“Ishah Rah!” came for the third time with the mystic solemnity that subdued her instantly into worshipful subjection. “Tear away your man from God! Tear him away from the holy Torah! Lose the one precious thing in life, the one thing that makes a Jew stand out over all other nations of the world, the one thing that the Tsar’s pogroms and all the sufferings and murders of the Jews could not kill in the Jew—the hope for the next world!”
Like a towering spirit of righteousness afire with the Word of God he loomed over her.
“I ask you by your conscience, should I give up the real life, the true life, for good eating, good sleeping, for a life in the body like the Amoratzim here in America? Should I make from the Torah a pick with which to dig for you the rent?”
Adjusting his velvet skull-cap, the last relic of his rabbinical days, he caught the woman’s adoring look. Memories of his past splendour in Russia surged over him. He saw his people coming to him from far and near to learn wisdom from his lips. Drawing himself to his full height, he strode across the room and faced her.
“Why didn’t you marry yourself to a tailor, a shoemaker, a thick-head, a money-maker—to a man of the flesh—a rabbi who can sell his religion over the counter as a butcher sells meat?”
Mrs. Ravinsky gazed with fear and contrition at her husband’s God-kindled face. She loved him because he was not a man of this world. Her darkest moments were lit up with pride in him, with the hope that in the next world the reflected glory of his piety might exalt her.
It wrung her heart to realize that against her will she was dragging him down with her ceaseless demands for bread and rent. Ach! Why was there such an evil thing as money in this world? Why did she have to torture her husband with earthly needs when all she longed for was to help him win a higher place in heaven?
Tears fell from her faded eyes. He could have wept with her—it hurt him so to make her suffer. But once and for all he must put a stop to her nagging. He must cast out the evil spirit of worry that possessed her lest it turn and rend him.
“Why are you killing yourself so for this life? Ut! See, death is already standing over you. One foot is already in the grave. Do you know what you’ll get for making nothing from the Torah? The fires of hell are waiting for you! Wait—wait! I warn you!”
And as though to ward off the evil that threatened his house, he rushed to his shrine of sacred books and pulled from its niche a volume of his beloved Talmud. With reverence he caressed its worn and yellowed pages as he drank in hungrily the inspired words. For a few blessed moments he took refuge from all earthly storms.