Page:Yiddish Tales.djvu/577

 THE LAST OF THEM 573

ing over the heads of his people, the air seemed to catch fire, and they listened dumbfounded and spellbound.

Suddenly the old man stopped in the midst of his exposition, and was silent. The congregation thrilled with speechless expectation. For a minute or two the Rav stood with his piercing gaze fixed on the people, then he deliberately pulled aside the curtain before the ark, opened the ark doors, and turned to the congre- gation :

"Listen, Jews ! I know that many of you are think- ing of something that has just occurred to me, too. You wonder how it is that I should set myself up to expound the Torah to a townful of Jews, when my own children have cast the Torah behind them. Therefore I now open the ark and declare to you, Jews, before the holy scrolls of the Law, I have no children any more. I am the last Rav of our family !"

Hereupon a piteous wail came from out of the women's Shool, but the Rav's sonorous voice soon reduced them to silence, and once more the Torah was being ex- pounded in thunder over the heads of the open-mouthed assembly.

Years, a whole decade of them, passed, and still the old Rav walked erect, and not one silver hair showed in his curly beard, and the town was still used to see him before daylight, a tall, solitary figure carrying a stick and a lantern, on his way to the large old Bes ha- Midrash, to study there in solitude until Mouravanke began to ring with the fame of her Charif, her great new scholar. 37