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 HERTZ 
 GRATITUDE
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE 
 
 CENTRAL SYNAGOGUE 
 PULPIT 
 
 A SELECTED SERIES 
 OF SERMONS DELIVERED AT THE 
 
 Central Synagogue, Great Port'and Street. W. 
 
 No. 2 
 
 GRATITUDE 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 PREACHED OX THE FIRST DAY 
 
 OF TABERNACLES 
 
 OCTOBER i2th, 5();7-i9i6 
 
 BY THE 
 
 VERY REV. THE CHIEF RABBI 
 
 Printed for Private Circulation
 
 //t^ ^^<^ /V^t^-t:^**-*
 
 THE CENTRAL SYNAGOGUE 
 
 PULPIT 
 
 No. 2 
 
 GRATITUDE 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 PREACHED BY THE 
 
 Very Rev. THE CHIEF RABBI 
 
 OCTOBER i2tli, niDD X 
 5677-1910
 
 6t-v 
 s 
 
 SERMON 
 PREACHED AT THE CENTRAL SYNAGOGUE 
 
 ox THE 
 
 EH^ST DAY OF TABERNACLES, 
 October i2th, 5677 — 1916. 
 
 •• nV/a/ cmi I voider unto tJic Lord for all His benefits 
 ioii'ardsme? I ivill offer to Thee the sacrifice of tlianks- 
 givinij;. and will call upon the name of the Lord." 
 
 -Psalm cxui. i 2. 17. 
 
 Various have been the aspects of Succos that have 
 been dwelt upon in this pulpit as, year by year, it 
 has been my privilege to address this congregation 
 on the First Dav of Tabernacles. 
 
 We have not, however, so far considered the message 
 
 of Succos as an annual Festival of Thanksgiving to 
 
 our Friend and Benefactor on High. Now, the preaching 
 
 ■ of this elementary duty of gratitude is far from 
 
 2095ir>l
 
 superfluous. Gratitude is at the root of character. 
 No man can be wholly bad who has gratitude in him, 
 whereas the man who forgets to be grateful has indeed 
 fallen asleep in life. Ingratitude, alas, is common 
 enough ; yet, it is strange, each time it shocks us 
 much more than uncharitableness or untruthfulness, 
 each time our faith in human nature simply goes under. 
 The prophets rank it as an unpardonable, an unnatural 
 sin, since it reduces man below the level of a dumb 
 animal, which at least faithfully follows its master 
 and gratefully remembers the hand that provides its 
 food. And a large-hearted lover of his fellow-men in 
 our own time lost his kindliness of nature when 
 he thought of this sub-brutish failing, and in bitter 
 and savage irony he declared : "If you take a starving 
 dog on a freezing day, if you warm him and feed him, 
 he will not bite you ; that is the principal difference 
 between a dog and a man ! " The truth is that men 
 and M'omen, as we know them, seem in need of perennial 
 reminders against lapsing into base ingratitude. Even 
 in the Messianic Era, the Rabbis tell us, all sacrifices 
 shall have ceased — except the thanksgiving sacrifice. 
 There will no more be gross violence, deceit or impurity 
 to necessitate burnt offerings, sin offerings, or guilt 
 offerings ; all the others will have fulfilled their 
 educational mission, all, save the one inculcating the 
 dutv of gratitude. Tliat is to rontinur for ever.
 
 Perhaps someone, even in this House of Prayer, may 
 now think to himself, " Quite so, gratitude is the 
 beginning of virtue ; but, really, what have I to be 
 grateful for ? " What have I to be grateful for ? If 
 one should give me a dish of sand and tell me there 
 were particles of iron in it, I might look for them with 
 my eyes and search for them with my hngers, and 
 be unable to detect them ; but let me take a magnet 
 and sweep it through that dish, how it would draw 
 to itself the almost invisible particles by the mere power 
 of attraction. The unthankful heart, like the fingers 
 in the sand, discovers no mercies ; but let the thankful 
 heart sweep through the day, through the month, 
 through the year, and as the magnet finds the iron, 
 so will it find in every day some heavenly blessing. 
 
 True, not all our wishes are realised, not all desires 
 fulfilled, not all our petitions heard. Thank God for 
 it ! There are blessings in disguise, but there are also 
 curses in disguise. We yearn for some golden apple 
 which Fate dangles before our eyes ; that apple would 
 complete, would crown our happiness. At last it is 
 ours ; and we find it to be an Apple of Sodom — fair 
 without, bitterness, gall and ashes within. How deep 
 is the Talmudic saying : " When the Almighty wishes 
 to punish a man for his sins. He grants him all his 
 prayers, withholding nothing." God's grace may l)e
 
 6 
 
 displayed as much, and mure so, in tlie things He denies 
 us as in what He grants us ! And then think of the 
 evil visitations we dreaded that have not befallen us. 
 
 r]^)y ri'^'i ^^ px ,niNnS pyS n)cn n^ni ^'^^Sx 
 
 yp^lt^n ^J3/t3 "n^yS " If the eye could but see 
 them," says an ancient Rabbi, " there are ten thousands 
 of demons ever hovering over us to destroy us." Indeed, 
 our worst misfortunes never come ; the catastrophes 
 that threaten our health and happiness, the life, health 
 and happiness of our dear ones, most often pass away 
 without our even being aware of the evils that were 
 about to blight us and ours. Verily, He doth not deal 
 with us according to our sins, nor recjuite one-hundredth 
 part of our transgressions ; He charitably covereth our 
 shortcomings, and healeth all our diseases ; He delivereth 
 our life from the grave, and showereth undeserved 
 blessings on us unawares ; He crowneth us with sure 
 mercies which endow us with hope and youth, and 
 give us the power, phoenix-like, to rise again from 
 the ashes of misfortune and calamity. 
 
 Much more, however, than all this is involved in the 
 Jewish conception of gratitude preached by this festival ; 
 nothing less, in fact, than a moral paradox, as profound 
 as it is original. We must thank God, says our sacred 
 Faith, not only for the good we have received, but we 
 must thank Him as well for the evil that befalls us.
 
 " Under every conceivable \-icissitude of fortune or 
 misfortune," declared Rabbi Akiba, "a man oui^lit to 
 say : ' What the Almiijhty doeth is for the best.' " D7iy^ 
 
 "iny 2t±> x:iDnn n^np S^ if^h S^:in dix N*n^ 
 
 To thank God only when we receive good at His hands, 
 is in the last instance no more meritorious than to obey 
 Him when it suits us, when it serves our purposes ; 
 no more meritorious than to be patriotic so long as 
 such patriotism is at one with our self-interest. A 
 man must be ready to hallow God's name even when 
 the wa^'es of ach'ersity threaten to engulf him. Judaism 
 bids its children meet misfortune manfully, without 
 murmuring, and bear bereavement in resignation and 
 dignity ; and teaches them to exclaim with Job : 
 " The Lord hath given, the Lord hath taken awav, 
 blessed be the name of the Lord." 
 
 Gratitude, thus widened and spiritualised, becomes 
 the highest proof of soul-strength, the finest test of 
 manhood and womanhood. For thousands of years 
 has Judaism been preaching this duty in its broadest 
 and deepest connotation. But e\'en in our own camp 
 many had never heeded this sublime teaching, had 
 never understood it. Succah and Lulab were to them 
 far-off, empty symbols — the one had crumbled and 
 the other had withered. The world-war, however,
 
 now Jiolding the fairest portions of earth in its grasp, 
 is proving a mighty educator. It is teaching men and 
 women the language of religion ; it is opening their 
 eyes to the vast and infinite meaning of religious 
 symbols. During the South African War, I visited 
 various coast towns in Cape Colony whither the British 
 Jewish population from the Boer States had gone for 
 safety and shelter. x\t Port Elizabeth I found hundreds 
 of refugees living in tents. The}' were quite cheerful, 
 however, and said to me : " For years we have not 
 properly observed Succos. We are doing so now." 
 In the same manner, many a Jewisli household and 
 many a son and daughter of our people, who had never 
 observed this beautiful festival, are to-day ready to 
 understand the teaching of the Succah, when it bids 
 us leave our homes and, in a frail hut, entrust ourselves 
 to the Providence of God ; when it commands us 
 to emancipate ourselves from the tyranny of things, 
 and in joyful gratitude acknowledge God as our Father 
 and Friend on High. 
 
 The vital message of the other symbol of this 
 Festival — the Lulab — is likewise forcibly brought 
 home to Jews, observant or non-observant, by a 
 grave communal problem arising out of the War. 
 The Lulab proclaims the responsibility of the majestic 
 palm-branch and aromatic esrog for the myrtle and
 
 willow ; i.e., of the wise, rich and strong, for the weak, 
 erring and ignorant. And it insists that this responsibility 
 is mutual. HT HX HT \'12'^J2 DO^D ^nnX Each one 
 of the four plants ran " hinder " the others, says the 
 Din; an unfit willow renders the whole chister unfit, 
 just as much as an unfit esrog does. It is a great pity 
 that a few thousands of our foreign brethren, who do 
 not realise that this is no time for theorising on individual 
 liberty or militarism, have it now in their power to 
 neutralise the patriotic achievements of the overwhelming 
 majority of their brethren in belligerent countries, and 
 to " hinder " some of our fairest hopes and aspirations. 
 
 But the message of Succos extends far bevond the 
 domain of the individual, or of the community even. 
 We ha\'e only recently been told that "for generations 
 Europe will be a seething cauldron of national hates." 
 What can, therefore, be more timelv than the world- 
 embracing and man-redeeming ideals of the unity of 
 mankind which Succos enshrines ? During the Festival 
 of Tabernacles, we are told, there were offered on the 
 Altar in the Temple of Jerusalem seventy bullocks 
 on behalf of the seventy nations then inhabiting the 
 world. In modern speech, this means that Judaism 
 recognises each people, each historic group, endowed 
 by Hea^Tn with an inalienable right to its own language, 
 to its own traditions, to its own ethnic personalitv.
 
 10 
 
 We have long known that there were duties for the 
 fulfihnent of which a mother willingly sends her only 
 child to almost certain death. The War is now recalling 
 the ancient Succos lesson to the conscience of men 
 and nations, that there are also n'o'/z/s— political, cultural 
 and linguistic — which are absolute, which cannot be 
 withheld or robbed from any human group yearning 
 for them. 
 
 Our Succos thoughts are ended. May our reflections 
 to-day touch our hearts with the divine magnetism of 
 gratitude and trust in God, so that with all our being 
 we rejoice before the Lord on this Festival and bless 
 His name Who hath kept us in life, preserved us in 
 health, and enabled us to reach this sacred day. May 
 we bless His holy name for having chosen us to be the 
 heralds, announcing the sure advent of that glorious 
 (lav when mankind shall form one band of brotherhood, 
 united under one Paternal roof — when in the words 
 of our Haftorah, " The Lord shall be King over all 
 the earth, in that day shall the Lord be One and His 
 name One." Amen.
 
 WILLIAMS. I,IlA & CO., LTD., PRINTERS, 
 
 CLllTON IIOUSL. WORSHIP STRIiET, li.C. 
 CONTRACTORS TO H. M. STATIONERY OI'I-ICC.
 
 3 1158 01045 "S 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 001 265 547 
 
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