Children of the Ghetto Part 15

"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, s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 ma.n.u.script 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 G.o.d 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 rea.s.sure 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 G.o.d.' 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 G.o.d--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 a.s.sociated with Christianity. But the ram's horn on the New Year is an inst.i.tution 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 G.o.d 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, n.o.body in particular," said the Reb, equally embarra.s.sed 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 pa.s.sage. 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.