Mordecai Cohen

Mordecai Cohen

Mirah's lost brother Ezra; an idealistic Jew, on fire with plans for the advancement of the race. The character is said to have been drawn from a Jewish journeyman watchmaker named Cohn or Kohn.

A man steeped in poverty and obscurity, weakened by disease, consciously within the shadow of advancing death, but living an intense life in an invisible past and future, careless of his personal lot, except for its possibly making some obstruction to a conceived good which he would never share except as a brief inward vision--a day afar off, whose sun would never warm him, but into which he threw his soul's desire, with a passion often wanting to the personal motives of healthy youth.--Ch. xliii.