Page:Zangwill-King of schnorrers.djvu/121

107 THE KING OF SCHNORRERS. 107

him who refused to be Warden of the Captives — he who ransomed the chained hostages of the Moorish Corsairs, or the war prisoners held in durance by the Turks — or to be President of the Congregation, or Parnass of the Holy Land, or Bridegroom of the Law, or any of the numerous dignitaries of a complex constitution. Fines, frequent and heavy — for the benefit of the poor-box — awaited him " by permission of the Mahamad." Unhappy the wight who misconducted himself in Synagogue " by offending the presi- dent, or grossly insulting any other person," as the ordi- nance deliciously ran. Penalties, stringent and harrying, visited these and other offences — deprivation of the " good deeds," of swathing the Holy Scroll, or opening the Ark ; ignominious relegation to seats behind the reading-desk, withdrawal of the franchise, prohibition against shaving for a term of weeks ! And if, accepting office, the Yahid failed in the punctual and regular discharge of his duties, he was mulcted and chastised none the less. A fine of fortv pounds drove from the Synagogue Isaac Disraeli, collector of Curiosities of Literature, and made possible that curiosity of politics, the career of Lord Beaconsfield. The fathers of the Synagogue, who drew up their constitution in pure Castilian in the days when Pepys noted the indecorum in their little Synagogue in King Street, meant their statutes to cement, not thus to disintegrate, the community. 'Twas a tactless tyranny, this of the Mahamad, an inelastic adminis- tration of a cast-iron codex wrought " in good King Charles's golden days," when the colony of Dutch-Spanish exiles was as a camp in enemies' country, in need of military regime ; and it co-operated with the attractions of an unhampered " Christian " career in driving many a brilliant family beyond the gates of the Ghetto, and into the pages of Debrett. Athens is always a dangerous rival to Sparta.