Note 151 — II. OUR DUTIES. (continued 4)

All the seasons of rejoicing are also occasions for mitsvoth—charity, and for strengthening the bond of love between husband and wife, between parents and children, and the bond of friendship between man and man. Every erebh shabbath and erebh yom-tobh afford the opportunity of giving challah,151 kindling Sabbath or Festival lights,152 and inviting strangers153 (‏הכנסת אורחים‎) to our meals. On Sabbaths and Festivals children, even when grown up, come to their parents and ask for their blessing.154 Before Kiddush the husband chants the section of Prov. xxxi. beginning ‏אשת חיל‎, in praise of a good wife. The Shabbath shalom or Good shabbath, Shabhua tobh or Good woch, Good yom tobh, and similar salutations, remind us that we ought to have only good wishes for each other. Sabbath and Festivals afford suitable occasions for home-devotion, in which all the members of the family, males and females, should take part. The meals are preceded and followed by the usual berachoth, but it is customary to add extra psalms and hymns (zemiroth) in honour of the day, and those who are gifted should add to these, or even substitute for them, compositions of their own in any language they like in gloriam Dei. A second kind of home-devotion which ought not to be neglected, but should rather be revived where it is neglected, is the reading of the Scriptures. On Friday evening the pious Jew reads the Sidra twice in the original and once in the Targum; but all should at least read Sidra and Haphtarah in the vernacular.