The Yoke of the Thorah. Harland Henry

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СКАЧАТЬ The light of the sun shall be extinguished for him. A curse shall rest upon him and upon all that concerns him. His wife shall become as a sore in his flesh. With a scolding tongue she shall be-shrew him. As a wanton, she shall shame him.

      “His worldly affairs shall not prosper. Misfortune and calamity shall follow wherever he goes. Whatsoever he puts his hand to, that shall fail. An old man, homeless and friendless, he shall beg his bread from door to door. His intelligence shall decay. He shall be pointed out and jeered at, as a fool that drivels and chatters. His health shall break. His bones shall rot in his body. His eyes shall become running ulcers in their sockets. His blood shall dry up, a fiery poison in his veins. And his seed also shall be afflicted. From generation to generation, a blight shall pursue those that bear his name. For the blood of Israel mixed with the blood of a strange people, is like a sweet wine mixed with aloes. His sons shall be weak of mind and body. His daughters shall be ugly to look upon. To him and to his the Lord our God will show no mercy, even unto the brink of the grave. They shall be as if touched with the leprosy, shunned and despised of all men. To the Goy they will continue to be Jews; but to the Jew they will have become Goym. The Lord our God is a jealous God. His love knoweth no bounds. His wrath is like a great fire that can not be put out. He showereth favors abundantly upon them that love Him and keep His commandments. The iniquity of the fathers He visits upon the children and the children's children, even unto the third and fourth generations. Blessed be the name of the Lord!”

      The rabbi had begun this reading in low and matter-of-fact accents; but as he proceeded, his voice had increased in volume and emphasis, and the last words rang forth, loud and resonant, as though they had been addressed to a multitude in the synagogue. The veins in his forehead stood out blue and swollen against the white skin, and behind the thick lenses of his spectacles you could see that his black eyes were flashing fire. He paused for a little, breathing deeply. By degrees the veins in his forehead grew small and smaller, becoming pale, flat lines, like veins in marble. Presently, laying aside the manuscript, “There, Elias,” he added, quietly, “that is what your great-grandfather thought about intermarriage, and I guess there has never been a Bacharach to think differently. I hope there never may be one, I'm sure. Why—why, what makes you so pale?”

      “Am I pale? I didn't know it. The denunciation is bitter—terrible. It gave me cold shivers.”

      “Yes, terrible, so it is. But not exaggerated. It sounds pretty strong, but it couldn't be called exaggerated. For really it's only a simple statement of the truth, the facts. I'm going to quote it in my own discourse next Sabbath. It's just like every thing else. Break a law, whether it be a law of nature, a law of the land, or the law of God, and you must expect to suffer the consequences, to be punished.”

      “Yes, of course. And yet, somehow, it seems as though the punishment ought to be in proportion to the offense. Do you seriously, literally, believe that the Lord would punish such a sin with such frightful, far-reaching penalties?”

      “With worse, even. No mere human mind can conceive, much less describe, the fearful forms the Divine vengeance would take. All we can do is to picture to ourselves the worst, and then say: It will be as bad as that, or worse. That's what your grandfather has tried to do here. The Lord has expressed in perfectly plain language His desire that the integrity of Israel should be preserved. That was the purpose for which this world was created and mankind called into existence. Now, to enter into matrimony with a Gentile is such a flagrant setting at naught of the Lord's will—why, common-sense is enough to show the inevitable consequences.”

      “But suppose a Jew should love a woman of another race—a Christian, for example; what would you have him do? Leave her? Never see her again? Give her up? If he loved her, no pain that the Lord could inflict would be worse than the pain of that.”

      “Hold your tongue, Elias!” the rabbi cried sharply. “What you say is blasphemous, is a denial of the Lord's omnipotence. May the Lord forgive you. No, no. His power to inflict pain, as well as to confer blessings, is measureless. What would I have the Jew do? Why, of course, I would have him give her up, no matter how much the sacrifice might cost him. But the case you put is not likely to arise. Love for a Christian woman never could enter a Jewish heart. Such a sentiment as a Jew might perhaps feel for her would be an unholy passion. She might fascinate his senses, but of true love, she could inspire none at all.”

      “And yet, suppose, for the sake of argument, suppose that she could—that she had—that the Jew really did love her with true love, what then?”

      “Why, then, as I say, I would have him renounce her, and abstain afterward from any sort of communication with her. I would have him pray, also, that his heart might be cleansed and restored to health; for such love would be a spiritual disease.”

      Elias made no answer. The rabbi turned his attention to his lamp, the flame of which was spluttering and palpitating, preparatory to going out.

      “Pshaw,” he said, extinguishing it, “I must have forgotten to fill it.”

      Then he struck a match, and lighted the gas.

      “You have made me hungry and thirsty with so much talking,” he continued. “Now I'm going down stairs to forage for something to eat. Will you come along?”

      “No, I guess I'll go to bed,” said Elias. “Good-night.”

      But he did not go to bed, nor even to his bed-room.

      He went to his studio, and sat down in the dark at the window.

      It was a wondrous night—the sky cloudless, the air as clear as crystal. The moon, waning, was up, but out of sight in the south, hidden by the housetops. Its frosty light bathed the prospect, like an ethereal form of dew, as far as eye could see. The branches of the trees were silvered by it. Their shadows were sharply etched upon the turf beneath. The yellow flames of the street lamps flared faint and sickly. The few human beings who now and then passed on the sidewalk opposite, had the appearance of mere black spots in motion. Only the largest of the stars dared to show themselves, and they trembled, and were pale, as if cowed by their luminous rival. In the north-west, the spires of St. George's Church stood in massive profile against the deep, shimmering vault of sky. An impressive outlook, cold, serene, passionless; of a sort to remind one of the magnitude and the inexorableness of the material universe, and of the infinitesimal smallness and insignificance of one's self, and to fill one's mind with solemn doubts and questions. But it had no such effect upon Elias Bacharach. Never had his own self loomed larger in his eyes, never had it more exclusively absorbed his faculties, than at this moment, in the face of this moonlit view.

      Elias had been bred in the straitest sect of his religion; a rare thing in this country in these days of radicalism and unbelief. From his earliest boyhood down, his training, his associations, his family life, nearly every influence that had borne upon him, had been of a nature to make him intensely, if not zealously or aggressively, a Jew—to imbue his mind thoroughly with the Jewish faith, and to color his character to its innermost fibers with strong Jewish feelings. Besides, the blood of generations of devout Jews coursed in his veins; it was tinctured through and through with Jewish prejudice and superstition. He had never been sent to school, lest in some wise his Judaism might be weakened by contact with the Christians. His uncle, the rabbi, had taken sole charge of his education. Pride of race had been an integral part of the curriculum. “Never forget that you are a Jew, and remember that the world has no honor to bestow upon you equal to the honor that attaches to your birth. To be born in Israel is more illustrious than to be born a prince; the blood of Israel outranks the blood royal; for the Lord our God created the heavens and the earth, the birds and the beasts, the flowers, the trees, the air, the sunlight, for the especial enjoyment of His chosen and much-beloved people. But remember, too, that if the Lord has vouchsafed to you this great and peculiar privilege, so He will exact СКАЧАТЬ