are forced to resort to the
study of the Polish-Jewish patois to reconstruct the old idiom. In 1523,
the year of Luther's Pentateuch translation, a Jewish-German Bible
dictionary was published at Cracow, and in 1540 appeared the first
Jewish-German translation of the Pentateuch. The Germans strongly
influenced the popular literature of the Jews. The two nationalities
seized the same subjects, often imitating the same models, or using the
same translations. The German "Till Eulenspiegel" was printed in 1500,
the Jewish-German in 1600. Besides incorporating German folklore,
Jewish-German writings borrowed from German romances, assimilated
foreign literatures, did not neglect the traditions of the Jews
themselves, and embraced even folk-songs, some of which have perpetuated
themselves until the modern era.

Mention of the well-known fact that the Hebrew studies prosecuted by
Christians in the eighteenth century were carried on under Jewish
influence brings us to the threshold of the modern era, the period of
the Jewish Renaissance. Here we are on well-worn ground. Since Jews have
been permitted to enter at will upon the multifarious pursuits growing
out of modern culture, their importance as factors of civilization is
universally acknowledged, and it would be wearisome, and would far
transgress the limits of a lecture, to enumerate their achievements.

In trying to show what share the Jew has had in the world's
civilization, I have naturally concerned myself chiefly with literature,
for literature is the mirror of culture. It would be a mistake, however,
to suppose that the Jew has been inactive in other spheres. His
contributions, for instance, to the modern development of international
commerce, cannot be overlooked. Commerce in its modern extension was the
creation of the mercantile republics of mediaeval Italy-Venice, Florence,
Genoa, and Pisa--and in them Jews determined and regulated its course.
When Ravenna contemplated a union with Venice, and formulated the
conditions for the alliance, one of them was the demand that rich Jews
be sent thither to open a bank for the relief of distress. Jews were the
first to obtain the privilege of establishing banks in the Italian
cities, and the first to discover the advantages of a system of checks
and bills of exchange, of unique value in the development of modern
commerce.

Even in art, a sphere from which their rigorous laws might seem to have
the effect of banishing them,