Part 33 (1/2)

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 ma.n.u.script, 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 lat.i.tudinarian, enjoyed the reputation of a bulwark of orthodoxy too well to give it up. Gradkoski pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sion-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 pa.s.sionately 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 const.i.tution 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 a.s.similation 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 n.o.bly sung (here he broke into the Hebrew _Wacht Am Rhein_, of which an English version would run thus):

”THE WATCH ON THE JORDAN.

I.

”Like the crash of the thunder Which splitteth asunder The flame of the cloud, On our ears ever falling, A voice is heard calling From Zion aloud: 'Let your spirits' desires For the land of your sires Eternally burn.

From the foe to deliver Our own holy river, To Jordan return.'

Where the soft flowing stream Murmurs low as in dream, There set we our watch.

Our watchword, 'The sword Of our land and our Lord'-- By the Jordan then set we our watch.

II.

”Rest in peace, loved land, For we rest not, but stand, Off shaken our sloth.

When the boils of war rattle To s.h.i.+rk not the battle, We make thee our oath.

As we hope for a Heaven, Thy chains shall be riven, Thine ensign unfurled.

And in pride of our race We will fearlessly face The might of the world.

When our trumpet is blown, And our standard is flown, Then set we our watch.

Our watchword, 'The sword Of our land and our Lord'-- By Jordan then set we our watch.

III.

”Yea, as long as there he Birds in air, fish in sea, And blood in our veins; And the lions in might.

Leaping down from the height, Shake, roaring, their manes; And the dew nightly laves The forgotten old graves Where Judah's sires sleep,-- We swear, who are living, To rest not in striving, To pause not to weep.

Let the trumpet be blown, Let the standard be flown, Now set we our watch.

Our watchword, 'The sword Of our land and our Lord'-- In Jordan NOW set we our watch.”

He sank upon the rude, wooden bench, exhausted, his eyes glittering, his raven hair dishevelled by the wildness of his gestures. He had said. For the rest of the evening he neither moved nor spake. The calm, good-humored tones of Simon Gradkoski followed like a cold shower.

”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 G.o.d 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 a.s.suredly--in G.o.d'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.