ABSTRACT
THE prevalence of child-marriages in the middle ages reduced Jewish courtship to an expression of the will of the parents. But the sons of Israel did not quite forget that the noblest of love poems is contained in the Hebrew Bible. The Song of Songs was perhaps the most popular of all the Books of the Old Testament. It was read in synagogue, and its imagery has left its mark on many pages of the Jewish liturgy. Through a happy misunderstanding of its meaning, this idealization of love became a tradition which tinged the most matter-of-fact marriage bargains with some colour of romance. Nay, there has never been an age in which Jewish love-stories have not relieved the monotony of made-up marriages. In the Talmud and the medieval Jewish records may be found genuine cases of courtship, in the modern sense of the word.
