Israel Zangwill

“ Again a great wave of agitation shook the man from head to foot.
"Don't look at me like that, Rivkoly," he almost screamed. "I won't have it. I won't see thee. Curse that candle! Why does it flicker on eternally and not blot thee from my sight?" He puffed violently at the tenacious flame and a pall fell over the room. But the next instant the light leaped up higher than ever.
"Moshé!" Rebecca shrieked in wild dismay. "Dost thou forget it is Kol Nidré night? How canst thou dare to blow out a light? Besides, it is the Yom Kippur Candle—it is our life and happiness for the New Year. ”

“ That temptation should have assailed you, too, at such a period—when you were publishing your great work on the ideals of Holy Russia! Mysterious, indeed, are the ways of Providence. And yet why may not all be well after all, and Heaven grant me such grace as I would willingly sacrifice my life to deserve? It is impossible that my son's passion can be utterly dead. Such fires are only covered up. I will go to him and tell him all. The news that he is a Jew will revolutionize him. His love will flame up afresh and take on the guise and glamour of duty. ”

“ Peloni intoned the Hebrew benediction, closing his eyes in pious ecstasy. "Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, who hast kept us alive, and preserved us, and enabled us to reach this day!"
As he opened his eyes, he perceived in the distance high in air, rising far above the Island, a great mist of shining spray, amid which rainbows netted and tangled themselves in ineffable dream-like loveliness. At the same instant his ear caught—over the boom of the rapids—the first hint of another, a mightier, a more majestic roar.
"Niagara," murmured the Indian. ”

“ You must take Christian gold, I tell you. Thus only shall I be able to get you fire—to get you fire," repeated the hunchback with horrible emphasis. "You call yourself a disbeliever. If so, what matters? Why should you die for a miserable prejudice? But you are no true infidel. So long as you shrink from professing any religion under the sun, you still possess a religion. Your unfaith is but foam-drift on the deep sea of faith; but lip-babble while your heart is still infected with superstition. Come, bid me fetch the priest with his crucifix and holy water. ”

“ Paris and Rome and the wonder-places still shone on the horizon, together with the noble young Bayard, handsome and tender-hearted. And twice or thrice a year Kitty would flash upon the scene to remind her that there was truly a world of elegance and adventure. Her mother had begun to worry over the beautiful Kitty's failure to marry; she had imagined that in those gilded regions she would have snapped up a South African millionaire or other ingenuous person. How nearly Kitty had actually come to doing so, even without the spring-board of Bedford Square, Salvina never told her. ”

“ A smart rat-tat at the door denoted the inopportune return of Lazarus himself. Salvina darted upstairs to let him in and break the shock. He was a slimmer and more elegant edition of his father, a year older than Kitty, and taller than Salvina by a jaunty head and shoulders.
"And why isn't the hall lamp alight?" he queried, as her white face showed itself in the dusky door-slit. "It looks so beastly shabby. The only light's in the kitchen; I daresay you and the mater are pigging there again. Why can't you live up to your position?" ”

“ For so many days and years Caterina was my constant companion; I loved her as my own soul. Yet was she but a sun that dazzled my eyes so that I could not gaze upon my own soul; but a veil between me and my dead youth. The sun has sunk forever below the horizon; the veil is rent. No phantom from the other world hovers to remind me of our happiness. Those years, with all their raptures and successes, are a dull blank. It is the years of boyhood and youth which resurge in my consciousness; their tints are vivid, their tones are clear. ”

“ It was not the etiquette of the Pale to kiss one's betrothed bride, but Srul stared dully at Biela without even touching her hand, as if the Atlantic already rolled again between them. Here was a pretty climax to the dreams of years!
"My poor Srul, we must go back to Hamburg to be married," faltered Biela.
"And give up my store?" Srul wailed. "Here the dollar spins round. We have now what one names a boom. There is no land on earth like ours."
The forlornness of the others stung Leah to her senses. ”

“ But there lurks more fraternity in his sneer than in a Christian's applause. We are knit below the surface like two ocean rocks, whose isolated crests rise above the waters. Nicholas laughs at there being any Judaism to survive, or anything in Judaism worth surviving. He declares that the chosen people have been chosen for the plaything of the fates, fed with illusions and windy conceit, and rewarded for their fidelity with torture and persecution. He pities them, as he would pity a dog that wanders round its master's grave, and will not eat for grief. ”

“ With stifling throat that strove in vain to shriek, the woman dashed out through the well-known door, fled wildly down the stairs, pursued at every step by the sardonic merriment, met at every corner by the gibbering shapes—fled on, dashing through the heavy, ever-open street door into the fresher air of the night—on, instinctively on, through the almost deserted streets and alleys, where only the vile gin-houses gleamed with life—on, without pause or rest, till she fell exhausted upon the dusty door-step of the Synagogue of Love and Mercy. ”

“ Ha! ha! ha!"
"Yarchi!" I cried angrily, "you know Bethulah must be kept sacred from this rabble," and I switched with my riding-whip at the poppies that grew among the maize in the little front garden, as if they were pilgrims and I a Tarquin.
"Yes, I know that's Ben David's game. But I wish some man would marry her and ruin his business. Ha! ha! ha!"
"It would ruin yours too," I reminded him, more angrily. "You are ready enough to let lodgings to the pilgrims."
Yarchi shrugged his hump. "If fools are fools, wise men are wise men," he replied oracularly. ”

“ Oh, to fight, to fight, like the warriors who went out against the Greeks, who defended the Holy City against the Romans. "For the Lord is a Man of War." And he shouted the cry of David, "Blessed be the Lord, my Rock, who teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight." But he stopped, smitten by an ironic memory. This very blessing was uttered every Sabbath twilight, in every Ghetto, by every bloodless worshipper, to a melancholy despairing melody, in the lightless dusk of the synagogues. ”

“ In obedience to the Cantor's summons, the blind boy, in his high hat and silken praying-shawl with the blue stripes, rose, and guided by his father's hand ascended the platform, amid the emotion of the synagogue. His brave boyish treble, pursuing its faultless way, thrilled the listeners to tears, and inflamed Zillah's breast, as she craned down from the gallery, with the mad hope that the miracle had happened, after all. ”

“ How beautiful and peaceful everything is! God, wilt Thou not impart to me the secret of peace?
Little did I divine what awaited my eyes when they rested fondly on the first sentence of Paul's article. Voi, it was a pronouncement on the Jewish question, venomous, scathing, mordant, terrific. It was an indictment of the race, lit up with all the glow of moral indignation; cruel and slanderous, yet noble and righteous in its tone and ideals; base as hell, yet pure as heaven; breathing a savagery as of Torquemada, and a saintliness as of Tolstoï. ”

“ Blessed be the true Judge."
"Thou art not angry with me, Sarah?"
"Why should I be angry? She was right—I am but a dead woman. Only no one may say Kaddish for me, no one may pray for the repose of my soul. I am not angry, Herzel. A wife should light the Sabbath candles, and throw in the fire the morsel of dough. But thy home was desolate, there was none to do these things. Here I have all I need. Now thou wilt be happy, too." ”

“ We are the centre of the world, the capital of the future. And look! See what the Albany Gazette says: 'Here the Hebrews can have their Jerusalem without fearing the legions of Titus. Here they can erect their Temple without dreading the torches of frenzied soldiers. Here they can lay their heads on their pillows at night without fear of mobs, of bigotry and persecution.'"
Peloni drew a long breath, enraptured by this holy El Dorado, sparkling on the map, amid its tributary lakes and rivers.
"You will see the eighteenth chapter of Isaiah fulfilled," Noah went on. ”

“ Such disappointment as often befalls the visionary when he sees the land of his dreams was spared to the Maggid, who remained a visionary even in the presence of the real; beholding with spiritual eye the refuse-laden alleys and the rapacious Schnorrers (beggars) . He lived enswathed as with heavenly love, waiting for the moment of transition to the shining World-To-Come, and his supplications at the Wailing Wall for the restoration of Zion's glory had, despite their sympathetic fervour, the peaceful impersonality of one who looks forward to no worldly kingdom. ”

“ Poor Rebecca Grinwitz was still thinking of her husband.
It was of him she thought, even when the ministers, in their long white cerements, were pouring forth their souls in passionate vocalization, now rising to a wail, now breaking to a sob, now sinking to a dread whisper; it was of him she thought when the weeping worshippers, covered from head to foot in their praying-shawls, rocked to and fro in a frenzy of grief, and battered the gates of Heaven with fiery lyrics ”

“ Behind all the tangled network of ceremony and ritual, the larger mind of the man who has lived and loved sees the outlines of a creed grand in its simplicity, sublime in its persistence. The spirit [423] has clothed itself on with flesh, as it must do for human eyes to gaze on it and live with it; and if, in addition, it has swaddled itself with fold on fold of garment, even so the music has not gone out of its voice, nor the love out of its eyes.
As soon as Paul is gone to-morrow, I must plan out my future life. His book will doubtless launch him on the road to fame and fortune. ”

“ Why did these forms and ceremonies, which now loom beautiful to me through a mist of tears, seem hideous chains on the free limbs of childhood? Was it my father's fault or my own that the stereotyped routine of the day; that the being dragged out of bed in the gray dawn to go to synagogue, or to intone in monotonous sing-song the weary casuistries of the rabbis; that the endless precepts or prohibitions, made me conceive religion as the most hateful of tyrannies? ”

“ Every ear was astrain for the revelations to come.
"Children," said he slowly, "as I passed through the circles the souls cried to me. 'Haste, haste, for the Evil One plotteth and the Messianic day will be again delayed.' So I rose into the ante-chamber of Grace where the fiery wheels sang 'Holy, holy,' and there I came upon the Poison God waiting to see the glory of the Little Face. And with him was a soul, very strange, such as I had never seen, living neither in heaven nor hell, perchance created of Satan himself for his instrument. ”

“ To live on as I am doing would be intolerable. To do nothing for my people, either with voice or purse, to live alone in this sleepy hamlet, cut off from all human fellowship, alienated from everything that makes my neighbours' lives endurable—better death than such a death-in-life. And yet is it possible that I can get into touch again with my youth, that after a sort of Rip Van Winkle sleep, I can take up again and retwine the severed strands? How shall my people receive again a viper into its bosom? ”

“ The poor, conscience-stricken woman burst into tears.
"My Rivkoly have wicked thoughts!" said Moshé incredulously, as he smoothed her cheek. "If my Rivkoly puts on a new dress in honour of the Sabbath, is not the dear God pleased? Why, where is thy new dress?"
"I have changed it for an old one," she sobbed. "I do not want to see the demon again."
"The Satan Mekatrig has no real existence, I tell thee," said Moshé, irritated. "He only means our own inward thoughts, that distract us in the performance of the precepts; our own inward temptations to go astray after our eyes and after our hearts." ”

“ Salvina's pallid cheek coloured with modesty and resentment. "My sister doesn't need your services."
"Maybe not," said Sugarman, unruffled. "But the young man does. He saw your sister once years ago, before he went to the Cape. Now he is a Takif (rich man) and wants a wife."
"He's not rich enough to buy Kitty." Salvina's romantic soul was outraged, and she spoke with unwonted asperity.
"He is rich enough to buy Kitty all she wants. He is quite in love with her—she can ask for anything."
"Then let him go and tell her so himself. What does he come to you for? He must be a very poor lover." ”

“ And in truth he did find at heart some subtle sympathy with this copper-coloured savage which was not called out by the busy citizens of Buffalo. On a sunlit morning, bearing his flagstaff with the flag wrapped round it, a blanket, and a little store of provisions for camping out over-night, Peloni slipped into the birch canoe and the Indian paddled off. For miles they glided in silence along the sparkling Niagara, lone denizens of a lonely world. ”

“ Salvina was by this time dazed, yet she had a gleam of consciousness left with which to register this culminating destruction of all her social landmarks. What! That monstrous wickedness of marquises and epauletted officers which hovered vaguely in the shadow-land of novels and plays had tumbled with a bang into real life; had fallen not even into its natural gilded atmosphere, but through the amulet-guarded doors of a respectable Jewish [259] family in the heart of a Hackney Terrace, amid the horsehair couches and deal tables of homely reality. ”

“ Perhaps she was still seventeen, studying the Greek verbs for the Bachelorhood of Arts, perhaps her mother was still a happy wife. Her eyes filled with tears, and she let herself dwell upon the wondrous possibility a second or so longer than she believed in it. For the smell of new paint was too potent; it routed the persuasions of the old furniture. And in another instant it had penetrated through Mrs. Brill's fatigue. She started up, aware of something subtly wrong, ere clearer consciousness dawned. ”