The Yoke of the Thorah. Harland Henry

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VI.

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      THE rabbi's study was a bare enough apartment, furnished with a faded carpet, three or four chairs, and a writing table. The walls and ceiling were kalsomined in slate color, the former being lined half-way up with book shelves. A student's lamp, with a green shade, burned on the table. The oil in it must have been pretty low, for it shed but a dim light, and gave off a strong, offensive odor. The rabbi sat with his back to the door, bending over what looked like a manuscript sermon. The top of the rabbi's head was perfectly bald, and it reflected the lamplight like a surface of polished ivory. His little remaining hair and his beard were bluish black. His eyes, behind thick spectacles, were black, too—small, deep-set, bright, restless black beads. But his skin was intensely white, as white almost as the clerical collar that encircled his throat, and it looked as though it would feel chilly to the touch, like marble. The rabbi was a very little man, short of stature, spare of habit, with a frame and with features as slender and as delicate as a maiden's. Yet he had not at all the appearance of a weakling. You felt at once the presence of a strong will and of an active, if not enlightened or profound, intelligence. You felt the presence of a person who could, if he chose, be sufficiently good-natured, but who possessed also the capacity of becoming as hard and as cold as ice.

      At his nephew's entrance the rabbi glanced over his shoulder.

      “Ah, Elias,” he asked, in a tone which, though amiable, denoted very little interest, “where do you come from?”

      “The Academy of Design. I've been at the exhibition.”

      “So? Have you any pictures there?”

      “Only one. 'The Song of Deborah.'”

      “Ah! Is it well hung?”

      “Oh, yes—on the line.”

      “That's good. Some day I must drop in and see it.”

      On both sides the dialogue had been perfunctory. Now there befell a silence. The rabbi returned to his reading. Elias sank upon a chair, thrust his hands deep into his trowsers pockets, and fixed his eyes upon the carpet. For a while the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece was the only sound.

      All at once Elias said: “Oh, yes—I forgot—I've been at Delmonico's, too.”

      “Ah,” rejoined the rabbi, “eating trepha food.”

      “I ate neither pork nor shellfish,” Elias submitted. “I ate a bit of sweet-bread. Of course it hadn't been killed kosher. But is that such a great sin? Some of our most pious Jews go to Delmonico's. To-night, indeed, I saw Judge Nathan there, with his wife and daughters; and he's president of his congregation.”

      “Small sins beget larger ones. It's better not to commit even peccadillos,” said the rabbi. “And eating trepha food isn't merely a peccadillo. However, you're of full age. It's not my place to call you to account.”

      “Speaking of sins, Uncle Felix,” Elias presently went on, “tell me, what is the worst sin that a Jew could commit?”

      The rabbi's eyes had strayed back to his manuscript. Lifting them, “How?” he queried.

      Elias repeated his question.

      “Why,” said the rabbi, “there are the ten commandments, which you know as well as I do. They're of equal force. Theft, adultery, murder—one is as bad as another.”

      “That isn't exactly what I meant. I meant the worst sin which a Jew, as a Jew, could commit—the worst infraction of the Thorah as it applies peculiarly to Israel. The ten commandments embody the common law of morality, which is as binding upon Christians as it is upon Jews.”

      “Oh,” said the rabbi, “that's another question.”

      “Would it be, for example, the desecration of Yom Kippur?”

      “The desecration of Yom Kippur would be a deadly sin; so would the desecration of the Sabbath; so would disobedience to parental authority. But the most deadly of all, in my opinion, would be a forbidden marriage.”

      “That is, marriage with a Christian?”

      “Yes—with a Gentile, a Goy—with any one not of our own race.”

      “That, you think, is the one sin which would be most unpardonable in the sight of the Lord? For which He would inflict the severest punishment?”

      “Yes, I think so. And it's rather odd that we should speak of this just now, for at the moment when you came in I was reading a sermon on the very subject—a sermon written by your own greatgrandfather, the Reverend Abraham Bacharach, of New Orleans, the first of your family who came to America. I was reading a sermon that he preached at the excommunication of a young man of his congregation, who had married a Frenchwoman, a Catholic. Here it is.”

      The rabbi pointed to the manuscript that lay upon his table.

      “Indeed?” questioned Elias. “What does he say?”

      “Oh, he agrees with me, that it is absolutely the most deadly of sins. He denounces it with a good deal of energy. There's one paragraph here somewhere that struck me as especially fine. Would you like to hear it?”

      “Yes, I shouldn't mind,” Elias assented.

      The rabbi picked up the manuscript and began to run over the pages, searching for the place.

      “Ah, I've got it,” he said at last. “It comes just after a statement of the circumstances, as a sort of summing up. It's in German. Shall I read the original or translate?”

      “Translate, if you will.”

      The rabbi cleared his throat, brought the manuscript close to his eyes, knitted his brows and proceeded thus:

      “Well, it runs this way: 'He has defied the law of the Lord our God. Let him tremble and be afraid. He has dishonored the memory of his ancestors; he has besmirched the name of his family; he has broken the tie that bound him to his kinsfolk; he has sent the father that begot him, and the mother that bore and suckled him, weeping on the way to their graves. Oh, let him cast down his face and be ashamed. To his brothers and sisters, to those who were his friends and loved him, to the rabbi, the chazzan, the parnass, and the people of this congregation, and to all faithful Jews from one end of the earth to the other, he is as one who has died a disgraceful death. The anger of СКАЧАТЬ