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after, guided by a pillar of smoke
by day and of fire by night, the
Israelites reached the neighbor
hood of Mount Sinai., Here Mo
ses received from Jehovah the
tables of those fundamental
laws which were henceforward
to be followed with occasional
lapses by the highest forms of
human society.
We must, at this point, exam
ine briefly the whole question
of the miracles. Everyone knows
that the pollution of rivers, the
Hies, fr .gs, lice, sandstorms and
pestilence among men and cat
tle, are the well-known afflic
tions of the East. The most scep
tical person can readily believe
that they occurred with excep
tional frequency at this juncture.
The strong north wind which is
said to have blown back the wat-
ters of the Red Sea may well
have been assisted by a seismic
and volcanic disturbance. Geol-
gists tell us that the same fault
in the earth's structure which
cleft the depression of the Dead
Sea in Palestine runs unbroken
to the Rift Valley in what we
now call the Kenya province of
East Africa. The Sinai Penin
sula was once volcanic, and the
Bible descriptions of Mount Si
nai both by day and by night are
directly explicable by an er-
ruption, which would have pro
vided at once the pillar of cloud
by daylight and of fire in the
darkness. Flocks of quails fre
quently arrive exhausted in
Egypt in their migrations, and
some might well have alighted
in the nick of time near the en
campment of the Israelites. Re
nan has described the exudation
by certain shrubs in the Sinai
Peninsula of a white gummy
substance which appears from
time to time, and is undoubtably
capable of supplying a form of
nourishment.
All these purely rationalistic
and scientific explanations only
prove the truth of the Bible sto
ry. It is silly to waste time ar
guing wether Jehovah broke His
own natural laws to save His
Chosen People, or whether He
merely made them work in a
favorable manner. At any rate
there is not doubt about one mir
acle. This wandering tribe, in
many respects indistinguishable
from numberless nomadic com
munities, grasped and proclaim
ed an idea of which all the gen
ius of Greece and all the power
of Rome were incapable. There
was to be only one God, a uni
versal God, a God of nations, a
just God, a God who would pun
ish in another world a wicked
man dying rich and prosperous;
a God from whose service the
God of the humble and of the
weak and poor was inseparable.
Books are written in many
languages upon the question of
how much of this is due to Moses.
Devastating, inexorable modern
study and criticism have proved
that the Pentateugh constitutes a
body of narrative and doctrine
which came into being over at
least the compass of several cen
turies. We reject, however, with
scorn all those learned and la
boured myths that Moses was
but a lengendary figure upon
whom the priesthood and the
people hung their essential so
cial, moral and religious ordin
ances. We believe that the most
scientific view, the most up-to-
date and rationalistic conception,
will find its fullest satisfacton
in taking the Bible story literally,
and in identifying one of the
greatest of human beings with
the most decisive leap-forward
ever discernible in the human
st ry. We remain unmoved by
the tomes of Professor Grad-
grind and Dr. Dryasdust. We
may be sure that all these things
happened just as they are set out
according to Holy Write. We
may believe that the impressions
those people received were faith
fully recorded and have been
transmitted across the centuries
with far more accuracy than
many of the telegraphed ac
counts we read of the goings-on
of today. In the words of a for
gotten work of Mr. Gladstone,
we rest with assurance upon
“The impregnable rock of Holy
Scripture.”
Let the men of science and of
learning expand their knowledge
and probe with their researches
every detail of the records which
have been preserved to us from
these dim ages. All they will do
is to fortify the grand simplicity
and essential accuracy of the re
corded truths which have lighted
so far the pilgrimage of man.
WHY GO TO THE SYNAGOGUE?
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R. L. Mathis Certified Dairy
Route 1 DECATUR, fiA. DE. 4463
I come to the Synagogue to
probe my weakness and my
strength, and to fill the gap
between my profession and
my practice. I come to lift my
self by my bootstraps. I come
to quiet the turbulence of my
heart, restrain its mad impul
siveness and check the itching
eagerness of my every muscle
to outsmart and outdistance my
neighbor. I come for self re
newal and regeneration. I come
into the sadness and compas
sion permeating the Synagogue
to contemplate and be instruct
ed by the heaving panorama of
The Southern Israelite
Jewish martyrdom and human
misery. I come to be strength
ened in my determination to
be free, never to compromise
with idolatry or bow to dicta
torship, cringe before autocra
cy to sucomb to force. I come
to orient myself to the whole
of reality, to the thrusts of
power beyond the comprehen
sion of my compounded dust.
I come to behold the beauty of
the Lord, to find Him who put
an upward reach in the heart
of man.
Rabbi Solomon Goldman
We Bid You One And All
A Happy Passover
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