Page:Yiddish Tales.djvu/151

 AN EASY FAST 147

So reasons Chayyim Chaikin, and, lost in speculation, he pities the world, and is grieved to the heart to think that God should have made man so little above the beast.

The day on which Chayyim Chaikin fasts is, as I told you, his best day, and a real fast day, like the Ninth of Ab, for instance he is ashamed to confess it is a festival for him !

You see, it means not to eat, not to be a beast, not to be guilty of the children's blood, to earn the reward of a Mitzveh, and to weep to heart's content on the ruins of the Temple.

For how can one weep when one is full? How can a full man grieve? Only he can grieve whose soul is faint within him ! The good year knows how some folk answer it to their conscience, giving in to their insides afraid of fasting! Buy them a groschen worth of oats, for charity's sake !

Thus would Chayyim Chaikin scorn those who bought themselves off the fast, and dropped a hard coin into the collecting box.

The Ninth of Ab is the hardest fast of all so the world has it.

Chayyim Chaikin cannot see why. The day is long, is it? Then the night is all the shorter. It's hot out of doors, is it? Who asks you to go loitering about in the sun? Sit in the Shool and recite the prayers, of which, thank God, there are plenty.

"I tell you," persists Chayyim Chaikin, "that the Ninth of Ab is the easiest of the fasts, because it is the best, the very best !