Jewish Portraits

JEWISH PORTRAITS
BY L A D Y M A G N U S AUTHOR OF ‘OUTLINES OF JEWISH HISTORY,’ ‘ABOUT THE JEWS SINCE BIBLE TIMES,’ ETC. Second Revised and Enlarged Edition L O N D O N Published by DAVID NUTT in the Strand 1897 ‘THESE, TO HIS MEMORY’ February 7 : January 11
The papers which form this volume have already appeared in the pages of Good Words , Macmillan’s Magazine , The National Review , and The Spectator , and are reprinted with the very kindly given permission of the editors. The Frontispiece is reproduced through the kindness of the proprietors of Good Words .
I fancy that there is enough of family likeness, and I hope there is enough of friendly interest, in these Jewish portraits to justify their re-appearance in a little gallery to themselves.
KATIE MAGNUS.

In the far-off days, when religion was not a habit, but an emotion, there lived a little-known poet who solved the pathetic puzzle of how to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land. Minor poets of the period in plenty had essayed a like task, leaving a literature the very headings of which are strange to uninstructed ears. ‘ Piyutim ,’ ‘ Selichoth ’: what meaning do these words convey to most of us? And yet they stand for songs of exile, sung by patient generations of men who tell a monotonous tale of mournful times—
‘When ancient griefs Are closely veiled In recent shrouds,’
as one of the anonymous host expresses it. For the writers were of the race of the traditional Sweet Singer, and their lot was cast in those picturesquely disappointing Middle Ages, too close to the chivalry of the time to appreciate its charm. One pictures these comparatively cultured pariahs, these gaberdined, degenerate descendants of seers and prophets, looking out from their ghettoes on a world which, for all the stir and bustle of barbaric life, was to them as desolate and as bare of promise of safe resting-place as when the waters covered it, and only the tops of the mountains appeared. One sees them now as victims, and now as spectators, but never as actors in that strange show, yet always, we fancy, realising the barbarism, and with that undoubting faith of theirs in the ultimate dawning of a perfect day, seeming to regard the long reign of brute force, of priestcraft, and of ignorance as phases of misrule, which, like unto manifold others, should pass whilst they would endure.