Shall we cry to the Lord, that he save?Shall we plead that he spare with hishand?Yet he takes but the weapons he gave,And his own is the Land.
Can we measure the flaw in the lute? Can we reckon the gain and the cost? Do we think when our prophets are mute That the Word has been lost?
With our eyes on the height of our hill,With our hearts to the ultimate task,We shall serve with a resolute willAnd with nothing to ask.
Though the leader be hid from our eyes, Though the voice of command may be dumb, We shall fight, we shall fall, we shall rise, And Moshiach will come.
“In a Minor Key”
Out of doors the storm was tearing the heavens and the earth to shreds. The glass rattled in the windows. The house shook. Down the chimney the wind whistled a furious, melancholy tune. The howls and shrieks made me shudder involuntarily. They filled my friend Belinski's heart with desolation. I know his moods. He is as highly strung as the finest instrument he ever played on. No artist that ever lived possessed a larger share of that elusive quality vaguely styled temperament. He was mercurial in the extreme. And he was susceptible to an abnormal degree to atmospheric changes. I knew that the wild melancholy of the storm was being echoed and re-echoed in his sensitive soul. His narrow eyes, slumberous, questioning, yet eager told me what was going on within him.
We two were alone in his study, the cosiest and brightest room of any in his brilliantly lit-up house. The very air of it had freedom and life in it, and seemed to fill one with new vigour.
Belinski lit one cigarette after the other in total silence was pitched in a minor key, as he called those fits of melancholy to which he was subject.
"Are you thinking of those who are at sea?" I asked, when a sudden gust of wind caused him to move uneasily in his chair. He did not answer me for a minute or two.
"Those at sea," he repeated a little ab-sently. "No. We Jews think of the sea only as an accident in our lives. We cross it when we must, and seldom remember its existence afterwards. Other storms fret
us; other shipwrecks than those at sea work havoc in our midst.”
“You mean—?” I began tentatively. I feared to disturb the expansive mood his opening words told me he had fallen into.
“I mean nothing. I was only thinking of an experience I had in Russia some ten years ago. You remember the autumn of the great storm? Was it not ten years ago? You are better at fixing dates than I. How many years ago was it?”
“Seven,” I answered promptly.
“Well, seven if you will. That year I was in Russia. I played in all the principal towns. Though everyone knew I as a Jew I was not only allowed into the cities of St. Petersburg and Moscow, but was invited to come to them, and received with delight when I was there. My triumphs were greater than I care to speak of. Well, I was due at Berlin after my Russian tour. Instead of going direct from Moscow to Berlin by train, I decided to break my journey. I wished to pay a visit to a tiny village in the province of Kovno. Its name was—well, its name doesn’t matter now. You would forget it in a minute if I told it to you. It was my father’s birthplace, and my mother’s, and mine also.”
Belinski's life-history was so well known to me that I needed to ask no questions, and make no comments. I nodded to him to go on.
"In that village there still lived many of my relatives. An uncle of mine, a bedridden old man had reared his family there. At that time he was still alive. His children had drifted here and there. You know how the Jews of Russian villages have been drifting these last thirty or