The Book of Delight and Other Papers

"The fox heard and believed their words. He rode upon one of them, and they went with him into the sea. Soon, however, the waves dashed over him, and he began to perceive that he had been tricked. 'Woe is me!' wailed the fox, 'what have I done? I have played many a trick on others, but these fishes have played one on me worth all mine put together. Now I have fallen into their hands, how shall I free myself? Indeed,' he said, turning to the fishes, 'now that I am fully in your power, I shall speak the truth. What are you going to do with me?' 'To tell thee the truth,' replied the fishes, 'the leviathan has heard thy fame, that thou art very wise, and he said, I will rend the fox, and will eat his heart, and thus I shall become wise.' 'Oh!' said the fox, 'why did you not tell me the truth at first? I should then have brought my heart with me, and I should have given it to King Leviathan, and he would have honored me; but now ye are in an evil plight.' 'What! thou hast not thy heart with thee?' 'Certainly not. It is our custom to leave our heart at home while we go about from place to place. When we need our heart, we take it; otherwise it remains at home.' 'What must we do?' asked the bewildered fishes. 'My house and dwelling-place,' replied the fox, 'are by the sea-shore. If you like, carry me back to the place whence you brought me, I will fetch my heart, and will come again with you. I will present my heart to Leviathan, and he will reward me and you with honors. But if you take me thus, without my heart, he will be wroth with you, and will devour you. I have no fear for myself, for I shall say unto him: My lord, they did not tell me at first, and when they did tell me, I begged them to return for my heart, but they refused.' The fishes at once declared that he was speaking well. They conveyed him back to the spot on the sea-shore whence they had taken him. Off jumped the fox, and he danced with joy. He threw himself on the sand, and laughed. 'Be quick,' cried the fishes, 'get thy heart, and come.' But the fox answered, 'You fools! Begone! How could I have come with you without my heart? Have you any animals that go about without their hearts?' 'Thou hast tricked us,' they moaned. 'Fools! I tricked the Angel of Death, how much more easily a parcel of silly fishes.'

"They returned in shame, and related to their master what had happened. 'In truth,' he said, 'he is cunning, and ye are simple. Concerning you was it said, The turning away of the simple shall slay them [Prov. i:32]. Then the leviathan ate the fishes."

Metaphorically, the Bible characterizes the fool as a man "without a heart," and it is probably in the same sense that modern Arabs describe the brute creation as devoid of hearts. The fox in the narrative just given knew better. Not so, however, the lady who brought a curious question for her Rabbi to solve. The case to which I refer may be found in the Responsa Zebi Hirsch. Hirsch's credulous questioner asserted that she had purchased a live cock, but on killing and drawing it, she had found that it possessed no heart. The Rabbi refused very properly to believe her. On investigating the matter, he found that, while she was dressing the cock, two cats had been standing near the table. The Rabbi assured his questioner that there was no need to inquire further into the whereabouts of the cock's heart.

Out of the crowd of parallels to the story of the fox's heart supplied by the labors of Benfey, I select one given in the second volume of the learned investigator's Pantschatantra. A crocodile had formed a close friendship with a monkey, who inhabited a tree close to the water side. The monkey gave the crocodile nuts, which the latter relished heartily. One day the crocodile took some of the nuts home to his wife. She found them excellent, and inquired who was the donor. "If," she said, when her husband had told her, "he feeds on such ambrosial nuts, this monkey's heart must be ambrosia itself. Bring me his heart, that I may eat it, and so be free from age and death." Does not this version supply a more probable motive than that attributed in the Hebrew story to the leviathan? I strongly suspect that the Hebrew fable has been pieced together from various sources, and that the account given by the fishes, viz. that the leviathan was ill, was actually the truth in the original story. The leviathan would need the fox's heart, not to become wise, but in order to save his life.

To return to the crocodile. He refuses to betray his friend, and his wife accuses him of infidelity. His friend, she maintains, is not a monkey at all, but a lady-love of her husband's. Else why should he hesitate to obey her wishes? "If he is not your beloved, why will you not kill him? Unless you bring me his heart, I will not taste food, but will die." Then the crocodile gives in, and in the most friendly manner invites the monkey to pay him and his wife a visit. The monkey consents unsuspectingly, but discovers the truth, and escapes by adopting the same ruse as that employed by the fox. He asserts that he has left his heart behind on his tree.

That eating the heart of animals was not thought a means of obtaining wisdom among the Jews, may be directly inferred from a passage in the Talmud (Horayoth, 13b). Among five things there enumerated as "causing a man to forget what he has learned," the Talmud includes "eating the hearts of animals." Besides, in certain well-known stories in the Midrash, where a fox eats some other animal's heart, his object is merely to enjoy a titbit.

One such story in particular deserves attention. There are at least three versions of it. The one is contained in the Mishle Shualim, or "Fox-Stories," by Berechiah ha-Nakdan (no. 106), the second in the Hadar Zekenim (fol. 27b), and the third in the Midrash Yalkut, on Exodus (ed. Venice, 56a). Let us take the three versions in the order named.

A wild boar roams in a lion's garden. The lion orders him to quit the place and not defile his residence. The boar promises to obey, but next morning he is found near the forbidden precincts. The lion orders one of his ears to be cut off. He then summons the fox, and directs that if the boar still persists in his obnoxious visits, no mercy shall be shown to him. The boar remains obstinate, and loses his ears (one had already gone!) and eyes, and finally he is killed. The lion bids the fox prepare the carcass for His Majesty's repast, but the fox himself devours the boar's heart. When the lion discovers the loss, the fox quiets his master by asking, "If the boar had possessed a heart, would he have been so foolish as to disobey you so persistently?"

The king of the beasts, runs the story in the second of the three versions, appointed the ass as keeper of the tolls. One day King Lion, together with the wolf and the fox, approached the city. The ass came and demanded the toll of them. Said the fox, "You are the most audacious of animals. Don't you see that the king is with us?" But the ass answered, "The king himself shall pay," and he went and demanded the toll of the king. The lion rent him to pieces, and the fox ate the heart, and excused himself as in the former version.

The Yalkut, or third version, is clearly identical with the preceding, for, like it, the story is quoted to illustrate the Scriptural text referring to Pharaoh's heart becoming hard. In this version, however, other animals accompany the lion and the fox, and the scene of the story is on board ship. The ass demands the fare, with the same dénouement as before.

What induced the fox to eat the victim's heart? The ass is not remarkable for wisdom, nor is the boar. Hence the wily Reynard can scarcely have thought to add to his store of cunning by his surreptitious meal.

Hearts, in folk-lore, have been eaten for revenge, as in the grim story of the lover's heart told by Boccaccio. The jealous husband forces his wife, whose fidelity he doubts, to make a meal of her supposed lover's heart. In the story of the great bird's egg, again, the brother who eats the heart becomes rich, but not wise. Various motives, no doubt, are assigned in other Märchen for choosing the heart; but in these particular Hebrew fables, it is merely regarded as a bonne bouche. Possibly the Talmudic caution, that eating the heart of a beast brings forgetfulness, may have a moral significance; it may mean that one who admits bestial passions into his soul will be destitute of a mind for nobler thoughts. This suggestion I have heard, and I give it for what it may be worth. As a rule, there is no morality in folk-lore; stories with morals belong to the later and more artificial stage of poet-lore. Homiletical folk-lore, of course, stands on a different basis.

Now, in the Yalkut version of the fox and the lion fable, all that we are told is, "The fox saw the ass's heart; he took it, and ate it." But Berechiah leaves us in no doubt as to the fox's motive. "The fox saw that his heart was fat, and so he took it." In the remaining version, "The fox saw that the heart was good, so he ate it." This needs no further comment.

Of course, it has been far from my intention to dispute that the heart was regarded by Jews as the seat both of the intellect and the feelings, of all mental and spiritual functions, indeed. The heart was the best part of man, the fount of life; hence Jehudah Halevi's well-known saying, "Israel is to the world as the heart to the body." An intimate connection was also established, by Jews and Greeks alike, between the physical condition of the heart and man's moral character. It was a not unnatural thought that former ages were more pious than later times. "The heart of Rabbi Akiba was like the door of the porch [which was twenty cubits high], the heart of Rabbi Eleazar ben Shammua was like the door of the Temple [this was only ten cubits high], while our hearts are only as large as the eye of a needle." But I am going beyond my subject. To collect all the things, pretty and the reverse, that have been said in Jewish literature about the heart, would need more leisure, and a great deal more learning, than I possess. So I will conclude with a story, pathetic as well as poetical, from a Jewish medieval chronicle.

A Mohammedan king once asked a learned Rabbi why the Jews, who had in times long past been so renowned for their bravery, had in later generations become subdued, and even timorous. The Rabbi, to prove that captivity and persecution were the cause of the change, proposed an experiment. He bade the king take two lion's whelps, equally strong and big. One was tied up, the other was allowed to roam free in the palace grounds. They were fed alike, and after an interval both were killed. The king's officers found that the heart of the captive lion was but one-tenth as large as that of his free companion, thus evidencing the degenerating influence of slavery. This is meant, no doubt, as a fable, but, at least, it is not without a moral. The days of captivity are gone, and it may be hoped that Jewish large-heartedness has come back with the breath of freedom.

"MARRIAGES ARE MADE IN HEAVEN"

"The Omnipresent," said a Rabbi, "is occupied in making marriages." The levity of the saying lies in the ear of him who hears it; for by marriages the speaker meant all the wondrous combinations of the universe, whose issue makes our good and evil.

George Eliot

The proverb that I have set at the head of these lines is popular in every language of Europe. Need I add that a variant may be found in Chinese? The Old Man of the Moon unites male and female with a silken, invisible thread, and they cannot afterwards be separated, but are destined to become man and wife. The remark of the Rabbi quoted in "Daniel Deronda" carries the proverb back apparently to a Jewish origin; and it is, indeed, more than probable that the Rabbinical literature is the earliest source to which this piece of folk-philosophy can be traced.

George Eliot's Rabbi was Jose bar Chalafta, and his remark was made to a lady, possibly a Roman matron of high quality, in Sepphoris. Rabbi Jose was evidently an adept in meeting the puzzling questions of women, for as many as sixteen interviews between him and "matrons" are recorded in Agadic literature. Whether because prophetic of its subsequent popularity, or for some other reason, this particular dialogue in which Rabbi Jose bore so conspicuous a part is repeated in the Midrash Rabba alone not less than four times, besides appearing in other Midrashim. It will be as well, then, to reproduce the passage in a summarized form, for it may be fairly described as the locus classicus on the subject.

"How long," she asked, "did it take God to create the world?" and Rabbi Jose informed her that the time occupied was six days. "What has God been doing since that time?" continued the matron. "The Holy One," answered the Rabbi, "has been sitting in Heaven arranging marriages."—"Indeed!" she replied, "I could do as much myself. I have thousands of slaves, and could marry them off in couples in a single hour. It is easy enough."—"I hope that you will find it so," said Rabbi Jose. "In Heaven it is thought as difficult as the dividing of the Red Sea." He then took his departure, while she assembled one thousand men-servants and as many maid-servants, and, marking them off in pairs, ordered them all to marry. On the day following this wholesale wedding, the poor victims came to their mistress in a woeful plight. One had a broken leg, another a black eye, a third a swollen nose; all were suffering from some ailment, but with one voice they joined in the cry, "Lady, unmarry us again!" Then the matron sent for Rabbi Jose, admitted that she had underrated the delicacy and difficulty of match-making, and wisely resolved to leave Heaven for the future to do its work in its own way.

The moral conveyed by this story may seem, however, to have been idealized by George Eliot almost out of recognition. This is hardly the case. Genius penetrates into the heart, even from a casual glance at the face of things. Though it is unlikely that she had ever seen the full passages in the Midrash to which she was alluding, yet her insight was not at fault. For the saying that God is occupied in making marriages is, in fact, associated in some passages of the Midrash with the far wider problems of man's destiny, with the universal effort to explain the inequalities of fortune, and the changes with which the future is heavy.

Rabbi Jose's proverbial explanation of connubial happiness was not merely a bon mot invented on the spur of the moment, to silence an awkward questioner. It was a firm conviction, which finds expression in more than one quaint utterance, but also in more than one matter-of-fact assertion. To take the latter first:

"Rabbi Phineas in the name of Rabbi Abbahu said, We find in the Torah, in the Prophets, and in the Holy Writings, evidence that a man's wife is chosen for him by the Holy One, blessed be He. Whence do we deduce it in the Torah? From Genesis xxiv. 50: Then Laban and Bethuel answered and said [in reference to Rebekah's betrothal to Isaac], The thing proceedeth from the Lord. In the Prophets it is found in Judges xiv. 4 [where it is related how Samson wished to mate himself with a woman in Timnath, of the daughters of the Philistines], But his father and mother knew not that it was of the Lord. In the Holy Writings the same may be seen, for it is written (Proverbs xix. 14), House and riches are the inheritance of fathers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord."

Many years ago, a discussion was carried on in the columns of Notes and Queries concerning the origin of the saying round which my present desultory jottings are centred. One correspondent, with unconscious plagiarism, suggested that the maxim was derived from Proverbs xix. 14.

Another text that might be appealed to is Tobit vi. 18. The Angel encourages Tobit to marry Sarah, though her seven husbands, one after the other, had died on their wedding eves. "Fear not," said Raphael, "for she is appointed unto thee from the beginning."

Here we may, for a moment, pause to consider whether any parallels to the belief in Heaven-made marriages exist in other ancient literatures. It appears in English as early as Shakespeare:

God, the best maker of all marriages,Combine your hearts in one.Henry V., v. 2.

This, however, is too late to throw any light on its origin. With a little ingenuity, one might, perhaps, torture some such notion out of certain fantastic sentences of Plato. In the Symposium (par. 192), however, God is represented as putting obstacles in the way of the union of fitting lovers, in consequence of the wickedness of mankind. When men become, by their conduct, reconciled with God, they may find their true loves. Astrological divinations on the subject are certainly common enough in Eastern stories; a remarkable instance will be given later on. At the present day, Lane tells us, the numerical value of the letters in the names of the two parties to the contract are added for each name separately, and one of the totals is subtracted from the other. If the remainder is uneven, the inference drawn is favorable; but if even, the reverse. The pursuit of Gematria is apparently not limited to Jews. Such methods, however, hardly illustrate my present point, for the identity of the couple is not discovered by the process. Whether the diviner's object is to make this discovery, or the future lot of the married pair is all that he seeks to reveal, in both cases, though he charm never so wisely, it does not fall within the scope of this inquiry. Without stretching one's imagination too much, some passages in the Pantschatantra seem to imply a belief that marriage-making is under the direct control of Providence. Take, for instance, the story of the beautiful princess who was betrothed to a serpent, Deva Serma's son. Despite the various attempts made to induce her to break off so hideous a match, she declines steadfastly to go back from her word, and bases her refusal on the ground that the marriage was inevitable and destined by the gods.

As quaint illustrations may be instanced the following: "Raba heard a certain man praying that he might marry a certain damsel; Raba rebuked him with the words: 'If she be destined for thee, nothing will part thee from her; if thou art not destined for her, thou art denying Providence in praying for her.' Afterwards Raba heard him say, 'If I am not destined to marry her, I hope that either I or she may die,'" meaning that he could not bear to witness her union with another. Despite Raba's protest, other instances are on record of prayers similar to the one of which he disapproved. Or, again, the Midrash offers a curious illustration of Psalm lxii. 10, "Surely men of low degree are a breath, and men of high degree a lie." The first clause of the verse alludes to those who say in the usual way of the world, that a certain man is about to wed a certain maiden, and the second clause to those who say that a certain maiden is about to wed a certain man. In both cases people are in error in thinking that the various parties are acting entirely of their own free will; as a matter of fact, the whole affair is predestined. I am not quite certain whether the same idea is intended by the Yalkut Reubeni, in which the following occurs: "Know that all religious and pious men in this our generation are henpecked by their wives, the reason being connected with the mystery of the Golden Calf. The men on that occasion did not protest against the action of the mixed multitude [at whose door the charge of making the calf is laid], while the women were unwilling to surrender their golden ornaments for idolatrous purposes. Therefore they rule over their husbands." One might also quote the bearing of the mystical theory of transmigration on the predestination of bridal pairs. In the Talmud, on the other hand, the virtues of a man's wife are sometimes said to be in proportion to the husband's own; or in other words, his own righteousness is the cause of his acquiring a good wife. The obvious objection, raised by the Talmud itself, is that a man's merits can hardly be displayed before his birth—and yet his bride is destined for him at that early period.

Yet more quaint (I should perhaps rather term it consistent, were not consistency rare enough to be indistinguishable from quaintness) was the confident belief of a maiden of whom mention is made in the Sefer ha-Chasidim (par. 384). She refused persistently to deck her person with ornaments. People said to her, "If you go about thus unadorned, no one will notice you nor court you." She replied with firm simplicity, "It is the Holy One, blessed be He, that settles marriages; I need have no concern on the point myself." Virtue was duly rewarded, for she married a learned and pious husband. This passage in the "Book of the Pious" reminds me of the circumstance under which the originator of the latter-day Chasidism, Israel Baalshem, is said to have married. When he was offered the daughter of a rich and learned man of Brody, named Abraham, he readily accepted the alliance, because he knew that Abraham's daughter was his bride destined by heaven. For, like Moses Mendelssohn, in some other respects the antagonist of the Chasidim, Baalshem accepted the declaration of Rabbi Judah in the name of Rab: "Forty days before the creation of a girl, a proclamation [Bath-Kol] is made in Heaven, saying, 'The daughter of such a one shall marry such and such a one.'"

The belief in the Divine ordaining of marriages affected the medieval Synagogue liturgy. To repeat what I have written elsewhere: When the bridegroom, with a joyous retinue, visited the synagogue on the Sabbath following his marriage, the congregation chanted the chapter of Genesis (xxiv) that narrates the story of Isaac's marriage, which, as Abraham's servant claimed, was providentially arranged. This chapter was sung, not only in Hebrew, but in Arabic, in countries where the latter language was the vernacular. These special readings, which were additional to the regular Scripture lesson, seem to have fallen out of use in Europe in the seventeenth century, but they are still retained in the East. But all over Jewry the beautiful old belief is contained in the wording of the fourth of the "seven benedictions" sung at the celebration of a wedding, "Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast made man in thine image, after thy likeness, and hast prepared unto him out of his very self a perpetual fabric." Here is recalled the creation of Eve, of whom God Himself said, "I will make for man a help meet unto him." Not only the marriage, but also the bride was Heaven-made, and the wonderful wedding benediction enshrines this idea.

In an Agadic story, the force of this predestination is shown to be too strong even for royal opposition. It does not follow that the pre-arrangement of marriages implies that the pair cannot fall in love of their own accord. On the contrary, just the right two eventually come together; for once freewill and destiny need present no incompatibility. The combination, here shadowed, of a predestined and yet true-love marriage, is effectively illustrated in what follows:

"Solomon the king was blessed with a very beautiful daughter; she was the fairest maiden in the whole land of Israel. Her father observed the stars, to discover by astrology who was destined to be her mate in life and wed her, when lo! he saw that his future son-in-law would be the poorest man in the nation. Now, what did Solomon do? He built a high tower by the sea, and surrounded it on all sides with inaccessible walls; he then took his daughter and placed her in the tower under the charge of seventy aged guardians. He supplied the castle with provisions, but he had no door made in it, so that none could enter the fortress without the knowledge of the guard. Then the king said, 'I will watch in what way God will work the matter.'

"In course of time, a poor and weary traveller was walking on his way by night, his garments were ragged and torn, he was barefooted and ready to faint with hunger, cold, and fatigue. He knew not where to sleep, but, casting his eyes around him, he beheld the skeleton of an ox lying on a field hard by. The youth crept inside the skeleton to shelter himself from the wind, and, while he slept there, down swooped a great bird, which lifted up the carcass and the unconscious youth in it. The bird flew with its burden to the top of Solomon's tower, and set it down on the roof before the very door of the imprisoned princess. She went forth on the morrow to walk on the roof according to her daily wont, and she descried the youth. She said to him, 'Who art thou? and who brought thee hither?' He answered, 'I am a Jew of Acco, and a bird bore me to thee.' The kind-hearted maiden clothed him in new garments; they bathed and anointed him, and she saw that he was the handsomest youth in Israel. They loved one another, and his soul was bound up in hers. One day she said, 'Wilt thou marry me?' He replied, 'Would it might be so!' They resolved to marry. But there was no ink with which to write the Kethubah, or marriage certificate. Love laughs at obstacles. So, using some drops of his own blood as ink, the marriage was secretly solemnized, and he said, 'God is my witness to-day, and Michael and Gabriel likewise.' When the matter leaked out, the dismayed custodians of the princess hastily summoned Solomon. The king at once obeyed their call, and asked for the presumptuous youth. He looked at his son-in-law, inquired of him as to his father and mother, family and dwelling-place, and from his replies the king recognized him for the selfsame man whom he had seen in the stars as the destined husband of his daughter. Then Solomon rejoiced with exceeding joy and exclaimed, Blessed is the Omnipresent who giveth a wife to man and establisheth him in his house."