r
a new name. Henceforth the Jew, dispersed, isolated, and afflicted, had to
struggle to preserve his faith in its pristine purity. The very danger
besetting the study of the Law during the Hadrianic persecutions, which
followed the Bar Kochba revolt, increased his zeal and courage. "Devoid of
the Torah, our vital element, we are surely threatened with death," said
Rabbi Akiba, applying to himself the fable of the fox and the fishes, as
he defied the Roman edict.(1161) The fear lest the Torah should be
forgotten, stimulated the teachers and their disciples ever anew to its
pursuit. The Torah was regarded as the bond and pledge of God's nearness;
hence the many rabbinical sayings concerning its value in the eyes of God,
which are frequently couched in poetic and extravagant language.(1162) The
underlying idea of them all is that Israel could dispense with its State
and its Temple, but not with its storehouse of divine truth, from which it
constantly derives new life and new youth.

7. One important question, however, remains, which must be answered: Has
the Jewish people, shut up for centuries by the ramparts of Talmudic
Judaism, actually renounced its world mission? In transmitting part of its
inheritance to its two daughter-religions, has Judaism lost its claim to
be a world-religion? The Congregation of Israel, according to the Midrash,
answers this question in the words of the Shulamite in the Song of Songs:
"I sleep, but my heart waketh."(1163) During the sad period of the Middle
Ages, Judaism in its relation to the outer world slept a long
winter-sleep, now in one land and now in another, but its inner life
always manifested a splendid activity of mind and soul, exerting a mighty
influence upon the history of the world. It was declared dead by the
ruling Church, and yet it constantly filled her with alarm by the truths
it uttered. The Jewish people was given over to destruction and
persecution a thousand times, but all the floods of hatred and violence
could not quench its flame. Its marvelous endurance constituted the
strongest possible protest against the creed of the Church, which claimed
to possess an exclusive truth and the only means of salvation. To suffer
and die as martyrs by thousands and tens of thousands, at the stake and
under the torture of bloodthirsty mobs, testifying to the One Only God of
Israel and humanity, was, to say the least, as heroic a mission as to
convert the heathen. Indeed, the Jew, in