“In Palestine there once lived a widow with her two daughters, whose only worldly possessions consisted of a little field. When she began to plough it, a Jewish official quoted to her the words of the lawgiver Moses: ‘Thou shalt not plough with ox and ass together.’ When she began to sow, she was admonished in the words of the same lawgiver not to sow the fields with two kinds of seed. When she began to reap and pile up the stacks, she was told that she must leave ‘gleanings,’ the poor man’s sheaf, and the ‘corner.’ “When the harvest time came, she was informed that it was her duty to give the priest’s share, consisting of the first and second ‘tithes.’ She quietly submitted, and gave what was demanded of her. Then she sold the field, and bought two young ewes, in order that she might use their wool, and profit by their offspring. But, as soon as the ewes gave birth to their young, a priest came, and quoted to her the words of Moses: ‘Give _me_ the first-born, for so the Lord hath ordained.’ Again she submitted, and gave him the young. “When the time of shearing came, the priest again made his appearance, and said to her that, according to the Law, she was obliged to give him ‘the shoulder, the two cheeks, and the maw.’ “In a moment of despair, the widow said: ‘Let all the animals be consecrated to the Lord!’ ‘In that case,’ answered the priest, ‘they belong altogether to me; for the Lord hath said: “Everything consecrated in Israel shall be thine.”’ So, he took the sheep, and went his way, leaving the widow and her two daughters in great distress, and bathed in tears!” _A WIFE’S RUSE_ (A Rabbinical Tale) “There is a Rabbinical law which makes it obligatory upon every Jewish husband to divorce his wife, if after ten years of married life she shall remain childless. Now, there once lived in an Oriental town a man and his wife who were greatly attached to each other, but who had, unfortunately, no children, though they had been married for a considerable time. “When the end of the tenth year of their marriage was approaching, they both went to the Rabbi, and asked him for his advice. The Rabbi listened with great sympathy, but declared his inability to alter or modify the law in their favour. The only suggestion, he said, that he could make, was, that on the last night before their final separation, they should celebrate a little feast together, and that the wife should take some keepsake from her husband which would be a permanent token of her husband’s unchangeable affection for her.