History of the Jews (Vol. 1-6). Graetz Heinrich
with the Law. Slavery ceased to exist; even if a Judæan wished to sell himself as a slave he could not find a buyer. Therefore the year of Jubilee, intended as a year of release of slaves, became a superfluous institution. On the other hand, the Sabbatical year was strictly kept. The debts of the poor were then cancelled, and the fields lay fallow. Probably the Judæan favourites at the Persian court had already demanded that, in the Sabbatical year, the taxes upon the produce of the fields be remitted. The poor were looked after with great solicitude, for the Pentateuch demanded that there should be no needy in the land. Alms giving was looked upon in this new order of things as the exercise of the highest virtue. In every town, members of the Judæan community were appointed to devote themselves to the care of the poor. The constant denunciations by the prophets and psalmists of the hard-heartedness displayed towards the poor and the helpless were no longer justified. Justice was admirably administered, and so conscientiously was the law executed that the Judæan law-officers might have been held up as models to the rest of the world. Twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, the market days, public courts of justice were held in all large towns.
It was most natural that, as the life of the community was regulated according to the commands of the Torah, the spiritual leaders of the people should devise a supreme court of justice, possessing the power to make and interpret laws. They were but carrying out the words of Deuteronomy, in which was enjoined the establishment of a superior court of justice, where a final decision in doubtful cases could be given. The question now arose as to the number of members to constitute this court. Seventy elders had shared with Moses the great burden of his duties, the representatives of the seventy chief families of the children of Israel. It was therefore decided that the supreme tribunal and high court of justice should number seventy elders. This peculiar institution, which lasted until the destruction of the Judæan commonwealth, which became the strict guardian of the Law, and at times rose to great political importance, was doubtless called into life at this period. At no other time could it have arisen. Thus the great assembly which Nehemiah had originally summoned, merely for the purpose of accepting the obligations of the Torah, developed into a permanent council for settling all religious and social questions. The seventy members of the supreme council were probably chosen from various great families. The high-priest, whether he was worthy of the dignity or not, was placed at their head. The president was called "father of the tribunal" (Ab Beth-din). As soon as the council was formed, it proceeded to carry into effect what Ezra and Nehemiah had begun, namely, the application of Judaism or the Law to the life and customs of the people. This supreme council brought about a complete revolution.
All the changes which we notice two hundred years later in the Judæan commonwealth were its work; the new regulations which tradition assigns to Ezra, and which were known under the name of Sopheric regulations (Dibre Sopherim) were the creations of this body. It laid a sure foundation for the edifice that was to last thousands of years. During this period it was that regular readings from the Law were instituted; on every Sabbath and on every Holy Day a portion from the Pentateuch was to be read to the assembled congregation. Twice a week, when the country people came from the villages to market in the neighbouring towns, or to appeal at the courts of justice, some verses of the Pentateuch, however few, were to be read publicly. At first only the learned did the public reading, but gradually as it came to be looked upon as a great honour to belong to the learned class, every one was anxious to be called upon to do duty as a reader. But the characters in which the Torah was written were an obstacle in the way of overcoming illiteracy. The text of the Torah was written in an antique script with Phœnician or old Babylonian characters, which could be deciphered only by practised scribes. For the Judæans in Persia, even more than for the Judæans in Palestine, the Torah was a book with seven seals. It was therefore necessary to transform the old-fashioned characters of the Hebrew Scriptures (Khetab Ibrith) into others, which were familiar to the inhabitants of the land between the Euphrates and the Tigris, and which the Judæans of Palestine and of the Persian provinces used also for the ordinary purposes of every-day life. In order to distinguish it from the old writing, the new style was called the Assyrian (Khetab Ashurith), because it had arisen in one of the Assyrian provinces. The Samaritans, animated by a spirit of contradiction, retained the old Hebrew characters for their Pentateuch, only in order to be able to reproach their opponents with having introduced a forbidden innovation and falsified the Torah. Until the present day, their holy writ exists in these old-fashioned characters, and it is a closed book even to most of their priests.
Owing to the regular reading of the Law and to its accessibility, there arose among the Judæans an intellectual activity which gradually gave a peculiar character to the whole nation. The Torah became their spiritual and intellectual property, and their own inner sanctuary. At this time there sprang up another important institution, namely, schools for young men, where the text of the Law was taught, and love for its teachings and principles cultivated. The intellectual leaders of the people continually enjoined on the rising generation, "Bring up a great many disciples." And what they enjoined so strenuously on others they themselves must have zealously laboured to perform. One of these religious schools (Beth-Waad) was established in Jerusalem. The teachers were called scribes (Sopherim) or wise men; the disciples, pupils of the wise (Talmide Chachamim). The wise men or scribes had a twofold activity: on the one hand, to explain the Torah, and on the other, to make the laws applicable both to individual and communal life. This supplementary interpretation was called "exposition" (Midrash); it was not arbitrary, but rested upon certain rules laid down for the proper interpretation of the Law. The supreme council and the houses of learning worked together, and one completed the other.
The result was a most important mental development, which impressed upon the descendants of the patriarchs a new characteristic so strongly as to make it seem second nature in them: the impulse to investigate, to interpret, and to tax their ingenuity in order to discover some new and hidden meaning either in the word or the substance. The supreme council, the source of these institutions and this new movement, did not confine itself to the interpretation of the existing laws, and to their application to daily life, but it also drew up its own code of laws, which were to regulate, to stimulate and to strengthen the religious and social life of the people. There was an old maxim of great repute in Judæa: "Make a fence about the Law." By this maxim the teacher of the Law was directed to forbid certain things in themselves permissible, which, however, touched too closely upon the forbidden points, or might be confounded with them. This method of guarding against any possible infringement of the Law, by means of a "fence" (Seyag), had its justification in the careless, unsettled habits of those early days. It was absolutely necessary that the mass of the people, who were wholly uneducated, should accustom themselves to the performance of the precepts and duties enjoined by the Law.
An entire set of laws, made for the purpose of preventing the violation of the commands of the Torah, belong to the Sopheric age. For instance, the degrees of relationship considered unlawful for matrimony were increased in number; to prevent the violation of chastity, men were forbidden to hold private interviews with married women in solitary places. The loose way in which the Sabbath was observed in Nehemiah's age was replaced by an extraordinarily rigid observance of the Sabbath. In order to prevent any possible violation of the Sabbath or of the festival days, all work was to cease before sunset on the preceding evening, and an official was appointed to proclaim, by the blast of a horn, the proper hour for repose. But the Sabbath day and the festivals were intended to create a feeling of both devotion and exaltation in the observers of the Law, and to banish from their memory the cares and the troubles of the working days. It was partly to express this that it became a custom in those days to drink a goblet of wine at the coming in and at the going out of the festivals, and to pronounce a blessing upon them, at their commencement declaring that these days are holy, and sanctified by God (Kiddush), and at their close, that they have a peculiar significance in contradistinction to the working days (Habdalah). By laws such as these, which were not permitted to remain a dead letter, the Sabbath acquired a holy character.
The first evening of the Paschal feast, falling in the spring time, was also invested with peculiar importance. It was intended to arouse every year and to keep alive a grateful remembrance of the deliverance from Egypt, and the consciousness of being in possession of precious freedom. It became either a law or a custom to drink four glasses of wine upon this festival of rejoicing, and even the poorest managed to obtain the draught "that rejoices the heart." On the