The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization
In order to give any reasonably truthful account of the inception and execution of the publishing venture known as the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, I will, as its Founder, have to say something about the germination of the idea in my own head, and the means taken to realize it. I must, therefore, give a short account of some aspects of my youth, since its particular circumstances have a strong bearing on the inception of the Library, as well as the character it has taken. Although I was born in London, my formative years were spent in Brighton where, between the ages of seven and thirteen, I was a pupil in one of those Anglo Jewish boarding schools, formed on the model of existing preparatory schools, which educate middle class children for the public schools. It delighted in the name of Aryeh House School, and was situated at the eastern end of Regency Brighton, in Sussex Square. Its curriculum was based on that followed by hundreds of preparatory schools up and down the country. Apart from the inefficiency of its teaching, the only way it differed from most of them was that instead of morning prayers being held according to the Anglican rite in chapel or hall, we had morning and evening prayers in the largest classroom, in Hebrew, according to the Minhag of the Singer's Prayer Book. Our playing fields were on the Downs at the back of Kemp Town. It was on their slopes that we played football and cricket, and between Brighton Racecourse and Roedean that we were taken on long rambling walks or learned to ride. One of my abiding memories is of trooping down those hills in football shorts and jerseys on the way back to school with the rest of the two opposing teams into which we had been divided, with frozen hands and feet. Another is the sight of the Channel below us, with, as often as not, the sun like a great ball of fire sinking into it while the sky glowed in a sea of red and gold. One other difference was that Saturday, not Sunday, was our Sabbath, and on that morning we dressed up in our best, wearing blue caps with white badges in winter, and straw boaters with blue ribands in summer. Having been marshalled into crocodile lines, we were led off by two of our Form Masters, along the Marine Parade towards the Pavilion, and from there along one of those little lanes which must have been familiar to the Prince Regent, to Sheridan, to Fox, to Creevey, and to a host of others a century and a quarter before, who had lived, intrigued and been entertained in an ambiance which, had they been able to see it in the 1930s, would have been instantly recognized by them. We trooped into the synagogue in Middle Lane, into an atmosphere aglow with warmth, light and colour and filled with gorgeous sound. The synagogue had been built in the 1870s and was superbly finished with