The Grandchildren of the Ghetto Part 4

'I deny it. Only a small percentage of his own race is responsive. I would wager our percentage is proportionally higher. But Browning's philosophy of religion is already ours--for hundreds of years every Sat.u.r.day night every Jew has been proclaiming the view of life and Providence in "Pisgah Sights":

'"All's lend and borrow, Good, see, wants evil, Joy demands sorrow, Angel weds devil."

What is this but the philosophy of our formula for ushering out the Sabbath and welcoming in the day of toil, accepting the holy and the profane, the light and the darkness?'

'Is that in the Prayer-Book?' said Esther, astonished.

'Yes, you see you are ignorant of our own ritual while admiring everything non-Jewish. Excuse me if I am frank, Miss Ansell, but there are many people among us who rave over Italian antiquities, but can see nothing poetical in old Judaism. They listen eagerly to Dante, but despise David.'

'I shall certainly look up the liturgy,' said Esther. 'But that will not alter my opinion. The Jew may say these fine things, but they are only a tune to him. Yes, I begin to recall the pa.s.sage in Hebrew--I see my father making _Havdalah_--the melody goes in my head like a sing-song. But I never in my life thought of the meaning. As a little girl I always got my conscious religious inspiration out of the New Testament. It sounds very shocking, I know.'

'Undoubtedly you put your finger on an evil. But there is religious edification in common prayers and ceremonies even when divorced from meaning. Remember the Latin prayers of the Catholic poor. Jews may be below Judaism, but are not all men below their creed? If the race which gave the world the Bible knows it least----'

He stopped suddenly, for Addie was playing _pianissimo_, and although she was his sister, he did not like to put her out.

'It comes to this,' said Esther, when Chopin spoke louder: 'our Prayer-Book needs depolarisation, as Wendell Holmes says of the Bible.'

'Exactly,' a.s.sented Raphael. 'And what our people need is to make acquaintance with the treasure of our own literature. Why go to Browning for theism, when the words of his "Rabbi Ben Ezra" are but a synopsis of a famous Jewish argument?

'"I see the whole design, I, who saw Power, see now Love, perfect too.

Perfect I call Thy plan, Thanks that I was a man!

Maker, remaker, complete, I trust what Thou shalt do."

It sounds like a bit of Bachja. That there is a Power outside us n.o.body denies; that this Power works for our good and wisely is not so hard to grant when the facts of the soul are weighed with the facts of Nature. Power, Love, Wisdom--there you have a real trinity which makes up the Jewish G.o.d. And in this G.o.d we trust--incomprehensible as are His ways, unintelligible as is His essence. "Thy ways are not My ways, nor thy thoughts My thoughts." That comes into collision with no modern philosophies--we appeal to experience, and make no demands upon the faculty for believing things "because they are impossible." And we are proud and happy in that the dread Unknown G.o.d of the infinite universe has chosen our race as the medium by which to reveal His will to the world. We are sanctified to His service. History testifies that this has verily been our mission, that we have taught the world Religion as truly as Greece has taught Beauty and Science. Our miraculous survival through the cataclysms of ancient and modern dynasties is a proof that our mission is not yet over.'

The sonata came to an end. Percy Saville started a comic song, playing his own accompaniment. Fortunately, it was loud and rollicking.

'And do you really believe that we are sanctified to G.o.d's service?'

said Esther, casting a melancholy glance at Percy's grimaces.

'Can there be any doubt of it? G.o.d made choice of one race to be messengers and apostles, martyrs at need to His truth. Happily the sacred duty is ours,' he said earnestly, utterly unconscious of the incongruity that struck Esther so keenly. And yet, of the two, he had by far the greater gift of humour. It did not destroy his idealism, but kept it in touch with things mundane. Esther's vision, though more penetrating, lacked this corrective of humour, which makes always for breadth of view. Perhaps it was because she was a woman that the trivial sordid details of life's comedy hurt her so acutely that she could scarce sit out the play patiently. Where Raphael would have admired the lute, Esther was troubled by the little rifts in it.

'But isn't that a narrow conception of G.o.d's revelation?' she asked.

'No. Why should G.o.d not teach through a great race as through a great man?'

'And you really think that Judaism is not dead, intellectually speaking?'

'How can it die? Its truths are eternal, deep in human nature, and the const.i.tution of things. Ah, I wish I could get you to see with the eyes of the great Rabbis and sages in Israel; to look on this human life of ours, not with the pessimism of Christianity, but as a holy and precious gift, to be enjoyed heartily, yet spent in G.o.d's service--birth, marriage, death, all holy; good, evil, alike holy.

Nothing on G.o.d's earth common or purposeless; everything chanting the great song of G.o.d's praise, "The morning stars singing together," as we say in the Dawn Service.'

As he spoke Esther's eyes filled with strange tears. Enthusiasm always infected her, and for a brief instant her sordid universe seemed to be transfigured to a sacred joyous reality, full of infinite potentialities of worthy work and n.o.ble pleasure. A thunder of applausive hands marked the end of Percy Saville's comic song. Mr.

Montagu Samuels was beaming at his brother's grotesque drollery. There was an interval of general conversation, followed by a round game, in which Raphael and Esther had to take part. It was very dull, and they were glad to find themselves together again.

'Ah, yes,' said Esther sadly, resuming the conversation as if there had been no break; 'but this is a Judaism of your own creation. The real Judaism is a religion of pots and pans. It does not call to the soul's depths like Christianity.'

'Again, it is a question of the point of view taken. From a practical, our ceremonialism is a training in self-conquest, while it links the generations, "bound each to each by natural piety," and unifies our atoms, dispersed to the four corners of the earth, as nothing else could. From a theoretical, it is but an extension of the principle I tried to show you. Eating, drinking, every act of life is holy, is sanctified by some relation to Heaven. We will not arbitrarily divorce some portions of life from religion, and say these are of the world, the flesh, or the devil, any more than we will save up our religion for Sundays. There is no devil, no original sin, no need of salvation from it, no need of a mediator. Every Jew is in as direct relation with G.o.d as the Chief Rabbi. Christianity is an historical failure: its counsels of perfection, its command to turn the other cheek, a farce. When a modern spiritual genius, a Tolstoi, repeats it, all Christendom laughs as at a new freak of insanity. All practical honourable men are Jews at heart. Judaism has never tampered with human dignity, nor perverted the moral consciousness. Our housekeeper, a Christian, once said to my sister Addie: "I'm so glad to see you do so much charity, miss. _I_ need not, because I'm saved already."

Judaism is the true "religion of humanity." It does not seek to make men and women angels before their time. Our marriage service blesses the King of the Universe, who has created "joy and gladness, bridegroom and bride, mirth and exultation, pleasure and delight, love, brotherhood, peace and fellows.h.i.+p."'

'It is all very beautiful in theory,' said Esther; 'but so is Christianity, which is also not to be charged with its historical caricatures, nor with its superiority to average human nature. As for the doctrine of original sin, it is the one thing that the science of heredity has demonstrated, with a difference. But do not be alarmed; I do not call myself a Christian because I see some relation between the dogmas of Christianity and the truths of experience, nor even because'--here she smiled wistfully--'I should like to believe in Jesus. But you are less logical. When you said there was no devil, I felt sure I was right, that you belong to the modern schools that get rid of all the old beliefs, but cannot give up the old names. You know as well as I do that, take away the belief in h.e.l.l--a real old-fas.h.i.+oned h.e.l.l of fire and brimstone--even such Judaism as survives would freeze to death without that genial warmth.'

'I know nothing of the kind,' he said. 'And I am in no sense a modern. I am (to adopt a phrase which is to me tautologous) an orthodox Jew.'

Esther smiled.

'Forgive my smiling,' she said. 'I am thinking of the orthodox Jews I used to know, who used to bind their phylacteries on their arms and foreheads every morning.'

'I bind my phylacteries on my arm and forehead every morning,' he said simply.

'What!' gasped Esther. 'You, an Oxford man!'

'Yes,' he said gravely. 'Is it so astonis.h.i.+ng to you?'

'Yes, it is. You are the first educated Jew I have ever met who believed in that sort of thing.'

'Nonsense?' he said inquiringly. 'There are hundreds like me.'

She shook her head. 'There's the Rev. Joseph Strelitski. I suppose _he_ does, but then he's paid for it.'

'Oh, why will you sneer at Strelitski?' he said, pained. 'He has a n.o.ble soul. It is to the privilege of his conversation that I owe my best understanding of Judaism.'

'Ah, I was wondering why the old arguments sounded so different, so much more convincing from your lips,' murmured Esther. 'Now I know: because he wears a white tie. That sets up all my bristles of contradiction when he opens his mouth.'

'But I wear a white tie, too,' said Raphael, his smile broadening in sympathy with the slow response on the girl's serious face.

'That's not a trade-mark,' she protested. 'But forgive me, I didn't know Strelitski was a friend of yours. I won't say a word against him any more. His sermons really are above the average, and he strives more than the others to make Judaism more spiritual.'

'More spiritual!' he repeated, the pained expression returning. 'Why, the very theory of Judaism has always been the spiritualisation of the material.'

'And the practice of Judaism has always been the materialisation of the spiritual,' she answered.

He pondered the saying thoughtfully, his face growing sadder.

'You have lived among your books,' Esther went on. 'I have lived among the brutal facts. I was born in the Ghetto, and when you talk of the mission of Israel, silent sardonic laughter goes through me as I think of the squalor and the misery.'

'G.o.d works through human sufferings. His ways are large,' said Raphael, almost in a whisper.

'And wasteful,' said Esther. 'Spare me clerical plat.i.tudes _a la_ Strelitski. I have seen so much.'

'And suffered much?' he asked gently.

She nodded, scarce perceptibly.

'Oh, if you only knew my life!'

'Tell it me,' he said. His voice was soft and caressing. His frank soul seemed to pierce through all conventionalities, and to go straight to hers.

'I cannot--not now,' she murmured. 'There is so much to tell.'