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 252 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS intimate knowledge of Israel's career, in all its ramifications. To this standard Dr. Hirsch has set himself during his long studions life. He has ever been conscious of his long intellectual ancestry, of his spiritual affiliation with a company of saints and schol- arSy men who eked out a niggardly existence in the contracted quarters of noisome Ghettoes in the Middle Ages. He feels himself allied to the great rabbis living to-day in the squalid chambers of little Bussian towns, meditating on the law day and nighty rabbis whose sole treasure is the wealth of their wisdom. He is brother to the sages and teachers in Italy, France, Germany, and England. With these he feels himself one. These men would rather suffer martyrdom than sub- mit to the clamor of the world ; like the homesick captives be- side the streams of Bablylon, they would rather cut the tongues out of their mouths than to belie their faith. It may safely be stated that there are few books written in Hebrew which he has not read either in part or in toto. Only those familiar with the century-long intellectual activity of the Jews have any adequate conception of what a gigantic task this is. It covers the enormous realm of the Bible, the sea of the Talmud, the midrashim, the commentaries of the Middle Ages, the poets and philosophers of the Spanish era, the trans- lations from Arabic philosophers, the codifications of the law by Maimonides and by Joseph Quaro. It includes the Cabala and mystic writers of Italy and Saf ed ; the prayers, responses, petitions, and pityuim of the Middle Ages, not to mention the revival of neo-Hebraism under the Zionistic movement in Bussia to-day. The contact of the Jews with mankind has been unique and it has made them cosmopolitan, flexible, adaptable. He who would interpret Israel must know the various influences that have moulded the Jew — he must know not only his own ver- nacular and the dialects of Hebrew ; he must also read Greek and Latin. But Dr. Hirsch knows not only the message of men who speak to us from the past, but the message of men who are J