Preface Misc 4

<plain_text><page sequence="1">FOREWORD TO THE ADVANCE FASCICULE Published in July, 1941 Dear Mr. Elkan Adler, The occasion of your eightieth birthday affords your friends a welcome opportunity to give expression to their affection and their gratitude for the many eminent services you have rendered during your long and active life. Over a period of two generations, you have broadened our knowledge of mankind through your travels, you have enriched the world of scholarship with your great library, you have fertilised Hebraic studies by your bibliographical researches, you have added to Jewish history in a series of notable writings, you have collaborated generously in every Jewish endeavour in this country and in many overseas, you have assisted the councils of many great causes by your ripe wisdom and never-failing wit, you have enhanced the good name of your people in your widely-spread profes? sional activities and you have endeared yourself to a multitude of persons in many countries by your genius for friendship. In normal circumstances, The Jewish Historical Society of England (of which you have been a member ever since its foundation, member of the Council for nearly as long, Honorary Solicitor since 1907 and President in 1912-1914) would have deemed it a happy privilege to present you, in testimony of its regard and gratitude, with a tribute of the sort which it knows you would most appreciate?a volume of essays written in your honour by some of your friends and well-wishers who have been associated with you in the work of the Society and elsewhere. The times are not propitious for carrying this scheme to fulfilment at the present moment. But that is no reason why we should be deprived in perpetuity of the pleasure that we had promised vii</page><page sequence="2">ourselves, or you of the tribute that we had intended; our plans are well advanced, and everything is ready for them to be completed on the re-establishment of peace. Meanwhile, though literary rationing prevents us for the time being from serving the feast that we had intended, we have at least been able to draw up the bill of fare. We have much pleasure accordingly in presenting you with a plan of the volume that we are preparing, which we trust may be supplemented ultimately by a further selection of papers from your friends overseas. It is our earnest hope that before long circumstances will permit us to carry our scheme to its conclusion, and that, in a world restored to peace, in which justice again prevails, religious and racial freedom is again triumphant, and scholarship is restored to its rightful place, you will be able to read the studies which we are able to present to you here only in tide. For The Jewish Historical Society of England, CECIL ROTH, President July TLtyh, 1941. viii</page></plain_text>