The Maccabaean

A LITTLE, gray-haired, stooping man, with a broad white forehead and melancholy brown eyes. He wandered all seasons of the year among the multitude of little towns in South Russia, a brown bundle containing his belongings slung over his narrow shoulders, and six drashahs (moral dissertations), covering six precepts of the Law, in his head. With every congregation, in his long, unwearying journey, he left one or two of his drashahs, in return for which his rusty tin plate was regularly filled with small change.

As a rule the maggid did not unburden himself of more than two drashahs in one town. For which you must not accuse him of being a bad tradesman unwilling to sell all his wares. Gladly would the maggid have sold his six dissertations at a price—if only he could. But there were difficulties. Not least of them being that the towns to which his threadbare appearance did not forbid him entre contained only very poor people like himself.

Often, as he dragged wearily along the road, doubled under his bintel tzorus (load of troubles) like a jack-knife, he fancied himself delivering all the six drashahs in one town, and emptying out six plates full of copper and silver. (That would mean riding at least a part of the way to the next town.) Sometimes, such are the whims of illusion, the little man even saw himself arriving in front of a great Beth Hamidrash in a fiacre! What a difference that would make in his fees.

But the maggid was aware of very subtle reasons why he should not deliver more than two drashahs in one town. The reasons were in the nature of things. For as time went by the maggid became less and less sure of the value of his dissertations. And if he delivered only two dissertations in one town it left him a choice of two each for the two neighboring towns. He trembled lest, repeating a dissertation, some Jew from a nearby town who had already heard it, might smile knowingly.

Besides, the maggid repeated his dissertations like an automaton. During the process he thought of his home, his wife, his children, and his one unmarried daughter. Sometimes it happened that he finished the dissertation before the usual time, before he himself expected it, and he remained on the platform thinking of his home, his wife, his children and his one unmarried daughter, while the congregation regarded him with wonder and continued with the services. Aroused by the resumed praying a great fear seized the maggid and he made his way tremulously down the platform. . . .

Another thing haunted the maggid. Every night when he counted up the receipts of his rusty plate he found several counterfeit coins. And as time went by the counterfeits appeared in greater numbers.

II

Every day the need for a new dissertation became more pressing. As he resumed the rounds of the little towns which he had already visited and harangued several times, he was conscious of repeating the same thing before the same people. Sometimes what he had to say was obvi-

ously pointless. For instance, in some of the towns the local Government officials had already taken up the matter of weights and measures—so what was the sense of additionally warning the congregation against false weights? So, more than once, as he was trudging along the way, the maggid decided that as soon as he reached town he would sit down and think something up—but when he actually got there, hunted up the synagogue, and washed his hands and face clean of the dust and grime of the road, he was so fatigued that he naturally sank down on one of the benches and fell asleep. Nor did he awaken till the entire congregation had gathered.

“Reb Maggid, you must get up now. The whole congregation is here—and you are still sleeping.”

And rising up the old maggid murmured to himself; "No use. I shall have to live out my days on the old dissertations!"

III

But a time did come when the maggid had to learn a new dissertation—a dissertation such as he had never dreamt of.

It happened one day that, arriving in front of a Beth Hamidrash in one of the larger towns, he read a bulletin announcing an address to be delivered that very evening by a well-known Zionist. An address, not a drashah! And no hint of a maggid! All the dormant fear and restlessness in the little man broke out anew.

There was no public program by which a maggid might know when another maggid was coming to a certain town; so the maggid was accustomed to entering a town and finding another maggid already at the synagogue. On such occasions the two maggidim tossed up a coin to determine who was to deliver the first dissertation. Our maggid had luck at this sort of thing, and the coin usually turned up in his favour. But here, his instinct told him, it would be useless to look forward to such a test. . . .

The misfortune would not have been so great were it merely a matter of surrendering the platform to this newcomer. The old maggid would have gladly called it a few miles of journeying wasted and wended his way to the next town. But there was a boding of evil in the announcement itself. This new preacher, this Zionist, he felt, had come to supplant him entirely. It might become necessary for him to beg his livelihood from door to door in his old age. And as he waited with the rest of the congregation for the appearance of the speaker his poor dissertations floundered pell mell through his head as if they laughed at him and threatened to desert him. . . .

And at last the speaker did arrive. . . . Everyone stepped aside for him, even the old maggid, who slunk into a corner of the synagogue. His competitor was a young man in the thirties with a little black beard (shorn, the maggid would swear) and a long black swallow tail coat. The little old man regarded him with burning eyes.

The Zionist slowly ascended the platform, looked over the congregation calmly and began to speak in low, even tones. But as he continued a warm fervour seemed to steal