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The one bright spot in the story of the Sudminster Sabbath is that the congregation of which the present esteemed Parnass is Solomon Barzinsky, Esq., J.P., managed to avert the threatened split, and that while in so many other orthodox synagogues the poor minister preaches on the Sabbath to empty benches, the Sudminster congregation still remains at the happy point of compromise acutely discovered by Simeon Samuels: of listening reverentially every Saturday morning to the unchanging principles of its minister-elect, the while its shops are engaged in supplying the wants of Christendom.
S. Cohn was indeed a personage in the seaport of Sudminster, and his name had been printed on voting papers, and, what is more, he had at last become a Town Councillor.
When the eldest, Deborah, was married, her husband received, by way of compensation, the goodwill of the Sudminster business, while S. Cohn migrated to the metropolis, in the ambition of making 'S. Cohn's trouserings' a household word. He did, indeed, achieve considerable fame in the Holloway Road. Gradually he came to live away from his business, and in the most fashionable street of Highbury.
For nearly three generations a congregation had been established in Sudminster like every Jewish congregation, a camp in not friendly country struggling at every sacrifice to keep the Holy Day despite the supplementary burden of Sunday closing, and the God of their fathers had not left unperformed His part of the contract.
The glad news spread through the Sudminster Congregation that Simeon Samuels had at last been bought out at a terrible loss to the martyred marine-dealers who had had to load themselves with chutney and other unheard-of and unsaleable stock. But they would get back their losses, it was felt, by the removal of his rivalry.
There was a storm in Sudminster, not on the waters which washed its leading Jews their living, but in the breasts of these same marine storekeepers. For a competitor had appeared in their hive of industry an alien immigrant, without roots or even relatives at Sudminster.
Simeon Samuels requests me to say that he presents his compliments to the secretary of the Sudminster Hebrew Congregation, and begs to acknowledge the receipt of the Council's resolution. In reply I am to state that Mr.
Samuels desires me to say that he has no intention of dying in Sudminster, but merely of getting his living there. In any case, under his will, his body is to be deported to Jerusalem, where he has already acquired a burying-place. 'Next year in Jerusalem! cried Barzinsky fervently, when this was read to the next meeting. 'Order, order, said the Parnass. 'I don't believe in his Jerusalem grave.
'Oh, Lord, I ought to have recognised you by that synagogue beginning. 'Me, a Schnorrer! The little man swelled skywards. 'Me, Solomon Barzinsky, whose shop stood in Sudminster twenty years before you poked your nose in 'I beg your pardon. There! you see I'm a beggar, too. And Simeon Samuels laughed mirthlessly. 'Well, you've come to beg of me. And his fingers caressed his patriarchal beard.
It took a long discussion, however, before the synagogue decided to wash its hands of responsibility, and give over to a sub-committee of three the task of ridding Sudminster of its plague-spot by any means that commended itself to them. Solomon Barzinsky, Ephraim Mendel, and Peleg the pawnbroker were elected to constitute this Council of Three.
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