y they had grown, operating through every spiritual
medium, poetry, oratory, philosophy, political agitation. In the
sunshine of the eighteenth century they finally matured, and at its
close the rejuvenation of the Jewish race was an accomplished fact in
every European country. Eagerly its sons entered into the new
intellectual and literary movements of the nations permitted to enjoy
another period of efflorescence, and Jewish humor has conquered a place
for itself in modern literature.

Our brief journey through the realm of love and humor must certainly
convince us that in sunny days humor rarely, love never, forsook Israel.
Our old itinerant preachers (_Maggidim_), strolling from town to town,
were in the habit of closing their sermons with a parable (_Mashai_),
which opened the way to exhortation. The manner of our fathers
recommends itself to me, and following in their footsteps, I venture to
close my pilgrimage through the ages with a _Mashal_. It transports us
to the sunny Orient, to the little seaport town of Jabneh, about six
miles from Jerusalem, in the time immediately succeeding the destruction
of the Temple. Thither with a remnant of his disciples, Jochanan ben
Zakkai, one of the wisest of our rabbis, fled to escape the misery
incident to the downfall of Jerusalem. He knew that the Temple would
never again rise from its ashes. He knew as well that the essence of
Judaism has no organic connection with the Temple or the Holy City. He
foresaw that its mission is to spread abroad among the nations of the
earth, and of this future he spoke to the disciples gathered about him
in the academy at Jabneh. We can imagine him asking them to define the
fundamental principle of Judaism, and receiving a multiplicity of
answers, varying with the character and temper of the young
missionaries. To one, possibly, Judaism seemed to rest upon faith in
God, to another upon the Sabbath, to a third upon the _Torah_, to a
fourth upon the Decalogue. Such views could not have satisfied the
spiritual cravings of the aged teacher. When Jochanan ben Zakkai rises
to give utterance to his opinion, we feel as though the narrow walls of
the academy at Jabneh were miraculously widening out to enclose the
world, while the figure of the venerable rabbi grows to the noble
proportions of a divine seer, whose piercing eye rends the veil of
futurity, and reads the remote verdict of history: "My disciples, my
friends, the fundamental principle of J