mpartiality, justice. What I
have said to his praise and for his defense was intended solely to
assist the fairminded reader in forming a just opinion of an agitation
which in Europe embitters, cripples, and darkens thousands of lives,
which, under better treatment, would be spent in contentment and
general usefulness.

It is for this purpose only that I will briefly add two more traits of
the Jews, equally valuable and undeniable. One is their charity; they
care for their poor, their sick, their aged, if destitute, as the
numerous institutions prove, found in every place where they dwell in
sufficient number to maintain them. Ungrudgingly they assume the heavy
burdens which this "exclusiveness" imposes upon them. Blame them for
it who may; the right-minded will not, especially when assured that
this feeling of pity is not the privilege of the well-to-do among them
only. The working classes have always something to spare from their
scanty earnings for "Z'dakah," the religious term in common use for
charity, which, significantly enough, in biblical Hebrew means
"justice." The idea that charity is an essential part of worship has
been bred into them by long tradition, and continues to be regarded as
such, wherever rabbinical Judaism survives in full force. From
childhood every Jew knows the saying of Simon the Just, one of the
last men of the Great Synagogue:--

"The whole world rests on these three pillars;

Law, Worship, and Charity."

The other trait is their zeal in the education of their children.

One of the standard objections to the Hebrews is their "forwardness";
socially, it is a disagreeable and annoying fault, but otherwise a
gift of no little value. Forwardness is the soul of all progress and
advancement. Call it that, call it self-help, call it energy, call it
self-reliance, call it by the popular name of wide-awakeness, and you
transfigure the fault into a merit. How the Jew was able to preserve
it in any one of its forms is one of the many miracles of his history,
seeing that the world has left nothing untried to cast the Jews
backward to the last depth of self-despair. An exhibition of his
forwardness might be seen at the doors of the public schools in the
lower districts of the city, notably at the time of admission of new
pupils. The poorest of the Jewish fathers and mothers would be seen
wrangling for the registration of their little ones, as if it were for
their daily bread. And ma