Strange to Relate

In the approximately 1500 weekly columns[2] that Alstat wrote, Strange to Relate revealed fascinating and little-known information about Judaism, its history, its people, and their intersection with American and World events.

This early American reverence for Hebraic scholarship was imported by the Puritans on the Mayflower from its European sources, the general cultural renaissance and the Protestant Reformation.

degree, in the daily scriptural lessons, and in oratorical and declamation contests (For 38 years, 1722–1760, it was taught by Judah Monis, a baptized Jewish hardware merchant of Cambridge, Mass.)

However, the task of mastering this difficult semitic language proved so unpopular with the students that in 1825 the faculty was constrained to make the study of Hebrew optional (which innovation was incidentally the beginning of the elective system at Harvard).

For in the minds of the people, citizenship and church membership were still so closely identified that those elected or appointed to political office were required by law to take an oath ending with the doctrinal affirmation "of belief in the Christian religion."

Beginning with 1797, the Jews of Maryland were naturally persistent in their efforts for the removal of all their civil disabilities; but the House of Delegates was equally consistent in rejecting their petitions and defeating the bills designed to bring them relief.

He wanted to meet Pope Nicklaus III on the eve of the Jewish New Year and persuade the leader of the world's Roman Catholics to become a Jew.