I see the New Synagogue now every day. It was dedicated over forty years
ago, but it is still called "New." They had a rabbi come from Berlin to
dedicate it, and that after their own rabbi had worked for ten long
years to make the building possible, after he had gone to great pains to
scrape the money together, after his ardent appeals had succeeded in
warming his people up to the undertaking, after he had removed all the
difficulties presented by the authorities--after he had brought things
so far, his congregation found it in their hearts to humiliate him at
the crowning point of his achievement, they found it in their hearts to
set him aside at the dedication in favor of another.
Have honor and justice come back to you? Have the years left their
traces upon you, O ye, whom I love, my brethren in faith? Forty years!
New generations have blossomed since those days when pride and false
ambition brought sorrow to a noble spirit, and sought to deprive him of
the fruits of his labor, blessed and pleasing to the Lord. Another was
permitted to take his place and consecrate the work he had called into
being. On the day of his greatest glory they poured gall into his soul,
filled his heart with bitterness. But he forgave!
Gradually I am learning all sorts of stories about the congregation.
Simon Eichelkatz tells them to me when I visit him, and that happens
almost daily. It is now one of my favorite recreations to hunt up this
old man, this wise old man; for what he says in that easy, simple way of
his always awakens new thoughts in me. He little suspects the abundance,
the wealth of ideas that arise and take form in his mind. They all well
forth so unconsciously, the most profound and the most exalted. One day
a granite rock of Kantian philosophy towers up before me; the next day
the trumpet tones of a Nietzsche reveille sound in my ears. And this
feeble old man, who gives utterance to these deep thoughts, never read
any other book than the book of life, life in a small town remote from
the bustle of the world, life in a Jewish community, with its
intellectual backwardness and provincial peculiarities. The _Khille_, it
is true, with its concentric circles, its conservatism, its solidarity,
its self-sufficiency, was rich soil to foster individuality and develop
reserve strength. Nothing is wasted there, nothing consumed too quickly
in those communities thrown back upon themselves, leading, forced to
lead, a life apart from the rest of the world. How much that is of
import to the world has gone forth from such communities! When the seed
had grown strong and healthy in its native soil, and was then
transplanted to fresh soil, how it blossomed forth, fruit-bearing,
fructifying!
Now it seems to me as though Professor Friedrich Eichner could not
possibly have been of other parentage. The son, the heir of Simon
Eichelkatz! With amazement, with rapture we listened to his lectures, to
which students from all the other departments also crowded; and when the
world-philosophies he unfolded loomed before our eyes in gigantic
proportions, a feeling came over us of shuddering awe and admiration.
Who was this man? A radical, an iconoclast. And now, out of the mouth of
an old man, I hear ideas, conceptions, truths that might have laid the
foundations for the philosophy of the other, the younger, man. Not that
the relation between them was that of teacher and pupil; for Professor
Friedrich Eichner knew nothing of his father's wisdom, and the father
knew nothing of his son's philosophic systems. The father does not
mention his son--he probably is ignorant of his son's life, of his son's
importance to science. Only once he referred to him, recently, in
telling me about the "New" Synagogue. Sunk in thought he said:
"The first _Bar-Mitzvah_ that took place there was my son's. I still
remember the speech our _Rav_ delivered then--about the love of parents
and fidelity to those who lead us in our youth--Herr Kreisphysikus, our
Rav was a fine, sensible man, but he did not understand just what a
child should be. The child should grow away from us, above us, larger,
stronger, and higher--and we mustn't ask anything of him, and we mustn't
say to him, 'Come and stay here with me, where it is cramped and stuffy
for want of air--enough air for an old man, but too little for you. And
you shall not be my child, not a child, a filly, that neighs for the
stable where its father and mother roll on the straw like animals. You
must keep on growing--you must be a man, not a child.'"
Simon Eichelkatz--Friedrich Eichner!
My heart is tender, and I love my dear mother, whom a kindly fate has
preserved for me unto this day; and I bless and honor the memory of my
dead father. My opinion about filial and parental relations is entirely
different from Simon Eichelkatz's; but it seemed to me as though I were
listening to a chapter of Nietzsche's Zarathustra. Never did this name
sound in your ears, Simon Eichelkatz. You never left the Khille, and for
twenty years you have been living alone with your bodyguard, Feiwel
Silbermann. But your son has written great works concerning the
Zarathustra doctrine.