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198 be decided whether they would be inscribed in the Book of Life, or cast into outer darkness. And in that outer darkness perhaps now armed Cossacks were standing and caring nothing at all about the Atonement and the Book of Life. Praying, the men stretched their arms above their heads, storming the footstool of Almighty God, wrestling for His grace, because once He had set them free.

And long centuries prayed with them. Long centuries which had weighed heavily upon the backs of these Polish Jews, and bent them; long centuries of want, disgrace, persecution—the persecution of the wanderer—and the curse. And the long centuries seemed to rise up again on these holy days, rise upon the bent backs, and stretch up toward the God of Righteousness, with the heaven-storming arms of prayer, and to ring out boldly in the voice of the cantor, to announce their woe.

The women, according to the old custom, sat apart, upon the horse-shoe curved balcony fronting the altar. Here the women wept softly. SomtimesSometimes [sic] a sob was heard and it cut tragically across the gentler melody of tears. And they wept long just as they do by the graves of their