"With the consent of the All-Present and with the consent of this congregation, we give leave to pray with them that have transgressed." And a great fear fell upon me and upon all the people, young and old. In that same moment I saw the Rabbi mount the platform. Is he going to preach? Is he going to lecture the people at a time when they are falling dead like flies? But the Rabbi neither preached nor lectured. He only called to remembrance the souls of those who had died in the course of the last few days. But how long it lasted! How many names he mentioned! The minutes fly one after the other, and the Rabbi has not finished! Will the list of souls never come to an end? Never? And it seems to me the Rabbi had better call out the names of those who are left alive, because they are few, instead of the names of the dead, who are without number and without end. I shall never forget that night and the praying, because it was not really praying, but one long, loud groan rising from the depth of the human heart, cleaving the sky and reaching to Heaven. Never since the world began have Jews prayed in greater anguish of soul, never have hotter tears fallen from human eyes. _That_ night no one left the Shool. After the prayers they recited the Hymn of Unity, and after that the Psalms, and then chapters from the Mishnah, and then ethical books.... And I also stand among the congregation and pray, and my eyelids are heavy as lead, and my heart beats like a hammer. "U-Malochim yechofezun--and the angels fly around." And I fancy I see them flying in the Shool, up and down, up and down. And among them I see the bad angel with the thousand eyes, full of eyes from head to feet. That night no one left the Shool, but early in the morning there were some missing--two of the congregation had fallen during the night, and died before our eyes, and lay wrapped in their prayer-scarfs and white robes--nothing was lacking for their journey from the living to the dead. They kept on bringing messages into the Shool from the Gass, but nobody wanted to listen or to ask questions, lest he should hear what had happened in his own house. No matter how long I live, I shall never forget that night, and all I saw and heard. But the Day of Atonement, the day that followed, was more awful still. And even now, when I shut my eyes, I see the whole picture, and I think I am standing once more among the people in the Shool. It is Atonement Day in the afternoon. The Rabbi stands on the platform in the centre of the Shool, tall and venerable, and there is a fascination in his noble features. And there, in the corner of the Shool, stands a boy who never takes his eyes off the Rabbi's face. In truth I never saw a nobler figure.