"But say, what has happened?" cried Jäkel the Fool, with all the impatient curiosity which was even then characteristic of the Frankfort Jews.
But the Rabbi impatiently broke loose from them, and went his way along the Jews' Street. "See, Sara!" he exclaimed, "how badly guarded is our Israel. False friends guard its gates without, and within its watchers are Folly and Fear."
They wandered slowly through the long empty street, where only here and there the head of some young girl showed itself in a window, against the polished panes of which the sun was brilliantly reflected. At that time the houses in the Jewish quarter were still neat and new, and much lower than they now are, since it was only later on that the Jews, as their number greatly increased, while they could not enlarge their quarter, built one story over another, squeezed themselves together like sardines, and were thus stunted both in body and soul. That part of the Jewish quarter which remained standing after the great fire, and which is called the Old Lane, those high blackened houses, where a grinning, sweaty race of people bargains and chaffers, is a horrible relic of the Middle Ages. The older synagogue exists no more; it was less capacious than the present one, which was built later, after the Nuremberg exiles were taken into the community, and lay more to the north.
The Rabbi had no need to ask where it was. He recognized it from afar by the buzz of many loud voices. In the court of the House of God he parted from his wife, and after washing his hands at the fountain there, he entered the lower part of the synagogue where the men pray, while Sara ascended a flight of stairs and entered the place reserved for women. The latter was a kind of gallery with three rows of seats painted a reddish brown, whose backs were fitted with a hanging board, which held the prayer-books, and which could be raised and lowered. Here the women either sat gossiping or stood up in deep prayer. They often went and peered with curiosity through the large grating on the eastern side, through the thin, green lattice of which one could look down on the lower floor of the synagogue. There, behind high praying-desks, stood the men in their black cloaks, their pointed beards shooting out over white ruffs, and their skull-capped heads more or less concealed by a four-cornered scarf of white wool or silk, furnished with the prescribed tassels, and in some instances also adorned with gold lace. The walls of the synagogue were uniformly white-washed, and no ornament was to be seen other than the gilded iron grating around the square stage, where extracts from the Law were read, and the holy ark, a costly embossed chest, apparently supported by marble columns with gorgeous capitals, whose flower-and leaf-work shot up in beautiful profusion, and covered with a curtain of purple velvet, on which a pious inscription was worked in gold spangles, pearls, and many colored gems. Here hung the silver memorial-lamp, and there also rose a trellised dais, on whose crossed iron bars were all kinds of sacred utensils, among them the seven-branched candlestick. Before the latter, his countenance toward the ark, stood the choir-leader, whose song was accompanied, as if instrumentally, by the voices of his two assistants, the bass and the treble. The Jews have banished all instrumental music from their church, maintaining that hymns in praise of God are more edifying when they rise from the warm breast of man, than from the cold pipes of an organ.
Beautiful Sara felt a childish delight when the choir-leader, an admirable tenor, raised his voice and sounded forth the ancient, solemn melodies, which she knew so well, in a fresher loveliness than she had ever dreamed of, while the bass sang in harmony the deep, dark notes, and, in the pauses, the treble's voice trilled sweetly and daintily. Such singing Beautiful Sara had never heard in the synagogue of Bacharach, where the presiding elder, David Levi, was the leader; for when this elderly, trembling man, with his broken, bleating voice, tried to trill like a young girl, and in his forced effort to do so, shook his limp and drooping arm feverishly, it inspired laughter rather than devotion.
A sense of pious satisfaction, not unmingled with feminine curiosity, drew Beautiful Sara to the grating, where she could look down on the lower floor, or the so-called men's division. She had never before seen so many of her faith together, and it cheered her heart to be in such a multitude of those so closely allied by race, thought, and sufferings. And her soul was still more deeply moved when three old men reverentially approached the sacred ark, drew aside the glittering curtain, raised the lid, and very carefully brought forth the Book which God wrote with His own hand, and for the maintenance of which Jews have suffered so much—so much misery and hate, disgrace and death—a thousand years' martyrdom. This Book—a great roll of parchment—was wrapped like a princely child in a gaily embroidered scarlet cloak of velvet; above, on both wooden rollers, were two little silver shrines, in which many pomegranates and small bells jingled and rang prettily, while before, on a silver chain, hung gold shields with many colored gems. The choir-leader took the Book, and, as if it really were a child—a child for whom one has greatly suffered, and whom one loves all the more on that account—he rocked it in his arms, skipped about with it here and there, pressed it to his breast, and, thrilled by its holy touch, broke forth into such a devout hymn of praise and thanksgiving, that it seemed to Beautiful Sara as if the pillars under the holy ark began to bloom; and the strange and lovely flowers and leaves on the capitals shot ever higher, the tones of the treble were converted into the notes of the nightingale, the vaulted ceiling of the synagogue resounded with the tremendous tones of the bass singer, while the glory of God shone down from the blue heavens. Yes, it was a beautiful psalm. The congregation sang in chorus the concluding verse, and then the choir-leader walked slowly to the raised platform in the middle of the synagogue bearing the holy Book, while men and boys crowded about him, eager to kiss its velvet covering, or even to touch it. On the platform, the velvet cover, as well as the wrappings covered with illuminated letters, were removed, and the choir-leader, in the peculiar intonation which in the Passover service is still more peculiarly modulated, read the edifying narrative of the temptation of Abraham.
Beautiful Sara had modestly withdrawn from the grating, and a stout, much ornamented woman of middle age, with a forward, but benevolent manner, had with a nod invited her to share her prayer-book. This lady was evidently no great scholar, for as she mumbled to herself the prayers as the women do, not being allowed to take part in the singing, Sara observed that she made the best she could of many words, and skipped several good lines altogether. But after a while the watery blue eyes of the good woman were languidly raised, an insipid smile spread over her red and white porcelain face, and in a voice which she strove to make as genteel as possible, she said to Beautiful Sara, "He sings very well. But I have heard far better singing in Holland. You are a stranger, and perhaps do not know that the choir-leader is from Worms, and that they will keep him here if he will be content with four hundred florins a year. He is a charming man, and his hands are as white as alabaster. I admire beautiful hands; they make one altogether beautiful." Having said this, the good lady laid her own hand, which was really a fine one, on the shelf before her, and with a polite nod which intimated that she did not like to be interrupted while speaking, she added, "The little singer is a mere child, and looks very much worn out. The basso is too ugly for anything; our Star once made the witty remark: 'The bass singer is a bigger fool than even a basso is expected to be!' All three eat in my restaurant—perhaps you don't know that I'm Elle Schnapper?"
Beautiful Sara expressed thanks for this information, whereupon Schnapper-Elle proceeded to narrate in detail how she had once been in Amsterdam, how she had been subjected to the advances of men on account of her beauty, how she had come to Frankfort three days before Whit-suntide and married Schnapper, how he had died, and what touching things he had finally said on his deathbed, and how hard it was to carry on the restaurant business and keep one's hands nice. Several times she glanced aside with a contemptuous air, apparently at some giggling girls, who seemed to be eyeing her clothes. And the latter were indeed remarkable enough—a very loose skirt of white satin, on which all the animals of Noah's Ark were embroidered in gaudy colors; a jacket of gold cloth, like a cuirass, with sleeves of red velvet, yellow slashed; a very high cap on her head, with a mighty ruff of stiff white linen around her neck, which also had around it a silver chain hung with all kinds of coins, cameos, and curiosities, among them a large picture of the city of Amsterdam, which rested on her bosom.
But the dresses of the other women were no less remarkable. They consisted of a variety of fashions of different ages, and many a woman there was so covered with gold and diamonds as to look like a wandering jeweler's shop. It is true that there was at that time a fashion of dress prescribed by law to the Frankfort Jews, and to distinguish them from Christians the men had to wear yellow rings on their cloaks, and the women very stiff, blue-striped veils on their caps. However, in the Jewish quarter the law was little observed, and there, in the synagogue, especially on festival days, the women put on as much magnificent apparel as they could—partly to arouse envy of others, and partly to advertise the wealth and credit of their husbands.
While passages from the Books of Moses are being read on the lower floor of the synagogue, the devotion is usually somewhat lulled. Many make themselves comfortable and sit down, whispering perhaps business affairs with a friend, or go out into the court to get a little fresh air. Small boys take the liberty of visiting their mothers in the women's balcony; and here worship is still more loosely observed, as there is gossiping, chattering, and laughing, while, as always happens, the young quizz the old, and the latter censure the light-headedness of the girls and the general degeneracy of the age.