Upon All Alms Collected, Besides Their Travelling
Expenses.
The Jewish devotees pass the whole day in the schools or the
synagogue, reciting the Old Testament and the Talmud, both of which many
of them know entirely by heart.
They all write Hebrew; but I did not see
any fine hand-writing amongst them; their learning, seems to be on the
same level as that of the Turks, among whom an Olema thinks he has
attained the pinnacle of knowledge if he can recite all the Koran
together with some thousand of Hadeath, or sentences of the Prophet, and
traditions concerning him; but neither Jews, nor Turks, nor Christians,
in these countries, have the slightest idea of that criticism, which
might guide them to a rational explanation or emendation of their sacred
books. It was in vain that I put questions to several of the first
Rabbins, concerning the desert in which the children of Israel sojourned
for forty years; I found that my own scanty knowledge of the geography
of Palestine, and of its partition amongst the twelve tribes, was
superior to theirs.
There are some beautiful copies of the books of Moses in the Syrian
synagogue, written upon a long roll of leather, not parchment, but no
one could tell me when or where they were made; I suspect, however, that
they came from Bagdad, where the best Hebrew scribes live, and of whose
writings I had seen many fine specimens at Aleppo and Damascus. The
libraries of the two schools at Tiberias are moderately stocked with
Hebrew books, most of which have been printed at Vienna and Venice.
Except some copies of the Old Testament and the Talmud, they have no
manuscripts.
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