Avigail straightened up and smiled at her. "Good morning, gracious lady."
Avigail spoke Yiddish, not German, but Judith had no trouble understanding her. Except for some loan words, the languages were almost identical. The spoken languages, that is. Yiddish was written in Hebrew characters, which Judith couldn't read at all. One of the reasons Judith had hired Avigail was because the woman could read German also, which allowed Judith to leave notes for her when need be.
Now, she wondered what other languages Avigail might speak. Judith knew the woman was fluent in Czech also. But She blurted it out. In English. A language she had just assumed-without ever asking-would be completely foreign to the cook.
"Avigail, do you speak English?"
The cook hesitated for a moment. Then, her face a bit stiff, replied in heavily accented but quite understandable English: "Yes, gracious lady. I do."
Judith suddenly realized that the normally-bustling and busy kitchen had fallen very quiet. She scanned the room and saw that all five of the cooks and helpers present were staring at her. All of them with that same, slightly stiff expression.
"Do all of you speak English?"
Again, that hesitation. Then, again, nodding heads.
For a moment, Judith wavered between anger and…
Well…
She burst out laughing. "Does every servant in this house speak English?"
Nods. A bit hastily, Avigail said: "Young Jacob upstairs, not so well." She pointed with a ladle at a teenage girl standing in a corner near the pantry. "And little Rifka over there, even worse. Lazy youngsters, they don't do their studies like they should."
Judith had to fight to bring her laughter under control. "Their 'studies,' no less!"
She shook her head, grinning. "They must have scoured the ghetto to find this many English-speakers. Avigail, if you have any questions-or if the rabbis do-you need only ask. I really have no secrets. Neither does my husband."
There didn't seem anything else to say. Still grinning, she left the room.
After she was gone, Avigail and the three women who'd been employed since the first days after the Roths arrived, turned their heads to regard Rifka. The young woman was new to the household, having only started working there the week before. Their expressions were identicaclass="underline" that of older women finally and fully vindicated in front of skeptical and callow striplings.
"You see?" demanded Avigail. "Did we not tell you?"
"I will study harder," Rifka said meekly.
"That's not what I meant!" snapped Avigail. "And you know it perfectly well."
She sniffed, turned away, and went back to work with her ladle. It had a very long handle, because the hearth was large and the fire was hot. But the ladle in Avigail's mind had just grown shorter still. By now, it was not much longer than a spoon.
2
The first thing Morris saw when he entered the community center-the first thing he really noticed, at least, because of his nervousness-was the rabbi standing next to Jason and another young man.
He assumed he was a rabbi, at least. Partly from the clothing the man was wearing, but mostly from certain indefinable things about the way he carried himself-and the very evident respect with which Jason and the other youngster were listening to what he had to say.
Morris found himself almost gritting his teeth. He had a better knowledge of history, in general, than most residents of Grantville. And because he'd always been especially interested in Jewish history, he had a particularly good knowledge of that subject. He felt like shouting at the three of them: Your damn rabbinate didn't start running the show until not much more than a thousand years ago! Those old men in Babylon who started throwing their weight around after the destruction of the Second Temple. Our history goes back at least two thousand years earlier than that. Ask David and Solomon-or Abraham and Moshe-if they kowtowed to a bunch of old men with long beards and stupid hats!
But, he didn't. It would have been unfairly one-sided, as well as rude and pointless. And, besides…
Well, the fact was that the rabbi in question was not particularly old. In fact, he looked to be younger than Morris himself.
Nothing for it, then. Morris took a deep breath and marched over.
Seeing him come, Jason smiled widely. It was the biggest smile Jason had given Morris in at least two months, and Morris felt himself warming. As Judith had said, since the Ring of Fire Morris had come to look upon young Gotkin as something of an adopted son. The estrangement that had grown between them since their arrival in Prague had been painful.
The rabbi turned his head and regarded Morris. He obviously knew who he was, even though they'd never met. Morris was not surprised. This was not the first time, by any means, that Morris had entered the ghetto. He'd made a number of trips-right into the center of the Josefov-to meet with Dunash and his people. And, every time, although people had not been rude about it, Morris had been quite aware that he'd been carefully and closely observed everywhere he went. And was just as sure that the people who watched him passed on their observations to their rabbis.
As he neared, the rabbi smiled politely and addressed him. "Good morning, Don Morris. Since I have never had the opportunity, let me take it now to thank you for your generosity in providing for this center. And your many other generosities."
The rabbi's German was excellent, if oddly accented to Morris' ear. By now, Morris' own German was almost fluent. What he found more interesting, though, was the way the rabbi had addressed him. Don Morris-as if Morris were a Sephardic hidalgo. True, it made a certain sense, because most court Jews in the first half of the seventeenth century were still Sephardic rather than Ashkenazi. Still…
Morris decided it was a workable compromise, for him as much as the rabbi. Although there were some differences in the way Sephardim and Ashkenazim observed their faith, which resulted in friction and even occasional clashes, neither one of the branches of Judaism considered the other to be heretics. Not to mention that Italian Jews, in this day and age, constituted something of a third tradition of their own.
Truth be told, the friction between Ashkenazim and Sephardim was due more to social factors than religious ones. Sephardim, as a rule, were more comfortable with cultural accommodation to gentile society-and, as a rule, considerably wealthier than most Ashkenazim. So, they tended to look down on Ashkenazim as the equivalent of "country rubes"-a disdain which the Ashkenazim returned in kind, much as Morris' hillbilly neighbors made wisecracks about city slickers. But, since he'd arrived in his new universe, Morris had discovered that the interaction between the two-and with the Judaeo-Italians-was quite a bit more extensive than his study of history had led him to suspect.
Besides, the man was being courteous. Whatever his underlying attitudes, Morris had never found it possible to be rude to someone who was not being rude to him.
He nodded. Graciously, he hoped. "My pleasure, rabbi. Ah-"
"This is Rabbi Spira," Jason said promptly, almost eagerly.
So. This is the one.
Morris had to fight down a momentary surge of jealousy. Although Jason had been veiled about it, Morris was well aware that the young man had come to develop a deep admiration for Mordechai Spira-and something that bordered on filial respect.
Now that Morris had finally met the man, he could understand that better. As much as Morris was inclined to dislike zealots-and he considered all Orthodox rabbis to be zealots, by their nature-he couldn't miss the intelligence in Spira's eyes. Nor the quite evident warmth and kindliness in them, either. Jason had told him, more than once, that even when Rabbi Spira corrected him for his errors, he invariably did so with good humor. Even wit.