Page:George Eliot and Judaism.djvu/94

 courteous kindliness of George Eliot, who makes Deronda study Zunzs 'Synagogale Poesie,' and places the monumental words which open his chapter entitled "Leiden" at the head of the passage in which she introduces us to Ezra Cohen's family, and to the Club-meeting at which Mordecai gives utterance to his ideas concerning the future of Israel? She is as familiar with the views of Jehuda-ha-Levi as with the dreams and longings of the Cabbalists, and as conversant with the splendid names of our Hispano-Arabian epoch as with the moral aphorisms of the Talmud and the subtle meaning contained in Jewish legends. Here is an instance: "There is a legend told of the Emperor Domitian, that having heard of a Jewish family of the house of David, whence the ruler of the world was to spring, he sent for its members in alarm, but quickly released them on observing that they had the hands of