h. Fish was, indeed, the staple of the
meal. Fried fish, and such fried fish! Only a great poet could sing the
praises of the national dish, and the golden age of Hebrew poetry is
over. Strange that Gebirol should have lived and died without the
opportunity of the theme, and that the great Jehuda Halevi himself
should have had to devote his genius merely to singing the glories of
Jerusalem. "Israel is among the other nations," he sang, "as the heart
among the limbs." Even so is the fried fish of Judaea to the fried fish
of Christendom and Heathendom. With the audacity of true culinary
genius, Jewish fried fish is always served cold. The skin is a beautiful
brown, the substance firm and succulent. The very bones thereof are full
of marrow, yea and charged with memories of the happy past. Fried fish
binds Anglo-Judaea more than all the lip-professions of unity. Its savor
is early known of youth, and the divine flavor, endeared by a thousand
childish recollections, entwined with the most sacred associations,
draws back the hoary sinner into the paths of piety. It is on fried
fish, mayhap, that the Jewish matron grows fat. In the days of the
Messiah, when the saints shall feed off the Leviathan; and the Sea
Serpent shall be dished up for the last time, and the world and the
silly season shall come to an end, in those days it is probable that the
saints will prefer their Leviathan fried. Not that any physical frying
will be necessary, for in those happy times (for whose coming every
faithful Israelite prays three times a day), the Leviathan will have
what taste the eater will. Possibly a few highly respectable saints, who
were fashionable in their day and contrived to live in Kensington
without infection of paganism, will take their Leviathan in conventional
courses, and beginning with _hors d'oeuvres_ may _will_ him everything
by turns and nothing long; making him soup and sweets, joint and
_entree_, and even ices and coffee, for in the millennium the harassing
prohibition which bars cream after meat will fall through. But, however
this be, it is beyond question that the bulk of the faithful will
mentally fry him, and though the Christian saints, who shall be
privileged to wait at table, hand them plate after plate, fried fish
shall be all the fare. One suspects that Hebrews gained the taste in the
Desert of Sinai, for the manna that fell there was not monotonous to the
palate as the sciolist supposes, but likewise mutable un