Business! You in your synagogue—you ought to be the enemy of business. You ought to preach it to our people without end that their life of morning, noon, and night, and not a breath drawn but for sake of gain, is a sickly mockery of life, and that it is against the law of Moses!
The Rabbi.
Another prophet! Business, gain, contrary to the laws of Moses! Go on, my boy! Let us have the sermon you would preach! Ha, ha! Go on! Now I shall learn something.
Rafael.
Have I not read in the Book of Moses how the people divided the soil, and there was no one who had more than another; and there was no grinding of the poor, and there was never any selling of lands: "For mine is the soil, and you are but strangers unto Me!" And among them was not business despised? How did Jacob speak of Issachar?
The Rabbi.
Bravo! "A strong ass," eh? Ha, ha, ha! You've been deep in the Pentateuch. Where will you find such inspirations in any other Sacred Book? But you should read them under guidance, you foolish boy!
Rafael.
Under guidance! There is a guidance born in me that takes me where I am, and I do not fear! It is a guidance that lives to-day; it is not a guidance dug from the bones of a dead people of the dim past! I know. You are going to say that Solomon did business, that David did business. I don't care if they did! And you tell me that I skim the surface, that I miss the spirit of the Jewish faith; and I tell you that it is this spirit that my soul revolts against—the spirit that holds our people in chains—the chains of the Ghetto!
The Rabbi.