It was an evening in April.
According to the Jewish calendar it was the first Passover night,
when Israel's liberation from the bondage of Egypt is
commemorated by a feast and family reunion which form the
greatest event in the domestic life of our people
Two years before, when I was engaged to Fanny, I deeply regretted
not being able to spend the great evening at her father's table. This
time I was an invited guest at the Tevkins'. They were not a
religious family by any means. Tevkin had been a free-thinker
since his early manhood, and his wife, the daughter of the Jewish
Ingersoll, had been born and bred in an atmosphere of aggressive
atheism. And so religious faith never had been known in their
house. Of late years, however--that is, since Tevkin had espoused
the cause of Zionism or nationalism--he had insisted on the
Passover feast every year. He contended that to him it was not a
religious ceremony, but merely a "national custom," but about this
his children were beginning to have their doubts. It seemed to
them that the older their father grew the less sure he was of his
free thought.
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