JUDAISM

By
ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, M.A.

READER IN TALMUDIC AND RABBINIC LITERATURE

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE



FOREWORD

The writer has attempted in this volume to take up a few of the most
characteristic points in Jewish doctrine and practice, and to explain
some of the various phases through which they have passed, since the
first centuries of the Christian era.

The presentation is probably much less detached than is the case
with other volumes in this series. But the difference was scarcely
avoidable. The writer was not expounding a religious system which has
no relation to his own life. On the contrary, the writer is himself a
Jew, and thus is deeply concerned personally in the matters discussed
in the book.

The reader must be warned to keep this fact in mind throughout. On the one
hand, the book must suffer a loss of objectivity; but, on the other hand,
there may be some compensating gain of intensity. The author trusts,
at all events, that, though he has not written with indifference, he
has escaped the pitfall of undue partiality.