y hides, ashamed of his bald pate.
Beria! were I to meet thee on New Year's Day in the morning,
An omen 'twere of an inauspicious year.
Tamar smiles, and heals the heart's bleeding wounds;
She raises her head, the stars slink out of sight.
Beria it were well to transport to heaven,
Then surely heaven would take refuge on earth.
Tamar resembles the moon in all respects but one--
Her resplendent beauty never suffers obscuration.
Beria partakes of the nature of the gods; 'tis said,
None beholds the gods without most awful repentance.
Tamar, were the Virgin like thee, never would the sun
Pass out of Virgo to shine in Libra.
Beria, dost know why the Messiah tarries to bring deliverance to men?
Redemption time has long arrived, but he hides from thee."

With amazement we see the Hebrew muse, so serious aforetimes,
participate in truly bacchanalian dances under Immanuel's guidance. It
is curious that while, on the one hand, he shrinks from no frivolous
utterance or indecent allusion, on the other, he is dominated by deep
earnestness and genuine warmth of feeling, when he undertakes to defend
or expound the fundamentals of faith. It is characteristic of the trend
of his thought that he epitomizes the "Song of Songs" in the sentence:
"Love is the pivot of the _Torah_." By a bold hypothesis it is assumed
that in Daniel, his guide in Paradise (in the twenty-eighth canto of his
poem), he impersonated and glorified his great friend Dante. If true,
this would be an interesting indication of the intimate relations
existing between a Jew and a circle devoted to the development of the
national genius in literature and language, and the stimulating of the
sense of nature and truth in opposition to the fantastic visions and
grotesque ideals of the past.

Everywhere, not only in Italy, the Renaissance and the humanistic
movement attract Jews. Among early Castilian troubadours there is a Jew,
and the last troubadour of Spain again is a Jew. Naturally Italian Jews
are more profoundly than others affected by the renascence of science
and art. David ben Yehuda, Messer Leon, is the author of an epic,
_Shebach Nashim_ ("Praise of Women"), in which occurs an interesting
reference to Petrarch's Laura, whom, in opposition to the consensus of
opinion among his contemporaries, he considers, not a figment of the
imagination, but a woman of flesh and blood. Praise and criticism of
women are favorite themes in the poetic