Free The Library Paradox by Catherine Shaw Page A

gait, carry his books and papers just that way, sweep aside his prayer curls with that gesture, mumble in Yiddish as he passed through the gate. Not in just that very way. I’ve gone over it in my mind again and again. He was a real Hassid.’
    ‘You are absolutely certain?’
    ‘I only wish I weren’t!’ he replied. ‘But it’s just impossible. Believe me, their manner of holding themselves, speaking, moving, the look in their eyes is unmistakable, and I don’tsee how one could act it. Maybe it wouldn’t be so difficult to imitate one of the younger ones, who are sometimes a little forced in their efforts, but the man I saw was a true rebbe. He was old, and he had the authority. There is no question about it.’
    ‘He was himself a rabbi?’ I said, feeling a little awkward about using the unfamiliar term, although I had heeded his explanations.
    ‘In the Hassidic sense – I should say definitely,’ he replied.
    ‘Then that should make it easier to trace him,’ I observed. ‘How many of them can there be in London, I wonder?’
    ‘That is the point,’ he said. ‘That is exactly what we were going to talk to you about. You see, it would not be easy to count the rebbes who live in London’s East End, because it is not an official status, such as being a priest would be. One is not ordained officially as a rebbe, so there is no list. On the other hand, while there are a great many of them, probably several dozen if not hundreds, still, if one has a contact within the tightly knit community who lives in that area, it seems to us,’ he glanced at his sister, ‘that perhaps one could learn something. And that is what we believe we have.’
    ‘It is not that we believe it; we actually have it,’ intervened Amy. ‘We have a cousin who married a man from that area. It is a strange story. Rivka was brought up in London, exactly as we were. She knew no Yiddish and as a child, she went to synagogue only occasionally, on the holiest days. But later she and her mother became more religious. She met this young man, David Mendel, after theservices for the High Holy Days in September, three years ago. It was impossible to tell anything about his origins; his English was perfect. He is very handsome, and he and Rivka fell in love. Then came the surprise. David turned out to be from a Hassidic family living in the East End. They had emigrated from a
shtetl
– that is what they call their villages in the Yiddish dialect – in Poland some ten years earlier, when he was only a boy. An enormous number of immigrants started coming then – they’re still coming, in fact – because of the pogroms, vicious attacks on Jewish villages by the local population.’
    I remembered seeing a mention of the wave of immigration on Professor Ralston’s list.
    ‘Some of the
shtetl
families who arrived in London tried to continue living according to their customs, bringing up their children as they did at home, sending them only to
heder
and
yeshiva
, the schools for Jewish studies, and not to state schools. However, most of the people, the non-Hassidic Jews and a few among the Hassidim also, were more broad-minded, and sent their children to the Jewish Free School in Bell Lane. That was the school that David attended, and he did so well there that he was awarded a scholarship to a grammar school to finish his studies. By the time he was sixteen or seventeen, you couldn’t tell his English from that of a native. I don’t think he ever told his schoolmates anything about his origins, or let them know that he spent his evenings in, as it were, a different world. When he finished school, he began an apprenticeship in a bank in the City, and eventually rose toa position of responsibility there. Yet he still lived at home with his parents, and remained at heart a practising Hassid; why, he even wears his prayer shawl underneath his city suit, although he hides the fringes during the day.’
    ‘Such a double life must be wearying,’ I