The New Land | Page 3

What land will give us
refuge?"
He raised his face to the brightening sky, his hands tearing at the gold
chain about his throat. No one spoke for a moment, nor even moved
until Alonzo turned back to his wheel, his eyes bright with strange tears.
A cry burst from him; a cry of unbelieving joy.
"Land! Land!" and he pointed a trembling finger toward the misty
outlines of palm trees, straight and slender beneath the early morning
sky. Bernal echoed his cry with a great shout and in a moment, from
every part of the ship, men came pouring, wide-eyed and unbelieving
that they had crossed the Sea of Darkness at last. In their midst came a
quiet man; a tall man with iron-gray hair and a firm mouth, who at first
spoke no word, only gazed dumbly at the fulfillment of his dreams,
stretching before him in the silvery light.
"We have reached India," said Columbus at last.
Those about him laughed shrilly in their joy or wept or prayed. Alonzo,
his eyes snapping with excitement, wrenched his wheel with hands no
longer tired, and Bernal, the sneer for once absent from his lips, gazed
with tense face toward the palm trees.
Only Luis de Torres stood apart, his face still convulsed from his
passionate outburst of grief for his people. For, like the others, he could
not know that instead of a new route to India a mighty continent had
been discovered; nor did the unhappy dreamer dream that a very land
of refuge and of hope for the wandering sons of Israel, lay before him
across the smiling waters.

WHEN KATRINA LOST HER WAY
A Tale of the First Jewish Settlers of New Amsterdam.
The warm spring sunshine forced its way through the tiny
diamond-shaped window panes to fall in a bright pool of light upon the
table cloth and blue cups and bowls Mary Barsimon had brought with
her from Holland. It was a pleasant room, shining with the exquisite
neatness that characterized the dwelling of every Dutch housewife in
New Amsterdam with the same simple, well-made furniture and bright
hand-woven rugs. Yet it differed strikingly in two or three details from
the other homes in the Dutch settlement; on the mantle-piece, above the
blue-tiled fire-place, stood two brass candle-sticks for the Sabbath,
while on the eastern wall hung a quaint wood-cut representing scenes
from the Bible; Abraham sacrificing Isaac, Jacob dreaming of the
ladder reaching up to heaven. This Mizrach, Samuel's father had once
told him, hung upon the eastern wall of every good Jewish home, that
at prayer all might be reminded to turn toward the east and face the site
of the Temple at Jerusalem. For centuries the Temple had been in ruins
and the children of those who had worshipped there scattered to the
four corners of the earth. Jacob Barsimon himself had wandered from
Spain to Holland, from Amsterdam to Jamaica, from Jamaica to the
Dutch colony of New Amsterdam upon the Atlantic; yet in all his
wanderings he had brought with him the old Mizrach; and he still
taught his twelve-year-old son to pray with his face toward the land of
his fathers.
It was before this Mizrach that Jacob Barsimon stood one early spring
morning in the year 1655, when New Amsterdam was still free from
the rule of the English who were to re-name the colony New York. He
stared at it with unseeing eyes, frowning darkly, his long, slender hands
plucking nervously at the buttons of his coat. Samuel, assisting the
young colored slave girl in removing the breakfast dishes, glanced at
his father from time to time a little nervously, although he could not
recall any prank or misdeed on his part that might have angered him.
But his mother, after watching her husband for a few moments from her

low chair at the window where she sat dressing the chubby
two-year-old Rebecca, broke the heavy silence by asking:
"What is wrong, Jacob? What troubles you?"
For a moment Jacob Barsimon said nothing, but frowned more darkly
than ever. At last he spoke. "Have you forgotten that a month from
tomorrow is Samuel's birthday--that he will be thirteen?"
A tender smile played about the mother's mouth. "Surely, I remember
the day he was born as well as though it were yesterday." She sighed a
little, her hands busy with the buttons of the little girl's dress, her eyes
gazing dreamily through the window. "We were still in Amsterdam, in
dear old Holland, with our own people. Do you remember, Jacob, how
on the day when he was made a 'Son of the Covenant,' your old uncle
acted as godfather and all of our neighbors----"
Jacob Barsimon interrupted her with a bitter laugh. "Neighbors! Yes,
we had neighbors