Moshe rose obediently, and went towards the door. The Rabbi, raising both arms, exclaimed "Woe to the headstrong and disobedient! Woe to him who touches the leper and spreads contagion!"
Saying this, his whole face became suffused with a wave of dark, relentless hatred. And yet, a quarter of an hour ago the same face was full of brotherly love; the same mouth spoke gentle and comforting words, and the eyes were full of tears.
Thus gentleness and wrath, love and relentless hatred dwelt side by side in the same heart; virtues and dark crimes flow from the same source. Charity goes hand in hand with persecution and neighbour often stands for enemy. Man, who tended to human suffering and healed the sick, with the same hand lit the stakes and prepared the instruments of torture.
What mysterious influences rule such dual lives?—asks the perplexed student of human nature.
But for these mysterious undercurrents which lead human brains and hearts into awful error, Rabbi Isaak might have been a great man.
Let us be just. He would have been a great man but for those that raised the weapons of fire and sword, and the still more deadly weapons of scorn and contempt, against his brethren, and thus confined them in the narrow, dark,—a spiritual and moral Ghetto!
The sun had set, and the earth was wrapped in the dim light of a summer evening. The large court of the synagogue swarmed with a crowd. The interior of Bet-ha-Midrash was already full of people. There could be seen heads of old men and fair locks of children, long beards, black like crow's wings and blonde like hemp. They all moved and swayed, necks were craned, beards raised, and eyes glowed in anticipation of some new sensation. Everything appeared in shadow. The large room was lighted by a small lamp, suspended at the entrance door, and a single tallow candle in a brass candlestick, which stood on a white table; this, with a solitary chair close to the high and bare wall, constituted the platform from which the speaker was wont to address the people. In Israel, everybody, young or old, and of whatever social position, had the right to speak in public, according to the democratic principles prevailing in the ancient law. Every Israelite had the right to enter this building, whether for the purposes of praying, reading, or teaching.
The people who crowded outside the building looked often in at the windows of the room where the elders and judges held their conferences. In the entrance hall the lamp was being lit, and burning candles were placed upon the long table. Presently people well-known to the inhabitants ascended, the steps of the portico. Singly or in twos arrived the judges of the community—all of them men well on in years, fathers of large families, wealthy merchants, or house owners. There ought to have been twelve in number, but the bystanders counted only up to eleven. The twelfth judge was Raphael Ezofowich. People whispered to each other that the uncle of the accused could not sit in judgment against him; others said that he would not. After the judges arrived, the elders, amongst whom was Morejne Calman, with his hands in his pockets and the stereotyped, honeyed smile on his lips, and Jankiel Kamionker, whose face looked very yellow, and whose eyes had the hunted look of a criminal. The last, but not least of them, was Isaak Todros, who glided in so swiftly and silently that scarcely anybody in the crowd noticed him.
At the same time, from the depth of Bet-ha-Midrash, a clear, resonant voice reached the ears of the surging crowd without:
"In the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, hear, O
Israel!"