The Parable and Its Lesson: A Novella (Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture) - Softcover

Agnon, S. Y.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804788723 ISBN 13: 9780804788724

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2014

Synopsis

S.Y. Agnon was the greatest Hebrew writer of the twentieth century, and the only Hebrew writer to receive the Nobel Prize for literature. He devoted the last years of his life to writing a massive cycle of stories about Buczacz, the Galician town (now in Ukraine) in which he grew up. Yet when these stories were collected and published three years after Agnon's death, few took notice. Years passed before the brilliance and audacity of Agnon's late project could be appreciated.

The Parable and Its Lesson is one of the major stories from this work. Set shortly after the massacres of hundreds of Jewish communities in the Ukraine in 1648, it tells the tale of a journey into the Netherworld taken by a rabbi and his young assistant. What the rabbi finds in his infernal journey is a series of troubling theological contradictions that bear on divine justice. Agnon's story gives us a fascinating window onto a community in the throes of mourning its losses and reconstituting its spiritual, communal, and economic life in the aftermath of catastrophe. There is no question that Agnon wrote of the 1648 massacres out of an awareness of the singular catastrophic massacre of his own time―the Holocaust.

James S. Diamond has provides an extensive set of notes to make it possible for today's reader to grasp the rich cultural world of the text. The introduction and interpretive essay by Alan Mintz illuminate Agnon's grand project for recreating the life of Polish Jewry, and steer the reader through the knots and twists of the plot.

About this title

About the Author

S. Y. Agnon was born in 1888 in Buczacz, Galicia. He emigrated to Palestine in 1908 and lived there for five years before beginning an extended stay in Germany. He returned to Palestine in 1924 and settled permanently in Jerusalem. He received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1966.
James S. Diamond is a rabbi, academic, and translator. He taught literature at Princeton University for over a decade, and has written extensively on Agnon and modern Hebrew literature.
Alan Mintz is the Chana Kekst Professor of Hebrew Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. He is author, most recently, of Sanctuary in the Wilderness: A Critical Introduction to American Hebrew Poetry (Stanford, 2011). He was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

THE PARABLE AND ITS LESSON

a novella

By S.Y. AGNON, JAMES S. DIAMOND

Stanford University Press

Copyright © 2014 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8047-8872-4

Contents

Introduction Alan Mintz, ix, 
THE PARABLE AND ITS LESSON S. Y. AGNON Translated and Annotated by James S. Diamond, 1, 
Essay on The Parable and Its Lesson [Hamashal vehanimshal] Alan Mintz, 79, 
Glossary, 159, 

CHAPTER 1

THE PARABLE AND ITS LESSON

S. Y. AGNON

TRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED BY JAMES S. DIAMOND

AMONG THE LINE OF RABBIS who ruled in our town was the illustrious and godly Rabbi Moshe, a rabbi who, in his lifetime, journeyed to Gehinnom in order to free an agunah. Two purposes motivate me to record this story. One is to tell of the greatness of that saintly rabbi. The other, as I have already noted, is to admonish those among us, old and young alike, who permit themselves to talk during the prayer service and the Torah reading. In Buczacz no one talks during the service and the reading of the Torah. That is the long-standing local custom. But every city has someone who hails from somewhere else, and so it happened that there was in Buczacz just such a man who was unaware of the local custom and chatted while the Torah was being read. This story is about him. It is a story from which we will come to learn what the punishment is for those who conduct conversations during the prayers and the Torah reading. To be sure, some things related here will not square with those who maintain that Buczacz was unaffected by the Khmelnitski pogroms. I leave it to the One who reconciles all matters to settle this one too.

1

There was in our old beit midrash an elderly shamash named Reb Yeruham ben Tanhum. Some insist that his name was Reb Tanhum ben Yeruham and that the Great Synagogue was where he served. Then there are those who claim that this name belongs not to the shamash but to the man who got involved with the him. I, who know only the names of the men who served as shamash in the ten generations before I left my hometown, cannot make this determination. I can only tell the story. Besides, the name itself is immaterial to what follows, even though it is known that a person's essence, not to mention the incarnations through which his soul passes, can be discerned in his name. Let me, then, put aside what I cannot explain and relate what I do know.

A wealthy man from the upper crust of our town took as his son-in-law a learned young man from a prominent family. The boy was skilled at advancing all kinds of novel interpretations of our holy texts, even when their meanings were already transparent. In fact, sometimes, in his encounter with a text, he would pronounce his own interpretation before he had even digested its plain sense. I refer here not to the nature of his insights but to the fact that his eagerness to propose them overrode any capacity he had for self-restraint. That is the gist of this tale, and the details now follow.

One Sabbath, while the Torah was being read, he was sitting in his regular seat against the eastern wall of the synagogue, a prestigious place that his father-in-law bought for him from an old man who had emigrated to the Land of Israel. A Bible with commentaries was in his hands. The reader was chanting from the scroll and the entire congregation was sitting in rapt attention listening to the words of the Torah, when the young man had a brilliant new hidush on that week's Torah portion or on one of its commentaries. He raised his talit over his eyes, leaned over to the man sitting next to him, and shared his hidush with him. The latter looked at him dumbfounded, stunned that someone dared to talk during the Torah reading. As if the words of a mere mortal were superior to those of the living God.

Do not wonder at that man's astonishment, because in our town there was absolutely no talking during the service and certainly not during the Torah reading. From the moment the Torah scroll was opened until the reading of the weekly portion was concluded everyone strained to listen and concentrated so as to catch every word that issued from God Himself. The elders of that time, going by what they had heard from their fathers, and their fathers from their fathers, said that their forebears would never interrupt the Torah reading even to congratulate the person who had just been called up to the Torah. Three times a year, however, on Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot, after the Yizkor memorial service, the senior member of the congregation would take the Torah scroll in his arms and one by one everyone would come up and tell him his name, his father's name, and the amount he would contribute. The elder would bless that person and his household and there would be no mention of money. Contributions were brought after the festival. In later times, when expenses increased, they started doing this on every Sabbath, but again, money was never mentioned in the presence of the Torah scroll. Then later, when the number of donors who wanted their charitable intentions made public increased, every penny that had been pledged or contributed would be announced. And then even later, when expenses for nonessential items increased, like the fees for cantors who showed off their vocal talents and turned the prayers into ridiculous performances, all prior restraints were removed, and they would stop between sections of the Torah reading to bless both the one who was called up and the person he instructed the gabbai to bless. Soon they began to exceed the regular number of seven people called up to the Torah, until the Torah readings were sliced up like olives. Eventually things reached the point where there was not only jealousy and enmity among the honorees but insult and invective.

So there sits our young scholar during the Torah reading when he gets this new insight into the Torah portion. He leans over to the man sitting next to him and regales him with his discovery. The shamash sees this and throws him a look of rebuke. When this is ignored the shamash gives him a wrathful look. When the talking does not stop he thumps his middle finger with a "Nu! Nu!" When this has no effect the shamash thumps his finger again in order to silence him. When this has no effect he steps down from the bimah, walks over to the eastern wall, grabs the young man by the arm and ushers him out of the synagogue.

The town was in an uproar. Never in the whole history of Buczacz had anyone embarrassed another person in such a holy place, much less ejected him from it. Certainly no lowly shamash had ever done that to a Torah scholar, especially one from a prestigious family and the son-inlaw of a local grandee to boot. And even though everyone knew that the shamash had acted for the sake of Heaven, the consensus was to fine him and even to dismiss him from his position.

On Monday they arraigned him before the beit din of the chief rabbi. The chief rabbi recused himself on account of his admitted partiality to Torah scholars. Thereupon they went and constituted an alternate beit din.

The dayan asked the shamash how he proposed to argue his case. The latter replied, "Is anything more meritorious than not kowtowing to a Torah scholar from a prominent family who commingles the Sacred Word with his own prattle?"

The dayan then asked, "But was he not talking words of Torah?"

"Yes, but it was during the reading of the Torah."

"It was sufficient that you stopped him. What impelled you to embarrass him in public?"

"It was out of compassion for him that I did what I did, for I have seen the punishment that awaits one for talking during prayers and Torah reading. A thousand humiliations in this world are nothing compared to the punishment for this transgression in the world to come."

"How is it that you knew and others did not? We have many treatises that deal with that particular sin, and it is widely condemned by our rabbis. Indeed, there are those who attribute the pogroms of 1648 to the sin of talking during the service."

"The books may offer their condemnations, but it is the eyes that see what it is to suffer God's wrath."

"What do you mean 'it is the eyes that see'? Does the whole world see with a different organ and you alone see with eyes? What do you mean by these alarming insinuations?"

The shamash lowered his eyes and fell silent.

The dayan continued, "What do you answer?" The shamash raised his eyes and then shut them, like one who sees something and is mortified by it. What was it that made him so afraid? It was visions that he had once seen, visions that were now reawakened within him and began to reappear before him. It is those visions I shall presently relate.

The dayan looked at him and saw all manner of horror etched in his face. Something is going on, he thought to himself. "Perhaps you can explain to us what you have said?" The shamash again lowered his eyes and said, "One thing I ask of the Lord, one thing I desire: that my mouth not get the better of me and make me utter something that I should not. Would that this whole incident had not happened and I were not forced to relate something of which I am not worthy to speak. Silence would be the better course." He fell silent. The dayan said, "I think there is something you wish to say?" Consternation took hold of the shamash. He raised his eyes to those who sat in judgment of him and began to speak: "It is not because I seek acquittal from this earthly court or because I want to curry favor with the esteemed members of the congregation that I permit my tongue to reveal a profound mystery. I speak so that you may all come to know the true punishment for something that everyone takes much too lightly."

2

The shamash looked out at those who sat in judgment of him and at those who had come to hear his case, and this is what he related:

The venerable elders here are already aware that I served as personal assistant to our Master, the esteemed Av Beit Din Rabbi Moshe, may the Lord illumine him in Eden until the coming of the Redeemer and may he plead well for us and all Israel. I am not worthy to tell of his greatness and his brilliance in Torah and piety. What I can relate is what is widely known, namely, that our Master Rabbi Moshe was, as you know, one of the students of the holy Rabbi Mikhl of Nemirov. On account of our many sins Rabbi Mikhel Mikhl was martyred in the massacres of 1648. Through the merits of one secret word in the Torah that that holy Tsadik communicated to our Master Rabbi Moshe, he was saved from the sword of that barbarian Khmelnitski, may his name be blotted out. Some say the word is in the weekly Torah portion Mishpatim. Some say it is in the portion of Ha'azinu. Others hold that it was not a word that he communicated but the meaning of one of the dots found above the Hebrew words in the passage haniglot vehanistarot. Who can say what that dot means? It is enough for a man like me to get through the weekly portion with Targum and Rashi's commentary.

Our Master had a relative named Zlateh. She was the sole survivor when her family was slaughtered in the pogroms of the abominable Khmelnitski, may the names of the wicked rot. This Zlateh was a granddaughter of Reb Naftali the wine merchant. He was a wonderful advocate for the Jews in his time and did much for communities and individuals alike. He met a tragic end. A government official who owed him four hundred barrels of wine set his hunting dogs on him and they devoured him. May God avenge his blood.

The murder of Reb Naftali occurred not long before the pogroms of 1648. When the evil decree fell, the whole family perished, "some by water, some by fire, some by strangling, some by stoning," as the poet wrote in the piyyut Unetanneh tokef. Those who were spared such gruesome deaths died of hunger or thirst. Through the mercy of God the little girl saved herself from death by hiding in the forest. Like an innocent lamb she lived on grass and very nearly forgot how to talk like a human being. She was found by some survivors who had come out of hiding when the pogroms began to abate. They took her with them as they wandered from town to town and from community to community. Some of them tried to return to their hometowns but could not find them. Most of the communities had been razed in the cataclysm and were unrecognizable. Some of these survivors got used to being on the road and never found a place to stop and settle down. During their wanderings they came to Buczacz and arrived at the house of our Master.

The Rabbi's wife looked at the little girl but had no idea who she was. The good qualities that she noticed in her endeared the child to her. She took her in and fed her, clothed her, put shoes on her bare feet. The Rabbi's wife made an arrangement with the people who had brought the girl with them, paying them off so they would leave the child with her. And so they did. The Rabbi's wife asked the girl about her hometown and where she came from and about her father and her mother. The child told what she remembered.

The Rabbi's wife listened to all this and related it to our Master. Upon hearing it he declared, "Is she not of our family? Why, she is a descendant of our relative Naftali!" Our Master raised his sacred hands and intoned, "Blessed be the One who is beneficent to the wicked and the good alike. Blessed is the One who has been beneficent to this granddaughter of Naftali, who has found her way to her family. And blessed be the One who has allowed us to raise this orphan girl in our home, the only one of our family left alive."

Our Master took the girl in and provided for all her needs—food, drink, lodging, clothing. Our Master, who was not particular about his own clothes except for his beautiful talit and tefillin, personally picked out the material for her dresses and personally sent for the cobbler to make her a pair of shoes. On Friday afternoons, before leaving for the bathhouse to get ready for the Sabbath, he would look in on the kitchen and ask, "Has she had her bath? Has her hair been combed?" Sometimes he would stand and make sure they were not hurting her when they combed her hair, which had gotten tangled during the long time in the forest.

As she grew older our Master thought about a match for her. He cast his eye on his favorite student, a clever and knowledgeable young man with some proficiency in several languages. This student was the son of Zevulun the spice merchant. Zevulun, after his death, left a manuscript of a book on the prayer recited upon embarking on a journey. It contained some shocking things about disputations he had with freethinkers in various cities in the Ottoman lands. I heard that he had asked our Master to write an approbation for the book, and our Master declined the invitation. He said that since the questions it dealt with were of no concern to him, he was quite ready to forgo the answers it offered.

So our Master married off Zlateh to Zevulun's son Aaron. Because he loved the couple so much, our Master himself recited the seven nuptial benedictions at all seven wedding feasts. I remember that at the feast of the seventh day they were sitting around the table and there was no new guest present. The door opened and in came a young man with a volume of the talmudic tractate Kiddushin in hand. And so they recited the seven benedictions. Among the company was a scholar who loved to joke. He said to Aaron, "You see, tractate Kiddushin itself has sent you a new face so that all seven benedictions can be said."

About the young man who came in with tractate Kiddushin in hand I have nothing to say. But about the tractate itself I do. I once saw in a certain book, Kaftor vaferah, a tale about a scholar who spent his whole life studying the tractate Hagigah. When he departed this world no one took any notice, until there appeared a woman who lamented him loudly, the way a bereaved wife keens for her husband. The woman was the tractate Hagigah, which took on the form of a woman because of that scholar's lifelong devotion to it.

Our Master made a place for the couple in his home and arranged with Aaron fixed times to study Torah together, before dawn and at night after the evening service. You had to see our Master sitting and learning with him to know the love of a master for his student. Matters that our Master would usually treat cursorily he expounded to him in minute detail. Our Master saw in Aaron and Zlateh his aspirations for a new generation that would serve God righteously in place of their parents murdered by the enemy.

Suffering is hard, hard when it happens and hard afterward. Because of the many troubles that had befallen the Jews, Aaron began to inquire into what God had done to this people, into the great wrath that caused this people to be handed over to the Gentiles, Heaven forfend, to be destroyed by them.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from THE PARABLE AND ITS LESSON by S.Y. AGNON, JAMES S. DIAMOND. Copyright © 2014 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of Stanford University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0804788723
• ISBN 13: 9780804788724
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176