“Rabbi, why do you not come to supper? Everything is getting spoiled; and if you do not come soon, your meal will not be fit to eat.” It was the voice of Rebecca the rebbetzin, or wife of the rabbi of Galoschin, in the province of Posen; and she was endeavoring to induce her lord and master, Rabbi Akiba Erter, to leave his sanctum, where he had been busy all afternoon solving profound intellectual problems, and to turn his attention to the less ideal but equally necessary task of eating his evening meal. It was nothing unusual for the good rabbi to be so absorbed in his studies as to be utterly oblivious to all other matters, and to disregard utterly such insignificant trifles as a call to a meal. Rabbi Akiba was a noble specimen of the old-time rabbi. He was a Talmudic scholar of extraordinary erudition and dialectic keenness, a pietist of rigidly scrupulous observance, and charitable in the extreme. Of the three elements which go to make up the ideal man, the head, the heart, and the soul, it was hard to say with which he was more liberally 269endowed. Whatever he did, he did with all his power. When engaged in study, his absorption was absolute and his concentration complete; when worshipping, his whole being poured itself out before his Maker; and, when engaged in performing an act of benevolence, he had no other thought in his mind until it was accomplished.
The problem which had engaged his attention on this particular occasion belonged to the last-mentioned category, and was knottier far than the most abstruse ceremonial, legal, or theological riddle he had ever been called upon to solve. So troublesome was it, and so greatly did it worry the good rabbi, that he presented quite a picture of despair as he sat before his study-table, upon which were heaped in picturesque confusion huge rabbinical tomes, some open and some closed, his black skull cup pushed far back upon his head, and his hair and long venerable beard sadly tousled and frowsed from the constant pulling he had given it during the past three hours, while his long peoth were from the same cause all limp and out of curl. Supper-time had come, but the problem was apparently as far from solution as ever, for the servant maid of the household had summoned him four and five times to the evening meal and he had not answered or even seemed aware of the summons; 270and it was only when the rebbetzin herself appeared that he seemed conscious that he had been called, and answered abstractedly, “Yes, wife, I am coming at once, at once.” Impatiently muttering and grumbling to herself, the rebbetzin returned to the dining-room; and the rabbi, rising from his seat, directed his steps to the same place, his face clearly showing by its abstracted and absorbed expression that the same problem which had worried him all afternoon still engaged his thoughts.
Rabbi Akiba was usually a very pleasant companion at table. He was in the habit of telling amusing anecdotes and making witty remarks in the course of the meal, and it was his invariable custom to discourse learnedly on some theme of the law before the blessing of the food was pronounced, in order to fulfil the rabbinical precept, “a man shall always speak words of the law over his table”; but to-night he was very poor company indeed. He ate his food mechanically, taking everything that came along without examination, although his usual practice was to eat quite sparingly, and only such dishes as were favorites of his. He put snuff into his milk-soup and salt to his nose, and would have eaten the soup with its snuffy admixture had not Rebecca pointed out the error.
271To the remarks addressed to him by his better half he returned only incoherent answers. In a word, he was in a state of abstraction and perplexity which was plainly visible to all, so that not only his spouse and his three pretty black-eyed daughters, Leah, Miriam, and Taube, noticed it, but even the Russian Bochur Hayim, whom the rabbi kept in his house out of admiration for the latter’s profound erudition and who was three-fourths blind, and as a rule totally oblivious to everything that went on in the world outside of the Beth Hammidrash, dimly perceived that his master was not the same as at other times. Suddenly the rabbi paused while drinking a cup of tea, with such a suddenness, indeed, as to make half of the hot fluid go down “the wrong throat”; and though sputtering and coughing, and with face fiery red from the resulting tracheal disturbance, managed to exclaim in triumphant gasps: “I have it, I have it.”
“What have you?” inquired Rebecca with some acerbity. “As far as any one can notice, all you have is a fit of coughing which cannot do you any good. I hope what you have is worth having.”
“Never mind, wife,” said the rabbi with a pleasant smile. “What I have is indeed worth 272the while. When all is accomplished you shall know what it is. And now let us finish our meal, for I am in haste.”
The rabbi then briefly discoursed on a religious theme in order not to deviate from his custom, and pronounced the blessing of the food, in which all joined. “Now, my good Rebecca,” said the rabbi, when these ceremonies were concluded, “bring me my great coat, my Sabbath hat, and my cane, for I have a certain visit to make.”
“Why, what possesses you?” said Rebecca in wonderment. “Why do you want to go out at night, although you have often told me that the disciples of the learned should not go out alone at night, and why do you wish to dress in your Sabbath state? Are you making a visit at court or the palace of a noble? I am afraid all is not right with you.”
“Do not be afraid, wife,” said the rabbi, who was now in excellent spirits. “Everything is all right. Now, quickly get me my things, for, as I said, I am in haste.”
The rebbetzin was fain to be content with this not very satisfactory answer, and brought her husband his finest official robes, the great, heavy satin jubitza and his broad velvet streimel or Sabbath hat. Having arrayed himself in 273these, and taken in addition a stout stick, the rabbi ventured forth into the night, which, although the hour was not late, was already, as usual in those northern regions, intensely dark and quite cold.
While he is on his way to his destination, whatever that may be, let us see what was the matter which had so greatly troubled the holy man all day, and which had driven him forth into the darkness and rigor of a northern winter night. That morning there had come to him Mosheh Labishiner, one of the constant worshippers in the synagogue and an unfailing attendant at the rabbi’s Talmudic lectures in the house of learning, and had poured into his ears a pitiful tale of woe. It was not exactly a story of destitution, but it was one which touched the rabbi’s naturally soft heart, always open to every plea of distress and ever ready to sympathize with all that suffered and sorrowed, in a particularly tender and sensitive spot. Mosheh told Rabbi Akiba that his daughter Deborah (whom Rabbi Akiba knew as a dutiful and God-fearing maiden and pretty withal) had been betrothed to a poor but very worthy youth, Samuel of Kempen, for more than two years; that the two young people were ardently devoted to each other, and desirous, as were also the parents on 274both sides, of sealing their love by the sacred bond of wedlock, but that prudence forbade the union until the youth would be the possessor of a business of his own, and able properly to maintain a wife and family. He, Mosheh, in accordance with the invariable custom in all good Jewish families, had promised his prospective son-in-law a dowry of a thousand gulden, which would be amply sufficient to establish a modest business; but that owing to various misfortunes and losses he had been unable to accumulate more than two hundred gulden, which would barely suffice for the expenses of the wedding, but would leave nothing for the dowry. The young people were to have been married a year previously; but as Mosheh did not possess the requisite amount of the dowry, he had continually deferred the marriage, on various pretexts, until now it was impossible to defer it any more. His poor wife and his daughter, the Kallah, were in the utmost distress and wept unceasingly, while his intended son-in-law and Mehuttanim, who knew nothing of his financial embarrassments, were beginning to grow suspicious and to think that he was opposed to the marriage, and did not really intend to permit it to be consummated.
“And now, dear rabbi,” Mosheh had said, 275“help me, I implore thee. Unless I can procure a thousand gulden within a day or two I do not know what misfortune will happen. My poor wife and daughter will surely die of broken hearts and my name will be blackened forever.”
Rabbi Akiba was not intimately acquainted with Mosheh. All he knew of him was that he was an “honest Jew,” a good, straightforward, religious man; but that was sufficient to gain his sympathy, and especially the sorrows of his wife and daughter touched him to the quick. He at once offered to go and collect the money for the dowry among the wealthy members of his flock; and he added that he was sure there would be no difficulty in obtaining the required amount for a young woman of such excellent repute, who was a daughter of such eminently respectable and pious parents. But here he struck an unexpected difficulty. Mosheh objected strenuously to any public collection in his behalf.
“You must not breathe a syllable of all this to any living creature, dear rabbi,” he begged. “I could never endure the thought that all the Kehillah should know that I had been obliged to depend upon the charitable gifts of kind-hearted people in order to obtain a dowry for my daughter. I have always been an independent, self-respecting merchant, and have myself 276provided for all the needs of my family. I could not endure the thought of appearing as a Schnorrer for any reason. And then my wife and daughter, do you think that they would ever accept a dowry which had been thus gathered together from the offerings of pity? They would sooner die. They do not even know that my circumstances are so straitened. The mere report that contributions were being solicited in our behalf would destroy whatever happiness they have. No, rabbi, you must get the amount needed in some other way, in some way which will not even raise a suspicion that we are being helped, or else I shall have to ask you rather to do nothing and to leave it to the All-Merciful One to deal with us as He sees fit.”
These words, while they greatly increased the respect which the rabbi felt for Mosheh, also added immensely to his perplexity. They seemed utterly to shut the door in the face of any attempt to obtain the required sum. Rabbi Akiba himself was not the possessor of any considerable amount of money. His income was not large and he never had any difficulty in disposing of it, there being plenty of claimants on his bounty outside of his own family. If, therefore, he could not go to the wealthy householders in the Kehillah and openly ask them for 277donations, he knew of no source whence he could derive the assistance needed. It would not do to request of them the gift of such a large amount without stating the purpose for which it was to be used. They might give it to him, such was their respect for his character and their trust in the purity of his motives, but they would be apt to speculate on the use to which he intended to devote it, and very likely they would find it out, too, and that would be directly contrary to the explicit desire and request of Mosheh, Hence the perplexity and the mental struggles by which the poor rabbi had been tortured all day until at supper he had found, as he thought, the solution of the vexatious problem. The simpler solution which would have suggested itself to many a modern cleric, to shrug the shoulders deprecatingly and politely to inform the suppliant that he regretted extremely that under the circumstances it was impossible to do anything for him, did not occur to Rabbi Akiba. He was narrow in many ways, limited both in views and experience to that which could be acquired in the secluded recesses of the Beth Hammidrash, simpler, indeed, than many a modern child in worldly ways; but on that very account his moral fibre possessed the old, unspoiled Jewish sturdiness. He knew that 278Mosheh was deserving of sympathy and help, and he determined to help him if there were any possibility of doing so; and believed he had now found a way to attain that wished-for end.
Rabbi Akiba hurried through the streets of Galoschin, brilliantly lighted with the bright illumination of early evening, presenting a singular enough figure, as he hastened along, to be the object of the wondering stares of many a passer-by. Galoschin was a city originally Polish, but which under the influence of Prussian culture and discipline had become thoroughly Germanized, and which strove to reproduce the manners and the external characteristics of the German metropolis. The Jewish inhabitants in particular had, as a rule, dropped all the old-time Polish characteristics. Jubitzas and peoth in particular were utterly banned, and were conceded only to the rabbi to whom, as an example of rigid conservatism and unswerving piety, they were deemed appropriate. As Rabbi Akiba hastened through the streets he presented, therefore, a most extraordinary contrast in his long, girdled robe, his strange broad-brimmed hat, with long, dangling ear-curls and the stout cane in his hands, to the ladies and gentlemen, attired in the height of modern fashion, who sauntered along the elegant thoroughfare, 279stopping before the brilliantly lighted windows of the shops or entering the theatres, concert halls, cafés, and other places of amusement which abounded in this vicinity. In front of a large and splendid edifice, through whose windows and great portal floods of light poured and loud strains of gay dance music were heard, the rabbi paused. Over the gateway was a huge sign, which bore, in letters composed of shining gas flames, the legend, “Galoschiner Casino und Vereinshaus.” Rabbi Akiba glanced at this sign a moment and then boldly entered. His entrance was the signal for great excitement among the persons standing in the hall and among the visitors who were entering at the same time, and who had come to attend the annual ball and reunion of the Galoschiner Gesellige Verei............