The Grandchildren of the Ghetto Part 38

'Yes; but look what Jews set up to be--G.o.d's witnesses!' interrupted Strelitski. 'This mediocrity may pa.s.s in the rest of the world.'

'And does lack of modern lights const.i.tute ignorance?' went on Raphael, disregarding the interruption. He began walking up and down, and thras.h.i.+ng the air with his arms. Hitherto he had remained comparatively quiet, dominated by Strelitski's superior restlessness.

'I cannot help thinking there is a profound lesson in the Bible story of the oxen who, unguided, bore safely the Ark of the Covenant.

Intellect obscures more than it illumines.'

'Oh, Leon, Leon, you'll turn Catholic soon!' said Strelitski reprovingly.

'Not with a capital C,' said Raphael, laughing a little. 'But I am so sick of hearing about culture, I say more than I mean. Judaism is so human--that's why I like it. No abstract metaphysics, but a lovable way of living the common life, sanctified by the centuries. Culture is all very well--doesn't the Talmud say the world stands on the breath of the school-children?--but it has become a cant. Too often it saps the moral fibre.'

'You have all the old Jewish narrowness,' said Strelitski.

'I'd rather have that than the new Parisian narrowness--the cant of decadence. Look at my cousin Sidney. He talks as if the Jew only introduced moral headache into the world--in face of the corruptions of paganism which are still flagrant all over Asia and Africa and Polynesia--the idol wors.h.i.+p, the abominations, the disregard of human life, of truth, of justice.'

'But is the civilised world any better? Think of the dishonesty of business, the self-seeking of public life, the infamies and hypocrisies of society, the prost.i.tution of soul and body! No, the Jew has yet to play a part in history. Supplement his Hebraism by what h.e.l.lenic ideals you will, but the Jew's ideals must ever remain the indispensable ones,' said Strelitski, becoming exalted again. 'Without righteousness a kingdom cannot stand. The world is longing for a broad, simple faith that shall look on science as its friend and reason as its inspirer. People are turning in their despair even to table-rappings and Mahatmas. Now, for the first time in history, is the hour of Judaism. Only it must enlarge itself; its platform must be all-inclusive. Judaism is but a specialised form of Hebraism; even if Jews stick to their own special historical and ritual ceremonies, it is only Hebraism--the pure spiritual kernel--that they can offer the world.'

'But that is quite the orthodox Jewish idea on the subject,' said Raphael.

'Yes, but orthodox ideas have a way of remaining ideas,' retorted Strelitski. 'Where I am heterodox is in thinking the time has come to work them out. Also in thinking that the monotheism is not the element that needs the most accentuation. The formula of the religion of the future will be a Jewish formula--Character, not Creed. The provincial period of Judaism is over, though even its Dark Ages are still lingering on in England. It must become cosmic, universal. Judaism is too timid, too apologetic, too deferential. Doubtless this is the result of persecution, but it does not tend to diminish persecution.

We may as well try the other att.i.tude. It is the world the Jewish preacher should address, not a Kensington congregation. Perhaps, when the Kensington congregation sees the world is listening, it will listen, too,' he said, with a touch of bitterness.

'But it listens to you now,' said Raphael.

'A pleasing illusion which has kept me too long in my false position.

With all its love and reverence, do you think it forgets I am its hireling? I may perhaps have a little more prestige than the bulk of my fellows--though even that is partly due to my congregants being rich and fas.h.i.+onable--but at bottom everybody knows I am taken like a house--on a three years' agreement. And I dare not speak, I cannot, while I wear the badge of office; it would be disloyal; my own congregation would take alarm. The position of a minister is like that of a judicious editor--which, by the way, you are not; he is led, rather than leads. He has to feel his way, to let in light wherever he sees a c.h.i.n.k, a cranny. But let them get another man to preach to them the echo of their own voices; there will be no lack of candidates for the salary. For my part, I am sick of this petty Jesuitry; in vain I tell myself it is spiritual statesmans.h.i.+p like that of so many Christian clergyman who are silently bringing Christianity back to Judaism.'

'But it _is_ spiritual statesmans.h.i.+p,' a.s.serted Raphael.

'Perhaps. You are wiser, deeper, calmer than I. You are an Englishman, I am a Russian. I am all for action, action, action! In Russia I should have been a Nihilist, not a philosopher. I can only go by my feelings, and I feel choking. When I first came to England, before the horror of Russia wore off, I used to go about breathing in deep breaths of air, exulting in the sense of freedom. Now I am stifling again. Do you not understand? Have you never guessed it? And yet I have often said things to you that should have opened your eyes.

I must escape from the house of bondage--must be master of myself, of my word and thought. Oh, the world is so wide, so wide--and we are so narrow! Only gradually did the web mesh itself about me. At first my fetters were flowery bands, for I believed all I taught and could teach all I believed. Insensibly the flowers changed to iron chains, because I was changing as I probed deeper into life and thought, and saw my dreams of influencing English Judaism fading in the harsh daylight of fact. And yet at moments the iron links would soften to flowers again. Do you think there is no sweetness in adulation, in prosperity--no subtle cajolery that soothes the conscience and coaxes the soul to take its pleasure in a world of make-believe? Spiritual statesmans.h.i.+p forsooth!' He made a gesture of resolution. 'No, the Judaism of you English weighs upon my spirits. It is so parochial.

Everything turns on finance; the United Synagogue keeps your community orthodox because it has the funds and owns the burying-grounds. Truly a dismal allegory--a creed whose strength lies in its cemeteries.

Money is the sole avenue to distinction and to authority; it has its coa.r.s.e thumb over education, wors.h.i.+p, society. In my country--even in your own Ghetto--the Jews do not despise money, but at least piety and learning are the t.i.tles to position and honour. Here the scholar is cla.s.sed with the _Schnorrer_; if an artist or an author is admired, it is for his success. You are right; it is oxen that carry your Ark of the Covenant--fat oxen. You admire them, Leon; you are an Englishman, and cannot stand outside it all. But I am stifling under this weight of moneyed mediocrity, this _regime_ of dull respectability. I want the atmosphere of ideas and ideals.'

He tore at his high clerical collar as though suffocating literally.

Raphael was too moved to defend English Judaism. Besides, he was used to these jeremiads now--had he not often heard them from Sidney? Had he not read them in Esther's book? Nor was it the first time he had listened to the Russian's tirades, though he had lacked the key to the internal conflict that embittered them.

'But how will you live?' he asked, tacitly accepting the situation.

'You will not, I suppose, go over to the Reform Synagogue?'

'That fossil, so proud of its petty reforms half a century ago that it has stood still ever since to admire them! It is a synagogue for sn.o.bs--who never go there.'

Raphael smiled faintly. It was obvious that Strelitski on the war-path did not pause to weigh his utterances.

'I am glad you are not going over, anyhow. Your congregation would----'

'Crucify me between two money-lenders?'

'Never mind. But how will you live?'

'How does Miss Ansell live? I can always travel with cigars--I know the line thoroughly.' He smiled mournfully. 'But probably I shall go to America--the idea has been floating in my mind for months. There Judaism is grander, larger, n.o.bler. There is room for all parties. The dead bones are not wors.h.i.+pped as relics. Free-thought has its vent-holes--it is not repressed into hypocrisy as among us. There is care for literature, for national ideals. And one deals with millions, not petty thousands. This English community, with its squabbles about rituals, its four Chief Rabbis all in love with one another, its stupid Sephardim, its narrow-minded Reformers, its fatuous self-importance, its invincible ignorance, is but an ant-hill, a negligible quant.i.ty in the future of the faith. Westward the course of Judaism, as of empire, takes its way--from the Euphrates and Tigris it emigrated to Cordova and Toledo, and the year that saw its expulsion from Spain was the year of the discovery of America. _Ex Oriente lux_.

Perhaps it will return to you here by way of the Occident. Russia and America are the two strongholds of the race, and Russia is pouring her streams into America, where they will be made free men and free thinkers. It is in America, then, that the last great battle of Judaism will be fought out; amid the temples of the New World it will make its last struggle to survive. It is there that the men who have faith in its necessity must be, so that the physical force conserved at such a cost may not radiate uselessly away. Though Israel has sunk low, like a tree once green and living, and has become petrified and blackened, there is stored-up sunlight in him. Our racial isolation is a mere superst.i.tion unless turned to great purposes. We have done nothing _as Jews_ for centuries, though our Old Testament has always been an a.r.s.enal of texts for the European champions of civil and religious liberty. We have been unconsciously pioneers of modern commerce, diffusers of folk-lore and what not. Cannot we be a conscious force, making for n.o.bler ends? Could we not, for instance, be the link of federation among the nations, acting everywhere in favour of Peace? Could we not be the centres of new sociologic movements in each country, as a few American Jews have been the centre of the Ethical Culture movement?'

'You forget,' said Raphael, 'that, wherever the old Judaism has not been overlaid by the veneer of Philistine civilisation, we are already sociological object-lessons in good fellows.h.i.+p, unpretentious charity, domestic poetry, respect for learning, disrespect for respectability.

Our social system is a bequest from the ancient world by which the modern may yet benefit. The demerits you censure in English Judaism are all departures from the old way of living. Why should we not revive or strengthen that, rather than waste ourselves on impracticable novelties? And in your prognostications of the future of the Jews have you not forgotten the all-important factor of Palestine?'

'No; I simply leave it out of count. You know how I have persuaded the Holy Land League to co-operate with the movements for directing the streams of the persecuted towards America. I have alleged with truth that Palestine is impracticable for the movement. I have not said what I have gradually come to think--that the salvation of Judaism is not in the national idea at all. That is the dream of visionaries--and young men,' he added, with a melancholy smile. 'May we not dream n.o.bler dreams than political independence? For, after all, political independence is only a means to an end, not an end in itself, as it might easily become, and as it appears to other nations. To be merely one among the nations--that is not, despite George Eliot, so satisfactory an ideal. The restoration to Palestine, or the acquisition of a national centre, may be a political solution, but it is not a spiritual idea. We must abandon it--it cannot be held consistently with our professed attachment to the countries in which our lot is cast--and we have abandoned it. We have fought and slain one another in the Franco-German War, and in the war of the North and the South. Your whole difficulty with your pauper immigrants arises from your effort to keep two contradictory ideals going at once. As Englishmen, you may have a right to shelter the exile; but not as Jews. Certainly, if the nations cast us out, we could draw together and form a nation as of yore. But persecution, expulsion, is never simultaneous; our dispersal has saved Judaism, and it may yet save the world. For I prefer the dream that we are divinely dispersed to bless it, wind-sown seeds to fertilise its waste places. To be a nation without a fatherland, yet with a mother-tongue, Hebrew--there is the spiritual originality, the miracle of history. Such has been the real kingdom of Israel in the past--we have been "sons of the Law" as other men have been sons of France, of Italy, of Germany. Such may our fatherland continue, with "the higher life" subst.i.tuted for "the Law"--a kingdom not of s.p.a.ce, not measured by the vulgar meteyard of an Alexander, but a great spiritual Republic, as devoid of material form as Israel's G.o.d, and congruous with his conception of the Divine.

And the conquest of this kingdom needs no violent movement--if Jews only practised what they preach, it would be achieved to-morrow; for all expressions of Judaism, even to the lowest, have common sublimities. And this kingdom--as it has no s.p.a.ce, so it has no limits; it must grow till all mankind are its subjects. The brotherhood of Israel will be the nucleus of the brotherhood of man.'

'It is magnificent,' said Raphael; 'but it is not Judaism. If the Jews have the future you dream of, the future will have no Jews. America is already decimating them with Sunday-Sabbaths and English Prayer-Books.

Your Judaism is as eviscerated as the Christianity I found in vogue when I was at Oxford, which might be summed up: There is no G.o.d, but Jesus Christ is His Son. George Eliot was right. Men are men, not pure spirit. A fatherland focusses a people. Without it we are but the gipsies of religion. All over the world, at every prayer, every Jew turns towards Jerusalem. We must not give up the dream. The countries we live in can never be more than "step-fatherlands" to us. Why, if your visions were realised, the prophecy of Genesis, already practically fulfilled, "Thou shalt spread abroad to the west and to the east, and to the north and to the south; and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed," would be so remarkably consummated that we might reasonably hope to come to our own again according to the promises.'

'Well, well,' said Strelitski good-humouredly, 'so long as you admit it is not within the range of practical politics now.'

'It is your own dream that is premature,' retorted Raphael; 'at any rate, the cosmic part of it. You are thinking of throwing open the citizens.h.i.+p of your Republic to the world. But to-day's task is to make its citizens by blood worthier of their privilege.'

'You will never do it with the old generation,' said Strelitski. 'My hope is in the new. Moses led the Jews forty years through the wilderness merely to eliminate the old. Give me young men, and I will move the world.'

'You will do nothing by attempting too much,' said Raphael; 'you will only dissipate your strength. For my part, I shall be content to raise Judea an inch.'

'Go on, then,' said Strelitski. 'That will give me a barley-corn. But I've wasted too much of your time, I fear. Good-bye. Remember your promise.'

He held out his hand. He had grown quite calm, now his decision was taken.

'Good-bye,' said Raphael, shaking it warmly. 'I think I shall cable to America, "Behold, Joseph the dreamer cometh."'

'Dreams are our life,' replied Strelitski. 'Lessing was right--aspiration is everything.'

'And yet you would rob the orthodox Jew of his dream of Jerusalem!

Well, if you must go, don't go without your tie,' said Raphael, picking it up, and feeling a stolid, practical Englishman in presence of this enthusiast. 'It is dreadfully dirty, but you must wear it a little longer.'

'Only till the New Year, which is bearing down upon us,' said Strelitski, thrusting it into his pocket. 'Cost what it may, I shall no longer countenance the ritual and ceremonial of the season of Repentance. Good-bye again. If you should be writing to Miss Ansell, I should like her to know how much I owe her.'

'But I tell you I don't know her address,' said Raphael, his uneasiness reawakening.

'Surely you can write to her publishers?'

And the door closed upon the Russian dreamer, leaving the practical Englishman dumfounded at his never having thought of this simple expedient. But before he could adopt it the door was thrown open again by Pinchas, who had got out of the habit of knocking through Raphael being too polite to reprimand him. The poet tottered in, dropped wearily into a chair, and buried his face in his hands, letting an extinct cigar-stump slip through his fingers on to the literature that carpeted the floor.

'What is the matter?' inquired Raphael in alarm.

'I am miserable--vairy miserable.'

'Has anything happened?'

'Nothing. But I have been thinking vat have I come to after all these years, all these vanderings? Nothing! Vat vill be my end? Oh, I am so unhappy.'

'But you are better off than you ever were in your life. You no longer live amid the squalor of the Ghetto; you are clean and well dressed; you yourself admit that you can afford to give charity now. That looks as if you'd come to something--not nothing.'