Then, if once in a long, long while the rich Volhynian householder stumbled, by some miracle or other, into Lithuania, sheer curiosity would drive him to take a look at the Lithuanian celebrity. But he would stand before him in trembling and astonishment, as one stands before a high granite rock, the summit of which can barely be discerned. Is he terrified by the dark and bushy brows, the keen, penetrating looks, the deep, stern wrinkles in the forehead that might have been carved in stone, they are so stiffly fixed? Who can say? Or is he put out of countenance by the cold, hard assertiveness of their speech, which bores into the conscience like a gimlet, and knows of no mercy?—for from between those wrinkles, from beneath those dark brows, shines out the everlasting glory of the Shechinah.
Such were the celebrated Rabbonim of Mouravanke.
They were an old family, a long chain of great men, generation on generation of tall, well-built, large-boned Jews, all far on in years, with thick, curly beards. It was very seldom one of these beards showed a silver hair. They were stern, silent men, who heard and saw everything, but who expressed themselves mostly by means of their wrinkles and their eyebrows rather than in words, so that when a Mouravanke Rav went so far as to say "N-nu," that was enough.
The dignity of Rav was hereditary among them, descending from father to son, and, together with the Rabbinical position and the eighteen gulden a week salary, the son inherited from his father a tall, old reading-desk, smoked and scorched by the candles, in the old house-of-study in the corner by the ark, and a thick, heavy-knotted stick, and an old holiday pelisse of lustrine, the which, if worn on a bright Sabbath-day in summer-time, shines in the sun, and fairly shouts to be looked at.
They arrived in Mouravanke generations ago, when the town was still in the power of wild highwaymen, called there "Hydemakyes," with huge, terrifying whiskers and large, savage dogs. One day, on Hoshanah Rabbah, early in the morning, there entered the house-of-study a tall youth, evidently village-born and from a long way off, barefoot, with turned-up trousers, his boots slung on a big, knotted stick across his shoulders, and a great bundle of big Hoshanos. The youth stood in the centre of the house-of-study with his mouth open, bewildered, and the boys quickly snatched his willow branches from him. He was surrounded, stared at, questioned as to who he was, whence he came, what he wanted. Had he parents? Was he married? For some time the youth stood silent, with downcast eyes, then he bethought himself, and answered in three words: "I want to study!"
And from that moment he remained in the old building, and people began to tell wonderful tales of his power of perseverance—of how a tall, barefoot youth, who came walking from a far distance, had by dint of determination come to be reckoned among the great men in Israel; of how, on a winter midnight, he would open the stove doors, and study by the light of the glowing coals; of how he once forgot food and drink for three days and three nights running, while he stood over a difficult legal problem with wrinkled brows, his eyes piercing the page, his fingers stiffening round the handle of his stick, and he motionless; and when suddenly he found the solution, he gave a shout "Nu!" and came down so hard on the desk with his stick that the whole house-of-study shook. It happened just when the people were standing quite quiet, repeating the Eighteen Benedictions.
Then it was told how this same lad became Rav in Mouravanke, how his genius descended to his children and children's children, till late in the generations, gathering in might with each generation in turn. They rose, these giants, one after the other, persistent investigators of the Law, with high, wrinkled foreheads, dark, bushy brows, a hard, cutting glance, sharp as steel.
In those days Mouravanke was illuminated as with seven suns. The houses-of-study were filled with students; voices, young and old, rang out over the Gemorehs, sang, wept, and implored. Worried and tired-looking fathers and uncles would come into the Shools with blackened faces after the day's pitch-burning, between Afternoon and Evening Prayer, range themselves in leisurely mood by the doors and the stove, cock their ears, and listen, Jewish drivers, who convey people from one town to another, snatched a minute the first thing in the morning, and dropped in with their whips under their arms, to hear a passage in the Gemoreh expounded. And the women, who washed the linen at the pump in summer-time, beat the wet clothes to the melody of the Torah that came floating into the street through the open windows, sweet as a long-expected piece of good news.
Thus Mouravanke came to be of great renown, because the wondrous power of the Mouravanke Rabbonim, the power of concentration of thought, grew from generation to generation. And in those days the old people went about with a secret whispering, that if there should arise a tenth generation of the mighty ones, a new thing, please God, would come to pass among Jews.
But there was no tenth generation; the ninth of the Mouravanke Rabbonim was the last of them.