PREFACE
It was at the end of the good, and the beginning of the bad, years. Black clouds had appeared in the sky, but it was believed that the wind[57]—the spirit of the times, I mean—would soon disperse them, that they would pour out their heart somewhere in the wilderness.
In Europe's carefully-tended vineyard the bitter root was already cleaving the sod and sending out prickly, poisonous shoots, but look, look! now the gardener will see it and tear it out root and all. That was the idea. It was supposed that the nineteenth century had caught a cold, a feverish chill, in its old age. That it would end in a serious illness, a fit of insanity, never occurred to anyone.
How far away America was for us in those days! Not a Jew troubled himself as to what a plate of porridge looked like over there, or wondered whether people wore their skull-caps on their feet. Palestinian Esrogîm were as seldom mentioned as Barons Hirsch and Edward de Rothschild.[58]
Astronomy calculates beforehand every eclipse of the sun or moon. Psychology is not so advanced. The world-soul grows suddenly dark, the body is seized with a sort of convulsion, and science cannot foretell the hour—the thing is difficult enough to believe in after it has happened—it is not to be explained. And yet people were uneasy—rumor followed rumor from every side.
It was resolved, among other things, to inquire into the common, workaday Jewish life, to find out what went on in the little towns, what men were hoping for, how they made a living, what they were about, what the people said.
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