accustomed to read and understand such exteriors, of his internal
characteristics. Beneath the unprepossessing outward semblance there
dwelt a keen intellect and a noble soul which might well deserve the
admiration of the discerning. He had received a good education of its
kind in his youth in his Russian home. He had been thoroughly trained in
Hebrew, had read the entire Bible in the original, and was well
acquainted with the Talmud and the modern Hebrew literature from which
he had derived correct ideas of the world and the development of modern
science. But he had not been able to utilize his training either in his
native land or America. In Russia he had desired to become a rabbi, for
which his learning and his sincere religious bent amply fitted him; but
all the positions he knew of were filled, and so after a few years’ vain
waiting he kissed his wife and his two little ones good-by (he had
married early while still a student at the _Yeshibah_) and set sail for
America, where, he thought, congregations without number were ready to
greet him as their spiritual chief. But a brief glance at the conditions
surrounding the rabbinate among his immigrant brethren under the Western
skies had cured him of his desire to make it his vocation. As he had
neither capital nor sufficient secular training to enable him to become
a merchant, or secure a remunerative commercial position, he had only
the choice between two ways of gaining a livelihood. He could become a
workman in a sweat-shop or a peddler. He chose the latter and, at the
time this story begins, had pursued the occupation of itinerant
merchant, an occupation in which there is little gain and less glory,
for some ten years. During all these years he had permitted himself only
one form of pleasure, attendance at the House of God. The theatre knew
him not, the interior of saloons saw him only when on business bent; but
at the synagogue he was a regular attendant, never missing the early
morning services or the evening gatherings, in which the rabbi expounded
the Talmud and its commentaries to a group of attentive “learners.”
Apart from his natural piety it had gradually become a matter of pride
with him to be regular and punctual in his attendance at the synagogue,
and consequently he felt considerably mortified when on the morning of
our tale he found that he must either be absent or late at service. On
his way to the house of worship he tried to console himself with the
sneaking hope that perhaps his watch was fast and that the hour was not
really as late as it indicated. But his hopes were doomed to
disappointment. As he entered the little synagogue the mourners were
just repeating the last _Kaddish_, and most of the other worshippers
were folding and putting away their _Tallithoth_ and _Tephillin_,
preparatory to leaving for the work of the day.
Poor Moses! A pang went through his heart at the thought that he, whose
punctuality and zeal had become proverbial, should be so culpably remiss
as to appear in _Shool_ when services were practically over, and a
keener pang yet pervaded him when he noticed the expression of
wonderment with which his companions and fellow-members gazed at him.
Nor did they confine themselves to looks of amazement; but, being
finished with their devotions, they gave free expression to their
astonishment in questions. “What’s the matter, Levinsky?” he was asked
from all sides. “Aren’t you well, or are you getting lazy, or are you
turning _link_?” To all these interrogations Moses returned no answer;
indeed, he felt morally too much crushed to defend or even to palliate
his shortcoming. Gloomily he proceeded to put on his prayer-shawl and
phylacteries and with much less fervor than usual he recited the morning
prayer. By the time he had concluded his devotions every one else had
left except the _Shammas_, who, obliged by his office to remain, had
waited impatiently to lock the synagogue, and who felt considerably
aggrieved at Moses for having caused him to lose so much of his valuable
time, which might have been utilized for collecting a bill or arranging
a _Shidduch_. Listlessly Moses left the room and directed his feet
street-ward, but not too listlessly to feel the withering glance of
reproach which the _Shammas_ shot after him as he departed.
The street was thronged and bustling with the full tide of activity
which had now begun, but Moses paid no attention to its appearance. He
did not even notice the friendly greetings of several acquaintances whom
he passed on his homeward way. His mind had only room just then for one
thought, that of mortification at his inexplicable tardiness and the
humiliation which that morning had brought him in the opinion of his
fellow-congregants. He reached the huge tenement he called his home and
began mechanically to climb the narrow and interminable staircases that
led up to his room. The building was comparatively quiet. Most of the
male inmates and of the children of school age had already departed, the
former to take up their daily tasks, the latter for the immense public
school a few blocks away. No one met him on the stairs to draw his mind
from its gloomy abstraction. But as he reached the fifth floor he
perceived something which at once, arrested his attention and turned his
thoughts to matters outside of himself. It was a strong and pungent
smell, the smell of smoke. He stopped, all his senses at once keenly
alert. Like all tenement-dwellers he realized well the meaning of smoke.
It meant fire, and fire all too often meant death in those lofty and
crowded edifices, from whose upper portions escape was always difficult
and sometimes impossible. Even as he stood, the noise of uneasy motion
in the apartments at the side of the hall where he was and a sudden
clamor of voices within betokened that their occupants too had smelt the
smoke and were seized with sudden dread. Doors were flung open; the
white, anxious faces of frightened women, followed by wondering little
children, peered out. There was a rush of feet in the hall below and
quavering voices screamed “fire! fire!” By this time (a very brief
interval only had passed) Moses Levinsky had located the direction
whence the smoke proceeded. It came from the sixth story, and was
already quite dense at the head of the stairs. As he gazed, Levinsky
thought he could hear children’s voices, faintly crying, as if half
stifled.
What should he do? For a moment he thought he would rush downstairs to
the street and start the fire-alarm at the next corner. But he realized
instantly that quicker action was necessary in this case, that human
lives, children’s lives probably, were in imminent danger, and that he
must do something himself to rescue them, leaving to others the task of
notifying the fire department. With a few swift bounds he was at the
next landing, clearing three steps at every leap. The fire was evidently
in the apartments on the left side of the hall, where lived the Shapiros
with their three children, for dense smoke was pouring from their rear
door and children’s voices were heard from within, feebly wailing. The
rooms on the other side of the hall, occupied by the Arnowitzs, a young
married couple, were still and evidently empty. With one rush Levinsky
was at the door through whose interstices the smoke proceeded and
endeavored to open it. It was closed and resisted his efforts. He kicked
at it frantically. It did not yield. In the meanwhile the smoke was
pouring forth in denser clouds, paining his eyes and his lungs, and the
children’s voices were growing fainter and feebler. With mad frenzy
Moses Levinsky threw his body against the door; it shook and quivered
but did not yield. Again he tried to kick it in, striking his right foot
in his thin boot against the door with all his strength, and with utter
disregard for the pain and possible injury to himself. In vain. The door
was strong and firmly locked, while Levinsky was but an indifferent
specimen of muscular development (his athletics had all been of the
intellectual variety), and all his efforts to break it down were of no
avail. Several precious minutes had now passed and Levinsky was almost
in despair. He was hesitating what to do, and half inclined to rush
downstairs in quest of additional help when his eyes, aimlessly
wandering about the hall, chanced to light in the opposite corner, and
lo and behold! there stood an axe. It was the axe with which Shapiro was
accustomed to chop wood in the yard. Usually he kept it in his rooms,
but that morning had left it, by a providential chance, in the hall.
Instantly Moses Levinsky seized it. A few vigorous blows, launched with
all his strength against the door, brought it down and he rushed into
the smoke-filled room. In the corner he saw dimly three little figures.
Two were clinging to each other and one was lying prostrate on the
floor. They were Sarah and Ikey, the five-year and three-year-old
daughter and son, and little Josey, the eighteen-months-old baby of the
Shapiros. The older ones were still conscious, but wee little Josey had
been overcome by the smoke and had fallen to the floor. In the middle of
the room stood the large family bed, the bed-clothing fiercely burning
and emitting dense volumes of black smoke. Levinsky’s first thought was
of the children. Lifting up and holding the unconscious child with his
right hand and taking a hand of each of the other children in his left,
he rushed from the room.
By this time the whole house and all the neighborhood had taken alarm.
As he hastened down the stairs, in an effort to find a place where the
unconscious child might have fresh air, there came rushing toward him a
throng of neighbors; among them several firemen, with a portable
extinguisher, and a physician. Moses Levinsky’s task had been
accomplished. The firemen proceeded to deal in systematic manner with
the fire, which had now grown large enough to threaten the whole house.
The physician took charge of the unconscious infant and in a few minutes
had brought him to. But who is this whose agonized screams are now
heard, and who comes rushing through the dense crowd, frantically
crying, “My children! O my children!” It is the mother, Mrs. Shapiro,
who had gone out to do her marketing, together with her neighbor, Mrs.
Arnowitz, and, in the manner customary in that vicinity, had locked her
children in the room until her return. When she saw that her children
were alive and well, she kissed and hugged them frantically, and drew
them to her breast as if she half doubted the evidence of her senses.
Then she asked who was their brave rescuer; and when all pointed to
Moses Levinsky, she fell on her knees before him and kissed his hands
and called him a _Malach_ of God, sent directly from heaven to rescue
her dear ones. But Moses Levinsky did not grow at all conceited nor take
the praise to himself. His face was lighted up with the gleam of
intelligence, with the satisfaction of a problem solved. All he said
was: “Now I see that God is good and His plans are wise. He made me late
at _Shool_ so that I should be on time to save these poor _Nefoshos_. I
was too late for one _Mitzvah_, but just in time for another, and that
is quite in accordance with the _Halachah_; for does not the Talmud tell
us, ‘He that has to perform one _Mitzvah_ is exempt from another’?”
THE PROSELYTE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS.
About fifty years ago a group of street-idlers and passers-by were
standing at the corner of one of the narrow and old-fashioned streets
near the old harbor of Marseilles, amusing themselves at the plight of a
short, dark-complexioned man who stood in their midst, and who was
evidently a foreigner and a stranger in the town. It was a typical early
summer day in one of the busiest spots of the metropolis of southern
France. The sun shone with a brilliance and a radiance characteristic of
the region and the season, and was just a little too warm for comfort;
and the streets were crowded with a motley throng partly composed of
Frenchmen, among whom the natives of northern France and the provençals
or inhabitants of the south could be easily distinguished from each
other by their diversity of type, and partly by representatives of
various races and nationalities varying in shade from the olive-skinned
Spaniards, Italians, and Greeks to the coffee-brown Arabs and Moors from
northern Africa, with here and there among the throng a negro of ebony
blackness.
[Illustration:
A GROUP OF STREET-IDLERS WERE AMUSING THEMSELVES AT THE PLIGHT OF A
SHORT, DARK-COMPLEXIONED MAN WHO STOOD IN THEIR MIDST
_Page 142_]
The great press upon the streets was due in part to the normal activity
of the town; but more to the fact that three of the great sailing
vessels which, in those ante-steam-navigation days managed the freight
and passenger traffic between the Levantine ports, had that morning
discharged their human cargoes at three of the principal wharves in the
neighborhood, and the stream of released passengers was flowing through
the adjacent streets before becoming commingled with the general human
flood of the city. There were many strange figures among the new
arrivals, but they all appeared fairly at home in their new
surroundings. Some may have been in Marseilles on previous occasions,
and others were met by relatives or friends who guided them to their
respective destinations. Thus all were cared for in the strange city
except one, and he the woe-begone individual whom we have seen standing
at the street corner amidst the knot of street _gamins_ and loiterers.
They had fine sport with him, commenting on his outlandish appearance,
and asking him all sorts of facetious questions in the vulgar _argot_
they spoke; but he understood nothing, and only looked helplessly from
one unsympathetic face to the other, saying only occasionally in a dazed
sort of way, to the one or the other, in what seemed to them an
unintelligible gibberish, the mystic words, “_Yehudi Attah? Yehudi
Attah?_” Every such utterance would be greeted with a shout of laughter;
that is to say, by all except one.
Benjamin Dalinsky, a Jewish peddler, whose cradle had stood on the banks
of the Dnieper, but whom fate had carried to the land of the Gauls, and
who found his subsistence as an itinerant merchant in the southern
French metropolis, chanced to pass the spot where these scenes were
being enacted, and paused a moment to ascertain the cause of the
excitement. The stranger noticed the newcomer, and addressed to him the
query he had so often fruitlessly repeated: “_Yehudi Attah? Yehudi
Attah?_”
A thrill went through the whole body of Benjamin Dalinsky. He understood
the mystic words. He heard in them an echo of the voices of his
childhood, and of the spirit of his home, which he missed so sadly in
this strange, un-Jewish France. He felt in them the yearning of a Jewish
soul for the companionship of a brother in faith, in sympathy, and in
affection. His soul went out in sudden attraction to this dark-hued
stranger, whom he had never seen before; and in the same ancient tongue,
the Hebrew, in which the stranger had made his inquiry, he answered:
“_Ani Yehudi bo immi achi._”
Great, overwhelming joy lit up the dark face of the stranger. With
mingled love and deference he bowed low and kissed the hem of the coat
of Dalinsky, who quickly drew him from the midst of the throng; and the
wondering French idlers stepped aside as this strangely assorted pair,
the fair-haired son of the North and the swarthy Oriental walked away
together. Dalinsky’s lodgings were but a short distance away—he had a
room with a Jewish couple who eked out their scanty earnings with the
small amount he paid them and thither he quickly led the stranger. After
he had given the latter an opportunity to wash himself and eat
something, which he did ravenously after he had satisfied himself of its
ritual purity, for on the ship he had tasted hardly anything of the food
of the Gentiles, he asked the stranger what had brought him to this
unknown country, whose language and manners were alike unfamiliar to
him. In classic Hebrew, which he spoke with perfect fluency and with
great animation and vivacity, the stranger told the following tale:
“I am a Jew; and it is the pride and glory of my life that I belong to
the faith first proclaimed by Abraham, and whose sacred laws and
ordinances I endeavor faithfully to fulfil; but I am not native-born in
the household of Israel. I am only an adopted child therein, although, I
trust, my love for the people which is now mine is none the less warm
and true on that account. By origin I am a Greek. I was born on the
beautiful island of Corfu, the pearl of the archipelago, where grow the
finest and choicest _Ethrogim_, most suitable of all species for the
solemn ceremonies of the Feast of Tabernacles; and the name upon which I
was baptized was Dimitri Aristarchi. To-day I am known in Israel as
Abraham Ger-Tsedek. The manner in which I came to seek entrance into the
congregation of the Lord was most extraordinary; and my statement may
seem to you but little worthy of credence, but I solemnly assure you it
is true. It happened in this wise. My family was an old and
distinguished one in the island; but my father, in consequence of ill
success in various business ventures and a series of other misfortunes,
lost all his wealth when I was a lad of about fifteen, and shortly
afterward died. My poor mother, overwhelmed by the double loss of her
dearly beloved husband and all her earthly possessions, did not survive
her life partner long, but within a few short weeks followed him into
the grave. I was thus thrown entirely upon my own resources; and as I
was an only child, without either brother or sister, and had learnt no
trade or profession, having been reared in the luxurious and careless
fashion usual in my country in well-to-do families, my condition was
indeed desperate. There was nothing left for me to do except to seek a
position as a domestic servant, in which no special skill is required
and in which industry and good-will may supply the place of training. It
was a most humiliating necessity, which drew many tears from my eyes. I,
the pampered child of wealth, must seek my daily bread as a menial! But
there was no alternative; and as the saying is, ‘Necessity can neither
be praised nor blamed.’
“It so happened that I found employment in the house of a Jewish
physician, Moses Allatini by name. He was a man of considerable
prominence, handsome and distinguished in appearance, extremely skilful
in his profession, but learned as well in Hebraic lore. His wife,
Esperanza by name, was radiantly beautiful, with the pensive, thoughtful
beauty that marks so many of the daughters of Israel, and as
kind-hearted and pious as she was beautiful. Their family consisted of
seven children, all well-bred, polite, and lovable. At the time of my
entrance into the household there was a baby, a sweet boy of two years,
with curly black locks clustering around a face of alabaster whiteness,
and eyes in whose liquid black depths an infinity of sentiment was
revealed. As I was not good for much else, Raphael, for so the youngest
was called, was assigned to my care, at which I greatly rejoiced, for I
had fallen in love with the sweet child when first these eyes lighted
upon his angelic countenance. I devoted myself to his care with the
utmost zeal. I washed, bathed, and clothed him, took him out daily in
the fresh air, gave him his meals, and tucked him in his little bed
nightly when he closed his beautiful eyes in sleep. I learnt the little
Hebrew prayers which Jewish children recite when they lie down to rest
at night, or when they rise in the morning, and the benedictions which
they pronounce on various occasions in order that I might dictate them
to him, and that no one should come between me and my dearly beloved
charge. Raphael reciprocated my attachment; no doubt because he
perceived its sincerity and we grew inseparable. As he grew older our
love for each other did not diminish; on the contrary, it increased and
grew deeper and more intense. Next to his parents Raphael loved best his
Dimitri; and as for me, I had no one else in the wide world for whom I
need care, and I concentrated upon him all the intensity of love of a
naturally warm and affectionate heart. I continued to have the exclusive
charge of Raphael, participated in all his sports and games, and
accompanied him whenever he went out. Indeed, he always insisted that I
must be his companion, and refused to go anywhere unless I was with him.
Our great love for each other became generally known and excited great
interest, especially among the Hebrew inhabitants—the Greeks were not so
well pleased—and the Allatini family were universally congratulated upon
the possession of such a faithful and devoted servitor. When Raphael was
four years old his parents began to take him to the synagogue on
holidays and Sabbaths of special importance; and as he insisted upon my
accompanying him, a request which excited great amusement among the
family and the others who learned of it, I was one of the party on these
occasions. Thus was I first introduced to the ancient Hebrew worship as
it is conducted in the Jewish House of God. I was deeply impressed by
the melodious chanting of the _Hazan_, in which the congregation joined
harmoniously from time to time, and I listened with great interest to
the learned and pious discourses of the venerable rabbi. But there was
no thought in my mind at this time of allying myself to Israel; and as
for the Allatinis and the other Hebrews, they never even dreamed of such
a thing.
“When Raphael had attained to the age of five, Dr. Allatini declared
that it was now time to teach him the Hebrew language, and to begin to
initiate him into the knowledge of the Bible and the rabbinical
writings. But now a new and unexpected difficulty arose. Raphael
insisted stoutly that I must take the lessons, too, and declared that he
would learn nothing unless I was his fellow-scholar. This was a little
too much for his good parents. They tried to make him comprehend that it
was absurd to make a Gentile study the Hebrew language and religious
literature; and to me, too, the thing appeared exceedingly dubious; but
he would have nothing of their arguments and, with the unreasoning
obstinacy of childhood, insisted that I must participate in the
instruction. ‘Dimitri does everything with me,’ he said, ‘and he must
learn with me, too. If Dimitri will not learn, Raphael will not learn
either.’ There was no help for it. His youthful mind was fixed in the
idea that I must be his companion in study as in all other things; and
his parents, seeing that it was impossible to change his view, yielded,
half in amusement and half in vexation, to his wish. Thus I became a
student of the Holy Law; and I bless God for the hour when He separated
me from those that are in error and brought me near to Him, by enabling
me to become acquainted with His Torah and to recognize the wisdom and
holiness of His teachings. A teacher was engaged, the ablest Hebrew
scholar of the town, and he began to instruct what he declared was the
strangest pair of pupils he had ever had, the Greek Gentile youth of
eighteen and the Hebrew lad of five. Both of us learned zealously.
“Now that I had begun I was eager to learn all that I could of Hebrew
lore; and Raphael, pleased that his wish had been gratified, and
possessing a bright and acute intellect, learned rapidly and well. We
began with the Hebrew alphabet and the rudiments of the sacred tongue;
but soon we had mastered these elementary portions and took up the
reading of the Scriptures, at first in the simple text and afterward
with the commentaries of various learned rabbis. I cannot find words
with which to describe the profound impression which this course of
study made upon me. What had at first been a mere good-natured
compliance with the whim of a child became afterward a most fascinating
and absorbing pursuit, the most important part of my intellectual and
spiritual life. At first I was charmed with the Hebrew tongue as a
vehicle of thought and expression, with its pronunciation, at once
sonorous and melodious, with its symmetrical and harmonious grammatical
construction, with its brief and yet richly expressive phrases and
sentences; then the sublimity and grandeur of the Biblical teachings
stirred and moved me. I wondered at the divine wisdom of the creation; I
admired the grand and heroic leaders, God-inspired prophets and teachers
who spread the knowledge of the universal Master among men; I began to
understand why Israel existed on earth; I followed with deepest interest
the checkered history of the chosen people; I triumphed with Solomon
when the holy house was dedicated on Zion’s height, and I wept and
sorrowed with Jeremiah when it sank in ruin. The wisdom of the Torah
impressed me deeply, its numerous statutes and ordinances, all designed
to bring about the one end, the happiness and well-being of mankind
revealed clearly to my mind the ineffable goodness of the Author of all,
and with David I exclaimed, ‘The law of the Lord is perfect restoring
the soul.’ In a word the spirit of the All-holy entered into me, and I
understood, as I never understood before, and as millions do not
understand to-day, that He desires the happiness of mankind; and in
order to promote that happiness and to diffuse universal blessing, He
hath chosen the Torah and Moses His servant and Israel His people.