The essay below is typical of Isaacs’ approach to a subject in which he was keenly interested both as a thinker and as a religious Jew. It is certainly more than the discussion of an ancient Jewish idea; it is the Jewish credo of a 20th-century American scholar who experienced the acquisition and organization of knowledge as perhaps the highest of human activities. The essay was first published in The Jewish Library, First Series, edited by Dr. Leo Jung, by whose permission it appears here.—Ed.

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The ancient world knew many man’s devotion to his God or his idol: fasting and feasting, abstinence and orgies, caressing and pelting with stones, magic (the attempt to control supernatural forces against their will) and divination (the attempt to learn the inescapable will of these forces in order to submit to it gracefully), bedecking the object of worship and defiling it, inciting the worshiper to a frenzy and lulling him into a stupor, treating the higher power as taboo to be kept away, or totem to be kept near, singing and weeping, dancing and lamenting, anointing one’s body with oil and disfiguring it, riotous games and quiet prayers, seeking favor by faith and seeking favor by works. Enough of contrasts; one can easily understand the talmudic allusions to technical acts of idolatry in which the worshiper has no intent to worship. The ten thousand cults differed not only in what they thought ought to be done, but in their prescribed ways for doing these things. There is a story to the effect that Pharaoh’s daughter imported a thousand musical instruments and demonstrated to King Solomon the particular use of each in some idolatrous cult. The symbolic acts and gestures range all the way from the whirling of a dervish to a simple bowing or bending of the knee. The places chosen for these acts were individual hearths or public heaths, groves or high places, grottoes or crossroads, deserts or river valleys, where they erected altars or pillars or shrines or temples or planted sacred trees. They burned incense, poured libations of wine, sacrificed plants, animals, enemies, friends, children, themselves. They devoted valued things and chosen persons to the uses of religion. They treated the animals, or heavenly bodies or other objects or images that they looked upon as symbols or embodiments or the very beings of their divinities, more or less as if they were human, setting tables before them, bargaining with them and sometimes cheating them in the bargain. Occasionally they played off one power against another. At other times they cowered before them, showing deepest contrition, making confessions of all their sins, uttering fearful vows and doing horrible penance. Israel had to be warned not only against the worship of strange gods, but against strange worship of the true God: “ Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord, thy God; for every abomination to the Lord, which He hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters do they bum in the fire to their gods” (Deut. xii. 31).

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Talmud Torah as “Abodah”

Among the carefully selected methods that were open to Jews, there was one, perhaps the most important one, that seems to have been unknown among the Gentiles. It is the mitzvah of Talmud Torah. The study of the Law is not merely a means to an end; it is in itself a highly meritorious act and a mode of worship. That this notion had its origin in Judaism and that it has served the needs of Jews in Judaism peculiarly well are propositions more likely to be overlooked than controverted. It was controversy, however, that first caused them to be articulately put forth with scientific apparatus. One hundred years ago grave doubts were expressed within Jewry and outside of it as to whether the sermon was an element of Gottesdienst. Zunz, in his defense of the institution, clearly saw that its sole claim to recognition was its historic connection with the reading of the Law as a synagogue function.¹ Quite appropriately in a Zunz Memorial lecture a few years ago Professor George Foot Moore declared that he recognized in the Rabbinic zeal for learning a true religious enthusiasm. “This conception of individual and collective study,” said he, “as a form of divine service has persisted in Judaism through all ages, and has made not only the learned by profession but men of humble callings in life assiduous students of the Talmud as the pursuit of the highest branch of religious learning and the most meritorious of good works.” It is the purpose of the present study to examine this aspect of Judaism both in theory and in practice, and then to suggest, if not to answer, some psychological questions connected with this variety of religious experience.

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Three Aspects

There are three senses in which Torah study may be referred to as a method of worship among the Jews. In the first place, it is, of course, reckoned as a mitzvah, and a mitzvah of such importance that its regular performance is to be assumed by incorporation into the daily ritual. In the second place, Torah study ranks as worship even in the narrowest sense because it takes the place, according to Jewish doctrine, of the altar service of old. Finally in a much more significant sense Torah study is worship because it brings the Jew and his God into closer contact. It is the direct course leading to Daat Elohim, “knowledge of God,” which is the nearest Hebrew equivalent of “religion.” To each of these senses of the word “worship”—the obvious, the narrow, and the broad—and the place of Torah study in connection with it we shall devote a section, but the sections will be of very uneven length and fullness.

1. The Greatest Mitzvah Incorporated in the Liturgy. First, then, let us consider the biblical commands and their interpretation and application, including the incorporation of particular acts of study in the liturgy. The biblical commands are found chiefly in Deuteronomy:

Make them known unto thy children and thy children’s children (iv. 8): “And the words which I command, thee this day shall be upon thy heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children and shalt talk of them when thou walkest by the way and when thou liest down and when thou risest up” (vi. 6);

When thy son asketh thee in time to come saying: “What means the testimonies and the statutes and the ordinances which the Lord, our God, hath commanded you?” then shalt thou say unto thy son: “We were bondsmen . . . and the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes” (vi. 20-25);

And ye shall teach them your children, talking of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down and when thou risest up (xi. 19);

And Moses commanded them (the priests and elders) saying: “At the end of every seven years, in the set time of the year of release, in the feast of tabernacles, when all Israel is come to appear before the Lord thy God, in the place which He shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Assemble the people, the men and the women and the little ones, and the stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the Lord your God, and observe to do all the words of this law; and that their children, who have not known, may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God, as long as ye live in the land whither ye go over the Jordan to possess it” (xxxi. 10-13).

Closely related to the idea of learning and teaching are those sentences which prescribe the publication of the laws, the writing of them, and the use of devices calculated to keep the people reminded of them, to keep them, so to speak, constantly at hand and before the eyes (Deut vi. 8, 9; xi. 18-20; xvii. 18-20; xx. 12; xxiii. 1-4, 8; Num. xv. 37-41).

Most of these passages are, as indicated, from Deuteronomy. The idea is by no means absent from other parts of the Pentateuch; in Exodus, for example, there are three passages about the teaching of sons quite parallel to the one quoted above, and constituting with it the material for the theme of the Four Sons in the Passover Haggadah (xii. 26; xiii. 8; xiii. 14). But the Book of Deuteronomy is such a remarkable unit that to understand the passages taken from it, one should attempt to see them in the setting disclosed by a coup d’oeil of the whole work. Deuteronomy consists of four orations, a song, and the blessing of Moses, with a code of laws inserted between the second and the third oration. The code is the thing talked about or sung about in all of the other parts of the book. It is the document referred to when the other parts speak of “these words which I command thee this day” or “the statutes and the ordinances which I command thee this day,” or when they use similar expressions. Furthermore the four orations represent four different approaches to this code that correspond pretty closely with four types of jurisprudence that have their uses even today: historical, analytical, social, and ethical. The first oration (i. 6—IV. 40) is an historical introduction that warms up to an admonition “lest thou forget the things which thine eyes saw” and an appeal to the Israelites in the name of history to appreciate their Law, which is destined to constitute their wisdom and their understanding in the sight of the peoples: “Ask now of the days past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon the earth and from the one end of heaven unto the other, whether there hath been any such thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it. Did ever a people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and live?” The second oration (v. 8—xi. 32) is analytical in the sense that it calls attention to underlying principles. It contains the Ten Commandments, the Shema, and the grand summary: “And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul; to keep for thy good the commandments of the Lord, and his statutes, which I command thee this day?” The code, including a group of laws cast into the impressive form of a curse, occupies sixteen chapters (xii-xxvii). The third oration is a plea on social and political grounds (xxviii) in which obedience to the Law is pointed out as the road to public welfare and disobedience as the road to national ruin. It contains the great tokahah or admonition. The fourth oration (xxix. 1—xxxi. 8) represents an approach to the Law through individual ethics. It is the beginning of individual religion: “Ye are standing this day all of you before the elders and your little ones, your wives, and the stranger that is in the midst of thy camp, from the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy water.” More than this, he that standeth here this day and also he that is not here with us this day is included.

code; they are its frame. They are not ordinary precepts, but something that stands out against the whole of the Law, coordinate with all the rest of it put together. The outline may serve further to correct a very superficial view that comes from learning out of the siddur instead of out of the Torah. When the law-giver says “these words, I command thee this day” and “my commandments which I command thee this day,” in two passages known to every Jew, he is not referring to any formula. It is the whole code, the mishneh ha-torah, that “shall be upon thine heart,” that “thou shalt teach diligently unto thy children,” that “thou shalt talk of when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.” In fact the simple sense of the text is not satisfied unless the whole code is represented in the sign upon the hand, the frontlets between the eyes, on the doorposts of the homes and at the city gates. The actual Jewish practice of writing the words “And thou shalt write them” instead of the code itself in these places requires some explanation. Otherwise it may strike one as it would to approach an American city and encounter a signpost with such words as these: “Notice: It has been ordained by the Selectmen of the Town of Blank that the speed regulations of the Town be posted in a conspicuous place on every avenue of approach to the Town.” Just this, and not a word to tell us whether the speed limit of that town was eight or ten or fifteen or twenty miles an hour. There is a simple explanation of the Jewish practice, namely, that our posting an ordinance, with its command to teach and to teach again, to talk of and to publish and to keep before the mind and ready at hand the whole of the Law, embodies the commandment of Talmud Torah, which is the equivalent of all the other commandments put together. Of course, it is—so long as it is obeyed. Otherwise we are posting the posting ordinance instead of the matter ordered to be posted.

Throughout Jewish history the ordinances as to learning and teaching the Law have been taken to heart. The minutiae of their observance, such questions as who must be taught (Kiddushin, 30, sons and grandsons); who may be taught (Sotah 2; cf. Maimonides, Hilkot T.T., on the teaching of daughters²) and who may not be taught (Makkot, 10; Ketubot, 28; Hagigah, 13, as to non-Jews); and who shall do the teaching (Berakot, 28, as to minim; the medieval writers stress public schools and paid teaching for elementary courses)—these interesting developments do not concern us here. We are interested primarily in those laws which put study and teaching into the ritual as an element of worship. These fall into two groups: those dealing with the reading of the Torah on stated occasions, such as holidays, New Moons, Sabbaths, Mondays, and Thursdays, so that three days could never pass without some public reading from the Torah; and, secondly, those ccncerned with the insuring of a minimum of Torah study daily and nightly by each Israelite. The synagogue reading is subject to elaborate regulation. Though the cycle for the completion of the Five Books differed in different parts of the world, there were traditional principles as to the types of passages with which to begin and end, as to what breaks were proper, and numerous other details that have been embodied in the annual cycle that now predominates in most parts of Jewry. Strict rules were also laid down as to the accuracy of the handwritten scroll from which the reading was to take place, as to who could and who must be called up to read from the scroll or stand by during the reading and pronounce the prescribed blessings. Special portions for special Sabbaths, the selection of appropriate companion pieces from the prophets for haftarot, the study by the individual to supplement the reading, twice in the original and once in the Targum—these are topics on which thought has been concentrated throughout the history of the synagogue.

The second branch of study appearing in the liturgy demands a closer scrutiny for its discovery and it will repay us more abundantly by the light it sheds on Jewish services. I speak of services rather than of prayer because the word “prayer” in its original and ordinary sense is misleading when used in connection with Judaism. Praying or asking for what we selfishly desire, that is the use of tehinnot (for matters other than forgiveness), forms a remarkably small part of Jewish liturgy. It is practically excluded from the Sabbath and festival services. Even the week-day Eighteen Benedictions must be changed into something else on those days because they contain too many allusions to our daily cares. What, then, are the contents of Jewish services? They are words of praise and thanksgiving to the Lord, confessions of our imperfections and words of high resolve, declarations of faith and of love for God and his Torah, recitations of historical narratives constituting a kind of philosophy of history. All of these elements ask for nothing, they are merely wholesome meditation. Then there is the intenser meditation—study.

The early portion of the morning service is devoted largely to the commandment of Torah study. It includes the opening words of the Mishnah Peah in which Torah study is glorified among the commandments for which no maximum is set and among those whose fruits are enjoyed in this world while the stock remains for the world to come. It is equal to all the rest of these commandments put together. Among the first benedictions in the service is that which is intended to precede the Torah study of the day:

Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast sanctified us by Thy commandments, and commanded us to occupy ourselves with the words of the Law. Make pleasant, therefore, we beseech Thee, O Lord our God, the words of Thy Law in our mouth and in the mouth of Thy people, the house of Israel, so that we with our offspring and the offspring of thy people, the house of Israel, may all know Thy name and learn Thy Law; Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who teachest the Law to Thy people Israel. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who hast chosen us from all nations and given us Thy Law. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who givest the Law (Berakot, 11).

The last part will be recognized as the very words of the first blessing pronounced by one who is honored by an aliyah, an invitation to officiate at the reading of the Torah. In the service it is immediately followed by three biblical verses, the minimum number constituting a connected passage requiring the recitation of the blessing. The three verses ordinarily chosen here are those of the priestly blessing. Then to complete the threefold cord of learning that the rabbis have described, we read passages from the Mishnah and the Gemara, passages to which we shall refer again presently. A Baraita, the thirteen principles of interpretation of Rabbi Ishmael, is also included as an element of learning. We pass then through the meditative “verses of praise” and come upon Torah study again in the Shema paragraphs and the blessings that surround them. These take up the subject matter of the first books of the Bible with the Torah represented by the Shema in its historical setting. The first blessing has to do with creation, the second with Israel’s selection, and the third with its redemption. In the evening service the Shema is placed in a similar setting. The Rabbis looked upon the reading of Shema as a satisfactory minimum of Bible study, yet they were cautious not to mislead the ignorant by giving undue publicity to this view (Menahot, 99). Naturally they devoted much attention to the time and place and conditions of the recitation of the Shema (e.g., at the beginning of Berakot) and not once did it occur to them to think any the less of it as a service because they saw in it a fulfilment of the obligation to study. The one idea embraced the other.

2. Study as a Substitute for Specific Temple Service. To understand the second phase of the identification of study with worship we revert to the peculiar choice of Mishnah and Gemara passages in the services to complete, with the Bible passages, the threefold cord. The Mishnah passage deals with details of the sacrifices in the Temple and the Gemara passage with the burning of incense. With these are recited biblical references to the regular daily sacrifice and other details of the Temple cult. In the light of a Jewish doctrine that the study of these passages is the equivalent of the performance of the commandments therein, this part of the service is a substitute for the Temple service and thus constitutes an unbroken tradition of abodah in the strictest sense of the word. A passage printed in some of the larger prayer books gives voice to this theory:

Sovereign of the Universe, Thou didst command us to offer the daily sacrifice at its appointed time; and that the priests be at their service, and the Levites on their platform and the Israelites at their station. But now, because of our sins, the Temple is laid waste and the daily sacrifice is discontinued. We have no priest-at his service, no Levite on the platform, no Israelite at his station. But Thou hast said of us, “We shall render for bullocks the offering of our lips (Hosea xiv. 3).” Therefore may it please Thee, O Lord our God, and the God of our Fathers, that the words of our lips be accounted, accepted and esteemed before Thee as the equivalent of having offered the daily sacrifice at its appointed time and having stood at our station.

This represents a point of view well established in the Talmud. Thus in one place (Taanit, 27b) we read as a reassurance for the whole world in the days when the Temple is lacking that the reading of the sections of the law describing the service serves the same purpose. We read again (Menahot, 110a) a collection of opinions likening the learning of Torah to the offering of incense, to Temple service in general, to the rebuilding of the Temple. In another place (Berakot, 26b) the several prayers are directly related to the daily sacrifices, and the musaf, or additional prayers of special days, to the additional offerings prescribed for these days.

3. Study as Religious Activity Outside of the Liturgy. It would be misleading, however, to argue from these passages, as is sometimes done, that Jewish devotion to learning has come about as a result of the loss of everything else that seemed of significance in Jewish life, national independence, native land, the Sanctuary, the priesthood. In this connection the story of Johanan ben Zakkai is sometimes repeated: At the fall of Jerusalem he saved Judaism by establishing a place where the study of the Torah could go on. But it is idle to seek the beginning of the importance attributed to Torah study so late in Jewish history. The Bible is full of it. The Lord says to Joshua—the words are taken to heart as pertaining to all Israel—“This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt .meditate therein day and night that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein (Josh. i. 8).” The first Psalm catches up the important phrase: it declares that man happy, whose “delight is in the Law of the Lord; and in his Law does he meditate day and night.” There is a longer encomium in the nineteenth Psalm, beginning: “The Law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul.” And the longest of all Psalms, the hundred and nineteenth, is an eightfold acrostic poem in every verse of which there is a synonym for the Torah. Isaiah (ii. 3) and Micah (iv. 2) look forward to the time when Torah will go forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. Jeremiah even while rebuking Israel bears witness to their pride and confidence that the Law of the Lord is with them (Jer viii. 7). The last of the prophets calls on Israel to remember the Law of Moses (Mal iii. 22). There is hardly a break between this biblical commendation of the study of the Law and the midrashic and talmudic elaboration of it. One need only turn to the sixth chapter of Pirke Abot, every line of which could be quoted here. I shall mention only that it sets learning above the priesthood and kingship. In fact the talmid hakam without a name outranks an illiterate high priest in the estimation of the rabbis. In all of these discussions the rabbis are too practical to overlook the tremendous importance of the study of the law as a means to an end. Sometimes they stress the relative importance of the works to which it leads a little more than at others. But they never forget that it is also an end in itself. It is best to study for the purpose of mastering and teaching, of keeping and performing the law; but it is also worth while to study without reference to putting the teachings into practice. Nay, we are advised to study regardless of our motive, for, beginning lo lishmah, one comes naturally to a point where he studies lishmah, that is, with the proper intent (Pesahim, 50). It is quite important to bear in mind this Jewish feeling that Torah study is a good act in itself, if we are to estimate its meaning in Judaism as a form of worship.

There have, of course, been several reactions in Jewish history against the exaltation of learning as an end in itself. Something of the sort was brewing in the troublous times that gave birth to Christianity, and was taken advantage of by the agitators who were trying to sway the am haaretz. Something of the sort has cropped out now and again among Jewish mystics, medieval and modern. But at no time in Jewish history has Jewish respect for learning fallen so low that it could not serve the body of Israel as a means of communion with God. ³

There is a traditional Jewish attitude behind this wonderful feeling toward learning. It is the attitude that mothers pour into cradle songs that foretell careers for their children as men of learning. I can find no other cradle songs that dream of intellectual achievement. The same trait is reflected in Jewish hero-tales. The heroes are intellectual giants who have wrestled with difficult Torah questions. We need only remember how the Anglo-Saxons found even the partly illiterate founders of Christianity too intellectual for their poetic needs and converted them into a chieftain with twelve warriors bold who went forth to battle with shining helmets. In like manner but in a different spirit the haggadists could imagine Father Jacob spending his youth in no more appropriate way than in study in the tents of Shem and Eber. No question is entertained about the familiarity of the outstanding figures of Israel, even the crude Jephthah, to say nothing of David and Solomon, with the halakah. A villain to assume heroic proportions must be as learned as Doeg and Ahithophel. To the payetan it is a matter of course that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, Samuel, David, Solomon, and Elijah rejoiced in the Rejoicing of the Law. This readiness to see beauty and heroism and joy as well as duty and piety and intrinsic worth in Torah study is the quality that has made the Jew fit to use the Torah as an instrument of worship.

His enthusiasm has saved him from the danger of being satisfied with the minimum worked out for him by the rabbis. To the daily ritual the pious have added the Ten Commandments and various other Bible passages from the several types of books, constituting the maamadot, direct substitutes for the Israelites’ part in the Temple service. But the ritual is only a beginning. Daily study is a part of the duty for every Jew. The synagogues have never ceased reverberating with the hum of Bible groups, Mishnah groups, and Gemara groups, and even groups for the study of mystic literature. In connection with the public reading of the Torah, the practice of interpreting and then of explaining at greater length led to the development of the sermon. True, this custom fell into decay in the Middle Ages but it has recently been revived not only as a substitute for something else in the service as among the early Reformers, but in its old place as a supplement to the prescribed amount of Torah study.

We can imagine the confusion of the ancient Greeks and Romans who peered into the Jewish synagogues and failed to see anything that reminded them of their temples. There were no images, no sacrifices, no ceremonies—nothing but a school so far a, they could see. The early Christians, of course, copied the services of the synagogue. Soon, however, it was found difficult to keep the Gentiles who attended interested in the long excerpts from the wanderings of the ancestors of the Jews in the wilderness and from their “obsolete” laws. Gradually the intellectual element of the Christian liturgy, which had come from the Jews, was submerged in the sacramental part, which came from the pagans. All that was left of the teaching in the synagogue, so often spoken of in the Christian Bible, was the sermon, which had become an inspirational talk loosely connected with a brief text wrested by main force from its context. A revival of interest in study has marked the liturgy of several Protestant sects in their beginnings, but the intellectual elements has almost invariably been suppressed in the end or relegated to the Sunday-school class.

Study is not ranked among the Christian methods of worship. It is missing, for example, in Professor James’s well-known Varieties of Religious Experience. At least, it is not the philosophy that he speaks of. It is not a mode of coercing belief. It is not the intruding of intellect in functions not primarily intellectual. The religious experience involved is a consciousness of the same kind that flows from saintliness in general, and in fact from all modes of worship that are at all effective in creating a feeling of nearness to the Object of Devotion. Rabbi Halafta ben Dosa of the Village of Hanania said: “When ten people sit together and occupy themselves with the Torah, the Divine Presence abides among them.” And the same is proved of five, or three, or two, and finally even of one. The inner satisfaction of hours spent in such nearness to the Shekinah illuminates the popular Jewish picture of the World to Come, a place free from eating and drinking and worldly activities of all kinds, where the righteous sit crowned, enjoying the splendor of the Shekinah (Berakot, 7a). The exalted feeling of having well done a task divinely appointed, a task too in which man proves himself most Godlike, that comes from having mastered a particularly difficult bit of Torah, explains much of the devotion to abstruse learning for which Jews have long been remarkable. But then the capacity for experiencing that exaltation in learning is indispensable for keeping Torah study effective as a means of worship. This capacity is to a remarkable degree the peculiar inheritance of Israel. “Lo asah ken lekol goi, umishpatim bal yedaum, Halleluyah” (Ps cxlvii. 20). “He hath not dealt so with any nation; And as for his ordinances, they have not known them. Hallelujah.”

¹ We have been hearing in recent days as a result of the Kulturkampf that has been waged in certain countries since the war, that there is a distinction between freedom in education and freedom in worship. A Zunz is needed to demonstrate to these countries that with us, at least, education is worship: Torah is Abodah.

² The doubt raised as to the teaching of the Torah to women is difficult to comprehend when we remember that Moses (see Deut xxix. 1 and xxxi. 12) and Ezra (Neh viii. 2) so specifically included the women in the ceremony of hearing the public readings from the Law. The notion that the woman must not learn by means of the public teaching is more in accord with the attitude of New Testament times than that of the times reflected in the Jewish Bible. Thus Paul writes: “Let your women keep silence in the churches; for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything let them ask their husbands at home; for it is a shame for women to speak in the church” (I Cor xiv. 34, 35). His reference to “the law” is rather vague. Does he allude to the curse of Eve (Gen iii. 16) or to the law of Ahasuerus “that every man should bear rule in his own house” (Esther i. 22)?

³ I do not consider the saying of Rabbi Simeon ben Gamaliel near the end of the first chapter of Abot as contrary to the tradition described here, although I find it translated in most versions as “not earning but doing is the chief thing.” When Simeon was a student, another, according to the record preserved by the Christians, also sat at the feet of Gamaliel, the wordiest man of all antiquity, Saul of Tarsus. He entertained no high respect for the study of the law, and none for its practice. His theory was that salvation must come by faith and not by works. He preached and argued and explained and wrote incessantly on this one point. Within the Christian Church he won his point, that the Gentiles be admitted without making them submit to the Law, so long as they accepted a theory. In the light of this disturbance read the remarks of Simeon, the very antithesis of Saul: “All my days have I grown up among the wise, and I have found nought of better service than silence; ‘midrash’ is not the thing that counts, but ‘works’ are; whoso is profuse in words causes sin.” It is not Torah study that he relegates to an inferior position; on the contrary that is closely related to the idea of “works,” which means obedience to the Torah; it is the theorizing, the making everything turn on what we say or believe, that he finds a improper emphasis, an emphasis that involves its victim in sin.