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Updated: June 29, 2025
I searched the Shass and a heap of Shaalotku-Tshuvos. I went and consulted the Maggid and Sugarman the Shadchan and Mr. Karlkammer, and at last we decided that the fowl was tripha and could not be eaten. So the same evening I sent for the woman, and when I told her of our decision she burst into tears and wrung her hands.
"May thy strength increase!" said the Maggid in the Hebrew formula of gratitude. "Nay, thine is more important," replied the Shalotten Shammos with hilarious heartiness, and he proceeded to read the letter as they walked along together, giant and doubled-up wizard. "But I haven't got a wife and six children," said the Maggid, for whom one or two phrases stood out intelligible.
He drew up a letter forthwith, not of course in the name of the Sons of the Covenant, but in the Maggid's own. He took the magniloquent sentences to the Maggid for signature. He found the Maggid walking up and down Royal Street waiting for the verdict. The Maggid walked with a stoop that was almost a permanent bow, so that his long black beard reached well towards his baggy knees.
"We mustn't forget the Maggid draws crowds here every Saturday and Sunday afternoon," said Mendel Hyams. "Suppose he goes over to a Chevrah that will pay him more!" "No, he won't do that," said another of the Committee. "He will remember that we brought him out of Poland." "Yes, but we shan't have room for the audiences soon," said Belcovitch.
He turned appealingly to the Maggid; "but there must be some way out of this, surely there must be some way out. I know you Maggidim can split hairs. Can't you make one of your clever distinctions even when there's more than a trifle concerned?" There was a savage impatience about the bridegroom which boded ill for the Law. "Of course there's a way out," said the Maggid calmly.
Dutchmen were not behind the door when the Almighty gave out noses, and their deceitfulness is in proportion to their noses." The company murmured assent, and one gentleman, with a rather large organ, concealed it in a red cotton handkerchief, trumpeting uneasily. "The Holy One, blessed be He, has given them larger noses than us," said the Maggid, "because they have to talk through them so much."
He intoned the grace with unction when the meal ended, and everybody joined in heartily at the specifically vocal portions. Then the Maggid left, and the cards were brought out. It is inadvisable to play cards before fried fish, because it is well known that you may lose, and losing may ruffle your temper, and you may call your partner an ass, or your partner may call you an ass.
The Maggid felt so grateful he was almost ashamed to ask whether he could eat kosher there, but the Shalotten Shammos, who had the air of a tall encyclopaedia, set his soul at rest on all points. The day of Ebenezer Sugarman's Bar-mitzvah duly arrived. All his sins would henceforth be on his own head and everybody rejoiced.
He went out and wandered down another narrow dirty street in search of Mordecai Schwartz, whose address Baruch Emanuel had so obligingly given him. He thought of the Maggid's sermon on the day before. The Maggid had explained a verse of Habakkuk in quite an original way which gave an entirely new color to a passage in Deuteronomy.
And the years went rolling on, and the children grew up and here and there a parent. The elders of the synagogue were met in council. "He is greater than a Prince," said the Shalotten Shammos. "If all the Princes of the Earth were put in one scale," said Mr. Belcovitch, "and our Maggid, Moses, in the other, he would outweigh them all.
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