hyper-subtleties

Updated: May 15, 2025

Of the teaching I acquired here, and later in the Beth-Hamidrash for I was destined by my grandfather for a Rabbi my heart is too heavy to speak. Who does not know the arid wilderness of ceremonial law, the barren hyper-subtleties of Talmudic debate, which in my country had then reached the extreme of human sharpness in dividing hairs; the dead sea fruit of learning, unquickened by living waters?

Israel Zangwill - Dreamers of the Ghetto