The Parable and Its Lesson: A Novella (Stanford Studies in Jewish History and C)

by S. Agnon

  The shamash proceeded:

  There are distinguished people who think that after they die they will go straight to Gan Eden. But when I visited Gehinnom with our Master I saw that it was filled with such people. Let me be more precise about this. Those who fill the ranks of Gehinnom are people who have already attained considerable merit. Those who have not descend to the nethermost parts of Sheol, which is to Gehinnom as Gehinnom is to Gan Eden. I mention no names here out of respect for their families. In this regard I try to emulate a practice our Master instituted after he came back from Gehinnom. Before he went, his study was focused on the Zohar and the writings of the Ari, aside from the regular classes he gave in halakhah. When he came back he devoted himself to studying Mishnah. The Mishnah study was for the purpose of raising up the souls of those who went down to Gehinnom, even though everyone thought they were righteous while they were alive. I try to do likewise. Though I am poor, whenever I get penny from the children and grandchildren of such people, I light a candle in their memory.

  7

  When the shamash finished these digressions, he resumed his story, first telling about the husband who abandoned his wife, then recounting all the twists and turns of the journey, then relating all the extraordinary things he had seen—everything that led up to and resulted from the fact that he had thrown a scholar from a prominent family out of the beit midrash for talking during the Torah reading.

  I remove myself from the narrative and take on the character of the shamash so he can speak in his own voice. But lest you start thinking that this story is about me, I intrude periodically with the words “the shamash said.”

  And so he did, as follows:

  Look how modest our Master was, may the memory of the righteous be for a blessing: he had taken me with him to serve as his spotter, yet it was he who recognized the wicked one first. When Aaron realized he had been seen, he ran over to our Master and said, “Rebbe, you are here! I always knew you would come to me. When a scholar goes into exile, his master is exiled with him.” Our Master nodded. “Tractate Makkot folio 10a, a little below the middle of the page!” Our Master, may the memory of the righteous be for a blessing, always did that. Whenever someone quoted a passage from the Talmud he would think for a moment and then cite the tractate, the folio, the precise side of the folio—a or b—and sometimes even the exact line and whether it was on the top half of the page or the bottom half of the page. The two of them began to converse quietly.

  Our Master said to Aaron, “How could you leave your wife, the woman you married according to the laws of Moses and Israel? You transgressed, but what about your wife? What was her sin that you made not the least effort to release her from the shackles of her chained state? How terrible it is that your sin has wiped out your capacity for mercy, which is the hallmark of a Jewish person.”

  At this Aaron let out a wail and began crying loudly and bitterly. “They never let me! They never let me to go to her! They buried me in their cemetery, a Gentile cemetery with a cross on my grave! Two sticks, vertical and horizontal. They cut me off from Jews, and I had no way to get to a Jewish home. When I wanted to leave my grave to visit my wife in a dream and tell her that I was dead and that she was free to remarry, the cross would bar my way, and I could not get to her. Rebbe, Gehinnom is terrible, but the torment of knowing that I left my wife to be an agunah is much, much worse.”

  I could see tears in our Master’s eyes. I heard him ask, “My son, how did you get here? For what sin did you die?” I heard Aaron’s answers and got the gist of what he said, but I was so terror-stricken that I do not remember his exact words. But I do remember the gist of it. If there is a difference here between what he said and what I report, it is not in the content. He spoke in the first person, the technical term for which is “indirect speech.” I give over his words in the third person. He spoke, he cried, he spoke, he groaned, he sighed, and I was as one who heard it all from afar.

  When Aaron saw the troubles that had overtaken Israel, he began to wonder about what God had done to this people and what lay behind this great and terrible anger. He started to probe the matter deeply but found no answers. He immersed himself in volumes of theosophical speculation, the great texts of the Kabbalah, the Kanah and the Peli’ah. Now a man who is righteous and along in years will read such texts and attain an even deeper sense of awe. But a young man wet behind the ears who starts delving into Kabbalah will bring upon himself only inner turmoil, all the more so when he fills his head with metaphysical investigations. He will not only fail to grow in piety, he will fall into the depths of the qelipot. That is what happened to Aaron. He not only failed to resolve his doubts, he reached the dire conclusion that the God of Israel had disengaged Himself from Israel, Heaven forbid, and had become, Heaven forbid, an enemy.

  As the saying goes, “One who seeks to purify himself will get help from above, just as one who seeks to pollute himself will find the door open to him.” Foolishly, Aaron decided to find out what the Gentile scholars say. He took the trouble to learn Latin and picked up in one year what the priests could not learn in seven. He buried his nose in their books and pored over their words, but the ideas he found there brought him no satisfaction. And sure enough, when a person loses his way, Satan comes and leads him on.

  Satan showed him the way to a priest. Those priests have books that deal with what is above and what is below and what came before and what will be in the end, and they put forth ridiculous ideas that do nothing to resolve doubts about those matters. They say, for example, that when the different languages originated after the Tower of Babel, God created strange creatures with swordlike hands with which they incised letters in their books. Some of those books were written under the sign of Mars, and their guardian angel was Gabriel. That is totally false. Gabriel loves the Jews and champions their cause. Some of those books were written under the sign of Venus and were protected by the daughters of humans who were corrupted by the superhuman sons of God. That is a bit closer to the truth but needs to be qualified, because one of the maidens separated herself from transgression and ascended to the firmament to become one of the stars of the Pleiades. The priests bind all their books in pigskin, and as they read them the light in their soul darkens until eventually they fall into tehom, the abyss which is hinted at in the verse and darkness was over the surface of the deep. And note: the word tehom is made up of the same four Hebrew letters as the word hamavet (Death), and the two are one and the same, which is why tehom is the domain of the qelipot.

  Aaron borrowed a few books from the priest and secreted himself away with them as one would with an adulterous woman. He drank of the bitter water, and the bitter water induced its curse within him. A person possesses two souls, an outer one that encompasses him about, and an inner one. When a person sins, God forbid, his inner soul descends below while he is still in this life.

  One Friday night Aaron was at home alone. Zlateh had gone off to search for her father’s grave. As you know, her father disappeared just after the murder of his father-in-law Reb Naftali. Both deaths occurred right before the pogroms of 1648–49 and were forgotten in the ensuing carnage.

  It so happened that a Jewish butcher from our town made a trip to a certain place to buy cattle. A Gentile there started bragging about his cows, which, he said, were of superior quality because they grazed in a field where Jews were buried. On hearing this, the butcher pretended not to believe him. So the Gentile called his mother, who related how she had worked in the home of Naftali the wine merchant and how his son-in-law worked with him in the business. One day Naftali came to the estate in a wagon loaded with casks of wine. When night fell he slept in the open next to his wagon. Now the lord of the estate had some young noblemen who regularly dined with him. They caught the scent of the wine, went out and opened all the casks, and proceeded to get good and drunk. When they sobered up they became fearful that the lord would punish them, because he had promised the authorities that no harm would come to merchants passing
through his estates. Besides, they knew that with a nobleman of his stature no actions were to be taken without his orders. After debating what to do, they killed the wine merchant. They knew it was likely that some nobleman would inform on them. After all, noblemen informed on Jews and were just as likely to inform on them. So they took the body and buried it in a field where there were Jewish graves from long ago. When Zlateh heard about all this she went with the butcher’s wife to find her father’s grave. But she got delayed and could not get back before the Sabbath.

  That night Aaron dined with our Master. After dinner he went home and forgot that it is forbidden to sleep in one’s house all alone. Why, you may ask, did our Master not remind him about that? He assumed that Aaron had arranged for a Yeshiva student to come over and stay with him overnight. So Aaron went home, sat down, and read through the weekly Torah portion. When he finished and then reviewed the prophetic reading, he found a verse in it that troubled him. He reviewed the commentaries but found no explanation that satisfied him. He then went to see what the Christian exegetes had to say. From under his bed he took out one of the books the priest had loaned him and started reading but could not make out a single letter. He thought that this was because the candle was set down too low. He did not know that on the holy Sabbath Jewish eyes cannot take in anything written in Gentile script.

  One whose punishment already awaits him will forget that it is Sabbath, as Aaron did that night. He got up and took the candle and placed it on top of one of the Christian books and sat and read. Satan then did his work and Aaron’s eyes did theirs. He went on reading until the candle burned down without his noticing. The candle burned through the book it was sitting on, leaving a round hole in the middle. When Aaron later returned the book, the priest took one look at it and promptly accused him of deliberately setting fire to it. He threatened to have Aaron drawn and quartered and thrown to the dogs, but if he accepted the Christian faith he could be saved. Furthermore, they would spare him all the suffering the Jews were facing, and if he feared retribution from them, the priest would arrange for him to be taken to a place where there were no Jews and no fear of Jews. Aaron chose life over death and thus bartered eternal life for this transient one. In his heart he fantasized escaping to another country, returning to the God of Israel, and getting word to his wife to come and join him. Fearing that the Gentiles would somehow discover his designs, he redoubled his violations of Jewish practice so as to show them that he accepted their god with a perfect faith. But he was torn up inside. He began to afflict his body by fasting, even though he knew that fasting without repentance is of no avail. His body shriveled and the volume of his blood shrank, not only from the fasting but also from the agony he suffered. At length he took sick and died. They buried him in a Gentile cemetery and put a cross on his grave, thereby setting up a permanent barrier between him and the Jews and preventing him from visiting his wife in a dream to inform her that he was dead and she could remarry. When a Jew engages in idolatry it is as if the idolatry itself is empowered to do him harm.

  That is the story of Aaron. But I must add here something that I really should have stated earlier. That year, on the Sabbath of Repentance before we went on the journey to Gehinnom, our Master began his discourse with these words: “Preachers who chastise their congregations customarily begin with a verse from the weekly Torah portion and conclude with the verse And a redeemer shall come to Zion and to those in Jacob who turn from transgression, says the Lord. I, however, shall begin with that verse. And a redeemer shall come to Zion summarizes the foundation of our faith and the basis of repentance, for when we see year after year the same tribulations, and we continue to wait for the End of Days, and we are not destroyed by the Gentiles—all that gives us the strength and the courage to turn in complete repentance.” That is what I mean when I say that our Master possessed the power of prophesy. Because even before he spoke with Aaron in Gehinnom, he already knew that his sin consisted in his having questioned the very idea of an End of Days.

  That is the story of Aaron, husband of Zlateh, and it is through his fate that I came to see how severe is the punishment for all who talk during the service and the Torah reading.

  If this introduction is longer than the story, more severe still is the story itself. I wish I were not telling it, and now that I am telling it, I hope it will not be taken as just a story but rather that you will learn from it how very careful we must be not to talk in the synagogue during the prayers and especially during the reading of the Torah.

  8

  Aaron’s story diverted everyone’s attention from the shamash’s case, and it was the shamash himself who brought them back to it. “If you wish to hear it,” he said, “I will now tell it. But I must add a word or two before I begin.”

  The shamash sat upright and a great sadness emanated from him. It created a wall between him and the assembled. If he had not begun speaking, no one would have reminded him that they wanted to hear the story he was about to relate.

  This is what he said:

  I know that I have violated the teachings of our Sages according to which one who embarrasses another person in public forfeits his share in the world to come. Not only have I violated that teaching, I have impugned the honor of a scholar of good family and the son-in-law of a benefactor of the community, whose generosity underwrites half the expenses of our synagogue; moreover, I have shamed him not for mindless chatter but for talking Torah, and doing that not in a Gentile marketplace but in a holy place in front of the Torah scroll, and on the holy Sabbath, when the Holy One spreads the tent of peace over Israel. I have therefore every right to regret what I did. But not only do I have no regret, I am certain that when I die, a band of beneficent angels will come out to welcome me saying, Come, let us keep company with someone who selflessly relinquished his share in the world to come in order to save another person from a harsh sentence and severe punishment. I could cite sources for my position in our holy books, but there are present here learned men who have the whole Torah at their fingertips. So I will simply tell you what my eyes saw. Solomon the wise wrote that What the eyes see is better than the flights of desire. He means to say that what a person sees with his own eyes is better than where his fancy takes him. His fancy roams over mountain tops, descends into valleys, creeps into caves, and insists that the earth is flat.

  From what you have heard about Aaron so far, you know that our Master, may the memory of the righteous ever be for a blessing, took me to that place. I cannot tell you all that I saw there. Nor do I want to tell you all that I saw there. But I can speak of some of the things these ancient eyes saw when they were younger.

  I pass over all the old man’s moanings and groanings and “oy vays” and get to the main events. At some points I will cite him word for word, at others I will paraphrase, and at some points I will summarize. But I must note that even though the shamash was rather long-winded about the events surrounding Aaron, which was after all only a prologue, when it came to the events themselves he was concise. I have found that it is easier to relate what you have heard from others than to relate what your own eyes have seen. It was easier for the old man to tell what he heard from Aaron than to recount what he himself had seen. In any case, being succinct will not diminish the story.

  I will mark off his words from mine by prefacing them with the phrase “the shamash said,” except now, where it will be obvious that he is speaking.

  9

  In Gehinnom there is a compartment they call Tsalmavet, Shadow of Death. It is larger than Earth in size, and its dimensions are perfectly symmetrical. Nothing in the world is as paradoxical as that compartment. It is circular in shape but appears square, square in shape but appears circular. The eyes perceive it one way, the mind another. These differences in perspective induce a certain melancholy.

  In that compartment it is neither hot nor cold nor in-between. No wind blows there, only an occasional vapid gust encased in a cool dry silent breeze. A nameless long-legged ange
l oversees the compartment, but this angel does absolutely nothing. It stands there with its mouth agape, like a person utterly bored and about to yawn.

  The compartment is populated by twice the number of people who went out of Egypt, all of them wrapped in silver-crowned talitot. The tefillin on their heads are as big as those worn by chief rabbis and heads of yeshivot. The space between one person and another is equivalent to the distance of a Sabbath boundary. All of them are brilliant intellects with a profound knowledge of Talmud and its earlier and later authorities. Each one sits by himself, in talit and tefillin, steeped in Torah. When he seeks to disseminate his wisdom, he looks this way and that but sees no one. The years of poring over tomes of text have dimmed his eyes and he is unable to notice that there are thousands upon thousands of Torah scholars just like him there. Boastfully he thinks, “I’m all alone in the world; all wisdom dies with me.” He gets up from his place, looks around and sees a multitude of people as tiny as sesame seeds. He says to himself, “The tefillin on their heads tell me that they are human beings, so I will go over to them and say a pilpul.” But then he becomes drowsy and falls asleep, like a hermaphrodite who sleeps without pleasure or desire or satisfaction or sweet dreams, until he awakens and doesn’t know if he is really awake or has simply turned over on his side. He notices a humanlike form striding by and gets up and walks toward it. When the two draw near, one of them says, “I have developed a brand new pilpul no one has ever thought of before.” The other replies, “You are taking the words right out of my mouth. The pilpul that I have devised every bone in your body would strain to hear. But since you desire to speak, I defer to you. And now, since I have deferred to you, it would be right for you too to defer your desire to speak to mine. Moreover, since I deferred to you before you deferred to me, it follows that I should rightfully have primacy. Therefore, I should speak first.” As soon as he begins to speak his mouth grows as wide as a church courtyard. His colleague says, “A pilpul like that just goes right past me.” At which point his ears grow bigger and bigger until they cover his whole body. The two of them stand there gaping at each other, confounded, frightened, ready to scream. But no scream is heard from either one. The first one’s scream dies in his throat, and the other’s is muffled by his ears. At that moment the angel sways from side to side, the only time it ever moves. It sits and gazes at the two of them as if they were one, looking not with its eyes but with its mouth. If the angel had not then wanted to yawn, that look would have killed them.