“It’s the most delicious food I’ve eaten since I left Paris,” laughed Robert. Mrs. Levin beamed her pleasure.
Every one was talking at once. Explaining this and that. The significance of the candelabra. Why the rabbi wore a skull cap. Why little mazzuzas, painted wooden things, hung at the doors. Explaining the food. The rabbi, like his son, had a habit of skipping from one subject to another—literature, art, music, sociology, anthropology. Robert had always had an idea that Jewish learning was confined to the Talmud, mysterious books of ancient and medieval lore. But he found the rabbi’s knowledge was quite as modern as the most enlightened cosmopolite might wish.
“Most of these customs are simply customs,” said the Rabbi. “Why do you take off your cap to a lady? Custom. For the same reason I wear a hat. The simpler people make up explanations. See that mazzuza hanging at the door? It contains a little bit of holy scrip. Superstitious people think it drives away the devils. Other people hang it up because they think it makes a pretty curio. Like you might have a Buddhist idol, without believing in it, or a horseshoe. Some customs are nice customs. There is sentiment in back of them. So I stick to ’em. My children, nu, they are Americans. They grow away from it.”
McCall tried to turn the conversation back to the Tribe, while Robert protested that he had been convinced. To appease McCall, the rabbi had showed them the constitution of the Sons of Israel and assured them that the oaths were as innocent as that of the real fourth degree of the Knights of Columbus. The Tribe had accused the Sons of Israel of attempting to carry out the “international revolution.”
“Even if everything the Tribe says about everybody—Jews, Catholics, Negroes, foreigners—was absolutely true, still it would be wrong,” said the rabbi. “Why? Because either your Tribe is an invisible government, or it isn’t. If it isn’t, you are getting money under false pretenses, because you claim it is. And if it is an invisible government, they are transferring the government from its proper offices and should be arrested for the same reason that the communists were arrested when they also tried to set up an invisible government. Invisible government, no matter for what purposes, has no place here.”
At the end of the meal, they returned to the living room, where Estelle, upon the insistence of her parents, played surprisingly well, some selections from Rimsky-Korsakov. The rabbi kept time with his head, shaking it rhythmically from side to side.
“When she plays I can just hear the shepherds blowing on their pipes,” he said.
But McCall insisted on thrashing out the Jewish question still further.
“Well,” said Hamilton at length. “Of course those charges are all false. I don’t think any sane person is afraid that a handful of Jews, especially disorganized as they are, could ever gain control of the world. That’s preposterous. The real objection to him is that he is different, a foreigner, an inferior element. Not that I believe it, but—”
Dr. Levin, who had allowed his father to carry out the bulk of the argument, could keep back no longer, and he took up the challenge.