The Judenrat members saw through this argument at once. There was no way for them to reach their clerks. No phone. No telegraph. And the sun was steadily sinking.

“We will have to hop like toads!”

“Aha! Aha! I’ve thought of something!” It was the Fur Trimmers’ rabbi again. “It is true, the case of the person specifically named is an exception to the rule Not a single soul from Israel. But there is an exception to the exception. Resh Laquish has ruled, and Rambam has accepted this teaching: not even such a named person may be surrendered, unless he is deserving of death!”

Popower: “Wonderful! Grand! It’s the criminals! I said that all along!”

“The question is,” said Rabbi Kanal, the Descendant, “is the exception to the exception truly an exception? What is meant, beyond the obvious instance of capital cases, by deserving of death? Do we not say that a student of Torah is ‘deserving of death’ if he happens to have a stain on his garment? Is not the man who holds his own organ when passing water called ‘death-deserving’ too? To whom, then, does this phrase not apply?”

Wolf-Kitzes: “A married man may support his organ from below.”

Rabbi Kornischoner said thoughtfully, “What our Master now teaches is valid. All men are guilty. There is no person who can say that his death is not just.”

“True! True! Us most of all! We are bad, guilty people! Let’s put our names down and be the first ones to go!” Old Philosoff was rocking from one foot to the other. The rosy light in the room lit his swaying beard, like the strands of a beaded curtain.

Then Mathilda Megalif began weeping, from both her eyes.

The next to join in was Schpitalnik, and after him Margolies. “Why are we weeping?” Verble asked, sobbing too. In no time, the whole room, including the rabbis, was quietly shedding tears. The answer to Verble’s question was that each man and each woman was thinking of the reason why he or she deserved to die. Their faces were red, partly from this intense emotion and partly because the sun—round, immense, purple, like a gigantic beet root—was setting opposite the House of Lords. They all turned toward it, with bright pink tears on their cheeks.

Then Kornischoner sighed and wiped his wet beard with his sleeve. “Let’s keep trying,” he said. “We might find a way.”

“There is the case of the one hundred blessed loaves,” said Wolf-Kitzes. They all turned toward the half-dressed rabbi. “The heathen demands one such loaf on pain of defiling the remaining ninety-nine. Many authorities write that all the loaves must suffer defilement; but Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah has ruled that while the single loaf may not be delivered directly into the heathen’s hand, it may be put on a stone within his reach. Thus, by analogy—”

“I know!” Kleen interrupted. “We can write the list and leave it on the table!”

“A perfect solution!”

The Pshisker Descendant: “Not so perfect. A loaf is a loaf and not a person. Why is this distinction important? First, because the former is not capable of feeling pain, but the latter is. Second, because one loaf is exactly like another, while no two people are the same. With the bread there is no true process of selection.”