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"For a thousand years in thy sight,are but ... as a watch in the night"
Psalms, xc, 4.
A Thousand Years
of Jewish History
From the Days of Alexander the Great
To the Moslem Conquest of Spain
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS,
MAPS AND NOTES.
BY THE
Rev. Maurice H. Harris, A. M., Ph. D.
Author of "People of the Book."
"History of the Mediæval Jews"
"Modern Jewish History"
"Selected Addresses," etc.
SIXTH EDITION.
Revised and Enlarged
NEW YORK:
BLOCH PUBLISHING CO., 40 EAST 14TH ST.,
1914.
Copyright, 1911
By MAURICE H. HARRIS
PRESS OF
PHILIP COWEN
NEW YORK
Introduction
"Wenn es eine Stufenleiter von Leiden giebt, so hat Israeldie höchste Staffel erstiegen; wenn die Dauer der Schmerzenund die Geduld, mit welcher sie ertragen werden, adeln, so nehmenes die Juden mit den Hochgeborenen aller Länder auf;wenn eine Literatur reich genannt wird, die wenige klassischeTrauerspiele besitzt, welcher Platz gebührt dann einer Tragödie,die anderthalb Jahrtausende währt gedichtet und dargestellt vonden Helden selber?"
—Zunz: Die Synagogale Poesie des Mittelalters.
When the impatient youth demands, like the heathenfrom Hillel, a definition of Judaism, bid him "go andlearn" the history of the Jew. Let him follow the fascinatingstory from hoar antiquity, when the obscure Hebrews,"leaving kindred and father's house," took a boldand new departure for the land that God would show—theland that would show God.
Point to the colossal figure of Moses on Sinai, "greatestof the prophets," who gave the first uplifting impulsewith his Ten Words of Faith and Duty. Trace with himthe soul struggle of this "fewest of all peoples" to reachthe truth of divinity—beginning with a crude conceptionthat became steadily more exalted and more clarified witheach successive age, until, at last, the idea is realized of anall-pervading Spirit, with "righteousness and justice asthe pillars of His throne,"