conscience, religious duty, and human sympathy--in short, with
the relations "between man and God" and those "between man and
man." But it practically contains a consideration of almost every
topic under the sun, mostly with some verse of the Pentateuch for a
pretext. All of which is analyzed and explained in the minutest and
keenest fashion, discussions on abstruse subjects being sometimes
relieved by an anecdote or two, a bit of folklore, worldly wisdom,
or small talk. Scattered through its numerous volumes are
priceless gems of poetry, epigram, and story-telling

It is at once a fountain of religious inspiration and a
"brain-sharpener." "Can you fathom the sea? Neither can you
fathom the depths of the Talmud," as we would put it. We were
sure that the highest mathematics taught in the Gentile
universities were child's play as compared to the Talmud

In the Preacher's Synagogue, then, I spent seven years of my
youthful life.

For hours and hours together I would sit at a gaunt reading-desk,
swaying to and fro over some huge volume, reading its ancient
text and interpreting it in Yiddish. All this I did aloud, in the
peculiar Talmud singsong, a trace of which still persists in my
intonation even when I talk cloaks and bank accounts and in
English

The Talmud was being read there, in a hundred variations of the
same singsong, literally every minute of the year, except the hours
of prayer.