ecular culture with religious
devotion, and the professors of other faiths met them with tolerance and
friendliness. Sunshine falls upon the Jewish schools, and right into the
heart of a youth, who straightway abandons the Talmud folios, and goes
out into the world to proclaim to wondering mankind the evangel of a
new philosophy. The youth is Baruch Spinoza!

There are many left to expound Judaism: Manasseh ben Israel, writing
both Hebrew and Latin books to plead the cause of the emancipation of
his people and of its literary pre-eminence; David Neto, a student of
philosophy; Benjamin Mussafia, Orobio de Castro, David Abenator Melo,
the Spanish translator of the Psalms, and Daniel de Barrios, poet and
critic--all using their rapidly acquired fluency in the Dutch language
to champion the cause of their people.

In Germany, a mixture of German and Hebrew had come into use among the
Jews as the medium of daily intercourse. In this peculiar patois, called
_Judendeutsch_, a large literature had developed. Before Luther's time,
it possessed two fine translations of the Bible, besides numerous
writings of an ethical, poetical, and historical character, among which
particular mention should be made of those on the German legend-cycles
of the middle ages. At the same time, the Talmud receives its due of
time, effort, and talent. New life comes only with the era of
emancipation and enlightenment.

Only a few names shall be mentioned, the rest would be bound soon to
escape the memory of the casual reader: there is an historian, David
Gans; a bibliographer, Sabbatai Bassista, and the Talmudists Abigedor
Kara, Jacob Joshua, Jacob Emden, Jonathan Eibeschuetz, and Ezekiel
Landau. It is delight to be able once again to chronicle the interest
taken in long neglected Jewish literature by such Christian scholars as
the two Buxtorfs, Bartolocci, Wolff, Surrenhuys, and De Rossi.
Unfortunately, the interest dies out with them, and it is significant
that to this day most eminent theologians, decidedly to their own
disadvantage, "content themselves with unreliable secondary sources,"
instead of drinking from the fountain itself.

We have arrived at the sixth and last period, our own, not yet
completed, whose fruits will be judged by a future generation. It is the
period of the rejuvenescence of Jewish literature. Changes in character,
tenor, form, and language take place. Germany for the first time is in
the van, and Mendelssohn, its most