“But it was faith in Judaism that made him what he was. If I—if all Jews could only believe in the religion of their fathers as he believed—what an example to mankind Israel would be!
“My friend, I thank you. You have come with me—you have listened to my story. I must attend to my friend. May the peace of God be with you!”
The Reverend Thomas Gillespie (although, as I said, it may have been William) bowed, and, without a word, walked slowly out of the room. His lips trembled slightly.
The “second outdoor meeting of the Reverend Gillespie’s Mission to the East Side Jews” has never taken place.
WITHOUT FEAR OF GOD
The thread on which the good qualities of human beings are strung like pearls, is the fear of God. When the fastenings of this fear are unloosed the pearls roll in all directions and are lost, one by one.
—The Book of Morals.
Be pleased to remember that this tale points no moral, that there is absolutely nothing to be deduced from it, and that in narrating it I am but repeating a curious incident that belongs to the East Side. It is a strange place, this East Side, with its heterogeneous elements, its babble of jargons. Its noise and its silence, its impenetrable mystery, its virtues, its romance, and its poverty—above all, its poverty! Some day I shall tell you something about the poverty of the East Side that will tax your credulity.
There lived on the East Side once a man who had no fear of God. His name was Shatzkin, and there had been a time when he was a learned man, skilled in the interpretation of Talmudic lore, fair to look upon and strong.