Rabbi and Priest | Page 8

a power in the community of that
place.
Leah met the men at the door.
"Good Shabbes, my dear husband; good Shabbes, brother," said the
woman, cheerfully, her matronly face all aglow with pride and pleasure.
"You must be famished from your long trip, brother."
"Yes, I am very hungry. I have tasted nothing since I left Kharkov, at
five o'clock this morning."
"How kind of you to come all that distance to our boy's bar-mitzvah!
He can never be sufficiently grateful."
"He is my god-child," said the man, affectionately stroking his
nephew's head. "I take great pride in him. It has pleased the Lord to
deny me children, and the deprivation is hard to bear. Sister, let me take
Mendel with me. I am rich and can give him all he can desire. He shall
study Talmud and become a great and famous rabbi, of whom all the
world will one day speak in praise. You have still another boy, while
my home is dreary for want of a child's presence. What say you?"
But the mother had, long before the conclusion of this appeal, clasped
the boy to her bosom, while the tears of love forced themselves through
her lashes at the bare suggestion of parting from her first-born.
"God forbid," she cried, "that he should ever leave me; my precious
boy." And she embraced him again and again.
Meanwhile, the husband had crossed the room to where a little fellow,
scarcely six years of age, lay upon a sofa.
"Well, Jacob, my boy; how do you feel?" he asked, gently.
"A little better, father," murmured the child. "My arm and ear still pain
me, but not so much as yesterday."
The boy sat up and attempted to smile, but sank back with a groan.

"Poor child, poor child," said the father, soothingly, "Have patience. In
a few days you will be about again."
"Is uncle here? I want to see uncle," cried the boy.
Hirsch Bensef obeyed the call, and, going to the sufferer, kissed his
burning brow.
"Why, Jacob; how is this?" he said. "I did not know that you were sick.
What is the trouble, my lad?" The child turned his face to the wall and
shuddered.
Reb Mordecai shook his head mournfully, while a tear he sought to
repress ran down his furrowed cheek.
"It is the old story," he said. "Prejudice and fanaticism, hatred and
ignorance."
And while the Sabbath meal waited, the father told his tale in a simple,
unaffected manner, and the uncle listened with clenched hands and
threatening glances.
The day following the events in the kretschma, little Jacob had
wandered, in company with some Christian playmates, through the
village, and seeing the door of a barn wide open, his childish curiosity
got the better of his discretion, and he peeped in. A brindled cow, with
a pretty calf scarcely three days old, attracted his attention, and for
some minutes he gazed upon the pair in silent ecstasy. Then, knowing
that he was on forbidden ground, he retraced his steps and endeavored
to reach the lane where he had left his companions. The master of the
farm, however, having witnessed the intrusion from a neighboring
window, did not lose the opportunity to vent his anger against the
whole tribe of inquisitive Jews. On the following day the cow ran dry.
In vain did the calf seek nourishment at the maternal breast; there was
nothing to satisfy its cravings.
The farmer, slow as he was in matters of general importance, was far
from slow in tracing the melancholy occurrence to its supposed source.

"That accursed Jew has bewitched my cow," was his first thought, and
his second was to find the author of the deed and mete out punishment
to him.
Throughout the whole of Russia, and even in parts of civilized
Germany, Jews are accused of all manner of sorcery. The Cabala is the
principal religious authority of the lower classes among the Russian
Jews, and this may perhaps inspire such a preposterous notion. The
Jews, themselves, frequently believe that some one of their own
number is in possession of supernatural secrets which give him
wonderful and awful powers. Many were the tortures which these poor
people were doomed to endure for their supposed influence over
nature's laws.
It was an easy matter to find little Jacob. His hours at the cheder
(school) were over. He was sure to be playing upon the streets, and his
capture was quickly effected. Seizing the innocent little fellow by the
arm, the irate peasant lifted him off his feet, and dragged him by sheer
force into the barn, where he confronted the malefactor with his victim.
"So, you thought you could bewitch my cow," he hissed. "But I saw
you, Jew, and, by our holy