Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches
Transcriber’s notes are used when making corrections to the text or to provide additional information for the modern reader. These notes are not identified in the text, but have been accumulated in a single section at the end of the book.
MEN frequently think that the evils in the world are more numerous than the good things; many sayings and songs of the nations dwell on this idea. They say that the good is foun...
16. Part 16THE mystery of pain is an old problem. The Rabbis were deeply impressed with its gravity and complexity. The sorrows of the universe and the agony of Israel; the suffering of th...
6. Part 6TO base the appeal for justice to present-day Jewry upon the cultural services of ancient Israel would be treason to the inalienable rights of man. A people may for a time be ro...
9. Part 9THE moral feelings of men have been deepened and strengthened, and also softened, and almost created, by the Jewish prophets. In modern times we hardly like to acknowledge the f...
2. Part 2JEWISH custom bids the Jewish mother, after her preparations for the Sabbath have been completed on Friday evening, kindle the Sabbath lamp. That is symbolic of the Jewish woman...
12. Part 12COULD we with ink the ocean fill, Were every blade of grass a quill, Were the world of parchment made, And every man a scribe by trade, To write the love Of God above Would drai...
3. Part 3Charity is the main foundation of Israel’s pre-eminence, and the basis of the Law of Truth. As the prophet says unto Zion: ‘By _Zedakah_ shalt thou be established’ (Isaiah 54. 1...
7. Part 7‘He never’, continued the advocate, ‘was heard to complain of either God or man; there was never a flash of hatred in his eye; he never lifted it with a claim on heaven.’
4. Part 4WHAT has prevented this constantly migrating people, this veritable Wandering Jew, from degenerating into brutalized vagabonds, into vagrant hordes of gipsies? The answer is at...
11. Part 11MAY it be Thy will, O God, that I walk in Thy law, and cleave to Thy commandments. Lead me not into sin or temptation or contempt. Let not evil desire rule over me. Bend my will...
10. Part 10Persecution came to the Jewish nation in its most horrible forms, yet surrounded by every circumstance of petty annoyance that could destroy its grandeur, and it continued for c...
5. Part 5THE high-road of Jewish history leads to wide outlooks. That which is great and lasting in Jewish history is the spiritual wealth accumulated through the ages; the description o...
8. Part 8THE religion of the Bible is well said to be _revealed_, because the great natural truth, that ‘righteousness tendeth to life’, is seized and exhibited there with such incompara...
14. Part 14THIS Feast of the Law all your gladness display, To-day all your homages render. What profit can lead one so pleasant a way, What jewels can vie with its splendour? Then exult i...
13. Part 13‘I have wood to sell’, says the sham peasant, ‘very cheap, for next to nothing.’ And without further ado he goes in. The Lithuanian steals in behind him, and sees, in the grey l...
1. Part 1Transcriber’s notes are used when making corrections to the text or to provide additional information for the modern reader. These notes are not identified in the text, but have...
19. Part 19318. Ethics of the Fathers: The fourth chapter ends with the words of R. Eleazar Hakkappar:―― ‘The born are to die and the dead to live on again; and those who enter the eternal...
18. Part 18The lines, written in 1882, apply with hundredfold force to the uninterrupted pogroms that have been raging in the Ukraine throughout 1919. More than 100,000 Jews――men, women, a...
17. Part 17SURELY there is a mine for silver, And a place for gold which they refine. Iron is taken out of the earth, And brass is molten out of the stone. Man setteth an end to darkness,...
20. Part 20JEW, What is a? 135; 21; and Bible, 56‒64; the misunderstood of history, 65, 326; and Greek, 66; heroism of, 66, 78, 79; and scholarship, 99; and non-Jew, 9, 25, 26; as citizen,...