Sholem Asch

“ Open up the earth at my feet and let it swallow me! But shield my daughter. Send her back to me as pure and innocent as when she left. I know. . . to You everything is possible. Work a miracle! For You are an almighty God. And if You don't, then You're no God at all, I tell you. I, Yekel Tchaftchovitch, tell You that You are as vengeful as any human being. . .
Reb Ali, jumps up and snatches the Parchment from Yekel's grasp.
Do you realize whom you are talking to? (Looks at him sternly , then takes the Scroll back to Rifkele's room.) Implore pardon of the Holy Scroll! ”

“ Imbedded in the slime that fills Yekel's soul is a jewel of sparkling beauty. But the very income by which he seeks to secure his daughter's spiritual splendor contains the germs of her loathsome fall and of his own crushing defeat. ”

“ Come, Scribe. Come, host, let's be off to the synagogue. We'll hunt out a quorum and celebrate the Holy Scroll. . . (To the Scribe.) Do you see, Reb Aaron? A Jew, even if he sins, still remains a Jew. A Jewish soul — seeks a pious scholar for a son-in-law. . . (To Yekel.) Never you mind. Don't worry. God will help you. . . The Lord loves a repentant sinner. But you must give generous donations to the students of the Law. If you cannot study the Law yourself, at least support those who can, for the whole world rests upon the Holy Law. . . (To the Scribe.) ”

“ And when will the wedding take place, — may it be with luck!
Sarah
Just see with whom he's stopped to talk! It really becomes him! With outcasts, God forgive my words. Reb Ali and the Scribe will be here at any moment!
Shloyme
When'll the wedding take place, you ask? When does one of our kind ever have a wedding? When we'll get a couple of girls we'll get married and open a house of our own. What else can one of us become? Certainly not a Rabbi. But the girls must be something fine, — first class. Fiery and hot-blooded. ”

“ Down into the cellar. . . Back to the brothel. . . We don't need any daughter now . . . don't need her. . . She's become what her mother was. . . God won't have it. . . Back to the cellar. . . Down into the brothel!
Sarah
So you want to go back to the cellar? — Into the cellar, then! Much I care! (Resumes her packing.) He wants to ruin us completely. What has come over the man? (For a moment she is absorbed in reflection.) If you're going to stand there like a lunatic, I'll get busy myself! (Takes off her diamond ear-rings.) I'll go over to Shloyme's and give him my diamond ear-rings. ”

“ Rebbi, when a man has a son who goes to the bad — the devil take him. But a daughter, Rebbi. If a daughter falls, it is as if the mother had sinned in her grave. So I went to the holy synagogue and approached this man (Pointing to Reb Ali.) and I said to him: "Give me something that'll guard my home from evil.". . . So he said to me: "Have a Holy Scroll written and place it in your home." Rebbi, as for us, our souls belong to the devil anyway. . . For her, and in her room I'll place the Scroll; for her to have as a companion. As for us, we dare not, we must not. ”

“ Hindel
Such a crazy idea: to stand in the rain. As if they'll attract the whole world. . . Nobody'd ever show up in a downpour like this. . . (Goes into her compartment and sits down near her trunk, packing various articles.)
Reizel, shaking off raindrops.
To the deuce with the whole lot of them. I paid my account the day before yesterday. . . We were standing under the eaves, the rain is so fragrant. . . It washes the whole winter off your head. (Goes over to Hindel.) Just look. . . (Showing her wet hair.) How fresh it is. . . how sweet it smells. . . ”

“ Sarah
"Who you are!" What! Have you stolen anything? You have a business. Everybody has his own business. You don't compel anybody, do you? You may deal in what you please, can't you, if you yourself do no wrong? ”

“ Pity for and interest in the underdog — the soul of Russian art — became, from the very outset, the underlying principle of the new-born Yiddish art. No human being is so utterly brutalized as to possess not a single spark worthy of the artist's sympathetic, though ruthlessly impartial, attention, — this is the basic rule of Yiddish letters.
Himself a creature of the gutter, Yekel Tchaftchovitch, the central figure of "The God of Vengeance," is stirred by the noblest ambition known to a father in the world of orthodox Judaism. ”

“ No dead people can come here. Our boss has a Holy Scroll upstairs. . . (A sudden hush.) What's wrong about our trade, I'd like to know? (She leaves her little room and goes into the cellar.) Wasn't our mistress in a house like this for fifteen years? Yet she married. And isn't she a respectable God-fearing woman? . . . Doesn't she observe all the laws that a Jewish daughter must keep? . . . And isn't her Rifkele a pure child? And isn't our boss a respectable man? Isn't he generous? Doesn't he give the biggest donations to charity? . . . And he's had a Holy Scroll written. ”

“ SHOLOM ASH is one of the chief authors in contemporary Yiddish letters,—a literature at present enjoying a renaissance that attests the remarkable vitality of a people long oppressed in intellectual no less than in economic domains,—a literature that has much to teach America in the way of fearlessness before the facts of life, frankness in their interpretation and persistent idealism in face of the most degrading and debasing environment. ”

“ Yekel, in the same hoarse voice, as he paces about the room.
It's all the same to me now. My soul is given over to the devil. Nothing will help. It's no use. God won't have it. . . (He stops before the window and peers through an interstice of the shutter.) ”

“ Thousands of enlightened men and women then suddenly made the discovery, as it were, that the speech of their childhood was not a jargon, but a real language,—that instead of being a wretched conglomeration of uncouth words and phrases, it was rich in neglected beauty and possessed a homely vigor full of artistic possibilities. A stimulus was given to writing Yiddish "as the Gentiles do their mother tongues." Abramovitch was hailed as "the father of Yiddish literature" and his example was followed by a number of new writers, several of whom proved to be men of extraordinary gifts. ”

“ It was a matter of course that the young literature of which he is a conspicuous representative should shape itself under the influence of the much older and richer literary treasures of Slavic Russia and Poland. If it was natural for the novel of countries like France, Germany, Norway or Italy to fall under the sway of Turgenev, Tolstoi, Dostoyevski, Chekhov and Gorki, how much more so was it for a non-Russian fiction produced on Russian soil to seek guidance, directly or indirectly, in the same source.
Human sympathy is the watchword. ”

“ Reb Ali, interrupting Yekel. To the Scribe.
The man is a sincere penitent and it is our duty to befriend him. The Talmud counsels us to. Of course he understands the significance of a Holy Scroll. He's a Jew, after all. (To Yekel.) You must have reverence for a Scroll of the Law. Great reverence, — precisely as if a noted Rabbi were under your roof. In the house where it resides no profanity must be uttered. It must dwell amidst purity. (Speaks to Sarah, looking toward her but not directly at her.) Wherever a Holy Scroll is sheltered, there no woman must remove the wig from her head. ”

“ With er, er. . . (Casts a significant glance at Reizel, who at last understands, and leaves.) I had a talk with the groom's father. I spoke to him between the afternoon and evening prayers, at the synagogue. He's almost ready to talk business. Of course I gave him to understand that the bride doesn't boast a very high pedigree, but I guess another hundred roubles will fix that up, all right. Nowadays, pedigrees don't count as much as they used to. With God's help I'll surely be here this Sabbath, with the groom's father. ”

“ He loves you. Very, very much. Today I'm having a Holy Scroll written. It costs a good deal of money. All for you, my child, all for you. (Rifkele is silent. Pause.) And with God's help, when you are betrothed, I'll buy your sweetheart a gold watch and chain — the chain will weigh half a pound. . . Papa loves you very dearly. (Rifkele is silent. She lowers her head bashfully. Pause.) Don't be ashamed. There's nothing wrong about being engaged. God has ordained it. (Pause.) That's nothing. Everybody gets engaged and married. (Rifkele is silent. Pause.) Well, now. Do you love daddy? ”

“ Girls will come, fine young ladies, respectable ones. And you'll chum with them.
Rifkele, stubbornly.
You're always putting things off until Passover. I'm a grown-up girl already. (Looking into the mirror.) See, ma. I'm a big girl. (Showing her hair.) And just see how long my braids are. Why, Manke tells me. . . (' Interupting herself.) And Manke will be there, too, won't she, mamma dear?
Sarah
No, my darling. Only nice, respectable girls. For you are a respectable child, a decent Jewish daughter. ”

“ Perhaps, too, the retribution which in each case is visited upon the parent arises from the fact that both Mrs. Warren and Yekel have, in Vivie's accusatory words, "lived one life and believed in another."
"The God of Vengeance," despite conclusions too easily drawn, is not a sex play. When Ash wishes to deal with sex as sex he is not afraid to handle the subject with all the poetry and power at his command. Such a play as his "Jephthah's Daughter" treats the elemental urge of sex with daring, beauty and Dionysiac abandon. Here, too, a golden symbolism wafts through the piece. ”

“ Rifkele's crying is heard from without.)
Shloyme
There's a virtuous Yekel for you! It doesn't become his dignity for his daughter to be a brothel-woman. (Through the ceiling is heard a noise of angry stamping, and the weeping of a woman.) He must be giving it to his wife now, all right! Biff! Bang!
Hindel
He's right. A mother should guard her daughter well. . . Whatever you were, you were, but once you marry and have a child, watch over it. . . Just wait. If God should bless us with children, I'll know how to bring them up. ”

“ But Abramovitch's stories were not even regarded as vanguard swallows heralding the approach of Spring. They aroused an amused sort of admiration. Indeed, it required a peculiar independence of mind to read them at all, and while they were greeted with patronizing applause, it was a long time before they found imitators. ”

“ Hindel, from her room, where she is still busy with her chest of clothes.
And what's the matter with a place of this sort, I'd like to know? Aren't we every bit as good as the girls in the business houses, eh? The whole world is like that nowadays; that's what the world demands. In these days even the daughters of the best families aren't any better. This is our way of earning a living. And believe me, when one of us gets married, she's more faithful to her husband than any of the others. We know what a man is. ”

“ The last woman speaks to Rifkele, loud enough for the others to hear.) Go, Rifkele, and prepare the robe for the Holy Scroll. Reb Ali will soon come, and the Scribe, too. (Rifkele goes into her room.)
Sarah, sweeping the floor.
To think that he had to boast before such people ! I tell you! . . . And otherwise, do you imagine, they wouldn't have come to you? Make a celebration every day, and every day you'll have them here. In respectable houses people know how to act so that they'll be looked up to. What do you think, — they're all like you, with your "Hello, good brother!" ”

“ Reizel
But they say that you mustn't read from such a Holy Scroll, and that the daughter of such mothers become what the mothers themselves were. . . that something draws them on like a magnet, and that the Evil Spirit drags them down into the mire. . .
Hindel, frightened. ”

“ In the home of one who has a Scroll of the Law written, all must be joy and happiness. Not quarrelling. (To the Scribe outside.) This way, please. Scribe. (Yekel, at the sound of Reb Ali's voice, releases Shloyme. Sarah runs over to Shloyme and thrusts into his hand a piece of paper money which she has taken from her stocking. She shoves Hindel and Shloyme toward the door; the latter two encounter the Scribe and Reb Ali on the threshold. The pious men stand back from the woman, making way for her and Shloyme.) ”

“ Above or below. Downstairs live no strangers, nor upstairs either. Same thing. The same devil.
Yekel
Get a move on! Off with you! Do you hear? — We're expecting people!
Sarah
May an evil night descend upon their heads, their hands and their feet. They came here to spoil our celebration. . . (Looks at Hindel with scorn.) It pays to have so much vexation over such a slut!
Hindel
If I'm not good enough to be one of your women, go down into the cellar yourself.
Shloyme, to Hindel
Tell her to send her daughter down there. (To Sarah.) Upon my word, you'd do a rushing business. ”