I was present at the ceremony. It was performed according to Jewish custom, in the open air. The synagogue yard was crowded, and the busybodies talked and talked. They really had something to talk about, for the bride had to be fairly lifted from the carriage, and the doctor had grown years older. The pompous “Gnaedige Frau Doktorin” alone held her head erect and did not weep.

An orthodox Jewish wedding ceremony is a sadly solemn occasion. The groom wears his shroud and the bride’s head is covered by an impenetrable veil. The rabbi reads the ceremony in the Hebrew Chaldaic dialect which no one understands, the cantor chants a solemn tune and the parents walk about the bridal couple weeping and praying. Never before was there a wedding in our town so solemn as this, and when the bride lifted her veil to drink from the ceremonial cup, her face looked like that of a corpse.

The next morning, long before daybreak, sounds of weeping and lamentation came from the house of the doctor. We heard the mad shriek of an insane woman, then a man lifted his voice in a heart-broken wail, and all who went to the door and all who heard the cause, wept with them. The old doctor, broken-hearted, stood by his daughter’s bed, holding her lifeless hand in his; thus he stood, until the pious women came to prepare her for burial. When the pale morning grew bright and the Gentile community wakened to its tasks and duties, a shot was heard in the post-office. Through the crowd gathered there, an old peasant and his wife forced their way. Beside the desk where he had worked, lay their son—with a bullet in his brain.

XVIII
THE FIRST APOSTASY

WE who lived in the town were the envied of our race who lived in the scattered villages among the mountains. We had the synagogue, the centre of spiritual and social life, and we had the school. In spite of the fact that many of our Jews hated one another because of business competition, there was a community interest which held all of them together—making them, in a measure, share the common joys and certainly the common griefs.

We had no aristocracy except that of piety and learning and in this the poor excelled the rich; so that life, such as it was, with its dangers and drudgeries, was shared life—and thus became bearable.

The village Jew had cause to envy us. He lived isolated among an alien and often hostile population, whose social pleasures he could not share, even had he cared to. If he lived near enough, he came to the synagogue each Sabbath, taking steep climbs over many rough miles; but more often he could come only on the holy days, for distances were great and the means of communication difficult. The term “Village Jew” was synonymous with crudity and ignorance; in fact, the life of such an one did not differ much from his peasant neighbour, except in a few important particulars. The peasant drank palenka. The Jew sold it to him; the peasant consequently grew poorer and poorer while the wealth of the sober Jew increased correspondingly. The peasant had no ambitions beyond his meat and drink, while those of the Jew were boundless, and although he could not achieve much more than the accumulation of moderate wealth, the future of his children was assured to such a degree that he did not fear their being condemned to the life of a “Village Jew.”

The children came to school in town, which was no little burden upon our community, but a burden which was gladly borne. In spite of the fact that the “Village Jews” were better off than the peasants, many of them could not afford to pay their children’s tuition and board, which the town Jews provided by free scholarships and by a very unique scheme of “boarding ‘round.”

At the beginning of the school year, parents went to the homes of the well-to-do and secured in each a certain day in the week on which the child would be a guest at table. This provided a variety of boarding places; a fact which had obvious advantages and disadvantages.

Our home was open to this invasion Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and it was the “Sabbath boy” as we called him, whose pathetic career had a lasting influence upon my life.