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Leah gave a happy laugh, and turned the new ring on her finger in delighted contemplation. "All's well that ends well," said Sam. "Through this joke Leah will be the belle of the Purim Ball. I think I deserve another piece of plaice, Leah, for that compliment. As for you, Mr. Maggid, you're a saint and a Talmud sage!" The Maggid's face was brightened by a smile.
Look at your daughter think of what you are doing to her and beware before it is too late." "Is it in my hand to do or to forbear?" asked the old man, "It is the Torah. Am I responsible for that?" "Yes," said David, out of mere revolt. Then, seeking to justify himself, his face lit up with sudden inspiration. "Who need ever know? The Maggid is dead. Old Hyams has gone to America.
His eyes were red with weeping, but that was on account of the Maggid. His nose was blue with the chill of the cemetery. "He was a great man." he was saying to the grandmother. "He could lecture for four hours together on any text and he would always manage to get back to the text before the end. Such exegetics, such homiletics! He was greater than the Emperor of Russia. Woe! Woe!" "Woe!
"You can't compare yourself with the Maggid" the Shalotten Shammos reminded him consolingly. "There are hundreds of you in the market. There are several morceaux of the service which you do not sing half so well as your predecessor; your horn-blowing cannot compete with Freedman's of the Fashion Street Chevrah, nor can you read the Law as quickly and accurately as Prochintski.
"Yes, Hannah's father, Reb Shemuel is just the man," cried Milly Phillips. "I told you my husband was gone to Manchester for a day or two," Mrs. Jacobs reminded her. "There's the Maggid of the Sons of the Covenant," said one of the company. "I'll go and fetch him." The stooping, black-bearded Maggid was brought.
They were surrounded by immense throngs of Hasidim, unenlightened, ecstatic, worshipping saints during their lifetime. The most honored among these hasidic dynasties was that of Chernobyl. It was founded in the Ukraina toward the end of the eighteenth century by an itinerant preacher, or Maggid, called Nahum. Mordecai's "Empire" fell asunder after his death.
Lilienblum who, in 1877, believed that life without a university education was not worth living, became a repentant sinner. Russian Jewry seethed with religious enthusiasm. Moses Isaac Darshan, "the Khelmer Maggid," preached for six hours at a time to crowded synagogues. Asher Israelit, less trenchant, but equally effective, exhorted crowds to repentance.
A stooping black-bearded blear-eyed man in a long threadbare coat and a black skull cap, on either side of which hung a corkscrew curl, sat abstractedly eating the almonds and raisins, in the central place of honor which befits a Maggid. Before him were pens and ink and a roll of parchment. This was the engagement contract.
As the proverb says, if I were a Rabbi the town would burn. But if you were a scribe the letter would burn. I don't pretend to be a Maggid, don't you set up to be a letter writer." "Well, but do you think it's honorable?" "Hear, O Israel!" cried the Shalotten Shammos, spreading out his palms impatiently. "Haven't I written letters for twenty years?" The Maggid was silenced. He walked on brooding.
The Sons of the Covenant did not know that the poor consumptive Maggid sent half his salary to his sisters in Poland to enable them to buy back their husbands from military service; also they had vague unexpressed ideas that he was not mortal, that Heaven would look after his larder, that if the worst came to the worst he could fall back on Cabalah and engage himself with the mysteries of food-creation.
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