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A PUBLICATION OF THE ASGLO-JEWISH PERIODICAL PRESS.
roa THE PROMOTION OP THE SPIRITUAL AND GENERAL WELFARE OF THE JEWS, BY TIIE DISSEMINATION OF INTELLIGENCE ON SUBJECTS AFFECTING THEIR INTERESTS, AND BY TIIE ADVOCACY AND DEFENCE OF THEIR RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS. *
•• CJou »k«It *prfatr akroak Is Ike tout, ask to tkr east, ask te tke nortk. ask to Ike aestk: ank is tkee ask is Ik* seek skall all Ik* taaitUes Of tke cartk ke klrsfrk ."—Vocation of tke Je we. Gkk. xxviii. 14.
Yol. IV. No. 112,] LONDON, 24th OF ELLUL, A.M. 5605,—26th SEPT., 1845. [Prick 3d.
CONTENTS.
pietiev.—Ck»e of tbt Volume.
The New Y>*r, and a Retrospect of the Old Year.
Berts Marks' Congregaticm: Election of a Haxan.
KiiciLiiSioci IxTSLuaiMCB.—Jev*' Free School.' ■ Sermoos.—Instruction of O'&rOP*—Holland House Academy ; Examination.—Suaeea ilall Institution. FtSCBi acH Btuit Stnaoooux. -Sermon of the Chief Rabbi.
FouiGM awo COLONIAL Ihtihioirci.- Malta; letter from Jamaica.—IT<m.
burgh. —Lou by Fire.—Seal of the Rabbinical Assembly.— Sek*tri*.~- Mixed Marriages and their sad consequence*.— ComstontimopU. — CrtfekL—Charleiton: Jerutaitm. — Dr. Z. Prtnkti.— Hanover.— La JfarfiaaeTe—Fotifth UnivereiUe*.— Intereeting School Examination.
Objects for Jewish Charity Unprovided for.
Rivixw.—Emblaxoned Hebrew Calendar,
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THE NEW YEAH, AND A RETROSPECT OF THE OLD YEAR.
By a Corretpondenl.
The New Year ! What ideas ao these words awaken ! What reflections; what anticipations ! What regret or pleasure does the memory of the irrevocable past inspire : what promises and hopes shade the future with their golden tissue! The New Year: while the time departed is as a solid plain—barren or fruitful, as it has been carefully cultivated, or heedlessly neglected ; the future is a dark unstable gulf, which only becomes enlightened and firm as it recedes beneath our feet. The New Year! it is a joyful season, though solemn withal; a momentary pause on the ceaseless journey of eternal time, when man may contemplate his position, and calculate his means, his opportunities; it is the bridge which joins two opposite coasts,—each claims, both possess, Dut neither owns it; it is the link which connects the real with the ideal, the substantial with the im- sginary; it is the tomb of fancy, the threshold of. reason, the death and birth of hope; the end, and the beginning; it is the New Year.
Such reflections might the New Year suggest to men of all creeds; men to whom it is but a civil era, sanctified by usage, hut associated with no divine behest, no ancient tradition, whoae origin is lost in the deep obscurity of the mighty past. But on us, on Jews, the New Year, the Day of Memorial, the Day of Shouting, the First of the Days of Repentance, has a holier claim; in us it awakes a train of loftier and more sacred reflections. 1
Placed on earth in the peculiar position of the only living representatives of what has been, the Jews have indeed a grand field for conception; here they exist, the incarnation of the Bewildered past, the embodiment of the ghostly future, the living witnesses of the preeent; to testify to what has been, to minister to what is, to prepare for what shall be. The intermediate step
between their ancestors and their posterity, the Jews of to day, religiously speaking, have the same functions to discharge now that they had a thousand years gone. Time's all destroying hand has pressed heavily on human fabrications; the wheels of his chariot have been driven over man's high places, and have crushed them into ruin; the pride of antiquity has no boast now, for the most ancient record becomes a thing of yesterday, when compared with the Jews. Nations have risen and fallen; religions have been invented, diffused, and broken into * thousands of schisms—but the Jews still maintain their position —the Jewish religion is essentially and integrally as undivided now, as when the thunders that reverberated from Sinai announced to the world the accomplishment of that portion of Israel’s destiny, which made it the guardian of all earthly happiness. And oh! whata trust is this! Wisely and well did those act whose whole lives were devoted to the study of their treasure; wisely, because through all the mighty convulsions that have shaken the throne of knowledge, and at times almost extinguished its very existence, they still preserved the source of all true knowledge—the knowledge of good ; well, because they carefully guarded the cherished Law, and casing it, as it were, in proof mail, set at defiance the attacks of external warfare, which might indent the aurface, but could not penetrate beneath. But new wants arose; so long as Israel, though homeless and friendless, was the sole depository of learning, so long was it sufficient to study only that wisdom which teaches of Heaven ; but when the light of science again burst upon the world, when those who had nitherto groped in blindness, became conscious of the beauties of its divine beams, then a new series of studies became necessary—not, it is true, to supersede the old pursuits, not to seek aggrandizement by their downfall, nor to build their own success on the ruin of a traduced rival,—but to walk hand in hand, each shedding a portion of its lustre on the other; Heavenly knowledge dignifying worldly learning, and this in turn teaching that to become useful in prsotice; the sun and the earth, this receiving and reflecting the beams of that, and that more bright because more beneficial.
Here, however, mortal imperfections interfered. There were those among Israel who, claiming with justice to themselves all that Heaven had revealed, saw nothing good,'nothing dignified, nothing useful, but in what they alone possessed; (forgetful 6f the divine behest, “ In thee and in thy seed shall all