Narrative of the REV. Joseph Samuel C. F. Frey  (English, Paperback, Joseph Samuel Christian Frederick Frey)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Narrative B.EV. JOSEPH SAMUEIi C. F. FRET CHAPTER I. HIS BIRTH AND EDUCATION. It pleased God, in whom I live, move, and have my being, to favor me with the light of this world, Sept. 21, 1771. The place of my nativity is Mayn- stockheim, near to Wurtsburgh, in Franconia, Germany. My father, Samuel Levi, was nineteen years a private tutor in a Jewish family at Maynburnheim; and, after he had married, continued, as it were, day and night in the study of the sacred Scriptures and the traditions of men, and acted as Morah Tzedeck, whilst my mother carried on the trade by which the family was comfortably supported. Morak Tzedeck is a person to whom the Jews apply for direction in difficulties arising from the observation of the innumerable religious ceremonies with which the Jewish ritual abounds; and the cases on which a person is consulted are such as the following: If a grain of corn should be found in any kind of food during the feast of unleavened bread, it may happen that not only the food must be thrown away, but even the vessels yvhich contained any part of it dare not again be used during the feast. Or suppose a family, while feasting on meat or fowl, should find that their knife or fork is one of those which are used in eating food prepared with milkor butter, the company must desist from eating any more of those victuals; nor dare they use any of those knives, plates, or other vessels, until the case has been decided by the Morah Tzedeck, whose verdict is very frequently that the food must be thrown away, and the earthen and china vessels in which it was served be broken to pieces. Such like questions arc daily brought before the Morah Tzedeck; and in towns where as many as seventy families live, as is the case in my native place, such questions are continu...