The truth is that Pinski harmonises and renders universal almost everything he touches. From an insignificant three or four line suggestion in the Talmud he elaborates a “Beruriah,” producing one of the most striking female portraits that has come from an author peculiarly rich in well-drawn women. Out of various strands from Jewish history he weaves a “Zerubbabel,” which flames with a Jewish patriotism particularly contemporary in application. Nor is this intense devotion any more exclusively Jewish than the crumbling of world-philosophies depicted in the epic play, “The Last Jew.” This human and universal touch is rendered all the more evident by the author’s attitude, both in life and in the stories that are the product of his actual experience, toward the oppressed and the disinherited whose champion he is. With him the independence of the writer is almost a religion; so much so that he is just as ready to voice fearlessly the faults of his own people as he is to glorify their historic and racial virtues. He reveals them to themselves, and is as little compromising with them as with any other. If he knows their nobility, he knows, too, their pettiness; he sees them in their climb up Mount Sinai to talk with the Lord, and in their grovelling over the heaps of mire called money-making. Yet it is no part of his art or his purpose to sit in judgment. Indeed, one of the noblest notes arising from the author’s work as a whole is the spirit of “Judge not.” This human note rings from “Mary Magdalene” (an entirely original treatment of the fecund theme, superior, in my opinion, to both Paul Heyse’s and Maurice Maeterlinck’s plays upon the same subject) as from the excellent tales “The Temptation of Rabbi Akiba” and “High Priest Johanan.” He who beholds in such stories as these only a biblical or religious strain, misses more than half of their beauty. Rabbi Akiba and High Priest Johanan are not spirits of an ancient age, individuals of a departed civilisation. Far from it. They are you and I. “Beruriah” is by no means the virtuous wife of an overwrought Rabbi. She is an eternal type; she can be found in the Talmud, in the Icelandic sagas, in a play by Ibsen, in a novel by Hardy; she is Antigone, she is Candida; she is the soul of woman clothed in tragic beauty. Pinski’s tales, then, of which the following comprise the first series, demand universal appreciation but little less than his dramas. Theirs is that rare beauty which is an indissoluble union of manner and matter. In the original, they represent the most melodious Yiddish that has been written,—a powerful refutation of the unthinking scorn of those who refer to the tongue as a jargon. They are for men and women who read with the mind as well as the eye. ISAAC GOLDBERG. Roxbury, Mass. March, 1919. BERURIAH DEDICATED TO THE EVERLASTING MEMORY OF MY BELOVED LITTLE SON GABRI (Born March 11, 1909; Died August 14, 1916)