Page:The old paths, or The Talmud tested by Scripture.djvu/402



"If an Israelite does not know the five things which invalidate the act of slaughtering, as we have explained, and slaughters by himself, it is unlawful to eat of his slaughtering, both for himself and others; for this case is much the same as that of doubtful carrion, and he that eats of it a quantity equal to an olive, is to be flogged with the flogging of rebellion." (Ibid., c. iv.) Such is the mercy of the oral law, and such its justice. It punishes the eating of what God has allowed, with the same severity that it would visit a great crime. It makes no provision for those numerous cases of distress which we have mentioned. Whether one of its disciples has or has not food, it never considers. Without reflection and without mercy it sentences every one, who eats meat not rabbinically slaughtered, to be flogged. But, besides the cruelty, what is the effect upon the minds of its votaries? It teaches them that to transgress this mere human observance is a sin of the deepest die, more dreadful far than many which God has forgiven. A Rabbinist would be more grieved to hear that his son had transgressed the law of slaughtering, than to find that he had been guilty of falsehood. Its tendency is directly to draw off the mind from the weightier matters of the law, judgment, justice, and mercy, and to flatter the ill-informed that they are good Jews, if only they abstain from meat not slaughtered according to rabbinic art.

Let not any Jew imagine that we wish him lightly to transgress the law of Moses, or to eat of food which the law of God has forbidden. We now speak of that which Moses has allowed. If a Jew would see meat offered to idols, or be invited to partake of an idolatrous feast, let him abstain—let him refuse, and protest as strongly as he will and can against the sinfulness of such conduct. But where does Moses forbid the poor to partake of meat slaughtered by a Gentile worshipper of the true God, or by an Israelite who has not learned the rabbinic art? Certainly not in that passage to which the oral law refers. Moses gives a general permission to every Israelite, without exception, to kill and eat. "Notwithstanding thou mayest kill and eat flesh in all thy gates, whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, according to the blessing of the Lord thy God which he hath given thee." (Deut. xii. 15.) He makes no mention of any mysteries, connected with the art of slaughtering, the ignorance of which would disqualify. Why then