Children of the Ghetto

''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 nobody 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 God. And in this God 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 God 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 God's service?' said Esther, casting a melancholy glance at Percy's grimaces.

'Can there be any doubt of it? God 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 humor. It did not destroy his idealism, but kept it in touch with things mundane. Esther's vision, though more penetrating, lacked this corrective of humor, 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 scarcely 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 God's revelation?' she asked.

'No. Why should God 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 constitution 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 God's service-birth, marriage, death, all holy; good, evil, alike holy. Nothing on God's earth common or purposeless. Everything chanting the great song of God'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 noble 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 God 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, honorable 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 sifter 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 fellowship.''

'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, who 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 hell, a real old-fashioned hell 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 astonishing 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 noble 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 spiritualization of the material.'

'And the practice of Judaism has always been the materialization 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.'

'God works through human suffering; his ways are large,' said Raphael, almost in a whisper.

'And wasteful,' said Esther. 'Spare me clerical platitudes a la Strelitski. I have seen so much.'

'And suffered much?' he asked gently.