Page:Notes by the Way.djvu/220

 150 NOTES BY THE WAY.

Jehudah " He ' entered the courts with gladness.' * For Thy songs, O God I *

Halevi : his he cries, ' my heart is a harp ' ; and truly enough in some of these songs of faith ancient Hebrew hymns. . . .we seem to hear clearly the human strings and hope. vibrate.

The truest faith, the most living hope, the widest charity, are breathed forth in them ; and they have naturally been enshrined by his fellow-believers in the most sacred parts of their liturgy. The following three lines from the Atonement service Lady Magnus quotes as indicating the sentiment of Judaism :

When I remove from Thee, O God, I die whilst I live ; but when I cleave to Thee, I live in death.

The poet questions,

Lord, where art Thou to be found ?

Hidden and high is Thy home.

And where shall we find Thee not ?

Thy glory fills the world.

Thou art found in my heart,

And at the uttermost ends of the earth.

A refuge for the near.

For the far, a trust.

His desire to Jehudah Halevi long desired to visit Palestine, and in 1140, sec Palestine, at the age of fifty-six, he prepared to set forth on his journey ; his voyage on the Mediterranean was stormy, but the sight of the raging billows served only to strengthen his faith, and he wrote his poem ' A Stormy Sea.' Seven hundred years later Newman on the shores of the same sea wrote his ' Lead, Kindly Light.' Whether Halevi ever reached his beloved Sion cannot be told, for " no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day."

Jewish The Jewish Historical Society is rendering useful work, and

Historical thanks are due to it for the very interesting monograph published Society. b v Macmillan on ' Menasseh Ben Israel's Mission to Oliver Crom- well,' edited by Lucien Wolf.

Among lectures that have been given to the members was one by Major Martin Hume on the 27th of April, 1908, on the story of the plot against the life of Elizabeth, in which Ruy Lopez, the trusted Jewish physician of the Queen, was supposed to be implicated, and for which, with every indignity and cruelty, he was finally executed at Tyburn. The result of Major Hume's researches tended to disprove the doctor's complicity, and he stated that it " has been supposed that Shakespeare's Shy lock was a caricature of Lopez, and calculated to increase the animosity against the Jews."

Jews and The important services rendered by Jews to the art of printing

printing, were indicated by Mr. Elkan N. Adler in a lecture delivered before

the Jewish Literary Societies some four years back on ' The Romance

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