The prayer house was like a barracks.

  It was odd but no sooner did Yasha find himself in a House of Prayer than he began taking stock of his soul. True, he had alienated himself from the pious but he had lost everything: Emilia, his career, his health, his home. Emilia's words returned to him, "You must have some sort of a covenant with God since he punishes you so promptly." Yes, Heaven kept a sharp lookout over him. Possibly it was because he had never stopped believing. But what did they want of him? Earlier that day he had known what was required--that he keep to the path of righteousness as had his father before him and his father's father before that. Now he was again a prey to doubts. Why did God need these capotes, these sidelocks, these skullcaps, these sashes? How many more generations would wrangle over the Talmud? How many more restrictions would the Jew put on himself? How much longer would they wait for the Messiah, they who had already waited two thousand years? God was one thing, these man-made dogmas another. But was one able to serve God without dogmas? How had he, Yasha, come to be in his present predicament? He most certainly would not have been involved in all these love affairs and other escapades if he had put on a fringed garment and had prayed thrice daily. A religion was like an army--to operate it required discipline. An abstract faith inevitably led to sin. The prayer house was like a barracks; there God's soldiers were mustered.

From The Magician of Lublin by Isaac Bashevis Singer, 1960.

"The house of prayer was like a barracks." Photo: "Gothic Revival Church with Shattered Window, Utica, N.Y." copyright 2013 Peter Gumaer Ogden.