Dreyfus in Cathrielevke.
I BELIEVE that nowhere in the big round world did the Dreyfus affair create such excitement as out in little Cathrilevke.
In Paris, it is said, they were excited; newspapers issued extra editions; generals committed suicide; and gamins and street loafers ran about on the boulevards as though mad, throwing their hats in the air and turning everything topsyturvy; one crying "Vive Dreyfus!" and another cried "Vive Esterhazy!" and innocent Jews passing by meanwhile were insulted and maltreated, as is always the case . . . . but so much sorrow, so many heartaches and disgraceful scenes as our Cathrielevke suffered and saw, Paris never experienced until the coming of the Messiah.
How did the inhabitants know of the Dreyfus affair? This is a childish question. How did they know of the war that England waged with the Boers? How do they know what occurs in China? Surely not through their commercial relations with the outside world? Their tea they get from Visotsky's store in Moscow, and the yellow silk stuff called "Tska-Shun-Tska" is not liked or worn in our town; we thank and praise the Lord when we can wear common strong goods, not silk from China, and we do not like the color of the China silk. . .
But the question still remains, how did Cathrielevke find out about the Dreyfus affair?
Siedel, the son of Rabbi Shones, is the only inhabitant of our town that subscribed to the "Hazefrah," the Hebrew
daily newspaper of Warsaw, and all the news of the great outside world is known through him. He reads and explains to others; he reads what is in the paper but they that listen to him oftentimes infer the contrary of what they hear, they know better, and they tell him so, or else go away wisely shaking their heads. . .
* * *
And a day came to pass when Siedel entered the synagogue and seeing that the morning prayer was at an end, began to relate a story how in Paris a Jewish captain in the army, a certain Dreyfus, had been sentenced, punished for selling important papers belonging to the government. But no one cared to spend any time in thinking of this news—it went in one ear and went out the other. One old man passing by said with a deep sigh:
"What does not a Jew do nowadays to support his family?"
And another said, spitefully:
"A good deed! A Jew ought not to creep to the high places and mix himself up with the affairs of kings."
But later, when Siedel came and related another story, that the first news was totally false, that the Jewish captain had been wrongfully accused, that he was as pure as snow, this captain who had been banished, and that the whole affair was intrigue, a conspiracy entered into by a number of generals who had quarreled with each other—then the town became a little interested, and Dreyfus became a Cathrielevker. Wherever two citizens stood together, here was this invisible third one.