United States or Iran ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Because you are Reb Shemuel's daughter." "Oh, what nonsense! I like to hear people speak their minds. Besides, you mustn't fancy I'm as froom as my father." "I don't fancy that. Not quite," he laughed. "I know there's some blessed old law or other by which women haven't got the same chance of distinguishing themselves that way as men.
The poet spoke yet more, but in the end his excited stridulous accents fell on Reb Shemuel's ears as a storm without on the ears of the slippered reader by the fireside. He had dropped into a delicious reverie tasting in advance the Sabbath peace. The work of the week was over. The faithful Jew could enter on his rest the narrow, miry streets faded before the brighter image of his brain.
Debby suffered scarce any pang when her one-night companion transferred herself to Reb Shemuel's. For it was to suggest this that Hannah had called. The idea was her father's; it came to him when she told him of Esther's strange position. But Esther said she was going to America forthwith, and she only consented on condition of being allowed to pay for her keep during her stay.
Reb Shemuel's tone became momently more sing-song: "In the night the stones quarrelled for the honor of supporting the Patriarch's head, and so by a miracle they were turned into one stone to satisfy them all. 'Now you remember that when Jacob arose in the morning he said: 'How fearful is this place; this is none other than the House of God. So I said to the wranglers: 'Why did Jacob say that?
His lips moved in silent prayer; he raised his eyes beseechingly to the cold glittering heavens. Then, all at once as the clocks pointed to midnight he found him. Found him coming out of an unclean place, where he had violated the Passover. Found him fit climax of horror with the "strange woman" of The Proverbs, for whom the faithful Jew has a hereditary hatred. His son his. Reb Shemuel's!
Melchitsedek Pinchas was the Passover guest at Reb Shemuel's table, for the reek of his Sabbath cigar had not penetrated to the old man's nostrils. It was a great night for Pinchas; wrought up to fervid nationalistic aspirations by the memory of the Egyptian deliverance, which he yet regarded as mythical in its details.
A little obscure here and there, perhaps, and in need of amplification or explication for inferior intellects a half-finished manuscript commentary on one of the super-commentaries, to be called "The Garden of Lilies," was lying open on Reb Shemuel's own desk but yet the only true encyclopaedia of things terrestrial and divine. And, indeed, they were wonderful books.
Pesach was there, hand in hand with Fanny, their wedding very near now; and Becky lolled royally in all her glory, aggressive of ringlet, insolently unattached, a conscious beacon of bedazzlement to the pauper Pollack we last met at Reb Shemuel's Sabbath table, and there, too, was Chayah, she of the ill-matched legs.
"Yes, but he is not all to blame," she repeated. "Thy teaching did not reach his soul; he is of another generation, the air is different, his life was cast amid conditions for which the Law doth not allow." "Hannah!" Reb Shemuel's accents became harsh and chiding again. "What sayest thou? The Law of Moses is eternal; it will never be changed.
But the strangeness of the episode formed the undercurrent of all her thoughts; it seemed to carry to a climax the irony of her initial gift to Hannah. Escaping from the blessings of the Greeners, she accompanied her new friend to Reb Shemuel's. She was shocked to see the change in the venerable old man; he looked quite broken up.
Word Of The Day