On the Ancient Synagogue

DEDICATION.

...to obtain The text begins mid-word with "petrare," completing "impetrare," meaning to achieve or obtain. that I might spend the precious leisure, which I ought to devote to a more noble study by virtue of the office entrusted to me, in unfolding the Talmud Talmud: The foundational body of Jewish civil and ceremonial law, consisting of the Mishnah and the Gemara and the Commentaries of the Masters Referring to the Rabbinic commentators. I have therefore had a greater regard here for my duty than for the laurel A symbol of academic honor or fame which I might perhaps have expected from the cultivators of these Letters original: "Cultoribus harum Literarum"; meaning scholars of Hebrew and Rabbinic literature, if I had turned all my time and strength to this end. I have never ceased to exercise the Academic Youth the university students with Dissertations on Theological Matters of a far different kind and of greater importance; besides many other things which I have given to the public in the meantime. I have spent only the spare hours, which I could pluck from the leisure of the years most recently past, in collecting the necessary materials and arranging them in order.

Wherefore, if in these books you find in certain places a need for the file original: "limam"; a classical metaphor for the final polishing and refining of a literary work or a greater abundance of learning, you will consider—what is true—that my circumstances did not permit me to consume more time and labor in polishing these things. The difficulty of the Work, however, as well as the desire to serve the public interest, joined with modesty, will win me favor among fair judges, if—in such a variety of subjects, and especially in explaining the Literature and Statutes of the Hebrews, in which even the most practiced men have often stumbled—I should be discovered to have tripped anywhere. To take care for myself...