TALES THAT ARE TOLD
Sad and perplexed in spirit, I came down from the rabbi, with the Maskil, and into the street. There we came across the beadle, who assured us that, in his opinion, we should be able to go on with the work to-morrow.
The whole Tararam[74] had been stirred up by two impoverished householders, who were now in great misery; one, a public-house keeper, and the other, a horse-dealer.
The Maskil, for his part, promises to talk the matter over with the townspeople between Minchah and Maariv, and if he doesn't turn the place upside down, then his name is not Shmeril (such a name has a Maskil in Tishewitz!). They may stand on their heads, he said, but the notes must be taken. "The very authorities that forbade will permit."
Well done! It is evident that the Maskil had studied in a Cheder, in the great world one meets with other Maskilîm.
I go back to the inn; the beadle comes, too. At my host's they still have services, the mourning for his wife not being ended. Between Minchah and Maariv, we get on to politics; after Maariv, on to the Jews. The greater part are dreadfully optimistic. In the first place, it's not a question of them, secondly, plans will not prosper against "Yainkil,"[75] he has brains of his own; thirdly, it's like a see-saw, now it goes up and now it goes down;[76] fourthly, God will help; fifthly, "good Jews" will not allow it to happen.
The old song!
"Believe me," exclaims one, with small, restless eyes under a low forehead, "believe me, if there were unity among all 'good Jews,' if they would hold together, as one man, and stop repeating Tachanun,[77] Messiah would have to come!"
"But the Kozenitz Rebbe, may his memory be blessed, did stop," suggested another.
"'One swallow,' replied the young man, 'does not make a summer.' Who talks of their imposing a prohibition on All-Israel?"