And the offering of Judah and Jerusalem shall be a delight unto the Lord, as in days of old, as in ancient years.
With this ending of the great Standing-prayer, the congregation sat down.
It was Passover and a springtime thundershower was washing the windows of the synagogue, amid prolonged rumblings of thunder and many flashes of lightning. It was dark and all the electric lights had been turned on—by the Negro janitor (in accordance with the injunction, “On the first day shall be a holy convocation, ye [Jews] shall do no servile work”).
Moonfaced Rabbi Horn stood up in front of the closed curtain of the ark, adjusted his substantial sleeves, and said: “We come now to the most beautiful prayer of the day, Tefilas Tal, the Prayer for Dew. This prayer is said before the open ark; it comes from the heart of springtime longing. What could man do without the rain? The rain falls in order to fill the rivers, and the rivers flow into the seas and lakes in order to evaporate into clouds. Who will give me fifteen dollars for the honor of opening the ark for Tal, for P’shichas Tal, the opening of the ark for Tal? What am I bid? Do I hear anybody bid fifteen dollars?”
“Four dollars for my son, in memory of my husband Isaac Podolnik,” called down Mrs. Podolnik from the women’s gallery.
“Six dollars!” said Mr. Brody with a quiet smile.
The Rabbi and the President, who wore a silk hat, looked up at the widow Podolnik.
“Just what,” I turned round to my friend Leo, sitting behind me with his white-shawled father, “what is the mitzvah of a bid made in honor of somebody when it doesn’t win the auction?” I was at that time a member of the skeptical and mocking fraternity.
“Seven dollars!” called a voice in the rear.
“Seven dollars is bid back here,” said the beadle, hastening to the spot.
“What’s the name please?” asked the Rabbi tending his large ear, that was like a handle to the moon.
“Thumim.”
“Berman! Mr. Berman bids seven dollars.”
“Seven-fifty,” said Brody quietly.
“Seven-fifty is bid for the opening of the Holy Ark for the springtime prayer for Dew,” said Rabbi Horn.
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Meantime the rain, not prayed for yet, thudded against the windows and on the skylight of green glass. The water could be heard busily flowing down the runnels and the drainpipes—a “pleasant noise of waters.” A burst of lightning sharply silhouetted the old men near the window, with their fringes over their heads, and brightly illuminated the fringes.
“Eight-fifty!” said Mr. Thumim.
“Mr. Berman bids eight-fifty,” said the Rabbi.
“Eight-seventy-five,” said Brody.
“Nine!” cried Thumim excitedly.
“Nine and a half,” said Brody.
There was a crack of thunder and one of the electric lights over the reading-table dimmed, and went dark.
“Nunny,” said the President to his little son, “go call the shfartse to bring a new bulb.”
Nunny ran down the aisle, bouncing a rubber ball on the red carpet.
Throughout the synagogue the conversation became general. Everywhere comments about the weather; and far in the rear a burst of laughter where some one had just told a new joke.
My friend Leo, the seminarian, at last gave an opinion on the status of the widow Podolnik’s offer that had been outbid. “She fulfilled a commandment in starting the bidding off,” he said in my ear. “It is a mitzvah to start something off. Sof ma’aseh mach-shava tehila: the end of the deed is the thought of the Beginning!—”
As if afire the Jewish joke progressed from bench to bench, greeted at each telling with a greater outburst of hilarity.
“B’reshith—in the Beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
“Shh! shh! this is a synagogue!” admonished the President pounding the palm of his hand loudly against his open prayer-book. The buzz fell an octave lower on the scale, as happens on a meadow in the month of August when the sun passes momentarily behind a cloud.
“Twelve dollars!” rang out the voice of Thumim in a last desperate raise.
“Twelve-fifty,” said Brody.
“For heaven’s sake, Marcus—” said Brody’s brother-in-law, tugging wildly at his sleeve.
“So?” Brody turned to him with a bland smile. “Did I say I want the bid? I’m just—raising a little.”
“Twelve-fifty is bid by Mr. Meyer Brody for the honor of opening the ark for Tal.”
“Fifteen dollars!” thundered a new voice on the left.
“Ah,” said the Rabbi, “now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Sixteen,” said Brody.
“Seventeen!” boomed the voice.
“Seventeen-seventy-five,” said Brody.
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Preceded by Nunny now bouncing a different ball, a small red ball at the end of an elastic string, Aaron, the grizzled-haired Negro janitor, came down the aisle carrying a ladder and a frosted bulb. He climbed on the ladder stretching up his arm to unscrew the burnt-out light and the ladder began to wabble. The Reader lent his hand to hold it firm.
“The question is,” I said to Leo, “whether he should even lend his hand to hold the ladder—”
“The answer is Yes,” said Leo sharply. “This comes under the rubric of helping to preserve a man from injury.”
“Twenty dollars!” said the booming voice on the left.
“Twenty dollars is bid!” cried Rabbi Horn joyously. “What is the name please?”
“Samuelson—Ely Samuelson.”
“Ah, Mr. Samuelson!” exclaimed Rabbi Horn with joyous and flattering quaver that he mostly reserved for weddings. “Mr. Samuelson is not a member of our congregation,” he explained to everybody. “He is a visitor from Providence, the capital of Rhode Island. His uncle, however, is our dear President Mr. Sonnenschein; and I am sure that you will all join with me in telling Mr. Samuelson that he is just as much at home in this congregation as in Providence, Rhode Island.”
“I’ll give just one more hike,” said Brody quietly to us. “After such a build-up by the Rabbi, how can he get out of taking the bid? But why should I make him pay more than he can afford?”
“Twenty-three dollars,” he called out after judicious consideration.
“Twenty-five!” said Mr. Samuelson, on the left.
“Good—take it,” said Brody, and turned round to us triumphantly.
“I bid them up all the way from four dollars to twenty-five!—After all, why shouldn’t the money go to the synagogue? Have I been playing auction-pinochle for forty years for nothing? Always you can tell when you can bid them up and when there’s nothing doing! Seventeen-seventy-five: there was a bid! Who could refuse to go at least to eighteen? But in a game of pinochle, never three-forty; always force them into it; then just drop your cards and say Good! take it!
“Sometimes in a game,” said Brody, “they think that they‘re boosting me; but the fact is that I‘m boosting them.”
The pinochle-player of the Lord.
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The Cantor and his choir of black-robed boys had begun to gather at the reading-table under the light that had been repaired (but it now shone dimly in the brightening space). Several of the young soprani were downstairs in the cellar playing punchball, and their piercing cries could be heard in the distance.
At last, after its triumphant progress from the rear of the room across the entire congregation to us in the front, the joke arrived at our bench; but it proved to be the antique story, that I have already set down elsewhere, about the little Jew in the crowded trolley-car who sings “Deedle-deedle-dee, it ain’t my setchel.”
“Look here, Brody,” I said, “supposing the Rabbi decided to knock it down to both of you, and have both of you grasp the cord to open the curtain. Ha, then what?”
“It shouldn’t happen on Pesach,” said Brody, turning pale.
The Cantor, who had a white hat with a pom-pom, now stood up on a stool to tower, with his pom-pom, above the boys. For unfortunately, though he was very broad-shouldered and had a powerful black beard and a bass voice, he was only five feet high. Like Ulysses, “when he was seated he looked imposing, but when he rose to his feet you saw that he was of small stature.” From the top of a stool he dominated the scene, and often, holding a long note, he would dart a sidewise and upwards glance at the women.
He smote the table with his little tuning-fork and held the sound to his ear, while the vibration welled out amongst us with the unpleasant ring of pure, colorless music. (At one time he had been accustomed to use a pitch-pipe, but this was considered by some of the orthodox as playing a musical instrument.) The choir, catching the note, sang an A-minor chord. And as if created out of nothing, the tranquillity of nature, the natural harmony, crowded into the comers of the space.
“Will the Congregation please rise,” said Rabbi Horn, “for the repetition of the Amidah and the singing of Tefilas Tal. Mr. Samuelson, will you please come up and stand alongside me on the platform.”
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Barukh . . . Blessed art Thou, O Lord, our God and God of our fathers—” began the Cantor in a deep voice, accompanied by a humming continuo of the boys.
“God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob; great, strong, and awful God, God most high, who grantest goodly favors and art the owner of all that is. Thou rememberest the piety of our fathers, and Thou wilt bring a redeemer to their children’s children, for Thy name’s sake, in love. King, Helper, Savior, and Shield: Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the Shield of Abraham.
“Strong to eternity, O Lord, who quickenest the dead and art mighty to save.”
The numerous and progressing chords of the choir, and the flowing line of the Cantor’s voice, now baritone, penetrated every corner and we were (for the most part) still.
While Brody looked on with an ecstatic smile, Mr. Samuelson smartly pulled the cord of the curtain over the ark and disclosed the ranks of a dozen scrolls of the Law, dressed in white silk, wearing silver crowns.
The Congregation of Jews rose.
“Our God and God of our fathers, grant Dew!” said all.
“Grant dew, to quench the thirst of Thy land—” sang the Cantor alone, for all.
“In holy joy, sprinkle on us Thy blessing—with quantity of wine and corn establish the City of Thy desire!”
“B’tal! . . . with Dew!” shouted all, while the choir gave voice to a loud paean.
Now the thunderstorm had moderated to a light steady rain, tapping on the skylight, flowing down all the drains. Meantime the space had become brighter, and the artificial lights shone dim and pale.
There were many stanzas to the poem, each comparing, in some trope or other, the state of the Jewish people in exile to that of a land thirsting and without water.
“With dew and contentment fill our barns—” sang the Singer of this agricultural people, accompanied by the continuo of the choir.
“Renew our days as of old—
Beloved, according to Thy valuation uplift
our name—
make us like a garden well-watered—”“B’tal!” shouted all.
“. . .with Dew!”
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A Prayer for Dew
AND the offering of Judah and Jerusalem shall be a delight unto the Lord, as in days of old, as…
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