ers in the Middle Ages were due
to the interaction of external and internal forces. Further, in this
arrangement, the Ghetto period would have a place assigned to it as
such, for it would again mark the almost complete sway of purely Jewish
forces in Jewish literature. Adopting this classification, we should
have a wave of Jewish impulse, swollen by the accretion of foreign
waters, once more breaking on a Jewish strand, with its contents in
something like the same condition in which they left the original
spring. All these three methods are true, and this has impelled me to
refuse to follow any one of them to the exclusion of the other two. I
have tried to trace _influences_, to observe _periods_, to distinguish
_countries_. I have also tried to derive color and vividness by
selecting prominent personalities round which to group whole cycles of
facts. Thus, some of the chapters bear the names of famous men, others
are entitled from periods, others from countries, and yet others are
named from the general currents of European thought. In all this my aim
has been very modest. I have done little in the way of literary
criticism, but I felt that a dry collection of names and dates was the
very thing I had to avoid. I need not say that I have done my best to
ensure accuracy in my statements by referring to the best authorities
known to me on each division of the subject. To name the works to which
I am indebted would need a list of many of the best-known products of
recent Continental and American scholarship. At the end of every
chapter I have, however, given references to some English works and
essays. Graetz is cited in the English translation published by the
Jewish Publication Society of America. The figures in brackets refer to
the edition published in London. The American and the English editions
of S. Schechter's "Studies in Judaism" are similarly referred to.

Of one thing I am confident. No presentation of the facts, however bald
and inadequate it be, can obscure the truth that this little book deals
with a great and an inspiring literature. It is possible to question
whether the books of great Jews always belonged to the great books of
the world. There may have been, and there were, greater legalists than
Rashi, greater poets than Jehuda Halevi, greater philosophers than
Maimonides, greater moralists than Bachya. But there has been no greater
literature than that which these and numerous other Jews represent.

Ra