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Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People, a novel by Israel Zangwill |
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Book 1. Children Of The Ghetto - Chapter 15. The Holy Land League |
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_ BOOK I. CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO CHAPTER XV. THE HOLY LAND LEAGUE "Oh, these English Jews!" said Melchitsedek Pinchas, in German. "What have they done to you now?" said Guedalyah, the greengrocer, in Yiddish. The two languages are relatives and often speak as they pass by. "I have presented my book to every one of them, but they have paid me scarce enough to purchase poison for them all," said the little poet scowling. The cheekbones stood out sharply beneath the tense bronzed skin. The black hair was tangled and unkempt and the beard untrimmed, the eyes darted venom. "One of them--Gideon, M.P., the stockbroker, engaged me to teach his son for his _Bar-mitzvah_, But the boy is so stupid! So stupid! Just like his father. I have no doubt he will grow up to be a Rabbi. I teach him his Portion--I sing the words to him with a most beautiful voice, but he has as much ear as soul. Then I write him a speech--a wonderful speech for him to make to his parents and the company at the breakfast, and in it, after he thanks them for their kindness, I make him say how, with the blessing of the Almighty, he will grow up to be a good Jew, and munificently support Hebrew literature and learned men like his revered teacher, Melchitsedek Pinchas. And he shows it to his father, and his father says it is not written in good English, and that another scholar has already written him a speech. Good English! Gideon has as much knowledge or style as the Rev. Elkan Benjamin of decency. Ah, I will shoot them both. I know I do not speak English like a native--but what language under the sun is there I cannot write? French, German, Spanish, Arabic--they flow from my pen like honey from a rod. As for Hebrew, you know, Guedalyah, I and you are the only two men in England who can write Holy Language grammatically. And yet these miserable stockbrokers, Men-of-the-Earth, they dare to say I cannot write English, and they have given me the sack. I, who was teaching the boy true Judaism and the value of Hebrew literature." "What! They didn't let you finish teaching the boy his Portion because you couldn't write English?" "No; they had another pretext--one of the servant girls said I wanted to kiss her--lies and falsehood. I was kissing my finger after kissing the _Mezuzah_, and the stupid abomination thought I was kissing my hand to her. It sees itself that they don't kiss the _Mezuzahs_ often in that house--the impious crew. And what will be now? The stupid boy will go home to breakfast in a bazaar of costly presents, and he will make the stupid speech written by the fool of an Englishman, and the ladies will weep. But where will be the Judaism in all this? Who will vaccinate him against free-thinking as I would have done? Who will infuse into him the true patriotic fervor, the love of his race, the love of Zion, the land of his fathers?" "Ah, you are verily a man after my own heart!" said Guedalyah, the greengrocer, overswept by a wave of admiration. "Why should you not come with me to my _Beth-Hamidrash_ to-night, to the meeting for the foundation of the Holy Land League? That cauliflower will be four-pence, mum." "Ah, what is that?" said Pinchas. "I have an idea; a score of us meet to-night to discuss it." "Ah, yes! You have always ideas. You are a sage and a saint, Guedalyah. The _Beth-Hamidrash_ which you have established is the only centre of real orthodoxy and Jewish literature in London. The ideas you expound in the Jewish papers for the amelioration of the lot of our poor brethren are most statesmanlike. But these donkey-head English rich people--what help can you expect from them? They do not even understand your plans. They have only sympathy with needs of the stomach." "You are right! You are right, Pinchas!" said Guedalyah, the greengrocer, eagerly. He was a tall, loosely-built man, with a pasty complexion capable of shining with enthusiasm. He was dressed shabbily, and in the intervals of selling cabbages projected the regeneration of Judah. "That is just what is beginning to dawn upon me, Pinchas," he went on. "Our rich people give plenty away in charity; they have good hearts but not Jewish hearts. As the verse says,--A bundle of rhubarb and two pounds of Brussels sprouts and threepence halfpenny change. Thank you. Much obliged.--Now I have bethought myself why should we not work out our own salvation? It is the poor, the oppressed, the persecuted, whose souls pant after the Land of Israel as the hart after the water-brooks. Let us help ourselves. Let us put our hands in our own pockets. With our _Groschen_ let us rebuild Jerusalem and our Holy Temple. We will collect a fund slowly but surely--from all parts of the East End and the provinces the pious will give. With the first fruits we will send out a little party of persecuted Jews to Palestine; and then another; and another. The movement will grow like a sliding snow-ball that becomes an avalanche." "Yes, then the rich will come to you," said Pinchas, intensely excited. "Ah! it is a great idea, like all yours. Yes, I will come, I will make a mighty speech, for my lips, like Isaiah's, have been touched with the burning coal. I will inspire all hearts to start the movement at once. I will write its Marseillaise this very night, bedewing my couch with a poet's tears. We shall no longer be dumb--we shall roar like the lions of Lebanon. I shall be the trumpet to call the dispersed together from the four corners of the earth--yea, I shall be the Messiah himself," said Pinchas, rising on the wings of his own eloquence, and forgetting to puff at his cigar. "I rejoice to see you so ardent; but mention not the word Messiah, for I fear some of our friends will take alarm and say that these are not Messianic times, that neither Elias, nor Gog, King of Magog, nor any of the portents have yet appeared. Kidneys or regents, my child?" "Stupid people! Hillel said more wisely: 'If I help not myself who will help me?' Do they expect the Messiah to fall from heaven? Who knows but I am the Messiah? Was I not born on the ninth of Ab?" "Hush, hush!" said Guedalyah, the greengrocer. "Let us be practical. We are not yet ready for Marseillaises or Messiahs. The first step is to get funds enough to send one family to Palestine." "Yes, yes," said Pinchas, drawing vigorously at his cigar to rekindle it. "But we must look ahead. Already I see it all. Palestine in the hands of the Jews--the Holy Temple rebuilt, a Jewish state, a President who is equally accomplished with the sword and the pen,--the whole campaign stretches before me. I see things like Napoleon, general and dictator alike." "Truly we wish that," said the greengrocer cautiously. "But to-night it is only a question of a dozen men founding a collecting society." "Of course, of course, that I understand. You're right--people about here say Guedalyah the greengrocer is always right. I will come beforehand to supper with you to talk it over, and you shall see what I will write for the _Mizpeh_ and the _Arbeiter-freund_. You know all these papers jump at me--their readers are the class to which you appeal--in them will I write my burning verses and leaders advocating the cause. I shall be your Tyrtaeus, your Mazzini, your Napoleon. How blessed that I came to England just now. I have lived in the Holy Land--the genius of the soil is blent with mine. I can describe its beauties as none other can. I am the very man at the very hour. And yet I will not go rashly--slow and sure--my plan is to collect small amounts from the poor to start by sending one family at a time to Palestine. That is how we must do it. How does that strike you, Guedalyah. You agree?" "Yes, yes. That is also my opinion." "You see I am not a Napoleon only in great ideas. I understand detail, though as a poet I abhor it. Ah, the Jew is king of the world. He alone conceives great ideas and executes them by petty means. The heathen are so stupid, so stupid! Yes, you shall see at supper how practically I will draw up the scheme. And then I will show you, too, what I have written about Gideon, M.P., the dog of a stockbroker--a satirical poem have I written about him, in Hebrew--an acrostic, with his name for the mockery of posterity. Stocks and shares have I translated into Hebrew, with new words which will at once be accepted by the Hebraists of the world and added to the vocabulary of modern Hebrew. Oh! I am terrible in satire. I sting like the hornet; witty as Immanuel, but mordant as his friend Dante. It will appear in the _Mizpeh_ to-morrow. I will show this Anglo-Jewish community that I am a man to be reckoned with. I will crush it--not it me." "But they don't see the _Mizpeh_ and couldn't read it if they did." "No matter. I send it abroad--I have friends, great Rabbis, great scholars, everywhere, who send me their learned manuscripts, their commentaries, their ideas, for revision and improvement. Let the Anglo-Jewish community hug itself in its stupid prosperity--but I will make it the laughing-stock of Europe and Asia. Then some day it will find out its mistake; it will not have ministers like the Rev. Elkan Benjamin, who keeps four mistresses, it will depose the lump of flesh who reigns over it and it will seize the hem of my coat and beseech me to be its Rabbi." "We should have a more orthodox Chief Rabbi, certainly," admitted Guedalyah. "Orthodox? Then and only then shall we have true Judaism in London and a burst of literary splendor far exceeding that of the much overpraised Spanish School, none of whom had that true lyrical gift which is like the carol of the bird in the pairing season. O why have I not the bird's privileges as well as its gift of song? Why can I not pair at will? Oh the stupid Rabbis who forbade polygamy. Verily as the verse says: The Law of Moses is perfect, enlightening the eyes--marriage, divorce, all is regulated with the height of wisdom. Why must we adopt the stupid customs of the heathen? At present I have not even one mate--but I love--ah Guedalyah! I love! The women are so beautiful. You love the women, hey?" "I love my Rivkah," said Guedalyah. "A penny on each ginger-beer bottle." "Yes, but why haven't _I_ got a wife? Eh?" demanded the little poet fiercely, his black eyes glittering. "I am a fine tall well-built good-looking man. In Palestine and on the Continent all the girls would go about sighing and casting sheep's eyes at me, for there the Jews love poetry and literature. But here! I can go into a room with a maiden in it and she makes herself unconscious of my presence. There is Reb Shemuel's daughter--a fine beautiful virgin. I kiss her hand--and it is ice to my lips. Ah, if I only had money! And money I should have, if these English Jews were not so stupid and if they elected me Chief Rabbi. Then I would marry--one, two, three maidens." "Talk not such foolishness," said Guedalyah, laughing, for he thought the poet jested. Pinchas saw his enthusiasm had carried him too far, but his tongue was the most reckless of organs and often slipped into the truth. He was a real poet with an extraordinary faculty for language and a gift of unerring rhythm. He wrote after the mediaeval model--with a profusion of acrostics and double rhyming--not with the bald duplications of primitive Hebrew poetry. Intellectually he divined things like a woman--with marvellous rapidity, shrewdness and inaccuracy. He saw into people's souls through a dark refracting suspiciousness. The same bent of mind, the same individuality of distorted insight made him overflow with ingenious explanations of the Bible and the Talmud, with new views and new lights on history, philology, medicine--anything, everything. And he believed in his ideas because they were his and in himself because of his ideas. To himself his stature sometimes seemed to expand till his head touched the sun--but that was mostly after wine--and his brain retained a permanent glow from the contact. "Well, peace be with you!" said Pinchas. "I will leave you to your customers, who besiege you as I have been besieged by the maidens. But what you have just told me has gladdened my heart. I always had an affection for you, but now I love you like a woman. We will found this Holy Land League, you and I. You shall be President--I waive all claims in your favor--and I will be Treasurer. Hey?" "We shall see; we shall see," said Guedalyah the greengrocer. "No, we cannot leave it to the mob, we must settle it beforehand. Shall we say done?" He laid his finger cajolingly to the side of his nose. "We shall see," repeated Guedalyah the greengrocer, impatiently. "No, say! I love you like a brother. Grant me this favor and I will never ask anything of you so long as I live." "Well, if the others--" began Guedalyah feebly. "Ah! You are a Prince in Israel," Pinchas cried enthusiastically. "If I could only show you my heart, how it loves you." He capered off at a sprightly trot, his head haloed by huge volumes of smoke. Guedalyah the greengrocer bent over a bin of potatoes. Looking up suddenly he was startled to see the head fixed in the open front of the shop window. It was a narrow dark bearded face distorted with an insinuative smile. A dirty-nailed forefinger was laid on the right of the nose. "You won't forget," said the head coaxingly. "Of course I won't forget," cried the greengrocer querulously. The meeting took place at ten that night at the Beth Hamidrash founded by Guedalyah, a large unswept room rudely fitted up as a synagogue and approached by reeking staircases, unsavory as the neighborhood. On one of the black benches a shabby youth with very long hair and lank fleshless limbs shook his body violently to and fro while he vociferated the sentences of the Mishnah in the traditional argumentative singsong. Near the central raised platform was a group of enthusiasts, among whom Froom Karlkammer, with his thin ascetic body and the mass of red hair that crowned his head like the light of a pharos, was a conspicuous figure. "Peace be to you, Karlkammer!" said Pinchas to him in Hebrew. "To you be peace, Pinchas!" replied Karlkammer. "Ah!" went on Pinchas. "Sweeter than honey it is to me, yea than fine honey, to talk to a man in the Holy Tongue. Woe, the speakers are few in these latter days. I and thou, Karlkammer, are the only two people who can speak the Holy Tongue grammatically on this isle of the sea. Lo, it is a great thing we are met to do this night--I see Zion laughing on her mountains and her fig-trees skipping for joy. I will be the treasurer of the fund, Karlkammer--do thou vote for me, for so our society shall flourish as the green bay tree." Karlkammer grunted vaguely, not having humor enough to recall the usual associations of the simile, and Pinchas passed on to salute Hamburg. To Gabriel Hamburg, Pinchas was occasion for half-respectful amusement. He could not but reverence the poet's genius even while he laughed at his pretensions to omniscience, and at the daring and unscientific guesses which the poet offered as plain prose. For when in their arguments Pinchas came upon Jewish ground, he was in presence of a man who knew every inch of it. "Blessed art thou who arrivest," he said when he perceived Pinchas. Then dropping into German he continued--"I did not know you would join in the rebuilding of Zion." "Why not?" inquired Pinchas. "Because you have written so many poems thereupon." "Be not so foolish," said Pinchas, annoyed. "Did not King David fight the Philistines as well as write the Psalms?" "Did he write the Psalms?" said Hamburg quietly, with a smile. "No--not so loud! Of course he didn't! The Psalms were written by Judas Maccabaeus, as I proved in the last issue of the Stuttgard _Zeitschrift_. But that only makes my analogy more forcible. You shall see how I will gird on sword and armor, and I shall yet see even you in the forefront of the battle. I will be treasurer, you shall vote for me, Hamburg, for I and you are the only two people who know the Holy Tongue grammatically, and we must work shoulder to shoulder and see that the balance sheets are drawn up in the language of our fathers." In like manner did Melchitsedek Pinchas approach Hiram Lyons and Simon Gradkoski, the former a poverty-stricken pietist who added day by day to a furlong of crabbed manuscript, embodying a useless commentary on the first chapter of Genesis; the latter the portly fancy-goods dealer in whose warehouse Daniel Hyams was employed. Gradkoski rivalled Reb Shemuel in his knowledge of the exact _loci_ of Talmudical remarks--page this, and line that--and secretly a tolerant latitudinarian, enjoyed the reputation of a bulwark of orthodoxy too well to give it up. Gradkoski passed easily from writing an invoice to writing a learned article on Hebrew astronomy. Pinchas ignored Joseph Strelitski whose raven curl floated wildly over his forehead like a pirate's flag, though Hamburg, who was rather surprised to see the taciturn young man at a meeting, strove to draw him into conversation. The man to whom Pinchas ultimately attached himself was only a man in the sense of having attained his religious majority. He was a Harrow boy named Raphael Leon, a scion of a wealthy family. The boy had manifested a strange premature interest in Jewish literature and had often seen Gabriel Hamburg's name in learned foot-notes, and, discovering that he was in England, had just written to him. Hamburg had replied; they had met that day for the first time and at the lad's own request the old scholar brought him on to this strange meeting. The boy grew to be Hamburg's one link with wealthy England, and though he rarely saw Leon again, the lad came in a shadowy way to take the place he had momentarily designed for Joseph Strelitski. To-night it was Pinchas who assumed the paternal manner, but he mingled it with a subtle obsequiousness that made the shy simple lad uncomfortable, though when he came to read the poet's lofty sentiments which arrived (with an acrostic dedication) by the first post next morning, he conceived an enthusiastic admiration for the neglected genius. The rest of the "remnant" that were met to save Israel looked more commonplace--a furrier, a slipper-maker, a locksmith, an ex-glazier (Mendel Hyams), a confectioner, a _Melammed_ or Hebrew teacher, a carpenter, a presser, a cigar-maker, a small shop-keeper or two, and last and least, Moses Ansell. They were of many birthplaces--Austria, Holland, Poland, Russia, Germany, Italy, Spain--yet felt themselves of no country and of one. Encircled by the splendors of modern Babylon, their hearts turned to the East, like passion-flowers seeking the sun. Palestine, Jerusalem, Jordan, the Holy Land were magic syllables to them, the sight of a coin struck in one of Baron Edmund's colonies filled their eyes with tears; in death they craved no higher boon than a handful of Palestine earth sprinkled over their graves. But Guedalyah the greengrocer was not the man to encourage idle hopes. He explained his scheme lucidly--without highfalutin. They were to rebuild Judaism as the coral insect builds its reefs--not as the prayer went, "speedily and in our days." They had brought themselves up to expect more and were disappointed. Some protested against peddling little measures--like Pinchas they were for high, heroic deeds. Joseph Strelitski, student and cigar commission agent, jumped to his feet and cried passionately in German: "Everywhere Israel groans and travails--must we indeed wait and wait till our hearts are sick and strike never a decisive blow? It is nigh two thousand years since across the ashes of our Holy Temple we were driven into the Exile, clanking the chains of Pagan conquerors. For nigh two thousand years have we dwelt on alien soils, a mockery and a byword for the nations, hounded out from every worthy employ and persecuted for turning to the unworthy, spat upon and trodden under foot, suffusing the scroll of history with our blood and illuminating it with the lurid glare of the fires to which our martyrs have ascended gladly for the Sanctification of the Name. We who twenty centuries ago were a mighty nation, with a law and a constitution and a religion which have been the key-notes of the civilization of the world, we who sat in judgment by the gates of great cities, clothed in purple and fine linen, are the sport of peoples who were then roaming wild in woods and marshes clothed in the skins of the wolf and the bear. Now in the East there gleams again a star of hope--why shall we not follow it? Never has the chance of the Restoration flamed so high as to-day. Our capitalists rule the markets of Europe, our generals lead armies, our great men sit in the Councils of every State. We are everywhere--a thousand thousand stray rivulets of power that could be blent into a mighty ocean. Palestine is one if we wish--the whole house of Israel has but to speak with a mighty unanimous voice. Poets will sing for us, journalists write for us, diplomatists haggle for us, millionaires pay the price for us. The sultan would restore our land to us to-morrow, did we but essay to get it. There are no obstacles--but ourselves. It is not the heathen that keeps us out of our land--it is the Jews, the rich and prosperous Jews--Jeshurun grown fat and sleepy, dreaming the false dream of assimilation with the people of the pleasant places in which their lines have been cast. Give us back our country; this alone will solve the Jewish question. Our paupers shall become agriculturists, and like Antaeus, the genius of Israel shall gain fresh strength by contact with mother earth. And for England it will help to solve the Indian question--Between European Russia and India there will be planted a people, fierce, terrible, hating Russia for her wild-beast deeds. Into the Exile we took with us, of all our glories, only a spark of the fire by which our Temple, the abode of our great One was engirdled, and this little spark kept us alive while the towers of our enemies crumbled to dust, and this spark leaped into celestial flame and shed light upon the faces of the heroes of our race and inspired them to endure the horrors of the Dance of Death and the tortures of the _Auto-da-fe_. Let us fan the spark again till it leap up and become a pillar of flame going before us and showing us the way to Jerusalem, the City of our sires. And if gold will not buy back our land we must try steel. As the National Poet of Israel, Naphtali Herz Imber, has so nobly sung (here he broke into the Hebrew _Wacht Am Rhein_, of which an English version would run thus): I. "Like the crash of the thunder II. "Rest in peace, loved land, III. "Yea, as long as there he
"We must be sensible," he said, for he enjoyed the reputation of a shrewd conciliatory man of the world as well as of a pillar of orthodoxy. "The great people will come to us, but not if we abuse them. We must flatter them up and tell them they are the descendants of the Maccabees. There is much political kudos to be got out of leading such a movement--this, too, they will see. Rome was not built in a day, and the Temple will not be rebuilt in a year. Besides, we are not soldiers now. We must recapture our land by brain, not sword. Slow and sure and the blessing of God over all." After such wise Simon Gradkoski. But Gronovitz, the Hebrew teacher, crypto-atheist and overt revolutionary, who read a Hebrew edition of the "Pickwick Papers" in synagogue on the Day of Atonement, was with Strelitski, and a bigot whose religion made his wife and children wretched was with the cautious Simon Gradkoski. Froom Karlkammer followed, but his drift was uncertain. He apparently looked forward to miraculous interpositions. Still he approved of the movement from one point of view. The more Jews lived in Jerusalem the more would be enabled to die there--which was the aim of a good Jew's life. As for the Messiah, he would come assuredly--in God's good time. Thus Karlkammer at enormous length with frequent intervals of unintelligibility and huge chunks of irrelevant quotation and much play of Cabalistic conceptions. Pinchas, who had been fuming throughout this speech, for to him Karlkammer stood for the archetype of all donkeys, jumped up impatiently when Karlkammer paused for breath and denounced as an interruption that gentleman's indignant continuance of his speech. The sense of the meeting was with the poet and Karlkammer was silenced. Pinchas was dithyrambic, sublime, with audacities which only genius can venture on. He was pungently merry over Imber's pretensions to be the National Poet of Israel, declaring that his prosody, his vocabulary, and even his grammar were beneath contempt. He, Pinchas, would write Judaea a real Patriotic Poem, which should be sung from the slums of Whitechapel to the _Veldts_ of South Africa, and from the _Mellah_ of Morocco to the _Judengassen_ of Germany, and should gladden the hearts and break from the mouths of the poor immigrants saluting the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. When he, Pinchas, walked in Victoria Park of a Sunday afternoon and heard the band play, the sound of a cornet always seemed to him, said he, like the sound of Bar Cochba's trumpet calling the warriors to battle. And when it was all over and the band played "God save the Queen," it sounded like the paean of victory when he marched, a conqueror, to the gates of Jerusalem. Wherefore he, Pinchas, would be their leader. Had not the Providence, which concealed so many revelations in the letters of the Torah, given him the name Melchitsedek Pinchas, whereof one initial stood for Messiah and the other for Palestine. Yes, he would be their Messiah. But money now-a-days was the sinews of war and the first step to Messiahship was the keeping of the funds. The Redeemer must in the first instance be the treasurer. With this anti-climax Pinchas wound up, his childishness and _naivete_ conquering his cunning. Other speakers followed but in the end Guedalyah the greengrocer prevailed. They appointed him President and Simon Gradkoski, Treasurer, collecting twenty-five shillings on the spot, ten from the lad Raphael Leon. In vain Pinchas reminded the President they would need Collectors to make house to house calls; three other members were chosen to trisect the Ghetto. All felt the incongruity of hanging money bags at the saddle-bow of Pegasus. Whereupon Pinchas re-lit his cigar and muttering that they were all fool-men betook himself unceremoniously without. Gabriel Hamburg looked on throughout with something like a smile on his shrivelled features. Once while Joseph Strelitski was holding forth he blew his nose violently. Perhaps he had taken too large a pinch of snuff. But not a word did the great scholar speak. He would give up his last breath to promote the Return (provided the Hebrew manuscripts were not left behind in alien museums); but the humors of the enthusiasts were part of the great comedy in the only theatre he cared for. Mendel Hyams was another silent member. But he wept openly under Strelitski's harangue. When the meeting adjourned, the lank unhealthy swaying creature in the corner, who had been mumbling the tractate Baba Kama out of courtesy, now burst out afresh in his quaint argumentative recitative. "What then does it refer to? To his stone or his knife or his burden which he has left on the highway and it injured a passer-by. How is this? If he gave up his ownership, whether according to Rav or according to Shemuel, it is a pit, and if he retained his ownership, if according to Shemuel, who holds that all are derived from 'his pit,' then it is 'a pit,' and if according to Rav, who holds that all are derived from 'his ox,' then it is 'an ox,' therefore the derivatives of 'an ox' are the same as 'an ox' itself." He had been at it all day, and he went on far into the small hours, shaking his body backwards and forwards without remission. _ |
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