"D'un jour intérieur je me sens éclairé,
Et j'entends une voix qui me dit d'espérer."--LAMARTINE.
"Are you ready, Francesca?"
Nelly ran lightly down the narrow stairs, dressed for Sabbath and
Synagogue. She was dainty and pretty at all times in the matter of
dress, but especially on a summer day, which affords opportunity for
bright color and bright drapery and an ethereal appearance. This morning
she was full of color and light. When, however, she found herself
confronted with Francesca's simple gray dress, so closely fitting, so
faultless, and her black-lace hat with its single rose for color,
Nelly's artistic sense caused her heart to sink like lead. It is not for
nothing that one learns and teaches the banjo; one Art leads to another;
she who knows music can feel for dress. "Oh!" she cried, clasping her
hands. "That's what we can never do!"
"What?"
"That fit! Look at me! Yet they call me clever. Clara gives me the new
fashions and I copy them, and the girls in our street copy me--poor
things!--and the dressmaker comes to talk things over and to learn from
me. I make everything for myself. And they call me clever! But I can't
get near it; and if I can't nobody can."...
A large detached structure of red brick stood east and west, with a flat
façade and round windows that bore out the truth of the
date--1700--carved upon the front. A word or two in that square
character--that tongue which presents so few attractions to most of us
compared with other tongues--probably corroborated the internal evidence
of the façade and the windows.
"This is the synagogue," said Nelly. She entered, and turning to the
right, led the way up-stairs to a gallery running along the whole side
of the building. On the other side was another gallery. In front of both
was a tolerably wide grill, through which the congregation below could
be seen perfectly.
"This is the women's gallery," whispered Nell--there were not many women
present. "We'll sit in the front. Presently they will sing. They sing
beautifully. Now they're reading prayers and the Law. They've got to
read the whole Law through once a week, you know." Francesca looked
curiously through the grill. When one is in a perfectly strange place,
the first observations made are of small and unimportant things. She
observed that there was a circular inclosure at the east end, as if for
an altar; but there was no altar: two doors indicated a cupboard in the
wall. There were six tall wax-lights burning round the inclosure,
although the morning was fine and bright. At the west end a high screen
kept the congregation from the disturbance of those who entered or went
out. Within the screen was a company of men and boys, all with their
hats and caps on their heads; they looked like the choir. In front of
the choir was a platform railed round. Three chairs were placed at the
back of the platform. There was a table covered with red velvet, on
which lay the book of the Law, a ponderous roll of parchment provided
with silver staves or handles. Before this desk or table stood the
Reader. He was a tall and handsome man, with black hair and full black
beard, about forty years of age. He wore a gown and large Geneva bands,
like a Presbyterian minister; on his head he had a kind of biretta. Four
tall wax candles were placed round the front of the platform. The chairs
were occupied by two or three elders. A younger man stood at the desk
beside the Reader. The service was already begun--it was, in fact,
half over.
Francesca observed next that all the men wore a kind of broad scarf,
made of some white stuff about eight feet long and four feet broad.
Bands of black or blue were worked in the ends, which were also provided
with fringes. "It is the Talleth," Nelly whispered. Even the boys wore
this white robe, the effect of which would have been very good but for
the modern hat, tall or pot, which spoiled all. Such a robe wants a
turban above it, not an English hat. The seats were ranged along the
synagogue east and west. The place was not full, but there were a good
many worshipers. The service was chanted by the Reader. It was a kind of
chant quite new and strange to Francesca. Like many young persons
brought up with no other religion than they can pick up for themselves,
she was curious and somewhat learned in the matter of ecclesiastical
music and ritual, which she approached, owing to her education, with
unbiased mind. She knew masses and anthems and hymns and chants of all
kinds; never had she heard anything of this kind before. It was not
congregational, or Gregorian; nor was it repeated by the choir from
side to side; nor was it a monotone with a drop at the end; nor was it a
florid, tuneful chant such as one may hear in some Anglican services.
This Reader, with a rich, strong voice, a baritone of great power, took
nearly the whole of the service--it must have been extremely
fatiguing--upon himself, chanting it from beginning to end. No doubt, as
he rendered the reading and the prayers, so they had been given by his
ancestors in Spain and Portugal generation after generation, back into
the times when they came over in Phoenician ships to the Carthaginian
colonies, even before the dispersion of the Ten Tribes. It was a
traditional chant of antiquity beyond record--not a monotonous chant.
Francesca knew nothing of the words; she grew tired of trying to make
out whereabouts on the page the Reader might be in the book lent her,
which had Hebrew on one side and English on the other. Besides, the man
attracted her--by his voice, by his energy, by his appearance. She
closed her book and surrendered herself to the influence of the voice
and the emotions which it expressed.
There was no music to help him. From time to time the men in the
congregation lifted up their voices--not seemingly in response, but as
if moved to sudden passion and crying out with one accord. This helped
him a little, otherwise he was without any assistance.
A great Voice. The man sometimes leaned over the Roll of the Law,
sometimes he stood upright, always his great Voice went up and down and
rolled along the roof and echoed along the benches of the women's
gallery. Now the Voice sounded a note of rejoicing; now, but less often,
a note of sadness; now it was a sharp and sudden cry of triumph. Then
the people shouted with him--it was as if they clashed sword on shield
and yelled for victory; now it was a note of defiance, as when men go
forth to fight an enemy; now it sank to a murmur, as of one who consoles
and soothes and promises things to come; now it was a note of rapture,
as if the Promised Land was already recovered.
Was all that in the Voice? Did the congregation, all sitting wrapped in
their white robes, feel these emotions as the Voice thundered and
rolled? I know not. Such was the effect produced upon one who heard this
Voice for the first time. At first it seemed loud, even barbaric; there
was lacking something which the listener and stranger had learned to
associate with worship. What was it? Reverence? But she presently found
reverence In plenty, only of a kind that differed from that of Christian
worship. Then the listener made another discovery. In this ancient
service she missed the note of humiliation. There was no Litany at a
Faldstool. There was no kneeling in abasement; there was no appearance
of penitence, sorrow, or the confession of sins. The Voice was as the
Voice of a Captain exhorting his soldiers to fight. The service was
warlike, the service of a people whose trust in their God is so great
that they do not need to call perpetually upon Him for the help and
forgiveness of which they are assured. Yes, yes--she thought--this is
the service of a race of warriors; they are fighting men: the Lord is
their God; He is leading them to battle: as for little sins, and
backslidings, and penitences, they belong to the Day of Atonement--which
comes once a year. For all the other days in the year, battle and
victory occupy all the mind. The service of a great fighting people; a
service full of joy, full of faith, full of assurance, full of hope and
confidence--such assurance as few Christians can understand, and of
faith to which few Christians can attain. Perhaps Francesca was wrong;
but these were her first impressions, and these are mostly true.
In the body of the synagogue men came late. Under one gallery was a
school of boys, in the charge of a graybeard, who, book in hand,
followed the service with one eye, while he admonished perpetually the
boys to keep still and to listen. The boys grew restless; it was tedious
to them--the Voice which expressed so much to the stranger who knew no
Hebrew at all was tedious to the children; they were allowed to get up
and run into the court outside and then to come back again; nobody
heeded their going in and out. One little boy of three, wrapped, like
the rest, in a white Talleth, ran up and down the side aisle without
being heeded--even by the splendid Beadle with the gold-laced hat, which
looked so truly wonderful above the Oriental Talleth. The boys in the
choir got up and went in and out just as they pleased. Nobody minded.
The congregation, mostly well-to-do men with silk hats, sat in their
places, book in hand, and paid no attention.
Under the opposite gallery sat two or three rows of worshipers, who
reminded Francesca of Browning's poem of St. John's Day at Rome. For
they nudged and jostled each other; they whispered things; they even
laughed over the things they whispered. But they were clad like those in
the open part in the Talleth, and they sat book in hand, and from time
to time they raised their voices with the congregation. They showed no
reverence except that they did not talk or laugh loudly. They were like
the children, their neighbors,--just as restless, just as uninterested,
just as perfunctory. Well, they were clearly the poorer and the more
ignorant part of the community. They came here and sat through the
service because they were ordered so to do; because, like Passover, and
the Feast of Tabernacles, and the Fast of Atonement, it was the Law of
their People.
The women in the gallery sat or stood. They neither knelt nor sang
aloud; they only sat when it was proper to sit, or stood when it was
proper to stand. They were like the women, the village women, in a
Spanish or Italian church, for whom everything is done. Francesca, for
the moment, felt humiliated that she should be compelled to sit apart
from the congregation, railed off in the women's gallery, to have her
religion done for her, without a voice of her own in it at all. So, I
have heard, indignation sometimes fills the bosom of certain ladies when
they reflect upon the fact that they are excluded from the choir, and
forbidden even to play the organ in their own parish church.
The chanting ceased; the Reader sat down. Then the Choir began. They
sang a hymn--a Hebrew hymn--the rhythm and metre were not English; the
music was like nothing that can be heard in a Christian Church. "It is
the music," said Nelly, "to which the Israelites crossed the Red Sea:" a
bold statement, but--why not? If the music is not of Western origin and
character, who can disprove such an assertion? After the hymn the
prayers and reading went on again.
There came at last--it is a long service, such as we poor weak-kneed
Anglicans could not endure--the end. There was a great bustle and
ceremony on the platform; they rolled up the Roll of the Law; they
wrapped it in a purple velvet cloth; they hung over it a silver
breastplate set with twelve jewels for the Twelve Tribes--in memory of
the Urim and Thummim. Francesca saw that the upper ends of the staves
were adorned with silver pomegranates and with silver bells, and they
placed it in the arms of one of those who had been reading the law; then
a procession was formed, and they walked, while the Choir sang one of
the Psalms of David--but not in the least like the same Psalm sung in
an English Cathedral--bearing the Roll of the Law to the Ark, that is to
say, to the cupboard, behind the railing and inclosure at the east end.
The Reader came back. Then with another chanted Prayer--it sounded like
a prolonged shout of continued Triumph--he ended his part of
the service.
And then the choir sang the last hymn--a lovely hymn, not in the least
like a Christian, or at least an English hymn--a psalm that breathed a
tranquil hope and a perfect faith. One needed no words to understand the
full meaning and beauty and depth of that hymn.
The service was finished. The men took off their white scarfs and folded
them up. They stood and talked in groups for a few minutes, gradually
melting away. As for the men under the gallery, who had been whispering
and laughing, they trooped out of the synagogue all together. Evidently,
to them the service was only a form. What is it, in any religion, but a
form, to the baser sort?
The Beadle put out the lights. Nelly led the way down the stairs.
Thinking of what the service had suggested to herself--- all those
wonderful things above enumerated--Francesca wondered what it meant to a
girl who heard it every Sabbath morning. But she refrained from asking.
Custom too often takes the symbolism out of the symbols and the poetry
out of the verse. Then the people begin to worship the symbols and make
a fetich of the words. We have seen this elsewhere--in other forms of
faith. Outside they found Emanuel. They had not seen him in the
congregation, probably because it is difficult to recognize a man merely
by the top of his hat.
"Come," he said, "let us look around the place. Afterwards, perhaps, we
will talk of our Service. This synagogue is built on the site of the one
erected by Manasseh and his friends when Oliver Cromwell permitted them
to return to London after four hundred years of exile. They were forced
to wear yellow hats at first, but that ordinance soon fell into disuse,
like many other abominable laws. When you read about mediaeval laws,
Francesca, remember that when they were cruel or stupid they were seldom
carried into effect, because the arm of the executive was weak. Who was
there to oblige the Jews to wear the yellow hat? The police? There were
no police. The people? What did the people care about the yellow hat?
When the Fire burned down London, sparing not even the great Cathedral,
to say nothing of the Synagogue, this second Temple arose, equal in
splendor to the first. At that time all the Jews in London were
Sephardim of Spain and Portugal and Italy. Even now there are many of
the people here who speak nothing among themselves but Spanish, just as
there are Askenazim who speak nothing among themselves but Yiddish. Come
with me; I will show you something that will please you."
He led the way into another flagged court, larger than the first. There
were stone staircases, mysterious doorways, paved passages, a suggestion
of a cloister, an open space or square, and buildings on all sides with
windows opening upon the court.
"It doesn't look English at all," said Francesca. "I have seen something
like it in a Spanish convent. With balconies and a few bright hangings
and a black-haired woman at the open windows, and perhaps a coat of arms
carved upon the wall, it would do for part of a Spanish street. It is a
strange place to find in the heart of London."
"You see the memory of the Peninsula. What were we saying yesterday?
Spain places her own seal upon everything that belongs to her--people,
buildings, all. What you see here is the central Institute of our
People, the Sephardim--the Spanish part of our People. Here is our
synagogue, here are schools, alms-houses, residence of the Rabbi, and
all sorts of things. You can come here sometimes and think of Spain,
where your ancestors lived. Many generations in Spain have made you--as
they have made me--a Spaniard."
They went back to the first court. On their way out, as they passed the
synagogue, there came running across the court a girl of fifteen or so.
She was bareheaded; a mass of thick black hair was curled round her
shapely head; her figure was that of an English girl of twenty; her eyes
showed black and large and bright as she glanced at the group standing
in the court; her skin was dark; she was oddly and picturesquely dressed
in a grayish-blue skirt, with a bright crimson open jacket. The color
seemed literally to strike the eye. The girl disappeared under a
doorway, leaving a picture of herself in Francesca's mind--a picture to
be remembered.
"A Spanish Jewess," said Emanuel. "An Oriental. She chooses by instinct
the colors that her great-grandmother might have worn to grace the
triumph of David the King."