Judith Trachtenberg: A Novel

There was a boy, Raphael, and a girl, Judith. The latter gave promise of great beauty. Both received a careful education, in accordance with the requirements of the age, from a tutor, one Herr Bergheimer, who had been brought from Mayence by Trachtenberg. But their religious training was cared for by the father himself. “I will not say,” he once told the tutor, “whether or not I consider it a misfortunate to have been born a Jew. I have my own ideas on the subject, which might shock your simple faith. Whether good or ill, it is our fate, and must be borne with equanimity. Therefore I wish my children educated with the most profound reverence for Judaism. The humiliations which will come to them because of their nation I can neither prevent nor modify, so I wish they should have the comfort of feeling in their struggles in life that they are suffering for something which is dear to them and is worth the pain.”

With this feeling he strove to stifle in their minds every germ of hatred towards Christians, and at the same time he early accustomed them to the idea that, sooner or later, they must run the gantlet because of their creed, and even because of the cast of their features.

“They must learn to endure,” he would say, with a sad smile. And so he allowed Raphael and Judith to associate with Christian children belonging to families who, for private reasons, were glad to pay some attention to the wealthy Jewish fabricant.

Trachtenberg thought this intercourse of small consequence, never dreaming it might exercise an influence over the character of his children quite the opposite of that he would like. And it could not but make an impression on the youthful minds growing up on a borderland where the musty air of the Ghetto mingled with another air no whit purer, compounded, as it was, of the incense of a fanatical creed and the pestilential gases of decaying Polish aristocracy.

Separated from the Jewish children of the town by mode of life, manner of speech, and learning, they were not less divided from their Christian playfellows by instinct and prejudices which made a really hearty sympathy and intercourse impossible. Whoever looks into a child’s heart knows well it can surrender every other necessity than that of loving and being loved. No matter how much the father might attempt to prevent a feeling of isolation for his darlings, the time came when, of necessity, he acknowledged to himself that he had not properly appreciated the bitterness which this feeling aroused, and when he was forced to stand by and look on helplessly as they sought for companionship with others of the same age.

This happened when Raphael had reached his twenty-first and Judith her nineteenth year. They had just completed a course of dancing lessons, held in the house of Herr von Wroblewski, a magistrate, and one of Trachtenberg’s most expensive acquaintances.

Raphael, who was weary of bearing slights because of his curly hair and round eyes, resolved, bitterly, that he would never again enter the house of a Christian, but would find associates among those to whom he belonged by race and common woe.

Judith’s experience was just the contrary. She felt more and more at home among her Christian friends, and went to her Hebrew lessons with a frown. But their father’s authority prevented any complete change in their way of life, so they complied with his requirements just as little as they could. The wise man recognized the fact that his intentions were combated by the strongest of human emotions—self-satisfaction on the one side, on the other injured self-love.

Poor Raphael was doubly hateful to his partners in the dance because he was a Jew, whereas the premature beauty of his sister entranced her youthful admirers, because they could cherish hopes as regarded her on account of her race which would not have entered their minds towards a girl belonging to their own class.

At times it troubled Trachtenberg’s mind lest this “childishness” should have a permanent influence upon their lives. But accustomed, as he had been for so many years, to keen calculation rather than to doubtful presentiments, he felt his forebodings vanish when he remembered his carefully laid plans for the future, which he thought could not be interfered with by these inclinations, but, so he sometimes sought to persuade himself, were even promoted by them.

He had intended his son for the law, not only because, like the rest of his race, he considered a diploma of a doctor of laws the highest of honors, but because he aspired to have him a model and a champion for his co-religionists. As Raphael was to pass his life in Galicia, it was well he should have this feeling for the oppressed awakened early, since it would nerve him for his destined work; while Judith, whom her father proposed to marry to some enlightened and educated German Jew, could best acquire that knowledge of etiquette and refinement which she would need in her future home in Christian society.

Influenced by these considerations, Trachtenberg allowed matters to take their own course as long as he feared no break in their mutual affection. But their relations were becoming more and more strained, and it was difficult for the father to decide which was most to blame. The alienation which had arisen did not spring from lack of love, or from difference in mental constitution.

Moreover, Raphael and Judith bore not the slightest physical resemblance to each other, he being an awkward, haggard youth with a pale, sharply cut face, above which was a forest of crinkly black hair; while she was a sweet, delicate rosebud of a girl, her beautiful brow crowned with masses of rich auburn hair; and although her cheerfulness and love of gayety contrasted strongly with his morose and gloomy manners, yet in vital matters they showed they were children of the same mother.

Both were gifted, sensitive, and fastidious; both ambitious and proud; both self-conscious to defiance, and each dearer to the other than life. It was this very equality of mental capacity that divided and embittered them. Each thought his own inclination the only right one, sensible, and just; each felt sorely wounded at the other’s reproof; each worried about the other’s future, and treasured up accidental or slighting observations relating to the other. She remembered the contemptuous sneer of the Polish ladies at the “gloomy follower of the Talmud”; he, every poisonous jest of the Ghetto about the “renegade.”

And so it came to pass that, though their love was really intact, yet outwardly they were almost in open warfare, and, urged on by pride and defiance, they went further than they themselves would have thought possible. Because Judith despised Jewish acquaintances, Raphael swore enmity towards all Christians; and because he became more and more observant of the ritual, she neglected it altogether.