=2. How the Stars shone.=――But every star has its own especial orbit. The men who made starlight in the long night of Jewish history were not of the sort who mostly make epochs in national history. It has been well said that there are some great men, who are not doers nor speakers, but influences. Among a dispersed people there was small room for doers or for speakers. For warriors or for statesmen there was no place, and but little opportunity for ‘heroes’ in any generally received sense of the word, and thus, the names of eminent Jews, from the fifth to the fifteenth century, include no doers of startling deeds. But if there be heroism in endurance, in patient fulfilment of duty when desire is altogether unsatisfied, in earnest endeavour for good, with evil rampant all round, then these Jewish men lived heroic lives, although it was life lived from within rather than from without. They worked on without hurry and without rest, and in trust when hope failed. Their outward action on passing events was small, but the impression they made on the spirit and intellect of their time was great, and on the liturgy and the literature of their people they have left enduring marks. And truly, as the Bible says, ‘the light is sweet.’ The mere light cast on dark places by the sight of men living clean, and wholesome, and scholarly lives, must have been doubly ‘sweet’ in those dark days when all refining and ennobling influences were so sadly needed. =3. Piyutim.=――Apart from the work of the schools, which found its outcome in the Talmud,[29] the earliest Jewish literature of post-Biblical times comes to us in the form of _Piyutim_. _Piyut_ is derived from a Greek word which is rendered poet.[30] A large number of _Piyutim_ are in existence, which range in dates of composition over some thousand years, and represent contributions from all parts of Europe. They are chiefly found in the _Machzor_ (prayer-book for festivals――literally cycle) of the various _minhagim_, or rituals. In this store there is a whole section of what are called _Selichoth_, or penitential poems. The word _Selichoth_ comes from the Hebrew סְלִחָה, meaning forgiveness, and the theme of most of these singers of the synagogue is of hope for divine forgiveness, founded on the memory of human sorrow. The _Selichoth_, and many of the _Piyutim_, tell a never-ceasing tale of persecution and oppression. They take the form sometimes of dirge and sometimes of elegy, and now and again the recital of an actual experience becomes poetic through its very literalness. ‘We are abused,’ says one _Selichah_, ‘spat upon, treated like mire in the street.’ ‘We are trampled upon like mire, seethed in the caldron, threshed like straw, and crushed as in a winepress,’ begins another. Sometimes the suffering teaches strength, and a poet protests in all his pain, ‘Because I fear the one Lord God, I fear amongst the many――none,’[31] or counsels his companions in misery