>they have treated the Jews more like dogs than men
Really makes you wonder why, doesn't it?
"Lieb," the first farmer shouted, "what do you do with our money?"
"I run this place for the landlord," Leib said apologetically, hiding his employer's money.
And Kagan?" the second farmer asked. "What does he do with our money?"
"Like me. Gives it to the landlord."
The men had to admit that Lieb was right, and the second farmer said, "You Jews are as bad off as we are," and Lieb breathed easier.
But then the first farmer said idly, as if reflecting upon some critical event in his life, "Jerusalem is lost."
Like a spark this mournful observation lit up the eyes of the half-drunk peasants. A man who had not yet spoken repeated, "Jerusalem is lost."
There was a long moment of hesitation, during which the innkeeper prayed while the sun went down. The farmers watched it go, waiting. The signal came from a youth, drunker than the others, who uttered the fatal word, that hateful word which once pronounced could never be recalled.
"Hep," he said quietly, and Lieb turned white with fear.
"Hep," the first farmer repeated as Lieblooked to see if he could reach the door.
"Hep!" the peasants began to chant, and the villagers hearing the ominous word began boarding up their windows. Lieb, with panic on his face, shrank into a corner among the bottles.
"Hep!" the drinkers repeated, and of a sudden the young man leaped from his chair, flung himself upon the bar, sliding down to where he faced the innkeeper. Grabbing a knife from a leg of meat he threw himself upon the white-faced Jew and cut his throat.
"Hep!" roared the growing crowd as it surged toward the Jewish section of the village, bellowing the ancient cry of the pogrom: "Hep!" Hierosolyma est perdita. And somehow the fact that Jerusalem was lost, a distant city which the did not know, became an excuse for murdering Jews. If any people in the world had a right to mourn the loss of that sacred city to Islam it was the Jews, but its surrender was used as a reason for exterminating them.
There were some in the crowd who recognized the irrelevancy of their cry and these substituted another of equal potency: "The Zhid crucified our Lord." But whichever cry was used, it fed the wild spirit of the pogrom and all united in the culminating wail, "Kill the Zhid."