PREFACE In presenting the eighth issue of the AMERICAN JEWISH YEAR BOOK, the Editor desires briefly to call attention to the new features. Those who observe the Sabbath in the traditional way will join the Directors of the JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY in expressing appreciation of their courtesy to the Funk and Wagnalls Company, the publishers of "The Jewish Encyclopedia," who have permitted the use of the table that opens this volume. It gives the times of sunrise and sunset, and of the beginning of dawn and the end of twilight, for six northern latitudes, on three days of each month of the solar year. Among the lists are two new ones, a record of the works produced by Jewish artists in the United States during the current year, and an enumeration of notable articles which have appeared in the Jewish press since last August, together with articles of Jewish interest in the secular mediums. The experience acquired in this first attempt at tabulating the information they are designed to convey promises good results in the future. The bibliographical article in this issue will probably appeal to a still larger circle than heretofore, for it addresses itself to the great host of lovers of fiction. M168616 The central feature of this year's book is the table of massacres of Jews in Russia during the period whose entrance and exit are guarded by Kishineff and Bialystok as bloodstained sentinels. The figures frightfully arrayed are so heartrending that one is impelled to apologize for perpetuating them. It would be a wanton harassment of the feelings, were it not a document tending to stimulate Israel to selfhelp and the gentiles to self-introspection. If balm there be for the sort of wounds it inflicts, it may perhaps be found in the diary of events, following hard upon the table in this volume, which exhibits the relation of various departments of the Government of the United States to questions affecting the Jews. The Editor welcomes the opportunity to acknowledge the valuable services rendered by Mr. J. Roschovsky in connection with the table of pogroms. During a whole Sabbatical period the YEAR BOOK enjoyed the experienced direction of an acknowledged master in editorial work and adept in Jewish affairs. Dr. Cyrus Adler was the first to urge the creation of a statistical instrument, for the purpose of recording Jewish activities in the United States annually, and with equal energy he put his hand to the task of producing it. The circumstance that he so well established the book on its way that the impetus he imparted to it carries it through this year, and can continue to carry it through many more, is not calculated to lessen regret at his having been forced to relinquish the editorship by the |