JEWS I HAVE MET
A nation, just like a man, when it becomes impotent and the future looms up with its dreadful coloration; when it begins to lose the power of distinguishing between "present" and "future," usually indulges itself in the past, provided its memory has not been lost. The Greek nation, which has neither present nor future, indulges itself in dwelling on its past when Homer sang and great Hercules was the hero: An old man bent under the burden of years will tell you of the great Bonaparte, but the present and the future does not interest him. I, too, have reached that age when I can no more enjoy the present and the future is so dark before me that I see neither what is Above nor Beyond. Therefore, I indulge myself in the past and recall the sweet faces that have smiled on me, encouragingly, as I began my wanderings on the thorny road of life. I shall first tell of the last of the pioneers who fought darkest Galicia with the weapon of culture and civilization.
I.
JOSHUA HESCHELL SCHORR
When Moses Mendelssohn first pressedthe button of Jewish progress, there awokethe first Jewish nightingale, Naphtali HerzWess'v, whose song stirred the dormantJewi'h people. The thinker and the poetwere two men who began the cleansing of the augean stables of superstition.But the pioneers who fought andstormed mighty fortress of darknesswere Galicians, and among theme wereSolomon Leib Rappaport, Mair Letteris,Heschel schorr and Nachman Krochmal.Nachman Krochmal attacked the fanaticson the spiritual side, while Rappoport
wrote sketches of the lives of the great rabbis, Joseph Perl, a wealthy man, founded schools and modern institutions of charity. But Schorr was by far superior in the manner he attacked the Talmud with his iron logic. While Letteris was singing his melodious songs, the blasts of Schorr shattered the glass windows of the synagogues.
This is how I came to meet this great man.
When my father died, he left three orphans, including me, a boy of fourteen. My name as a precocious Hebrew poet was already known. The Austrian emperor had already acknowledged the receipt of my first Hebrew poem by sending me fifty guldens, and the newspapers had written me up quite considerably. After my father was disposed of, my mother told me to take the two orphans to the city of Brody and place them in an orphan asylum. I arrived in Brody and was met by a man named Feldman, who was then about forty, a well-built man, who looked like the commission merchant he was. He took me and my two children into a mead saloon and ordered some refreshments for us. I drank the mead and gave my poor brothers the crackers. Mr. Feldman offered to read a booklet of his own poems and they made me very sick; after each stanza I called for another glass of the peculiar beverage. Suddenly a slender man loomed up before my eyes. He was Jeremiah Masen, who knew me from my native town, Zloczow. He saluted me in friendly fashion and invited me to have supper with him. I accepted his invitation, but asked: "What shall I do with my orphans?"