The Equinox (Volume I, Number VIII)

PREFACE AN any good thing come out of Palestine? is the broader anti-Semitic retort to the sneer cast by the Jews themselves against the harmless and natural Nazarene; one more example 01 the poetic justice 01 History. And no doubt such opponents 01 the modern Jew will acclaim this volume as an admirable disproof of that thesis which it purports to uphold, The dissimilarities, amounting in some cases to sheer contradiction, which mark many numbers, will appear proof positive that there is nothing in the numerical Qabalah, especially as we may presume that by filling up this dictionary from the ordinary Hebrew Lexicon one would arrive at a mere hatch-pot. Apart from this, there is a deeper-lying objection to the Qabalah; viz., that the theory is an example of the fallacy Post hoc propter hoc, Are we to believe, asks the sceptic, that a number of learned men deliberately sat down and chose words for the sake of their numerical value? Language is a living thing, with many sources and diverse; can it be moulded in any such arbitrary fashion? The only reply seems to be a mere assertion that to some extent it certainly is so‘ Examples of a word being spelt deliberately wrong do occur; and such a jugglery as the changing 01 the names Abram and Sarai to Abraham and Sarah can hardly be purposeless. Once admit the end of such a wedge, and it is difficult to say whether it may not be driven home so far as to split asunder the Tree 01 Knowledge, if not the Tree of Life Another line of argument is the historical. We do not here refer to the alleged forgery of the Qabalah by Rabbi Moses ben Leon—was it not ?—but to the general position of the ethnologist that the Jews were an entirely barbarous race, incapable 01 any spiritual pursuit. That they were polytheists is clear from the very first verse of Genesis; that Adonai Melekh is identical with "Moloch" is known to every Hebraist. The “Old Testament " is mainly the history 01 the struggle of the phallic Jehovah against the rest of the Elohim, and that his sacrifices were of blood, and human blood at that, is indisputable. ₪ 2