History of the Jews, Vol. 3 (of 6). Graetz Heinrich

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СКАЧАТЬ to each community with a ceremonious form of greeting from the college. It was customary for the various congregations to accompany their inquiries with valuable presents in money. If these presents were sent specially to one of the two colleges, the other received no share; but if they were remitted without any precise directions, the Soranian school, being the more important, received two-thirds, and the remainder went to the sister-college. These presents were divided by the president among the members of the college and the students of the Talmud.

      Over and above such irregular receipts, the two colleges derived a regular income from the districts which were under their jurisdiction. To Sora belonged the south of Irak, with the two important cities Wasit and Bassora, and its jurisdiction extended as far as Ophir (India or Yemen?). In later times the revenues of these countries still amounted to 1500 gold denars (about $3700). The northern communities belonged to Pumbeditha, whose jurisdiction extended as far as Khorasan.

      The appointment of the judges of a district was, in all probability, the duty of the principal of the college, in conjunction with the chief judge and the seven members of the Senate-council. Each of these three heads of the Babylonian-Jewish commonwealth accordingly possessed the power of appointing the judges of his province, and the communities were thus either under the Prince of the Captivity or the Soranian Gaonate, or were dependent on the college of Pumbeditha. When a judge was appointed over a certain community he received a commission from the authorities over him. He bore the title of Dayan, and had to decide not only in civil but also in religious cases, and was therefore at the same time a rabbi. He chose from amongst the members of the community two associates (Zekenim), together with whom he formed a judicial and rabbinical tribunal. All valid deeds, marriage contracts, letters of divorce, bills of exchange, bills of sale, and deeds of gift, were also confirmed by this rabbi-judge. He was, at the same time, the notary of the community. For these various functions he received – first, a certain contribution from every independent member of the community; secondly, fees for drawing up deeds; and, thirdly, a weekly salary from the vendors of meat. The children's schools, which were in connection with the synagogue, were probably also under the supervision of this rabbi-judge.

      The communal constitution in Jewish Babylonia has served as a model for the whole Jewish people, partly until the present time. At the head of the community stood a commission entrusted with the public interests, and composed of seven members, who were called Parnesé-ha-Keneset (Maintainers of the Community). A delegate of a Prince of the Captivity, or of one of the principals of the colleges, was charged with the supervision of public business, and also possessed the power of punishing refractory members. The punishments inflicted were flogging and excommunication. The latter, the invisible weapon of the Middle Ages, which changed its victims to living corpses, was, however, neither so often nor so arbitrarily exercised by the Jews as by the Christians; but even among them it fell with terrible force. Those who refused to comply with religious or official regulations, were punished with the lesser excommunication. It was mild in form, and did not entail the total isolation of the person excommunicated, and affected the members of his own family still less. But whosoever failed to repent within the given respite of thirty days, and to make application to have the excommunication annulled, incurred the punishment of the greater ban. This punishment scared away a man's most intimate friends, isolated him in the midst of society, and caused him to be treated as an outcast from Judaism. No one was allowed to hold social intercourse with him, under penalty of incurring similar punishments. His children were expelled from school, and his wife from the synagogue. All were forbidden to bury his dead, or even to receive his new-born son into the covenant of Abraham. Every distinctive mark of Judaism was denied him, and he was left branded as one accursed of God. The proclamation of the ban was posted up outside the court of justice, and communicated to the congregation. Although this punishment of excommunication and its consequences were extremely horrible, it was nevertheless, at a time when the multitude was not open to rational conviction, the only means of preserving religious unity intact, of administering justice, and of maintaining social order.

      The Jewish commonwealth of Babylonia, notwithstanding its dependence on the humors of a Mahometan governor and the caprice of its own leaders, seemed nevertheless to those at a distance surrounded with a halo of power and greatness. The Prince of the Captivity appeared to the Jews of distant lands, who heard only confused rumors, to have regained the scepter of David; for them the Geonim of the two colleges were the living upholders and the representatives of the ideal times of the Talmud. The further the dominion of the Caliphate of the house of Ommiyyah was extended, to the north beyond the Oxus, to the east to India, in the west and the south to Africa and the Pyrenees, the more adherents were gained for the Babylonian Jewish chiefs. Every conquest of the Mahometan generals enlarged the boundaries of the dominion under the rule of the Prince of the Captivity and the Geonim. Even Palestine, deprived of its center, subordinated itself to Babylonia. The hearts of all Jews turned towards the potentates on the Euphrates, and their presents flowed in freely, to enable the house of David to make a worthy appearance, and the Talmudical colleges to continue to exist in splendor. The grief for their dispersion to all corners of the earth was mitigated by the knowledge that by the rivers of Babylon, where the flower of the Jewish nation in its full vigor had settled, and where the great Amoraim had lived and worked, a Jewish commonwealth still existed. It was universally believed by the Jews that in the original seat of Jewish greatness the primitive spring of ancient Jewish wisdom was still flowing. "God permitted the colleges of Sora and Pumbeditha to come into existence twelve years before the destruction of the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar, and vouchsafed them His special protection. They never suffered persecution at the hands of the Romans or the Byzantines, and have known neither coercion nor bondage. From thence will proceed the deliverance of Israel, and the dwellers in this happy corner of the earth will be spared the sufferings that are to usher in the age of the Messiah." Such was the view held by all who had not seen the Babylonian settlement with their own eyes.

      It was accounted an honor for a dead person to be mentioned at a memorial service at the colleges. For this purpose a special day was set apart in each month of assembly, during which no business was transacted by the colleges; the members mourned for the benefactors of the colleges that had died during the past year, and prayed for the peace of their souls (Ashkabá). Later on it became customary to forward lists of the dead, even from France and Spain, in order that they might also be thus honored.

      The Jews of Spain, to whom so brilliant a part is allotted in Jewish history, drained the cup of misery to the dregs, at the very time when their brethren in Irak obtained almost perfect freedom and independence. Some of them had been obliged to emigrate; others were compelled to embrace Christianity, and were required by the king Chintila, solemnly to declare in writing their sincere adherence to the Catholic faith and their entire repudiation of Judaism. But although they had been forcibly converted, the Jews of Visigothic Spain nevertheless clung steadfastly to their prohibited religion. The independent Visigothic nobles, to a certain extent, protected them from the king's severity, and no sooner were the eyes of the fanatical Chintila closed in death than the Jews openly reverted to Judaism under Chindaswinth, his successor (642–652). This monarch was at open enmity with the clergy, who desired to restrain the power of the throne in favor of the Church, but was well affected towards the Jews.

      His son, Receswinth, however, who was altogether unlike him, adopted an entirely different policy. Either from fanaticism, or in order to ingratiate himself with the clergy, at that time hostile to the throne, he proposed in an ecclesiastical council (which was at the same time a parliament) to deal rigorously with the Jews, more especially with such of them as had formerly feigned to be Christians. In his speech from the throne, Receswinth made the following appeal to the members of the council: "It is because I have learnt that my kingdom is polluted by them as by an epidemic that I denounce the life and the behavior of the Jews. For while the Almighty has entirely freed the country from heresy, a disgraceful desecration of the churches still continues. This shall either be reformed by our piety or rooted out by our severity. I mean that many of the Jews still persist in their old unbelief, while others, although purified by baptism, have relapsed so deeply into the errors of apostasy that their blasphemy seems even more abominable than the sin of those who have not been baptized. I adjure you, therefore, to decree against the Jews, without СКАЧАТЬ