The Ghetto Part 21

RAFAEL.

In the house of Aaron?

THE RABBI.

With your father, and at home, under the roof where your mother lived. Ah! what a fine career is open to you in following out your father's business! It isn't every boy who has such opportunities!

RAFAEL.

Business! You in your synagogue--you ought to be the enemy of business. You ought to preach it to our people without end that their life of morning, noon, and night, and not a breath drawn but for sake of gain, is a sickly mockery of life, and that it is against the law of Moses!

THE RABBI.

Another prophet! Business, gain, contrary to the laws of Moses! Go on, my boy! Let us have the sermon you would preach! Ha, ha! Go on!

Now I shall learn something.

RAFAEL.

Have I not read in the Book of Moses how the people divided the soil, and there was no one who had more than another; and there was no grinding of the poor, and there was never any selling of lands: "For mine is the soil, and you are but strangers unto Me!" And among them was not business despised? How did Jacob speak of Issachar?

THE RABBI.

Bravo! "A strong a.s.s," eh? Ha, ha, ha! You've been deep in the Pentateuch. Where will you find such inspirations in any other Sacred Book? But you should read them under guidance, you foolish boy!

RAFAEL.

Under guidance! There is a guidance born in me that takes me where I am, and I do not fear! It is a guidance that lives to-day; it is not a guidance dug from the bones of a dead people of the dim past! I know. You are going to say that Solomon did business, that David did business. I don't care if they did! And you tell me that I skim the surface, that I miss the spirit of the Jewish faith; and I tell you that it is this spirit that my soul revolts against--the spirit that holds our people in chains--the chains of the Ghetto!

THE RABBI.

Ghetto! There is no Ghetto! We do not live in Ghettos now, my boy!

Preposterous!

RAFAEL.

And now _you_ are skimming the surface, and _you_ will not see the truth that underlies! You say there is no Ghetto! Could I ever play with any but another Jew when I was a child? Could I ever eat with a Christian? Was I ever taught by any but a Jew? No, you have taught me to despise the Christians!

THE RABBI.

They persecuted us for ages; they have not taught us to admire them.

RAFAEL.

They have ceased to persecute us, they have taken down the stones of the Ghetto walls, but still we are taught to despise them; still we try to think ourselves the chosen people. We set ourselves as a race against them and the universal brotherhood of man. This is the proof of it: _our women we marry, theirs we pay!_

THE RABBI.

That is not true; it's a shameful calumny!

RAFAEL.

I can pick you ten young men to prove it--out of those that heard you preach to-day!

THE RABBI.

How dare you say such a thing! Are you a Jew no longer? Am I speaking to a Christian?

RAFAEL.

You are speaking to a Jew who claims to-day and to-morrow as his own--not yesterday! A Jew who believes that it shall not be asked if a man wors.h.i.+p in a synagogue or in a cathedral, in a chapel or in a mosque, or in silence and solitude under G.o.d's own dome! And the falsehood you have brought me up by; our hatred and our bigotry which keeps us away from them, our cursed earthiness which keeps them away from us--I loathe it all--I hate it--I will fight it as long as I live! I am a Jew--a Jew of to-day and to-morrow; and every man whom G.o.d created in his image is my brother!

THE RABBI.

The boy's gone daft! Daft!

SACHEL.

No, not that; he's been poisoned--poisoned by this d.a.m.ned creature in my house! She's his----

THE RABBI.

Be still! I lost my self-control--set me a better example. I--I--it is many years--indeed, I may say I have never listened to such a tirade! Let me tell you, you will live to regret what you have said here in the very shadow of the synagogue. I will not treat it seriously; I cannot! That you--a mere boy who has gobbled a bit here and a bit there from the Book of Law, should have the monstrous effrontery to--to----

RAFAEL.

Father, are you ready to walk home now?

SACHEL.

I--I am not rested yet. [_He pokes THE RABBI._

RAFAEL.

From the sermon?

_Enter two rough fellows, supporting another, who has a swollen eye; they stand at a distance, with sinister looks at RAFAEL._

SACHEL.

Ha, ha! [_Pokes THE RABBI._] You don't laugh enough!

THE RABBI.

As I was about to say, when I was interrupted, you have said that Rafael wants to go away. Then let him go! When he comes back he'll have a different view of his people. Do you fear he won't come back; not come back to his home--to his blind old father? You are foolish, Sachel! Drive him away, and he'll find that there is no home in the world like a Jewish home--that a clock ticks nowhere in the world as it does by one's own hearth. Ah, the Christians don't know what family life is; they have nothing to compare with ours. It is because we stay by one another, because we are sober and temperate and industrious and respectful of our elders!

[_RAFAEL goes up, faces the three men at the back; they slink off.

He returns, showing a new determination in his face._

SACHEL.