Great Religions of World by -National Geo Society- 4 Para

Even while the priests were still offering Biblically ordained sacrifices in Herod's golden Temple, the rabbis had begun to transmute Judaism into a faith which was not dependent upon any one place or even one land. The ingredients for this metamorphosis were always present; the Biblical God, though making special demands upon his chosen people, was a universal God. In the time of the second Temple, Jews who lived in Babylon and had no easy access to Jerusalem had substituted small sanctuaries. The rabbis, however, went further. "Wherever ten men gather in My name," they taught, "there will I cause My Presence to descend." It was as if they knew that Jews, soon to be scattered, would need Torah-teachings in their wanderings. (183:2)

Not that they made light of the Psalmist's oath, "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning." When a Jew prays, they declared, he must face toward the holy city. Nevertheless, the rabbis said, when the Holy of Holies went up in flames, a spark of this flame descended into the synagogue, a place which men can sanctify by their prayers. The basic forms of liturgy were also fixed by the rabbis. The prayer book which emerged was never sealed; it could grow with the inspiration of spiritual genius. But a fixed liturgy meant that a Jew in 6th-century Babylon, in 14th-century Cordova, and in 20th-century Poland were united by words, thoughts, and moods which could annul the disintegrating effects of time and space. Most important, the rabbis spelled out every detail of the law and showed by example how study of the law could be not only a guide to life but in itself life's peak experience. (183:3)

The result of their labors girded the Jews for the long trial of exile that followed the Roman conquest of Judaea 19 centuries ago. Though it lacked a common soil, a common language, a common sovereignty, Judaism had been supplied with a portable homeland whose pillars were "Torah, prayer, and good works." Love of God and man, respect for the life of the mind and for spiritual strivings structured by the wisdom of earlier generations-- this was the atmosphere of life within that homeland. Those who lived outside and observed the Jewish ghetto from afar were rarely aware of these things. But those who lived within had no trouble repeating daily, "Blessed are we and blessed is our lot." (183:4)

To be sure, even a portable homeland required some space and security. And history seemed to decree that every Jewish community in Diaspora-- the dispersion-- was to come to and end, usually a catastrophic end. Still, there was the strange fact: before every blow, a healing. Thus, even as the once fruitful community in Babylon began to fade in the ninth century, vigorous new centers of Torah arose in North Africa and western Europe. Before Spain's thousand-year-old community was ended by Ferdinand and Isabella's decree of exile in 1492, eastern Europe was already witness to an efflorescence of Jewish life which, despite poverty and pogrom, was as bright as any in Judaism's long saga. (183:5)

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