THE LORD GIVETH
One glance at his wife’s tight-drawn mouth warned Reb Ravinsky of the torrent of wrath about to burst over his head.
“Nu, my bread-giver? Did you bring me the rent?” she hurled at him between clenched teeth.
Reb Ravinsky had promised to borrow money that morning to ward off their impending eviction for unpaid rent, but no sooner had he stepped out of his house than all thought of it fled from his mind. Instinctively, he turned to the synagogue where he had remained all day absorbed in the sacred script. It was easier to pray and soar the heights with the prophets of his race than to wrestle with sordid, earthly cares.
“Holy Jew! Why didn’t you stay away a little longer?” She tore at her wig in her fury. “Are you a man like other men? Does your wife or your child lay in your head at all? I got to worry for rent. I got to worry for bread. If you got to eat you eat. If you ain’t got to eat you ain’t hungry. You fill yourself only withhigh thoughts. You hold yourself only with God. Your wife and your child can be thrown in the street to shame and to laughter. But what do you care? You live only for the next world. You got heaven in your head. The rest of your family can rot in the streets.”
Reb Ravinsky stood mute and helpless under the lash of her tongue. But when she had exhausted her store of abuse, he cast upon her a look of scorn and condemnation.
“Ishah Rah!Evil woman!” he turned upon her like an ancient prophet denouncing ungodliness.
“Ishah Rah!” he repeated. His voice of icy passion sent shivers up and down her spine.
“Ishah Rah!” came for the third time with the mystic solemnity that subdued her instantly into worshipful subjection. “Tear away your man from God! Tear him away from the holy Torah! Lose the one precious thing in life, the one thing that makes a Jew stand out over all other nations of the world, the one thing that the Tsar’spogromsand all the sufferings and murders of the Jews could not kill in the Jew—the hope for the next world!”
Like a towering spirit of righteousness afire with the Word of God he loomed over her.
“I ask you by your conscience, should I give up the real life, the true life, for good eating, good sleeping, for a life in the body like theAmoratzimhere in America? Should I make from the Torah a pick with which to dig for you the rent?”
Adjusting his velvet skull-cap, the last relic of his rabbinical days, he caught the woman’s adoring look. Memories of his past splendour in Russia surged over him. He saw his people coming to him from far and near to learn wisdom from his lips. Drawing himself to his full height, he strode across the room and faced her.
“Why didn’t you marry yourself to a tailor, a shoemaker, a thick-head, a money-maker—to a man of the flesh—a rabbi who can sell his religion over the counter as a butcher sells meat?”
Mrs. Ravinsky gazed with fear and contrition at her husband’s God-kindled face. She loved him because he wasnota man of this world. Her darkest moments were lit up with pride in him, with the hope that in the next world the reflected glory of his piety might exalt her.
It wrung her heart to realize that against her will she was dragging him down with her ceaseless demands for bread and rent. Ach! Whywas there such an evil thing as money in this world? Why did she have to torture her husband with earthly needs when all she longed for was to help him win a higher place in heaven?
Tears fell from her faded eyes. He could have wept with her—it hurt him so to make her suffer. But once and for all he must put a stop to her nagging. He must cast out the evil spirit of worry that possessed her lest it turn and rend him.
“Why are you killing yourself so for this life?Ut!See, death is already standing over you. One foot is already in the grave. Do you know what you’ll get for making nothing from the Torah? The fires of hell are waiting for you! Wait—wait! I warn you!”
And as though to ward off the evil that threatened his house, he rushed to his shrine of sacred books and pulled from its niche a volume of his beloved Talmud. With reverence he caressed its worn and yellowed pages as he drank in hungrily the inspired words. For a few blessed moments he took refuge from all earthly storms.
In Schnipishock, Reb Ravinsky had been aporush, a pensioned scholar. The Jews of the village so deeply appreciated his learning andpiety that they granted him an allowance, so as to free the man of God from all earthly cares.
Arrived in the new world, he soon learned that there was no honoured pension forthcoming to free him from the world of the flesh. For a time he eked out a bare living by teaching Hebrew to private scholars. But the opening of the Free Hebrew Schools resulted in the loss of most of his pupils.
He had been chosen by God to spread the light of the Torah—and a living must come to him, somehow, somewhere, if he only served faithfully.
In the meantime, how glorious it was to suffer hunger and want, even shame and derision, yet rise through it all as Job had risen and proclaim to the world: “I know that my Redeemer liveth!”
Reb Ravinsky was roused from his ecstasy by his wife’s loud sobbing. Thrust out from the haven of his Torah, he closed the book and began to pace the floor.
“Can fire and water go together? Neither can godliness and an easy life. If you have eyes of flesh and are blind, should I fall into your blindness? You care only for what you can putin your mouth or wear on your back; I struggle for the life that is together with God!”
“My rent—have you my rent? I warned you!” The landlord pushed through the half-open door flaunting his final dispossess notice under Reb Ravinsky’s nose. “I got orders to put you out,” he gloated, as he motioned to his men to proceed with the eviction.
Reb Ravinsky gripped the back of a chair for support.
“Oi-i-i! Black is me! Bitter is me!” groaned his wife, leaning limply against the wall.
For weeks she had been living in momentary dread of this catastrophe. Now, when the burly moving men actually broke into her home, she surrendered herself to the anguish of utter defeat. She watched them disconnect the rusty stove and carry it into the street. They took the bed, the Passover dishes prayerfully wrapped to avoid the soil of leavened bread. They took the brass samovar and the Sabbath candlesticks. And she stood mutely by—defenceless—impotent!
“What did I sin?” The cry broke from her. “God! God! Is there a God over us and sees all this?”
The men and the things they touched wereto Reb Ravinsky’s far-seeing eyes as shadows of the substanceless dream of life in the flesh. With vision focused on the next world, he saw in dim blurs the drama enacted in this world.
Smash to the floor went the sacred Sabbath wineglass! Reb Ravinsky turned sharply, in time to see a man tumble ruthlessly the sacred Hebrew books to the floor.
A flame of holy wrath leaped from the old man’s eyes. His breath came in convulsive gasps as he clutched with emaciated fingers at his heart. The sacrilege of the ruffians! He rushed to pick up the books, kissing each volume with pious reverence. As he gathered them in his trembling arms, he looked about confusedly for a safe hiding-place. In his anxiety for the safety of his holy treasure, he forgot the existence of his wife and ran with his books to the synagogue as one runs from a house on fire. So overwrought was he that he nearly fell over his little daughter running up the stairs.
“Murderer!” screamed Mrs. Ravinsky, after him. “Run, run to the synagogue! Holy Jew! See where your religion has brought us. Run—ask God to pay your rent!”
She turned to her little Rachel who burst into the room terrified.
“See, my heart! See what they’ve done to us! And your father ran to hide himself in the synagogue. You got no father—nobody to give you bread. A lost orphan you are.”
“Will the charity lady have to bring us eating again?” asked Rachel, her eyes dilated with dread. “Wait only till I get old enough to go to the shop and earn money.” And she reached up little helpless arms protectingly.
The child’s sympathy was as salt on the mother’s wounds.
“For what did we come to America?”
The four walls of her broken home stared back their answer.
Only the bundles of bedding remained, which Rachel guarded with fierce defiance as though she would save it from the wreckage.
Pushing the child roughly aside, the man slung it over his shoulder. Mrs. Ravinsky, with Rachel holding on to her skirts, felt her way after him down the dark stairway.
“My life! My blood! My feather bed!” she cried, as he tossed the family heirloom into the gutter. “Gevalt!” prostrate, she fell on it. “How many winters it took my mother to pick together the feathers! My mother’s wedding present....”
From the stoops, the alleys and the doorways the neighbours gathered. Hanneh Breineh, followed by her clinging brood, pushed through the throng, her red-lidded eyes big with compassion. “Come the while in by me.”
She helped the grief-stricken woman to her feet. “We’re packed like herrings in a barrel, but there’s always room for a push-in of a few more.”
Lifting the feather bed under her arm she led the way to her house.
“In a few more years your Rachel will be old enough to get her working papers and all your worries for bread will be over,” she encouraged, as she opened the door of her stuffy little rooms.
The commotion on the street corner broke in upon the babble of gossiping women in the butcher shop. Mr. Sopkin paused in cutting the meat.
“Who did they make to move?” he asked, joining the gesticulating mob at the doorway.
“Oi weh!Reb Ravinsky?”
“God from the sky! Such a good Jew! Such a light for the world!”
“Home, in Russia, they kissed the groundon which he walked, and in America they throw him in the street!”
“Who cares in America for religion? In America everybody has his head in his belly.”
“Poor little Rachel! Such a smart child! Writes letters for everybody on the block.”
“Such a lazy do-nothing! All day in the synagogue!” flung the pawnbroker’s wife, a big-bosomed woman, her thick fingers covered with diamonds. “Why don’t he go to work in a shop?”
A neighbour turned upon her. “Hear! Hear her only! Such a pig-eater! Such a fat-head! She dares take Reb Ravinsky’s name in her mouth.”
“Who was she from home? A water-carrier’s wife, a cook! And in America she makes herself for a person—shines up the street with her diamonds.”
“Then leave somebody let know the charities.” With a gesture of self-defence, the pawnbroker’s wife fingered her gold beads. “I’m a lady-member from the charities.”
“The charities? A black year on them!” came a chorus of angry voices.
“All my enemies should have to go to the charities for help.”
“Woe to anyone who falls into the charities’ hands!”
“One poor man with a heart can help more than the charities with all their money.”
Mr. Sopkin hammered on his chopping-block, his face purple with excitement. “Weiber!with talk alone you can’t fill up the pot.”
“Takeh! Takeh!” Eager faces strained forward. “Let’s put ourselves together for a collection.”
“I’m not yet making Rockefeller’s millions from the butcher business, but still, here’s my beginning for good luck.” And Mr. Sopkin tossed a dollar bill into the basket on the counter.
A woman, a ragged shawl over her head, clutched a quarter in her gaunt hand. “God is my witness! To tear out this from my pocket is like tearing off my right hand. I need every cent to keep the breath in the bodies of mykinder, but how can we let such a holy Jew fall in the street?”
“My enemies should have to slave with such bitter sweat for every penny as me.” Hannah Hayyeh flung out her arms still wet with soapsuds and kissed the ten-cent piece she dropped into the collection.
Mr. Sopkin walked to the sidewalk and shook the basket in front of the passers-by. “Take your hand out from your pocket! Take your bite away from your mouth! Who will help the poor if not the poor?”
A shower of coins came pouring in. It seemed not money—but the flesh and blood of the people—each coin a part of a living heart.
The pawnbroker’s wife, shamed by the surging generosity of the crowd, grudgingly peeled a dollar from the roll of bills in her stocking and started to put it into the collection.
A dozen hands lifted in protest.
“No—no! Your money and our money can’t mix together!”
“Our money is us—our bodies! Yours is the profits from the pawnshop! Hold yourtrefahdollar for the charities!”
Only when the Shammes, the caretaker of the synagogue, rattling his keys, shook Reb Ravinsky gently and reminded him that it was past closing time did he remember that somewhere waiting for him—perhaps still in the street—were his wife and child.
The happening of the day had only deepened the intensity with which he clung to God and HisTorah. His lips still moved in habitual prayer as with the guidance of neighbours he sought the new flat which had been rented for a month with the collection money.
Bread, butter, milk and eggs greeted his gaze as he opened the door.
“Nu, my wife? Is there a God over us?” His face kindled with guileless faith. “The God that feeds the little fishes in the sea and the birds in the air, has He not fed us? You see, the Highest One takes care of our earthly needs. Our only business here is to pray for holiness to see His light!”
A cloud of gloom stared up at him out of his wife’s darkening eyes.
“Why are you still so black with worry?” he admonished. “If you would only trust yourself on God, all good would come to us yet.”
“On my enemies should fall the good that has come to us,” groaned Mrs. Ravinsky. “Better already death than to be helped again by the pity from kind people.”
“What difference how the help comes, so long we can keep up our souls to praise God for His mercy on us?”
Despair was in the look she fixed upon her husband’s lofty brow—a brow untouched by timeor care, smooth, calm and seamless as a child’s. “No wonder people think that I’m your mother. The years make you younger. You got no blood in your body—no feelings in your heart. I got to close my eyes with shame to pass in the street the people what helped me, while you—you—shame cannot shame you—poverty cannot crush you——”
“Poverty? It stands in the Talmud that poverty is an ornament on a Jew like a red ribbon on a white horse. Those whom God chooses for His next world can’t have it good here.”
“Stop feeding me with the next world!” she flung at him in her exasperation. “Give me something on this world.”
“Wait only till our American daughter will grow up. That child has my head on her,” he boasted with a father’s pride. “Wait only, you’ll see the world will ring from her yet. With the Hebrew learning I gave her, she’ll shine out from all other American children.”
“But how will she be able to lift up her head with other people alike if you depend yourself on the charities?”
“Woman! Worry yourself not for our Rachel! It stands in the Holy Book, the world is a wheel, always turning. Those who are richget poor; if not they, then their children or children’s children. And those who are poor like us, go up higher and higher. Our daughter will yet be so rich, she’ll give away money to the charities that helped us. Isaiah said——”
“Enough—enough!” broke in Mrs. Ravinsky, thrilled in spite of herself by the prophecies of her holy man. “I know already all your smartness. Go, go, sit yourself down and eat something. You fasted all day.”
Mrs. Ravinsky hoarded for her husband and child the groceries the neighbours had donated. For herself she allowed only the left-overs, the crumbs and crusts.
The following noon, after finishing her meagre meal, she still felt the habitual gnawing of her under-nourished body, so she took a sour pickle and cut off another slice of bread from the dwindling loaf. But this morsel only sharpened her craving for more food.
The lingering savour of the butter and eggs which she had saved for her family tantalized her starved nerves. Faint and weak from the struggle to repress her hunger, she grew reckless and for once in her life abandoned herself to the gluttonous indulgence of the best in her scant larder.
With shaking hand she stealthily opened the cupboard, pilfered a knife-load of butter and spread it thickly on a second slice of bread. Cramming the whole into her mouth, she snatched two eggs and broke them into the frying-pan. The smell of the sizzling eggs filled the air with the sweet fragrance of the Sabbath. “Ach! How the sun would shine in my heart if I could only allow myself the bite in my mouth!”
Memories ofgefülltefish and the odour of freshly-baked apple strudel dilated her nostrils. She saw herself back in Russia setting the Sabbath table when she was the honoured wife of Reb Ravinsky.
The sudden holiday feeling that thrilled her senses smote her conscience. “Oi weh! Sinner that I am! Why should it will itself in me to eat like a person when my man don’t earn enough for dry bread? What will we do when this is used up? Suppose the charities should catch me feasting myself with such a full hand?”
Bent ravenously over the eggs—one eye on the door—she lifted the first spoonful to her watering mouth as Rachel flew in, eyes wide with excitement.
“Mamma! The charity lady is coming!She’s asking the fish-pedlar on the stoop where we live now.”
“Quick! Hide the frying-pan in the oven! Woe is me! The house not swept—dishes not washed—everything thrown around! Rachel! Quick only—sweep together the dirt in a corner. Throw those rags under the bed!Oi weh—quick—hide all those dirty things behind the trunk!”
In her haste to tidy up, she remembered the food in the cupboard. She stuffed it—broken eggshells and all—into the bureau drawer. “Oi weh! The charity lady should only not catch us with all these holiday eatings....”
Footsteps in the hallway and Miss Naughton’s cheery voice: “Here I am, Mrs. Ravinsky! What can I do to help now?”
With the trained eye of the investigator, she took in the wretched furniture, scant bedding, the under-nourished mother and child.
“What seems to be wrong?” Miss Naughton drew up a three-legged stool. “Won’t you tell me, so we can get at the root of the trouble?” She put her hand on the woman’s apron with a friendly little gesture.
Mrs. Ravinsky bit her lips to force back the choking pressure of tears. The life, thebuoyancy, the very kindness of the “charity lady” stabbed deeper the barb of her wretchedness.
“Woe is me! On all my enemies my black heart! So many babies and young people die every day, but no death comes to hide me from my shame.”
“Don’t give way like that,” pleaded Miss Naughton, pained by the bitterness that she tried in vain to understand. “If you will only tell me a few things so I may the better know how to help you.”
“Again tear me in pieces with questions?” Mrs. Ravinsky pulled at the shrunken skin of her neck.
“I don’t like to pry into your personal affairs, but if you only knew how often we’re imposed upon. Last week we had a case of a woman who asked us to pay her rent. When I called to investigate, I found her cooking chicken for dinner!”
The cot on which Mrs. Ravinsky sat creaked under her swaying body.
“You see, we have only a small amount of money,” went on the unconscious inquisitor, “and it is but fair it should go to the most deserving cases.”
Entering a few preliminary notes, Miss Naughton looked up inquiringly. “Where is Mr. Ravinsky?”
“In the synagogue.”
“Has he no work?”
“He can’t do no work. His head is on the next world.”
Miss Naughton frowned. She was accustomed to this kind of excuse. “People who are not lazy can always find employment.”
Seeing Mrs. Ravinsky’s sudden pallor, she added kindly: “You have not eaten to-day. Is there no food in the house?”
Mrs. Ravinsky staggered blindly to her feet. “No—nothing—I didn’t yet eat nothing.”
The brooding grey of Rachel’s eyes darkened with shame as she clutched protectingly at her mother’s apron. The uncanny, old look of the solemn little face seemed to brush against Miss Naughton’s very heartstrings—to reproach the rich vigour of her own glowing youth.
“Have you had any lunch, dear?” The “charity lady’s” hand rested softly on the tangled mat of hair.
“N-nothing—nothing,” the child echoed her mother’s words.
Miss Naughton rose abruptly. She dared notlet her feelings get the better of her. “I am going to get some groceries.” She sought for an excuse to get away for a moment from the misery that overwhelmed her. “I’ll be back soon.”
“Bitter is me!” wailed Mrs. Ravinsky, as the “charity lady” left the room. “I can never lift up my head with other people alike. I feel myself lower than a thief, just because I got a husband who holds himself with God all day.”
She cracked the knuckles of her bony fingers. “Gottuniu!Listen better to my prayer! Send on him only a quick death. Maybe if I was a widow, people would take pity on me and save me from this gehenna of charity.”
Ten minutes later Miss Naughton returned with a bag of supplies. “I am going to fix some lunch for you.” She measured cocoa into a battered saucepan. “And soon the boy will come with enough groceries for the whole week.”
“Please, please,” begged Mrs. Ravinsky. “I can’t eat now—I can’t.”
“But the child? She needs nutritious food at once.”
Rachel’s sunken little chest rose and fell with her frightened heartbeat as she hid her face in her mother’s lap.
“Small as she is, she already feels how it hurts to swallow charity eating,” defended Mrs. Ravinsky.
Miss Naughton could understand the woman’s dislike of accepting charity. She had coped with this pride of the poor before. But she had no sympathy with this mother who fostered resentment in her child towards the help that was so urgently needed. Miss Naughton’s long-suffering patience broke. She turned from the stove and resolutely continued her questioning.
“Has your husband tried our employment bureau?”
“No.”
“Then send him to our office to-morrow at nine. He can be a janitor—or a porter——”
“My man? My man a janitor or a porter?” Her eyes flamed. “Do you know who was my man in Russia? The fat of the land they brought him just for the pleasure to listen to his learning. Barrels full of meat, pots full of chicken fat stood packed in my cellar. I used to make boilers of jelly at a time. Thegefülltefish only I gave away is more than the charities give out to the poor in a month.”
Miss Naughton could not suppress a smile.“Why did you leave it, then, if it was all so perfect?”
“Mygefülltefish! Oi-i-i! Oi-i!! My apple strudel!” she kept repeating, unable to tear herself away from the dream of the past.
“Can you live on the apple strudel you had in Russia? In America a man must work to support his family——”
“All thick-heads support their families,” defended Reb Ravinsky’s wife. “Any fat-belly can make money. My man is a light for the world. He works for God who feeds even the worms under the stone.”
“You send your husband to my office. I want to have a talk with him.”
“To your office?Gottuniu!He won’t go. In Schnipishock they came to him from the four ends of the world. The whole town blessed itself with his religiousness.”
“The first principle of religion is for a man to provide for his family. You must do exactly as we say—or we cannot help you.”
“Please, please!” Mrs. Ravinsky entreated, cringing and begging. “We got no help from nobody now but you. I’ll bring him to your office to-morrow.”
The investigator now proceeded with the irk-someduty of her more formal questions. “How much rent do you pay? Do you keep any boarders? Does your husband belong to any society or lodge? Have you relatives who are able to help you?”
“Oi-i-i! What more do you want from me?” shrieked the distracted woman.
Having completed her questions, Miss Naughton looked about the room. “I am sorry to speak of it, but why is your flat in such disorder?”
“I only moved in yesterday. I didn’t get yet time to fix it up.”
“But it was just as bad in the last place. If you want our help you must do your part. Soap and water are cheap. Anyone can be clean.”
The woman’s knees gave way under her, as Miss Naughton lifted the lids from the pots on the stove.
And then—gevalt! It grew black before Mrs. Ravinsky’s eyes. She collapsed into a pathetic heap to the floor. The “charity lady” opened the oven door and exposed the tell-tale frying-pan and the two eggs!
Eyes of silent condemnation scorched through the terror-stricken creature whose teeth chattered in a vain struggle to defend herself.But no voice came from her tortured throat. She could only clutch at her child in a panic of helplessness.
Without a word, the investigator began to search through every nook and corner and at last she came to the bureau drawer and found butter, eggs, cheese, bread and even a jar of jelly.
“For shame!” broke from the wounded heart of the betrayed Miss Naughton. “You—you ask for charity!”
In the hall below Reb Ravinsky, returning from the synagogue, encountered a delivery boy.
“Where live the Ravinskys?” the lad questioned.
“I’m Reb Ravinsky,” he said, leading the way, as he saw the box of groceries.
Followed by the boy, Reb Ravinsky flung open the door and strode joyfully into the room. “Look only! How the manna is falling from the sky!”
Ignoring Reb Ravinsky, Miss Naughton motioned to the box. “Take those things right back,” she commanded the boy.
“How you took me in with your hungry look!” There was more of sorrow than scorn in her voice. “Even teaching your child to lie—andyour husband a rabbi!—a religious man—too holy to work! What would be left for deserving cases if we allowed such as you to defraud legitimate charity?”
With bowed head, Reb Ravinsky closed the door after the departing visitor. The upbraidings of the woman were like a whip-lash on his naked flesh. His heart ached for his helpless family. Darkness suffocated him.
“My hungry little lamb,” wailed his wife, clinging to Rachel. “Where now can we turn for bread?”
Compassionate hands reached out in prayer over the grief-stricken mother and child. Reb Ravinsky stood again as he did before his flight to America, facing his sorrowing people. His wife’s wailing for their lost store of bread brought back to him the bereaved survivors of thepogrom—thepogromthat snatched away their sons and daughters. Afire with the faith of his race, he chanted the age-old consolation: “The Lord giveth; the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Printed by Cassell & Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage, London E.C.4.