Source: *ProQuest Historical Newspapers Boston Globe (1872-1923) - January 5, 1913, page 50
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The spectator is wondering why, for all his unquenchable interest in the people of the Ghetto, he has waited these many years visiting an Orthodox Jewish Synagogue at the time of service. It was in Boston that, strolling through Salem Street on a Saturday morning, he noted at the foot of a blind alley the ugly, dingy-yellow, spireless old church which serves the faithful of this Ghetto.
The door stood wide. Not without misgivings on the score of a welcome, he ventured in. As he climbed the stairs to the audience room an indescribably stirring sound smote his ears - a singular hubbub, a surge of male voices, the wild, rhythmless babel of Hebrew prayers. The spectator paused in the doorway, surveying the congregation rocking on their feet as, with no attempt at unison, they fervently intoned the ancient ritual. Amazingly picturesque was the scene before him. The congregation of black-bearded men, robed in the broad stripes and mellowed ivory hues of venerable prayer-shawls, might have been an Oriental group out of a painting by Tissot but for the over-large derby or, in the case of the dignitaries, silk hats worn low over their ears. There, where the pulpit of a Christian church would be, rose the impressive curtained niche of the Ark of the Law, with the carved lions of Judah supporting the tables of the law, mounted over all. Just then the excited "Bub-ba-ubba-bubba-bub!" of the congregational responses died down and a single voice, a glorious baritone, took up a recitative. The spectator's eyes came to rapid focus upon the singer. Upon a low platform in the center of the floor of the synagogue, leaning upon a reading desk draped with rich Eastern fabrics, he stood - a big man in a high black cap of fur, his prayer shawl, gold-banded at the neck, enveloping him like a robe. The cantor, beyond a doubt. Behind him a little group of white-haired men in silk hats were busy over something which one of them held in his arm. The Spectator caught the flash of blue and the gleam of silver. Then the group separated and he saw that they held the Scroll of the Law. The reading was over. They were adjusting the "shirt" or robe of blue plush, securing the broad silver clasp and preparing to replace it in the Sacred Ark. And now an old man, apparently a mere member of the congregation rose with the sacred scroll in his arms, the tall silver ornaments on the rollers reaching above his head, and descending the aisle, began a slow progress to the Ark. At every step worshipers crowded round him to touch and kiss the mantle of the Scroll. The curtains of the Ark were drawn back, the Scroll reverently set up among its fellows, the synagogue thrilling meanwhile to the wonderful music of an ecstatic hymn of praise. For dramatic intensity the intoning of the poems of the Hebrew liturgy, the congregation alternating with the cantor, surpassed any religious music it has been the spectator's fortune to hear. At times quaintly plaintive, at times soul-stirring, at times fiercely joyful, at times the jubilance quenched in sobbing agony - it needed no Yiddish to understand that. And then the outbreak of the passionate chorus of the people, rushing, hurried, wild - there was in it the whole thrill of the National experience, the joy of the chosen people, the triumph of Israel, the despair of the carrying away into Babylon, the long patience of the persecution. All this time the spectator had been standing unnoted in a pew by the door. Instinctively, on entering he had removed his hat. Now a late comer stopped beside him and said courteously: "Excuse me, sir, but it is the Orthodox custom to wear the hat in the synagogue. Would you like a better seat?" So the spectator, feeling as if he were breaking something, replaced his hat and followed down the aisle. Coming to anchor in a bare pew in the transept from which his eye was free to range the whole room, he shortly discovered the women segregated in a gallery running round three sides of the building - a black-habited, negligible element in the scene. A Yiddish-English prayer book he had purchased before coming in bore eloquent testimony as to the piece of woman in the synagogue. For do not all the men say: "O Lord God, Eternal King of the Universe, I thank thee that thou hast made me according to thy will." Vainly the spectator strove to reconcile with the primitive grandeur of the service, the apparent informalities all about him. There were the Jewish boys in their little blue-striped talliths storing coldly about or even parading guileslessly from pew to pew unrebuked of their elders. And this although a bulletin in the vestibule commands that non shall walk about or talk "during the speaking." The elder Hebrew, too, arriving late, betrayed none of the self-consciousness and guilty slinking of a Gentile who get to church after the first prayer. They marched unconcernedly to their places, leisurely extracted their prayer shawls from their velvet bags, adjusted them robe-fashion, looped the folds over their arms, found the place in the service book, and began the curious rapid, rocking bob with which the Orthodox Hebrew accompanies his intoning. All this without any special manner of Sabbath sanctity, but with a business-like directness. From time to time in similar nonchalant fashion such as were impelled flung off the tallith, carefully folding the great striped fringed square, stowed it in its bag, and informally departed. - The Outlook. |