Jochebed, may boast to have reared a monument more perennial than brass!
“As of the master, so of his work, the Jews, I have never spoken with sufficient veneration; a circumstance, also due, no doubt, to my Hellenic temperament, to which Judaic asceticism was repugnant. My predilection for Hellas has since diminished. I see now that the Greeks were merely comely youths, but the Jews were always men, powerful, inflexible men, not only formerly but down to the present day, in spite of eighteen centuries of persecution and misery. Since then I have learnt to do them greater justice, and, were it not that any pride of birth on the part of a champion of revolution and its democratic principles would be a silly contradiction, the writer of these pages might well be proud of the fact that his ancestors belonged to the noble house of Israel; that he is a descendant of those martyrs who gave unto the world morality and a God, and have fought and suffered on all the battlefields of thought.”
After the Seder
THE table had been cleared, and the father leaned back against the white pillows which elevated him above his family. He was about to conclude the ceremony with the reading of the last half of the Hagada. The children were drowsy. They kept themselves awake by kicking each other's shins. The mother shook her lean finger at one, at another, and said, reproachfully: "Can't you be patient. It will soon be over now."
The candles spluttered. The lamp, enveloped in a humid corona, shone softly, and matzo crumbs were scattered over the table. The wine-glasses were half-filled, and red blotches stained the linen table cloth. Then the father raised his heavy eyes, beckoned to his wife to fill the glass once more, and resumed the reading of the Hagada, his voice thick and his gestures languid.
The last few pages of the Hagada were not as interesting as its beginning. Little Michael had asked the Four Questions for the first time, and there had been much merriment. Now the father read:
"O pour out Thy wrath upon the heathen that have not known Thee, and upon the kingdoms that have not called upon Thy Name."
The mother opened the door to give the words an opportunity to escape outdoors, and the children nudged each other. The prophet Elijah did not appear, nor was any sound returned in answer to the invocation.
David listened with an inattentive ear. He had sat at eight Seders, and it was not a novel ceremony. He fidgeted about in his seat. Would his father never end? It seemed absurd to repeat the sing-song doggerel: "One kid, one kid. . . . . "
But the Hagada was soon finished with a mumbled flourish.
The younger children had already left the table. The mother said: “Nu, Dovidle, why don’t you go to sleep?” Dovidle mur- murecd a reply, and feigned drowsiness, but remained at the tabıe. His father arose, smoked his last eigarette, sulleniy, sleepily seratehed the back of his head and went to bed. Finally the mother turned down the lamp-wick, locked the door, and unsteadily followed her husband.
When all were gone, David looked up slyly, and produced a bulky package, upon which he had been seated all evening. It was a book. He placed in on the table, and pressing his elbows on either side of the book looked down on the printed page and read.
His eyes shone and his face flamed. He read swiftly and turned down page after page with great eagerness. . . . . .
He was reading the story of the life of Jesus told by Ernest Renan, the stirring romance of the life of the man who had given Christendom its religion and its ideals. He read of the simple candor and proud courage of the scourged prophet. Of course, Jesus was not a Jew, thought David. He read of the rude, simple, weak men who were his disciples, and followed