(rules, customs); the second (the poetry), Haggadah (tradition and legend, including parable, allegory, lessons).[1]
The Halachah (rules) for a very long period were never written down, but were transmitted from teacher to teacher in an unbroken succession, orally, with many and various additions. The Haggadah (traditions) in many cases were, however, written down, and so transmitted.
Thus from the period of the Return from the Exile a vast bulk of teaching, largely unwritten, traditional, and legendary, all founded on and closely bearing on the Law (Torah), had been collected by the Scribes and their schools stretching over a period of about five centuries. Some thirty years before the Christian era Hillel, the great Rabbinic master of the period, endeavoured to reduce this great mass of teaching, oral and written, rule and tradition, Halachah and Haggadah, to some definite system and order. He did something in this direction, but died before his task was in any real way completed, and for many years nothing further was done in the way of codifying or arrangement.
Then came the great upheaval of A.D. 70, when the Holy City was razed to the ground; when it appeared as though the religion of the Jew was destroyed, now that the Temple round which all the cherished memories of the people were grouped had disappeared. Curiously enough, as it appears to men, the contrary was the case: a wonderful resurrection of religious life was the almost immediate outcome of the fall of the City and Temple.
A group of singularly able and devoted men, as we have already remarked, arose at this critical moment in Jewish history—when all seemed lost. Judaism in the year 70, when the long and bitter war with Rome was finally closed, was stripped of everything. It had lost for ever its position as a nation. Its Temple, the joy of the whole world, as their royal songman pictured it, was a heap of shapeless ruins. Its most sacred treasures were carried away to adorn an Italian triumph. The Holy City was literally razed to the ground. The pro-*
- ↑ At the close of this Fifth Book is a short general description of "Haggadah." See, too, in the Appendix for a further description of Haggadah and Halachah.
