e of life or death.
No trifle! But the Jew is not so terrified as you might think--he has
broad shoulders. Besides, he has a certain footing behind the "upper
windows," he has good advocates and plenty of them; he has the "binding
of Isaac" and a long chain of ancestors and ancestresses, who were put
to death for the sanctification of the Holy Name, who allowed themselves
to be burnt and roasted for the sake of God's Torah. Nishkoshe! Things
are not so bad. The Lord of All may just remember that, and look aside a
little. Is He not the Compassionate, the Merciful?

The shadows lengthen and lengthen.

Jews are everywhere in commotion.

Some hurry home straight from the bath, drops of bath-water dripping
from beard and earlocks. They have not even dried their hair properly in
their haste.

It is time to prepare for the davvening. Some are already on their way
to Shool, robed in white. Nearly every Jew carries in one hand a large,
well-packed Tallis-bag, which to-day, besides the prayer-scarf, holds
the whole Jewish outfit: a bulky prayer-book, a book of Psalms, a
Likkute Zevi, and so on; and in the other hand, two wax-candles, one a
large one, that is the "light of life," and the other a small one, a
shrunken looking thing, which is the "soul-light."

The Tamschevate house-of-study presents at this moment the following
picture: the floor is covered with fresh hay, and the dust and the smell
of the hay fill the whole building. Some of the men are standing at
their prayers, beating their breasts in all seriousness. "We have
trespassed, we have been faithless, we have robbed," with an occasional
sob of contrition. Others are very busy setting up their wax-lights in
boxes filled with sand; one of them, a young man who cannot live without
it, betakes himself to the platform and repeats a "Bless ye the Lord."
Meantime another comes slyly, and takes out two of the candles standing
before the platform, planting his own in their place. Not far from the
ark stands the beadle with a strap in his hand, and all the foremost
householders go up to him, lay themselves down with their faces to the
ground, and the beadle deals them out thirty-nine blows apiece, and not
one of them bears him any grudge. Even Reb Groinom, from whom the beadle
never hears anything from one Yom Kippur to another but "may you be ...
"and "rascal," "impudence," "brazen face," "spendthrift," "carrion,"
"dog of all dogs"--and not infrequently Reb Groinom allow