Friday, September 07, 2018

First Paragraph

"The Jew is being legislated out of Russia," Mark Twain wrote in Harper's Magazine in 1898. "Spain [decided] to banish him four hundred years ago, and Austria about a couple of centuries later. In all the ages Christian Europe has . . . curtail[ed] his activities. Trade after trade was taken away from the Jew by statute till practically none was left. He was forbidden to engage in agriculture; he was forbidden to practice law; he was forbidden to practice medicine, except among Jews; he was forbidden the handicrafts. Even the seats of learning and the schools of science had to be closed against this tremendous antagonist."

- From Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn by Daniel Gordis

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