be cited. To
lawyers especially, the study of them is fascinating; they are full of
startling relevancy in the present time of unrest and agitation for
legal reform in this country. And not without reason. What we are keen
for now is a greater measure of social justice in a democratic
community. A study of Hillel's jurisprudence--both the theory and the
decisions affecting the workaday life of the people--will give one an
appreciation not only of the beautiful spirituality of the master, his
erudition and his imagination, but the characteristic coalition of
letter and spirit, the emphatic sense of social justice, which has
prevailed in the whole system of Jewish law.

_Hillel's Public Spirit and Humanity_

Thus Hillel, while head of his famous school of instruction, became
the founder of a school in another sense--a school of interpretation
of the Torah. This school, as already indicated, was marked by a
leniency and elasticity of interpretation of the traditional law quite
in contrast to the harshness and rigidity of the contemporary school
of Shammai; it is the school of Hillel, leaning to the spiritual and
the humane, that has prevailed ever since in Jewish law. Hillel made
the people realize the truth of the famous text about the Torah: "It
is a tree of life to them that grasp it, and of them that uphold it,
everyone is rendered happy. Its paths are paths of pleasantness and
all its ways are peace." Those who have mistakenly conceived the
Jewish law as something dour and rigid, unlovable, unspiritual,
should study the decisions and dicta of this great master.

Hillel's character is illustrated by a number of pregnant sayings of
his that have been recorded in the Talmud. "Do not separate yourself
from the community," was one of his characteristic sayings which
genuinely expressed his public spirit. His sense of individual and
social responsibility is summed up in his three famous questions: "If
I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am for myself alone,
what am I? And if not now, when?" His peace-loving nature and humanity
found voice in his counsel: "Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving
peace, pursuing peace, loving God's creatures and bringing them near
to the knowledge of the Law." His disinterestedness, his liberal
pursuit of the Law, that is, of knowledge, made him confidently say:
"He who aggrandizes his name, his name shall perish. He who does not
add to his store of learning and good deeds wi