THE RABBI OF BACHARACH.
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such attacks of popular rage, though they were continually subject to enmity and threatening.[1]
Yet the more hate oppressed them from without, the more earnestly and tenderly did the Jews of Bacharach cherish their domestic life within, and the deeper was the growth among them of piety and the fear of God. The ideal exemplar of a life given to God was seen in their Rabbi Abraham, who, though as yet a young man,
- ↑ Heine speaks here of the Middle Ages. What would he have said could he have foreseen that in the year 1889 a book would be published devoted to proving that Jews do sacrifice Christian children, and that this book would receive the approbation and sanction of the Pope? Since translating the foregoing passage, I have met with the following remarkable illustration of it in the Levant Herald:—
"A few days back two Greeks presented themselves at the palace of the grand rabbi of Smyrna, and asked to see him on very important business. The venerable Abraham Palacci being unwell, they were asked to come another day. Next day they called again; the rabbi not having yet recovered, his son, a man of forty-five, learning that the business was urgent, asked if they could not explain it to him. After some desultory conversation they consented, at the same time requesting to be conducted to some remote compartment where there was no danger of being overheard. This being done, one of them said to him:—'Every one has his particular religion; we are aware that part of yours is to offer at Easter a Christian child in sacrifice; now we are ready, for the sum of £1400, to furnish you with a fine, plump, and healthy Christian child, a little Greek girl of four years old, for your sacrifice, and the child shall be obtained in such a manner as to insure the most profound secrecy.' The rabbi's son, as may be supposed, was thunderstruck at the proposal, but he dissembled his feelings and stated that before he could enter into any definite arrangements with
