Nor was extortion the only danger that the travelling Jew had to face: “Two Jewish Rabbis, named Schamaria and Jacob, came to me at Wittenberg, desiring of me letters of safe conduct, which I granted them, and they were well pleased.”[88] The unpopularity of the Jews in Germany at this time arose partly from their staunch adherence to the Idea, their aloofness and their dissent in modes of thinking and living from their neighbours: “They sit as on a wheelbarrow, without a country, people or Government; yet they wait on with earnest confidence; they cheer up themselves and say: ‘It will soon be better with us.’... They eat nothing the Christians kill or touch; they drink no wine; they have many superstitions; they wash the flesh most diligently, whereas they cannot be cleansed through the flesh. They drink not milk, because God said: ‘Thou shalt not boil the young kid in his mother’s milk.’”[89] Partly from their rapacity and their hostility to the non-Jew: “’Tis a pernicious race, oppressing all men by their usury and rapine. If they give a prince or a magistrate a thousand florins, they extort twenty thousand from the subjects in payment. We must ever keep on our guard against them. They think to render homage to God by injuring the Christians, and yet we employ their physicians; ’tis a tempting of God.”[90] Partly from their arrogance: “They have haughty prayers, wherein they praise and call upon God, as if they alone were his people, cursing and condemning all other nations, relying on the 23rd Psalm: ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall lack nothing.’ As if that psalm was written exclusively concerning them.”[91] How far these unamiable qualities were the cause, and how far the effect of the Gentile’s antipathy to the Jew, is a question which prejudice on either side finds no difficulty in answering. The humble-minded and impartial student prefers to record the fact and ignore the question. But it is passing strange to find the Jew’s resolute faith in the Faithful Shepherd characterised as an offence against good manners.