Utopia
For me, conscious of being Jewish and of the meaning of being Jewish, it is impossible to write of this contrast without bias, as if this book were merely an intellectual exercise. Because I am Jewish I look with ultimate aversion on the world which finds supreme and ideal expression in Plato's Republic. And though I may repeat that this is no question of right and wrong in these two worlds, yours and ours, I cannot but feel profoundly and vehemently that ours is the way and the life.
Yet I would pay what tribute I can to the dreams of one like Plato. I have at least touched your world closely enough to have caught some of the beauty of its freedom.
There is a Jewish legend which tells that when God brought the Law, his Law, to the children of Israel assembled at the foot of Sinai, after he had offered it to all the other peoples, only to have it rejected, he left them no choice, but said: Either you take my Law or I will lift up this mountain and crush you beneath it. I attach no psychological signifi-
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