"Dog," I agreed, "inasmuch as I follow your daughter like a dog,
humbly, lovingly. But blasphemer? Say rather worshipper. For I worship
Bethulah."
"Then worship her like the others," he roared. Had I not heard him
pray, I should have expected the hoary patriarch to collapse after
such an outburst.
"Thank you," I said. "I don't want her to fly up to heaven for me. I
want her to come down to earth--from her turret."
"She will not come down to any earthly spouse," he said more gently.
"Quite the reverse."
"Then I will make a soul-ascension," I said defiantly.
"Get back to hell, spawn of Satan!" he thundered again. "Or since,
strange son of the New World, you neither believe nor disbelieve,
hover eternally between hell and heaven!"
"Meantime I am here," I said good-humouredly, "between you and your
daughter. Come, come, be sensible; you are a very old man. Where in
Zloczszol will you find a superior husband for your child?"
"The Lord, to whom she is consecrated, forgive you your blasphemy," he
said, in a changed voice, and rang his bell, so that the next
applicant came in and I had to go.
It was plain the girl was kept as a sacred celibate, a sort of vestal
virgin--Bethulah was the very Hebrew for virgin, it suddenly flashed
upon me. But how came such practices into Judaism--Judaism, with its
cheery creed, "increase and multiply?" And _Chassidism_, I had
hitherto imagined, was the cheeriness of Judaism concentrated! In
Yarchi's version it was even license--"the Adamite life." I raked up
my memories of the Bible--remembered Jephtha's daughter. But no! there
could be no question of a vow; this was some new _Chassidic_ mystery.
The crown and the shroud! The shroud of renunciation, the crown of
victory!
And for some fantastic shadow-myth a beautiful young life was to be
immolated. My respect for _Chassidism_ vanished as suddenly as it
came.
But I was powerless. I could only wait till the flood of pilgrims
oozed back, even as the waters had done. Then perhaps Bethulah might
walk again upon the moonlit mountain-peak, or in the "house of life,"
as the cemetery was mystically called.
The penitential season, with its trumpets and terrors,
judgment-writings and sealings, was over at last, and Tabernacles came
like a breath of air and nature. Yarchi hammered up a little wooden
booth in the corner of his front garden, and hung grapes and oranges
and flowers from its loose roof of boughs, through which the stars
peeped at us as we ate. It struck me as a very pretty custom, and I
wondered why American Judaism had let it fall into desuetude. Ere the
break-up of these booths the pilgrims had begun to melt away, the old
sleepiness to fall upon Zloczszol.
Hence I was startled one morning by the passage of a joyous procession
that carried torches and played on flutes and tambourines. I ran out
and discovered that I was part of a wedding procession escorting a
bride. As this was a company not of _Chassidim_, but of everyday Jews,
bound for the little Gothic synagogue, I was surprised, despite my
experience of the Tabernacles, to find such picturesque goings-on, and
I went all the way to the courtyard, where the rabbi came out to meet
us with the bridegroom, who, it seemed, had already been conducted
hither with parallel pomp. The happy youth--for he could only have
been sixteen--was arrayed in festival finery, with white shoes on his
feet and black phylacteries on his forehead, which was further
over-gloomed by a cowl. He took the bride's hand, and then we all
threw wheat over their heads, crying three times, "_Peru, Urvu_" (Be
fruitful and multiply). But just when I expected the ceremony to
begin, the bride was snatched away, and we all filed into the
synagogue to await her return.
I had fallen into a mournful reverie--perhaps the suggestion of my own
infelicitous romance was too strong--when I felt a stir of excitement
animating my neighbours, and, looking up, lo! I saw a tall female
figure in a white shroud, with a veiled face, and on her head a crown
of roses and myrtles and olive branches. A shiver ran through me.
"Bethulah!" I cried half-aloud. My neighbours smiled, and as I
continued to stare at the figure, I saw it was only the bride, thus
transmogrified for the wedding canopy. And then some startling half
comprehension came to me. Bethulah's dress was a bride's dress, then.
She was made to appear a perpetual bride. Of whom? To what Cabalistic
mystery was this the key? The Friday night hymn sprang to my mind.
"Oh, come, my beloved, to meet the Bride,
The face of the Sabbath let us welcome."
For a moment I thought I held the solution, and that my very first
conjecture had been warranted. The Holy Queen Sabbath was also
typified as the Sabbath Bride, and this dual allegory it was that
Bethulah incarnated. Or perchance it was Israel, the Bride of God!
But I was still dissatisfied. I felt that the truth lay deeper than a
mere poetic metaphor or a poetical masquerading. I discovered it at
last, but at the risk of my life.