Mendelssohn's "Jerusalem" and the fame of Kant. In
fine, I have never hesitated to take as an historian or to focus and
interpret as an imaginative artist.

I have placed "A Child of the Ghetto" first, not only because the
Venetian Jewry first bore the name of Ghetto, but because this chapter
may be regarded as a prelude to all the others. Though the Dream pass
through Smyrna or Amsterdam, through Rome or Cairo, through Jerusalem
or the Carpathians, through London or Berlin or New York, almost all
the Dreamers had some such childhood, and it may serve to explain
them. It is the early environment from which they all more or less
emerged.

And there is a sense in which the stories all lead on to that which I
have placed last. The "Child of the Ghetto" may be considered "father
to the man" of "Chad Gadya" in that same city of the sea.

For this book is the story of a Dream that has not come true.

I.Z.

CONTENTS

PAGE

PRELUDE: MOSES AND JESUS viii

A CHILD OF THE GHETTO 1

JOSEPH THE DREAMER 21

URIEL ACOSTA 68

THE TURKISH MESSIAH 115

THE MAKER OF LENSES 186

THE MASTER OF THE NAME 221

MAIMON THE FOOL AND NATHAN THE WISE 289

FROM A MATTRESS GRAVE 335

THE PEOPLE'S SAVIOUR 369

THE PRIMROSE SPHINX 424

DREAMERS IN CONGRESS 430

THE PALESTINE PILGRIM 441

THE CONCILIATOR OF CHRISTENDOM 453

THE JOYOUS COMRADE 480

CHAD GADYA 493

EPILOGUE: A MODERN SCRIBE IN JERUSALEM 514

DREAMERS OF THE GHETTO

MOSES AND JESUS

In dream I saw two Jews that met by chance,
One old, stern-eyed, deep-browed, yet garlanded
With living light of love around his head,
The other young, with sweet seraphi