The World’s Wit and Humor: An Encyclopedia in 15 Volumes. 1906.
Heinrich Heine (17971856)Moses Lumps Religion
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In Hamburg, for instance, there lives in the Bakers’ Broad Walk a man named Moses Lump. This man runs about the whole week, in wind and weather, with his pack on his back, to earn a few Thaler. But when he comes home on Friday night he finds the seven lights burning, and the table covered with a fair white cloth; he puts away his pack and his cares; sits down at the table with his crooked wife and crookeder daughter; eats fish cooked in tasteful white garlic sauce; sings the splendid songs of King David, rejoicing in his heart over the deliverance of the children of Israel out of Egypt; rejoicing, too, that all villains who wished them ill—Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Haman, Antiochus, Titus—are dead, while he, Moses Lump, is still alive, and eating fish with his wife and child. And I tell you, the fish is delicious, and the man is happy. He needs not to worry over culture. Right cheerfully he sits here in his religion and his green coat, like Diogenes in his tub, and looks complacently at the seven candles, which he does not even snuff himself. I tell you, should the lights burn low, and the Gentile women not be at hand to snuff them, and Rothschild the Great should enter with all his agents, brokers, cashiers, and head clerks, and were to say, “Moses Lump, ask a favor, and whatever you desire is yours”—I am convinced that Moses Lump would say, “Snuff those candles for me!” Then Rothschild the Great would marvel deeply, and say, “If I were not Rothschild, I should wish to be Moses Lump!”