four children, and in
the house opposite we heard wild cries one whole night through, and in
the morning we became aware that there was no one left in it alive.

The grave-diggers worked early and late, and the corpses lay about in
the streets like dung. They stuck one to the other like clay, and one
walked over dead bodies.

The summer broke up, and there came the Solemn Days, and then the most
dreadful day of all--the Day of Atonement.

I shall remember that day as long as I live.

The Eve of the Day of Atonement--the reciting of Kol Nidre!

At the desk before the ark there stands, not as usual the precentor and
two householders, but the Rabbi and his two Dayonim.

The candles are burning all round, and there is a whispering of the
flames as they grow taller and taller. The people stand at their
reading-desks with grave faces, and draw on the robes and prayer-scarfs,
the Spanish hoods and silver girdles; and their shadows sway this way
and that along the walls, and might be the ghosts of the dead who died
to-day and yesterday and the day before yesterday. Evidently they could
not rest in their graves, and have also come into the Shool.

Hush!... the Rabbi has begun to say something, and the Dayonim, too, and
a groan rises from the congregation.

"With the consent of the All-Present and with the consent of this
congregation, we give leave to pray with them that have transgressed."

And a great fear fell upon me and upon all the people, young and old. In
that same moment I saw the Rabbi mount the platform. Is he going to
preach? Is he going to lecture the people at a time when they are
falling dead like flies? But the Rabbi neither preached nor lectured. He
only called to remembrance the souls of those who had died in the
course of the last few days. But how long it lasted! How many names he
mentioned! The minutes fly one after the other, and the Rabbi has not
finished! Will the list of souls never come to an end? Never? And it
seems to me the Rabbi had better call out the names of those who are
left alive, because they are few, instead of the names of the dead, who
are without number and without end.

I shall never forget that night and the praying, because it was not
really praying, but one long, loud groan rising from the depth of the
human heart, cleaving the sky and reaching to Heaven. Never since the
world began have Jews prayed in greater anguish of soul, never have
hotter tears fallen from human eyes.