of miles from anywhere, languidly rolling under a perfect moonlit sky, listening to the plaintive airs that Puccini had coined for Mimi. There was hardly a sound but the gentle lapping of the waves breaking against the vessel’s side till a slight commotion on deck up ahead caused some of the listeners to investigate. One of the passengers, an ex-Harvard man, returned with the remark:
“Oh, it’s only some damned Jew. He’s fallen and hurt himself pretty badly.”
Like a smudge on some beautiful picture was this anti-Semitic sentiment on such a night, and considering its source I felt deeply grieved. As I was the only other Jew in the first cabin I made my way to the stateroom where they had carried the victim of the accident and found him to be a tender-hearted old man who I subsequently learned had spent a long life in acts of charity toward his fellow men and women, regardless of creed. He was returning to end his days in Jerusalem (his Jerusalem, not the one of my dream), where he could touch again the beloved stones of the wailing wall.
Something in the old man’s face, that “something” which was in the face of my father, my brother, that “something” which is in the face of every Jew, drew me to him, as it has drawn me to all Jews always, and I spent many intellectual hours by his bedside, picking up grains of wisdom which he had translated from the Talmud. I wished that the ex-Harvard man could have known that the old man’s wrinkles were but the pathetic records of the massacres of his kith and kin which he had witnessed in his homeland and that he daily prayed for death to efface the awful memories.
Later on the ex-Harvard man asked me to join in a deck game. I reminded him that I also was a “damned Jew.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know what you refer to—that was an unfortunate slip I made the other night—merely a figure of speech, I assure you.”