by S. Y. Agnon
Now my husband was not a disciple of this same rebbe: on the contrary, he was opposed to him, because of the great dispute that had broken out between the rebbes, on account of a slaughterer, whom one had appointed and the other had dismissed. In the course of that quarrel a man of Israel was killed, and several families were uprooted, and several owners of property lost their possessions, and several persons ended their days in prison.
Nevertheless, my husband made the journey to the town where this rebbe lived. Before he had arrived there, the rebbe died, after dividing his followers amongst his sons, who went away each to a different town. My husband journeyed from town to town, from son to son, enquiring of each son where Shraga might be. Finally he was told: “If you are asking after Shraga, Shraga has become a renegade and rejoined our opponents.” But no one knew where Shraga now lived.
When a man is a Hassid, you may trace him without difficulty. If he is not the disciple of one rebbe, he is the disciple of another. But with any ordinary unattached Jew, unless you know where he lives, how may he be found? My husband, peace be upon his soul, was accustomed to making journeys, for his business took him to many places. He made journey after journey enquiring for Shraga. On account of these travels his strength in time began to fail and his blood grew thin. At last, having travelled to a certain place, he fell sick there and died.
After I had set up his tombstone, I went back to my town and entered into business. While my husband was still alive, I had helped him in his affairs: now that he was dead, I speeded them with all my might. And the Lord doubled my powers until it was said of me, She has the strength of a man. It would have been well, perhaps, had wisdom been granted me in place of strength, but the Lord knows what He intends and does not require His own creatures to tell Him what is good. I thought in my heart: all this toil is for my daughter’s sake. If I add to my wealth, I shall add to her welfare. As my responsibilities became ever greater, I found I had no leisure to spend at home, except on Sabbaths and holy days: and even these days were apportioned, half to the service in synagogue, and the other half to the reception of guests. My daughter, so it seemed, was in no need of my company: for I had engaged governesses and she was devoted to her studies. I received much praise on account of my daughter, and even the Gentiles, who make fun of our accent, would say that she spoke their language as well as the best of their own people. Furthermore, these governesses would ingratiate themselves with my daughter, and invite her to their homes. In due course, I called the matchmakers, who found her a husband distinguished for his learning, and already qualified for the rabbinate. But I was not to enjoy a parent’s privilege of leading my daughter to her bridal canopy: for an evil spirit took possession of her, so that her reason became unhinged.
And now, my son, this is what I ask of you — write to Shraga for me, and say that I have forgiven him for all the sorrows that befell me at his hand. And say that I think he should forgive me, too: for I have been stricken enough.
FOR a long, long time I sat in silence, unable to speak a word. At last, wiping a tear from my eye, I said to Tehilla:
Allow me to ask a question. Since the day when your father tore up the marriage contract, ninety years and more have elapsed. Do you really believe that Shraga is still alive? And if so, has anyone informed you where he may be found?
Tehilla answered: Shraga is not alive. Shraga has now been dead for thirty years. I know the year of his death, for in that year, on the seventh day of Adar, I went to a synagogue for the afternoon service. Following the week’s reading from the Prophets, they said the memorial prayer for the dead, and I heard them pray for the soul of Shraga. After the service, I spoke to the beadle of the synagogue, and asked him who this Shraga might be. He mentioned the name of a certain relative of the dead man, who had given instructions for his soul to be remembered. I went to this relative, and heard what I heard.
If Shraga is dead, then, how do you propose to send him a letter?
Tehilla answered: I suppose you are thinking that this poor old woman’s wits are beginning to fail her, after so many years; and that she is relying upon the post office to deliver a letter to a dead man.
I said: Then tell me, what will you do?
She rose, and picking up the clay jar that stood on the table, raised it high above her head, intoning in a kind of ritual chant:
I shall take this letter—and set it in this jar;—I shall take this wax—and seal up this jar;—and take them with me—this letter and this jar.
I thought to myself, And even if you take the jar and the letter with you, I still do not see how your message will come to Shraga. Aloud I said to her: Where will you take your jar with its letter?
Tehilla smiled and said softly: Where will I take it? I will take it to the grave, my dear. Yes, I shall take this jar, and the letter inside it, straight to my grave. For up in the Higher World they are well acquainted with Shraga, and will know where to find him. And the postmen of the Holy One are dependable, you may be sure; they will see that the letter is delivered.
Tehilla smiled again. It was a little smile of triumph, as of a precocious child who has outwitted her elders.
After a while she let her head sink upon her walking-stick and seemed again to be half asleep. But soon she glanced up and said: Now that you understand the whole matter, you can write it yourself. —And again her head drooped over her stick.
I took up the quill and wrote the letter. When I had finished, Tehilla raised her head and enquired: It is done now?—I began to read the letter aloud, while she sat with her eyes closed, as if she had lost interest in the whole matter and no longer desired very greatly to hear. When the reading was over, she opened her eyes and said:
Good, my son, good and to the point. Perhaps it might have been phrased rather differently, but even so, the meaning is clear enough. Now, my son, hand me the pen and I shall sign my name. Then I can put the letter in the jar; and after that I shall go about my lease.
I dipped the pen in the ink and handed it to her, and she took it and signed her name. She passed the pen over certain of the characters to make them more clear. Then she folded the letter and placed it inside the jar, and bound the piece of parchment over the top. Then she kindled the lamp, and took wax for sealing, and held it against the flame until the wax became soft; then she sealed the jar with the wax. Having done these things, she rose from her place and went towards her bed. She lifted up the coverlet and placed the jar under the pillow of the bed. Then she looked at me fairly, and said in a quiet voice:
I must make haste to confirm my lease. Bless you, my son, for the pains you have taken. From now on I shall not bother you any more.
So saying, she made smooth the coverlet of her bed, and took up her stick, and went to the door, and reached up that she might lay her lips to the mezuza, and waited for me to follow. She locked the door behind us and walked ahead with brisk steps; and I overtook her and went at her side.
As she walked, she looked kindly upon every place that she passed and every person that she met. Suddenly she stopped and said:
My son, how can they abandon these holy places and these faithful Jews?
At that time, I still did not comprehend all she meant by these words.
When we reached the parting of the ways, she stopped again and said: Peace be with you. But when she saw that I was resolved not to leave her, she said no more. She went up by the wide steps that lead to the courtyard of the Burial Society, and entered, and I followed.
We went into the Burial Society, which administers the affairs of the living and the dead. Two of the clerks sat there at a desk, their ledgers before them and their pens in their hands, writing and taking sips at their black coffee as they wrote. When they saw Tehilla, they set their pens down and stood up in respect. They spoke their welcome, and hastened to bring her a chair.
What brings you here? asked the elder of the two clerks.
She answered, I have come to confirm my lease.
He said: Yo
u have come to confirm your lease: and we are of opinion that the time has come to cancel it.
Tehilla was terrified.—What is all this? she cried.
He said: Surely you have already joined the immortals?
Laughing at his own joke, the clerk turned to me, saying: Tehilla, bless her, and may she live for many, many years, is in the habit of coming every year to confirm the bill of sale on the plot for her grave on the Mount of Olives. So it was last year, and the year before that, and three years ago, and ten and twenty and thirty years ago, and so will she go on till the coming of the Redeemer.
Said Tehilla: May he come, the Redeemer: may he come, the Redeemer! Would to God he would hasten and come! But as for me, I shall trouble you no more.
The clerk asked, assuming a tone of surprise: Are you going to a kibbutz, then, like these young girls they call “pioneers?”
Tehilla said: I am not going to a kibbutz, I am going to my own place.
What, said the clerk, are you returning abroad to your home country?
Tehilla said: I am not returning to my home country; I am returning to the place whence I came: as it is written, And to the dust thou shalt return.
Tut-tut, said the clerk, do you think that the Burial Society has nothing to do? Take my advice, and wait for twenty or thirty years more. Why all the haste?
She said quietly: I have already ordered the corpse-washers and the layers-out, and it would be ill-mannered to make sport of these good women.
The clerk’s expression changed, and it was evident that he regretted his light words. He now said:
It is good for us to see you here: for so long as we see you, we have before us the example of a long life; and should you desert us, God forbid, it is as if you take away from us this precedent.
Said Tehilla: Had I any more years to live, I would give them gladly to you, and to all who desire life. Here is the lease for you to sign.
When the clerk had endorsed the bill of sale, Tehilla took it and placed it in the fold of her dress. She said:
Now and henceforth I shall trouble you no more. May God be with you, dear Jews; for I go to my place.
She rose from her chair, and walked to the door and reached up to lay her lips to the mezuza, and kissed the mezuza, and so went away.
When she saw that I still went with her, she said: Return to your own affairs, my son.
I thought, said I, that when you spoke of confirming the lease, you meant the lease of your house; but instead…
She took me up in the midst of my words. But instead, said she, I confirmed the lease of my eternal home. Yet may the Holy One grant that I have no need to dwell there for long, before I rise again, with all the dead of Israel. Peace be upon you, my son. I must make haste and return to my house, for I am sure that the corpse-washers and the layers-out already await me.
I stood there in silence and watched her go, until she passed out of sight among the courts and the alleys.
NEXT morning I went to the City to enquire how she fared. On my way, I was stopped by the man of learning to whose house Tehilla had led me. For some while he kept me in conversation, and when I wished to take my leave, he offered to accompany me.
I am not going home yet, I said. I am on my way to see Tehilla.
He said: Go; at the end of a long life.
Seeing my surprise, he added: You must live. But that saint has now left us.
I parted from him and went on alone. As I walked, I thought again and again: Tehilla has left us, she has gone on alone: she has left us, and gone on alone. I found that my feet had carried me to the house of Tehilla, and I opened her door and entered.
Still and calm was the room: like a house of prayer, when the prayer has been said. There, on the stone floor, flowed the last tiny rivulets of the waters in which Tehilla had been cleansed.
Translated by Walter Lever
Revised and Annotated by Jeffrey Saks
Annotations to “Tehilla”
Mitzva / A commandment, good deed.
Rabbanit / The wife of a rabbi.
Mount of Olives / Site of an ancient Jewish cemetery, just to the east of Jerusalem’s Old City,
Eve of the New Moon / Special penitential prayers are recited by the faithful on the afternoon before the first of the month, a minor festival, in the Jewish lunar calendar. Many in Jerusalem customarily gathered at the Western Wall for these prayers.
The Place / A nickname for God, the Omnipresent who fills all places (Heb. Ha-makom).
Mandate and Mandatory Police / The British mandate over Palestine administered civil affairs from 1920-1948.
Balfour Declaration / 1917 British government declaration of support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Goy / Non-Jew; gentile.
Psalms appointed for the day / According to custom the 150 chapters of Psalms are divided into sections for daily recital over the course of the week or (likely in this case) over the course of the month.
Good thing to give thanks… / Psalms 92:2.
Yeshiva / Institute of traditional Jewish learning, principally of Talmud study.
Happy is he… / Psalms 65:5.
Ishmael / Biblical son of Abraham; here used as a nickname for Arabs.
Nahalat Shiva / One of the earliest Jerusalem neighborhoods built outside the walls of the Old City, starting in 1869.
Rebbe Yitzhak Meir Alter /1799-1866, founder of the Ger Hassidic dynasty.
Half my kingdom / Cf. Esther 5:3.
Writer / Tehilla is playing off the fact that in Hebrew a sofer is both a ritual scribe as well as a modern author.
Crown-paper / Special bonded stationery for use in sending official petitions or communications with the royal court of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Tomb of Rachel / Traditional burial site of the Biblical matriarch (cf. Gen. 35:9-20) on the outskirts of Bethlehem, about 5 miles south of Jerusalem’s Old City.
Tefillin / Phylacteries; cube-shaped leather containers containing passages from the Bible, worn by men on the arm and head during morning prayers.
Sect / Pejorative description of Hassidim used by their opponents.
Simhat Torah / Festival at conclusion of the Sukkot holiday on which the yearly cycle of Torah reading is concluded, and each man is honored with an aliyah, i.e., being called up to the Torah.
Rebbe / Signifies a Hassidic master (as distinct from a non-Hassidic rabbi).
Shulhan Arukh / 16th century code of Jewish law by R. Yosef Karo.
Havdala / Ceremony marking the end of the Sabbath.
Kibbutz / Collective farming community.
Tehilla Timeline
We should be careful to never fall into the trap of confusing an author and his narrator. Nevertheless, Agnon often utilized a narrator who the reader is meant to believe is an autobiographical projection of the author into the story. While there’s no clear timestamp on the story “Tehilla” there are certain historical events and indicators that help us map out a timeline for the plot. If we presume that the middle-aged writer who returns to Jerusalem from a period spent abroad, settles in the Nahalat Shiva neighborhood outside the walls of the Old City, and who sometimes “found a place for myself at the Wall, standing at times amongst the worshippers, at times amongst the bewildered bystanders,” is just such a case of autobiographical projection, then the story commences in the Fall of 1924, just before “the beginning of the rainy season.” In fact, Agnon returned to Jerusalem (settling initially in Nahalat Shiva) from his twelve year sojourn in Germany, on October 31, 1924. Working backwards we can conjecture as to the milestones in the long life of that righteous and wise and gracious and humble woman. (To clarify, “Agnon” below refers to the actual real-life author, “Narrator” refers to the character in “Tehilla”).
1820 – Shraga born (was one year older than Tehilla)
1821 – Tehilla born (104 years old in 1925)
1832 – Engagement to Shraga (one year before Shraga’s bar mitzva)
&nb
sp; 1833 – Wedding to Shraga cancelled; Tehilla marries husband
1836 – First son born (“Three years after the wedding I gave birth to a son…”)
1838 – Second son born (“…two years later, another son was born to me.”)
1840 – Daughter born (“And two years after that, I gave birth to a daughter.”)
1849 – First son dies (“My son had died after the havdala, at the ending of Sabbath, thirty days before he came of age for tefillin”; i.e., a month before bar mitzva)
1851 – Second son dies; husband seeks out Shraga and dies (similarly: “Two years later, the boy’s brother came of age – came, and did not come.”)
c. 1852-54? – Daughter engaged to Rabbanit’s father and her apostasy (presumably would have been married off around this age; in all cases I place this before 1855 for the following reason: The crown-paper she wishes the narrator to write her letter on in 1925 has been in her possession “upwards of seventy years”. Presumably this is the remainder of the paper stock on which she sent “her appeal [which] went up to the Emperor himself [i.e., to have her daughter returned to her]; and even the Emperor was powerless to help.” Crown-paper being special bonded stationery for use in sending official petitions or communications with the royal court of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.)
1860 – First neighborhood built outside Old City; Tehilla’s aliya before this (“The eye that has seen all Jerusalem enclosed within her walls cannot get accustomed to viewing what is built beyond the walls of the City itself.”)
1895 – Shraga dies (in 1925 Tehilla tells the Narrator: “Shraga has now been dead for thirty years.”)
Lag BaOmer 1908 – Agnon arrives in the Land of Israel
1912 – Agnon departs for Germany
1922 – British Mandate bans placing seats near the Western Wall (“I was driven from my place by one of the British police who carried a baton. This man was in a great rage, on account of some ailing old woman who had brought a stool with her to the Wall. The policeman jumped to it and gave a kick, throwing the woman to the ground, and confiscated the stool: for she had infringed the law enacted by the legislators of the Mandate, which forbade worshippers to bring seats to the Wall.”)