hold true. In North America the harvest festival would be celebrated in October or November; on the other hand in Argentine or Brazil, the harvest would be celebrated in March or April. A festival to commemorate the sentiment of Liberty would be celebrated in the United States on July 4th; in France on the 14th of July; among the Jews, however, and among the Jews only, on the 15th day of Nissan. Such distinct and yet internally related liberal and national religious organizations can and will live together in friendship and in mutual helpful agreement. "In that the rose adorns itself, it adorns the garden." And in that each national religion grows in itself in light and truth and ever more strongly and benefically exerts an influence upon that particular nation, it also adds to the adornment of all humanity.
XIII.
By means of a so called universal religion humanity is exposed to a great danger : this religion may forge spiritual chains for itself and thereby free thought and effort and self-develop-
ment may become seriously restrained. For the confessors of such a religion must have something in common. And what may this thing in common be? What else but an obligatory dogmatism? But where there are binding dogmas, there heretics are found, and where there are heretics, laws against heretics may be found. Eventually: Dismissal of leading teachers, excommunication, etc. And the soil is then prepared for the growth of intolerance, fanaticism and other poisonous weeds.
XIV
The final triumph of Judaism will be not in that all Jews shall have become Jews — that is impossible, for humanity will ever be divided into classes and races,—but in that the eternal truths of Theism and their lofty ethical demands for holiness of life, shall be universally recognized and that these. truths shall be universally extolled as ideal forces which must control all life.
B. FELSENTHAL.
[From "Die Deborah."]
The Charitable Houswife
I.
MORDECAI was searching everywhere for his boots. The distance to the blacksmith's was some four or five versts, and it was hazardous to plow through the snow-drifts without them. His wife Roesl peered into every nook and corner, while the children, with the eldest at their head, huddled together in apprehension of trouble. Mordecai angrily threw a rolling pin upon the floor and cursed the day he was born. "Well, I'll have to go like this, and stop this foolish searching," he cried, in a rage. "The devil swallows my boots, and I must get sore eyes looking for them."
Arye Labe had been trying to speak to his father for some time, but invariably caught his eye in a very angry moment. Now that the situation was becoming serious, he plucked up courage enough to step forward and say, in a timid voice:— "It was boots the mother gave to
[AN ORIGINAL SKETCH OF JEWISH LIFE]
a schnorrer yesterday." His audacity could carry him no further.
Mordecai raised both hands appealingly to heaven:— "What did I say? She will do away with all my property, she with her schnorrers. To-day my fine winter boots gone; to-morrow, God knows what !"
The mother stood with eyes sullenly fixed upon the floor. Arye Labe tugged at her apron to see whether she was angry with him for telling. “If this keeps on,” Mordecai yelled, “I don’t know what I’ll do! Just let me see another of these beggars around here—with their whines and groans and lies. . . . An impertinence of her — to give away new boots without even asking!” And slamming the door fiercely, he rushed out into the cold, frosty air, with no covering about his neck.
The children gathered about the mother to console her. The better to show their sympathy, they looked reproachfully at Arye Labe. But