Destiny at Play
Episode the First
SOMETIMES the sun shines on the parched grass; the earth loses its spring, sometimes the moon looks icy and steeled upon a frozen cheerless world; yet in a cranny a solitary blade grows, defying nature......Oft the clouds lower, grey and black to meet a lifeless earth; then sky and land seem one desolation,—the very breath of misery; yet out of the wide extending shadow comes the ‚child’s crow of Jjoy........When there is neither day or night; at dusk, when night has given her last kiss of greeting to the day; when the blush that has mantled the face of the sky fades, when all is uncertain unreal, doubtful and indistinct. in that hour the Messiah will be born. —FRoM THE WRITINGS OF THE SCRIBE.
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Jossele hurry!"
"Leah, run quickly."
The boy paused to pull up his stocking, the girl stopped to catch her brothers hand. Deborah Isacson with her ritual ordained wig set awry, and her cap strings flying, panted as she shouted to her children.
The crowd was forming at the street corner, the patter of hurring footsteps was behind them, but where the mass congregated all looks and voices were hushed. The policeman having jingled his sword and having considered his duty crossed to the inn and took a nip of vodka. It was vodka or a row to clear the street; there had been sufficient rows of late in the little Russian town so he selected vodka which was cheap. The innkeepers daughter understood the situation, she did not ask for payment. A guest rose from the rough wooden table in the dark squalid inn. "It wants still fifteen minutes to sunset," he observed, and leisurely made towards the gathering.
The children had pressed forward and passed between their elders and stood uncertain where to turn in the midst of the narrow roadway. A sound of weeping
came from a little distance, a wail, continuous and prolonged that sounded above the tread of many feet. The street knot took its cue and the children from sympathy also began to cry.
And now the procession was in sight. An old rabbi with silvered locks and beard, down which trickled many a stream of tears, led. A mixed mass followed, a cortege, picked up at street corners, that knew no regulations except the measured tread of grief. In the midst of the swelling host two bearded men bore an enshrouded roll. It was too narrow, too smooth, to be a corpse?
"The Sepher. The Scroll," shouted the late comers, and fell in ragged line, emotional weeping and praying.
During the riots the scrolls of the law had been torn from their resting places in the synagogues; were cast in the streets desecrated, burnt and destroyed. The sacrilege had set on edge the teeth of the children of Jacob. This was the very worst form of ill treatment, it struck all the Jews through their treasured faith. One poor little parchment roll had been found, and now its torn, tattered remnants which the scribe had diligently put together were being given burial. A child not of one, but the pet, the pride, the joy and hope of so many generations; this poor skin so laboriously written, deserved to rest by the side of those to whom its words had meant so much, during all the days of their dark, dreary lives. Perhaps it was crude and superstitious. Yet the simplicity of the rite, the solemnity of the hour gave it a rare note of pathos. There was a wondrous comeliness in those tear-dimmed faces, a light spiritual suffused them as they passed through the Ghetto street to the Ghetto resting place. This one writing should know the hallowed peace of the Jewish grave.