering: such persons are compelled to abstain altogether from animal food, or to do violence to their conscience. The poor Jews who go out to the colonies to seek employment are in the same case, and are precluded from taking such situations as require them to partake of the food of their employers. Even if they can buy an animal, they are not allowed to kill it for themselves:—