Page:Yiddish Tales.djvu/534

 530 ASCH

He sat the whole day in the house-of-study and learned. Not that he was a great scholar, but he was a pious, scrupulously observant Jew, who followed the straight and beaten road, a man without any pride. He used to recite the prayers in Shool together with the strangers by the door, and quite quietly, without any shouting or, one may say, any special enthusiasm. His prayer that rose to Heaven, the barred gates opening before it till it entered and was taken up into the Throne of Glory, this prayer of his did not become a diamond there, dazzling the eye, but a softly glistening pearl.

And how, you ask, did he come to be called the Sinner? On this wise: You must know that everyone, even those who were hardest on him after the affair, acknowledged that he was a great lover of Israel, and I will add that his sin and, Heaven defend us, his coming to such a fall, all proceeded from his being such a lover of Israel, such a patriot.

And it was just the simple Jew, the very common folk, that he loved.

He used to say : A Jew who is a driver, for instance, and busy all the week with his horses and cart, and soaked in materialism for six days at a stretch, so that he only just manages to get in his prayers when he comes home on Sabbath and sits down to table, and the bed is made, and the candles burning, and his wife and children are round him, and they sing hymns together, well, the driver dozing off over his prayer-book and for- getting to say grace, I tell you, said Reb Avrohom, the Divine Presence rests on his 'house and rejoices and