Some Aspects of the Growth of the fewish Law perpetuities! " And with that I tore out of the house, not waiting even to settle the bill in equity which was tendered me at the door! The last I heard of this extraordinary
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manor was a faint shout, as I issued out on the easement, which directed some unseen sheriff to serve a writ of ne exeat upon me!
SOME ASPECTS OF THE GROWTH OF JEWISH LAW. Bv David Werner Amram. I. The Study of the Law. THE study of the law was for a period of two thousand years the principal intellectual exercise of the Jews. The Talmudic period, so called, was especially char acterized by mental alertness and richness of fancy, which found their outlet in legal studies and agadistic lore. During this period the law was developed by the legal acumen, profound reasoning and keen knowl edge of human nature possessed by the Talmudists. Since the compilation of the Talmud the Jewish law has not developed with the same freedom as theretofore. The migrations and persecutions of the Middle Ages, on the one hand, prevented its natural development and growth, but, on the other hand, were the cause of its preservation as it stood in the days when the Talmud was compiled. Persecution endeared the law to the Jew, and he clung to it tenaciously. The law was his only refuge from the oppressor, it was the sanctuary into which the enemy could not intrude. Devotion to the law and its study was one of the marked characteris tics of the Jew in Talmudical and postTalmudical times. Literary exercises were almost wholly confined to legal studies. The Jew grew up in an atmosphere charged with knowledge of the law and reverence for it, and it was considered the noblest task of a man to devote himself to its study. The Jew learned in the law, no matter how lowly
his origin or humble his calling, was con sidered more honorable than the most emi nent, the richest and proudest ignoramus. It followed from this general diffusion of knowledge of the law that even the veriest idler in the street could not be entirely ig norant. The Gemara in the treatise Sanhedrin illustrates this condition of affairs. The Mishnah there states that civil suits are decided by a Beth Din or Court of three men, one of whom was appointed by the plaintiff, one by the defendant, and the third by the two thus chosen. This Court of Three was not a fixed court, but was made up of laymen chosen to decide the case, after which its authority ended. Rabbi A'ha suggested that one man was sufficient to de cide civil suits, as it is written in the Torah (Lev. xix, 15), * In righteousness thou (one man) shalt judge thy neighbor." The answer to this view of Rabbi A'ha was that the choice of a single judge might result in the selection of one who is unlearned in the law; to which rejoinder is made that the selection of a court of three might equally well result in the selection of three unlearned men. This objection is silenced by the re mark that it is not possible that among three there should not be at least one who knows the law, having learned it by listening to the sages and the judges. (Talmud Babli Sanhedrin, 3a.) The higher judges, the rabbis, and the members of the greater and lesser Sanhe
