It was the Day of Atonement—the Great White Fast. The principal synagogue in the West End of London was crowded from the doors to the Ark, and the heat was intense. Like a flock of frightened sheep, those Jews—and they were many—who ignored the claims of public worship for over eleven months at a stretch, rushed to the synagogue on this Holy Day in order to settle their accounts with an offended Deity, and obtain exemption from service for yet another year. This Day served as a test to prove whether a man of Hebrew birth clung to the Jewish faith or not; for if he retained the very smallest respect for the tenets of his religion, he would at least put in an appearance at the synagogue, and refrain from tasting food. However lax he might be throughout the year, on this Day he would try to make reparation, lest he should be struck off from the inheritance of Israel; for if he failed to observe Yom Kippur, he could no longer claim—amongst his own people—to be a Jew.
People are apt to speak of “the Jews” as though they were one nation of one unvaried character, and in so doing they make a fatal mistake. The fact that Jews possess in a large measure the chameleon-like faculty of reflecting the colour—or rather the characteristics—of the country wherein they happen to reside is entirely overlooked. No wider divergence of opinion and character between that possessed by the English Jew and the Polish Jew, between the educated and the ignorant, could be imagined; yet by the easy-going Gentile the whole heterogeneous mass of the race of Israel is summed up in one category—“The Jews.” Even in this small gathering of modern Israelites there were many different types. There was the old man, clad in his burial garments, and slipperless, who swayed to and fro and smote his breast with the zeal of a devotee; there was—up in the gallery—the equally old woman, her head disfigured by the scheitel[[1]] (tabooed by the modern Jewish matron), which she wore as the mark of her wifehood. There was the opulent Jew, newly imported from South Africa, with his consort above him; the diamond merchant from Holland; the English stockbroker; the German commercial traveller; the Oxford under-graduate. There was the vulgar Jewish matron, with her insufferable air of affluence and her display of diamonds; and the refined Jewish lady, with her less conspicuous attire and quieter manner. There were men and women of all nationalities and classes, bound together by one common tie, yet in temperament as opposite as the poles. And out of this crowd of more or less fervent worshippers there is but one who claims our attention, a man of religious views so broad as to be almost heterodox, yet still in his conformity to the fundamental principles of his religion, a faithful Jew.
[1]. Wig.
He belonged to one of the noblest Jewish families in England. Descended from the Sephardim, his ancestors had come over in the reign of Charles II., and his forefathers for generations had been therefore of English birth. The Selim Montellas were famous throughout the land for their wealth, their munificence in disposing of it, and their devotion to their country and its sovereign ruler. Lionel, the last of the race, proved no less worthy a representative of the ancient house. After a brilliant career at Oxford, where he had earned the respect of both dons and under-graduates for his adherence to the rules of his religion, he had entered Parliament as member for Thorpe Burstall—where his father possessed an estate. He was one of the youngest men in the House, but possessed a clear-sightedness beyond his age. His youth served to intensify rather than detract from the interest he instilled into his political duties.
It was after he left the university that his religious views underwent a change. From orthodoxy he drifted into reform—a reform which was dangerously akin to Rationalism, and then putting a stern check upon himself, he adopted a belief not unlike that of the Karaites. He tried to reject the Talmud and the whole authority of tradition, and to adhere only to the written Law; but finding this unsatisfactory, he was gradually making his way back to conventional Judaism once again. That accounted for his presence in the synagogue on this solemn occasion, for whatever his views on the lesser details of the faith might be, on Yom Kippur he was as strict as the most orthodox of his confrères.
It was about two o’clock in the afternoon, and vitality in the synagogue was at a somewhat low ebb. Most of the children, and those of their elders who were too delicate to sustain the rigours of an absolute fast, had gone home to lunch, leaving their stricter co-religionists to satisfy the cravings of hunger by naught but spiritual refreshment. It was in the gallery where the ordeal was found most severe, for the ladies possessed less staying power than the more hardy men; moreover, the mere fact of having to refrain from the gossip in which they delighted was in itself a trial of no little magnitude. Their faces showed signs of weariness and ennui, and the air of smartness which had been theirs at the beginning of the service had almost disappeared. Two or three of them created a diversion by fainting—the majority of them were too healthy to swoon. They sat still, and counted the hours and minutes to nightfall; it seemed as if the Fast would never end.
In the quietest part of the service a noise from the street was heard. A number of boys were calling out the afternoon editions of the newspapers, but although their voices floated in through the open windows, the substance of their announcement was lost. Lionel Montella almost unconsciously raised his head to listen, for he was always on the alert for new tidings of any kind, but the peculiar enunciation of the newspaper boys baffled even his acute ear. All he could make out was the word “death.” Who was dead he had not the faintest idea.
He raised his prayer-book, and applied himself with renewed diligence to the text. They were saying the Ameedah, and he repeated the responses with the rest of the congregation; but all the time the word “death” was at the back of his mind. It worried him so much that he was unable to give his undivided attention to the service, and when the newspaper boys repassed the synagogue, he listened to their shouts with all the intensity of which he was capable. He could not help feeling—perhaps it was a premonition—that the death was an important one, that it affected him in some way he could not define; and when at last he caught the name, the surprise which he ought to have experienced was absent—only the deep, inexpressible horror remained.
“Death of Mr. Lawrence Campbell!... Sudden death of the Premier!”
The words fell on the ears of the congregation like a knell. The reader paused almost imperceptibly in his chanting, the majority of the people looked at each other in horrified surprise. The name of Lawrence Campbell was synonymous with all that was noble and good, and as a loyal friend of the Jews, he had ever earned their respect and affection. Although he had occupied the high office of Prime Minister for over ten years, he was comparatively a young man, and his death came as a totally unexpected blow. What it would mean to the community remained to be seen, but like a sudden ray of light the possible consequence flashed across Lionel Montella’s mind. He sank on to his seat with his brain in a whirl, and in spite of the temporary feeling of weakness brought on by his long hours of fasting, tried to think clearly. He alone of all his co-religionists knew the true and perilous position of the Jews in modern Europe at the present day. The Alien Immigration question had reached a crisis which would have to be settled at Parliament’s next session, and the issue practically depended on the unreliable temper of the Government. Various expedients for colonisation had been tried without success, for the Jews, never having been “hewers of wood and drawers of water,” did not take kindly to the manual labour necessitated by such colonisation. What form the next experiment would take, therefore, was a difficult and vexed question, and one which the Premier and his subordinate, Montella, had been threshing out together for weeks. And now Lawrence Campbell, the chief, almost the only, enthusiastic champion of the Jews in Great Britain was dead. No wonder the young politician’s heart grew faint within him!