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A26373 The present state of the Jews (more particularly relating to those in Barbary) wherein is contained an exact account of their customs, secular and religious : to which is annexed a summary discourse of the Misna, Talmud, and Gemara / by L. Addison ... Addison, Lancelot, 1632-1703. 1675 (1675) Wing A526; ESTC R421 113,028 274

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Munday and Thursday one for the death of Miriam and Eli and another for the turning of the Bible out of holy Hebrew into profane Greek by the Seventy Translators But these Fasts being the private Exercises but of some Jews their Rites fall under no certain annotation The general Rule in all their Fasting is to abstain from all manner of Meat and Drink till the Stars appear and if the Jews were Orthodox in the circumstances of this Afflictive no people would therein exceed them But in this as all other things they are palpably Carnal relying upon the very doing of the work and esteeming a meer Corporal abstinence highly Meritorious Besides there are not a few Miracles ascribed to the bare act of Fasting The Prayer used upon Fasting-daies translated out of the Jews Liturgy HEar our voice O Lord our God and have Compassion upon us and with Mercie hear our Prayers and impart thy pity and subdue us to thy Holiness Deliver us from death and the sword and hunger and captivity from the prey and an evil desire and bad infirmities and hard chances Pronounce a good sentence upon me and all the males of my house And let thy Compassions return with thy Conditions and O Lord our God deal with us in mercie and favour and enter with us before the Rule of Justice and harken unto our Prayer our Supplication and Cry for thou hearest the Prayer of every mouth Answer me O my Father answer me in this day of Fasting and Affliction Because I am in a great strait by reason I have offended and rebelled against thee since the day that I was upon the Earth until this hour I blush and am ashamed of my Rebellion I repent me of my sins and transgressions Notwithstanding I have put thy Mercies before mine eyes with which thou art wont to keep off thy fury and to be appeased with thy Creatures Thou art good to pardon and hast great pity upon all that call upon thee For thy manifold Mercies now answer me and let a little of my Fat and Bloud be mingled with my fasting and be received of thee as the fat put upon the top of thy Altar to pardon every one that hath sin'd and that hath striven and rebelled against thee I beseech thee for the sake of thy Power Soveraignty and Knowledge bear good will unto me for thy Great Mercies and look not upon my wickedness nor stop thine ears at my prayers be nigh unto my calling and to the calling of the men of my house It is said Before we cry unto thee thou wilt answer before we speak thou wilt hear It shall be that before they cry I will answer and before they speak I will hear That thou O Lord wilt deliver and answer and be appeased in the hour of adversity and hear the Petition of every mouth Blessed be thou Adonai Lord hear our Prayer The Prayer used by the Jews after they have done fasting translated out of their Liturgy O Lord of the Worlds I have afflicted my self this day with fasting before thee I have made known and manifest before the Seat of thy Honour that in the time that the house of thy Sanctuary stood the man that sin'd brought before thee an Offering and offer'd nothing but the fat and bloud and was forgiven And at present we have neither Sanctuary that is Temple nor Altar for our many sins nor Priest to pardon Let it be thy will Lord our God and the God of our Fathers that the little of my fat and bloud which is this day spent before thee may be reckon'd with my fast and accepted before the Seat of thy Honour even as if I had done it upon the sides of thy Altar and receive me of thy great mercies CHAP. XXIII Of the Jewish Excommunication THe Mahumedans as I have observed in another Discourse are not acquainted with Church-censures the contriver of that Religion having left all sorts of Delinquents to the Civil Sword And though for greater Decorum and Solemnity the Grand Segnor keeps his Musti whom he makes his Pope and pretended Oracle in Religion yet he has no power to chastize any by Spiritual Censures be their Enormities never so hainous And upon this account the Jews upbraid Mahumedism with great deficiency because it has no power to terrifie Evil doers to preserve the broken from the whole and to prevent and divert Gods Judgements to bring Offenders to amendment and to maintain the credit and power of their Religion To all which ends the Jews manage and hold Excommunication necessary Concerning which this ensuing Chapter shall give the Reader a short account of the causes of Excommunication its kindes and form Some have thought that the Jews of old used Excommunications onely in case of Pollutions of which they held chiefly these three sorts viz. by Leprosie touching of the Dead and an Issue And that to these three sorts of Pollutions were adapted as many kindes of Excommunication namely the Niddui Herem and Shammatha But besides these three causes of Excommunication among the Primitive Jews the Modern assigne twenty four more for all or any of which they at present Excommunicate that is forbid those of their Religion the free enjoyment of all Civil and Religious Society The causes of Excommunication among the Jews are chiefly these 1. He that doth Scandalize a Master though he be dead 2. He that doth revile a publique Minister of Justice 3. He that calls a Free-man a Slave or Servant 4. He that doth not appear at the Consistory upon the day prefixt 5. He that doth undervalue a single Precept or one head of Doctrine which is contained in the Prescripts of the Scribes or the Law 6. He that doth not what he is appointed stands Excommunicated till he doth it 7. He that keeps in his House what may do mischief to another as a biting Dog or broken Scales is Excommunicated until the fault be corrected that is till the Dog be Hanged and the Scales be mended 8. He that sells his Land to a Gentile is Excommunicate till the Damage be repaired that thereby shall accrew unto an Israelite 9. He that in the Courts of the Gentiles shall be a Witness against an Hebrew so that he shall be forced to pay Money contrary to the custom of his Nation shall be Excommunicate until he refund it 10. The Priest that Sacrificing doth not give the Dues to the rest of the Priests is to stand Excommunicate until he doth 11. He that shall do any Work in the forenoon of the day before the Passover 12. He that shall carelessly or with an Oath or in lofty and Hyperbolical terms pronounce the Name of God 13. They that shall cause the Vulgar to profane the Name of God 14. He that shall cause the Vulgar to eat holy things out of holy places 15. He that doth reckon the Years and prefix the Months out of the Holy Land That is shall otherwise observe the Months and Years than of
they understand Esay 50.10 11. At the Entrance of the Synagogue they either make clean or put off their shooes in obedience to Eccles 4.17 and Exod. 3.5 Put off thy shooes c. And this saves them the uncovering of their Heads for their little black brimless Caps are never moved all the time they stay in the Synagogue At their stepping into the Synagogue they first spend a few minutes in the meditation of his Attributes whom they come to invoke which is to beget in them a Deportment humble and reverend And when they have duly possessed their minds with an awful reverence of Gods Majesty they repeat to themselves Numb 24.5 How goodly are thy Tents O Jacob and thy Tabernacles O Israel And Psalm 26.8 O Lord I have loved the habitation of thy house and the place where thine honour dwelleth And the 6 th Verse of Psalm 95. O come let us worship and bow down let us kneel before the Lord our Maker This Meditation being ended they lay the right hand upon the heart and bowing their bodies toward the Chest where the Law is laid up they begin the publick Service with the 7 th of the fifth Psalm I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercies and humble my self with fear in the Temple of thy Holiness So it is Verbatim in an old Spanish Translation of the Jewish Lyturgie They Pray standing girt with their faces toward Canaan their heads moderately bowed down and hands upon their heart They utter their Prayers in a sort of Plain-Song sometimes straining their Voices to a very harsh and unpleasant Note and then on a sudden letting it fall into a kind of whisper Their bodies are always in a wagging unsteddy posture which they say expresses joy and satisfaction in Devotion But to him that knows not the intent hereof this wavering and sometime exulting of the body will seem very careless and negligent and that they Pray with none or very little intention and devotion of mind Those which cannot read the Service in Hebrew who are but few are bound to learn when to say Amen A thing the more easily attain'd unto because they have a prescript Form And how heedless soever they may appear in other parts of Prayer yet they use a signal diligence in the right timing and pronouncing of the Amen Because whosoever saith it with all his might the Gate of the Garden of Eden is open'd to him In time of Prayers none are permitted openly to spit belch yawn or blow the Nose All which they do with great Secrecy in the Synagogue when they have occasion Neither may they spit or any such thing to the right hand or before them because of the Angels which have made those places their Situation in the Synagogue And from this short Account of the Jews entering and behaviour in the Synagogue we come to take a general view of the Prayers made therein And here we shall follow the Breviary in present use with the Jews in Barbary which was Printed at Venice in the 1622 Year of Grace And first of all they begin the Morning-Service with the eighteen Benedictions of which saith Moses Maimon Ezra was the Author For when the Israelites returned from the Captivity their Native Language was so corrupted with that of their Bondage that they were not able to praise or serve God in a continued Speech And upon this occasion Ezra is thought to have composed eighteen short Benedictions wherein they might praise God and beg at his hands the supply of his dayly blessings But others are of opinion that these eighteen Benedictions were composed as a Directory whereby they might guide themselves both in the private and publick Service of God to which purpose they are imployed at this day After the Benedictions follows a large Office for Sacrifice and Oblations which begins with the History of Abraham's going to Offer up his Son To this succeeds a long course of Psalms then a tedious Thanksgiving Then a Confession of Sins at the saying whereof they throw themselves prostrate and express a great sense of their own vileness and misery and that they have no strength but in the Almighty Then all on the sudden they start up and comfort themselves with the Oath God made unto Ahraham when he went to Sacrifice his only Son And now with great chearfulness they bless their Lot that God has chosen them for his Heritage and the people of his Covenant But besides all this they have in this Office a peculiar Thanksgiving for the Delivery of the Law and a Prayer which they say with a low voice for the restauration of the Temple That in their dayes God would rebuild the House of his Sanctuary which they hourly hope for And they shut all with praying that God would lead them in his righteousness and make plain his way before them And this is the sum of their dayly Morning-Service for whose more regular Celebration there are Rubricks intermingled with it directing them to the Responses Praises and how every part must come in course This Morning-Office as was said is very long for which they make sufficient amends in the brevity of the other two In some places they have a Custom for those to shut the Prayer-Book who are at Variance with their Neighbours thereby signifying that they will not Pray at all because they cannot pray aright till the difference be reconciled At the saying of Give Ear O Israel the Lord our God is one God they turn themselves East and North at the pronouncing of Holy Holy Holy Lord God of Sabbath they jump up three times They dare not turn their Backs on the Chest where the Law is deposit and lest they should do otherwise they go backward out of the Synagogue having their eyes always fixed thereon They are very careful that nothing may interrupt them in their Devotions at which if they sneeze they account it a lucky token of being therein accepted but to break wind preposterously is a very unhappy abodement I have omitted in the former Paragraph to observe that after the appointed course of Psalms they have two Lessons the first out of the Law which is always read by the Chasán or some eminent Jew The second Lesson is taken out of the Prophets and is read by any ordinary Jew who is able to read distinctly And in the difference of the persons imployed in these Lessons they show the great value and esteem which they have for the Law above the Prophets There is an universal Agreement among the Jews of all Countries that they ought every day to repeat a hundred Benedictions which they thus compute At w●shing in the Morning twenty three At their Entrance into the Synagogue six At putting on of the Zizith or Fringes one At putting on the Tephillim one At every one of the three Offices in the Synagogue eighteen Three after dinner and two before night At going to sleep two and as many at