The Jewish child : its history, folklore, biology, & sociology / by W.M. Feldman ; with an introduction by Sir James Crichton-Browne.
- William Moses Feldman
- Date:
- 1917
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Credit: The Jewish child : its history, folklore, biology, & sociology / by W.M. Feldman ; with an introduction by Sir James Crichton-Browne. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![I.] Introduction 19 and he said: May you never return here. When she gave birth to a son, she again asked him to bless her, and he said: ''May you never cease to say, 'Woe is me.' The bewildered daughter then asked him why he cursed her on each occasion on which she asked him to bless her, and he replied that both times he really prayed for her. When you got married, I prayed that you might be so happy as never to return to my house; and now that your child is born, I hope that he may live, so that you may be constantly worrying about him, saying, ' Woe is me ! my son has not eaten or drunk or gone to the house of worship.^ It is also narrated of two great Rabbis who, on being requested by the son of R. Simeon ben Yochai to bless him, delivered themselves as follows: May you sow and not reap; may you bring in but not bring out. The youth protested before his father, and said: They need not have blessed me, but they also should not have cursed me. But his father explained that their words were really blessings : ' May you sow and not reap ' means: may you have children, but not lose them.^ ^ Gen. R. xxvi. 4. 2 Moed Katan 9a and 6. Amongst the sect known as Chasidim (г.е., an ultra orthodox minority who adopt the Sephardic ritual in prayer and whose rabbi is believed by them to be endowed with special power to work miracles), it is even now the custom for the rabbi to give a blessing disguised in the form of a curse. A notable example is R. Aaron of Karlin, who lived in the middle of the last century. (See Solomon Feinerman, On the Origin of the Chasidic Anecdotes, Hashiloah, xxi., 1909, p. 437.)](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18023022_0052.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
