From the Heart of Israel: Jewish Tales and Types

by Bernard Drachman

THE GENERAL.

I have distinguished company in my study this morning. No less a personage than Gen. Sergei Pavlowitz, late commander of the —th division of the regular Russian army, has paid your humble servant the honor of a visit, and is now seated in the rocking-chair opposite my desk. I must, however, ask my readers not to strain their imaginations unduly in summoning up before their mental vision a suitable picture of military pomp and splendor. The general is not in full uniform heavily braided and trimmed with gold lace, nor radiant with glittering epaulets and buttons. No plumed helmet surmounts his head; no clanking sabre swings at his side; he is neither gloved, booted, nor spurred. His appearance would not dazzle the onlooker, nor overawe the most timid; in fact, no one would, at first sight, think of connecting him in any way with marching hosts or warlike scenes. As he sits there in my rocking-chair, gazing at me with his mild blue eyes, upon his head a little black skull-cap, his long, snow-white beard flowing down upon the front of his shirt and his black broadcloth coat; in his hand a stout cane to assist the steps which age has made somewhat uncertain, while he descants upon a matter of purely synagogical interest, there is no suggestion about him of martial glory, no hint of the groan and agony and heroism of battle. He seems just a plain, every-day, elderly Russian Jew, diffident and retiring in worldly affairs, but bright enough in matters of Jewish concern, of Hebrew learning, and religious practice, such a man, in a word, as may be found in any of the orthodox synagogues throughout New York but particularly on the lower East Side, where the places of worship and solemn assembly of his brethren and countrymen most abound.

THERE IS SOMETHING COMMANDING, SOMETHING INDEFINITELY MILITARY AND AUTHORITATIVE ABOUT HIM
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But now my visitor has concluded the business which brought him hither and rises to depart. Immediately one can notice a vast change in the impression he makes. He does seem different now from the ordinary so-called Ghetto type he appeared identical with a moment ago. There is something commanding, something indefinitely military and authoritative about him. Though feeble, he stands perfectly erect, and his figure and bearing are thoroughly military. Military, too, is the almost painful neatness which characterizes his attire, from his well-brushed hat and coat down to his brightly polished shoes, a far-off reminder, as it were, of the days when a dull button or a frayed coat sleeve meant disgrace and the guard-house; but most military of all is his right sleeve, for it hangs empty, with only a short stump filling the upper part near the shoulder, a mute reminder of bloody Sebastopol, where a British sabre cleft the arm to which it belonged in twain, and its owner hovered for many a day ’twixt life and death.

This is the General. Perhaps, strictly speaking, he does not deserve the title, for he long since was stricken from the Russian army list, and might even meet with condign punishment were he to return to his native land; but once he bore it with full right and authority, and no military shortcoming, no lack of loyalty or courage upon the battlefield was responsible for its forfeiture. It is, therefore, only natural that his friends and neighbors who know his history give him the title. So “the General” he is, and “the General” he will remain, until death calls him to his last long bivouac. What a tremendous change in state and fortune! Once a distinguished military commander, whose slightest behest thousands hastened to obey because of his heroism; beloved by his countrymen and honored by his emperor; the husband of a renowned general’s daughter, and with every prospect promising rapid advancement and eventually loftiest rank; now the humble denizen of an obscure street in the Jewish quarter of New York, his life in nowise different from that of the other long-bearded habitués of the synagogue and the Beth Hammidrash.

How came this Jew, son of a proscribed and pariah race, to attain to such distinguished rank in the service of the persecutors of his people? How came he to lose it, and to sink back again into the lowliness from which he sprang? It is a strange tale, showing what sombre romances, what heartrending tragedies Jewish life is still capable of producing in the empire of the Czars. I shall tell it you.

Some seventy years ago there lived in one of the western provinces of Russia a young couple. Israel Rabbinowitz was the husband’s name, and Malka Feige that of the spouse. They were a pious and worthy pair. The husband was a respected merchant, whose scrupulous honesty and commercial rectitude were no less esteemed than his unswerving religious fidelity, and the accuracy and extent of the Hebrew scholarship which he displayed in the Talmudic debates of the circle of “learners” in the Beth Hammidrash. Malka Feige was a worthy mate of such a husband. Kindhearted, unwearyingly industrious, and devout, she was a typical Jewish housewife.

They had but one child, a blue-eyed, fair-haired boy of eight, whom they loved with the passionate devotion of which parental hearts are capable when they have but one object upon which to concentrate their affection. He was literally the apple of their eyes. His father cared for his intellectual welfare, and provided the best and most highly esteemed Melammedim to introduce him into the intricacies of the Jewish education of that time; and the lad, who had a bright and acute intellect, responded well to these efforts, and at eight was quite a little prodigy of Biblical and Talmudical learning. His mother, on the other hand, looked after his physical well-being, fed him on delicate food, clothed him in a jubitza of extra fine material, brushed and combed his little peoth until they shone, and set her pride upon making him finer and brighter in appearance than his comrades. Like Hannah of old, she had determined to dedicate her offspring to the Lord. Already in imagination she saw him seated upon the rabbi’s seat, greeted by the plaudits of admiring thousands; and so strong was her faith in that future for her son that she rarely called him by his given name, which was Saul Isaac, but always referred to him as “my little rabbi.” Thus the love, the hopes, the ambition of these parents were all wrapped up in this, their only son.

Troublous times were just beginning then for the descendants of Jacob living on Muscovite soil. Nicholas the First sat on the throne of the Czars; and, like so many of the Russian potentates before and after him, could find no more pressing task to perform than to convert his Hebrew subjects to Christianity. He had no respect for the conscientious scruples which kept the Jews faithful to their ancestral religion; he could not appreciate the heroism with which they endured every conceivable suffering and martyrdom rather than grow recreant to the allegiance plighted to their God. In his eyes they were only a mass of obdurate, stubborn, and pestiferous heretics, who refused to see the beauties and accept the salvation of Christianity. He thought and thought and cudgelled his brains to devise some scheme by which to overcome the endless resistance of Judaism to its own dissolution, and finally evolved a plan which for sheer deviltry and refinement of heartless brutality would have done credit to the blackest fiend in the legions of Satan; and this, too, in the name of the religion which claims love and tenderness as its own special prerogative, and calmly assumes all the progress of humanity and civilization as its doing.