THE HOLY LAND LEAGUE.
"Oh, these English Jews!" said Melchitsedek Pinchas, in German.
"What have they done to you now?" said Guedalyah, the greengrocer, in
Yiddish.
The two languages are relatives and often speak as they pass by.
"I have presented my book to every one of them, but they have paid me
scarce enough to purchase poison for them all," said the little poet
scowling. The cheekbones stood out sharply beneath the tense bronzed
skin. The black hair was tangled and unkempt and the beard untrimmed,
the eyes darted venom. "One of them--Gideon, M.P., the stockbroker,
engaged me to teach his son for his _Bar-mitzvah_, But the boy is so
stupid! So stupid! Just like his father. I have no doubt he will grow up
to be a Rabbi. I teach him his Portion--I sing the words to him with a
most beautiful voice, but he has as much ear as soul. Then I write him a
speech--a wonderful speech for him to make to his parents and the
company at the breakfast, and in it, after he thanks them for their
kindness, I make him say how, with the blessing of the Almighty, he will
grow up to be a good Jew, and munificently support Hebrew literature and
learned men like his revered teacher, Melchitsedek Pinchas. And he shows
it to his father, and his father says it is not written in good English,
and that another scholar has already written him a speech. Good English!
Gideon has as much knowledge or style as the Rev. Elkan Benjamin of
decency. Ah, I will shoot them both. I know I do not speak English like
a native--but what language under the sun is there I cannot write?
French, German, Spanish, Arabic--they flow from my pen like honey from a
rod. As for Hebrew, you know, Guedalyah, I and you are the only two men
in England who can write Holy Language grammatically. And yet these
miserable stockbrokers, Men-of-the-Earth, they dare to say I cannot
write English, and they have given me the sack. I, who was teaching the
boy true Judaism and the value of Hebrew literature."
"What! They didn't let you finish teaching the boy his Portion because
you couldn't write English?"
"No; they had another pretext--one of the servant girls said I wanted to
kiss her--lies and falsehood. I was kissing my finger after kissing the
_Mezuzah_, and the stupid abomination thought I was kissing my hand to
her. It sees itself that they don't kiss the _Mezuzahs_ often in that
house--the impious crew. And what will be now? The stupid boy will go
home to breakfast in a bazaar of costly presents, and he will make the
stupid speech written by the fool of an Englishman, and the ladies will
weep. But where will be the Judaism in all this? Who will vaccinate him
against free-thinking as I would have done? Who will infuse into him the
true patriotic fervor, the love of his race, the love of Zion, the land
of his fathers?"
"Ah, you are verily a man after my own heart!" said Guedalyah, the
greengrocer, overswept by a wave of admiration. "Why should you not come
with me to my _Beth-Hamidrash_ to-night, to the meeting for the
foundation of the Holy Land League? That cauliflower will be four-pence,
mum."
"Ah, what is that?" said Pinchas.
"I have an idea; a score of us meet to-night to discuss it."
"Ah, yes! You have always ideas. You are a sage and a saint, Guedalyah.
The _Beth-Hamidrash_ which you have established is the only centre of
real orthodoxy and Jewish literature in London. The ideas you expound in
the Jewish papers for the amelioration of the lot of our poor brethren
are most statesmanlike. But these donkey-head English rich people--what
help can you expect from them? They do not even understand your plans.
They have only sympathy with needs of the stomach."
"You are right! You are right, Pinchas!" said Guedalyah, the
greengrocer, eagerly. He was a tall, loosely-built man, with a pasty
complexion capable of shining with enthusiasm. He was dressed shabbily,
and in the intervals of selling cabbages projected the regeneration of
Judah.
"That is just what is beginning to dawn upon me, Pinchas," he went on.
"Our rich people give plenty away in charity; they have good hearts but
not Jewish hearts. As the verse says,--A bundle of rhubarb and two
pounds of Brussels sprouts and threepence halfpenny change. Thank you.
Much obliged.--Now I have bethought myself why should we not work out
our own salvation? It is the poor, the oppressed, the persecuted, whose
souls pant after the Land of Israel as the hart after the water-brooks.
Let us help ourselves. Let us put our hands in our own pockets. With our
_Groschen_ let us rebuild Jerusalem and our Holy Temple. We will collect
a fund slowly but surely--from all parts of the East End and the
provinces the pious will give. With the first fruits we will send out a
little party of persecuted Jews to Palestine; and then another; and
another. The movement will grow like a sliding snow-ball that becomes an
avalanche."
"Yes, then the rich will come to you," said Pinchas, intensely excited.
"Ah! it is a great idea, like all yours. Yes, I will come, I will make a
mighty speech, for my lips, like Isaiah's, have been touched with the
burning coal. I will inspire all hearts to start the movement at once. I
will write its Marseillaise this very night, bedewing my couch with a
poet's tears. We shall no longer be dumb--we shall roar like the lions
of Lebanon. I shall be the trumpet to call the dispersed together from
the four corners of the earth--yea, I shall be the Messiah himself,"
said Pinchas, rising on the wings of his own eloquence, and forgetting
to puff at his cigar.
"I rejoice to see you so ardent; but mention not the word Messiah, for I
fear some of our friends will take alarm and say that these are not
Messianic times, that neither Elias, nor Gog, King of Magog, nor any of
the portents have yet appeared. Kidneys or regents, my child?"
"Stupid people! Hillel said more wisely: 'If I help not myself who will
help me?' Do they expect the Messiah to fall from heaven? Who knows but
I am the Messiah? Was I not born on the ninth of Ab?"
"Hush, hush!" said Guedalyah, the greengrocer. "Let us be practical. We
are not yet ready for Marseillaises or Messiahs. The first step is to
get funds enough to send one family to Palestine."
"Yes, yes," said Pinchas, drawing vigorously at his cigar to rekindle
it. "But we must look ahead. Already I see it all. Palestine in the
hands of the Jews--the Holy Temple rebuilt, a Jewish state, a President
who is equally accomplished with the sword and the pen,--the whole
campaign stretches before me. I see things like Napoleon, general and
dictator alike."
"Truly we wish that," said the greengrocer cautiously. "But to-night it
is only a question of a dozen men founding a collecting society."
"Of course, of course, that I understand. You're right--people about
here say Guedalyah the greengrocer is always right. I will come
beforehand to supper with you to talk it over, and you shall see what I
will write for the _Mizpeh_ and the _Arbeiter-freund_. You know all
these papers jump at me--their readers are the class to which you
appeal--in them will I write my burning verses and leaders advocating
the cause. I shall be your Tyrtaeus, your Mazzini, your Napoleon. How
blessed that I came to England just now. I have lived in the Holy
Land--the genius of the soil is blent with mine. I can describe its
beauties as none other can. I am the very man at the very hour. And yet
I will not go rashly--slow and sure--my plan is to collect small amounts
from the poor to start by sending one family at a time to Palestine.
That is how we must do it. How does that strike you, Guedalyah. You
agree?"
"Yes, yes. That is also my opinion."
"You see I am not a Napoleon only in great ideas. I understand detail,
though as a poet I abhor it. Ah, the Jew is king of the world. He alone
conceives great ideas and executes them by petty means. The heathen are
so stupid, so stupid! Yes, you shall see at supper how practically I
will draw up the scheme. And then I will show you, too, what I have
written about Gideon, M.P., the dog of a stockbroker--a satirical poem
have I written about him, in Hebrew--an acrostic, with his name for the
mockery of posterity. Stocks and shares have I translated into Hebrew,
with new words which will at once be accepted by the Hebraists of the
world and added to the vocabulary of modern Hebrew. Oh! I am terrible in
satire. I sting like the hornet; witty as Immanuel, but mordant as his
friend Dante. It will appear in the _Mizpeh_ to-morrow. I will show this
Anglo-Jewish community that I am a man to be reckoned with. I will crush
it--not it me."
"But they don't see the _Mizpeh_ and couldn't read it if they did."
"No matter. I send it abroad--I have friends, great Rabbis, great
scholars, everywhere, who send me their learned manuscripts, their
commentaries, their ideas, for revision and improvement. Let the
Anglo-Jewish community hug itself in its stupid prosperity--but I will
make it the laughing-stock of Europe and Asia. Then some day it will
find out its mistake; it will not have ministers like the Rev. Elkan
Benjamin, who keeps four mistresses, it will depose the lump of flesh
who reigns over it and it will seize the hem of my coat and beseech me
to be its Rabbi."
"We should have a more orthodox Chief Rabbi, certainly," admitted
Guedalyah.
"Orthodox? Then and only then shall we have true Judaism in London and a
burst of literary splendor far exceeding that of the much overpraised
Spanish School, none of whom had that true lyrical gift which is like
the carol of the bird in the pairing season. O why have I not the bird's
privileges as well as its gift of song? Why can I not pair at will? Oh
the stupid Rabbis who forbade polygamy. Verily as the verse says: The
Law of Moses is perfect, enlightening the eyes--marriage, divorce, all
is regulated with the height of wisdom. Why must we adopt the stupid
customs of the heathen? At present I have not even one mate--but I
love--ah Guedalyah! I love! The women are so beautiful. You love the
women, hey?"
"I love my Rivkah," said Guedalyah. "A penny on each ginger-beer
bottle."
"Yes, but why haven't _I_ got a wife? Eh?" demanded the little poet
fiercely, his black eyes glittering. "I am a fine tall well-built
good-looking man. In Palestine and on the Continent all the girls would
go about sighing and casting sheep's eyes at me, for there the Jews love
poetry and literature. But here! I can go into a room with a maiden in
it and she makes herself unconscious of my presence. There is Reb
Shemuel's daughter--a fine beautiful virgin. I kiss her hand--and it is
ice to my lips. Ah, if I only had money! And money I should have, if
these English Jews were not so stupid and if they elected me Chief
Rabbi. Then I would marry--one, two, three maidens."
"Talk not such foolishness," said Guedalyah, laughing, for he thought
the poet jested. Pinchas saw his enthusiasm had carried him too far, but
his tongue was the most reckless of organs and often slipped into the
truth. He was a real poet with an extraordinary faculty for language and
a gift of unerring rhythm. He wrote after the mediaeval model--with a
profusion of acrostics and double rhyming--not with the bald
duplications of primitive Hebrew poetry. Intellectually he divined
things like a woman--with marvellous rapidity, shrewdness and
inaccuracy. He saw into people's souls through a dark refracting
suspiciousness. The same bent of mind, the same individuality of
distorted insight made him overflow with ingenious explanations of the
Bible and the Talmud, with new views and new lights on history,
philology, medicine--anything, everything. And he believed in his ideas
because they were his and in himself because of his ideas. To himself
his stature sometimes seemed to expand till his head touched the
sun--but that was mostly after wine--and his brain retained a permanent
glow from the contact.
"Well, peace be with you!" said Pinchas. "I will leave you to your
customers, who besiege you as I have been besieged by the maidens. But
what you have just told me has gladdened my heart. I always had an
affection for you, but now I love you like a woman. We will found this
Holy Land League, you and I. You shall be President--I waive all claims
in your favor--and I will be Treasurer. Hey?"
"We shall see; we shall see," said Guedalyah the greengrocer.
"No, we cannot leave it to the mob, we must settle it beforehand. Shall
we say done?"
He laid his finger cajolingly to the side of his nose.
"We shall see," repeated Guedalyah the greengrocer, impatiently.
"No, say! I love you like a brother. Grant me this favor and I will
never ask anything of you so long as I live."
"Well, if the others--" began Guedalyah feebly.
"Ah! You are a Prince in Israel," Pinchas cried enthusiastically. "If I
could only show you my heart, how it loves you."
He capered off at a sprightly trot, his head haloed by huge volumes of
smoke. Guedalyah the greengrocer bent over a bin of potatoes. Looking up
suddenly he was startled to see the head fixed in the open front of the
shop window. It was a narrow dark bearded face distorted with an
insinuative smile. A dirty-nailed forefinger was laid on the right of
the nose.
"You won't forget," said the head coaxingly.
"Of course I won't forget," cried the greengrocer querulously.
The meeting took place at ten that night at the Beth Hamidrash founded
by Guedalyah, a large unswept room rudely fitted up as a synagogue and
approached by reeking staircases, unsavory as the neighborhood. On one
of the black benches a shabby youth with very long hair and lank
fleshless limbs shook his body violently to and fro while he vociferated
the sentences of the Mishnah in the traditional argumentative singsong.
Near the central raised platform was a group of enthusiasts, among whom
Froom Karlkammer, with his thin ascetic body and the mass of red hair
that crowned his head like the light of a pharos, was a conspicuous
figure.
"Peace be to you, Karlkammer!" said Pinchas to him in Hebrew.
"To you be peace, Pinchas!" replied Karlkammer.
"Ah!" went on Pinchas. "Sweeter than honey it is to me, yea than fine
honey, to talk to a man in the Holy Tongue. Woe, the speakers are few in
these latter days. I and thou, Karlkammer, are the only two people who
can speak the Holy Tongue grammatically on this isle of the sea. Lo, it
is a great thing we are met to do this night--I see Zion laughing on her
mountains and her fig-trees skipping for joy. I will be the treasurer of
the fund, Karlkammer--do thou vote for me, for so our society shall
flourish as the green bay tree."
Karlkammer grunted vaguely, not having humor enough to recall the usual
associations of the simile, and Pinchas passed on to salute Hamburg. To
Gabriel Hamburg, Pinchas was occasion for half-respectful amusement. He
could not but reverence the poet's genius even while he laughed at his
pretensions to omniscience, and at the daring and unscientific guesses
which the poet offered as plain prose. For when in their arguments
Pinchas came upon Jewish ground, he was in presence of a man who knew
every inch of it.
"Blessed art thou who arrivest," he said when he perceived Pinchas.
Then dropping into German he continued--"I did not know you would join
in the rebuilding of Zion."
"Why not?" inquired Pinchas.
"Because you have written so many poems thereupon."
"Be not so foolish," said Pinchas, annoyed. "Did not King David fight
the Philistines as well as write the Psalms?"
"Did he write the Psalms?" said Hamburg quietly, with a smile.
"No--not so loud! Of course he didn't! The Psalms were written by Judas
Maccabaeus, as I proved in the last issue of the Stuttgard
_Zeitschrift_. But that only makes my analogy more forcible. You shall
see how I will gird on sword and armor, and I shall yet see even you in
the forefront of the battle. I will be treasurer, you shall vote for me,
Hamburg, for I and you are the only two people who know the Holy Tongue
grammatically, and we must work shoulder to shoulder and see that the
balance sheets are drawn up in the language of our fathers."
In like manner did Melchitsedek Pinchas approach Hiram Lyons and Simon
Gradkoski, the former a poverty-stricken pietist who added day by day to
a furlong of crabbed manuscript, embodying a useless commentary on the
first chapter of Genesis; the latter the portly fancy-goods dealer in
whose warehouse Daniel Hyams was employed. Gradkoski rivalled Reb
Shemuel in his knowledge of the exact _loci_ of Talmudical remarks--page
this, and line that--and secretly a tolerant latitudinarian, enjoyed the
reputation of a bulwark of orthodoxy too well to give it up. Gradkoski
passed easily from writing an invoice to writing a learned article on
Hebrew astronomy. Pinchas ignored Joseph Strelitski whose raven curl
floated wildly over his forehead like a pirate's flag, though Hamburg,
who was rather surprised to see the taciturn young man at a meeting,
strove to draw him into conversation. The man to whom Pinchas ultimately
attached himself was only a man in the sense of having attained his
religious majority. He was a Harrow boy named Raphael Leon, a scion of a
wealthy family. The boy had manifested a strange premature interest in
Jewish literature and had often seen Gabriel Hamburg's name in learned
foot-notes, and, discovering that he was in England, had just written to
him. Hamburg had replied; they had met that day for the first time and
at the lad's own request the old scholar brought him on to this strange
meeting. The boy grew to be Hamburg's one link with wealthy England, and
though he rarely saw Leon again, the lad came in a shadowy way to take
the place he had momentarily designed for Joseph Strelitski. To-night it
was Pinchas who assumed the paternal manner, but he mingled it with a
subtle obsequiousness that made the shy simple lad uncomfortable, though
when he came to read the poet's lofty sentiments which arrived (with an
acrostic dedication) by the first post next morning, he conceived an
enthusiastic admiration for the neglected genius.
The rest of the "remnant" that were met to save Israel looked more
commonplace--a furrier, a slipper-maker, a locksmith, an ex-glazier
(Mendel Hyams), a confectioner, a _Melammed_ or Hebrew teacher, a
carpenter, a presser, a cigar-maker, a small shop-keeper or two, and
last and least, Moses Ansell. They were of many birthplaces--Austria,
Holland, Poland, Russia, Germany, Italy, Spain--yet felt themselves of
no country and of one. Encircled by the splendors of modern Babylon,
their hearts turned to the East, like passion-flowers seeking the sun.
Palestine, Jerusalem, Jordan, the Holy Land were magic syllables to
them, the sight of a coin struck in one of Baron Edmund's colonies
filled their eyes with tears; in death they craved no higher boon than a
handful of Palestine earth sprinkled over their graves.
But Guedalyah the greengrocer was not the man to encourage idle hopes.
He explained his scheme lucidly--without highfalutin. They were to
rebuild Judaism as the coral insect builds its reefs--not as the prayer
went, "speedily and in our days."
They had brought themselves up to expect more and were disappointed.
Some protested against peddling little measures--like Pinchas they were
for high, heroic deeds. Joseph Strelitski, student and cigar commission
agent, jumped to his feet and cried passionately in German: "Everywhere
Israel groans and travails--must we indeed wait and wait till our hearts
are sick and strike never a decisive blow? It is nigh two thousand years
since across the ashes of our Holy Temple we were driven into the Exile,
clanking the chains of Pagan conquerors. For nigh two thousand years
have we dwelt on alien soils, a mockery and a byword for the nations,
hounded out from every worthy employ and persecuted for turning to the
unworthy, spat upon and trodden under foot, suffusing the scroll of
history with our blood and illuminating it with the lurid glare of the
fires to which our martyrs have ascended gladly for the Sanctification
of the Name. We who twenty centuries ago were a mighty nation, with a
law and a constitution and a religion which have been the key-notes of
the civilization of the world, we who sat in judgment by the gates of
great cities, clothed in purple and fine linen, are the sport of peoples
who were then roaming wild in woods and marshes clothed in the skins of
the wolf and the bear. Now in the East there gleams again a star of
hope--why shall we not follow it? Never has the chance of the
Restoration flamed so high as to-day. Our capitalists rule the markets
of Europe, our generals lead armies, our great men sit in the Councils
of every State. We are everywhere--a thousand thousand stray rivulets of
power that could be blent into a mighty ocean. Palestine is one if we
wish--the whole house of Israel has but to speak with a mighty unanimous
voice. Poets will sing for us, journalists write for us, diplomatists
haggle for us, millionaires pay the price for us. The sultan would
restore our land to us to-morrow, did we but essay to get it. There are
no obstacles--but ourselves. It is not the heathen that keeps us out of
our land--it is the Jews, the rich and prosperous Jews--Jeshurun grown
fat and sleepy, dreaming the false dream of assimilation with the people
of the pleasant places in which their lines have been cast. Give us back
our country; this alone will solve the Jewish question. Our paupers
shall become agriculturists, and like Antaeus, the genius of Israel
shall gain fresh strength by contact with mother earth. And for England
it will help to solve the Indian question--Between European Russia and
India there will be planted a people, fierce, terrible, hating Russia
for her wild-beast deeds. Into the Exile we took with us, of all our
glories, only a spark of the fire by which our Temple, the abode of our
great One was engirdled, and this little spark kept us alive while the
towers of our enemies crumbled to dust, and this spark leaped into
celestial flame and shed light upon the faces of the heroes of our race
and inspired them to endure the horrors of the Dance of Death and the
tortures of the _Auto-da-fé_. Let us fan the spark again till it leap up
and become a pillar of flame going before us and showing us the way to
Jerusalem, the City of our sires. And if gold will not buy back our land
we must try steel. As the National Poet of Israel, Naphtali Herz Imber,
has so nobly sung (here he broke into the Hebrew _Wacht Am Rhein_, of
which an English version would run thus):
"THE WATCH ON THE JORDAN.
I.
"Like the crash of the thunder
Which splitteth asunder
The flame of the cloud,
On our ears ever falling,
A voice is heard calling
From Zion aloud:
'Let your spirits' desires
For the land of your sires
Eternally burn.
From the foe to deliver
Our own holy river,
To Jordan return.'
Where the soft flowing stream
Murmurs low as in dream,
There set we our watch.
Our watchword, 'The sword
Of our land and our Lord'--
By the Jordan then set we our watch.
II.
"Rest in peace, lovèd land,
For we rest not, but stand,
Off shaken our sloth.
When the boils of war rattle
To shirk not the battle,
We make thee our oath.
As we hope for a Heaven,
Thy chains shall be riven,
Thine ensign unfurled.
And in pride of our race
We will fearlessly face
The might of the world.
When our trumpet is blown,
And our standard is flown,
Then set we our watch.
Our watchword, 'The sword
Of our land and our Lord'--
By Jordan then set we our watch.
III.
"Yea, as long as there he
Birds in air, fish in sea,
And blood in our veins;
And the lions in might.
Leaping down from the height,
Shake, roaring, their manes;
And the dew nightly laves
The forgotten old graves
Where Judah's sires sleep,--
We swear, who are living,
To rest not in striving,
To pause not to weep.
Let the trumpet be blown,
Let the standard be flown,
Now set we our watch.
Our watchword, 'The sword
Of our land and our Lord'--
In Jordan NOW set we our watch."
He sank upon the rude, wooden bench, exhausted, his eyes glittering, his
raven hair dishevelled by the wildness of his gestures. He had said. For
the rest of the evening he neither moved nor spake. The calm,
good-humored tones of Simon Gradkoski followed like a cold shower.
"We must be sensible," he said, for he enjoyed the reputation of a
shrewd conciliatory man of the world as well as of a pillar of
orthodoxy. "The great people will come to us, but not if we abuse them.
We must flatter them up and tell them they are the descendants of the
Maccabees. There is much political kudos to be got out of leading such a
movement--this, too, they will see. Rome was not built in a day, and the
Temple will not be rebuilt in a year. Besides, we are not soldiers now.
We must recapture our land by brain, not sword. Slow and sure and the
blessing of God over all."
After such wise Simon Gradkoski. But Gronovitz, the Hebrew teacher,
crypto-atheist and overt revolutionary, who read a Hebrew edition of the
"Pickwick Papers" in synagogue on the Day of Atonement, was with
Strelitski, and a bigot whose religion made his wife and children
wretched was with the cautious Simon Gradkoski. Froom Karlkammer
followed, but his drift was uncertain. He apparently looked forward to
miraculous interpositions. Still he approved of the movement from one
point of view. The more Jews lived in Jerusalem the more would be
enabled to die there--which was the aim of a good Jew's life. As for the
Messiah, he would come assuredly--in God's good time. Thus Karlkammer at
enormous length with frequent intervals of unintelligibility and huge
chunks of irrelevant quotation and much play of Cabalistic conceptions.
Pinchas, who had been fuming throughout this speech, for to him
Karlkammer stood for the archetype of all donkeys, jumped up impatiently
when Karlkammer paused for breath and denounced as an interruption that
gentleman's indignant continuance of his speech. The sense of the
meeting was with the poet and Karlkammer was silenced. Pinchas was
dithyrambic, sublime, with audacities which only genius can venture on.
He was pungently merry over Imber's pretensions to be the National Poet
of Israel, declaring that his prosody, his vocabulary, and even his
grammar were beneath contempt. He, Pinchas, would write Judaea a real
Patriotic Poem, which should be sung from the slums of Whitechapel to
the _Veldts_ of South Africa, and from the _Mellah_ of Morocco to the
_Judengassen_ of Germany, and should gladden the hearts and break from
the mouths of the poor immigrants saluting the Statue of Liberty in New
York Harbor. When he, Pinchas, walked in Victoria Park of a Sunday
afternoon and heard the band play, the sound of a cornet always seemed
to him, said he, like the sound of Bar Cochba's trumpet calling the
warriors to battle. And when it was all over and the band played "God
save the Queen," it sounded like the paean of victory when he marched, a
conqueror, to the gates of Jerusalem. Wherefore he, Pinchas, would be
their leader. Had not the Providence, which concealed so many
revelations in the letters of the Torah, given him the name Melchitsedek
Pinchas, whereof one initial stood for Messiah and the other for
Palestine. Yes, he would be their Messiah. But money now-a-days was the
sinews of war and the first step to Messiahship was the keeping of the
funds. The Redeemer must in the first instance be the treasurer. With
this anti-climax Pinchas wound up, his childishness and _naïveté_
conquering his cunning.
Other speakers followed but in the end Guedalyah the greengrocer
prevailed. They appointed him President and Simon Gradkoski, Treasurer,
collecting twenty-five shillings on the spot, ten from the lad Raphael
Leon. In vain Pinchas reminded the President they would need Collectors
to make house to house calls; three other members were chosen to trisect
the Ghetto. All felt the incongruity of hanging money bags at the
saddle-bow of Pegasus. Whereupon Pinchas re-lit his cigar and muttering
that they were all fool-men betook himself unceremoniously without.
Gabriel Hamburg looked on throughout with something like a smile on his
shrivelled features. Once while Joseph Strelitski was holding forth he
blew his nose violently. Perhaps he had taken too large a pinch of
snuff. But not a word did the great scholar speak. He would give up his
last breath to promote the Return (provided the Hebrew manuscripts were
not left behind in alien museums); but the humors of the enthusiasts
were part of the great comedy in the only theatre he cared for. Mendel
Hyams was another silent member. But he wept openly under Strelitski's
harangue.
When the meeting adjourned, the lank unhealthy swaying creature in the
corner, who had been mumbling the tractate Baba Kama out of courtesy,
now burst out afresh in his quaint argumentative recitative.
"What then does it refer to? To his stone or his knife or his burden
which he has left on the highway and it injured a passer-by. How is
this? If he gave up his ownership, whether according to Rav or according
to Shemuel, it is a pit, and if he retained his ownership, if according
to Shemuel, who holds that all are derived from 'his pit,' then it is 'a
pit,' and if according to Rav, who holds that all are derived from 'his
ox,' then it is 'an ox,' therefore the derivatives of 'an ox' are the
same as 'an ox' itself."
He had been at it all day, and he went on far into the small hours,
shaking his body backwards and forwards without remission.