Page:Chapters on Jewish literature (IA chaptersonjewish00abra).pdf/241

Rh

Yet shalt thou wear thy scarlet raiment choice, And sound the timbrels high, And glad amid the dancers shalt rejoice, With joyful cry.

My heart shalt be uplifted on the day Thy Rock shall be thy light. When he shall make thy gloom to pass away, Thy darkness bright.

This combination of the poetical with the legal mind was parallelled by other combinations in such masters of “Responses” as the Sheshet and Duran families in Algiers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In these men depth of learning was associated with width of culture. Others, such as Moses and Judah Minz, Jacob Weil, and Israel Isserlein, whose influence was paramount in Germany in the fifteenth century, were less cultivated, but their learning was associated with a geniality and sense of humor that make their “Responses” very human and very entertaining. There is the same homely, affectionate air in the collection