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106 "Why not? There are many laws that refer only to Palestine. Stand by the word: here it speaks only of war, not of peace."

"Excuse me," persisted Baruch; "I must ask something else. Just after this verse it stands written: If a man have two wives, he loves one but not the other; the permission to wed many wives is granted for war and peace, for Palestine and other lands; why is it no longer so?"

"You know well enough that Rabbi Gerschon, 'the Light of the Exile,' laid those of all time under the ban who should wed more than one wife."

"But how dare he do so, since it is nowhere forbidden in the Holy Scriptures; and according to the Talmud, King Solomon was merely forbidden to wed more than eighteen wives?"

"I believe you think," replied the Rabbi, "that the Sanhedrim of Mainz did not know that as well as you. I cannot now explain everything, you are not alone here; if you ask sophistical questions, I cannot keep the others waiting till I answer them. Chisdai, read on."

Chisdai did as commanded. The whole reading was in a tone commonly believed to be traditional; half melancholy chanting, half recitation as of a litany, as little according to the rules of declamation or music as a grammar would be according to rule if extracted from the Babel of dialects in the Talmud. Each student sought to combine new