the whole, the book was a worthy summary of the fundamental Jewish
view, that religion is co-extensive with life, and that everything worth
doing at all ought to be done in accordance with a general principle of
obedience to the divine will. The defects of such a view are the defects
of its qualities.

The Shulchan Aruch was the outcome of centuries of scholarship. It was
original, yet it was completely based on previous works. In particular
the "Four Rows" (_Arbaea Turim_) of Jacob Asheri (1283-1340) was one of
the main sources of Karo's work. The "Four Rows," again, owed everything
to Jacob's father, Asher, the son of Yechiel, who migrated from Germany
to Toledo at the very beginning of the fourteenth century. But besides
the systematic codes of his predecessors, Karo was able to draw on a
vast mass of literature on the Talmud and on Jewish Law, accumulated in
the course of centuries.

There was, in the first place, a large collection of "Novelties"
(_Chiddushim_), or Notes on the Talmud, by various authorities. More
significant, however, were the "Responses" (_Teshuboth_), which
resembled those of the Gaonim referred to in an earlier chapter. The
Rabbinical Correspondence, in the form of Responses to Questions sent
from far and near, covered the whole field of secular and religious
knowledge. The style of these "Responses" was at first simple, terse,
and full of actuality. The most famous representatives of this form of
literature after the Gaonim were both of the thirteenth century,
Solomon, the son of Adereth, in Spain, and Meir of Rothenburg in
Germany. Solomon, the son of Adereth, of Barcelona, was a man whose
moral earnestness, mild yet firm disposition, profound erudition, and
tolerant character, won for him a supreme place in Jewish life for half
a century. Meir of Rothenburg was a poet and martyr as well as a
profound scholar. He passed many years in prison rather than yield to
the rapacious demands of the local government for a ransom, which Meir's
friends would willingly have paid. As a specimen of Meir's poetry, the
following verses are taken from a dirge composed by him in 1285, when
copies of the Pentateuch were publicly committed to the flames. The
"Law" is addressed in the second person:

Dismay hath seized upon my soul; how then
Can food be sweet to me?
When, O thou Law! I have beheld base men
Destroying thee?

Ah! sweet 'twould be unto mine eyes alway
Waters of tea