Gabirol, and Abn Ezra on one side, and the simple “non‐ questioning” Rabbenu Gershom, Rashi, and Jacob Tam on the other. The last three centuries, which occupy our author’s attention in the fifth volume, are not remarkable for their progress. The world lives on the past. The rationalists write treatises on Maimonides’ philosophical works, whilst the German Talmudists add commentary to commentary. It is, indeed, the reign of authority, “modified by accidents.” Such an accident was the struggle between the Maimonists and Anti‐Maimonists, or the rise of the Cabbalah, or the frequent controversies with Christians, all of which tended to direct the minds of people into new channels of thought. But though this period is less original in its work, it is not on that account less sympathetic. One cannot read those beautiful descriptions which Weiss gives of R. Meir of Rothenburg and his school, or of R. Asher and his descendants, without feeling that one is in an atmosphere of saints, who are the more attractive the less they were conscious of their own saintliness. The only mistake, perhaps, was that the successors of these “Chassidim or pious men of Germany” looked on many of the religious customs that were merely the voluntary expression of particularly devout souls as worthy of imitation by the whole community, and made them obligatory upon all. This brings us to the question of the Code already mentioned (by R. Joseph Caro), with which Weiss’s work concludes. I have already transgressed the limits of an essay, without flattering myself that I have done anything like justice to the greatest work on Jewish Tradition which modern Jewish genius has produced. But I should not like the reader to carry away with him the false impression that our author shares in the general cry, “Save us from the Codifiers.” Weiss, himself a Rabbi, and the disciple of the greatest Rabbis of the first half of this century, is quite aware of the impossibility of having a law without a kind of manual to it, which brings the fluid matter into some fixed form, classifying it under its proper headings, and this is what we call codifying the law. And thus he never passes any attempt made in this direction without paying due tribute to its author—be it Maimonides or Caro. But however great the literary value of a code may be, it does not invest it with the attribute of infallibility, nor does it exempt the student or the Rabbi who makes use of it from the duty of examining each paragraph on its own merits, and subjecting it to the same rules of interpretation that were always applied to Tradition. Indeed, Weiss shows that Maimonides deviated in some cases from his own code, when it was required by circumstances.