out of the world'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 archæologically. 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