Children of the Ghetto

CHAPTER XV. THE HOLY LAND LEAGUE.

'Oh, these English Jews!' said Melchitsedek Pinchas, in German.

'What have they done to you now?' said Guedalyah, the greengrocer, in Yiddish.

The two languages are relatives and often speak as they pass by.

'I have presented my book to every one of them, but they have paid me scarce enough to purchase poison for them all,' said the little poet scowling. The cheekbones stood out sharply beneath the tense bronzed skin. The black hair was tangled and unkempt and the beard untrimmed, the eyes darted venom. 'One of them-Gideon, M.P., the stockbroker, engaged me to teach his son for his Bar-mitzvah, But the boy is so stupid! So stupid! Just like his father. I have no doubt he will grow up to be a Rabbi. I teach him his Portion-I sing the words to him with a most beautiful voice, but he has as much ear as soul. Then I write him a speech-a wonderful speech for him to make to his parents and the company at the breakfast, and in it, after he thanks them for their kindness, I make him say how, with the blessing of the Almighty, he will grow up to be a good Jew, and munificently support Hebrew literature and learned men like his revered teacher, Melchitsedek Pinchas. And he shows it to his father, and his father says it is not written in good English, and that another scholar has already written him a speech. Good English! Gideon has as much knowledge or style as the Rev. Elkan Benjamin of decency. Ah, I will shoot them both. I know I do not speak English like a native-but what language under the sun is there I cannot write? French, German, Spanish, Arabic-they flow from my pen like honey from a rod. As for Hebrew, you know, Guedalyah, I and you are the only two men in England who can write Holy Language grammatically. And yet these miserable stockbrokers, Men-of-the-Earth, they dare to say I cannot write English, and they have given me the sack. I, who was teaching the boy true Judaism and the value of Hebrew literature.'

'What! They didn't let you finish teaching the boy his Portion because you couldn't write English?'

'No; they had another pretext-one of the servant girls said I wanted to kiss her-lies and falsehood. I was kissing my finger after kissing the Mezuzah, and the stupid abomination thought I was kissing my hand to her. It sees itself that they don't kiss the Mezuzahs often in that house-the impious crew. And what will be now? The stupid boy will go home to breakfast in a bazaar of costly presents, and he will make the stupid speech written by the fool of an Englishman, and the ladies will weep. But where will be the Judaism in all this? Who will vaccinate him against free-thinking as I would have done? Who will infuse into him the true patriotic fervor, the love of his race, the love of Zion, the land of his fathers?'

'Ah, you are verily a man after my own heart!' said Guedalyah, the greengrocer, overswept by a wave of admiration. 'Why should you not come with me to my Beth-Hamidrash to-night, to the meeting for the foundation of the Holy Land League? That cauliflower will be four-pence, mum.'

'Ah, what is that?' said Pinchas.

'I have an idea; a score of us meet to-night to discuss it.'

'Ah, yes! You have always ideas. You are a sage and a saint, Guedalyah. The Beth- Hamidrash which you have established is the only centre of real orthodoxy and Jewish literature in London. The ideas you expound in the Jewish papers for the amelioration of the lot of our poor brethren are most statesmanlike. But these donkey-head English rich people-what help can you expect from them? They do not even understand your plans. They have only sympathy with needs of the stomach.'

'You are right! You are right, Pinchas!' said Guedalyah, the greengrocer, eagerly. He was a tall, loosely-built man, with a pasty complexion capable of shining with enthusiasm. He was dressed shabbily, and in the intervals of selling cabbages projected the regeneration of Judah.

'That is just what is beginning to dawn upon me, Pinchas,' he went on. 'Our rich people give plenty away in charity; they have good hearts but not Jewish hearts. As the verse says,-A bundle of rhubarb and two pounds of Brussels sprouts and threepence halfpenny change. Thank you. Much obliged.-Now I have bethought myself why should we not work out our own salvation? It is the poor, the oppressed, the persecuted, whose souls pant after the Land of Israel as the hart after the water-brooks. Let us help ourselves. Let us put our hands in our own pockets. With our Groschen let us rebuild Jerusalem and our Holy Temple. We will collect a fund slowly but surely-from all parts of the East End and the provinces the pious will give. With the first fruits we will send out a little party of persecuted Jews to Palestine; and then another; and another. The movement will grow like a sliding snow-ball that becomes an avalanche.'

'Yes, then the rich will come to you,' said Pinchas, intensely excited. 'Ah! it is a great idea, like all yours. Yes, I will come, I will make a mighty speech, for my lips, like Isaiah's, have been touched with the burning coal. I will inspire all hearts to start the movement at once. I will write its Marseillaise this very night, bedewing my couch with a poet's tears. We shall no longer be dumb-we shall roar like the lions of Lebanon. I shall be the trumpet to call the dispersed together from the four corners of the earth-yea, I shall be the Messiah himself,' said Pinchas, rising on the wings of his own eloquence, and forgetting to puff at his cigar.

'I rejoice to see you so ardent; but mention not the word Messiah, for I fear some of our friends will take alarm and say that these are not Messianic times, that neither Elias, nor Gog, King of Magog, nor any of the portents have yet appeared. Kidneys or regents, my child?'

'Stupid people! Hillel said more wisely: 'If I help not myself who will help me?' Do they expect the Messiah to fall from heaven? Who knows but I am the Messiah? Was I not born on the ninth of Ab?'

'Hush, hush!' said Guedalyah, the greengrocer. 'Let us be practical. We are not yet ready for Marseillaises or Messiahs. The first step is to get funds enough to send one family to Palestine.'

'Yes, yes,' said Pinchas, drawing vigorously at his cigar to rekindle it. 'But we must look ahead. Already I see it all. Palestine in the hands of the Jews-the Holy Temple rebuilt, a Jewish state, a President who is equally accomplished with the sword and the pen,-the whole campaign stretches before me. I see things like Napoleon, general and dictator alike.'

'Truly we wish that,' said the greengrocer cautiously. 'But to-night it is only a question of a dozen men founding a collecting society.'

'Of course, of course, that I understand. You're right-people about here say Guedalyah the greengrocer is always right. I will come beforehand to supper with you to talk it over, and you shall see what I will write for the Mizpeh and the Arbeiter-freund. You know all these papers jump at me-their readers are the class to which you appeal-in them will I write my burning verses and leaders advocating the cause. I shall be your Tyrtaeus, your Mazzini, your Napoleon. How blessed that I came to England just now. I have lived in the Holy Land-the genius of the soil is blent with mine. I can describe its beauties as none other can. I am the very man at the very hour. And yet I will not go rashly-slow and sure-my plan is to collect small amounts from the poor to start by sending one family at a time to Palestine. That is how we must do it. How does that strike you, Guedalyah. You agree?'

'Yes, yes. That is also my opinion.'

'You see I am not a Napoleon only in great ideas. I understand detail, though as a poet I abhor it. Ah, the Jew is king of the world. He alone conceives great ideas and executes them by petty means. The heathen are so stupid, so stupid! Yes, you shall see at supper how practically I will draw up the scheme. And then I will show you, too, what I have written about Gideon, M.P., the dog of a stockbroker-a satirical poem have I written about him, in Hebrew-an acrostic, with his name for the mockery of posterity. Stocks and shares have I translated into Hebrew, with new words which will at once be accepted by the Hebraists of the world and added to the vocabulary of modern Hebrew. Oh! I am terrible in satire. I sting like the hornet; witty as Immanuel, but mordant as his friend Dante. It will appear in the Mizpeh to-morrow. I will show this Anglo-Jewish community that I am a man to be reckoned with. I will crush it-not it me.'

'But they don't see the Mizpeh and couldn't read it if they did.'

'No matter. I send it abroad-I have friends, great Rabbis, great scholars, everywhere, who send me their learned manuscripts, their commentaries, their ideas, for revision and improvement. Let the Anglo-Jewish community hug itself in its stupid prosperity-but I will make it the laughing-stock of Europe and Asia. Then some day it will find out its mistake; it will not have ministers like the Rev. Elkan Benjamin, who keeps four mistresses, it will depose the lump of flesh who reigns over it and it will seize the hem of my coat and beseech me to be its Rabbi.'

'We should have a more orthodox Chief Rabbi, certainly,' admitted Guedalyah.

'Orthodox? Then and only then shall we have true Judaism in London and a burst of literary splendor far