In 1947 he had allowed himself to be persuaded to abolish capital punishment in Russia. This did not mean he stopped killing people: - Paul Johnson

Yiddish was particularly good at borrowing: from Arabic, from Hebrew-Aramaic, from anything which came its way. On the other hand it contributed: to Hebrew, to English-American. Its chief virtue, however, lay in its internal subtlety, particularly in its characterization of human types and emotions.62 It was the language of street wisdom, of the clever underdog; of pathos, resignation, suffering, which it palliated by humour, intense irony and superstition. Isaac Bashevis Singer, its greatest practitioner, pointed out that it is the only language never spoken by men in power.

Mussolini was a reluctant fascist because, underneath, he remained a Marxist, albeit a heretical one.

Josephus noted, ‘the Sadducees draw their following only from the rich, and the people do not support them, whereas the Pharisees have popular allies’. He relates that at the end of the civil war, Alexander returned in triumph to Jerusalem, with many of his Jewish enemies among his captives and then ‘did one of the most barbarous actions in the world…for as he was feasting with his concubines, in the sight of all the city, he ordered about eight hundred of them to be crucified, and while they were living he ordered the throats of their children and wives to be cut before their eyes’.63 There is a reference to this sadistic episode in one of the Qumran scrolls: ‘the lion of wrath…when he hangs men up alive’.