to the nation, because it incapacitates Israel for the reception or the right employment of the promised blessings. Is it not, then, the duty of all Jews who desire and long for the glory and the happiness which God has promised, to lift up their voice with power, and to protest against that system which prevents the fulfilment of God's promises; and by all lawful means to endeavour to deliver their brethren from the bondage of such intolerance?
No. VII.
THE FEAST OF PURIM.
The feast of Purim now at hand, recalls to the Jewish recollection
one of those miraculous deliverances, with which the
history of Israel abounds. The narrative of the institution, as
contained in the Bible, is a signal proof and illustration of the
superintending providence of God, instructive to all the world,
but calling peculiarly for the gratitude and praise of the Jewish
nation, whose forefathers were then delivered. And it is much
to the honour of their posterity that they have not suffered the
lapse of more than twenty centuries to wear out the memory of
this great event, but that to this day they observe its anniversary
with alacrity and zeal. If the oral law simply contented
itself with commanding the observance and prescribing the
mode of worship for such an important season, we should have
no fault to find; but the oral law claims for itself Divine origin
and authority, anathematizes any denial of these claims as
heresy, and sentences the heretic to death. We are, therefore,
compelled to examine its pretensions, and to scrutinize its
features, in order to see whether they really bear the stamp of
divinity. We have already pointed out some, that savoured
more of earth than heaven: the constitutions for the feast of
Purim may be traced to the same source. The following law
respecting the meal to be provided on this occasion did
certainly not come to man from heaven:—
(
Hebrew characters)
"A man's duty with regard to the feast is, that he should eat
