This new rush of light upon her dark horizon so softened her heart that she could almost tolerate her superfluous parents.
“If I could only have love and my own life, I could almost forgive them for bringing me into the world. I don’t really hate them; I only hate them when they stand between me and the new America that I’m to conquer.”
Answering her impulse, her feet led her to the familiar Ghetto streets. On the corner of the block where her parents lived she paused, torn between the desire to see her people and the fear of their nagging reproaches. The old Jewish proverb came to her mind: “The wolf is not afraid of the dog, but he hates his bark.” “I’m not afraid of their black curses for sin. It’s nothing to me if they accuse me of being an anti-Semite or a murderer, and yet why does it hurt me so?”
Rachel had prepared herself to face the usual hail-storm of reproaches and accusations, but as she entered the dark hallway of the tenement, she heard her father’s voice chanting the old familiar Hebrew psalm of “The Race of Sorrows”:
“Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my cry come unto Thee.
“For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth.
“I am like a pelican of the wilderness.
“I am like an owl of the desert.
“I have eaten ashes like bread and mingled my drink with weeping.”
A faintness came over her. The sobbing strains of the lyric song melted into her veins like a magic sap, making her warm and human again. All her strength seethed to flow out of her in pity for her people. She longed to throw herself on the dirty, ill-smelling tenement stairs and weep: “Nothing is real but love—love. Nothing so false as ambition.”