Yesterday my old friend was very talkative. I felt it pleased him to glance back at his own life; and he probably felt that it was not vulgar curiosity but true sympathy that led me to him. When I began my diary, I thought it would record the deeds and events of the day happening here, the most recent news; it has turned out to be a book of the recollections of an old man. It's better so. Daily life here is dull and monotonous. The people, as far as I know, seem to be conventional. Those typical characteristics which Simon Eichelkatz reveals to me are lacking in the present generation. The more the Jews are acclimatized, the more they lose of their individuality; and if this is not to be deplored in general, yet it is at the expense of much originality, in both a good and a bad sense. Whatever originality has been saved for present times has taken the form of individualism, which plays a large and significant rôle in modern life; and I believe that if strong individualities are found among Jews, they are traceable to the time when the community at large was concerned with the preservation of individuality and race characteristics. Nowadays the Jews strive for exactly the opposite ideal. But I want to put the past on record. Simon Eichelkatz draws some remarkable though not always agreeable pictures. Yet if viewed in the softening perspective of time and distance, they evoke a feeling of reconciliation and mild tolerance.
Was not an impress laid on the Jews by the narrowness of their life, its one-sided interests, the lack of a wide outlook, and the failure to take a broad view of the world based on fixed ethical principles? Were the large mass of them not rendered doubly small and inferior because the great men among them were entirely too great? Was it not a necessary consequence that crudities and deformities should grow out of these contrasts, which were all the worse because they arose under oppression, in malicious, underhand ways? When I think of it all in the right light, my sympathy overcomes my repugnance for those who in the old communities crucified and burned at the stake the men who furthered the idea of reform in Judaism. Remarkable saints! Meyer Nathanson, the caretaker of the Khille; Saul Feuerstein, the professional bankrupt, and their savory crew, and alongside of them Dr. Krakauer, Dr. Ehrlich, and their colleagues. Alas for the miserable Khilles! Yet I am moved by the recollections of the scenes enacted in the past on this ground where fortune has cast me. Instead of the land of sun, in which the famous ancestor of my great-grandmother in Brody, Dr. Abarbanell, served his Master, the black coals of upper Silesia and the winds of the Beskides; instead of converse with scholars and artists, intercourse with the rude folk here; instead of stimulating activity, dissections and grubbing into the mental state of murderers, perjurers, etc.—such is my life and work; yet I have something to give me inner satisfaction—Simon Eichelkatz.
Yesterday, he said to me: "What the Herr Rabbiner did for the congregation as a whole when he came to this 'black' Khille cannot compare with what he gave to each person separately. He came here in 1849, soon after the great revolution. Shortly before, in the company of a deputation from Posen—he had been rabbi in Unruhstadt—he had stood before the king, in order to give expression to the 'most humble' thanks of the Jews for the rights granted them. You can imagine, Herr Kreisphysikus, how that impressed the people here—a Rav who had stood before the King, a Rav who spoke High German and was a doctor. I tell you there was a to-do when they went to receive him and his Rebbetzin; they rode as far as Kandrzin and met him there. Herr Dr. Krakauer, saving your reverence, had then been president for two years, and, to give the devil his due, it was Dr. Krakauer who brought a new Rav here and insisted on his being a man with an academic education. But when he saw that the Rav was independent, and wasn't willing to dance to the tune of his fiddle, he became the Herr Rabbiner's worst enemy. But on the rabbi's arrival Dr. Krakauer delivered the address of welcome in Kandrzin, and rode here in the same carriage with the rabbi and the Rebbetzin. The fourth person in the carriage was the goldsmith Manasse, who was then vice-president, a decent sort of a man. That's the way they entered town; the whole Khille had assembled before the rabbi's house, in the old school building next to the Mikveh. Well, and then they went up into his apartments, which had been entirely refurnished by Joseph, the cabinet-maker, and Manasse attempted to deliver a speech there. He was no orator, and embarrassment robbed him of his words. It is reported he stammered so that he couldn't get past the first words, and Dr. Merzbach said: 'Respected friends, I do not need words to be convinced of your sentiment and your kindly feelings for me. I feel that I belong to you, and I came gladly. I hope that in this congregation my activity will find a large field, which perhaps has hitherto been lying fallow, but on which the seeds of fine, noble thoughts, ethical principles, and the idea of forming a worthy communal life, will sprout and bear rich, glorious fruit. I know what you wanted to say to me, respected Herr Vorsteher, even if the emotion of the occasion overpowered you. Whoever looks into your true, good eyes feels that he is facing a kindly man; and so we all have the desire to cling to one another faithfully, and not in words but in deeds work for the weal of this precious congregation.'
"Manasse repeated this speech to me a hundred times. When the reception committee came down to the rest of the people at the end of half an hour, Dr. Krakauer looked so exasperated that Marek, the Shabbes Goy, immediately remarked: 'Something has gotten onto his nerves.' But Saul Feuerstein, professional bankrupt, and later leader of the 'Saints,' did not see why the formation of a 'worthy communal life' was necessary, since they had been davvening so long, and everything had been all right. Did he think they had been waiting for him to shape communal life? As for what he said about 'ethical principles,' you'd have to look it up in an encyclopedia before you could understand it. Besides it was a Chutzpeh in him to speak of a fallow field. The Khille had managed to exist without a sign of a Dr. Merzbach. Under such auspices the new rabbi assumed office—among Amrazim and coarse fellows, all of them, the well-educated Herr Dr. Krakauer, saving your reverence, and Dr. Ehrlich with his fine ways on top. Only two men understood the rabbi better, Karfunkelstein, the book-dealer, whose father had been rabbi, and Schlesinger, the old iron monger. And then there was another who might have if he had wanted to; a sensible, amiable, good, intelligent, and witty man. He joked about the entire congregation and had a great deal of influence, because they were afraid of his keen judgment. He was the new Chazen, the cantor Elias, who had been appointed a short time after the rabbi.
"Now, isn't it so, Herr Kreisphysikus, isn't it more of a misfortune than a shame if one hasn't had the opportunity to learn? But it is a shame if one hasn't respect for the knowledge of others, and if one hurts the feelings of those to whom one should look up with respect. Cantor Elias once said to Dr. Merzbach: 'If you want to remain friends with the Parchonim here, my dear Herr Doktor, you must learn Klabberjas, and Franzefuss, and Sixty-six. Here cards are more important than the pages of the Gemoreh.'
"He was right, Herr Kreisphysikus, and the worse he thought and spoke of the people, and the more disrespectfully he treated them, the better they were to him. He could always carry his point. Every year an increase in salary. And they let him do what he wanted. When he stood before the Omed on Shabbes and Yontef and began to sing, they were all in transports. He sang! Such a voice, such a way of singing! I don't know if there is anything like it now. He touched people to the very marrow of their bones. Perhaps sounds are more affecting than words. What do you think, Herr Kreisphysikus? At any rate he had more influence and power over the Khille than the rabbi. If the rabbi told them something, they had to think about it first; but they only had to hear what the cantor sang to them. Then, after Shul, he went with them to drink a glass of wine at Heimann's, or lunch with them at Schäfer's. Reb Shäfer would stand at the door and declare, when the Herr Kantor came, his heart laughed in his body. When the cantor was present, there was always fun and merriment. He was the most popular man. He would play a little game with the people, he lunched with them, and did not despise Heimann's Hungarian wine. He told the men rugged truths, and he teased the women. No one suspected how genuinely he despised them all, how high he was raised above them. In a few clever words he himself told what he thought about everything.
"'Do you know what our Rav is?' Once when I was present he asked the question of some Baale-Batim with whom he was playing Klabber. 'A pearl cast before swine.'
"'And the Rebbetzin?' some one asked in the midst of their laughter.
"At this he suddenly became quite serious, and said: 'She is a pearl picked from the coronet of a princely family. But you don't understand; why should you? You know Malkeh and Melech only on cards.' Then he threw down the ace and said: 'I'll take the king and queen with the diamond; they're in better hands than with you.'
"Often he used to say to me: 'You're right, Eichelkatz, for sticking to the rabbi. If anyone can help you, he's the man, for he knows, yes, he knows what is going on in the souls of men—and—the Rebbetzin!'