unkard with wife and children and aged parents near him for guardian
angels. The greatest difficulty the Jewish reformation has to face is
what to substitute for the old ceremonials where they have become
impracticable, and thus to preserve the essentially domestic character
of the ancient faith. Is it thinkable that the Jew would be less
objectionable to his surroundings were he to lose his sturdy horror of
intemperance, and thus "assimilate" more freely with his neighbors of
different faiths? It is not thinkable when we consider the great
efforts made by Christians everywhere to redeem their people from
their bondage to strong drink and the misery resulting from it. The
Jew is the _natural ally of the temperance advocates_; and if he is
not found in their ranks, it is simply because he never knew from
experience the need of that reformation.

And never will he know, as long as his passionate fondness for home
and his longing for family love abide within him. At present, this,
generally speaking, is still the case; the poorest and least
cultivated classes are not excepted; nay, just in that class it is one
of the most noteworthy features. If the uncouth immigrant from Eastern
Europe stoops to the lowest kinds of peddling, or, for a mere
pittance, wastes his life in the stifling sweatshop; if he is not very
scrupulous in his dealings with his transient patrons, and does not
hold city ordinances as inviolable as those of the "Shulchan Aruch"
(code of ceremonials), the central motive is his ever present thought
of his family; even when he has not yet scraped together enough
pennies to pay for their fare to the new home, they are constantly
with him in his mind. This is not offered as a defense for
over-reaching and cannot be allowed by a magistrate as a plea for
law-breaking; but it is offered to the unprejudiced reader in
compliance with Spinoza's golden rule: Human errors must not be
ridiculed and condemned, but _understood_. _Si duo faciunt idem, non
est idem._ This wise caution is the more to be heeded in the present
instance, as, from the same source, devotion to home life, springs
another fine feature of Jewry; go down in the scale as deep as you
may, they are an industrious, toilsome class of people, often turning
their narrow homes into workshops where old and young ply a handicraft
from early morn to the late evening hours. Hundreds of men and women,
arriving in this country after they have passed the middle life