and sultry—almost as close as this crowded hall. The streets of the
Ghetto were filled with the market throng, and the air hummed with the
music of life. The whole picture rises clearly, now—as clearly as the
platform from which the enthusiastic speaker’s voice resounds through
the hall.
A white hearse stands before the house. The driver, unaided, bears a
tiny coffin out of the gloomy hallway into the bright sunshine. The
group of idlers make way for him, and look on with curiosity, as he
deposits his burden within the hearse.
There are no carriages. There are no flowers. Koppel walks slowly out of
the house, his eyes fastened upon the sidewalk, his lips moving as if he
were muttering to himself. In his hand he carries two broken dolls.
Without looking to right or left, he climbs beside the driver, and the
hearse rattles down the street.
I mounted the stairs to his home, and found everything as it had been
when I was there last—everything save Koppel and Rebecca, and Urim and
Thummim, and these I never saw again.
A YIDDISH IDYLL
_Die Liebe ist eine alte Geschichte._
In German they call it “Die Liebe.” The French, as every school-girl
knows, call it “L’Amour.” It is known to the Spanish and the Italians,
and, unless I am greatly mistaken, it was known even in Ur of the
Chaldeans, the city that was lost before the dawn of ancient Greece.
The sky has sung of it, the bright stars have sung of it, the birds and
the flowers and the green meadows have sung of it. And far from the
brightness and the sunshine of the world I can lead you to a dark room
where, night and day, the air is filled with the whirring and buzzing
and droning and humming of sewing machines, and if you listen intently
you can hear the song they sing: “Love! Love! Love!”
_Die Liebe ist eine alte Geschichte._
It is a foolish song, and somehow or other it has become sadly entangled
with the story of Erzik and Sarah, which is a foolish story that has
neither beginning nor end. Nor has it a plot or a meaning or anything at
all, for that matter, save the melody of spring and the perfume of
flowers.
You see, Sarah’s eyes were brown and Erzik’s were blue, and they sat
side by side in the sweatshop where the sewing machines whirred and
buzzed and droned and hummed. And side by side they had sat for almost a
year, speaking hardly a dozen words a day, for they are silent people,
those Eastern Jews, and each time that Sarah looked up she could see
that Erzik’s eyes were blue, and she saw a light in them that brought
the blood to her cheeks and filled her with a strange joy and a resolve
not to look up again.
And Erzik, wondering at the gladness in his heart, would smile, whereat
the sweater would frown, and the machines would whirr and buzz and drone
and hum more briskly.
It was the fault of the black thread—or was it the white thread? One of
them, at least, had become entangled in the bobbin of Sarah’s sewing
machine, and in disentangling it the needle’s point pierced her skin,
drawing—a tiny drop of blood. Erzik turned pale, and tearing a strip
from his handkerchief—a piece of extravagance which exasperated the
sweater beyond all bounds—hastened to bind it around the wound. Then
Sarah laughed, and Erzik laughed, too, and of course he must hold the
finger close to his eyes to adjust the bandage, and then, before the
whole room, he kissed her hand. Then she slapped him upon one cheek,
whereupon he quickly offered the other, and they laughed, and all the
room laughed, save Esther, whose face was always white and pinched.
Is it not a foolish story? That very night Erzik told Sarah that he
loved her, and she cried and told him she loved him, and then he cried,
and they both were happy. And on the next day they told the sweater that
they were soon going to be married, which did not interest him at all.
It was gossip for half a day, and then it fell into the natural order of
things. The machines went on whirring and buzzing and droning and
humming, and Erzik and Sarah frequently looked up from their work and
gazed smilingly into each other’s eyes. Of this they never tired, and
through the spring their love grew stronger and deeper, and the machines
in the room never ceased to sing of it; even the sparrows that perched
upon the telegraph wires close by the windows chirped it all day long.
Esther grew whiter and whiter, and her face became more and more
pinched. And one day she was not in her place. But neither Erzik nor
Sarah missed her. Another day and another, she was absent, and on the
following day they buried her. The rabbi brought a letter to Erzik.
“She said it was for your wedding.”
Carefully folded in a clean sheet of note paper lay three double eagles;
it was Esther’s fortune.
_Die Liebe ist eine alte Geschichte._
Erzik and Sarah have been married a year, and they still sit side by
side in the sweatshop. Spring has come again, and the sewing machines
whirr and buzz and drone and hum, and through it all you can hear that
foolish old song. When they look up from their work and their eyes meet,
they smile. They are content with their lot in life, and they love each
other.
The story runs in my head like an old song, and when the sky is blue,
and the birds sing, the melody is sweet beyond all words. Sometimes,
when the sky is grey and the air is heavy with a coming storm, it seems
as if there is a note of sadness in the song, as if a heart were crying.
But the sunshine makes it right again.
THE STORY OF SARAI
It was the idle hour of the mart, and the venders of Hester Street were
busy brushing away the flies. Mother Politsky had arranged her
patriarchal-looking fish for at least the twentieth time, and was
wondering whether it might not be better to take them home than to wait
another hour in the hope of a chance customer being attracted to her
stand. Suddenly a shadow fell across the fish. She looked up and beheld
a figure that looked for all the world as if it had just stepped out of
the pages of the Pentateuch. The venerable grey beard, the strong
aquiline nose, the grave blue eyes, and, above all, the air of
unutterable wisdom, completed a picture of one of Israel’s prophets.
“God be with the Herr Rabbi!” greeted Mother Politsky.
The rabbi poked a patriarchal finger into the fish, and grunted in
approbation of their firmness.
“Are they fresh?” he asked, giving no heed to her salutation.
“They were swimming in the sea this very day, Herr Rabbi. They could not
be fresher if they were alive. And the price is—oh, you’ll laugh at me
when I tell you—only twelve cents a pound.”
The rabbi laughed, displaying fine, wide teeth.
“Come, come, my good mother. Tell me without joking what they cost. This
big one, and that little one over there.”
“But, Herr Rabbi, you surely cannot mean that that is too much! Well,
well—an old friend—eleven cents, we’ll say. Will you take the big one or
the little one?”
The rabbi was still smiling.
“My dear mother, you remind me of Sarai.”
“And who was she?” asked Mother Politsky with interest.
“Sarai was the beautiful daughter of the famous Rabbiner Emanuel ben
Achad, who lived many hundreds of years ago. She was famed for her
beauty, and likewise for her exceeding shrewdness. Yes, Sarai was very,
very clever.”
“And I remind you of her? Well, well. What a beautiful thing it is to be
a rabbi and know so much about the past! Come, now, I’ll say ten cents,
and you can have your choice. Shall I wrap up the big——”
“This Sarai,” the rabbi went on, “had many lovers, but of them all she
liked only two. One of these was the favourite of her father; the other
was a poor but handsome youth who was apprenticed to a scribe. For a
long time Sarai hesitated between the two. Each was handsome, each was a
devoted lover, each was gifted with no ordinary intelligence, and each
was brave. Yet she was undecided upon which to bestow her heart and her
hand.”
The rabbi had picked up the big fish, and now paused to sniff at it.
“And what did she do?” asked Mother Politsky.
“Ten cents?” said the rabbi, and then, with a sigh, he laid down the
fish, as if it were hopelessly beyond his reach.
“Nine, then, and take it, but what did Sarai do?”
The rabbi looked long and intently at the fish, and then, shaking his
head sadly, resumed his narrative.
“Sarai pondered over the matter for many, many weeks, and finally
decided to put them to a test. Now the name of her father’s favourite
was Ezra, while the poor youth was called Joseph. ‘Father,’ she said one
day, ‘what is the most difficult task that a man can be put to?’ ‘The
most difficult thing that I know of,’ her father promptly replied, ‘is
to grasp the real meaning of the Talmud.’
“Thereupon Sarai called Ezra and Joseph before her, and said to them:
‘He that brings to me the real meaning of the Talmud shall have my
hand.’ Was that not clever of her?”
“Yes! Yes! But who brought the true answer?” asked Mother Politsky, with
breathless interest. The rabbi was looking longingly at the fish.
“How much did you say?”
“Eight cents, eight cents. I don’t want any profit, but who——”
“Neither of the young men,” the rabbi went on, with his eyes still upon
the fish, “knew anything about the Talmud, but Joseph, who was well
versed in Hebrew, began at once to study it, wherein he had the
advantage over Ezra, who knew not a word of Hebrew.”
“Poor Ezra!” murmured Mother Politsky.
“But Ezra was a shrewd young man, and, without wasting any time upon
studying, he went straight to Sarai’s father and said to him: ‘Rabbi,
you are the greatest scholar of the world to-day. Can you tell me the
real meaning of the Talmud?’”
“Poor Joseph!” murmured Mother Politsky.
“‘My son,’ said Rabbi ben Achad, ‘all the wisdom of the human race since
the days of Moses has not been able to answer that question!’”
The rabbi had taken up the big fish and the small one, and was carefully
balancing them.
“Eight, you say. I know a place where I can get them——”
“Seven, then. And Joseph?”
“——for six.”
“Seven is the lowest. But Jo——”
The rabbi turned to move away.
“All right. Six cents. But finish the story. What did Joseph do?”
“Joseph studied many years and came to the same conclusion. I’ll take
the small one.”
“But which of them married Sarai?”
“The story does not say. You’re sure it is fresh?”
THE AMERICANISATION OF SHADRACH COHEN
There is no set rule for the turning of the worm; most worms, however,
turn unexpectedly. It was so with Shadrach Cohen.
He had two sons. One was named Abel and the other Gottlieb. They had
left Russia five years before their father, had opened a store on Hester
Street with the money he had given them. For reasons that only business
men would understand they conducted the store in their father’s
name—and, when the business began to prosper and they saw an opportunity
of investing further capital in it to good advantage, they wrote to
their dear father to come to this country.
“We have a nice home for you here,” they wrote. “We will live happily
together.”
Shadrach came. With him he brought Marta, the serving-woman who had
nursed his wife until she died, and whom, for his wife’s sake, he had
taken into the household. When the ship landed he was met by two
dapper-looking young men, each of whom wore a flaring necktie with a
diamond in it. It took him some time to realise that these were his two
sons. Abel and Gottlieb promptly threw their arms around his neck and
welcomed him to the new land. Behind his head they looked at each other
in dismay. In the course of five years they had forgotten that their
father wore a gaberdine—the loose, baglike garment of the Russian
Ghetto—and had a long, straggling grey beard and ringlets that came down
over his ears—that, in short, he was a perfect type of the immigrant
whose appearance they had so frequently ridiculed. Abel and Gottlieb
were proud of the fact that they had become Americanised. And they
frowned at Marta.
“Come, father,” they said. “Let us go to a barber, who will trim your
beard and make you look more like an American. Then we will take you
home with us.”
Shadrach looked from one to the other in surprise.
“My beard?” he said; “what is the matter with my beard?”
“In this city,” they explained to him, “no one wears a beard like yours
except the newly landed, Russian Jews.”
Shadrach’s lips shut tightly for a moment. Then he said:
“Then I will keep my beard as it is. I am a newly landed Russian Jew.”
His sons clinched their fists behind their backs and smiled at him
amiably. After all, he held the purse-strings. It was best to humour
him.
“What shall we do with Marta?” they asked. “We have a servant. We will
not need two.”
“Marta,” said the old man, “stays with us. Let the other servant go.
Come, take me home. I am getting hungry.”
They took him home, where they had prepared a feast for him. When he
bade Marta sit beside him at the table Abel and Gottlieb promptly turned
and looked out of the window. They felt that they could not conceal
their feelings. The feast was a dismal affair. Shadrach was racking his
brains to find some explanation that would account for the change that
had come over his sons. They had never been demonstrative in their
affection for him, and he had not looked for an effusive greeting. But
he realised immediately that there was a wall between him and his sons;
some change had occurred; he was distressed and puzzled. When the meal
was over Shadrach donned his praying cap and began to recite the grace
after meals. Abel and Gottlieb looked at each other in consternation.
Would they have to go through this at every meal? Better—far better—to
risk their father’s displeasure and acquaint him with the truth at once.
When it came to the response Shadrach looked inquiringly at his sons. It
was Abel who explained the matter:
“We—er—have grown out of—er—that is—er—done away with—er—sort of fallen
into the habit, don’t you know, of leaving out the prayer at meals. It’s
not quite American!”
Shadrach looked from one to the other. Then, bowing his head, he went on
with his prayer.
“My sons,” he said, when the table had been cleared. “It is wrong to
omit the prayer after meals. It is part of your religion. I do not know
anything about this America or its customs. But religion is the worship
of Jehovah, who has chosen us as His children on earth, and that same
Jehovah rules supreme over America even as He does over the country that
you came from.”
Gottlieb promptly changed the subject by explaining to him how badly
they needed more money in their business. Shadrach listened patiently
for a while, then said:
“I am tired after my long journey. I do not understand this business
that you are talking about. But you may have whatever money you need.
After all, I have no one but you two.” He looked at them fondly. Then
his glance fell upon the serving-woman, and he added, quickly:
“And Marta.”
“Thank God,” said Gottlieb, when their father had retired, “he does not
intend to be stingy.”
“Oh, he is all right,” answered Abel. “After he gets used to things he
will become Americanised like us.”
To their chagrin, however, they began to realise, after a few months,
that their father was clinging to the habits and customs of his old life
with a tenacity that filled them with despair. The more they urged him
to abandon his ways the more eager he seemed to become to cling to them.
He seemed to take no interest in their business affairs, but he
responded, almost cheerfully, to all their requests for money. He began
to feel that this, after all, was the only bond between him and his
sons. And when they had pocketed the money, they would shake their heads
and sigh.
“Ah, father, if you would only not insist upon being so old-fashioned!”
Abel would say.
“And let us fix you up a bit,” Gottlieb would chime in.
“And become more progressive—like the other men of your age in this
country.”
“And wear your beard shorter and trimmed differently.”
“And learn to speak English.”
Shadrach never lost his temper; never upbraided them. He would look from
one to the other and keep his lips tightly pressed together. And when
they had gone he would look at Marta and would say:
“Tell me what you think, Marta. Tell me what you think.”
“It is not proper for me to interfere between father and sons,” Marta
would say. And Shadrach could never induce her to tell him what she
thought. But he could perceive a gleam in her eyes and observed a
certain nervous vigour in the way she cleaned the pots and pans for
hours after these talks, that fell soothingly upon his perturbed spirit.
* * * * *
As we remarked before, there is no rule for the turning of the worm.
Some worms, however, turn with a crash. It was so with Shadrach Cohen.
Gottlieb informed his father that he contemplated getting married.
“She is very beautiful,” he said. “The affair is all in the hands of the
Shadchen.”
His father’s face lit up with pleasure.
“Gottlieb,” he said, holding out his hand, “God bless you! It’s the very
best thing you could do. Marta, bring me my hat and coat. Come,
Gottlieb. Take me to see her. I cannot wait a moment. I want to see my
future daughter-in-law at once. How happy your mother would be if she
were alive to-day!”
Gottlieb turned red and hung back.
“I think, father,” he said, “you had better not go just yet. Let us wait
a few days until the Shadchen has made all the arrangements. She is an
American girl. She—she won’t—er—understand your ways—don’t you know? And
it may spoil everything.”
Crash! Marta had dropped an iron pot that she was cleaning. Shadrach was
red in the face with suppressed rage.
“So!” he said. “It has come to this. You are ashamed of your father!”
Then he turned to the old servant:
“Marta,” he said, “to-morrow we become Americanised—you and I.”
There was an intonation in his voice that alarmed his son.
“You are not angry——” he began, but with a fierce gesture his father cut
him short.
“Not another word. To bed! Go to bed at once.”
Gottlieb was dumbfounded. With open mouth he stared at his father. He
had not heard that tone since he was a little boy.
“But, father——” he began.
“Not a word. Do you hear me? Not a word will I listen to. In five
minutes if you are not in bed you go out of this house. Remember, this
is my house.”
Then he turned to Abel. Abel was calmly smoking a cigar.
“Throw that cigar away,” his father commanded, sternly.
Abel gasped and looked at his father in dismay.
“Marta, take that cigar out of his mouth and throw it into the fire. If
he objects he goes out of the house.”
With a smile of intense delight Marta plucked the cigar from Abel’s
unresisting lips, and incidentally trod heavily upon his toes. Shadrach
gazed long and earnestly at his sons.
“To-morrow, my sons,” he said, slowly, “you will begin to lead a new
life.”
In the morning Abel and Gottlieb, full of dread forebodings, left the
house as hastily as they could. They wanted to get to the store to talk
matters over. They had hardly entered the place, however, when the
figure of their father loomed up in the doorway. He had never been in
the place before. He looked around him with great satisfaction at the
many evidences of prosperity which the place presented. When he beheld
the name “Shadrach Cohen, Proprietor” over the door he chuckled. Ere his
sons had recovered from the shock of his appearance a pale-faced clerk,
smoking a cigarette, approached Shadrach, and in a sharp tone asked:
“Well, sir, what do you want?” Shadrach looked at him with considerable
curiosity. Was he Americanised, too? The young man frowned impatiently.
“Come, come! I can’t stand here all day. Do you want anything?”
Shadrach smiled and turned to his sons.
“Send him away at once. I don’t want that kind of young man in my
place.” Then turning to the young man, upon whom the light of revelation
had quickly dawned, he said, sternly:
“Young man, whenever you address a person who is older than you, do it
respectfully. Honour your father and your mother. Now go away as fast as
you can. I don’t like you.”
“But, father,” interposed Gottlieb, “we must have someone to do his
work.”
“Dear me,” said Shadrach, “is that so? Then, for the present, you will
do it. And that young man over there—what does he do?”
“He is also a salesman.”
“Let him go. Abel will take his place.”
“But, father, who is to manage the store? Who will see that the work is
properly done?”
“I will,” said the father. “Now, let us have no more talking. Get to
work.”
Crestfallen, miserable, and crushed in spirit, Abel and Gottlieb began
their humble work while their father entered upon the task of
familiarising himself with the details of the business. And even before
the day’s work was done he came to his sons with a frown of intense
disgust.
“Bah!” he exclaimed. “It is just as I expected. You have both been
making as complete a mess of this business as you could without ruining
it. What you both lack is sense. If becoming Americanised means becoming
stupid, I must congratulate you upon the thoroughness of your work.
To-morrow I shall hire a manager to run this store. He will arrange your
hours of work. He will also pay you what you are worth. Not a cent more.
How late have you been keeping this store open?”
“Until six o’clock,” said Abel.
“H’m! Well, beginning to-day, you both will stay here until eight
o’clock. Then one of you can go. The other will stay until ten. You can
take turns. I will have Marta send you some supper.”
* * * * *
To the amazement of Abel and Gottlieb the business of Shadrach Cohen
began to grow. Slowly it dawned upon them that in the mercantile realm
they were as children compared with their father. His was the true
money-maker spirit; there was something wonderful in the swiftness with
which he grasped the most intricate phases of trade; and where
experience failed him some instinct seemed to guide him aright. And
gradually, as the business of Shadrach Cohen increased, and even the
sons saw vistas of prosperity beyond their wildest dreams, they began to
look upon their father with increasing respect. What they had refused to
the integrity of his character, to the nobility of his heart, they
promptly yielded to the shrewdness of his brain. The sons of Shadrach
Cohen became proud of their father. He, too, was slowly undergoing a
change. A new life was unfolding itself before his eyes, he became
broader-minded, more tolerant, and, above all, more flexible in his
tenets. Contact with the outer world had quickly impressed him with the
vast differences between his present surroundings and his old life in
Russia. The charm of American life, of liberty, of democracy, appealed
to him strongly. As the field of his business operations widened he came
more and more in contact with American business men, from whom he
learned many things—principally the faculty of adaptability. And as his
sons began to perceive that all these business men whom, in former days,
they had looked upon with feelings akin to reverence, seemed to show to
their father an amount of deference and respect which they had never
evinced toward the sons, their admiration for their father increased.
And yet it was the same Shadrach Cohen.
From that explosive moment when he had rebelled against his sons he
demanded from them implicit obedience and profound respect. Upon that
point he was stern and unyielding. Moreover, he insisted upon a strict
observance of every tenet of their religion. This, at first, was the
bitterest pill of all. But they soon became accustomed to it. When life
is light and free from care, religion is quick to fly; but when the sky
grows dark and life becomes earnest, and we feel its burden growing
heavy upon our shoulders, then we welcome the consolation that religion
brings, and we cling to it. And Shadrach Cohen had taught his sons that
life was earnest. They were earning their bread by the sweat of their
brow. No prisoner, with chain and ball, was subjected to closer
supervision by his keeper than were Gottlieb and Abel.
“You have been living upon my charity,” their father said to them: “I
will teach you how to earn your own living.”
And he taught them. And with the lesson they learned many things;
learned the value of discipline, learned the beauty of filial reverence,
learned the severe joy of the earnest life.
One day Gottlieb said to his father:
“May I bring Miriam to supper to-night? I am anxious that you should see
her.”
Shadrach turned his face away so that Gottlieb might not see the joy
that beamed in his eyes.