Children of the Ghetto

by Израэль Зангвилл

  "But he is not satisfied," said Mr. Belcovitch.

  "I don't see why he shouldn't be," said the Shalotten Shammos. "A pound a week is luxury for a single man."

  The Sons of the Covenant did not know that the poor consumptive Maggid sent half his salary to his sisters in Poland to enable them to buy back their husbands from military service; also they had vague unexpressed ideas that he was not mortal, that Heaven would look after his larder, that if the worst came to the worst he could fall back on Cabalah and engage himself with the mysteries of food-creation.

  "I have a wife and family to keep on a pound a week," grumbled Greenberg the Chazan.

  Besides being Reader, Greenberg blew the horn and killed cattle and circumcised male infants and educated children and discharged the functions of beadle and collector. He spent a great deal of his time in avoiding being drawn into the contending factions of the congregation and in steering equally between Belcovitch and the Shalotten Shammos. The Sons only gave him fifty a year for all his trouble, but they eked it out by allowing him to be on the Committee, where on the question of a rise in the Reader's salary he was always an ineffective minority of one. His other grievance was that for the High Festivals the Sons temporarily engaged a finer voiced Reader and advertised him at raised prices to repay themselves out of the surplus congregation. Not only had Greenberg to play second fiddle on these grand occasions, but he had to iterate "Pom" as a sort of musical accompaniment in the pauses of his rival's vocalization.

  "You can't compare yourself with the Maggid" the Shalotten Shammos reminded him consolingly. "There are hundreds of you in the market. There are several morceaux of the service which you do not sing half so well as your predecessor; your horn-blowing cannot compete with Freedman's of the Fashion Street Chevrah, nor can you read the Law as quickly and accurately as Prochintski. I have told you over and over again you confound the air of the Passover Yigdal with the New Year ditto. And then your preliminary flourish to the Confession of Sin-it goes 'Ei, Ei, Ei, Ei, Ei, Ei, Ei'" (he mimicked Greenberg's melody) "whereas it should be 'Oi, Oi, Oi, Oi, Oi, Oi.'"

  "Oh no," interrupted Belcovitch. "All the Chazanim I've ever heard do it 'Ei, Ei, Ei.'"

  "You are not entitled to speak on this subject, Belcovitch," said the Shalotten Shammos warmly. "You are a Man-of-the-Earth. I have heard every great Chazan in Europe."

  "What was good enough for my father is good enough for me," retorted Belcovitch. "The Shool he took me to at home had a beautiful Chazan, and he always sang it 'Ei, Ei, Ei.'"

  "I don't care what you heard at home. In England every Chazan sings 'Oi, Oi, Oi.'"

  "We can't take our tune from England," said Karlkammer reprovingly. "England is a polluted country by reason of the Reformers whom we were compelled to excommunicate."

  "Do you mean to say that my father was an Epicurean?" asked Belcovitch indignantly. "The tune was as Greenberg sings it. That there are impious Jews who pray bareheaded and sit in the synagogue side by side with the women has nothing to do with it."

  The Reformers did neither of these things, but the Ghetto to a man believed they did, and it would have been countenancing their blasphemies to pay a visit to their synagogues and see. It was an extraordinary example of a myth flourishing in the teeth of the facts, and as such should be useful to historians sifting "the evidence of contemporary writers."

  The dispute thickened; the synagogue hummed with "Eis" and "Ois" not in concord.

  "Shah!" said the President at last. "Make an end, make an end!"

  "You see he knows I'm right," murmured the Shalotten Shammos to his circle.

  "And if you are!" burst forth the impeached Greenberg, who had by this time thought of a retort. "And if I do sing the Passover Yigdal instead of the New Year, have I not reason, seeing I have no bread in the house? With my salary I have Passover all the year round."

  The Chazan's sally made a good impression on his audience if not on his salary. It was felt that he had a just grievance, and the conversation was hastily shifted to the original topic.

  "We mustn't forget the Maggid draws crowds here every Saturday and Sunday afternoon," said Mendel Hyams. "Suppose he goes over to a Chevrah that will pay him more!"

  "No, he won't do that," said another of the Committee. "He will remember that we brought him out of Poland."

  "Yes, but we shan't have room for the audiences soon," said Belcovitch. "There are so many outsiders turned away every time that I think we ought to let half the applicants enjoy the first two hours of the sermon and the other half the second two hours."

  "No, no, that would be cruel," said Karlkammer. "He will have to give the Sunday sermons at least in a larger synagogue. My own Shool, the German, will be glad to give him facilities."

  "But what if they want to take him altogether at a higher salary?" said Mendel.

  "No, I'm on the Committee, I'll see to that," said Karlkammer reassuringly.

  "Then do you think we shall tell him we can't afford to give him more?" asked Belcovitch.

  There was a murmur of assent with a fainter mingling of dissent. The motion that the Maggid's application be refused was put to the vote and carried by a large majority.

  It was the fate of the Maggid to be the one subject on which Belcovitch and the Shalotten Shammos agreed. They agreed as to his transcendent merits and they agreed as to the adequacy of his salary.

  "But he's so weakly," protested Mendel Hyams, who was in the minority. "He coughs blood."

  "He ought to go to a sunny place for a week," said Belcovitch compassionately.

  "Yes, he must certainly have that," said Karlkammer. "Let us add as a rider that although we cannot pay him more per week, he must have a week's holiday in the country. The Shalotten Shammos shall write the letter to Rothschild."

  Rothschild was a magic name in the Ghetto; it stood next to the Almighty's as a redresser of grievances and a friend of the poor, and the Shalotten Shammos made a large part of his income by writing letters to it. He charged twopence halfpenny per letter, for his English vocabulary was larger than any other scribe's in the Ghetto, and his words were as much longer than theirs as his body. He also filled up printed application forms for Soup or Passover cakes, and had a most artistic sense of the proportion of orphans permissible to widows and a correct instinct for the plausible duration of sicknesses.

  The Committee agreed nem. con. to the grant of a seaside holiday, and the Shalotten Shammos with a gratified feeling of importance waived his twopence halfpenny. He drew up a letter forthwith, not of course in the name of the Sons of the Covenant, but in the Maggid's own.

  He took the magniloquent sentences to the Maggid for signature. He found the Maggid walking up and down Royal Street waiting for the verdict. The Maggid walked with a stoop that was almost a permanent bow, so that his long black beard reached well towards his baggy knees. His curved eagle nose was grown thinner, his long coat shinier, his look more haggard, his corkscrew earlocks were more matted, and when he spoke his voice was a tone more raucous. He wore his high hat-a tall cylinder that reminded one of a weather-beaten turret.

  The Shalotten Shammos explained briefly what he had done.

  "May thy strength increase!" said the Maggid in the Hebrew formula of gratitude.

  "Nay, thine is more important," replied the Shalotten Shammos with hilarious heartiness, and he proceeded to read the letter as they walked along together, giant and doubled-up wizard.

  "But I haven't got a wife and six children," said the Maggid, for whom one or two phrases stood out intelligible. "My wife is dead and I never was blessed with a Kaddish."

  "It sounds better so," said the Shalotten Shammos authoritatively. "Preachers are expected to have heavy families dependent upon them. It would sound lies if I told the truth."

  This was an argument after the Maggid's own heart, but it did not quite convince him.

  "But they will send and make inquiries," he murmured.

  "Then your family are in Poland; you send your m
oney over there."

  "That is true," said the Maggid feebly. "But still it likes me not."

  "You leave it to me," said the Shalotten Shammos impressively. "A shamefaced man cannot learn, and a passionate man cannot teach. So said Hillel. When you are in the pulpit I listen to you; when I have my pen in hand, do you listen to me. As the proverb says, if I were a Rabbi the town would burn. But if you were a scribe the letter would burn. I don't pretend to be a Maggid, don't you set up to be a letter writer."

  "Well, but do you think it's honorable?"

  "Hear, O Israel!" cried the Shalotten Shammos, spreading out his palms impatiently. "Haven't I written letters for twenty years?"

  The Maggid was silenced. He walked on brooding. "And what is this place, Burnmud, I ask to go to?" he inquired.

  "Bournemouth," corrected the other. "It is a place on the South coast where all the most aristocratic consumptives go."

  "But it must be very dear," said the poor Maggid, affrighted.

  "Dear? Of course it's dear," said the Shalotten Shammos pompously. "But shall we consider expense where your health is concerned?"

  The Maggid felt so grateful he was almost ashamed to ask whether he could eat kosher there, but the Shalotten Shammos, who had the air of a tall encyclopaedia, set his soul at rest on all points.

  CHAPTER XIII. SUGARMAN'S BAR-MITZVAH PARTY.

  The day of Ebenezer Sugarman's Bar-mitzvah duly arrived. All his sins would henceforth be on his own head and everybody rejoiced. By the Friday evening so many presents had arrived-four breastpins, two rings, six pocket-knives, three sets of Machzorim or Festival Prayer-books, and the like-that his father barred up the door very carefully and in the middle of the night, hearing a mouse scampering across the floor, woke up in a cold sweat and threw open the bedroom window and cried "Ho! Buglers!" But the "Buglers" made no sign of being scared, everything was still and nothing purloined, so Jonathan took a reprimand from his disturbed wife and curled himself up again in bed.

  Sugarman did things in style and through the influence of a client the confirmation ceremony was celebrated in "Duke's Plaizer Shool." Ebenezer, who was tall and weak-eyed, with lank black hair, had a fine new black cloth suit and a beautiful silk praying-shawl with blue stripes, and a glittering watch-chain and a gold ring and a nice new Prayer-book with gilt edges, and all the boys under thirteen made up their minds to grow up and be responsible for their sins as quick as possible. Ebenezer walked up to the Reading Desk with a dauntless stride and intoned his Portion of the Law with no more tremor than was necessitated by the musical roulades, and then marched upstairs, as bold as brass, to his mother, who was sitting up in the gallery, and who gave him a loud smacking kiss that could be heard in the four corners of the synagogue, just as if she were a real lady.

  Then there was the Bar-mitzvah breakfast, at which Ebenezer delivered an English sermon and a speech, both openly written by the Shalotten Shammos, and everybody commended the boy's beautiful sentiments and the beautiful language in which they were couched. Mrs. Sugarman forgot all the trouble Ebenezer had given her in the face of his assurances of respect and affection and she wept copiously. Having only one eye she could not see what her Jonathan saw, and what was spoiling his enjoyment of Ebenezer's effusive gratitude to his dear parents for having trained him up in lofty principles.

  It was chiefly male cronies who had been invited to breakfast, and the table had been decorated with biscuits and fruit and sweets not appertaining to the meal, but provided for the refreshment of the less-favored visitors-such as Mr. and Mrs. Hyams-who would be dropping in during the day. Now, nearly every one of the guests had brought a little boy with him, each of whom stood like a page behind his father's chair.

  Before starting on their prandial fried fish, these trencher-men took from the dainties wherewith the ornamental plates were laden and gave thereof to their offspring. Now this was only right and proper, because it is the prerogative of children to "nash" on these occasions. But as the meal progressed, each father from time to time, while talking briskly to his neighbor, allowed his hand to stray mechanically into the plates and thence negligently backwards into the hand of his infant, who stuffed the treasure into his pockets. Sugarman fidgeted about uneasily; not one surreptitious seizure escaped him, and every one pricked him like a needle. Soon his soul grew punctured like a pin-cushion. The Shalotten Shammos was among the worst offenders, and he covered his back-handed proceedings with a ceaseless flow of complimentary conversation.

  "Excellent fish, Mrs. Sugarman," he said, dexterously slipping some almonds behind his chair.

  "What?" said Mrs. Sugarman, who was hard of hearing.

  "First-class plaice!" shouted the Shalotten Shammos, negligently conveying a bunch of raisins.

  "So they ought to be," said Mrs. Sugarman in her thin tinkling accents, "they were all alive in the pan."

  "Ah, did they twitter?" said Mr. Belcovitch, pricking up his ears.

  "No," Bessie interposed. "What do you mean?"

  "At home in my town," said Mr. Belcovitch impressively, "a fish made a noise in the pan one Friday."

  "Well? and suppose?" said the Shalotten Shammos, passing a fig to the rear, "the oil frizzles."

  "Nothing of the kind," said Belcovitch angrily, "A real living noise. The woman snatched it out of the pan and ran with it to the Rabbi. But he did not know what to do. Fortunately there was staying with him for the Sabbath a travelling Saint from the far city of Ridnik, a Chasid, very skilful in plagues and purifications, and able to make clean a creeping thing by a hundred and fifty reasons. He directed the woman to wrap the fish in a shroud and give it honorable burial as quickly as possible. The funeral took place the same afternoon and a lot of people went in solemn procession to the woman's back garden and buried it with all seemly rites, and the knife with which it had been cut was buried in the same grave, having been defiled by contact with the demon. One man said it should be burned, but that was absurd because the demon would be only too glad to find itself in its native element, but to prevent Satan from rebuking the woman any more its mouth was stopped with furnace ashes. There was no time to obtain Palestine earth, which would have completely crushed the demon."

  "The woman must have committed some Avirah" said Karlkammer.

  "A true story!" said the Shalotten Shammos, ironically. "That tale has been over Warsaw this twelvemonth."

  "It occurred when I was a boy," affirmed Belcovitch indignantly. "I remember it quite well. Some people explained it favorably. Others were of opinion that the soul of the fishmonger had transmigrated into the fish, an opinion borne out by the death of the fishmonger a few days before. And the Rabbi is still alive to prove it-may his light continue to shine-though they write that he has lost his memory."

  The Shalotten Shammos sceptically passed a pear to his son. Old Gabriel Hamburg, the scholar, came compassionately to the raconteur's assistance.

  "Rabbi Solomon Maimon," he said, "has left it on record that he witnessed a similar funeral in Posen."

  "It was well she buried it," said Karlkammer. "It was an atonement for a child, and saved its life."

  The Shalotten Shammos laughed outright.

  "Ah, laugh not," said Mrs. Belcovitch. "Or you might laugh with blood. It isn't for my own sins that I was born with ill-matched legs."

  "I must laugh when I hear of God's fools burying fish anywhere but in their stomach," said the Shalotten Shammos, transporting a Brazil nut to the rear, where it was quickly annexed by Solomon Ansell, who had sneaked in uninvited and ousted the other boy from his coign of vantage.

  The conversation was becoming heated; Breckeloff turned the topic.

  "My sister has married a man who can't play cards," he said lugubriously.

  "How lucky for her," answered several voices.

  "No, it's just her black luck," he rejoined. "For he will play."

  There was a burst of laughter and then the company remembered that Breckeloff was a Badchan or jester.

  "Wh
y, your sister's husband is a splendid player," said Sugarman with a flash of memory, and the company laughed afresh.

  "Yes," said Breckeloff. "But he doesn't give me the chance of losing to him now, he's got such a stuck-up Kotzon. He belongs to Duke's Plaizer Shool and comes there very late, and when you ask him his birthplace he forgets he was a Pullack and says becomes from 'behind Berlin.'"

  These strokes of true satire occasioned more merriment and were worth a biscuit to Solomon Ansell vice the son of the Shalotten Shammos.

  Among the inoffensive guests were old Gabriel Hamburg, the scholar, and young Joseph Strelitski, the student, who sat together. On the left of the somewhat seedy Strelitski pretty Bessie in blue silk presided over the coffee-pot. Nobody knew whence Bessie had stolen her good looks: probably some remote ancestress! Bessie was in every way the most agreeable member of the family, inheriting some of her father's brains, but wisely going for the rest of herself to that remote ancestress.

  Gabriel Hamburg and Joseph Strelitski had both had relations with No. 1 Royal Street for some time, yet they had hardly exchanged a word and their meeting at this breakfast table found them as great strangers as though they had never seen each other. Strelitski came because he boarded with the Sugarmans, and Hamburg came because he sometimes consulted Jonathan Sugarman about a Talmudical passage. Sugarman was charged with the oral traditions of a chain of Rabbis, like an actor who knows all the "business" elaborated by his predecessors, and even a scientific scholar like Hamburg found him occasionally and fortuitously illuminating. Even so Karlkammer's red hair was a pillar of fire in the trackless wilderness of Hebrew literature. Gabriel Hamburg was a mighty savant who endured all things for the love of knowledge and the sake of six men in Europe who followed his work and profited by its results. Verily, fit audience though few. But such is the fate of great scholars whose readers are sown throughout the lands more sparsely than monarchs. One by one Hamburg grappled with the countless problems of Jewish literary history, settling dates and authors, disintegrating the Books of the Bible into their constituent parts, now inserting a gap of centuries between two halves of the same chapter, now flashing the light of new theories upon the development of Jewish theology. He lived at Royal Street and the British Museum, for he spent most of his time groping among the folios and manuscripts, and had no need for more than the little back bedroom, behind the Ansells, stuffed with mouldy books. Nobody (who was anybody) had heard of him in England, and he worked on, unencumbered by patronage or a full stomach. The Ghetto, itself, knew little of him, for there were but few with whom he found intercourse satisfying. He was not "orthodox" in belief though eminently so in practice-which is all the Ghetto demands-not from hypocrisy but from ancient prejudice. Scholarship had not shrivelled up his humanity, for he had a genial fund of humor and a gentle play of satire and loved his neighbors for their folly and narrowmindedness. Unlike Spinoza, too, he did not go out of his way to inform them of his heterodox views, content to comprehend the crowd rather than be misunderstood by it. He knew that the bigger soul includes the smaller and that the smaller can never circumscribe the bigger. Such money as was indispensable for the endowment of research he earned by copying texts and hunting out references for the numerous scholars and clergymen who infest the Museum and prevent the general reader from having elbow room. In person he was small and bent and snuffy. Superficially more intelligible, Joseph Strelitski was really a deeper mystery than Gabriel Hamburg. He was known to be a recent arrival on English soil, yet he spoke English fluently. He studied at Jews' College by day and was preparing for the examinations at the London University. None of the other students knew where he lived nor a bit of his past history. There was a vague idea afloat that he was an only child whose parents had been hounded to penury and death by Russian persecution, but who launched it nobody knew. His eyes were sad and earnest, a curl of raven hair fell forwards on his high brow; his clothing was shabby and darned in places by his own hand. Beyond accepting the gift of education at the hands of dead men he would take no help. On several distinct occasions, the magic name, Rothschild, was appealed to on his behalf by well-wishers, and through its avenue of almoners it responded with its eternal quenchless unquestioning generosity to students. But Joseph Strelitski always quietly sent back these bounties. He made enough to exist upon by touting for a cigar-firm in the evenings. In the streets he walked with tight-pursed lips, dreaming no one knew what.