The white-bearded rabbi looked like one of the priests of old, and I could easily imagine myself in the Temple on Mount Moriah. This solemnity was but momentary; those who had the honour of performing the various ceremonies were called; they pronounced the blessing, quickly and mechanically a portion of the law was read, and then the readers made offerings for various charitable purposes. There is no religious or social function in Israel at which an offering is not made, and gratitude to Jehovah always expresses itself in gifts.
The sermon followed immediately and while old men listened to the expounding of the weighty things of the law, women gossiped, children in the yard played rather boisterously, and the young men talked about their affaires d’amour, much to the hurt of those of us who were old enough to listen and too young to fully understand.
The Sabbath dinner had a peculiar fragrance, and lingers in one’s memory more, I fear, than the teachings of the synagogue. The meal was prepared on Friday, and consisted of Scholeth. Pork and beans is, to the New England Puritan, what Scholeth was to his Jewish prototype.
In huge, black pots, the combination of beans and goose was carried to the communal bake-oven, where for eighteen hours it slowly simmered and baked, and was ready, piping hot, when the morning service was over. The pots were nearly all alike, the owner’s name or number being marked in chalk. Once at least it happened that we got the rabbi’s Scholeth. His wife was reputed a poor housekeeper, and the Scholeth proved the fact. When we returned it to its owner we found, much to our dismay, the rabbinic family getting to the bottom of our own.
In the afternoon, mother and I went visiting, usually among the poor and sick, and one of the heritages of those visits is a deep sympathy with human suffering. As I grew older, my uncle took me with him to the weekly discussions of the law, which were held in an anteroom of the synagogue.
I remember two questions which I asked on different occasions. One was, why we were permitted to drink the beer brewed by Gentiles and not the wine which they pressed. The rabbi’s reply was, that we were not permitted to drink the wine, because wine is used for social occasions and there would be danger of contact with the Gentiles. When I replied that beer was used for the same purpose, I was told that beer was not brewed in Talmudic times, and consequently could not be forbidden.
In a German translation of the prophets, I had read the first chapter of Isaiah. I felt its vigorous denunciation, I caught its first glimpse of true religion, and when I asked why the rabbi commanded and approved what Isaiah condemned, he told me that the prophetic writings were beneath the law, and that he who kept all the points of the law was greater than they. I never enjoyed these discussions, but now I wish I would have had the patience to sit through them, if only to fasten fully upon my mind one such discussion.
I do remember the stuffy room, for since that time I have sat in it with the new rabbi, who has studied theology in Germany and knows more and preaches less than he believes.
The old rabbi was genuinely orthodox; his Sabbath cap and velvet gown were full of lint and dust; his head was unkempt, for to comb it would have been labour. He sat in a dilapidated grandfather’s chair and before him lay the old Talmud; huge, forbidding looking volumes, a mixture of truth and superstition; a Magna Charta, bills of sale into slavery; wings and chains, the sublime and the ridiculous; but to him every sentence was sacred, every letter inspired of God. Around him sat the pious men of the town and such of their sons as were inclining or being inclined towards the study of the law.
“What did rabbi so and so reply to rabbi this and that?”