THE NEO-HEBREW POET.
He came through the open street door, knocked perfunctorily at the door
of the room, opened it and then kissed the _Mezuzah_ outside the door.
Then he advanced, snatched the Rebbitzin's hand away from the handle of
the coffee-pot and kissed it with equal devotion. He then seized upon
Hannah's hand and pressed his grimy lips to that, murmuring in German:
"Thou lookest so charming this morning, like the roses of Carmel." Next
he bent down and pressed his lips to the Reb's coat-tail. Finally he
said: "Good morning, sir," to Levi, who replied very affably, "Good
morning, Mr. Pinchas," "Peace be unto you, Pinchas," said the Reb. "I
did not see you in _Shool_ this morning, though it was the New Moon."
"No, I went to the Great _Shool_," said Pinchas in German. "If you do
not see me at your place you may be sure I'm somewhere else. Any one who
has lived so long as I in the Land of Israel cannot bear to pray without
a quorum. In the Holy Land I used to learn for an hour in the _Shool_
every morning before the service began. But I am not here to talk about
myself. I come to ask you to do me the honor to accept a copy of my new
volume of poems: _Metatoron's Flames_. Is it not a beautiful title? When
Enoch was taken up to heaven while yet alive, he was converted to flames
of fire and became Metatoron, the great spirit of the Cabalah. So am I
rapt up into the heaven of lyrical poetry and I become all fire and
flame and light."
The poet was a slim, dark little man, with long, matted black hair. His
face was hatchet-shaped and not unlike an Aztec's. The eyes were
informed by an eager brilliance. He had a heap of little paper-covered
books in one hand and an extinct cigar in the other. He placed the books
upon the breakfast table.
"At last," he said. "See, I have got it printed--the great work which
this ignorant English Judaism has left to moulder while it pays its
stupid reverends thousands a year for wearing white ties."
"And who paid for it now, Mr. Pinchas?" said the Rebbitzin.
"Who? Wh-o-o?" stammered Melchitsedek. "Who but myself?"
"But you say you are blood-poor."
"True as the Law of Moses! But I have written articles for the jargon
papers. They jump at me--there is not a man on the staff of them all who
has the pen of a ready writer. I can't get any money out of them, my
dear Rebbitzin, else I shouldn't be without breakfast this morning, but
the proprietor of the largest of them is also a printer, and he has
printed my little book in return. But I don't think I shall fill my
stomach with the sales. Oh! the Holy One, blessed be He, bless you,
Rebbitzin, of course I'll take a cup of coffee; I don't know any one
else who makes coffee with such a sweet savor; it would do for a spice
offering when the Almighty restores us our Temple. You are a happy
mortal, Rabbi. You will permit that I seat myself at the table?"
Without awaiting permission he pushed a chair between Levi and Hannah
and sat down; then he got up again and washed his hands and helped
himself to a spare egg.
"Here is your copy, Reb Shemuel," he went on after an interval. "You see
it is dedicated generally:
"'To the Pillars of English Judaism.'
"They are a set of donkey-heads, but one must give them a chance of
rising to higher things. It is true that not one of them understands
Hebrew, not even the Chief Rabbi, to whom courtesy made me send a copy.
Perhaps he will be able to read my poems with a dictionary; he certainly
can't write Hebrew without two grammatical blunders to every word. No,
no, don't defend him, Reb Shemuel, because you're under him. He ought to
be under you--only he expresses his ignorance in English and the fools
think to talk nonsense in good English is to be qualified for the
Rabbinate."
The remark touched the Rabbi in a tender place. It was the one worry of
his life, the consciousness that persons in high quarters disapproved of
him as a force impeding the Anglicization of the Ghetto. He knew his
shortcomings, but could never quite comprehend the importance of
becoming English. He had a latent feeling that Judaism had flourished
before England was invented, and so the poet's remark was secretly
pleasing to him.
"You know very well," went on Pinchas, "that I and you are the only two
persons in London who can write correct Holy Language."
"No, no." said the Rabbi, deprecatingly.
"Yes, yes," said Pinchas, emphatically. "You can write quite as well as
I. But just cast your eye now on the especial dedication which I have
written to you in my own autograph. 'To the light of his generation, the
great Gaon, whose excellency reaches to the ends of the earth, from
whose lips all the people of the Lord seek knowledge, the never-failing
well, the mighty eagle soars to heaven on the wings of understanding, to
Rav Shemuel, may whose light never be dimmed, and in whose day may the
Redeemer come unto Zion.' There, take it, honor me by taking it. It is
the homage of the man of genius to the man of learning, the humble
offering of the one Hebrew scholar in England to the other."
"Thank you," said the old Rabbi, much moved. "It is too handsome of you,
and I shall read it at once and treasure it amongst my dearest books,
for you know well that I consider that you have the truest poetic gift
of any son of Israel since Jehuda Halevi."
"I have! I know it! I feel it! It burns me. The sorrow of our race keeps
me awake at night--the national hopes tingle like electricity through
me--I bedew my couch with tears in the darkness"--Pinchas paused to take
another slice of bread and butter. "It is then that my poems are born.
The words burst into music in my head and I sing like Isaiah the
restoration of our land, and become the poet patriot of my people. But
these English! They care only to make money and to stuff it down the
throats of gorging reverends. My scholarship, my poetry, my divine
dreams--what are these to a besotted, brutal congregation of
Men-of-the-Earth? I sent Buckledorf, the rich banker, a copy of my
little book, with a special dedication written in my own autograph in
German, so that he might understand it. And what did he send me? A
beggarly five shillings? Five shillings to the one poet in whom the
heavenly fire lives! How can the heavenly fire live on five shillings? I
had almost a mind to send it back. And then there was Gideon, the member
of Parliament. I made one of the poems an acrostic on his name, so that
he might be handed down to posterity. There, that's the one. No, the one
on the page you were just looking at. Yes, that's it, beginning:
"'Great leader of our Israel's host,
I sing thy high heroic deeds,
Divinely gifted learned man.'
"I wrote his dedication in English, for he understands neither Hebrew
nor German, the miserable, purse-proud, vanity-eaten Man-of-the-Earth."
"Why, didn't he give you anything at all?" said the Reb.
"Worse! He sent me back the book. But I'll be revenged on him. I'll take
the acrostic out of the next edition and let him rot in oblivion. I have
been all over the world to every great city where Jews congregate. In
Russia, in Turkey, in Germany, in Roumania, in Greece, in Morocco, in
Palestine. Everywhere the greatest Rabbis have leaped like harts on the
mountains with joy at my coming. They have fed and clothed me like a
prince. I have preached at the synagogues, and everywhere people have
said it was like the Wilna Gaon come again. From the neighboring
villages for miles and miles the pious have come to be blessed by me.
Look at my testimonials from all the greatest saints and savants. But in
England--in England alone--what is my welcome? Do they say: 'Welcome,
Melchitsedek Pinchas, welcome as the bridegroom to the bride when the
long day is done and the feast is o'er; welcome to you, with the torch
of your genius, with the burden of your learning that is rich with the
whole wealth of Hebrew literature in all ages and countries. Here we
have no great and wise men. Our Chief Rabbi is an idiot. Come thou and
be our Chief Rabbi?' Do they say this? No! They greet me with scorn,
coldness, slander. As for the Rev. Elkan Benjamin, who makes such a fuss
of himself because he sends a wealthy congregation to sleep with his
sermons, I'll expose him as sure as there's a Guardian of Israel. I'll
let the world know about his four mistresses."
"Nonsense! Guard yourself against the evil tongue," said the Reb. "How
do you know he has?"
"It's the Law of Moses," said the little poet. "True as I stand here.
You ask Jacob Hermann. It was he who told me about it. Jacob Hermann
said to me one day: 'That Benjamin has a mistress for every fringe of
his four-corners.' And how many is that, eh? I do not know why he should
be allowed to slander me and I not be allowed to tell the truth about
him. One day I will shoot him. You know he said that when I first came
to London I joined the _Meshumadim_ in Palestine Place."
"Well, he had at least some foundation for that," said Reb Shemuel.
"Foundation! Do you call that foundation--because I lived there for a
week, hunting out their customs and their ways of ensnaring the souls of
our brethren, so that I might write about them one day? Have I not
already told you not a morsel of their food passed my lips and that the
money which I had to take so as not to excite suspicion I distributed in
charity among the poor Jews? Why not? From pigs we take bristles."
"Still, you must remember that if you had not been such a saint and such
a great poet, I might myself have believed that you sold your soul for
money to escape starvation. I know how these devils set their baits for
the helpless immigrant, offering bread in return for a lip-conversion.
They are grown so cunning now--they print their hellish appeals in
Hebrew, knowing we reverence the Holy Tongue."
"Yes, the ordinary Man-of-the-Earth believes everything that's in
Hebrew. That was the mistake of the Apostles--to write in Greek. But
then they, too, were such Men-of-the Earth."
"I wonder who writes such good Hebrew for the missionaries," said Reb
Shemuel.
"I wonder," gurgled Pinchas, deep in his coffee.
"But, father," asked Hannah, "don't you believe any Jew ever really
believes in Christianity?"
"How is it possible?" answered Reb Shemuel. "A Jew who has the Law from
Sinai, the Law that will never be changed, to whom God has given a
sensible religion and common-sense, how can such a person believe in the
farrago of nonsense that makes up the worship of the Christians! No Jew
has ever apostatized except to fill his purse or his stomach or to avoid
persecution. 'Getting grace' they call it in English; but with poor Jews
it is always grace after meals. Look at the Crypto-Jews, the Marranos,
who for centuries lived a double life, outwardly Christians, but handing
down secretly from generation to generation the faith, the traditions,
the observances of Judaism."
"Yes, no Jew was ever fool enough to turn Christian unless he was a
clever man," said the poet paradoxically. "Have you not, my sweet,
innocent young lady, heard the story of the two Jews in Burgos
Cathedral?"
"No, what is it?" said Levi, eagerly.
"Well, pass my cup up to your highly superior mother who is waiting to
fill it with coffee. Your eminent father knows the story--I can see by
the twinkle in his learned eye."
"Yes, that story has a beard," said the Reb.
"Two Spanish Jews," said the poet, addressing himself deferentially to
Levi, "who had got grace were waiting to be baptized at Burgos
Cathedral. There was a great throng of Catholics and a special Cardinal
was coming to conduct the ceremony, for their conversion was a great
triumph. But the Cardinal was late and the Jews fumed and fretted at the
delay. The shadows of evening were falling on vault and transept. At
last one turned to the other and said, 'Knowest them what, Moses? If the
Holy Father does not arrive soon, we shall be too late to say _mincha_."
Levi laughed heartily; the reference to the Jewish afternoon prayer went
home to him.
"That story sums up in a nutshell the whole history of the great
movement for the conversion of the Jews. We dip ourselves in baptismal
water and wipe ourselves with a _Talith_. We are not a race to be lured
out of the fixed feelings of countless centuries by the empty
spirituality of a religion in which, as I soon found out when I lived
among the soul-dealers, its very professors no longer believe. We are
too fond of solid things," said the poet, upon whom a good breakfast was
beginning to produce a soothing materialistic effect. "Do you know that
anecdote about the two Jews in the Transvaal?" Pinchas went on. "That's
a real _Chine_."
"I don't think I know that _Maaseh_," said Reb Shemuel.
"Oh, the two Jews had made a _trek_ and were travelling onwards
exploring unknown country. One night they were sitting by their
campfire playing cards when suddenly one threw up his cards, tore his
hair and beat his breast in terrible agony. 'What's the matter?' cried
the other. 'Woe, woe,' said the first. 'To-day was the Day of Atonement!
and we have eaten and gone on as usual.' 'Oh, don't take on so,' said
his friend. 'After all, Heaven will take into consideration that we lost
count of the Jewish calendar and didn't mean to be so wicked. And we can
make up for it by fasting to-morrow.'
"'Oh, no! Not for me,' said the first. 'To-day was the Day of
Atonement.'"
All laughed, the Reb appreciating most keenly the sly dig at his race.
He had a kindly sense of human frailty. Jews are very fond of telling
stories against themselves--for their sense of humor is too strong not
to be aware of their own foibles--but they tell them with closed doors,
and resent them from the outside. They chastise themselves because they
love themselves, as members of the same family insult one another. The
secret is, that insiders understand the limitations of the criticism,
which outsiders are apt to take in bulk. No race in the world possesses
a richer anecdotal lore than the Jews--such pawky, even blasphemous
humor, not understandable of the heathen, and to a suspicious mind
Pinchas's overflowing cornucopia of such would have suggested a prior
period of Continental wandering from town to town, like the
_Minnesingers_ of the middle ages, repaying the hospitality of his
Jewish entertainers with a budget of good stories and gossip from the
scenes of his pilgrimages.
"Do you know the story?" he went on, encouraged by Simcha's smiling
face, "of the old Reb and the _Havdolah_? His wife left town for a few
days and when she returned the Reb took out a bottle of wine, poured
some into the consecration cup and began to recite the blessing. 'What
art thou doing?' demanded his wife in amaze.' I am making _Havdolah_,'
replied the Reb. 'But it is not the conclusion of a festival to-night,'
she said. 'Oh, yes, it is,' he answered. 'My Festival's over. You've
come back.'"
The Reb laughed so much over this story that Simcha's brow grew as the
solid Egyptian darkness, and Pinchas perceived he had made a mistake.
"But listen to the end," he said with a creditable impromptu. "The wife
said--'No, you're mistaken. Your Festival's only beginning. You get no
supper. It's the commencement of the Day of Atonement.'"
Simcha's brow cleared and the Reb laughed heartily.
"But I don't seethe point, father," said Levi.
"Point! Listen, my son. First of all he was to have a Day of Atonement,
beginning with no supper, for his sin of rudeness to his faithful wife.
Secondly, dost thou not know that with us the Day of Atonement is called
a festival, because we rejoice at the Creator's goodness in giving us
the privilege of fasting? That's it, Pinchas, isn't it?"
"Yes, that's the point of the story, and I think the Rebbitzin had the
best of it, eh?"
"Rebbitzins always have the last word," said the Reb. "But did I tell
you the story of the woman who asked me a question the other day? She
brought me a fowl in the morning and said that in cutting open the
gizzard she had found a rusty pin which the fowl must have swallowed.
She wanted to know whether the fowl might be eaten. It was a very
difficult point, for how could you tell whether the pin had in any way
contributed to the fowl's death? I searched the _Shass_ and a heap of
_Shaalotku-Tshuvos_. I went and consulted the _Maggid_ and Sugarman the
_Shadchan_ and Mr. Karlkammer, and at last we decided that the fowl was
_tripha_ and could not be eaten. So the same evening I sent for the
woman, and when I told her of our decision she burst into tears and
wrung her hands. 'Do not grieve so,' I said, taking compassion upon her,
'I will buy thee another fowl.' But she wept on, uncomforted. 'O woe!
woe!' she cried. 'We ate it all up yesterday.'"
Pinchas was convulsed with laughter. Recovering himself, he lit his
half-smoked cigar without asking leave.
"I thought it would turn out differently," he said. "Like that story of
the peacock. A man had one presented to him, and as this is such rare
diet he went to the Reb to ask if it was _kosher_. The Rabbi said 'no'
and confiscated the peacock. Later on the man heard that the Rabbi had
given a banquet at which his peacock was the crowning dish. He went to
his Rabbi and reproached him. '_I_ may eat it,' replied the Rabbi,
'because my father considers it permitted and we may always go by what
some eminent Son of the Law decides. But you unfortunately came to _me_
for an opinion, and the permissibility of peacock is a point on which I
have always disagreed with my father.'"
Hannah seemed to find peculiar enjoyment in the story.
"Anyhow," concluded Pinchas, "you have a more pious flock than the Rabbi
of my native place, who, one day, announced to his congregation that he
was going to resign. Startled, they sent to him a delegate, who asked,
in the name of the congregation, why he was leaving them. 'Because,'
answered the Rabbi, 'this is the first question any one has ever asked
me!'"
"Tell Mr. Pinchas your repartee about the donkey," said Hannah, smiling.
"Oh, no, it's not worth while," said the Reb.
"Thou art always so backward with thine own," cried the Rebbitzin
warmly. "Last Purim an impudent of face sent my husband a donkey made of
sugar. My husband had a Rabbi baked in gingerbread and sent it in
exchange to the donor, with the inscription 'A Rabbi sends a Rabbi.'"
Reb Shemuel laughed heartily, hearing this afresh at the lips of his
wife. But Pinchas was bent double like a convulsive note of
interrogation.
The clock on the mantelshelf began to strike nine. Levi jumped to his
feet.
"I shall be late for school!" he cried, making for the door.
"Stop! stop!" shouted his father. "Thou hast not yet said grace."
"Oh, yes, I have, father. While you were all telling stories I was
_benshing_ quietly to myself."
"Is Saul also among the prophets, is Levi also among the story-tellers?"
murmured Pinchas to himself. Aloud he said: "The child speaks truth; I
saw his lips moving."
Levi gave the poet a grateful look, snatched up his satchel and ran off
to No. 1 Royal Street. Pinchas followed him soon, inwardly upbraiding
Reb Shemuel for meanness. He had only as yet had his breakfast for his
book. Perhaps it was Simcha's presence that was to blame. She was the
Reb's right hand and he did not care to let her know what his left was
doing.
He retired to his study when Pinchas departed, and the Rebbitzin
clattered about with a besom.
The study was a large square room lined with book-shelves and hung with
portraits of the great continental Rabbis. The books were bibliographical
monsters to which the Family Bibles of the Christian are mere pocket-books.
They were all printed purely with the consonants, the vowels being
divined grammatically or known by heart. In each there was an island of
text in a sea of commentary, itself lost in an ocean of super-commentary
that was bordered by a continent of super-super-commentary. Reb Shemuel
knew many of these immense folios--with all their tortuous windings of
argument and anecdote--much as the child knows the village it was born
in, the crooked by-ways and the field paths. Such and such a Rabbi gave
such and such an opinion on such and such a line from the bottom of such
and such a page--his memory of it was a visual picture. And just as the
child does not connect its native village with the broader world
without, does not trace its streets and turnings till they lead to the
great towns, does not inquire as to its origins and its history, does
not view it in relation to other villages, to the country, to the
continent, to the world, but loves it for itself and in itself, so Reb
Shemuel regarded and reverenced and loved these gigantic pages with
their serried battalions of varied type. They were facts--absolute as
the globe itself--regions of wisdom, perfect and self-sufficing. A
little obscure here and there, perhaps, and in need of amplification or
explication for inferior intellects--a half-finished manuscript
commentary on one of the super-commentaries, to be called "The Garden of
Lilies," was lying open on Reb Shemuel's own desk--but yet the only true
encyclopaedia of things terrestrial and divine. And, indeed, they were
wonderful books. It was as difficult to say what was not in them as what
was. Through them the old Rabbi held communion with his God whom he
loved with all his heart and soul and thought of as a genial Father,
watching tenderly over His froward children and chastising them because
He loved them. Generations of saints and scholars linked Reb Shemuel
with the marvels of Sinai. The infinite network of ceremonial never
hampered his soul; it was his joyous privilege to obey his Father in all
things and like the king who offered to reward the man who invented a
new pleasure, he was ready to embrace the sage who could deduce a new
commandment. He rose at four every morning to study, and snatched every
odd moment he could during the day. Rabbi Meir, that ancient ethical
teacher, wrote: "Whosoever labors in the Torah for its own sake, the
whole world is indebted to him; he is called friend, beloved, a lover of
the All-present, a lover of mankind; it clothes him in meekness and
reverence; it fits him to become just, pious, upright and faithful; he
becomes modest, long-suffering and forgiving of insult."
Reb Shemuel would have been scandalized if any one had applied these
words to him.
At about eleven o'clock Hannah came into the room, an open letter in her
hand.
"Father," she said, "I have just had a letter from Samuel Levine."
"Your husband?" he said, looking up with a smile.
"My husband," she replied, with a fainter smile.
"And what does he say?"
"It isn't a very serious letter; he only wants to reassure me that he is
coming back by Sunday week to be divorced."
"All right; tell him it shall be done at cost price," he said, with the
foreign accent that made him somehow seem more lovable to his daughter
when he spoke English. "He shall only be charged for the scribe."
"He'll take that for granted," Hannah replied. "Fathers are expected to
do these little things for their own children. But how much nicer it
would be if you could give me the _Gett_ yourself."
"I would marry you with pleasure," said Reb Shemuel, "but divorce is
another matter. The _Din_ has too much regard for a father's feelings to
allow that."
"And you really think I am Sam Levine's wife?"
"How many times shall I tell you? Some authorities do take the
_intention_ into account, but the letter of the law is clearly against
you. It is far safer to be formally divorced."
"Then if he were to die--"
"Save us and grant us peace," interrupted the Reb in horror.
"I should be his widow."
"Yes, I suppose you would. But what _Narrischkeit_! Why should he die?
It isn't as if you were really married to him," said the Reb, his eye
twinkling.
"But isn't it all absurd, father?"
"Do not talk so," said Reb Shemuel, resuming his gravity. "Is it absurd
that you should be scorched if you play with fire?"
Hannah did not reply to the question.
"You never told me how you got on at Manchester," she said. "Did you
settle the dispute satisfactorily?"
"Oh, yes," said the Reb; "but it was very difficult. Both parties were
so envenomed, and it seems that the feud has been going on in the
congregation ever since the Day of Atonement, when the minister refused
to blow the _Shofar_ three minutes too early, as the President
requested. The Treasurer sided with the minister, and there has almost
been a split."
"The sounding of the New Year trumpet seems often to be the signal for
war," said Hannah, sarcastically.
"It is so," said the Reb, sadly.
"And how did you repair the breach?"
"Just by laughing at both sides. They would have turned a deaf ear to
reasoning. I told them that Midrash about Jacob's journey to Laban."
"What is that?"
"Oh, it's an amplification of the Biblical narrative. The verse in
Genesis says that he lighted on the place, and he put up there for the
night because the sun had set, and he took of the stones of the place
and he made them into pillows. But later on it says that he rose up in
the morning and he took _the_ stone which he had put as his pillows.
Now what is the explanation?" Reb Shemuel's tone became momently more
sing-song: "In the night the stones quarrelled for the honor of
supporting the Patriarch's head, and so by a miracle they were turned
into one stone to satisfy them all. 'Now you remember that when Jacob
arose in the morning he said: 'How fearful is this place; this is none
other than the House of God.' So I said to the wranglers: 'Why did Jacob
say that? He said it because his rest had been so disturbed by the
quarrelling stones that it reminded him of the House of God--the
Synagogue.' I pointed out how much better it would be if they ceased
their quarrellings and became one stone. And so I made peace again in
the _Kehillah_."
"Till next year," said Hannah, laughing. "But, father, I have often
wondered why they allow the ram's horn in the service. I thought all
musical instruments were forbidden."
"It is not a musical instrument--in practice," said the Reb, with
evasive facetiousness. And, indeed, the performers were nearly always
incompetent, marring the solemnity of great moments by asthmatic
wheezings and thin far-away tootlings.
"But it would be if we had trained trumpeters," persisted Hannah,
smiling.
"If you really want the explanation, it is that since the fall of the
second Temple we have dropped out of our worship all musical instruments
connected with the old Temple worship, especially such as have become
associated with Christianity. But the ram's horn on the New Year is an
institution older than the Temple, and specially enjoined in the Bible."
"But surely there is something spiritualizing about an organ."
For reply the Reb pinched her ear. "Ah, you are a sad _Epikouros_" he
said, half seriously. "If you loved God you would not want an organ to
take your thoughts to heaven."
He released her ear and took up his pen, humming with unction a
synagogue air full of joyous flourishes.
Hannah turned to go, then turned back.
"Father," she said nervously, blushing a little, "who was that you said
you had in your eye?"
"Oh, nobody in particular," said the Reb, equally embarrassed and
avoiding meeting her eye, as if to conceal the person in his.
"But you must have meant something by it," she said gravely. "You know
I'm not going to be married off to please other people."
The Reb wriggled uncomfortably in his chair. "It was only a thought--an
idea. If it does not come to you, too, it shall be nothing. I didn't
mean anything serious--really, my dear, I didn't. To tell you the
truth," he finished suddenly with a frank, heavenly smile, "the person I
had mainly in my eye when I spoke was your mother."
This time his eye met hers, and they smiled at each other with the
consciousness of the humors of the situation. The Rebbitzin's broom was
heard banging viciously in the passage. Hannah bent down and kissed the
ample forehead beneath the black skull-cap.
"Mr. Levine also writes insisting that I must go to the Purim ball with
him and Leah," she said, glancing at the letter.
"A husband's wishes must be obeyed," answered the Reb.
"No, I will treat him as if he were really my husband," retorted Hannah.
"I will have my own way: I shan't go."
The door was thrown open suddenly.
"Oh yes thou wilt," said the Rebbitzin. "Thou art not going to bury
thyself alive."