Can one read this and not wonder what Judaism has been about that Lincoln did not even know there was such a church? But call the coming religious reconstruction what you will, what do names matter when all humanity is crucified, what does anything matter but to save it from meaningless frictions and massacres? "Would that My people forgot Me and kept My commandments," says the Jerusalem Talmud. Too long has Israel been silent. "Who is blind," says the prophet, "but My servant, or deaf as My messenger?" He is not deaf to-day, he is only dumb. But the voice of Jerusalem must be heard again when the new world-order is shaping. The Chosen People must choose. To be or not to be. "The religion of the Jews is indeed a light," said Coleridge in his "Table Talk," "but it is as the light of the glow-worm which gives no heat and illumines nothing but itself." Why let a sun sink into a glow-worm? And even a glow-worm should turn. It does not even pay-that prudent maxim of the Babylonian Talmud, Dina dimalchutha dina ("In Rome do as the Romans"). Despite every effort of Jews as individual citizens the world still tends to see them as Crabbe saw them a century ago in his "Borough":-
Nor war nor wisdom yields our Jews delight,
They will not study and they dare not fight.
It is because they fight under no banner of their own. But the time has come when they must fight as Jews-fight that "mental fight" from which that greater English poet, Blake, declared he would not cease till he had "built Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land." To build Jerusalem in every land-even in Palestine-that is the Jewish mission. As Nina Salaman sings-and I am glad to end with the words of a daughter of the lofty-souled scholar in whose honour this lecture is given-
Wherefore else our age-long life, our wandering landless,
Every land our home for ill or good?
Ours it was long since to join the hands of nations
Through the link of our own brotherhood.
AFTERWORD
DR. ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, Reader in Talmudic and Rabbinic Literature in the University of Cambridge, in seconding the vote of thanks to the speakers, moved by the President of the Jewish Historical Society (Sir Lionel Abrahams, K.C.B.), said that the Chairman had already paid a tribute to the memory of Arthur Davis. But a twice-told tale was not stale in repetition when the tale was told of such a man. He was a real scholar; not only in the general sense of one who loved great books, but also in the special sense that he possessed the technical knowledge of an expert. His "Hebrew Accents" reveals Arthur Davis in these two aspects. It shows mastery of an intricate subject, a subject not likely to attract the mere dilettante. But it also reveals his interest in the Bible as literature. He appreciated both the music of words and the melody of ideas. When the work appeared, a foreign scholar asked: "Who was his teacher?" The answer was: himself. There is a rather silly proverb that the self-taught man has a fool for his master. Certainly Arthur Davis had no fool for his pupil. And though he had no teacher, he had what is better, a fine capacity for comradeship in studies. "Acquire for thyself a companion," said the ancient Rabbi. There is no friendship equal to that which is made over the common study of books. At the Talmud meetings held at the house of Arthur Davis were founded lifelong intimacies. Unpretentious in their aim, there was in these gatherings a harmony of charm and earnestness; pervading them was the true "joy of service." Above all he loved the liturgy. Here the self-taught man must excel. Homer said:-
Dear to gods and men is sacred song.
Self-taught I sing: by Heaven and Heaven alone
The genuine seeds of poesy are sown.
And, as the expression of his inmost self, he gave us the best edition of the Festival Prayers in any language: better than Sachs'-than which praise can go no higher. This Prayer Book is his true memorial, unless there be a truer still. Perhaps his feeling that he might after all have lost something because he had no teacher made him so wonderful a teacher of his own daughters. In their continuance of his work his personality endures. At the end of his book on Accents he quoted, in Hebrew, a sentence from Jeremiah, with a clever play on the double meaning of the word which signifies at once "accent" and "taste." Thinking of his record, and how his beautiful spirit animates those near and dear to him, we may indeed apply to him this same text: "His taste remaineth in him and his fragrance is not changed."
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