From the dingy windows of the schools the mass of sordid buildings looks to their eyes like the hills of Palestine, and the shriek of the passing elevated trains and the clanging of the car bells and the din of passing traffic disturb them not, for they live in the past.
The alleged Jew of the fashionable uptown lobster palaces—the blatant, pushing type, who is the direct cause of much anti-Semitic feeling—knows and cares nothing for the submerged student of his race. The latter is equally oblivious of the alleged Jew who is contemptuously referred to as a meshumad (apostate). But while the former stands out in the world of money and worldly success as a target for much abuse and hatred, the latter lives with books, unknown and unheeded, drawing from the Talmud a joy that riches cannot buy and solacing himself with the love of humanity.
In strong contrast to their fathers and grandfathers are the children of these old men. Modern America, with its opportunities for all, has torn them from the religious atmosphere and sent them uptown to become the lawyers, the artists and the actors.
The Jewish comedian of the vaudeville theater who nightly sets the audience shrieking at his Yiddish idioms is in nine cases out of ten the son of a scholar, and though the glamour of Broadway success claims him and he no longer lives home, in his heart of hearts he is a Jew and never forgets the old people. He will tell many stories of his parents to his Gentile friends, imitating and exaggerating their many characteristics, but he is mighty sore when he hears a Gentile do the same thing. But, after all, the comic Jew of the modern stage is but an imaginary sketch.
There is absolutely nothing humorous in these old men of Judea. Even in the sordid surroundings where you find them engaged in prayer or study, their attitude is one of quiet dignity—a dignity enhanced by their extreme old age.