with them, and yet devote themselves unremittingly to its cultivation,
with all the ardor of despair. At their side, however, we see optimistic
dreamers, worthy disciples of the prophets. In the midst of the ruin of
all that made the past glorious, and in the face of the downfall of
cherished hopes, they lose not an iota of their faith in the future of
their people, in its speedy regeneration.

What we have before us is the issue of the supreme internal struggle
that engaged the great masses of the Jews torn from their moorings by
the disquietude of modern existence. A fervent desire for a better
social life took possession of all minds. The conviction that the
eternal people cannot disappear seems to have regained ground and to
have been stronger than ever, and the current again set in the direction
of auto-emancipation.

It is the true literature of the Jewish people that we are called upon
to examine, the product of the ghetto, the reflex of its psychic states,
the expression of its misery, its suffering, and also its hope. The
people of the Bible is not dead, and in its very own language we must
seek the true Jewish spirit, the national soul.

Let not the reader expect to find perfection of form, pure art, in its
often monotonous lyric poetry, or its prolix, didactic novels. The
authors of the ghetto felt too much, suffered too much, were too much
under the dominance of a life of misery, a semi-Asiatic, semi-mediaeval
_regime_, to have had heart for the cultivation of mere form. Does
the Song of Songs fall short of being a literary document of the first
order because it does not equal the dramas of Euripides in artistic
completeness? It is conceded that the proper aim of the artist is art,
finished and perfect art, but to the philosopher, the social