MS West Devon Record Office Acc No 308
My dear Mary
Thank you for the sight of the photographs Julian says the iron work is meant to cover it. It is very beautiful but I am afraid I do not like the idea of the Dove. It seems to me going beyond the lawful symbol, and I am sorry for it, though of course I have heard of such before, but not I think very frequently. I do not think our elders would have liked it.1 I had not thanked you for the Egyptian peas. I hope to sow them next spring. I wish you could have been at our meeting last night, Mr Rosenthal is a sound clergyman of the Church of England, curate to Mr Stone, who wrote the Church’s one foundation.1 He is himself a Polish Jew, and has some accent, but by speaking very slowly, he was quite well understood He has baptised 104 Jews chiefly in Whitechapel and thay have stood such persecutions and poverty. He shewed us his phylacteries and fringes– and the little olive wood case in which a text is hung by the door post. Nobody may give the blessing in the Synagogue but a descendant of Aaron if he can shew his pedigree The Rabbi– if not of the priestly line cannot but a poor pedlar is called up puts a white woollen covering with three stripes of blue over his head forms his fingers in a triangle and gives the blessing. Another thing he said was that from Jewish books they believe that there never was another Paschal Lamb sacrificed after AD 33, because none could be found fulfilling the requirements though they sent into Egypt and Mesopotamia for one. The special thing he finds works on the Jews is to get them to read the Epistle to the Hebrews. I hope Geoffrey is safe through with his matriculation and not the worse for it. I suppose Jane Moore will have her home still at Norwood unless General Moore is employed again.
your most affec
C M Yonge