exercises also a civil jurisdiction. The principal engine to enforce compliance with his decisions is the terror inspired by the ecclesiastical censures, excommunications, and anathemas which he has power to denounce, and the direful effects of which are supposed to extend beyond the present life. He takes cognizance of all cases of adultery, incest, violation of the sabbath or of any of the fasts or festivals, and apostacy; of marriages, divorces, and commercial contracts: he hears and determines appeals against decisions of inferior rabbies within his district; decides all difficult questions of the law, and preaches three or four sermons in a year. To some of these cases fees

* The learned reader who is desirous of seeing specimens of rabbinical preaching and exposition, in the seventeenth century, is referred to Wagenseil. Tela Ignea Satana, p. 245-263. where he may find enough to satiate his curiosity. The confidence in the polemical talents of these rabbies is, in some cases however, not very great. The Spanish and Portuguese Jews appear to have such a dread of theological controversy, that it is positively interdicted, even to the rabbies themselves, without the express permission of the synagogue. The present rabbi assigned the following among other reasons, for declining to read some publications in favour of Christianity, about seven years ago. 'I beg leave to state, that the bye laws of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish nation contain an injunction to all the members of their congregation, not to engage in any matter of religious disquisition or controversy, without the express leave of the Elders being first obtained: consequently, I might feel mortified in investigating your productions, deprived of 'the power of wielding a weapon of defence.' See in Third Report of the London Society, Appendix, No. ix. a letter to Joseph Fox, Esq. dated June 19, 1809, and signed R. DE M. MELDOLA, Chief Minister of the Synagogue of Spanish and Portuguese Jews in the City of London. This gentleman is generally styled Dr. R. Meldola: see page 72.

It does not appear whether the author of the letters published in the Jewish Repository, vol. ii. and referred to in several parts of this work, had obtained a previous license from his superiors to take up

are attached, and the office is accompanied with a respectable salary. In this country there are two of these officers: the Chief Rabbi of the German and Polish Jews, and the Chacam of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews.

The rabbies have delivered many particular directions which are deemed necessary to be followed, in attending the synagogue, by all who have a due reverence for what they call their little sanctuary.* But however exact or scrupulous may be their observance of some insignificant punctilios, an extreme want of reverence has long been the chief characteristic of what is called their public worship. A century and half ago, one who had often witnessed the services in the

synagogues of Germany, has recorded that they were seldom conducted with any order or common decency, but generally betrayed the most detestable confusion. The Italian and Portuguese Jews he has represented as maintaining greater decorum.† The same remarks are applicable in the presentday. In the Portuguese Synagogue there is, some

his pen to defend their faith;' whether it was in consequence of admonition from the elders that he declared himself determined to avoid all dispute respecting the Trinity, (see page 89.) or whether his zeal outran his duty, and made him forget the injunction of the bye laws, of which Dr. Meldola thought it prudent to take advantage, as a convenient excuse for declining all inquiry.

* In allusion to Ezek. xi. 16. There, however, God himself says, "I will be a little sanctuary." It is easy to conceive how God may sustain this character to his true worshippers in many or all parts of the world at once: but how numerous synagogues in various countries can be a little sanctuary, will be rather difficult even for rabbinical logic to explain.

+ Wagenseil. Sota, p. 616.

times at least, an appearance of sober attention to the service in which they are professedly engaged. The deplorable scene exhibited in the German Synagogues cannot be more correctly described than in the following language of a recent publication.* The fathers and princes of Israel, on 'their return from their captivity in Babylon "wept with a loud voice," when they compared 'the dwindled beauty of the second temple, with the glory and splendour of the first, which they 'had once seen in all its magnificence. What then would have been the grief and dismay of 'these holy men, had they lived to enter a modern synagogue! where, instead of the beauty of holiness, a magnificent service, and a temple filled with the immediate presence of Jehovah, they 'should see a rabble transacting business, making engagements, and walking to and fro in the midst ' of public prayers; children at their sports; every C countenance, with very few exceptions, indicating the utmost irreverence and unconcern; and their 'chief rabbi sitting by, and seeming to care for none of these things: indeed, to speak without any intentional exaggeration, the modern synagogue exhibits an appearance of very little more devotion than the Stock Exchange, or the public 'streets of the metropolis at noon day.'+

* Obligations of Christians, &c. Fourth Edit. p. 8, 9.

+ Buxtorf. Synag. Jud. c. x. p. 185–190. c. xlvi. p. 666-674. Leo Modena, ibid. P. i. c. 10. P. ii. c. 3. Addison, ibid. p. 88-92.

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CHAPTER XIX.

Forms of Prayer :—All in Hebrew.-Daily Prayers.— Recital of the Shema.-Daily Services in Synagogue. -Services on Mondays and Thursdays.-Celebration of the Sabbath.

IT would cause disgust rather than gratification, to introduce the reader into the Jewish bed-rooms and other places of retirement, and to detail the rules by which the rabbies have enjoined all their disciples to regulate the minutest circumstances of dressing and undressing, washing and wiping the face and hands, and other necessary actions of common and daily life. If some of their directions are allowed to be judicious, others may be pronounced frivolous, and not a few must be condemned as execrable.*

Numerous forms of prayer are prescribed for the worship of the synagogue, and for domestic and private use. They are all appointed to be said in Hebrew, which is far from being generally understood by modern Jews; and multitudes

Take one specimen of the frivolous. A Jew ought to put on 'the right shoe first, and then the left: but the left shoe is to be tied first, and the right afterwards. If the shoes have no latchets or 'strings, the left shoe must be put on first. In undressing, the left shoe, whether with or without latchets or strings, is in all cases 'to be taken off first.' Buxtorf. Synag. Jud. c. viii. p. 152. One of their eminent rabbies says: Some of them observe, in their dressing in the morning, to put on the right stocking and right shoe first, without tying it; then afterward to put on the left, and so to return 'to the right; that they may begin and end with the right side.' Leo Modena, ibid. P. i. c. 5. s. 11.

jabber the words, who annex no ideas to the sounds they have been taught to utter, yet are deiuded with a persuasion that their unmeaning jargon is an acceptable service to Jehovah. Of late years, attempts have been made to remedy this evil, in some small degree, by printing the prayers in Hebrew on one page and a translation on the opposite page. Would it not be more consistent with common sense for the prayers themselves to be said, and all the services performed, in a language familiar to the people?

Most of the Prayers are affirmed by the rabbies to be of high antiquity, but those which they esteem the most solemn and important, are called Shemoneh Esreh,* or the eighteen prayers. They tell us that these were composed and instituted by Ezra and the men of the great synagogue, and that a little before the destruction of the second temple, Rabbi Gamaliel, or according to others, Rabbi Samuel, one of his scholars, added another prayer against heretics and apostates; appellations which they liberally employ to designate Christians, not only of Jewish, but also of Gentile race. This additional prayer is now inserted as the twelfth, and the number is nineteen; but they still retain the name of Shemoneh Esreh. As some readers may be curious to see them, they are inserted in a note below. These nineteen prayers are required

+ The following version of the Shemonch Esreh is from the Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Prayer Book, p. 34-41. and the German and Polish Jews' Prayer Book, p. 34-41. in which I have only taken the liberty to alter a few grammatical inaccuracies. The two Prayer