It was _goluth_--exile.

On many occasions in the year we prayed to God to lead us out of exile.

The beautiful Passover service closed with the words, "Next year, may we be in Jerusalem." On childish lips, indeed, those words were no conscious aspiration; we repeated the Hebrew syllables after our elders, but without their hope and longing.

Still not a child among us was too young to feel in his own flesh the lash of the oppressor.

We knew what it was to be Jews in exile, from the spiteful treatment we suffered at the hands of the smallest urchin who crossed himself; and thence we knew that Israel had good reason to pray for deliverance.