Part 32 (1/2)
”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 s.h.i.+ning 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 Ma.r.s.eillaise 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, hus.h.!.+” said Guedalyah, the greengrocer. ”Let us be practical. We are not yet ready for Ma.r.s.eillaises 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 cla.s.s 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 ma.n.u.scripts, 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?”