“He came back from Haifa with his hands raised in holy horror,” Engelmacher said, in his short, dry accents. “According to him the city is a veritable hot-bed of heresy. He saw with his very own eyes a Jewish man carrying a walking-stick on the Sabbath; and the strange thing about it was that the heavens did not fall!”
“Ridiculous!” exclaimed the young man, with contempt. “It is a wonder he will consent to carry his clothes.”
“Well, you know he wears his pocket-handkerchief tied round his knee as a garter because it would be a sin to carry it in his pocket on the Sabbath. But there is worse to follow. He went to your house to dinner in spite of his misgiving as to the orthodoxy of your menage, and your wife actually offered him milk in his coffee thirty minutes after he had partaken of meat! After that he has given you all up as hopeless; and really, my dear Montella, I think you might have exercised greater care!”
“My wife offered him milk in his coffee!” repeated Lionel incredulously. “I can scarcely believe it. My mother was in the room, and would surely have noticed it; she is quite as particular in that way as Ben Yetzel himself.”
“But how is it there was milk on the tray at all so soon after dinner?”
“Because my wife and Miss Emanuel seldom eat meat. They find that light food agrees with them better in this climate. Of course, Patricia, who finds it difficult to realise the importance of the dietary laws, might unthinkingly have passed him the milk. It is a great pity, especially as Ben Yetzel is such a fanatic. But I dare not say anything to her about it; she would be very grieved at her mistake.”
“Oh, it isn’t worth while to rake up the matter now,” said the doctor, relapsing into his native tongue. “The question is, are we to bow down to Ben Yetzel or not? Years ago, when I was threshing out the Zionist question, I thought what a glorious thing national Judaism would be, but I left the narrowness of Rabbinical Judaism quite out of account. In this new State, it seems to me, as to my contemporaries, that we should let every man find salvation in his own particular way.[[12]] How can we, who have suffered so much on account of religious persecution, afford to deny toleration to our own brethren? Let every man do that which seems right according to his own conscience, thereby abolishing the secret hypocrisy which is so detestable to an honest soul. To enforce orthodoxy as Ben Yetzel would do is absolute madness; it will simply mean the cramping and narrowing down of all the best that is in us; it will mean the practical ruin of the State.”
[12]. Dr. Herzl’s principle.
“And yet you are an orthodox Jew yourself?”
“I am. Use is second nature, you know, and I am willing to try and set a good example. But I am a broad-minded man of the world, and I know that that world does not end at my own horizon. People of different temperaments need various forms, even of the same religion. It is impossible for an Englishman like yourself, for instance, to beat your breast like the Polish Jew.”