“Unlucky fool!  What my silly cousin Gittel, peace be upon him, could see to marry in thee, I know not.”

Moses could not enlighten her.  He might have informed her that olov hasholom, “peace be upon him,” was an absurdity when applied to a woman, but then he used the pious phrase himself, although aware of its grammatical shortcomings.

“I told her thou wouldst never be able to keep her, poor lamb,” Malka went on.  “But she was always an obstinate pig.  And she kept her head high up, too, as if she had five pounds a week!  Never would let her children earn money like other people’s children.  But thou oughtest not to be so obstinate.  Thou shouldst have more sense, Meshe; thou belongest not to my family.  Why can’t Solomon go out with matches?”

“Gittel’s soul would not like it.”

“But the living have bodies!  Thou rather seest thy children starve than work.  There’s Esther,—­an idle, lazy brat, always reading story-books; why doesn’t she sell flowers or pull out bastings in the evening?”

“Esther and Solomon have their lessons to do.”

“Lessons!” snorted Malka.  “What’s the good of lessons?  It’s English, not Judaism, they teach them in that godless school. I could never read or write anything but Hebrew in all my life; but God be thanked, I have thriven without it.  All they teach them in the school is English nonsense.  The teachers are a pack of heathens, who eat forbidden things, but the good Yiddishkeit goes to the wall.  I’m ashamed of thee, Meshe:  thou dost not even send thy boys to a Hebrew class in the evening.”

“I have no money, and they must do their English lessons.  Else, perhaps, their clothes will be stopped.  Besides, I teach them myself every Shabbos afternoon and Sunday.  Solomon translates into Yiddish the whole Pentateuch with Rashi.”

“Yes, he may know Terah” said Malka, not to be baffled.  “But he’ll never know Gemorah or Mishnayis.”  Malka herself knew very little of these abstruse subjects beyond their names, and the fact that they were studied out of minutely-printed folios by men of extreme sanctity.

“He knows a little Gemorah, too,” said Moses.  “I can’t teach him at home because I haven’t got a Gemorah,—­it’s so expensive, as you know.  But he went with me to the Beth-Medrash, when the Maggid was studying it with a class free of charge, and we learnt the whole of the Tractate Niddah.  Solomon understands very well all about the Divorce Laws, and he could adjudicate on the duties of women to their husbands.”

“Ah, but he’ll never know Cabbulah,” said Malka, driven to her last citadel.  “But then no one in England can study Cabbulah since the days of Rabbi Falk (the memory of the righteous for a blessing) any more than a born Englishman can learn Talmud.  There’s something in the air that prevents it.  In my town there was a Rabbi who could do Cabbulah; he could call Abraham our father from the grave.  But in this pig-eating country no one can be holy enough for the Name, blessed be It, to grant him the privilege.  I don’t believe the Shochetim kill the animals properly; the statutes are violated; even pious people eat tripha cheese and butter.  I don’t say thou dost, Meshe, but thou lettest thy children.”