the Fool, with all the impatient curiosity which was even then characteristic of the Frankfort Jews.
But the Rabbi impatiently broke loose from them, and went his way along the Jews' Street. "See, Sara!" he exclaimed, "how badly guarded is our Israel. False friends guard its gates without, and within its watchers are folly and fear."
They wandered slowly through the long and empty streets, where only here and there the head of some bright young girl looked out of a window, while the sun mirrored itself in the brilliant panes. In those days the houses in the Jewish quarter were still neat and new, and much lower than they now are, since it was only at a later time that the Jews, as their number greatly increased, although they could not enlarge their quarter, built one storey over another, squeezed themselves together like sardines, and so cramped themselves both in body and soul.[1] That part of the Jewish quarter which remained after the great fire, and which is called the Old Lane—that series of high, grimly dark houses, where a strangely grimacing, damp race of people bargains and chaffers, is a horrible relic of the Middle Ages. The older synagogue exists no
- ↑ It is remarkable that in America a narrow-minded, mean man is called a sardine. "A man who has never travelled, and has all his life been packed tightly among those who were his equals in ignorance and inexperience, is therefore called a sardine" (The Breitmann Ballads).
