Children of the Ghetto

Yet so young, from thee.

Thereupon the voice of his beloved mother Rachel was heard from the grave, comforting him and bidding him be of good cheer, for that his future should be great and glorious.

Esther could not sing this without the tears trickling down her cheeks. Was it that she thought of her own dead mother and applied the lines to herself? Isaac's ill-humor scarcely ever survived the anodyne of these mournful cadences. There was another melodious wail which Alte Belcovitch had brought from Poland. The chorus ran:

Man nemt awek die chasanim voon die callohs

Hi, hi, did-a-rid-a-ree!

They tear away their lovers from the maidens,

Hi, hi, did-a-rid-a-ree!

The air mingled the melancholy of Polish music with the sadness of Jewish and the words hinted of God knew what.

'Old unhappy far-off things

And battles long ago.'

And so over all the songs and stories was the trail of tragedy, under all the heart-ache of a hunted race. There are few more plaintive chants in the world than the recitation of the Psalms by the 'Sons of the Covenant' on Sabbath afternoons amid the gathering shadows of twilight. Esther often stood in the passage to hear it, morbidly fascinated, tears of pensive pleasure in her eyes. Even the little jargon story-book which Moses Ansell read out that night to his Kinder, after tea-supper, by the light of the one candle, was prefaced with a note of pathos. 'These stories have we gathered together from the Gemorah and the Midrash, wonderful stories, and we have translated the beautiful stories, using the Hebrew alphabet so that every one, little or big, shall be able to read them, and shall know that there is a God in the world who forsaketh not His people Israel and who even for us will likewise work miracles and wonders and will send us the righteous Redeemer speedily in our days, Amen.' Of this same Messiah the children heard endless tales. Oriental fancy had been exhausted in picturing him for the consolation of exiled and suffering Israel. Before his days there would be a wicked Messiah of the House of Joseph; later, a king with one ear deaf to hear good but acute to hear evil; there would be a scar on his forehead, one of his hands would be an inch long and the other three miles, apparently a subtle symbol of the persecutor. The jargon story-book among its 'stories, wonderful stories,' had also extracts from the famous romance, or diary, of Eldad the Danite, who professed to have discovered the lost Ten Tribes. Eldad's book appeared towards the end of the ninth century and became the Arabian Nights of the Jews, and it had filtered down through the ages into the Ansell garret, in common with many other tales from the rich storehouse of mediaeval folk-lore in the diffusion of which the wandering few has played so great a part.

Sometimes Moses read to his charmed hearers the description of Heaven and Hell by Immanuel, the friend and contemporary of Dante, sometimes a jargon version of Robinson Crusoe. To-night he chose Eldad's account of the tribe of Moses dwelling beyond the wonderful river, Sambatyon, which never flows on the Sabbath.

'There is also the tribe of Moses, our just master, which is called the tribe that flees, because it fled from idol worship and clung to the fear of God. A river flows round their land for a distance of four days' journey on every side. They dwell in beautiful houses provided with handsome towers, which they have built themselves. There is nothing unclean among them, neither in the case of birds, venison nor domesticated animals; there are no wild animals, no flies, no foxes, no vermin, no serpents, no dogs, and in general, nothing which does harm; they have only sheep and cattle, which bear twice a year. They sow and reap; there are all sorts of gardens, with all kinds of fruits and cereals, viz.: beans, melons, gourds, onions, garlic, wheat and barley, and the seed grows a hundred fold. They have faith; they know the Law, the Mishnah, the Talmud and the Agadah; but their Talmud is in Hebrew. They introduce their sayings in the name of the fathers, the wise men, who heard them from the mouth of Joshua, who himself heard them from the mouth of God. They have no knowledge of the Tanaim (doctors of the Mishnah) and Amoraim (doctors of the Talmud), who flourished during the time of the second Temple, which was, of course, not known to these tribes. They speak only Hebrew, and are very strict as regards the use of wine made by others than themselves, as well as the rules of slaughtering animals; in this respect the Law of Moses is much more rigorous than that of the Tribes. They do not swear by the name of God, for fear that their breath may leave them, and they become angry with those who swear; they reprimand them, saying, 'Woe, ye poor, why do you swear with the mention of the name of God upon your lips? Use your mouth for eating bread and drinking water. Do you not know that for the sin of swearing your children die young?' And in this way they exhort every one to serve God with fear and integrity of heart. Therefore, the children of Moses, the servant of God, live long, to the age of 100 or 120 years. No child, be it son or daughter, dies during the lifetime of its parent, but they reach a third and a fourth generation, and see grandchildren and great-grandchildren with their offspring. They do all field work themselves, having no male or female servants; there are also merchants among them. They do not close their houses at night, for there is no thief nor any wicked man among them. Thus a little lad might go for days with his flock without fear of robbers, demons or danger of any other kind; they are, indeed, all holy and clean. These Levites busy themselves with the Law and with the commandments, and they still live in the holiness of our master, Moses; therefore, God has given them all this good. Moreover, they see nobody and nobody sees them, except the four tribes who dwell on the other side of the rivers of Cush; they see them, and speak to them, but the river Sambatyon is between them, as it is said: 'That thou mayest say to prisoners, Go forth' (Isaiah xlix., 9). They have plenty of gold and silver; they sow flax and cultivate the crimson worm, and make beautiful garments. Their number is double or four times the number that went out from Egypt.

'The river Sambatyon is 200 yards broad-'about as far as a bowshot' (Gen. xxi., 16), full of sand and stones, but without water; the stones make a great noise like the waves of the sea and a stormy wind, so that in the night the noise is heard at a distance of half a day's journey. There are sources of water which collect themselves in one pool, out of which they water the fields. There are fish in it, and all kinds of clean birds fly round it. And this river of stone and sand rolls during the six working days and rests on the Sabbath day. As soon as the Sabbath begins fire surrounds the river and the flames remain till the next evening, when the Sabbath ends. Thus no human being can reach the river for a distance of half a mile on either side; the fire consumes all that grows there. The four tribes, Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher, stand on the borders of the river. When shearing their flocks here, for the land is flat and clean without any thorns, if the children of Moses see them gathered together on the border they shout, saying, 'Brethren, tribes of Jeshurun, show us your camels, dogs and asses,' and they make their remarks about the length of the camel's neck and the shortness of the tail. Then they greet one another and go their way.'

When this was done, Solomon called for Hell. He liked to hear about the punishment of the sinners; it gave a zest to life. Moses hardly needed a book to tell them about Hell. It had no secrets for him. The Old Testament has no reference to a future existence, but the poor Jew has no more been able to live without the hope of Hell than the poor Christian. When the wicked man has waxed fat and kicked the righteous skinny man, shall the two lie down in the same dust and the game be over? Perish the thought! One of the Hells was that in which the sinner was condemned to do over and over again the sins he had done in life.

'Why, that must be jolly!' said Solomon.

'No, that is frightful,' maintained Moses Ansell. He spoke Yiddish, the children English.

'Of course, it is,' said Esther. 'Just fancy, Solomon, having to eat toffy all day.'

'It's better than eating nothing all day,' replied Solomon.

'But to eat it every day for ever and ever!' said Moses. 'There's no rest for the wicked.'

'What! Not even on the Sabbath?' said Esther.

'Oh, yes: of course, then. Like the river Sambatyon, even the flames of Hell rest on Shabbos.'

'Haven't they got no fire-goyas?'; inquired Ikey, and everybody laughed.

'Shabbos is a holiday in Hell,' Moses explained to the little one. 'So thou seest the result of thy making out Sabbath too early on Saturday night, thou sendest the poor souls back to their tortures before the proper time.'

Moses never lost an opportunity of enforcing the claims of the ceremonial law. Esther had a vivid picture flashed upon her of poor, yellow hook-shaped souls floating sullenly back towards the flames.

Solomon's chief respect for his father sprang from the halo of military service encircling Moses ever since it leaked out through the lips of the Bube, that he had been a conscript in Russia and been brutally treated by the sergeant. But Moses could not be got to speak of his exploits. Solomon pressed him to do so, especially when his father gave symptoms of inviting him to the study of Rashi's Commentary. To-night Moses