Pictures of Jewish Home-Life Fifty Years Ago

Pictures of Jewish Home-Life
Fifty Years Ago

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pictures of Jewish Home-Life Fifty
Years Ago
by Hannah Trager This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no
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Title: Pictures of Jewish Home-Life Fifty Years Ago
Author: Hannah Trager
Release Date: February 25, 2005 [EBook #15173]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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OF JEWISH HOME-LIFE ***

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PICTURES OF JEWISH HOME-LIFE FIFTY YEARS AGO
By HANNAH TRAGER
Author of _Stories of Child-Life in Palestine_ _Festival Stories of
Child-Life in Palestine_ Pioneers in Palestine
WITH A PREFATORY LETTER BY LEO JUNG
WITH FOUR PLATES AND A GLOSSARY

NEW YORK BLOCH PUBLISHING CO., Inc.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE STANHOPE PRESS, LTD.
ROCHESTER

To MY BELOVED PARENTS in reverence and gratitude for their
beautiful and holy example

FOREWORD
My dear Mrs. Trager,
It gives me great pleasure to write a preface to your new book. I
consider it a real privilege, since it represents the fulfilment of a hope
expressed some five years ago. When you sent me the first article for
"The Sinaist" I told you that your pen would win the love and the
esteem not only of the child, but essentially also of the adult readers.
The simple joyousness of your style, the beauty and freshness of the
atmosphere, which you very well succeed in bringing to the pages of
your books, the strength of your faith, and the vividness of your
description, the love of Jew above the love of Palestine, all these
combine to render your volumes valuable additions to the small stock
of good Jewish literature in English. It is not only that you teach, while
talking so pleasantly; that you instruct while you interest and amuse;
that you have your own personality in the stories; that you convey the
charm of Eretz Israel, and the beauty of holiday spirit; but because your
stories help us to feel the depth of faith and the height of ideal as the
self-evident, normal factors of Jewish life.
For the children of our age, both young and old, should know that that
God-consciousness of the Jew, that wondrous sense of eternity in his
mission, is not a laboriously acquired conviction, not the result of some
spasmodic effort of grasping the innermost meaning of our history, but
the natural pervading spirit of Jewish life, the air which the Jew
breathes, when he lives with Torah as his guide and Mitzvah as his
ladder towards heaven.
They who read your stories conceive a deep love of Judaism, they find
a desire growing in them to live the life which produces such happiness
and goodness, they will want to study the Law and lore, of which that
life is an outward expression. I have given your tales to children in
various countries and all of them were enchanted with them, regretting

that "there were only two books by Mrs. Trager." I am glad indeed to
find that another one is coming out. And it is in the interest of our
youth that I hope you will give us every year some of these nourishing
and very palatable fruits of your pen.
You will thereby be doing an additional bit for our God and our people
whom you are serving so loyally. You reinterpret to the Jewish youth
of to-day the treasures they are so carelessly abandoning, you will shed
light and reawaken love and hope in the heart of many a Jew, who
seemed to feel that our glorious faith had no message for the child of
to-day, unless it were shorn by our 'religious' barbers, robbed of its
native beauty and reduced to some platform-commonplace. As a
lamented London Maggid told me, "There still live some real soldiers
of God." Such are those who use persuasion from the pulpit, such as
shine through the example of their own humane Jewishness and such as
capture our hearts by artless beautiful tales of Jewish life and lore.
I wish you every success in the world,
Yours very sincerely,
LEO JUNG

CONTENTS
THE ARRIVAL IN JERUSALEM THE WELCOME THE
CELEBRATION OF PURIM THE BAKING OF MATZOS LAG
B'OMER THE SABBATH IN PALESTINE THE SUCCAH HOW
CHARITY IS GIVEN FATHER FROST IN JERUSALEM
ENGAGEMENT AND WEDDING CEREMONIES JUBILEE OF
ZORACH BARNETT GLOSSARY

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE FATHER TEACHING THE CHILD THE MEANING OF THE
TSITSITH CHADAR (SCHOOL) YENSHVA (TALMUDICAL
SCHOOL) THE OLD LADY

THE ARRIVAL IN JERUSALEM
On a