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ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT
A Chief Rabbi of Palestine.
On a day in last July, as I was walking up one
of the streets of Jerusalem, and as I neared a
Jewish synagogue and Company House, suddenly
a ’woman began screaming in one of the rooms of
the house and calling for help, as I interpreted her
words, and there were also sounds of beating. I
supposed the woman was the unfortunate wife of
some drunken Jew, and was being beaten by her in
toxicated husband, for such things do happen even
in Jerusalem “the holy.” Men and women began
running to the place. When I was opposite the
room whence the sounds proceeded, I looked in
through an open window, and saw a noisy company
gathered around a bed. The strange demonstra
tions witnessed, with a strong smell of carbolic acid
instead of whiskey convinced me that it was a case
of sickness and death rather than of drunkenness.
So it proved, for Jacob Saul Elyashar, the Chief
Rabbi of Palestine, had just breathed his last. When
the sad news began to spread the lamentations w*ere
by no means confined to the immediate relatives and
friends, for the rabbi seemed to be much honored
and respected. He was about ninety years old.
Contrary to the usual custom which is to bury
on the same day (sometimes late at night) on which
the death occurs, and as soon after the death as
possible, his body was not buried until the next
day (Sunday). The funeral was the most largely
attended of any which have been here for years.
Os course there were loud wailings ana other wild
demonstrations, but the strangest part of the per
formance happened when the gate of the cemetery
was reached. This was near what is called “Absa
lom’s Pillar” or tomb (2 Sam. 18:18), the cemetery
being on the slopes of the “Mbunt of Offense”
<1 Kings 11:7). east of the city. At the gate the
body was removed from the open bier in which it
was being borne (the Jews here use : o coffins),
placed upon the ground, cords fastened to it, and
literally dragged up the hill to the tomb. This
great indignity shown the body was in accordance
with the positively expressed and written will of
the deceased, only it may be that it was his inten
tion that the body be dragged all the way from his
home. It was a punishment which he claimed was
deserved by some great sin or sins he had commit
ted and which had not been atoned for.
This remarkable requirement is not without its
precedent among former high Jewish officials in
Jerusalem. The most interesting case of the kind
on record is
The Story of Kolonimos,
Who lived about two hundred years ago, and was
Chief Rabbi of the poverty-stricken and much
persecuted community of Jews then living in Jeru
salem. One morning the body of a murdered Mo
hammedan boy was found in the Jewish quarter.
Immediately the crime was laid to the Jews, and the
Mohammedan population became much excited,
threatening to kill all the Jews unless they would
forthwith bring out the murderer of the boy The
rabbi was engaged in his devotions at the Jews’
Wailing Place, when the alarming news reached him.
Almost immediately he was seized by the enraged
Mohammedans, and violently hurried away to the
government house, and arraigned before the Pasha
or governor. The pasha, after some investigation,
pointing to the body of the murdered boy which
had been brought into court, said, as the body had
been found in the Jewish quarter, it was evident
the boy had been murdered by a Jew, and informed
the rabbi that, unless he and his people produced
the murderer, then vengeance would be wreaked
upon the Jews.
The situation was indeed critical for the Jews.
It is said that the rabbi called for writing materials,
and hurriedly wrote something on a piece of paper,
and, •while solemnly repeating some mysterious in
cantations, applied the paper to the lips and fore
head of the corpse. The boy came to life, sprang
to his feet, seized a Moslem who was standing near
by, exclaimed: “This is the man who murdered
The Golden Age for November 29, 1906.
By P. L. STANTON.
me!” and instantly fell back dead. The accused
man pleaded guilty to the charge which had been
made. Thus the Jews were, miraculously, as they
claimed, delivered from their great danger.
Alas for the rabbi! it was the Sabbath day, and
he had committed the grievous sin of profaning the
day by writing a little on a paper'and repeating
some incantations, and, though he diligently prac
ticed penance on account of it during the remainder
of his life, the time was tco short for him to atone
for the sin, so he left in his last will the instruction
that, when he was dead, his body should not be hon
ored with regular burial, but should be conveyed
to the western brink of the Kidron Valley, rolled
down into the valley, and stones heaped upon it at
the point where it might stop. Then, afterward,
every time a Jew passed that way he was to throw
a stone upon the heap in derision such as is prac
ticed by the Jews as to “Absalom’s Pillar” or
tomb, a short distance above the grave. As the peo
ple regarded him as a great and holy man, they did
not at first fully carry out his instructions, but
ventured to put a tomb-slab over his grave, but the
next morning the slab was found to be broken in
pieces. So it was, in regular succession, with other
stones placed over the grave, until the people de
cided to carry out his injunctions. Thus there be-
THE GRAVE OF KOLONIMOS.
came a great heap of stones on the grave. After
many years the custom changed, and it became com
mon for Jews, when starting on long journeys, to
carry some of ti e stones with them so as to insure
their safe and happy return. At this time it seeing
to be the custom of devout Jews to bring a stone
for the grave to take the place of the one which
they carry away, and the heap reamins about the
same in size.
A few days ago, while myself and some friends
were standing near the grave, a devout Jewish wo
man came along, prostrated herself upon the heap
of stones, lovingly kissed them, deposited the stone
she had brought, and carried another away. We
were disapointed that our cameras were not ready
in time to get a picture. Presently a Moslem wo
man came along, and we made an effort to hire her
to sit upon the heap to have her picture made,
but her price was exorbitant. A little later anoth
er Jew woman came, and the accompanying engrav
ing will give some idea of what one of the cameras
secured. The prostrate, ghost-like figure, was not
posing, for a picture, but seemed totally oblivious
of our presence.
Though, of course, the story of Kolonimos is not
true in all of its details, there are certainly good
reasons for accepting some important parts of it.
The unreasonable requirement made by the enrag
ed Moslems and the pasha is quite in keeping with
much more recent history in this land. Even at
this day, owing to the superstitious feelings in many
of the natives here, such a rabbi might succeed in
detecting a criminal in a crow r d of people. No less
a personage than Ibrahim Pasha did something of
the kind at Jaffa. He did it while he was having
the shop-dcor of a goldsmith wiped for allowing a
thief to rob the shop. Kolonimos might have se
lected the guilty man by closely watching the crowd
while practicing his mysterious art. He might have
been able to go to the extreme of suddenly lifting
the corpse to an upright position, and speaking
for him.
How the Stolen Medal Was Found.
A story given me a few days ago will give some
insight into the character of some superstitions
which still cling to the people of this land. The
one who tells the story holds an important position
in connection with one of the high officials of Je
rusalem and is noted for his truthfulness. He was
then a boy and the one who was used as the medium
by the shaik, and fully believes the whole story,
but does not understand the art used. His grown
brother had a fine gold medal which mysteriously
disappeared. It was believed that the demonsi
known as the Jinn or Jan had something to do in
the matter. The owner of the medal called to his
aid a shaik (an Arab chief) who was famed for
his skill in the mysterious arts. Instructing the
boy that he was to closely watch the liquid and tell
what he saw, the shaik poured some kind of spir
its into a plate, and began to stir it, all the time
repeating some mysterious formula. Presently the
boy began to see strange figures moving around in
the liquid. These he believed to be the jinn. By
and by they brought in a woman, who was carrying
a large jar of olives, but packed in the center of
the olives was the lost medal. He gave a descrip
tion of the woman, and it exactly fitted t > a woman
living some distance away. The company repaired
to the house of the woman, found the jar of olives,
and the owner of the lost medal on breaking open
the jar found the medal just as it had been seen
by the boy.
Jerusalem, Palestine, October, 1906.
My Love For Thee.
My love for thee doth take me unaware
When most with lesser things my brain is
wrought,
As in some nimble interchange of thought
The silence enters and the talkers stare;
Suddenly I am still and thou art there,
A viewless visitant and unbesought,
And all my being opens like a prayer.
Thou art the lifted chalice in my soul
And I a dim church at the thought of thee;
And all my thinking trembles into naught
Brief though the moment be, the mass is said,
The benediction like an aureole
Is on my spirit, and shuddering through me
A rapture like the rapture of the dead.
—Richard Hovey.
An Essay on Habit.
The school visitor in a New England town, an
elderly man, offered a prize for the best composi
tion on “How to Overcome Habit,” to be written
in five minutes.
When the compositions 'were read the following,
handed in by a lad of ten years, was declared the
prize-winner:
“Habit is hard to overcome. If you take off the
first letter it doesn’t change a bit. Take off another
letter and still you have a bit left. Take off an
other letter, and the whole of it remains. If you
take off another, it is not all used up; all of
which goes to show that if you want to get rid of
a habit you must throw it off altogether.”—Ex.
The currency system of the United States, like
the spelling of English words, has long been regard
ed by a great many persons as unnecessarily cum
bersome. It has not been easy, however, to convince
the treasury department of its own defects but it
is hoped that some of the most objectionable feat
ures will be finally changed. The chief one of these
is - that the present issue of currency does not pro
vide for the expansion and contraction of the circu
lation medium to meet the demands of emergencies.
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