also rose a trellised dais, on whose crossed
iron bars were all kinds of sacred utensils, among them the
seven-branched candlestick. Before the latter, his countenance toward
the ark, stood the choir-leader, whose song was accompanied, as if
instrumentally, by the voices of his two assistants, the bass and the
treble. The Jews have banished all instrumental music from their church,
maintaining that hymns in praise of God are more edifying when they
rise from the warm breast of man, than from the cold pipes of an organ.

Beautiful Sara felt a childish delight when the choir-leader, an
admirable tenor, raised his voice and sounded forth the ancient, solemn
melodies, which she knew so well, in a fresher loveliness than she had
ever dreamed of, while the bass sang in harmony the deep, dark notes,
and, in the pauses, the treble's voice trilled sweetly and daintily.
Such singing Beautiful Sara had never heard in the synagogue of
Bacharach, where the presiding elder, David Levi, was the leader; for
when this elderly, trembling man, with his broken, bleating voice, tried
to trill like a young girl, and in his forced effort to do so, shook his
limp and drooping arm feverishly, it inspired laughter rather than
devotion.

A sense of pious satisfaction, not unmingled with feminine curiosity,
drew Beautiful Sara to the grating, where she could look down on the
lower floor, or the so-called men's division. She had never before seen
so many of her faith together, and it cheered her heart to be in such a
multitude of those so closely allied by race, thought, and sufferings.
And her soul was still more deeply moved when three old men
reverentially approached the sacred ark, drew aside the glittering
curtain, raised the lid, and very carefully brought forth the Book which
God wrote with His own hand, and for the maintenance of which Jews have
suffered so much--so much misery and hate, disgrace and death--a
thousand years' martyrdom. This Book--a great roll of parchment--was
wrapped like a princely child in a gaily embroidered scarlet cloak of
velvet; above, on both wooden rollers, were two little silver shrines,
in which many pomegranates and small bells jingled and rang prettily,
while before, on a silver chain, hung gold shields with many colored
gems. The choir-leader took the Book, and, as if it really were a
child--a child for whom one has greatly suffered, and whom one loves all
the more on that account--he rocked it in his arms,