[⭘] Hertz: Passover as Israel’s birthday. ‘A people who, though they never founded a great empire nor built a great metropolis, have exercised upon a large portion of mankind an influence, wide-spread, potent and continuous; a people who have for nearly two thousand years been without country or organized nationality yet have preserved their identity and faith through all vicissitudes of time and fortune; who have been overthrown, crushed, scattered; who have been ground, as it were, to very dust, and flung to the four winds of heaven; yet who, though thrones have fallen, and empires have perished, and creeds have changed, and living tongues have become dead, still exist with a vitality seemingly unimpaired; a people who unite the strangest contradictions; whose annals now blaze with glory, now sound the depths of shame and woe—the advent of such a people marks an epoch in the history of the world.’ (Henry George.)
[⭘] Akdomus: Translation of a thought at the beginning of Akdomus, the Aramaic hymn that precedes theReading of the Law on Pentecost. I have not been able to discover the name of the translator.
[⭘] Rosenfeld: From a forthcoming book of poems, Songs of a Pilgrim (Jewish Forum Publishing Co., New York). He is known to the non-Jewish world by his Songs from the Ghetto—powerful descriptions of the New York sweatshop inferno. This volume has been translated into most Western languages. ‘It was left for a Russian Jew at the end of the nineteenth century to see and paint hell in colours not attempted by anyone since the days of Dante ... the hell he has not only visited, but that he has lived through.’ (Wiener.)
[⭘] The Sinaist, 1, 2. ‘The Torah—our Greatest Benefactor.’
[⭘] The Sinaist, 1, 3.
TEPHILLIN
Erect he stands, in fervent prayer,
His body cloaked in silken Tallis;
He seems a king, so free from care,
His wife a queen, his home a palace.