PROGRESSIVE WORLD STRUGGLE OF THE JEWS 



Photograph by Maynard Owen Williams 



A SCENE IN PALESTINE, WHERE THE JEW HAS BEEN A STRANGER IN HIS OWN LAND 



EOR CENTURIES 



After two millenniums of exile, the Jew may now return in safety to the land of his 

 fathers and abide there with the assurance that his civil as well as his religious liberty will 

 be safeguarded bv civilized nations. 



After the expulsion from Jerusalem, 

 the scribes and Pharisees established a 

 school and Sanhedrin at Jamnia, in Pal- 

 estine, and somewhat later the center of 

 church authority became Tiberias, on the 

 Sea of Galilee, and for two hundred 

 years an autonomous patriarchate under 

 the Roman Empire flourished there. 

 Here were institutions of learning in 

 which the rabbis codified the traditions 

 called the Oral Law into the Palestinian 

 Talmud. 



The seat of Jewish ecclesiastical au- 

 thority then passed from Tiberias, in 

 Palestine, to Babylonia, where great 

 schools were established at Nehardea and 

 Sura. In Babylonia three institutions of 

 learning were conducted by the rabbis, 

 who in the course of two hundred years 

 framed the Babylonian Talmud. 



The written law was the law of Moses, 

 contained in the Pentateuch and known 



as the "Torah." The remainder of the 

 Old Testament was divided into the 

 "Prophet 



s" and the "Writings," so called. 



WITHOUT HOME OR COUNTRY 



In the laws of Moses and the Talmud 

 was to be found a collection of rules of 

 conduct — physical, social, political, re- 

 ligious, moral, and philosophical — a strict 

 and literal compliance with which became 

 the life of the Jew. They offered a field 

 for his study and mental occupation and 

 discussion with his brethren which never 

 ended. His duties thus prescribed were 

 to be performed in the home and in the 

 synagogue and in the academy, and these 

 centers supplied to him what the father- 

 land was to others more fortunately situ- 

 ated. 



The Torah and the Talmud established 

 a direct relation to God on the part of 

 each individual and an accountability for 



