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No. 21. | Vienna, 20 May 1904 — 6 Sivan 5664. | 8th Year.

Pictures of Shavuoth.

By Dr. Leopold Kahn.

The Feast of Weeks . . ., the feast of the Decalogue, that fundamental law of human civilisation from which the great communities — the States — have differentiated out their compendia of civil and criminal law, admixed, it may be, with heathen elements of the Roman "disciplined egoism," . . . the feast of the Decalogue, that holy well-spring of human peace, which for three thousand five hundred years has ever been becoming the common property of all civilised nations, yet is far from being so still, was for Israel while rooted in its own soil — as indeed were all its holy days — no purely religious festival, but at the same time a national one, in truth a peasants' festival . . .

In the little Russian and Polish ghettos the night before the coming of the Feast of Weeks is passed in watching, and a compilation drawn up expressly for the purpose from the whole of ancient Hebrew literature — from Bible, Mishnah, Talmud, and even from the Kabbalah — is recited in the sing-song of the prayer-chants.

In the morning the rising sun, where it is able at all, penetrates through little green leaves into the airless, lightless rooms of the children of the ghetto. With these, on the day before, the window-panes have been pasted over in dainty figures. These green, yellowing leaves are, like the night-watch, a remembrance for the scattered leaves of the stock of Jacob of better times, over which almost two thousand years of estrangement from nature have passed away. To those who understand them they whisper old tales — tales of brotherly life together, of freedom, of delight in existence, of jubilant joy — all blessings which the forefathers in Zion enjoyed, and toward which the leaf-figures on the window-panes, the green hope of the humbled and outlawed dwellers in these stifling rooms, point the way, and in which they strengthen them . . .

The Feast of Weeks! Both Num. 24, 22 and Deuteron. 16, 9 and 26, 2, which ordain it, proceed from the presupposition of the untroubled possession of the Promised Land, from whose soil the first-fruits are to be brought to the holy city, to the high place of divine service, to the national centre, where the Law is held in honour, searched out, developed further by the wisest of the people, and adapted according to logical rules to the ever-changing, advancing views and circumstances of the time —, where one is to rejoice in the company of one's brethren, but also of the stranger, of the foreigner who chances to sojourn there . . .

Joy is decreed by law, prescribed by the State, and the stranger is to be invited to share in it . . . Shavuoth, above all, was the peasants' festival in which all the dwellers of the great city took delight and were uplifted, felt once more in touch with Nature as represented in the husbandman, and admiration for the goods wrung from her by diligence and hard toil. The tiller of the soil, for his part, had occasion in turn to observe the progress of city life, the grand works for supplying the great society living together in masses, and to rejoice in the growth of his city Jerusalem, the city of the God of his forefathers . . . Such a confluence and union of so many souls thrilled with holy joy, of representatives of various, mutually complementary callings, could only work beneficially for general progress, for the exchange of ideas, for the feeling of solidarity. The peasant, however, was the centre of the festival, and became proudly conscious of belonging to a noble commonwealth.

The Mishnah Bikkurim (First-fruits) sketches for us in short, vigorous strokes the picture of such a procession of the multitudes, who gathered in the several district towns and, on the great open squares, in moonlit, warm nights fanned by a caressing sea-breeze, made their beds beneath the starry canopy of heaven without entering the houses. Each with his basket full of the choicest fruits. Those near at hand bring the more delicate produce, which will bear but little transport; those farther off dried figs, raisins and the like . . . Many a one, too, may have kept watch there late into the night, but not to read in old tomes of vanished splendour and of the beauty of God's world. He read in the great book of Nature, in the stars of the heavens that silently span the universe and ever create themselves anew . . . Before sunrise all were awakened by the leader with the words: Arise, let us go up to Zion, where we will ascend the mountain to the Temple of the Lord! . . .