Note 483 — Part I (continued 5)

Falk does not appear to have brought good fortune to the Goldsmid family, for Margoliouth in a passage which evidently relates to Falk says that, according to Jewish legend, the suicide of Abraham Goldsmid and his brother was attributed to the following cause: "A Ba'al Shem, an operative Cabalist, in other words a thaumaturgos and prophet, used to live with the father of the Goldsmids. On his death-bed he summoned the patriarch Goldsmid, and delivered into his hands a box, which he strictly enjoined should not be opened till a tertain period which the Ba'al Shem specified, and in case of disobedience a torrent of fearful calamities would overwhelm the Goldsmids. The patriarch's curiosity was not aroused for some time; but in a few years after the Ba'al Shem's death, Goldsmid, the aged, half sceptic, half curious, forced open the fatal box, and then the Goldsmids began to learn what it was to disbelieve the words of a Ba'al Shem."--Margoliouth, History of the Jews, II. 144.