Part 8
Like many another outcast he had come with his story and his mystery out of the “poisonous East,” and there was no tie between him and his neighbours save the tie of Judaism. It is a wonderful bond between men, this tie of Judaism, a bond of steel that it has taken four thousand years of suffering and death to forge, and its ends are fastened to men’s hearts by rivets that are stronger than adamant, and the rabbis call these rivets “The fear of God.”
The heat of summer came on. You who swelter in your parlour these sultry days—do you know what the heat of summer means to two families chained by poverty within a solitary room in a Ghetto tenement, where there is neither light nor air, where the pores of the walls perspire, where the stench of decay is ever present, where there is nothing but heat, heat, heat? You who have read with horror the tale of the Black Hole of Calcutta—have you seen a child lie upon a bare floor, gasping, and gasping and gasping for breath amid the roomful of silent people who are stitching for bread? I would give a year of my life to wipe out a certain memory that is awakened each time I hear a child cry—it was terrible.
But I was telling you the story of Shatzkin.
The heat of summer came on, and his youngest-born died in his arms for lack of nourishment. And while his wife sat wringing her hands and the other children were crying, Shatzkin laid the lifeless body upon the bare floor, and, donning his praying cap, raised his voice and chanted:
“Great is my affliction, O God of Israel, but Thou knowest best!”
And it grew hotter, and the other children succumbed.
“You had better send them to the country,” said the doctor, and, seeing Shatzkin staring at him dumbly, “Don’t you understand what I mean?” he asked. Shatzkin nodded. He understood full well and—and that night another died, and Shatzkin bowed his head and cried:
“Great is my affliction, O God of Israel, but Thou knowest best!”
Within a week the Shatzkins were childless—it was a terrible summer—and when the congregation B’nai Sholom assembled upon the following Sabbath and the rabbi spoke words of comfort, Shatzkin, with his face buried in his hands, murmured:
“My sorrow is nigh unbearable, O God of Israel, but Thou knowest best!”
And now the heat grew greater, and the sweatshops, with all their people, were as silent as the grave. The men cut the cloth and ironed it, and the women stitched, stitched, stitched, with never a sound, and there was no weeping, for their misery was beyond the healing power of tears.
Shatzkin’s wife fell to the floor exhausted, and they carried her to her room above, and sent for a doctor.
“The sea air would do her good,” said the doctor.
“The sea air,” repeated Shatzkin, stupidly. “The sea air.”
“Keep her as cool as you can. I will call again in the morning.”
“The sea air,” was all that Shatzkin said. “The sea air.”
In the middle of the night the woman cried, “Shatzkin! Shatzkin!”
He looked down, for her head lay upon his lap.
“Shatzkin!” She was smiling feebly. “The baby—Aaron—Esther—dear Shatzkin——”
* * * * *
The congregation of B’nai Sholom had assembled for Sabbath eve worship. The rabbi was in the midst of the service.
“Blessed be God on high!” he read from the book. “Blessed be the Lord of Israel, who holds the world in the palm of His hand. For He is a righteous God——”
“Ho! ho!” shouted a derisive voice. The startled worshippers hastily turned their heads. They beheld a gaunt figure that had risen in the rear of the room, and seemed to be shaking with laughter. It was Shatzkin, but so pale and worn that few recognised him.
“Who are you that disturb this holy service?” cried the rabbi. “Have you no fear of God in your heart?”
The man ceased laughing and stared the rabbi in the eyes. “No,” he said, slowly. “I have no fear of God.”
A terrible hush had fallen upon the assemblage, and the man, looking vacantly from one to another of the faces that were turned to him, said, in a hollow voice:
“I am Shatzkin. Does no one remember Shatzkin? I sat here only last week,” and, slowly, “my—wife—went—to—the—seashore!”
The rabbi’s face softened.
“Good, brother Shatzkin,” his voice was trembling. “God has tried——”
“You lie!” cried Shatzkin, fiercely. “Do not speak to me of God! I have no fear of Him! He killed my youngest-born, and I prayed to Him—on my knees I prayed and cried, ‘Thou knowest best!’ And He killed the others—all the others, and I blessed Him and on my knees I prayed, ‘Thou knowest best!’ And He killed my wife—my darling wife—in my arms He killed her. And I am alone—alone—alone, and I fear no God! Curse—curse—curse! Ha! ha! ha! ho! ho! ho! Why should I fear God?”
And throwing a prayer-book to the floor he trampled it under foot, and rushed out into the street.
* * * * *
For many years there worked in one of the sweatshops on the East Side a shrivelled little man, with keen blue eyes, who was always laughing. From sunrise until midnight he toiled, sometimes humming an old melody, but always with a smile upon his lips. The other workers laughed and chatted merrily in the winter time, and became grave and silent in the summer, but rarely did they pay attention to the old man who seemed always happy. Strangers that visited the place were invariably attracted by the cheerful aspect of the man, but when they spoke to him he would smile and answer:
“I must earn money to send my wife to the sea air!”
And if they asked, “Who is this man?” they would be told in a whisper of awe:
“He has no fear of God!”
And then a significant shake of the head.
* * * * *
The heat of summer is here again. Shatzkin has been dead a long time, and the story is almost forgotten. But in the Ghetto each day his cry is repeated, and through the heat and the foul air there arises from a thousand hearts the tearless murmur:
“Great is my affliction, O God of Israel, but Thou knowest best!”
THE SUN OF WISDOM
“And therefore,” concluded Salvin, stroking his long, grey beard, “we are forced to accept the belief that the object of life is toil. We are the advance guard cutting out the road down which the next generation will travel, who, in turn, will carry the road further along. Our work done—our usefulness ends. We have accomplished our mission, and nothing remains but to make way for our successors.”
Young Levine smiled, and rose to go.
“You are wrong, my pessimistic brother,” he said, fondly laying his hand upon the old man’s shoulder. “You are wrong. Some day the sun of wisdom may shine upon you and you will learn the truth.”
Salvin had been the friend of Levine’s father, and, despite the inequality of their ages, a firm friendship existed between him and the son. He now blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling, and with a smile of amusement gazed at the young man.
“And what, O Solomon,” he asked, “may the sun of wisdom have taught you?”
Levine’s face lit up.
“The object of life,” he said, speaking swiftly and earnestly, “is love. It begins with love; it ends with love. Without love life has no object. It is, then, mere aimless, wondering, puzzling existence during which the mind—like yours—struggles vainly to solve the riddle of why and wherefore. But those who have once had the truth pointed out to them are never in doubt. To them love explains all. Without love you cannot know life.”
Salvin smiled, and then, as the young man departed, his face grew serious. He sat for a long time plunged in deepest thought. Strange memories must have crowded upon him, for his eyes softened, and the lines of his face relaxed their tension.
But at the end of it he only sighed and shook his head gently and muttered, “It is toil! Not love! Toil!”
Levine, meanwhile, was walking back to his work. He was a compositor in the printing-shop of the _Jewish Workingman_, and it had been his custom, for years, to meet his friend Salvin at the noonday meal in Weiss’s café, where they discussed those problems of life that perplex the minds of thinking men. One problem, Levine felt, had been solved—had been finally and definitely made clear. And the magic had all been worked by Miriam’s eyes—coal-black eyes that now seemed the alpha and omega of all his existence. For Levine, the object of life was Miriam. The sun rose in order that he might look upon her. It set in order that night might bring her sweet repose.
The seasons—what were they but a varying background against which the panorama of love could unfold itself? He toiled—for Miriam. He lived—for Miriam. He thought—always of Miriam. Could there be a simpler explanation of the mysteries of existence? Poor old Salvin! Poor, blind pessimist! After so much pondering to achieve nothing better than that hopeless creed! Toil? Yes, but only as a step toward love—as a means toward the higher end. If man were created for toil, then man were doomed to everlasting animal existence. Whereas love raised him to higher planes, transformed him into a higher, nobler being. Could life desire a sublimer object?
Levine trod on air. In his workshop the walls, the lights, the papers—all that surrounded him—sang to him of love. The presses chanted the melody of Miriam’s eyes all the livelong day. The very stones in the street seemed to him to sing it: “She is fair! She is fair! She is fair!” and “Love is all! Love is all! Love is all!”
* * * * *
One day they were married. Salvin was there, with a hearty clasp of the hand for his friend, and a kiss and a blessing for the bride. And laughingly Levine whispered into his ear, “It is love!” But Salvin was stubborn. He smiled and shook his head playfully. But what he whispered in return was, “It is toil!”
They were married, and the universe joined with them in their pæan of love—love that, like the wind, “bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth.”
* * * * *
Do you know that kind of woman whose temperament is like the smiling sunshine? Miriam was one of these. A light, happy heart—a nature that gloried in the joy of existence—ever ready to sing, to smile, to frolic—sympathetic to all woe, yet realising sorrow only as an external affliction, whose sting she could see, but had never felt—the soul of merriment was Miriam. Her lot in life was an humble one; her task had been severe; but through it all that sunshiny nature had served as a shield to ward off the blows of life. Once—there was a man. For a few hours Miriam’s brow had puckered in deep thought. But the man had been foolish enough to ask for a capitulation—for unconditional surrender—ere the battle had been half fought, and Miriam had shaken her head and had passed him by. Then Levine had come. There was a delicate, poetic strain in his nature that had immediately appealed to her, and his soft words fell upon willing ears. He had wooed her gently, tenderly, caressingly—in marked contrast to the tempestuous courtship that had failed—and he had won. It “bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth!”
Love’s eyes are keen, and Levine was quick to see the change that slowly came over his wife. He could not have explained it; there was no name for it; it baffled analysis. The first time he spoke to her about it she laughed and threw her arms around his neck, saying, “Can’t you see that I am growing older? You cannot expect your wife to remain a silly, giggling girl all her life.”
The second time he spoke to her about it she gave the same answer. She did not embrace him, however. And when she had answered him her face became thoughtful. He spoke to her about it a third time. She looked at him a long time before speaking. Then she said, slowly:
“Yes. I feel like a different woman. But I don’t understand it.” He did not offer to kiss her that night, as was his custom, but waited for her to make the first advance. She did not seem to notice the omission.
He never spoke to her about the matter again. He never kissed her again.
The marvels of a woman’s mind, the leaps and bounds of the emotions, the gamut of passion upon which her fancy plays and lingers—all these are the despair of psychology. Yet their manifestation is sufficiently clear. How it came or whence it came, or why it came, even Miriam herself could not tell. But as a flash of lightning on an inky night reveals with vivid clearness what the darkness conceals, so the sudden revelation that she adored the man whom she had rejected lit up, for a brief moment, the gloom that had fallen upon her heart and laid bare the terrible dreary prospect of her life. It came like a thunderbolt. She loved him. She had always loved him. He was the lord and master whom her heart craved. The fire had been smouldering in her heart. Now it leaped into devouring flame. He loved her! He had fallen upon his knees and had tried to drag her toward him. He had sworn that his life would be wretched without her. And now that she was married he had thrown all the energies of his heart and soul into incessant toil in order that he might forget her. Married? She, the wife of Levine? A cry of despair broke from her lips.
Ah, yes. The lightning flash had passed. But she remembered what its brightness had revealed. She knew now!
For a long time—for many weeks—she often felt an almost irresistible impulse to scream aloud, so that her husband—so that all the world might hear: “I love him! Him only! No one but him.” But the heart learns to bear even agony in silence. Miriam settled down into the monotonous groove that fate had marked out for her. The revelation that had come to her so suddenly developed into a wall that rose between her and her husband. An invisible wall, yet each felt its presence, and after many ineffectual attempts to surmount this barrier, to woo and win her heart anew, Levine abandoned the effort and yielded to despair. She never told him, and he never knew—never even suspected. But after that they lived in different worlds—each equally wretched. For there is only one other lingering misery on earth that can compare with the lot of a woman who is married to one man with her heart and soul bound up in another. It is the lot of her husband.
For Miriam there was no consolation. Her secret was buried in her inmost soul; she was doomed to live out her life brooding over it. During the day she often cried. When her husband came home she met him with a calm face—often with a smile—and then they would sit and talk over trivial matters the while that her agony was eating into her heart.
And Levine—the torments that he endured were beyond all description! Of a sensitive temperament, yet endowed with a clear, critical, philosophic intellect, he sought for an explanation and a remedy in a scrutiny of every incident of their married life, in self-analysis, in the keenest introspection, and found nothing but that insurmountable wall. Nothing seemed credible or tangible save that dull gnawing pain in his heart. Once or twice the thought of self-destruction entered his head. Why he thrust it aside he could not say. He was not a coward. The prospect of fighting his way through life with that burden of misery upon his soul possessed infinitely more terrors for him than the thought of suicide. Nor did he pursue the suggestion sufficiently to come to the conclusion that it was unworthy. It was an alien thought, foreign to his nature, and could find no lodgment. That was all. He lived on and suffered.
Have you ever heard of Levine, the poet? He is a compositor in the printing-shop of the _Jewish Workingman_ by day—he writes poetry, and, occasionally, short prose articles at night. He is not a genius. He is not a born singer. But his work is strong in its sincerity, and through it all runs a strain—that world-old strain of pleading—of weakness pleading for strength, of the oppressed pleading for justice. He is not a great poet, but among the readers of the _Jewish Workingman_, and among the loiterers in the East Side cafés, he is looked upon as a “friend of the masses.” And what they all marvel at is his prodigious industry. A day’s work in the composing-room of the _Jewish Workingman_ is a task calculated to sap a man’s vitality to its last drop. Yet, this task completed, Levine throws himself with feverish activity into the composition of verse, and writes, and writes, and writes, until the lamp burns low. Sometimes, when he tires, he pauses to listen to the gentle breathing of his wife, who sleeps in the next room. It acts like a spur upon him; with renewed energy he plunges into his work.
The poem which the readers of the _Jewish Workingman_ like best of all Levine’s writings is “Phantoms.” It ends—roughly translated from the Yiddish—like this:
_And when the deepening gloom of night descends Upon the perilous path and towering heights, And wild storm phantoms crowd each rocky pass— Love sinks exhausted, but grim Toil climbs on!_
A DAUGHTER OF ISRAEL
There was a young man with a Christian heart and blue eyes—eyes that made you look at him again and smile at his earnestness—who went among the lowly Jews of the East Side to convert them to the faith of the Messiah whom they disowned. Those blue eyes fell, one day, upon a head of hair that gleamed like gold, fiery, red hair, silken and carelessly tangled, and shining in the sunlight. Then the head turned and the young man beheld the face of Bertha, daughter of Tamor, the rabbi. And Bertha opened her eyes, which were brown, and gazed curiously at this young man who seemed out of place in the Ghetto, and smiled and turned away.
A year went by and the Jews still disowned the Messiah, but a great change had come over this young man. In the vague future he still hoped to carry out his daring scheme, but now all his heart and all his soul and all his hopes of earthly happiness were centred upon Bertha, daughter of Tamor, the rabbi.
In the beginning she had been amused at him, but his persistence and his earnestness won their reward, as those qualities always will, and when this first year was at an end it came to pass that this Jewish maiden wept, as a loving woman will weep, for sheer joy of being loved; she a rabbi’s daughter, bred in the traditions of a jealous faith, he a Christian lad.
She had kept the secret of her growing love locked in her heart, but now it became a burden too heavy to be borne, and one night—it was shortly before the fast of Yom Kippur—she poured out her confession into her father’s ear. She told it in whispers, hiding her face in her father’s long beard, and with her arms around his neck. When the full meaning of the revelation dawned upon him, the Rabbi Tamor, ashen pale, sprang from his feet and thrust her from him.
“A Christian!” he cried. “My daughter marry a Christian!”
He was an old man—so old and feeble that in a few days the synagogue had planned to retire him and install a younger rabbi in his place. But now fury gave him strength. His whole frame trembled, but his eyes were flashing fire, and he had raised his arm as if he were about to strike his daughter to the floor. But she did not move. Her eyes were raised to his, tearfully but undismayed.
“Do not strike me, father,” she said. “I cannot help it. I love him. I have promised to marry him. Will you not give me your blessing?”
“Blessings?” cried the infuriated old man. “My curses upon you if you take so foul a step! Your mother would rise from her grave if you married a Christian! How dare you tell such a thing to me—to me, who have devoted so many years to bringing you up in the faith to which I have devoted my life? Is there no son of Israel good enough for you? Must you bring this horrible calamity upon me in my old age? Would you have me read you out of the congregation? If it were the last act of my rabbinate—aye, if it were the last act of my life, I would read out aloud, so that all the world would know my shame, the ban of excommunication that the synagogue would impose upon you! Have I brought you up for this?”
But Bertha had swooned, and his rage fell upon ears that did not hear.
* * * * *
The cup of bitterness was full. Rabbi Tamor knew his daughter, knew the full strength of her nature, the steadfastness of her purpose. He had pleaded, expostulated, argued, and threatened, but all in vain. And to add to his misery he saw in all his daughter’s passionate devotion to her lover something that reminded him more and more vividly of the wife whom he had courted and loved and cherished until death took her from him. Many years had gone by, but whenever his memory grew dim, and her features began to grow indistinct, he had only to look at his daughter to see them before him again, in all their youthful beauty. His daughter, the image of his dead wife, to marry a Christian! It was the bitterness of gall!
The Rabbi Tamor’s father and grandfather had been rabbis before him, and in his veins surged the blood of devotion to Israel’s cause. He had been in this country many years, but the roots of his life had been planted in Russia, in a Ghetto where the traditions of thousands of years still survived in daily life, and in spirit he still dwelt there. To him Christianity meant oppression, persecution, torture. His nature was stern and unbending; there could be no compromise, no palliation; the sinner against Israel was like a venomous serpent that must be crushed without argument. And now his duty was clear.
When the officials of the synagogue met, a few days before Yom Kippur, the Rabbi Tamor, pale and trembling, but firm in his determination, laid before them the case of a young woman who had resolved to marry outside her faith. The officials listened, horror-stricken, but turned to him for the verdict. He was a wise man, they knew, learned in Mishna and Thora, and they had become accustomed to abide by his decisions.
“The warning!” he said, in a low voice. “Let us read aloud the warning of the ban!”
The new rabbi, who by courtesy had been invited to the meeting, and who had listened with interest to Rabbi Tamor’s narrative, raised his hand and leaned forward as if he were about to speak. But when he heard the clerk ask for the girl’s name, and heard Rabbi Tamor, in a hoarse, stifling voice, answer, “Bertha Tamor, my—my daughter!” his hand fell and the words died upon his lips. But he frowned and sat for a long time plunged in deep thought.
* * * * *
Upon the Day of Atonement Bertha fasted. She, too, had gone through a bitter struggle. For a nature like hers to abandon the faith of her race meant a racking of every fibre of soul and body. She had not slept for three nights. Her face was pale, and her eyes were encircled with black shadows. But through all her misery, through all the distress that she felt over her father’s grief, she could not subdue the throbbing of exulting joy that pulsed through her veins, nor blot out from her mind the blue eyes of her lover or the ardour of his kisses. But grief and joy only combined to wear out her vitality; she felt despondent, depressed.
The sun began to sink below the housetops. The day’s fasting and prayer were slowly coming to an end. Bertha went to the synagogue, where, all that day, since sunrise, her father had been praying. The news of the proposed reading of the warning had spread, and when Bertha entered the gallery set aside for women in the synagogue, she felt every eye upon her.
The Yom Kippur service is long, and to him who knows the story of Israel, intensely impressive. When it drew near its close the Rabbi Tamor slowly rose, and with trembling hands unfolded a paper. Several times he cleared his throat as if to speak, but each time his voice seemed to fail him. The silence of death had fallen upon the congregation.