The people of the hotel were sitting at table with the guests. Krolka hurried in confusion to bring the fasters their food. Dolik and Lolik sat with their heads covered, as at the Sabbath meal, and ate as after a fast. Babtchi, too, ate her fill. Opposite her sat Rachel and looked as if she were eating.
My host sat at the head of the table and his face was sad. Because of the pain in his legs that had been troubling him all day, he had been unable to go to the synagogue to pray with the congregation. Now that the pain had gone, he sat and rubbed the sore places, either to pamper them because they were not molesting him, or to molest them because they had annoyed him all day. While he was occupied with his legs, he raised his eyes and looked at Rachel. His lips shook and he cried, “Eat, you wicked girl, eat!” Shaken, Rachel picked up her spoon and pushed closer to the table, and her face went red as fire. When her mother saw this, she looked at her husband with surprise, and also at Rachel.
Between one course and the next, the guests talked about the day’s doings. One of them, who once had studied but then had stopped, said, “This was a fast in the true meaning of the word. For it is said in the Gemara: ‘Any fast which does not include the transgressors of Israel is no fast,’ and now some of the transgressors of Israel have fasted.” Another spoke up and said, “As far as a fast goes, it was a fast, but what about the fasting money?” “Fasting money? What is that?” Said the other, “It is the payment a faster makes for what he would have laid out on his food if he had not fasted.” Someone else spoke up, “How the Gemara begrudges the Jews any advantage, for they are not allowed to profit even from a fast.” Another spoke up, “I undertake to pay five zlotys as fasting money. If you don’t mind, Mrs. Zommer, take the money and give it to Hanoch’s wife.” The whole company praised the giver, and he added, “And if the mistress of the house thinks that the account is not correct, I will add another two or three zlotys.” By the time they had finished eating and drinking, a small sum had been collected for the benefit of that forsaken woman, Hanoch’s wife.
Another spoke up and said, “Now let us make a deal.” “A deal? I have never heard of a deal in Szibucz.” “Let us sell the grace after meals. Whoever gives most will lead the grace.” “An American auction?” “What’s an American auction?” “All those who want to buy pay in their money, and even if someone’s bid was not the highest, he still has to leave as much as he specified.”
Babtchi asked, “Can the women join in too?” “For giving money, why not?” “And if I win?” said Babtchi. “You can give your father the honor,” was the reply. Said Lolik to Babtchi, “What are you arguing about? Do you know how to say the grace?” “Do you?” “If I had been taught I would know.” By the time they had said grace, another sum was added to the first.
When I reached the rabbi’s house I told him all that had happened. “I will tell you something edifying,” the rabbi said. “Once the great scholar, the author of The Deliverances of Jacob, was preaching on the duty of providing for a certain poor bride. After the sermon, the great scholar said, ‘Never has a preacher preached so persuasive a sermon as I have preached.’ The congregation were surprised to see a rabbi so God-fearing and distinguished in the Torah praising himself in this way. The rabbi noticed this and said, ‘I have persuaded myself, and given her half her dowry.’ For that great scholar was a rich man — learning and great wealth in one place. What do you say to that, sir? Is such a power not to be envied? Blessed is he who preaches well and practices well.”
The rabbi stroked his beard and said, “Thank God that I have had the privilege of arousing a number of people for the benefit of that poor woman.”
Going from one subject to another, we came to the subject of the sages of the time.
The rabbi told me of things that had happened to him at the great convention of the Agudat Israel in Vienna, where some of the rabbis had objected to a legal ruling he had given on a certain matter, and he had outargued them all, until they admitted that the law was as he had said. While he was talking he handed me a bundle of letters that they had written and he had written.
I glanced at the letters and remembered the words of a certain wise man about the books of the wise men of the time. If these authors knew what was written in their books, said he, they too would be wise, for among their own words they cite words from the Gemara.
“What do you say?” said the rabbi. “Did I not outargue them thoroughly?” “What shall I say?” said I. “I am from the Land of Israel, and the scholars in the Land of Israel study the Torah for its own sake, and it makes no difference who outargues whom, for their only purpose is that things should be made plain and the law should be clearly established.” The rabbi grasped his beard angrily and said, “And your people are all righteous, I suppose. And those quarrels and feuds, the slandering and the tale-bearing we hear about from there, all these are only meant to clarify the law of the Torah? Even the Zionists are ashamed of you.”
“It is a punishment from heaven,” said I, “because they opposed the kingdom of the House of David. But although there are numerous men of strife in Jerusalem, there are more men of peace, who deny themselves and forego the honor due them, who study the Torah in poverty and rejoice at sufferings, and because of their love of the Torah do not feel all the troubles that befall them. Their actions are as goodly as their learning, and all their deeds are sincere. And their prayers are as goodly as their actions. I will show you a congregation of pious men in Jerusalem who spend all their days in prayer, seeking nothing for their own affairs, but only that His Blessed Name be magnified in the worlds He has created. Some men are privileged to pray such a prayer once in seventy years and some once a year, but they pray in this way three times a day.” “And what do your young men do?” said the rabbi. “As for the young men of Israel,” I said, “may I myself serve as expiation for their sins. They do not study like the scholars or pray like the pious men, but they plow and sow and plant, and give their lives for this Land that the Lord swore to give to our forefathers. That is why they have been privileged to have the Holy One, blessed be He, appoint them as guardians over His Land. Because they give their lives for the Land, He has entrusted the Land to them.”
The rabbi’s eyes filled with tears, but he paid no heed to his tears and said, “And what about the Sabbath?” A verse came to my mind: “And see the good of Jerusalem all the days of thy life,” I quoted. “‘See’ in the imperative. It is a man’s duty to see what is good in Jerusalem, and not the evil, heaven forbid. On the Sabbath,” I said to him, “Jews set their work aside and dress in goodly garments. He that can study, studies, and he that can read, reads, and he that can do neither strolls with his wife and children, speaking the Holy Tongue, and fulfilling in his own person the saying: ‘Everyone that walks four cubits in the Land of Israel and speaks the Holy Tongue is assured of life in the world to come.’”
Again tears gathered in the rabbi’s eyes and trickled down on his goodly beard, where they gleamed like pearls and precious stones set by the craftsman in a frame of gold. But the rabbi did not look at these pearls and precious stones, but thrust thorns into my eyes, saying things I will not repeat because of the ban on uttering slander against the Land of Israel.
I restrained my anger and answered him quietly, “I know, sir, that your aim is Israel’s welfare, but the spies in Moses’ day also aimed at Israel’s welfare, and what was the end of them? I should not like to sit in their company even in paradise.”
The rabbi put out his hand and laid it on my shoulder with great affection, until the warmth entered into me, and said, “Do you know what has come into my mind? Let us go, you and I, and travel throughout the communities of the Exile to restore Israel to the good way.” “Neither you nor I can do so,” I replied. “Why not?” “I, because I regard all Israel as innocent, and if it is a question of repentance, it is the Holy One, blessed be He — if I might say so — who ought to repent. As for you, sir, even if all Israel were like the ministering angels, you would not regard them as innocent.”