FOUNDATIONS OF JUDAISM
Teach them to fold the hands before going to bed, so that God may be their last thought crowning their life, their day. Teach them, says Mitzvah, to think of God the Giver before they eat, no idea will help so much to foster kindness. Teach them not to eat everything, not to indulge in every whim that occurs to them, let them look at everything in the light of God's law. At every opportunity they as children should ask themselves: Will God like it?—and as men: Is it in agreement with His ideals?
IV.
Mitzvah—
The
Method.The Mitzvah thus helped the Jew to keep in contact with God, to constantly guide his conduct by his God-consciousness. All the week the Jew held intercourse with his Father in heaven, and the Shabbos only intensified what the week had done. The Shabbos Service with all its solemnity was essentially nothing new. It helped to emphasize the claim of the Torah that the right, or as Taylor calls it, the holy, life, is to be found neither in the hut of the hermit, nor exclusively in the time-hallowed and time-dusty volumes, but in the average day of the average man. Just as the Jew needed no priest to open the gates of heaven, but could by his own kavanah enter as often as he so desired, so did the Synagogue service introduce God not as the object of sixty minutes' sublime attention, but as the influence for good in the thousand actions of the working day. At the synagogue the Jew heard the ideals pronounced in fiery eloquence. At home, in his place of business, at occasions, sad or joyful, when alone or in the company of fellow-Jews, the very same spirit was with him. All the week was a training, the Sabbath was the consummation. The mentality of the Sabbath was fed on the spirituality of the week day life. There was therefore no real difference between Judaism lived and Judaism preached; just as the Torah
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