are robbed by the other people. Therefore, it is no more than right that those few fortunate Jews who have had the good luck to become rich at the expense of the robbers, should help their coreligionists, who are the robbed ones.
The real help for a nation, however, is the same as it is for an individual. It is when there is a surer means than that of charity of the greater towards the lesser, the duty of men towards their own brethren.
It is by the sense of justice that a nation is elevated, justice to itself and justice to its neighbor. The greatest act of charity towards our people is to demand justice from the world. The highest sense of justice to ourselves as a people is, that we recognize ourselves as a nation among nations —through a constantly working international organization, which must come through the combined forces and support of the whole Jewish nation. And this organization must insist that we shall be recognized as a nation among nations. This organization shall have official power to manage our national interests, and it shall not be recognized as a charitable institution but as our national representative, our national legislature in Galuth.
Only such an organization is in a position to nationalize all our movements. With the organization of such a body we, as a nation, help ourselves. Then will every movement, Zionism, Territorialism and the others, be called national movements if they aim to help not merely the Jews as brothers in faith in a charitable way, but our brethren the Jews as a nation.
. By charity we can help our coreligionists in individual cases and for a short time; through justice, the whole Jewish nation can be helped —by a real national help!
— There are few things more touching to the Jew returning to the land of his forefathers (Palestine), than to find his little co-religionists doing their lessons in Hebrew, even prattling in it, as a very living language. —ELKAN ADLER (1905.)
Death of Moritz Steinschneider
Moritz Steinschneider, the greatest Jewish scholar of our time, died on January 28. He, together with Zunz and Rappaport, was one of the founders of Jewish science, who for seven decades with untiring enthusiasm devoted all his energies to the elucidation of Jewish literature in its relation to general culture.
Steinschneider was born in Trossnitz, Moravia, March 30, 1816, and he remained there till his sixteenth year; then he went to Nikolsburg, Prague, Vienna, Leipsic, to continue his studies in Talmudic as well as secular subjects. In 1839 he went to Berlin, where he remained for the rest of his life except during the years 1842-1849, when he returned to Prague. Steinschneider had to earn his living by giving lessons in his earlier years; later on he represented the Jewish community at the administration of the oath, “More Judaica” and, during the years 1869-90, he was director of the Juedische Maedchenschule. The only scientific places Steinschneider ever held were those of a teacher at the Veitel- Heine-Ephraimsche Lehranstalt since 1859, and as Hülfsarbeiter at the Royal Library, Berlin. Both he kept to the end of his life.
His greatest work, his catalogue of the Hebrew books in Bodleian Library (1852-60),deals with the whole extent of Jewishliterature. It is not a mere catalogue, but afull Bibliotheca Hebraica, a collection of allthe Hebrew books with all the data as to booksand authors, discussing and solving many anintricate literary problem and containing inexhaustible treasures of Jewish science.
His standard work on the Hebrew translations of the Middle Ages, originally intended to deal with the Jewish translators of the Arabic works, was extended so that it became a most important contribution to the history of mediaeval literature and culture.
Steinschneider always paid special attention to the secular branches of the mediaeval Jewish literature, which had suffered under a general neglect. His numerous essays on Jewish medical works are of the greatest importance for the history of medicine. On Jewish contributions to mathematics, he was just finishing an exhaustive essay which he had published in different periodicals during the last 14 years, after he had collected materials for it for about half a century. He died before he published the last additions and indices,