And the Holy One came, blessed be He, and slew the Angel of Death, who had slain the slaughterer, who had slaughtered the ox, which had drunk the water, which had extinguished the fire, which had burnt the staff, which had smitten the dog, which had bitten the cat, which had devoured the kid, which my father bought for two zuzim. Chad Gadya! Chad Gadya!
EPILOGUE
A MODERN SCRIBE IN JERUSALEM[ToC]
I
Outside the walls of Jerusalem, on the bleak roadless way to the Mount of Olives, within sight of the domes and minarets of the sacred city, and looking towards the mosque of Omar—arrogantly a-glitter on the site of Solomon's Temple—there perches among black, barren rocks a colony of Arabian Jews from Yemen.
These all but cave-dwellers, grimy caftaned figures, with swarthy faces, coal-black ringlets, and hungry eyes, have for sole public treasure a synagogue, consisting of a small room, furnished only with an Ark, and bare even of seats.
In this room a Scribe of to-day, humblest in Israel, yet with the gift of vision, stood turning over the few old books that lay about, strange flotsam and jetsam of the great world-currents that have drifted Israel to and fro. And to him bending over a copy of the mystic Zohar,—that thirteenth century Cabalistic classic, forged in Chaldaic by a Jew of Spain, which paved the way for the Turkish Messiah—was brought a little child.