Page 46 - The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages - Alfred Rosenberg

The Track of the Jew through the Ages

The king immediately sent a message to him. When Rabbi
Shila came, the judges spoke: "Why did you chastise this man?" -
"Because he has lived with an ass", was his answer. "Do you have
witnesses?", they asked. - "Yes", he said. There came Elias in human
form and gave evidence of it. "One with whom things stand thus",
the judges continued, "is doomed to death".
To which the rabbi: "Since the day when we were driven
out of our country we do not have the authority to kill, but you can
do with him what you will". While the judges considered the matter,
Rabbi Shila began to utter the saying of Chron 29:11: "Yours, O
Eternal, is the greatness and the power". The judges asked him:
"What did you say?" He replied: "I said: blessed be the merciful
who has made the kingdom of earth as well as of heaven, and given
you power and mercy in justice". The judges said: "The honour of
the kingdom is very dear", they gave him a staff and said to him:
"You may pass judgement".
When Rabbi Shila went out, that man (whom he had
chastised) spoke to him: "Does the merciful do such a wonder to
liars?" The rabbi: "Coward! Are they not called a donkey? As it is
written in Ezek 23:20: 'whose flesh is like that of donkeys'" - When
the rabbi saw that the man went away to tell the judges that he had
called them donkeys, he thought: "This is a persecutor and the Torah
says: 'forestall one who wishes to kill you'". And he took his staff
and killed him. Thereupon he said: "Since a wonder has befallen
me through the verse in Chron 29:11, 1 shall explain it in this way:
yours, O Eternal, is the greatness, that is related to the work of
creation, etc." There follows an entire series of biblical sayings
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thrown together without sense. This short narrative should speak
in clear words, without much commentary; in it everything is
contained: the incredible contempt for the non-Jew, the lie sanctioned
by the prophet Elias and the murder authorised by the Torah. If we

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Tractate Berachoth, fol.58a. It is characteristic indeed that of Rabbi Meir, one of
the greatest authorities on the Talmud, his contemporaries were able to report that
it was never possible to discover his own opinion for he was able, through
comparisons, inferences from other passages, etc. to set down as an actual
commandment from a clearly quite unequivocal law the very opposite of it. Graetz,
Geschichte der Juden, Vol.4, p. 178.

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