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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Karl Emil Franzos' 'The Jews of Barnow: Stories' is a collection of poignant narratives that offer a vivid portrayal of Jewish life in a small Galician town. Written in a realistic and detailed manner, the stories explore themes of identity, tradition, and modernity within the Jewish community. Franzos' literary style is marked by his precise attention to detail and his ability to evoke the complex emotions of his characters. Set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing world, these stories provide a glimpse into the challenges and triumphs of the Jewish people in the late 19th century. Karl Emil Franzos, a prominent Austrian writer and journalist, drew inspiration for 'The Jews of Barnow' from his extensive travels across Eastern Europe and his deep interest in Jewish culture and history. His firsthand experiences and observations of Jewish communities informed the authenticity and depth of his portrayals in this collection. I highly recommend 'The Jews of Barnow: Stories' to readers interested in exploring the cultural richness of Eastern European Jewish life. Franzos' insightful narratives offer a compelling and enlightening journey into a world teeming with tradition, resilience, and human emotion.
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The Jews of Barnow: Stories
Table of Contents
PREFACE
TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.
Although the high literary art which Franzos possesses (the finer quality of which has been preserved in this translation) is fully admitted by intelligent Jews, the subject-matter of his book itself, its raison d'être, they have by no means relished. In a review of "The Jews of Barnow," published some months ago in a leading New York journal, it was asserted by the writer that, from internal evidence, Franzos must be a Jew. This statement was directly controverted by a Jewish weekly of the highest standing. Still, we must believe that the acumen of the New York reviewer was not at fault, because in a late number of "Blackwood's Magazine," which contained an interesting criticism of Franzos and his book, it was asserted that the author is or was a Jew. No man not born a Jew, perfectly familiar with all the phases of Jewish life in Eastern Galicia, and in sympathy with them, could have created this book. Franzos may have clothed Jews and Jewesses with poetical raiment, given them melodramatic phrasings, but the gabardine, caftan, love-locks, are visible—the whine, the nasal twang audible.
This denial that Franzos was a Jew, though apparently insignificant in itself, and due, perhaps, to a want of acquaintance with the facts, is still peculiarly indicative of a natural travers of the Jewish mind. Any description of the inner life of Jews, when written by a Jew, unless it be laudatory, is particularly distasteful to Jews. No race cares to have its failings exposed. From one of another creed such strictures may be passed over with stolid indifference, but, from one of their own blood, any censure, direct or applied, is considered by Jews in the light of a sacrilege. With Jews it is ever a cry, "It is a dirty bird that fouls its own nest." Such acridity as a Goldwin Smith distills, Jews laugh at; but when one of their kinsmen, a Mr. Montefiore, finds fault with them, bidding them look for grace in another direction, then at once a holy horror pervades them.
What Franzos describes is Jewish life pent up within the narrow limits of some Galician town. Religious dislikes, racial hatreds kindled a thousand years ago, have never been quenched. Though to-day in that town a Jew could not be murdered, because it would be against the law, the inclination to kill him, because he is a Jew, still exists. The simple fact, that every Jew had been taught to read and write, had quickened his brains. Through heredity he became, intellectually, superior to the illiterate peasant, or townsfolk, who hemmed him in. The mental phenomenon the Jew would present, under such conditions, would not be, after all, so peculiar. He had but two ends in life, to work and pray. Even his toil was restricted, for he could only engage in certain callings. His solace was his religion. He might pray to his Maker, but only in such set phrases as had been chosen for him. His God was by far too sublime for him, poor worm, to address in such homely words as might well up spontaneously from his own heart. A slave to tradition, bound down by rote, the Jew had been taught that the least divergence from a cut-and-dried ritual was heresy. Mental and physical isolation brought about arrested development. The only wonder about this all is, that the Jew in Eastern Europe, seeing a better chance for life beyond the pale of his religion, had not broken bounds, and, abjuring his creed, found outside of it an easier existence. Brushing aside that sentimentalism which so often obscures considerations of this character, the chances of security for an apostate Jew were not very certain. Travestied in the guise of a Christian, he never could have looked like one. Stamped on his features were all the marked characteristics of his Orientalism. Even his tongue would have played him false, for the rabbi had forbidden him the use of that language common to the state in which he lived. By some complications brought about by the Jews themselves in Eastern Europe, they are not always subjected to the same regulations as Christians. Religious laws made for their own government, which underpinned their social life, were rarely meddled with. In a primitive society, necessarily ignorant, any accredited head, according to the laws of sociology, must be a despotic one. A rabbi, then, in these unknown towns, wielded almost the power of life and death. That modern infliction of Boycotting has been borrowed directly from the Jews. For a trivial divergence from common custom the punishment was severe. In these Polish or Russian districts, thirty years ago, a Jew did not dare read a Christian book.
What Franzos shows markedly in his "Jews of Barnow" is that barrier which Jews throw around their household. The seclusion of the family, so purely Oriental in its character, is something which the Polish rabbi takes particular pains to teach. This hiding, of what is the finest trait the Jew possesses, that love and peace which dwell in his home, that reverence which children have for their parents, that sacrifice of everything to his affections, because it never is known, has tended more than anything else to alienate the Jew from his neighbor. Among the ultra-orthodox Jews, whether they live in Odessa, Cracow, Frankfort, London, or New York, their doors are inhospitably closed to those of another belief. Has there been transmitted some instinct engendered by mistrust?
Is Judaism, then, so sensitive a plant that it should wither by mere contact? If, to live, it must have seclusion, it approaches closely to the Eastern's idea of a woman's virtue, something wanting the protection of high walls and difficult approaches. In our age, any religion which requires exclusiveness so that it may exist is hardly worth the keeping.
Franzos's stories exhibit those barbarities even now practiced under the sacred name of religion. There are Jews who are not merely galled by the opprobrium which in some places is still attached to their race, but are sincerely desirous of removing it. Franzos, because he describes what is the iron law of Talmudical or rabbinical tradition, shows how superstition degrades the man. It is difficult at this day, when research and modern methods of criticism have thrown such a flood of light on the past, to realize the mental condition of that vast body of Jews at the time of the commencement of the Christian era and the destruction of Jerusalem. The whole national and municipal administration of the country was in the hands of the priesthood. Every law, every ordinance, every police and sanitary regulation, became a religious obligation. Every action in every man's family, whether social or political, was regulated for him by rules handed down from former generations, and these rules were barnacled by conventionalisms. For his guidance in the most commonplace actions, a Jew had perforce recourse to his rabbi. As must always be the case, when municipal administration emanates from a church, religious observances override legal or social obligations. With the crucifixion of Christ came that hatred of Jews, the intensity of which can only now be measured by its continuance. The exclusion of Jews from the society and communion of mankind petrified into marble-like hardness all those existing traditions which guided the Jew's methods of life. Forbidden by every conceivable form of oppression and disability from accompanying the rest of mankind on their march toward a higher civilization, every advance, mental or physical, denied them, it was as if a hot iron had been seared over the bloody wound which had lopped them off from the family of nations. It is a wonder that all future growth was not arrested. As to the charge of tribalism (the writer acknowledging that the vast majority of Jews believe in it), and even according some unknown and undefined power as derivable from tribalism, to make a charge of this is but to repeat the old fable of the wolf and the lamb.
All that intelligent Jews are doing to-day is to take advantage of their freedom. They are trying to rid themselves of that incubus which has been weighing them down. That large and increasing number of Reformers and Reform synagogues, springing up in the large cities of Western Europe and the United States; the decadence, the difficulty of maintaining synagogues of pure orthodox Jews; the complaints, the lamentations which are constantly heard from the mouths of orthodox ministers and their organs, over what they call "the neglect of religious observance," show that the time of change has come. Even among some of the orthodox, the gross superstitions accompanying the offerings (auction-sales of God's blessings, knocked down to the highest bidder) have been for the major part abolished. Efforts are continually made to modify the ritual by denationalizing the older-fashioned form of prayer, and giving it more of that spiritual life which Maimonides first developed. Dietary and physical observances, which the Eastern Jew borrowed or adopted from the nations which once surrounded him, are being expunged.
What is the true reason for this change, a change which, born in America and in England, is now commencing to exert some slight influence in Germany? The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. Every act of wrong done to Jews rendered them the more rigid in their belief, causing at the same time differentiation in their surroundings. Whenever, through the operation of better, more humane laws, oppression was removed, Jews became more like the men among whom they lived. Why should M. Renan find fault with the French Jew, and take the Parisian Israelite as the type of some Hebraic Athenian? Under normal conditions men float in the general current, at about equal depths, for the social law of specific gravity remains forever the same. Those sociologists are ignorant of their calling who demand, then, of the Jew an instantaneous reversal of an existence formed by his surroundings, and a forgetting of the great belief which has been burned into his heart by the fires of thousands of years.
To the American Jew, "The Jews of Barnow" shows very clearly a great many things he may have been ignorant about. Jews who came to this country fifty years since, who by thrift, honesty, and intelligence, have secured an ample store of the world's goods, are prone to forget their early surroundings, or hesitate to tell their American children of that bigotry which existed in their European birth-places. They have educated their children in their own creed; but American school-boys or school-girls have had one inestimable blessing, the contact with an outer world and the opportunity of thinking for themselves. Education and superstition can never have a co-existence. These fathers would feel ashamed, then, did they tell their children the absurdities which they once were taught. That one story of Franzos's, "The Child of Atonement," is a revelation. As an American Jew reads it, he might be inclined to deem the Rabbi of Sadagóra a Torquemada, or that it was a clever creation, having no existence save in the brain of the romance-writer. But it is not a fancy-drawn picture, but had once actual being. Such stories as "The Child of Atonement" and "The Nameless Graves" can not be read by any intelligent Jew without the burning brand of shame rising to his cheeks. As to the truthfulness of many portions of Franzos's book, unfortunately there can be no possible doubt. There may not be many Rabbis of Sadagóra, but excommunication, the cherem, that social inquisition, is as prevalent in Russia and Poland, in 1882, as it was a thousand years ago. The Rabbi of Sadagóra of Franzos's book is dead, but his son actually lives, exercises perhaps not the same cruelties, but attributes to himself the identical miraculous functions as did his wicked father before him, and still this younger medicine-man has his followers.
"The Jews of Barnow" should make the existence of a Rabbi of Sadagóra an impossibility. Jewish women who read "The Jews of Barnow" will be amazed to learn how degraded is the condition of their sex in Eastern Europe. That one horrible text in their prayer-book, said by the men, "Thank God that thou hast not made me a woman," belongs to the period of the coarsest barbarity. It is incorporated in innumerable volumes, now perhaps being printed. Educated Jews who read this vicious paragraph, who think of mother, wife, and daughter, feel the degradation of it, and loathe its interpretation. We can not agree with Frances Power Cobbe in the general application of this sentence of hers, that "something appears to be lacking in Jewish feeling concerning women. Too much of Oriental materialism still lingers. Too little of Occidental chivalry and romance has yet arisen." This might be applicable for the East, even in its most exaggerated sense, but is hardly just to the West. Still, as Franzos tells us in his book, girls are sold to men, and become, it is true, wives, but with as little ceremony as if they were Circassians.
The oldest source of any religion is not the purest, "If it be an historical religion, fanaticism always assumes the form of a return to the primitive type." The ultra-orthodox Jew is ruled by the Ashkenazim of Jerusalem, the most superstitious, the most ignorant of men. This sect still fights for power. Even the purity of the Ashkenazim's belief, monotheism, the only thing left it, must be taken with suspicion, because the sanity or sincerity of any Cabalist is to be doubted.
There are little, if any, differences existing in the social strata, educated or uneducated, which uphold Christian beliefs. If Rome is the fountain-head of Catholicity, Jerusalem ought to be the true source whence Hebraism flows. The Holy City of the Jews does exert its influence over millions of the ultra-orthodox, but for educated Israelites has no more weight than have the decrees of any miracle-working rabbi who holds forth in Cracow. If there be in Russia, Finland, Scandinavia, Austria, Hungary, Roumania, Turkey, some five and a half million Jews, and in England, France, and the United States, half a million more, what a vast proportion are steeped in darkness!
What does as much as anything else to injure the Jew, and to make mankind his enemy, is that belief he entertains that he is the race "God cherishes most." This is, indeed, tribalism. Selected by the Creator as his special favorites, pious Jews think that to them "all blessings shall be given." Once it was believed that a Jew's brain was made of a finer material, that he was less subject to dementia, than others. Some very sad personal observations assure the writer that such is not the case. If anything, in that struggle for wealth in which Jews engage in the large cities of the United States, they have children more prone to feeble-mindedness than Christians. The close-marriage system of the Jews may in a certain measure induce degeneracy by exhaustion of the original stock, for the laws of nature are inexorable, and act alike in Christian or Mohammedan. That preservation of his race is something the Jew most particularly prides himself about. The Parsee, who for so long a time has had a religion apart, presents the precise condition of an isolated existence which the Jew is so proud of. Morality, continence, the sacred character of the marriage-ties, do in a certain measure preserve the Jewish race, but the miraculous in such fractional existence has nothing marvelous about it. This self-laudation of race, that "pride-belief," is the most difficult to eradicate, for it has been the consolation of an oppressed race.
What, then, is reform, this Jewish reform? It is pure, unadulterated monotheism. It believes that men, though they may expound religion, can not create it. It looks on the Talmud, as did Emanuel Deutsch, as the most poetical, the most confusing of chronicles, but utterly worthless for the guidance of any human being—a curiosity, patched over, embroidered, by a thousand different hands, something to be placed in a cabinet, to be gazed on, but as practically useless for human instruction as would be the Arthurian romances. Yahya ibn Main was a worshiper of the Prophet, and labored all his life to purify the text of his Koran, and thus he is recorded to have said: "I wrote down numbers of traditions under the dictation of liars, and made use of the paper for heating my ovens. I thus obtained at least one advantage—my bread was well baked." One saying in the Talmud is applicable to it: "They dived into the ocean and brought up a potsherd." Oh, the olla-podrida of nonsense in it! And still it shapes the lives of millions of Jews; it warps their ways, for it is almost their only book.
The Reformer is no iconoclast, he is educated enough not to wish to destroy this relic of a past, but he is striving to expunge it, to deprive the Talmud from exerting its baleful influence. The reformed Jew believes in a God of mercy—one of love. He thinks that his Creator is not a vengeful being. He does not believe that Christ was the Son of God, doubts even a coming Messiah, but thinks that modern teachings have done for man's immortal soul what the older lawgivers did for grosser flesh and blood only. What the Reformer desires most especially is that he shall have readers, clergymen (call them what you please), who shall not only be familiar with the language they live in, but have the highest, the very highest education, be in fact the equals of those who preach to their Christian friends. These Reformers sicken over those attempts of crass ignorance which, through the borrowed sanctity of a salaried office, assume the direction of educated intelligence. The majority of these Reformers are utterly indifferent to dietary regulations. Can peace with God, a resurrection of the soul after the death of the body, entrance to heaven, have anything to do with the eating of a mollusk? Could the great Creator have made food for one man which another dare not eat? Trivialities, mixed up in religion, debase it, weaken it, sap it to its very vitals. A stronger, more hearty belief must emancipate itself from puerilities. A reformed Jew can not be a materialist, though he may strip religion of its symbolisms.
Millennium is far distant, and a Bishop of Sadagóra and a Goldwin Smith may never, perhaps, lie in the same bed, or sup at the same banquet, for both of them represent that antagonism which inflamed England in King John's time, or is rampant to-day with Pastor Stöcker in King William of Prussia's reign. "Every country has the Jews it deserves," writes Franzos, quoting the most direful of sayings. God help, in his infinite mercy, American-born Jews if, in generations to come, this cruel speech had ever an application! It might arise from their own errors, and the faults of their surroundings. It would mean, however, nothing less than the political degradation of that country in which Christian and Jew live. Mr. Froude has been much blamed, little lauded, for what he wrote in regard to an oppressed race. It was somewhat as follows: that those who could not fight for their freedom did not deserve it.
It sometimes happens that fiction produces effects where facts fail. It is believed, then, that Franzos's stories will not only be of interest to numerous readers, but in the hands of the reformed Jew, by means of the lessons it teaches, help him in his earnest efforts to save his race from retrogression.
Barnet Phillips.
PREFACE.
The following stories, the scene of which is laid in the Podolian Ghetto, were my first literary attempt. They were for the most part written while I was at the university, and were published in various journals. Owing to circumstances, another and later book—"Aus Halb-Asien"—was the first to come out; for this youthful work was not published as a whole until 1876. I mention this, although it is visible from internal evidence, to explain my choice of subjects. The preface to that edition gives a further account of this, and from it I make the following quotations:
"When I took up my pen four years ago, I strongly felt the necessity of making my work as artistic as possible. I wished to write stories, and strove to give them poetic value. For this very reason, it seemed necessary that I should describe the kind of life with which I was best acquainted. This was essentially the case with regard to that of the Podolian Jews. I therefore became the historian of the Podolian Ghetto, and it was my great desire to give these stories an artistic form; but not at the cost of truth. I have never permitted my love of the beautiful to lead me into the sin of falsifying the facts and conditions of life, and am confident that I have described this strange and outlandish mode of existence precisely as it appeared to me. If in my first published volume my efforts to portray men and manners needed the assistance of my powers as a novelist, so in this book my knowledge of men and manners has to help me in my labors as a novelist. Sometimes the one side of my character takes the upper hand, and sometimes the other; but still they are at bottom inseparable, and it has always been my endeavor to describe facts artistically. However the novelist may be judged, the portrayer of men and manners demands that his words should be believed.
"This request is not superfluous, for it is a very strange mode of life to which I am about to introduce the reader. The influences and counter-influences that affect it are only touched upon in this book. Had I given a full account of them in an introduction, the introduction would, in all likelihood have been longer than the book. I have therefore refrained from doing it, and believe that I was right in making this decision. For I have kept before my eyes, while penning these stories, that I am writing for a Western reader. If he will only trust to my love of truth, and regard the separate stories in combination with each other, he will gain a clear idea of the kind of life I describe without any further particulars. I would repeat one sentence, the truth of which is shown in my first book: 'Every country has the Jews that it deserves'—and it is not the fault of the Polish Jews that they are less civilized than their brethren in the faith in England, Germany, and France. At least, it is not entirely their fault.
"No one can do more than his nature permits. This book is to a certain extent polemical, and the stories are written with an object. I do not deny that this is the case, and do not think it requires any excuse. Still I have never allowed myself to sin against truth in the pursuit of this object. I do not make the Polish Jews out to be either better or worse than they really are. These stories are not written for the purpose of holding up the Eastern Jews to obloquy or admiration, but with the object of throwing as much light as I could in dark places."
The second edition, published in 1877, only differed from the first in a few alterations made in the language; but the third edition (from which this translation is taken) is not only enlarged, but is also changed in several important particulars. I examined each story carefully, and strove to bring all into a distinct connection with each other, thus giving a clear idea of Polish Judaism regarded as a whole. For this reason new tales were introduced: they describe Jewish customs that had been at first passed over in silence, but which were necessary for the proper appreciation of the subject.
This work has been translated into all European languages, as well as into Hebrew; and now I have the pleasure of being able to lay it before the English public, by whom I hope it will receive as kind a reception as it has been given elsewhere. I hope so less for my own sake than in the interest of the unfortunate people whose life it describes.
Karl Emil Franzos.
Vienna.
THE SHYLOCK OF BARNOW.
(1873.)
The Jew's great white house stands exactly opposite the old gray monastery of the Dominicans, and close to the public road that leads from Lemberg to Skala, passing through the gloomy little town of Barnow on the way. The people born in the small dirty houses of the Ghetto grow up with a feeling of the deepest respect and admiration for this house and its owner, old Moses Freudenthal. Both house and man are the pride of Barnow; and both in their own way justify this pride.
To describe the house in the first place. It really seems to be conscious of its own grandeur as it stands there proud and stately in all the dignity of white-washed cleanliness, the long windows of the first floor bright and shining, and the painted shutters of the shop-windows coming down to the very ground at either side of the great folding-doors which stand invitingly open. For it is a house of entertainment, and the nobles of the country-side know how to take advantage of its superior attractions when they come to town on magisterial business, or attend the weekly market. It is also patronized by the cavalry officers who are stationed in the villages in the neighborhood, whenever the boredom of country quarters drives them into town. Besides this, the house is let in suites of apartments, and the greatest of the magnates of Barnow, such as the district judge and the doctor, live there. But it would be difficult to give a list of all the house contains, the ground-floor is so crowded. In one room is a lottery agency, then come the offices of a company for insuring cattle, men, and corn; and again, a drapery establishment, a grocer's shop, a room in which gentlemen may drink their wine, and another where the poor man can enjoy his glass of brandy-and-water. But then, the lottery agent, the agent of the insurance company, the draper, the grocer, and the innkeeper are one and all—Moses Freudenthal.
But the tall stern-looking old man to whom the house belongs is even more worthy of notice than it and all it contains. His family has been the grandest in the town as long as people can remember, and to him belongs of right the chief place in the synagogue. His father had been appointed head of the session on the death of his grandfather, and when his father died he was chosen as his successor without a dissentient voice, and by the unsolicited vote of the whole congregation. He is regarded as one of the most pious and honorable men in the Jewish community. Added to this is his wealth—his enormous wealth!
His co-religionists regard him as a millionaire, and they are right. For he not only possesses the big white house and all that is in it, but he has every reason to look upon several of the estates in the neighborhood as more really belonging to him than to the Polish nobles who live on them. And then Komorowka is his also. This beautiful place fell into his hands when little Count Smólski and his lovely wife Aurora lost it by their extravagance after a very few years' possession. Komorowka is indeed a lovely place. No wonder that when the time came for Count Smólski to leave his old home, he was in such utter despair that he sought to forget his woes in the worst fit of drunkenness of his whole life.
Would you be much surprised if you were now told that Moses Freudenthal was not only the richest and proudest, but also the most envied, man in Barnow?
But this he is not. Ask the poorest man in the Jewish town—the teacher of the law, who, with his six children, often suffers from the pangs of hunger, or the water-carriers, who groan under the heavy pails they bear from morning to night from the town-well—ask these men whether they would exchange lots with Moses, and they will at once answer, "No." For Freudenthal's sorrow is even greater than his wealth.
It is true that you can not read this in his face as he stands, tall and stately, in the doorway of his house. His silver-gray hair falls down below his black velvet skull-cap; the two long curls that hang, one at each side of the face, as is the fashion of the Chassidim, are also silver-gray and thin. But his figure is still strong and upright, and the curiously cut Jewish coat that he wears, resembling a talar in shape, and made of black cloth, is by no means an unbecoming garment. The old man stands almost motionless watching the painter who is busy painting the doors of the spirit-shop a bright arsenic green, with bottles, glasses, and bretzeln,[1] in yellow and white upon the green background. He seldom turns to acknowledge the greeting of a passer-by, for but few people are in the streets to-day. Now and then a group of Ruthenian peasants may be seen reeling out of the town-gate, or a nobleman drives past in his light britzska, or perhaps it is some poor peddler, who has been wandering the whole week long from farm to farm in the district, exchanging money and cloth for the sheepskins, laden with which he is returning to town. His burden is heavy and his gain is but small, yet his pale, worn, and, it may be, cunning face is not without a gleam of joy and pride. A few hours later and the miserable ragged Jewish peddler, on whom farmers and nobles had tried the weight of their whips, and on whom they had made many a scurrilous jest, is transformed into a proud prince awaiting the arrival of his lovely bride—the day of rest, the Sabbath.
He has not long to wait now, the Friday afternoon is drawing to a close, and the sun will soon set. Preparations for the day of rest are being made in every house; the sunlit street is almost totally deserted. Herr Lozinski, the district judge, a tall, thin, yellow-faced man, is coming down the street accompanied by a young stranger. He stands at the door for a few minutes talking to Moses before going up-stairs to his rooms. They discuss the badness of the times, the low price of silver, and the promising April weather; for it is a real spring day, more like May than anything else. The streets are very dry, except for a few puddles in the market-place; the air is deliciously soft and warm, and yonder in the monk's garden the fruit-trees and elder bushes are covered with blossom. The Christian children coming home from school are shouting, "Spring! spring is coming!" "Yes, spring is coming," says the district judge, taking off his hat and leading his guest up-stairs. "Spring is coming," repeats old Moses, passing his hand across his forehead as if awakening from a dream. … "Spring is coming!"
"Old Moses is a very remarkable man," says the district judge to the new registrar. "I scarcely know whether to call him eccentric or not. You won't believe it, but he knows as much law as the best barrister in the land. And besides that, he's the richest man in the country-side. He is said to be worth millions! And yet he slaves week-in, week-out, as though he hadn't the wherewithal to buy his Sabbath dinner."
"A niggardly money-grubber like all the Jews," says the registrar, making the smoke of his cigar curl slowly in the air.
"H'm! By no means. He is generous. I must confess that he is very generous. But his generosity gives him no more pleasure than his wealth. Yet he goes on speculating as before. And for whom, if you please—for whom?"
"Has he no children?" inquires the other.
"Yes. That's to say, he has and he hasn't. Ask him, and he will tell you that he has none. But you don't know his story, do you? … Every one here knows it—but then, you see, you come from Lemberg. I suppose that you never heard any one speak of the old man's daughter, beautiful Esther Freudenthal, when you were there? The whole affair is very romantic; I must tell it you. … "
The old man, whose story every one knows, is still leaning against the doorway of his house, watching the flower-laden branches of the fruit-trees in the cloister garden as they sway in the breeze. What is he thinking of? It can not be of his business; for his eyes are wet with unshed tears, and his lips tremble for a moment as though with stifled grief. He shades his eyes with his hand, as if the sunlight were blinding him. Then he draws himself up, and shakes his head, as though trying to rid himself of the sad thoughts that oppress him.
"Make haste, the Sabbath is drawing nigh," he says to the painter as he approaches to examine his work more closely.
The little humpback, who wears a shabby frogged coat of a fashion only known in Poland, has just finished the folding-doors, and now limps away to the window-shutters, paint-pot in hand. These shutters had formerly been colored a bright crimson, and their faded surface still bears the almost illegible inscription in white letters: "For ready money to-day—to-morrow gratis." Their glory has long since departed, and the little man, quickly filling his brush with the vivid green, begins to paint over them, saying as he works, "Do you remember, Pani Moschko, that I painted this too?" and with that he points to the dirty brown-red of the first coloring.
But Moses is thinking of other things, and scarcely heeding him, answers with an indifferent, "Really."
"Of course I did," continues the little man eagerly. "Don't you remember? I painted it fifteen years ago on just such another beautiful day as this is. The house was quite new, and I was a young fellow then. When I had finished my work, you looked at it, and said, 'I am pleased with you, Janko.' You were standing in front of the door, just where you are now, I verily believe, and your little Esterka was beside you. Holy Virgin! how lovely the child was! And how pleasant it was to hear her laugh when she saw the white letters appearing one after the other on the red ground! She asked what they meant, the darling! You gave me three Theresien zwanzigers[2] for my work. I remember it as distinctly as if it were yesterday. I thought then that it was my last job in Barnow; for old Herr von Polanski wanted to send me to the school of design at Cracow. But soon afterward he lost every farthing he possessed, and was even obliged to sell his daughter Jadwiga in order to get food to eat, and so I remained a house-painter. Ah yes! man proposes and. … Deuce take it! The old man's gone, and here I am gossiping away to the empty air. I suppose that the Jew is counting his money as usual. … "
But Janko is mistaken. Moses Freudenthal is not counting his treasures at this moment. Indeed he would probably give up all that he possesses without a sigh could he thereby rid his life of what has made him poorer and more wretched than the beggar at his gates. He has taken refuge in the large dusky sitting-room, into which no ray of sunlight, and no sound of the human voice, can penetrate. He can now throw himself into his arm-chair, and sob from the bottom of his heart without any one asking him what is the matter; he can let his head fall upon his breast, tear his hair, or cover his face with his hands. … He does not weep, or pray, nor yet does he curse; he moans out in pain, the words echoing in the quiet room, "How pleasant it was to hear the child's laugh! … " Thus he sits alone in the twilight. At last he gets up and raises his eyes as if in prayer—nay, rather as a man who demands a right. "O God!" he cries, "I do not ask that she may come back to me, for I made my servants drive her from my door; I do not ask that she may be happy, for she has sinned grievously in the sight of God and man; I do not ask that she may be unhappy, for she is my own flesh and blood; I only ask that she may die, so that I may not have to curse my only child. Let her die, O God, let her die, or let me! … "
Meanwhile the district judge is concluding his story in the room above. "No one knows what has become of the pretty little girl. She is forgotten; her father even doesn't seem to remember her existence. They're a heartless race these Jews; they're all alike. … "
It has grown dusk in the town, but there is no gloom in the hearts of its Jewish inhabitants. The dismal irregularly built houses of the Ghetto are now enlivened by thousands of candles, and thousands of happy faces. The Sabbath has begun in the hearts of these people and in their rooms, a common and usual occurrence, and yet a mysterious and blessed influence that drives away all that is poor and mean in everyday life. To-day, every hovel is lighted up, and every heart made glad with sufficiency of food. The teacher of the law has forgotten his hunger, the water-carrier his hard work, the peddler the blows and derision that continually fall to his lot, and the rich usurer his gain. To-day all are equal; all are the happy trustful sons of the same Almighty Father. The feeble light of the tallow-candle in its rude candlestick, and the soft light of the wax-candle in the silver candelabra, illumine the same picture. The daughters of the house and the little boys sit silently watching their mother, as she, in obedience to the beautiful old custom handed down from generation to generation, blesses the candles. The father then takes the large prayer-book down from the book-shelf and gives it to his eldest son to carry to the synagogue for him. After that they all go out into the street, the men and women keeping apart, as the strict law commands. Their words are few, and those they utter are grave and quiet. To-day neither grief nor joy finds vent in speech, for all hearts are full of the divine peace of the Sabbath. …
The large white house opposite the Dominican monastery is also illuminated. But the candles were lighted by a stranger, for there is no mistress there to speak the customary blessing. The finest linen covers the tables in the best parlor, which is handsomely furnished, but no child's merry laugh, and no loving word is heard there. The melancholy sound of the sputtering candles alone disturbs the stillness.
But the old man who now enters the room in his Sabbath suit has been accustomed to this state of things for years—for five long years. At first he used involuntarily to turn and listen for the sound of the voice he loved so well; for it was on an evening such as this that his child had left him. But this evening he crosses the room quickly, and taking the heavy leather-bound prayer-book from the shelf, leaves the room at once. Does he fear that to-day of all days the ghosts of the past will come forth to meet him from every corner of the well-lighted room?
If that be the case, it is foolish to fly from them, Moses Freudenthal! See, they dog your footsteps wherever you go through the narrow gloomy little streets. They whisper in your ear, even though you strive to drown their voices by entering into conversation with the passers-by. They appear before your very eyes in spite of your fixing them upon the votive tablets fastened to the pillars in the house of God! And when you pass through the congregation and take your seat in your accustomed place, they flutter around your head, look at you out of the very letters of your prayer-book, and speak to you in the voice of the officiating minister! …
"Praise ye the Lord. Break out into joy, gladness, and song. For He judgeth the world with righteousness and the people with His truth."
"And the solitary," cries a secret voice in the heart of the unhappy man, "shall He break in pieces!" His eyes are fixed upon his book, his lips whisper the words of prayer; but he does not pray, he can not! The whole of his past life rises ghost-like before his mental vision, and in such vivid detail as to cause him intense agony. …
