Page:Yiddish Tales.djvu/194

 190 ROSENTHAL

It is time to prepare for the davvening. Some are already on their way to Shool, robed in white. Nearly every Jew carries in one hand a large, well-packed Tallis-bag, which to-day, besides the prayer-scarf, holds the whole Jewish outfit : a bulky prayer-book, a book of Psalms, a Likkute Zevi, and so on; and in the other hand, two wax-candles, one a large one, that is the "light of life," and the other a small one, a shrunken looking thing, which is the "soul-light."

The Tamschevate house-of -study presents at this mo- ment the following picture: the floor is covered with fresh hay, and the dust and the smell of the hay fill the whole building. Some of the men are standing at their prayers, beating their breasts in all seriousness : "We have trespassed, we have been faithless, we have robbed," with an occasional sob of contrition. Others are very busy setting up their wax-lights in boxes filled with sand; one of them, a young man who cannot live without it, betakes himself to the platform and repeats a "Bless ye the Lord." Meantime another comes slyly, and takes out two of the candles standing before the platform, planting his own in their place. Not far from the ark stands the beadle with a strap in his hand, and all the foremost householders go up to him, lay themselves down with their faces to the ground, and the beadle deals them out thirty-nine blows apiece, and not one of them bears him any grudge. Even Reb Groinom, from whom the beadle never hears anything from one Yom Kippur to another but "may you be . . ." and "rascal," "impudence," "brazen face," "spendthrift," "carrion," "dog of all dogs" and not