rld's pleasure and the world's culture and barred up in
Ghetto slums, then it was that the Talmud became his recreation and his
consolation, feeding his mind and his faith. In this way it not only
became in the Middle Ages a picture of the Jew, but largely formed his
character. It made him a keen dialectician, tempered with a thoughtful
and poetic touch. It fostered his patience and his humor and kept vivid
his ideals. It linked him with the Orient, while living in the Occident
and made him a bridge between the old and the new.

To the world at large it has great value archaeologically. Here are
preserved ancient laws, glint lights on past history, forgotten forms in
the classic tongues, and pictures of old civilization. No one criticism
can cover the whole work. It is so many-sided. It includes so many
different standards of worth and value. If we take it as a whole, it is
good, it is bad and indifferent; it is trash and it is treasure; it is
dust and it is diamonds; it is potsherd and it is pearls; and in the
hands of impartial scholars, it is one of the great monuments of mental
achievement, one of the world's wonders.

Maurice H. Harris

THE TALMUD

* * * * *

Where do we learn that the Shechinah rests even upon one who studies the
law? In Exodus xx. 24, where it is written, "In all places where I
record my name I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee."

_Berachoth_, fol. 6, col. 1.

One pang of remorse at a man's heart is of more avail than many stripes
applied to him. (See Prov. xvii. 10.)

Ibid., fol. 7, col. 1.

"Here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord!" (Deut. vi. 4.) Whosoever
prolongs the utterance of the word one, shall have his days and years
prolonged to him. So also _Zohar_, syn. tit. ii.

Ibid., fol. 13, col. 2.

Once, as the Rabbis tell us, the Roman Government issued a decree
forbidding Israel to study the law. Whereupon Pappus, the son of
Yehudah, one day found Rabbi Akiva teaching it openly to multitudes,
whom he had gathered round him to hear it. "Akiva," said he, "art thou
not afraid of the Government?" "List," was the reply, "and I will tell
thee how it is by a parable. It is with me as with the fishes whom a
fox, walking once by a river's side, saw darting distractedly to and fro
in the stream; and, addressing, inquired, 'From what, pray, are ye
fleeing?' 'From the nets,' they replied, 'which the children of men have
set to ensnare us.'