The Maccabaean

"Let there be light," said the President, opening the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

And lo! there were sidelights.

* * * *

Rabbi Solomon Foster, of Newark, felt and expressed decided unbrage at an important omission. Rabbi Adolf Guttmacher, of Baltimore, as chairman of the Publication Committee, had distributed printed reports of its recommendations, signed by himself and all the members of the Committee.

"I protest!" shouted Rabbi Foster. "Why is my name on that report?"

"You are a member of the Committee," soothed President Philipson.

"But I was never given notice or invited to a single meeting," suggested Rabbi Foster, with a hurt voice.

Rabbi Foster had written a paper on "The Synagogue and the Workingman" for the Conference last year; but the Conference being pressed for time, and Dr. Foster's subject being one that would "keep," his paper was laid over for this Conference. He was also appointed a member of the Publication Committee.

* * * *

One of the rabbis in his report, recommended that the Conference send a man to Europe to gather suitable stories for some of their text books, "from German, French, Italian and Spanish literature."

Another rabbi—a young one—who looked innocent, but in whom there is the making of a Zionist, arose to ask:

"Since we wish to ransack German and French and Italian and Spanish literature, why might we not also seek some texts from Hebrew literature?"

He vouchsafed it guilelessly, poor Russian !

“Because we don't known Hebrew and that sort of stuff," snapped Rabbi Harry Mayer, of Kansas City, Mo., growing angrily red all over his American bull-dog jaw. Then he added: “There are some among us who may!"

“Sh-sh-sh!” hushed the Conference. A's if to imply that it were unkind to reproach a man—a rabbi—with his shortcomings: with: knowing Hebrew and Russian !"

* * * *

The papers on intermarriage were meant to be serious. Rabbi Krass, of Rochester, who read Prof. Feldman’s paper on “The Historical Aspects of Mixed Marriages,” had the courage of his convictions; he was not serious. He had all the brilliance of a Barnum clown.

"And here," winked Rabbi Krass, at one point in the reading, "Prof. Feldman speaks about the 129th psalm—you know: 'Praise God' and all that sort of stuff. I won't go to the trouble of reading it."

And, amid much laughter, he read on thereafter.

"I protest that we should be serious," shouted Rabbi Schulman. "This matter is not a joke; to me it is holy."

* * * *

Rabbi Moses, of New York, pleaded hard with the Conference not to go on record as "teetotally opposed to intermarriage," even though the Law, he admitted, might forbid it.

“If a rabbi refuses to perform such a marriage ceremony,” he asked, “what do you think the couple will do?”

“They will go to another rabbi,” called the comical Rabarnum Krass.

"No," replied Rabbi Moses. "They will hire a hall and get a prominent Jewish judge to perform the ceremony. If the