Zorn and his son were the guests of the dignitary whose pew was next to that of the Rabbi, a zealot, the descendant of a long line of rabbis.
Albert looked around with unconcealed bewilderment. For although he had scoffed at, and mimicked, the gestures of the zealots and mocked at their dogma and forms, he was now conscious of reverence. Even the Rabbi’s curly locks, dangling over his ears, his untrimmed beard, his long silk gabardine, his knickerbockers and white stockings, the mitre-like black fur cap on his head, his broad white linen collar—none of these provoked mockery in the youth. The figure before him conjured a Velasquez he had once seen in Prince Joachim’s gallery in his native town. He only saw in the visage before him the pure white skin shining through the scanty youthful beard, spirituality in the large pupils of his grayish blue eyes. While the prayers had not yet begun, the Rabbi, his face turned to the wall, was lost in devotion, swaying his body rapturously—sighing and praying and snapping his fingers in divine forgetfulness.
A resounding blow upon the altar was a signal for silence. All murmurs hushed. An irrepressible cough here and there accentuated the sudden stillness.
“_Lecho Daudi likras Kallo_,” the cantor in his lyric tenor trolled the first verse of a symbolic hymn composed by Salomo Alkabiz many centuries ago. After the manner of the Song of Songs, the Sabbath is compared to a Princess, with whom Israel is enamoured and whom he is wooing.
The rabbi, his face still turned to the wall, breathed every syllable as if he were in a trance, rolled his eyes heavenward in sublime ecstasy, spread his arms as if opening them for his beloved, a new light shining upon his countenance, glowing with the ardor of a lover, as he softly murmured,
“_Lecho daudi likras Kallo,_ _Pnei Shabbos Nekablo._”
Friday evening is the hour of betrothal of the Princess Sabbath to her lover Israel, but the Judengasse sighed even as it chanted this ditty.
Now the whole assemblage swayed like a forest in a storm—one could hear the soughing of the trees—responding with renewed ecstasy—
“_Lecho daudi likras Kallo,_ _Pnei Shabbos Nekablo;_”
and the sweet tenor picked up the refrain in the next quatrain and melted with song.