‘The hands of the clock crept on. It was half-past nine. Hannah sat lethargic, numb, unable to think, her strung-up nerves grown flaccid, her eyes full of bitter-sweet tears, her soul floating along as in a trance on the waves of a familiar melody. Suddenly she became aware that the others had risen and that her father was motioning to her. Instinctively she understood; rose automatically and went to the door; then a great shock of returning recollection whelmed her soul. She stood rooted to the floor. Her father had filled Elijah’s goblet with wine and it was her annual privilege to open the door for the prophet’s entry. Intuitively she knew that David was pacing madly in front of the house, not daring to make known his presence, and perhaps cursing her cowardice. A chill terror seized her. She was afraid to face him—his will was strong and mighty; her fevered imagination figured it as the wash of a great ocean breaking on the doorstep threatening to sweep her off into the roaring whirlpool of doom. She threw the door of the room wide and paused as if her duty were done.
“Nu, nu,” muttered Reb Shemuel, indicating the outer door. It was so near that he always had that opened, too.
Hannah tottered forwards through the few feet of hall. The cloak and hat on the peg nodded to her sardonically. A wild thrill of answering defiance shot through her: she stretched out her hands towards them. “Fly, fly; it is your last chance,” said the blood throbbing in her ears. But her hand dropped to her side and in that brief instant of terrible illumination, Hannah saw down the whole long vista of her future life, stretching straight and unlovely between great blank walls, on, on to a solitary grave; knew that the strength had been denied her to diverge to the right or left, that for her there would be neither Exodus nor Redemption. Strong in the conviction of her weakness she noisily threw open the street door. The face of David, sallow and ghastly, loomed upon her in the darkness. Great drops of rain fell from his hat and ran down his cheeks like tears. His clothes seemed soaked with rain.
“At last!” he exclaimed in a hoarse, glad whisper. “What has kept you?”
“Boruch Habo! (Welcome art thou who arrivest)” came the voice of Reb Shemuel front within, greeting the prophet.
“Hush!” said Hannah. “Listen a moment.”‘ – Children of the Ghetto, Chapter 25
The passage above reflects the inner turmoil of Hannah, the daughter of a rabbi, as she chooses between running away with the man that she loves and remaining a part of her family. It begins with a focus on time. She is thirty minutes late to meet David. As Hannah is caught in indecision, the focus on the slow, creeping movement of the hands of the clock in the first paragraph is important to increasing the suspense of the moment. This moment of suspense and fear is further captured by the anathema present in the articulation of Hannah’s feelings. “Her strung-up nerves…, her eyes…, her soul”, the structure of this sentence takes us into the interior life of Hannah. We more personally feel her panic in these lines as she is frozen with indecision.
The reasons for this indecision, a choice between her religion and her love, are partly revealed by references to previous points in the passage. “Her soul floating along as in a trance on the waves of a familiar melody” clearly refers to a moment earlier in the chapter when she sits with her father through the Seder service. When she hears the choir, she says that “the words seem fateful, pregnant with a special message”. This message is all about adhering to the strict obedience of the very Law she is about to defy. Her guilt steered her back to the words of this song, making it more difficult for her to choose her lover over her religion.
Religion continues to play a role in the meaning of the passage as the Seder dinner continues. It is Hannah’s “annual privilege to open the door for the prophet’s entry”. In the Bible, Hannah gives birth to the prophet Samuel after fervent prayer to God. In a matter of speaking, Hannah opens the door for the entry of the prophet into the world just as her namesake opens the door during the Seder dinner. Ironically, the person waiting outside the door is David, who is not the prophet Elijah nor a prophet in the Bible. In fact, the downfall of the biblical David resembles that of his namesake, for he falls in love with the wife of Uriah although it is unlawful for them to be together (2 Samuel 11).
Realizing that David would be waiting for her once she opened the door for Elijah is the “returning collection” that “whelmed her [Hannah’s] soul”, as it meant that she could no longer ignore David. The will of David to marry her is compared to a great ocean “threatening to sweep her off into the roaring whirlpool of doom”. This is likely a Biblical reference to the great flood. In this story, God sends a great flood upon the earth to wipe out the wickedness of humanity, preserving only the righteous, Noah’s family, in an ark. Here, it seems David is among the wicked and is doomed to drown Hannah as well as himself if she goes with him. Later in the passage, David is described as “soaked with rain”, his face “sallow and ghastly”, almost as if he was already drowned. To go with David would be to risk drowning and dying with him. This is further hinted to in the passage where it says “Hannah saw down the whole long vista of her future life,…on, on to a solitary grave”. She associates death with her life with David.
This is in contrast with Hannah’s thoughts earlier in the passage. She seems to desperately want to go with David before it’s too late. When she thinks “Fly, fly; it is your last chance”, it is suggestive of the Israelites flight from Egypt. Like her, they were fleeing persecution, but unlike her, they were being persecuted by the Egyptians, while Hannah is being persecuted by her own religion. This becomes even more important in the light of the fact that they are eating the Seder meal, the meal that commemorates the Israelites’ freedom from the Egyptians. In the original instructions for how this meal was to be eaten, Moses told the Israelites that they must eat the meal in haste, wearing sandals on their feet and holding their staff (Exodus 12:11), as if ready to make flight. Hannah, too, seeks to make flight, but hesitates. When she thinks of her choice, she feels defeated, saying “there would be neither Exodus nor Redemption”. Here, Exodus refers to the fact that she cannot flee, while Redemption could refer to her belief that she cannot be redeemed, or saved from her unhappiness, by David. Redemption could also refer to her unwillingness to abandon her religion, as Jesus is called the Redeemer (and Jesus is from the line of David). Either way, Hannah’s final lines of the passage clearly show that she has made up her mind. She chooses to listen to her father, who is greeting the prophet in Hebrew, rather than David, who is speaking in English. She is drawn back to her family and religion, leading her to finally reject David.
The historical context that this story is placed in is the late 19th century. During this time, the Jewish population in Cape Town, including people such as David, began to rapidly expand. The Eastern European Jews who came to Cape Town in this period shed the traditional garb and customs of Judaism for more Anglo-Jewish customs. Coming from such a background, David’s shock at such a strict adherence to the laws of Judaism is understandable. A kohein could not marry a divorcee, a convert, a promiscuous woman, a woman who is the offspring of a forbidden marriage to a kohein, or a woman who is the widow of a man who died childless but who has been released from the obligation to marry her husband’s brother. An ordinary Jewsh man is only prohibited from marrying certain close blood relatives, the ex-wives of certain close blood relatives, a woman who has not been validly divorced, the daughter or granddaughter of his ex-wife, or the sister of his ex-wife during the ex-wife’s lifetime (jewishvirtuallibrary.org). We can see from this that the title of kohein changes much of what is expected by Jewish law, expectations that David was unwilling to reckon with. It is through exploring this context that we’re better able to understand the events that happened in Children of the Ghetto.
