ABSTRACT
All anthologies have their drawbacks as well as their merits. But in view of the unsystematic and unindexed character of rabbinic literature, an adequate body of intelligently chosen extracts is the only way of getting firsthand acquaintance with it. It is also the special merit of this anthology that it has not sought to select those passages which sound modem, but has rather tried to give us an adequate picture of the weeds as well as the flowers of rabbinic thought from Shemayah and Abtalyon to some of the later Midrashim. “The lack of healthy simple companionship and friendship between men and women caused a constant dwelling upon sexual relations and details. In the rabbinic literature sexual allusions are very frequent.” Not the least valuable feature of this volume is the second introduction by Mr. Loewe, who has shown him to be a fit successor to Solomon Shachter and Israel Abrahams as a reader in Rabbinics at Cambridge.
