Asher

“ The Asheri family suffered great privations but remained faithful in their devotion to the Talmud. Jacob ben Asher is known as the Ba‘al ha-ṭurim (literally “Master of the Rows”) from his chief work, the four Ṭurim or Rows (the title is derived from the four Ṭurim or rows of jewels in the High Priest’s breastplate) . In this work Jacob ben Asher codified Rabbinic law on ethics and ritual, and it remained a standard work of reference until it was edited with a commentary by Joseph Qaro, who afterwards simplified the code into the more popular Shulḥan Aruch. ”

“ The plains frontier had no use for the one talent folk. People must know how to take care of life there. Asher’s first memory of Virginia was when she bent over him, fighting the fever in a prison hospital. He knew her talent for helping, and he had fairly estimated her quick ingenuity for this sod house emergency. But a new vision of the plains life came to her as she watched him, gentle-handed, swift, but unhurried, never giving an inch to the enemy in fighting with death for the life of Jim Shirley. ”

“ Asher is somewhat strange. The parallel with verse 10 alone suggests that we should read of Ephraim; and this is the more probable if the real significance of the reference is for the Chronicler’s period (see the head-note, and xv. 9) . It is not likely that Judaism at that time could claim many adherents in the old territory of Asher (see Hölscher, Palästina, p. 32) . ”

“ The emigration of Asheri or Asher from Germany to Spain inaugurates an unhappy period for the Spanish and Provençal Jews in their efforts for the progress of culture.
Asher ben Yechiel (born about 1250, died 1327) of the Rhine district, sprang from ancestors who centered their whole world in the Talmud. A disciple of the celebrated Meïr of Rothenburg, Asher acquired the acute Tossafist method, composed35 Tossafist works, but had a finer sense of system and order than this school. ”

“ Asher’s eyes followed the waving young wheat and the blossoming orchards, the grove, full of birds’ songs, and the line of Grass River running deeper year by year. Then he looked at his hard, brown hands and thought of the toil and faith and hope that had gone into the conquest.
“Yes, I’m still among the middle-aged,” he said, straightening with his habitual military dignity of bearing. “But I don’t know about this everlasting conquest of the prairies. There’s still some of it waiting over beyond those headlands in the open range where John Jacobs has a big holding. ”

“ Asher was the supreme god of the Assyrians, 20the Vedic Mahadeva, the emblem of the human male structure and creative energy. The same idea of the creator is still to be seen in India, Egypt, Phœnicia, the Mediterranean, Europe, and Denmark, depicted on stone relics.
To a rude and ignorant people, enslaved with such a religion, it was an easy step from the crude to the more refined sign, from the offensive to a more pictured and less obnoxious symbol, from the plain and self-evident to the mixed, disguised, and mystified, from the unclothed privy member to the cross. ”

“ Virginia had tucked herself down in the one rocking chair, with her feet on the footstool.
“It’s such a nice night to be to ourselves. Watch the rain washing that west window. It’s getting worse. I always think of Jim on nights like this.”
“So do I,” Asher said, as he sat down in the armed chair he had made for himself of cottonwood limbs with a gunny sack seat. “He’s all alone with his dog these dark nights, and loneliness cuts to the heart of a man like Jim. I’m glad I have you, Virginia. ”

“ And Asher, who had fought in the front line at Antietam, had forced his way through a storm of Indian arrows out of a death-trap in the foothills of the Rockies, had ministered to men on the plains dying of the Asiatic plague, and had bound up the wounds of men who returned to the battle again, found a new form of heroism that morning in his own little cabin—the heroism of motherhood. ”

“ He called Miss Asher loudly.
She came, calm and slightly contemptuous, in her white shirt waist and plain black skirt.
“Mr. Platt would like the pleasure of your company to dinner this evening,” said Zizzbaum, walking away.
“Sure,” said Miss Asher, looking at the ceiling. “I’d be much pleased. Nine-eleven West Twentieth street. What time?”
“Say seven o’clock.”
“All right, but please don’t come ahead of time. I room with a school teacher, and she doesn’t allow any gentlemen to call in the room. There isn’t any parlor, so you’ll have to wait in the hall. I’ll be ready.” ”

“ When Virginia Aydelot had fallen asleep at last the doctor came into the kitchen and sat down with the two haggard men to whom his coming had brought unspeakable solace.
“You can take comfort, Mr. Aydelot,” he said assuringly. “Your wife has been well cared for. Hardly one man in a thousand could do as well as you have done. I wonder you never studied medicine.”
“You seem confident of results, Doctor,” Asher said gratefully.
“I have known the Thaine family all my life,” Horace Carey said quietly. And Asher, whose mind was surged with anxiety, did not even think to be surprised. ”

“ Indeed, I no longer wonder that you think yourself the Messiah.'
[115] 'Even if I do, our tradition only makes the Messiah a man; somebody some day will have to win your belief. But what I said was that God acts through man.'
'Ah yes,' said Sir Asher good-humouredly. 'Three-in-one and one-in-three.'
'And why not?' said Barstein with a flash of angry intuition. 'Aren't you a trinity yourself?'
'Me?' Sir Asher was now quite sure of the sculptor's derangement.
'Yes—the Briton, the Jew, and the anti-Semite—three-in-one and one-in-three.'
Sir Asher touched one of the electric bells with a jerk. ”

“ I don’t need to back-fire like my neighbors do.”
As Asher untied his ponies and climbed into the wagon, Jim held their reins. 38
“Stop a minute. Let a single man offer you a word of advice, will you?” he asked.
“All right, I need advice,” Asher smiled down on Jim’s earnest face.
“Then heed it, too. No use to tell you to take care of your wife. You’ll do that to a fault. But don’t make any mistake about Mrs. Asher Aydelot. She went through Rebel and Union lines once to save your life. Don’t doubt her strength to hold her own here as soon as the first fight is over. ”

“ Everything is on the stable shelves,” Jim called back against the wind, as he drove the plow deep in the black soil. “Be sure you put ’em back when you are through with ’em, too.”
“Poor Jim!” Asher said to himself with a smile. “The artist in him makes him keep the place in order. He’d stop to hang up his coat and vest if he had to fight a mad bull. Poor judgment puts a good many tragedies into lives as well as stage villain types of crime.”
And then Asher thought of Virginia, and wondered what she was doing through the long afternoon. ”

“ Asher replied. “Armies don’t win, they terrorize and destroy. We whipped back the Indians out here; they’d come again, if they dared—but they never will,” he added quickly, as he saw his wife’s face whiten in the moonlight. “It’s a struggle to win the soil, with loneliness and distance and a few thousand other things to fight, beside. But I told you all this before I asked you to come out here.”
“I wish I could have brought some property to you to help you, Asher, but you know how the Thaine estate was reduced.” ”

“ I’ll stay here with Asher Aydelot. Other men and women as eager as we are will come soon. We can wait, and some day, Oh, some day, we’ll not miss what the Thaines lost by the war and the Aydelots lost by the Thaines, for we’ll have a prince’s holdings on these desolate plains! ”

“ She would always be handsome without regard to age or locality. Nor had the harshness of the wilderness made harsh the soft Southern tongue that was her heritage.
At Stewart’s words, Asher glanced at his wife, and he knew from her eyes what her choice would be.
“When I was a boy on the old farm back at Cloverdale, Ohio, my mother’s advice was as useful to me as my father’s.” Swift through Asher’s mind ran the memory of that moonlit April night on his father’s veranda five years before. “Out here it is our wives who bear the heaviest burdens. ”

“ In the Blessing of Moses it is bidden to defend itself—evidently against invasion (Deut. xxxiii. 25) .
Even in the time of Seti I. and Rameses II. (latter half of 14th cent. B.C.) the district to the west of Galilee appears to have been known to the Egyptians as Aser (u) , so that it is possible to infer either (a) that Asher was an Israelite tribe which, if it ever went down into Egypt, separated itself from its brethren in Egypt and migrated north, “an example which was probably followed by some of the other tribes as well” (Hommel, Ancient Hebrew Tradition, p. 228) ”

“ In company with him was his boyhood chum, Jim Shirley, son of the Cloverdale tavern keeper.
An April sun was slipping behind the treetops, and the twilight mists were already rising above the creek. Francis Aydelot and his wife sat on the veranda watching Asher in the glory of a military suit and brass buttons coming up the pike with springing step.
“How strong he is! I’m glad he is at home again,” the mother was saying.
“Yes, he’s here to stay at last. I have his plans all settled,” Francis Aydelot declared.
“But, Francis, a man must make some plans for himself. Asher may not agree,” Mrs. ”

“ Into Asher’s clear gray eyes, that for all the years had held the vision of the wide, pathless prairies redeemed to fruitfulness, there was a vision now of the big things with which the twentieth century must cope. The work of a generation younger than his own.
“Don’t forget two things, Thaine, when you are fairly started in this campaign. ”

“ Asher insisted.
“You are the strongest man here now, for all your farm work, Aydelot,” John Jacobs asserted. “It is the store that really breaks a man down.” 222
“Not in his nerve, nor in pocketbook,” Todd Stewart added. “Here’s a toast, now, to the second generation, and especially to Thaine Aydelot, son of the Sunflower Ranch. Nineteen years old tonight.”
“What is Thaine going to follow, Asher?” someone inquired. “I suppose you’ll be making a gentleman out of him, since he’s your only child.” ”

“ Champers queried urgently.
The plains life made men patient and deliberate of speech, and Asher did not hasten his words for all the bluster.
“I say I am not using my influence to keep any man here or push him out of here. I speak only for the family at the Sunflower Inn. I know ’danged well’ I am not going to leave the Grass River country this fall. Further, I know your hand before you play it, and I know that if you can play it against Todd Stewart and Jim Shirley and Cyrus Bennington and the rest of them, I haven’t taken their measure right. ”

“ Asher gave one long lingering look of love, folded the weeping Aréli to his bosom, and ere Imri could sufficiently recover his emotion to speak, the old man was gone.
The death he sought was speedily obtained. The Spanish officers and several of the men had quitted Eshcol, leaving only the lowest rank of soldiery to keep watch lest any of the fugitives should return, and, taking advantage of the secluded situation of the vale, set the edict at defiance. Effectually to prevent this, the men were commanded to turn the little temple to a place of worship for true believers. ”

“ Asher did not reply at once. A rush of boyhood memories flooded his mind, and as he looked at Virginia he recalled how his mother had looked at him on the day he 297 left home to join the Third Ohio regiment nearly forty years ago. And then he remembered the moonlit night and his mother’s blessing when he told of his longing for the open West, where opportunity hunts the man.
“No, Thaine,” he answered gently at last. “All I ask is that you try to foresee what is coming in hardship and responsibility. Young men go to war for adventure mostly. ”

“ Thaine settled back, satisfied to be silent as he watched the wonderful prairie landscape about him.
“I am going down to Shirley’s,” Carey began, as if to change the subject. “Strange fellow, Jim; I never knew another like him.” 145
“I was just thinking of Shirley,” Asher responded. “He is a royal neighbor and true friend, better to everybody else than he is to himself. His own crops suffer sometimes while he helps other folks lay theirs by. And yet his premises always look like he was expecting company. One cannot help wondering what purpose stays him in his work.” ”

“ It is not those of the sex of Eve alone that are inveigled to destruction by the serpent.
* For those who have not an opportunity of consulting the work referred to, I may observe that the Assyrian godhead consisted of four persons, three being male and one female. The principal god was Asher, the upright one, the equivalent of the Hindoo Mahadeva, the great holy one, and of the more modern Priapus. He was associated with Anu, lord of solids and of the lower world, equivalent to the "testis," or egg on the right side. ”

“ Asher, a son of Jacob, and the tribe descended from him, with its territory; also a place in Palestine:--Asher
837 אֹ֫שֶׁר (o'-sher) : from אָשַׁר; happiness: happy.
838 אֲשׁוּר (aw-shoor') : or ashshur; from אָשַׁר in the sense of going; a step: going, step.
839 אֲשֻׁרִים (ash-oor') : contracted for תְּאַשּׁוּר; the cedar tree or some other light elastic wood: Ashurite.
840 אֲשַׂרְאֵל (as-ar-ale') : by orthographical variation from אָשַׁר and אֵל; right of God; Asarel, an Israelite: Asareel. ”

“ Along with Gad Reuben possessed a splendid country, but these two faded away into a sort of barbarism, scarcely maintaining their separateness from the wild races of the desert. Asher in like manner suffered from the contact with Phœnicia and lost touch with the more faithful tribes. So it is always. Those who shirk religious duty lose the strength and dignity of religion. Though greatly favoured in place and gifts they fall into that spiritual impotence which means defeat and extinction. ”