"The changes he made in the service, above all a choir led by a cantor with musical training, also excited their anger. They came forward quite openly and arranged their own service under the leadership of Dovidel Kessler. But Rabbi Merzbach had consideration and pity for his enemies, and paid no attention to the way they threw mud at him. He was nothing less than a good, great man, and he would not let himself be hindered in his work. And for ten years of wicked struggles and bitter ill-will, he built his new synagogue in the hearts of his people, and at last the ground was prepared for it. Things became better, and, besides, he gave the people a common goal, the building of a new house of worship. Now they had an outlet for their energy--but an outlet, too, for their ambition and their vanity. "That's the way it must be, Herr Kreisphysikus. The highest often comes forth from the lowest. And finally the synagogue stood there finished. What joy there was! And what a reward! But now I ask you, Herr Doktor, can't life be without the riff-raff? Is dirt a constituent of cleanliness?" Again those remarkable observations! "Are poisoned wells necessary, and evil-smelling fires, and foul dreams, and maggots in the bread of life?" Comparisons from Zarathustra are always forcing themselves into my mind. Whence this wisdom, Simon Eichelkatz? And do you suspect there is an answer to these questions? "Verily, we have no abiding-places prepared for the unclean. Unto their bodies our happiness would be an icy cave, and unto their spirits as well. Like strong winds we would live above them, neighbors to the eagles, neighbors to the snow, neighbors to the sun; thus do the strong winds live." My eye fell again on the daguerreotype--were you a strong wind, Rabbi Dr. Merzbach? You blew away many a crumbling ruin of the past. Yet you knew naught of the new values. You did not know that you must call to your enemies, to them that spit at you: "Take heed that ye spit not in the face of the wind." You lived in the times of the daguerreotype. I asked Simon Eichelkatz for permission to make a number of copies of the picture with my excellent photographic apparatus which I use for the Roentgen rays. SEPTEMBER 28.