Rabbi of Kief,
and his reputation as a Talmudist and a man of great mental acumen was
not confined to his native town.

The rattan which the Rabbi held in his hand, the better to guide his
pupils, was never used for corporal punishment, for a glance or a
whispered admonition from the beloved teacher was more potent than were
blows from another. At his side sat his little daughter Recha, scarcely
nine years of age, whose features gave promise of great oriental beauty.
Her dark eyes and darker hair, her rosy lips and merry smile, formed a
veritable symphony of childish loveliness. Recha deemed it a great favor
to be allowed in the room with her father during school-hours, and as
her presence exercised a refining influence over the boys, each one of
whom loved the girl in his own juvenile way, the Rabbi offered no
objections.

The boys were being instructed in a difficult passage of the Talmud.
Following the movements of the Rabbi's head and body they recited their
appropriate lines. Like a mighty _crescendo_ swelled the chorus, for the
greater the pupil's zeal the louder rose his voice, and ever and anon
they were inspired to quicker time, to greater enthusiasm, until the
lesson came to an end.

Alas, poor boys! Taken from the cheerful sunlight to pass the days of
happy boyhood in wading through heaps of useless learning, tutored in a
philosophy which demands age and experience for its perfect
comprehension; of what use can all this Talmud delving be to you, when
once life summons you to more practical duties? And yet how much better
this training, confusing and bewildering though it be, than the absolute
ignorance, the unchecked illiteracy of the Russian Christians.

Rabbi Jeiteles interrupted his class to amplify upon the passage just
read. He had been a great traveller in his youth, had wandered through
Austria and Germany, and had picked up disconnected scraps of worldly
information, to which, in a measure, his superiority in Kief was due.
There were envious calumniators who did not hesitate to assert that the
Rabbi was a _meshumed_ (a renegade), that his mind had become polluted
with ideas and thoughts at variance with Judaism, that he had in his
possession--_O mirabile dictu!_--a copy of the Mendelssohnian
translation of the Pentateuch, against which a ban had been hurled.
These were but rumors, however, and the better class of Hebrews paid no
attention to them.

The passage under consideration was the beauti