“But how many Jews are there who would subscribe to your view of the case—who would admit that amalgamation is inevitable?”
“Doubtless, very few. Most of them have no views at all on the subject. The majority of the wealthier Jews here in America are epicureans. Eat, drink, be merry, and lay up a competence for the rainy day, is about their philosophy. But among the older people the prejudice against intermarriage is wonderfully strong. We shall have to wait for a generation or two, before it can become common. But it is a prejudice pure and simple, the offspring of superstition, and not the result of allegiance to that ideal I was speaking of. The average Jew of a certain age may not care a fig for his religion, but if he hears of an instance of intermarriage, he will hold up his hands in horror, and wag his head, and predict some dire calamity for the bride and bridegroom. The same man will not enter a synagogue from year’s end to year’s end, and should you happen to discuss theology with him, you’d put him down for an out-and-out rationalist at once. But then, plenty of people who pride themselves on being freethinkers, are profoundly superstitious—Gentiles as well as Jews.”
“No doubt about that. In fact, I think that every body has a trace of superstition in his makeup, no matter how emancipated he may fancy himself. Now I, for example, can’t help attributing some uncanny potency to the number seven. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of by modern science; and perhaps superstition is a crude way of acknowledging this truth. It is the reaction of the imagination, when confronted with the unknowable.”
“It seems to me that much which passes for superstition in the world, ought not to be so called. It is, rather, a super-sense. There is a subtle something that broods over human life—as the aroma broods over a goblet of old wine—a something of such fine, impalpable texture, that many men and women are never able to perceive it, but which others of more sensitive organization, feel all the time—are forever conscious of. This is the material which the imagination seizes hold of, and out of which it spins those fantastic, cobweb shapes that practical persons scoff at as superstitions. I can’t understand, however, how any body can specialize it to the extent of linking it to arithmetic, as you do, and as those do who are afraid of thirteen.”
“What you have reference to falls, rather, under the head of mysticism, does it not? And mysticism is one form of poetry. You come rightfully by your ideas on this subject. A strain of mysticism is your birthright, a portion of your inheritance as a Jewess. It’s one of the benefits you derive from being something more than an American.”
“Oh, but I am an American, besides. It is a privilege to be one.”
“I meant American of English ancestry. We are all Americans—or more precisely, we are all immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. But those of us that have an infusion of warmer blood than the English in our veins, are to be congratulated.”
“It seems to me that Ripley is an English name.”
“So it is. But my father’s mother was a Frenchwoman.”
“A ruddy drop of Gallic blood outweighs a world of gold,” parodied Mrs. Lehmyl.