Read "The Grandchildren of the Ghetto" by Israel Zangwill online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The weeks went on and Passover drew nigh. The recurrence of the feast brought no thrill to Esther now. It was no longer a charmed time, with strange things to eat and drink, and a comparative plenty of them -- stranger still. Lack of appetite was the chief dietary want now. Nobody had any best clothes to put on, in a world where everything was for the best in the way of clothes. Except for the speckled Passover cakes, there was hardly any external symptom of the sacred Festival. While the Ghetto was turning itself inside out, the Kensington Terrace was calm in the dignity of continuous cleanliness. Nor did Henry Goldsmith himself go prowling about the house in quest of vagrant crumbs. Mary O'Reilly attended to all that, and the Goldsmiths had implicit confidence in her fidelity to the traditions of their faith. Wherefore the evening of the day before Passover, instead of being devoted to frying fish and provisioning, was free for more secular occupations.
Esther, for example, had arranged to go to see the _debut_ of a new Hamlet, with Addie. Addie had asked her to go, mentioning that Raphael, who was taking her, had suggested that she should bring her friend -- for they had become great friends, had Addie and Esther, ever since Esther had gone to take that cup of tea, with the chat that is more essential than milk or sugar.