has suffered about equally at the hands of the commentator and the executioner. Many years ago Emmanuel Deutsch gave to the uninitiated a glimpse into that wondrous agglomeration of fantastically followed facts, where long-winded legend, or closeargued "law," starts some phrase or word from Holy Writ as quarry, and pursues it by paths the most devious, the most digressive imaginable to man. The work of many generations and of many "masters" in each generation, such a book is singularly susceptible to an open style of reading and a liberal aptitude of quotation, and it is no marvel that searchers in its pages, even reasonably honest ones, should be able to find detached individual utterances to fit into almost any one of their own preconceived dogmas concerning Talmud. On many subjects, qualifications, contradictions, differences abound, and instances of illegal law, of pseudo-science, of doubtful physics, may each, with a little trouble, be disinterred from the depths of these twelve huge volumes; but the ethics of the Talmud are, as a whole, of a high order, and on one point there is such remarkable and entire agreement, that it is here permissible to speak of what "the Talmud says," meaning thereby a general tone and consensus of opinion, and not the views of this or of that individual master. The subject on which this unusual harmony prevails is the, in these days, much discussed one of charity; and to discover something concerning so very ancient a mode of dealing with it may not prove uninteresting. The word which in these venerable folios is made to express the thing is, in itself, significant. In the Hebrew Scriptures, though the injunctions to charitable acts are many, an exact equivalent for our word "charity" can hardly be said to exist. In only eight instances, and not even then in its modern sense, does the Septuagint translate (tzedakah) into its Greek equivalent, Xenpoon, which would become in English "alms," or "charity.' The nearest synonyms for "charity" in the Hebrew Scriptures are (tzedakah), well translated as "righteousness" in the Authorized Version, and (chesed), which is adequately rendered as "mercy, kindness, love." The Talmud, in its exhaustive fashion, seems to accentuate the essential difference between these two words. Tzedakah is, to some extent, a class distinction; the rights of the poor make occasion for the righteousness of the rich, and the duties of tzedakah find liberal and elaborate expression in a strict and minute system of tithes and almsgiving.* The injunctions of the Pentateuch concerning the poor are worked out by the Talmud into the fullest detail of direction.

צדקה

The Levitical law, "When ye reap the harvest of your land,

* Maimonides, in his well-known digest of Talmudic laws relating to the poor, uniformly employs tzedakah in the sense of "alms."

thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field" (Levit. xiv. 9), gives occasion of itself to a considerable quantity of literature. At length it is enacted how, if brothers divide a field between them, each has to give a "corner," and how, if a man sell his field in several lots, each purchaser of each separate lot has to leave unreaped his own proportionate "corner" of the harvesting. And not only to leave unreaped, but how, in cases where the "corner was of a sort hard for the poor to gather, hanging high, as dates, or needing light handling, as grapes, it became the duty of the owner to undertake the "reaping" thereof, and, himself, to make the rightful division; thus guarding against injury to quickly-perishable fruits from too eager hands, or danger of a more serious sort to life or limbs, where ladders had to be used by hungry and impatient folks. The exactest rules, too, are formulated as to what constitutes a "field" and what a "corner," as to what produce is liable to the tax and in what measure. Very curious it is to read long and gravely-reasoned arguments as to why mushrooms should be held exempt from the law of the corner, whilst onions must be subject to it, or the weighty pros and cons over what may be fairly considered a "fallen grape," or a "sheaf left through forgetfulness." Yet the principle underlying the whole is too clear for prolixity to raise a smile, and the evident anxiety that no smallest loop-hole shall be left for evading the obligations of property compels respect. Little room for doubt on any disputed point of partition do these exhaustive, and, occasionally, it must be owned, exhausting, masters leave us, yet, when all is said, they are careful to add, "Whatever is doubtful concerning the gifts of the poor belongeth to the poor." The actual money value of this system of alms, the actual weight of ancient ephah or omer, in modern lbs. and ozs. would convey little meaning. Values fluctuate and measures vary, but a tithe of thy increase a corner of thy field," gives a tolerably safe index to the scale on which tzedakah was to be practised. Three times a day the poor might glean, and to the question which some lover of system, old style or new, might propound, "Why three times ? why not once, and get it over ?" an answer is vouchsafed. "Because there may

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be poor who are suckling children, and thus stand in need of food in the early morning; there may be young children who cannot be got ready early in the morning, nor come to the field till it be midday; there may be aged folk who cannot come till the time of evening prayer." Still, though plenty of sentiment in this code, there is no trace of sentimentality; rather a tendency for each back to bear its own burden, whether it be in the matter of give or take. Rights are respected all round, and significant in this sense is the rule that if a vineyard be sold by Gentile to Jew it must give up 44

VOL. X.

its "small bunches" of grapes to the poor; while if the transaction be the other way, the Gentile purchaser is altogether exempt, and if Jew and Gentile be partners, that part of the crop belonging to the Jew alone is taxed. And equally clear is it that the poor, though cared for and protected, are not to be petted. At this very three-times-a-day gleaning, if one should keep a corner of his "corner" to himself, hiding his harvesting and defrauding his neighbour, justice is prompt: "Let him be forced to depart," it is written, "and what he may have received let it be taken out of his hands." Neither is any preference permitted to poverty of the plausible or of the picturesque sort. "He who refuseth to one and giveth to another, that man is a defrauder of the poor," it is gravely said.

In general charity, there are, it is true, certain rules of precedence to be observed; kindred, for example, have, in all cases, the first claim, and a child supporting his parents, or even a parent supporting adult children, to the end that these may be "versed in the law, and have good manners," is set high among followers of tzedakah. Then, "The poor who are neighbours are to be regarded before all others; the poor of one's own family before the poor of one's own city, and the poor of one's own city before the poor of another city." And this version of "charity begins at home" is worked out in another place into quite a detailed table, so to speak, of professional precedence in the ranks of recognized recipients. And, curiously enough, first among all the distinctions to be observed comes this: If a man and woman solicit relief, the woman shall be first attended to and then the man." An explanation, perhaps a justification, of this mild forestalment of women's rights, is given in the dictum that "Man is accustomed to wander, and that woman is not," and "Her feelings of modesty being more acute," it is fit that she should be "always fed and clothed before the man.' And if, in this ancient system, there be a recognized scale of rights for receiving, so, equally, is there a graduated order of merit in giving. Eight in number are these so-called "Degrees in Alms Deeds," the curious list gravely setting forth as "highest," and this, it would seem, rather on the lines of "considering the poor" than of mere giving, that tzedakah which "helpeth helpeth . . . who is cast down," by means of gift or loan, or timely procuring of employment, and ranging through "next" and "next," till it announces, as eighth and least, the "anyone who giveth after much molestation." High in the list are placed those "silent givers" who "let not poor children of upright parents know from whom they receive support," and even the man who "giveth less than his means allow is lifted one degree above the lowest if he "give with a kind countenance." The mode of relief grew, with circumstances, to change. The

time came when, to "the Hagars and Ishmaels of mankind," rules for gleaning and for "fallen grapes" would, perforce, be meaningless, and new means for the carrying out of tzedakah had to be devised. In Alms of the Chest, (kupah), and Alms of the Basket, (tamchui), another exhaustive system of relief was formulated. The kupah would seem to have been a poor-rate, levied on all "residents in towns of over thirty days' standing,' and "Never," says Maimonides, "have we seen or heard of any congregation of Israelites in which there has not been the Chest. for Alms, though, with regard to the Basket, it is the custom in some places to have it, and not in others." These chests were placed in the Silent Court of the Sanctuary, to the end that a class of givers who went by the name of Fearers of Sin,* might deposit their alms in silence and be relieved of responsibility. The contents of the Chest were collected weekly and used for all ordinary objects of relief, the overplus being devoted to special cases and special purposes. It is somewhat strange to our modern notions to find that one among such purposes was that of providing poor folks with the wherewith to marry. For not only is it commanded concerning the "brother waxen poor," "If he standeth in need of garments, let him be clothed; or if of household things, let him be supplied with them," but "if of a wife, let a wife be betrothed unto him, and in case of a woman, let a husband be betrothed unto her." Does this quaint provision recall Voltaire's taunt that "Les juifs ont toujours regardé comme leurs deux grands devoirs des enfants et de l'argent"? Perhaps, and yet, Voltaire and even Malthus notwithstanding, it is just possible that the last word has not been said on this subject, and that in "improvident" marriages and large families the new creed of survival of the fittest may, after all, be best fulfilled.

Philosophers, we know, are not always consistent with themselves, and if there be truth in another saying of Voltaire's"Voyez les registres affreux de vos greffes crimines, vous y trouvez cent garçons de pendus ou de roués contre un père de famille "-then is there something certainly to be said in favour of the Jewish system. But this by the way, since statistics, it must be owned, are the most sensitive and susceptible of the sciences. This ancient betrothing, moreover, was no empty form, no bare affiancing of two paupers; but a serious and substantial practice of raising a marriage portion for a couple unable to marry without it. By Talmudic code, "marriages were not legitimately complete till a settlement of some sort was made

* NUT (yeree chet). These ultra-sensitive folks seem to have feared that in direct relief they might be imposed on, and so indirectly become encouragers of wrong-doing, or unnecessarily hurt the feelings of the poor.

on the wife," who, it may be here parenthetically remarked, was so far in advance of comparatively modern legislation as to be entitled to have and to hold in as complete and comprehensive a sense as her husband. But whilst Alms of the Chest, though pretty various in its application,* was intended only for the poor of the place in which it was collected, Alms of the Basket was, to the extent of its capabilities, for "the poor of the whole world." It consisted of a daily house-to-house collection of food of all sorts, and occasionally of money, which was again, day by day, distributed. This custom of tamchui, suited to those primitive times, would seem to be very similar to the practice of "common Boxes, and common gatherynges in every City," which prevailed in England in the sixteenth century, and which received legal sanction in Act of the 23rd of Henry VIII. -"Item, that 2 or 3 tymes in every weke 2 or 3 of every parysh shal appoynt certaine of ye said pore people to collecte and gather broken meates and fragments, and the refuse drynke of every householder, which shal be distributed evenly amonge the pore people as they by theyre discrecyons shal thynke good." Only the collectors and distributors of kupah and tamchui were not "certaine of ye said pore people"; but unpaid men of high character, holding something of the position of magistrates in the community. The duty of contributing in kind to tamchui was supplemented among the richer folks by a habit of entertaining the poor as guests;† seats at their own tables, and beds in their houses being frequently reserved for wayfarers, at least over Sabbath and festivals. The curious union of sense and sentiment in the code is shown again in the regulations as to who may and who may not receive of these gifts of the poor: "He who has sufficient for two meals," so runs the law, "may not take from tamchui; he who has sufficient for fourteen, may not take from kupah." Yet might holders of property, fallen on slack seasons, be saved from selling at a loss and helped

* We read, in medieval times, of the existence of wide "extensions "of this system of relief. In a curious old book, published in the seventeenth century, by a certain Rabbi Elijah ha Cohen ben Abraham, of Smyrna, we find a list drawn up of Jewish charities to which, as he says, "all pious Jews contribute." These modes of satisfying "the hungry soul" are over seventy in number, and of the most various kinds. They include the lending of money and the lending of books, the payment of dowries and the payment of burial charges, doctors' fees for the sick, legal fees for the unjustly accused, ransom for captives, ornaments for brides, and wet nurses for orphans.

Spanish Jews often had their coffins made from the wood of the tables at which they had sat with their unfashionable guests.

This custom had survived into quite modern times-to cite only the well-known case of Mendelssohn, who, coming as a penniless student to Berlin, received his Sabbath meals in the house of one co-religionist, and the privilege of an attic chamber under the roof of another.