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My Dear Father:—The excellent Rabbi, Ben Israel,
has just made known to me his intention of returning
to Egypt to-morrow, and has waited upon me, to inquire
if I had any commands to entrust him with, for my
friends in Alexandria. Instead of this letter, which he
will be the bearer of to you, I would rather commit myself
a second time to his care, and instead of placing this
parchment in your hand, let him lay your child again
upon your bosom. But it is by your wish, dear father,
that I am here, and though I sigh to behold you once
more, I will try to be content in my absence from you,
knowing that my discontent would cause sorrow to bow
down your gray hairs.

So far as a daughter can be happy from the home of
her youth, I have every thing to render me so. The good
Rabbi Amos in his kindness recalls your own mild and
dignified countenance, and Rebecca, his noble wife, my
cousin, is truly a mother in Israel. Her daughter Mary,
my younger cousin, in her affectionate attachment to me,
shows me how much love I have lost, in never having
had a sister. It is altogether a lovely household, and I
am favored by the God of our fathers in having my lot,
during my exile from my home on the banks of the beautiful
Nile, cast in so peaceful and holy a domestic sanctuary.

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The street in which we dwell is elevated, and from the
roof of the house, where I love to walk in the evening,
watching the stars that hang over Egypt, there is commanded
a wide prospect of the Holy City. The stupendous
Temple, with its terraces piled on terraces of dazzling
marble, with its glittering fountains shooting upward like
palm trees of liquid silver, with its massive yet beautiful
walls and towers, is ever in full sight. The golden are,
that spans the door which leads into the Holy of Holies,
as it catches the sunbeams of morning, burns like a celestial
coronet with an unearthly glory. I dare not gaze
steadily upon that holy place, or imagine the blinding
splendor within, of the visible presence of Jehovah, in the
Shechinah once present there.

Yesterday morning I was early on the house-top, to
behold the first cloud of the day-dawn sacrifice rise from
the bosom of the Temple. When I had turned my gaze
towards the sacred summit, I was awed by the profound
silence which reigned over the vast pile that crowned
Mount Moriah. The sun was not yet risen; but the East
blushed with a roseate purple, and the morning star was
melting into its depths. Not a sound broke the stillness of
the hundred streets within the walls of Jerusalem. Night
and silence still held united empire over the city and the
altar of God. I was awe-silent. I stood with my hands
crossed upon my bosom and my head reverently bowed,
for in the absence of man and his voice I believed angels
were all around in heavenly hosts, the guardian armies
of this wondrous city of David. Lances of light now
shot upward and across the purple sea in the East, and
fleeces of clouds, that reposed upon it like barks, catch

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ing the red rays of the yet unrisen sun, blazed like burning
ships. Each moment the darkness fled, and the
splendor of the dawn increased; and when each instant I
expected to see the sun appear over the battlemented
heights of Mount Moriah, I was thrilled by the startling
peal of the trumpets of the priests: a thousand silver
trumpets blown at once from the walls of the Temple,
and shaking the very foundations of the city with their
mighty voice. Instantly the house-tops everywhere around
were alive with worshipers! Jerusalem started, as one
man, from its slumbers, and, with their faces towards the
Temple, a hundred thousand men of Israel stood waiting.
A second trumpet peal, clear and musical as the voice of
God when He spake to our father Moses in Horeb, caused
every knee to bend, and every tongue to join in the morning
song of praise. The murmur of voices was like the
continuous roll of the surge upon the beach, and the walls
of the lofty Temple, like a cliff, echoed it back. Unused
to this scene, for we have nothing like this majesty of
worship in Alexandria, I stood rather as a spectator than
a sharer, as it became thy daughter to have been, dear
father. Simultaneously with the billow-like swell of the
adoring hymn, I beheld a pillar of black smoke ascend
from the midst of the Temple, and spread itself above the
court like a canopy. It was accompanied by a blue
wreath of lighter and more misty appearance, which threaded
in and out, and entwined about the other, like a silvery
strand woven into a sable cord. This latter was the
smoke of the incense which accompanied the burnt sacrifice.
As I saw it rise higher and higher, and finally overtop
the heavy cloud, which was instantly enlarged by

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volumes of dense smoke that rolled upward from the consuming
victim, and slowly disappeared melting into heaven,
I, also, kneeled, remembering that on the wings of
the incense went up the prayers of the people; and ere it
dissolved wholly, I entrusted to it, dear father, prayers for
thee and me!

How wonderful is our religion! How mysterious this
daily sacrifice, so many hundreds of years offered up for
the sins of our fathers and of ourselves! How, I often have
asked myself since I have been here, how can the blood
of a heifer, of a lamb, or of a goat, take away sin? What
is the mysterious relation existing between us and these
dumb and innocent brutes? How can a lamb stand for
a man before God? The more I reflect upon this awful
subject the more I am lost in wonder. I have spoken
to Rabbi Amos of these things, but he only smiles, and bids
me think about my embroidery; for cousin Mary and I
are working a rich gold border in the phylactery of his
next New-Year's garment.

The evening sacrifice, which I witnessed yesterday, is,
if possible, more imposing than that of the morning. Just
as the sun dips beyond the hill of Gibeah, overhanging
the valley of Aijalon, there is heard a prolonged note of a
trumpet blown from one of the western watch-towers of
Zion. Its mellow tones reach the farthest ear within the
gates of the city. All labor at once ceases! Every man
drops the instrument of his toil, and raises his face towards
the summit of the house of God. A deep pause, as if all
held their breath in expectation, succeeds. Suddenly the
very skies seem to be riven, and shaken with the thunder
of the company of trumpeters that rolls, wave on wave of

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sound, from the battlements of the Temple. The dark
cloud of sacrifice ascends in solemn grandeur, and sometimes
heavier than the evening air, falls like a descending
curtain around the Mount, till the whole is veiled from
sight; but above it is seen to soar the purer incense to the
invisible Jehovah, followed by a myriad eyes, and the utterance
of a nation's prayers. As the day-light faded, the
light of the altar, hidden from us by the lofty walls of the
outer court of the Temple, blazed high and beacon-like,
and lent a wild sublimity to the towers and pinnacles that
crowned Moriah.

There was, however, my dear father, last evening, one
thing which painfully marred the holy character of the
sacred hour! After the blast of the silver trumpets of
the Levites had ceased, and while all hearts and eyes
were ascending to Jehovah with the mounting wreaths of
incense, there came from the Roman castle adjoining the
City of David a loud martial clangor of brazen bugles, and
other barbarian war-instruments of music, while a smoke,
like the smoke of sacrifice, rose from the height of David's
fortified hill. I was told that it was the Romans engaged
in worshiping Jupiter, their idol God! Oh, when, when
shall the Holy City be freed from the reproach of the
stranger! Alas, for Israel! Her inheritance “is turned
to strangers, and her houses to aliens.” Well said Jeremiah
the Prophet, “The kings of the earth and all the inhabitants
of the world would not have believed that the
adversary and the enemy should have entered into the
gates of Jerusalem.” How truly now are the prophecies
fulfilled, which are to be found in the Lamentations!
“The Lord hath cast off His altar, He hath given up into

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the hands of the enemy the walls of her palaces: they have
made a noise in the house of the Lord, as in the day of
a solemn feast.” For these things I weep, my dear father;
even now, while I write, my tears drop on the parchment.
Why is it so? Why does Jehovah suffer the adversary
to dwell within his holy walls, and the smoke of his abominable
sacrifices to mingle with that of the offerings of
the consecrated priests of the Most High? Surely Israel
has sinned, and we are punished for our transgressions.
It becomes the land “to search and try its ways and turn
unto God,” if perhaps He will return and have mercy,
and restore the glory of Israel. Our kings are the servants
of the Gentiles. Our laws are no more. Our prophets
no longer see visions. God has gone up in anger,
and no longer holds discourse with his chosen people. The
very smoke of the daily sacrifice seems to hang above the
Temple like a cloud of Jehovah's wrath.

Nearly three hundred years have passed since we have
had a Prophet—that divine and youthful Malachi! Since
his day, Rabbi Amos confesses that Jehovah has ceased
from all known intercourse with his people and holy
house; nor has He made any sign of having heard the
prayers or heeded the sacrifices that have been offered to
Him in his time! I inquired of the intelligent Rabbi, if
this would always be thus? He replied, that when
Shiloh came there would be a restoration of all things—
that the glory of Jerusalem then would fill the whole earth
with the splendor of the sun, and that all nations should
come up from the ends of the world to worship in the
Temple. He acknowledges that we are now under a cloud

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for our sins: but that a brighter day is coming when Zion
shall be the joy of the whole earth.

My conversation with Rabbi Amos, dear father, a conversation
which grew out of the subject of the Roman
garrison occupying the citadel of David, and offering their
pagan sacrifices by the side of our own smoking altars,
led me to examine the Book of the Prophet Malachi. I
find that after plainly alluding to our present shame, and
reproaching the priests “for causing the people to stumble,”
and thus making themselves “contemptible and
base before all nations;” he thus prophesies: “Behold, I
will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way
before me, and the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly
come to his Temple; and he shall sit as a REFINER and
PURIFIER of silver, and he shall PURIFY the sons of Levi,
and PURGE them as gold and silver, that they may offer
unto the Lord an offering in righteousness. Behold,”
adds the divine seer, “I will send you Elijah the prophet
before the coming of the great and dreadful day of
the Lord.”

These words I read to-day to Rabbi Amos—indeed I
was reading them when Rabbi Ben Israel came in to say
that he departs to-morrow. The excellent Amos looked
grave, graver than I had ever seen him look. I feared I
had offended him by my boldness, and, approaching him,
was about to embrace him, when I saw tears were sparkling
in his eyes. This discovery deeply affected me, you
may be assured, dear father; and, troubled more to have
grieved than displeased him, I was about to ask his forgiveness
for intruding these sacred subjects upon his notice,
when he took my hand, and smiling, while a glittering

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drop danced down his snow-white beard and broke into
liquid diamonds upon my hand, he said, “you have done
no wrong, child: sit down by me and be at peace with
thyself. It is too true, in this day, what the Prophet
Malachi writeth, Ben Israel,” he said sadly, to the Alexandrian
Rabbi: “The priests of the Temple have indeed
become corrupt, save the few here and there! It must
have been at this day the Prophet aimed his words. Save
in the outward form, I fear the great body of our Levites
have little more true religion and just knowledge of the
one God Jehovah, than the priests of the Romish idolatry!
Alas, I fear me, God regards our sacrifices with no more
favor than He looks upon theirs! To-day, while I was in
the Temple, and was serving at the altar with the priests,
these words of Isaiah came into my thoughts and would
not be put aside: `To what purpose is the multitude of
your sacrifices unto me?' saith the Lord; `I am full of
the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and
I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he
goats. Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination
unto me; I am weary to bear them; yea, when
ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from
you; yea, when ye make many prayers I will not hear;
your hands are full of blood! Wash you; make you clean.
Cease to do evil; learn to do well!'

“These terrible words of the prophet,” added Rabbi
Amos, addressing the amazed Ben Israel, “were not out
of my mind while I was in the Temple. They seemed to
be thundered in my ears by a voice from heaven. Several
of the younger priests, whose levity during the sacrifice
had been reproved by me, seeing me sad, asked the cause.

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In reply, I repeated, with a voice that seemed to myself to
be inspired, the words of the prophet. They turned pale
and trembled, and thus I left them.”

“I have noticed,” said Ben Israel, “that there is less
reverence now in the Temple than when I was in Jerusalem
a young man; but I find that the magnificence of the
ceremonies is increased.”

“Yes,” responded Ben Amos, with a look of sorrow;
“yes, as the soul of piety dies out from within, they gild
the outside. The increased richness of the worship is
copied from the Roman. So low are we fallen! Our
worship, with all its gorgeousness, is as a sepulchre whitewashed
to conceal the rottenness within!”

You may be convinced, my dear father, that this confession,
from such a source, deeply humbled me. If, then,
we are not worshiping God, what do we worship? If
Jehovah of Hosts, the God of our Fathers, Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, hides his face from our sacrifices, and is weary
with our incense, whom does Israel worship? NOUGHT!
We are worse off than our barbarian conquerors, for we
have no God; while they at least have gods many and
lords many, such as they are! Alas, alas, the time of the
judgment of Jerusalem seems to be at hand. The Lord
MUST suddenly come to his Temple, and as a refiner! I
am deeply impressed with the conviction that the day is
very near at hand! Perhaps we shall see it in our lifetime,
dear father!

Since writing the last line I have been interrupted by
Mary, who has brought to see me a youth, son of a noble
Jewish ruler, who was slain by the Romans for his patriotic
devotion to his country. He dwells near the Gaza

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gate, with his widowed mother, who is a noble lady,
honored by all lips that discourse of her. Between this
young man and Mary there exists a beautiful attachment,
not ardent enough to be love, but sincere enough for the
purest friendship; yet each day their friendship is ripening
into the deepest emotion. He has just returned from
the vicinity of Jericho, where he has been for some days
past, drawn thither by curiosity, to see and hear the new
prophet, alluded to by me at the close of my last letter,
whose fame has spread far and wide, and who is drawing
thousands into the wilderness, to listen to the eloquence
that flows from his mouth. The young man had been
giving Mary so interesting an account of him that she
desired me also to be a listener! In my next I will write
you all I heard; and I trust, dear father, you will patiently
bear with me in all things; and believe that, however I
may, from the investigating character of my mind, venture
upon sacred mysteries, I shall never be less a lover of the
God of our Father Abraham, nor less the affectionate and
devoted Adina to thee! Adieu.