Ghetto Comedies Part 12

'Break her heart!' repeated Sir Asher, startled out of his discreet reticence. 'I'd sooner break her heart than see her married to a Zionist!'

This time it was the sculptor's turn to gasp.

'To a what?' he cried.

'To a Zionist. You don't mean to deny you're a Zionist?' said Sir Asher sternly.

Barstein gazed at him in silence.

'Come, come,' said Sir Asher. 'You don't suppose I don't read the Jewish papers? I know all about your goings-on.'

The artist found his tongue. 'But--but,' he stammered, 'you yearn for Zion too.'

'Naturally. But I don't presume to force the hand of Providence.'

'How can any of us force Providence to do anything it doesn't want to?

Surely it is through human agency that Providence always works. G.o.d helps those who help themselves.'

'Spare me your blasphemies. Perhaps you think you are the Messiah.'

'I can be an atom of Him. The whole Jewish people is its own Messiah--G.o.d working through it.'

'Take care, young man; you'll be talking Trinity next. And with these heathen notions you expect to marry my daughter! You must excuse me if I wish to hear no further.' His hand began to wander towards the row of electric bells on his desk.

'Then how do you suppose we shall ever get to Palestine?' inquired the irritated artist.

Sir Asher raised his eyes to the ceiling. 'In G.o.d's good time,' he said.

'And when will that be?'

'When we are either too good or too bad for our present sphere. To-day we are too neutral. Besides, there will be signs enough.'

'What signs?'

'Read your Bible. Mount Zion will be split by an earthquake, as the prophet----'

Barstein interrupted him with an impatient gesture. 'But why can't we go to Jerusalem and wait for the earthquake there?' he asked.

'Because we have a mission to the nations. We must live dispersed. We have to preach the unity of G.o.d.'

'I have never heard you preach it. You lowered your voice when you denounced the Trinity to me, lest the Christians should hear.'

'We have to preach silently, by our example. Merely by keeping our own religion we convert the world.'

'But who keeps it? Dispersion among Sunday-keeping peoples makes our very Sabbath an economic impossibility.'

'I have not found it so,' said Sir Asher crus.h.i.+ngly. 'Indeed, the growth of the Sat.u.r.day half-holiday since my young days is a remarkable instance of Judaizing.'

'So we have to remain dispersed to promote the week-end holiday?'

'To teach international truth,' Sir Asher corrected sharply; 'not narrow tribalism.'

'But we don't remain dispersed. Five millions are herded in the Russian Pale to begin with.'

'The Providence of G.o.d has long been scattering them to New York.'

'Yes, four hundred thousand in one square mile. A pretty scattering!'

Sir Asher flushed angrily. 'But they go to the Argentine too. I heard of a colony even in Paraguay.'

'Where they are preaching the Unity to the Indians.'

'I do not discuss religion with a mocker. We are in exile by G.o.d's decree--we must suffer.'

'Suffer!' The artist's glance wandered cynically round the snug solidities of Sir Asher's exile, but he forbore to be personal. 'Then if we _must_ suffer, why did you subscribe so much to the fund for the Russian Jews?'

Sir Asher looked mollified at Barstein's acquaintance with his generosity. 'That I might suffer with them,' he replied, with a touch of humour.

'Then you _are_ a Jewish patriot,' retorted Barstein.

The bluff British face grew clouded again.

'Heaven forbid. I only know of British patriots. You talk treason to your country, young man.'

'Treason--I!' The young man laughed bitterly.

'It is you Zionists that will undermine all the rights we have so painfully won in the West.'

'Oh, then you're not really a British patriot,' Barstein began.

'I will beg you to remember, sir, that I equipped a corps of volunteers for the Transvaal.'

'I dare say. But a corps of volunteers for Zion--that is blasphemy, narrow tribalism.'

'Zion's soil is holy; we want no volunteers there: we want saints and teachers. And what would your volunteers do in Zion? Fight the Sultan with his million soldiers? They couldn't even live in Palestine as men of peace. There is neither coal nor iron--hence no manufactures.

Agriculture? It's largely stones and swamps. Not to mention it's too hot for Jews to work in the fields. They'd all starve. You've no right to play recklessly with human lives. Besides, even if Palestine were as fertile as England, Jews could never live off one another. And think how they'd quarrel!'

Sir Asher ended almost good-humouredly. His array of arguments seemed to him a row of steam-hammers.

'We can live off one another as easily as any other people. As for quarrelling, weren't you in Parliament? Party government makes quarrel the very basis of the Const.i.tution.'

Sir Asher flushed again. A long lifetime of laying down the law had ill prepared him for repartee.

'A pretty mess we should make of Government!' he sneered.

'Why? We have given Ministers to every Cabinet in the world.'

'Yes--we're all right as long as we're under others. Sir Asher was recovering his serenity.