On the contrary,
make them better Jews, and they will be better citizens.
The _Bet Yehudah_ may justly be called the connecting link between the
_Te'udah_, which preceded it, and _Zerubbabel_, which followed it. The
latter, though written in Hebrew, was really intended exclusively for
the Gentile world, as the former had been mainly for the Jewish world.
It is a continuation, but not yet a conclusion, of the self-assigned
task of Levinsohn. The Talmud, we have seen, was at that time the object
of assaults of zealous Christians and disloyal Jews, and hostile works
against Judaism were the order of the day. Most of them, however, like
the fabulous snake, vented their poison and died. It was different with
McCaul's poignant diatribe against the cause of Judaism and the honor of
the Talmud, which had been translated into many languages. Montefiore,
while in Russia, urged Levinsohn to defend his people against their
traducers, and the bed-ridden sage, almost blind and hardly able to hold
a pen, finally consented. What _Zerubbabel_ accomplished, can be judged
from the fact that in the second Hebrew edition of McCaul's _Old Paths_
(1876) are omitted many of the calumnies and aspersions of the first
edition, published in 1839.
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