`Судьбы еврейского народа` и другие произведения

The history of the Jews, firstly, is too strange in its striking dissimilarity with the history of other peoples and, secondly, for the most part is so hopelessly sad that the viewer involuntarily stops amazed; thought persistently seeks to unravel the sequence and meaning of such an extraordinary spectacle. Before this riddle of history, we know, many non-Jewish minds also stopped; the more understandable is the thinking of the Jew. ... Why is the Jewish people so heavily punished by dispersion and persecution? Was there some fatal fault in his past, or was there such an innate feature in his character, from which a monstrous string of torments inevitably developed?