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

by S. Agnon

  In order to lend authority to these new directives it was instructed that they be inscribed in the pinqas, the great communal register, because anything written down there was meticulously followed. They further instructed that the entire story told by the shamash also be recorded in the pinqas, because stories awaken the heart, especially of those who cannot picture something unless they read it in writing. So shortly thereafter a scribe wrote out all the details of the story, and he considered it so important that he decided to begin it on a new page in the pinqas lest it get lost among all the things written there previously. The town leaders then read the story and decided that it deserved a wider hearing beyond Buczacz. They agreed amongst themselves that should anyone ever find himself in another town, he would be sure to tell there the whole tale, certainly if he would see someone talking during the service or the reading of the Torah. And he would tell it without fear of intimidation by any of the locals, for the impudent pass on while the word of our God stands firm forever.

  So the scribe wrote out the whole story in words true and wise, in the way words were used in Buczacz at the time when Buczacz was Buczacz. Some of the words were from the Torah, some from the sages, all of them had an eloquence that gives tongue to knowledge. The town leaders read the document and showed it to the local maskilim. In Buczacz and the Kingdom of Poland of those days, the term maskilim referred to men broadly learned in many branches of wisdom, men who exemplified the ideal of Understanding and knowing Me. It did not apply to those who strayed from the path of reason, of whom David complained, Is there any man of understanding who seeks after God? The maskilim read what was written and saw that the scribe indeed had a sophisticated sense of style and grammar, and they acknowledged it, one with words of praise, one with a simple nod of the head. There was one who equivocated and could not say whether it was good or bad, for it is human nature that what one person deems beautiful, another does not. In the end, though, even he admitted that the scribe had expressed everything exactly as it was meant to be written.

  The scribe took the document and looked it over a few times, changing a word here, a phrase there. Sometimes the revisions needed are apparent to a writer from the language itself, and sometimes simply from how the words look to him on the page. The writer has to struggle mightily until he finds the appropriate words, and then when he thinks he has found them, others occur to him that look even better. Were it not for the mercies of Heaven, this process of revision could go on forever. Only a writer who is a fool will think that he has found exactly the right words; a wise one knows that the only correct words are the ones revealed in the Torah, the prophets, and the other books of the Bible. Therefore, the more a writer truly knows the Hebrew language, the more anxious he will be that in his writing he may have, Heaven forfend, tarnished a word.

  Why is it that all the other languages are spoken and written without difficulty, whereas Hebrew requires that every word be given extra consideration and that careful attention be paid to word order and syntax? Because all the other languages were devised by humans, whereas Hebrew is the language in which the Torah was given and with whose letters the world was created. Just as there is no letter in the Torah that does not hold great significance, so there is nothing in the world that is superfluous, because everything is ordered as God desires. In the same way, anything composed in Hebrew, the language of holiness, cannot have words that are superfluous or anything in it that is out of place. Hebrew is special for other reasons too, as those who have studied the matter know.

  After he made his corrections, the scribe sat down and copied everything out in a handsome script, the letters written the way they were written in Buczacz at the time when Buczacz was Buczacz, each letter distinct unto itself and each one in its place on the line, like people standing for the silent devotion, where the tall ones stick up like a lamed and the short ones are small as a yod, and all of them are directed to the same place. Had the pinqas not been consumed in the flames, we could have read the entire story just as it was set down in its true and original form, with the unique blend of wisdom and faith that marked all that our ancestors wrote and did and thought and said. But now that book is no more, and Buczacz is destroyed, and many thousands of Jews have been slain, the least of them the equal of the most eminent of the Gentiles, who watched the loathsome monsters destroy the world and did nothing. From our town there were those who were buried alive in graves they dug for themselves; there were those who were never buried; and there were those upon whom the murderers poured kerosene and were immolated one by one, limb by limb.

  So now, since that pinqas went up in the flames, and Buczacz has been destroyed, and the deeds of the former generations have been forgotten in the recent suffering, I pondered the possibility that the Gehinnom of our time would make us forget the Gehinnom that the shamash saw, and the story about it, and all we can learn from that story. So I said to myself, Let me put it all down in a book and thus create a memorial to a holy community that sanctified its life in its death as its ancestors sanctified their lives with Torah, which is our life.

  (And may I achieve some merit if what I write will motivate some denizens of Jerusalem. For I have seen even here in Jerusalem, the holy city, the gate of heaven, from whence all prayers ascend, that there are people who sit in synagogues and houses of study and talk during the service and the reading of the Torah. I asked my pen, Will you join me in writing this story? And my pen said, Give me your words and I will put your story down on paper. I gave it my words and now the story is written on paper.

  Would that my toil has not been for naught nor my effort in vain. And that all who guard their mouth and their tongue will give honor to their Maker and sit in fear and in awe before the One who is above all praise, when the Torah is being read and the prayers are being said, on New Moon and Sabbath and festivals and weekdays. Then the meditation of every heart and the offering of their voices shall ascend in favor before the Lord of all, and they shall be pleasing to God as in days of old, as is written, May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to You, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.)

  The noble story The Parable and Its Lesson is now complete.

  NOTES

  1 Khmelnitski pogroms In 1648–49 the Cossack leader Bogdan Khmelnitski, as part of the uprising against the Polish Commonwealth, led a campaign of atrocities against Jews in the Ukraine. Jews were prime targets of Cossack fury because they were agents of the Polish aristocracy, who hired them to manage their estates. As many as tens of thousands of Jews were murdered and many communities were destroyed. The massacres were deeply rooted in the collective memory of Ashkenazic Jewry until the Holocaust overshadowed them. In Jewish annalistic literature Khmelnitski is often referred to as “Khmiel.”

  2 through which his soul passes The idea that a name contains the essence of a person has its roots in Kabbalistic doctrine, as does the notion of gilgul neshamot (lit. the cycle of souls), in which the soul of a person cycles through a series of bodily incarnations over time.

  6 weekly Torah portion Mishpatim The weekly Torah portion comprising Exodus 21:1–24:18.

  6 portion of Ha’azinu The weekly Torah portion comprising Deuteronomy 32.

  6 the passage haniglot vehanistarot Lit. “The revealed and the hidden. . . .” These words occur in Deuteronomy 29:28. The authorized Hebrew (Masoretic) text of this verse contains eleven dots above these words and above the first letter of the word that follows. The origin and import of these dots is the subject of both scholarly speculation and midrashic interpretation. The JPS TANAKH renders the verse “Concealed acts concern the Lord our God; but with overt acts, it is for us and our children ever to apply all the provisions of this Teaching.”

  6 the piyyut Unetanneh tokef A piyyut is a liturgical poem. The piyyut referred to here, Unetanneh tokef (Let Us Declare the Holiness of the Day), is recited during the Musaf service on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Though its origins are earlier, the present text was written by t
he eleventh-century poet Kalonymus ben Meshullam Kalonymus of Mainz, Germany. Legend attributes it to one Amnon of Mainz, who is said to have composed it as he was being martyred by the local bishop for refusing to convert to Christianity. Three days after his death, so the story goes, he appeared to Kalonymus in a dream and taught him the poem.

  7 prayer recited upon Called in Hebrew tefillat haderekh, it is traditionally recited by travelers as they set out on a journey.

  8 seven nuptial benedictions Seven benedictions are chanted at the marriage ceremony and at the ensuing wedding feast. During the week following the wedding, tradition mandates that a festive meal for the newlyweds be held each day. At the end of each meal, following the Grace, the seven benedictions are repeated. In order to ensure that the blessings remain fresh, it is customary to make sure there is present at each of the meals at least one “new face,” i.e., someone who did not attend either the wedding ceremony or any of the previous meals. If there is not, the seven benedictions are not recited, except for the blessing over a cup of wine at the conclusion of the Grace after the meal.

  8 Kiddushin The talmudic tractate that treats the laws of betrothal.

  8 tractate Ḥagigah Kaftor vaferaḥ is a Hebrew treatise on rabbinic aggadah by Yaakov bar Yitzchak Luzzato, Safed, ca. 1527–1587. In the Lemberg, 1891 edition, the tale is found on p. 66a. The talmudic tractate Ḥagigah deals with the laws of the festival sacrifices.

  8 Aaron began to inquire It is unclear exactly what kind of inquiry Aaron is engaging in or who he is reading. Clearly it involves the philosophical speculation about first things and the problem of evil that was prevalent in the late seventeenth century.

  9 qelipot Lit. shells or husks. The reference is to the complex notion in Lurianic Kabbalah of “the breaking of the vessels.” Qelipot signify the impurity and grossness that adhere to a person living in the unredeemed cosmos.

  11 Behukotai The Torah portion comprising Leviticus 26:3–27:34, generally read during May.

  12 melamed One who teaches Torah to children.

  12 banned by the community The reference is to niddui, a temporary ban (as opposed to excommunication) that could be imposed by the rabbinic authorities to ostracize and discipline a recalcitrant member of the community. The practice goes back to rabbinic times but with modifications was applied by later Jewish communities. It has currency today only in ultra-Orthodox communities.

  13 Fear no man Deuteronomy 1:17.

  13 Rabbenu Tam’s tefillin Jewish law records a debate between Rashi (1040–1105) and his grandson, Rabbi Jacob Tam (usually referred to as Rabbenu Tam, ca. 1100–1171), over the order in which the parchments containing passages from the Torah are to be positioned inside the tefillin fitted on the head. Jews who are fastidious about the observance of this precept will don both Rashi and Rabbenu Tam tefillin on weekday mornings.

  13 Mountains of Darkness See Babylonian Talmud tractate Tamid 32b: “The Tanna de-be Eliyahu taught: Gehinnom is above the firmament; some, however, say that is behind the Mountains of Darkness.”

  14 Sabbath of Repentance The Sabbath of Repentance (Hebrew, Shabbat Shuvah) is the Sabbath between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Its name derives from the opening words of the prophetic reading that follows the Torah reading at the morning service: “Shuvah yisra’el” (Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God; Hosea 14:2.) It was customary on that Sabbath for the rabbi to present a major discourse or sermon on the theme of repentance to prepare the congregants for Yom Kippur.

  15 Israel in the desert See Exodus 13:21ff., 40:34ff., Numbers 9:15–23.

  16 Shas A Hebrew acronym for (1) shomer sefarim, which has the sense of book collector or bibliophile; and (2) “shishah sedarim” (six orders or parts), a Hebrew designation for the Mishnah, which contains six volumes. The term is used more broadly to denote the many tomes that contain the elaboration of the Mishnah in the sixty-three tractates of the Babylonian Talmud.

  16 Akdamut hymn Composed by Meir ben Isaac Nehorai (eleventh century, northern France). The ninety-line piyyut is read by Ashkenazic Jews at the morning service on Shavuot just prior to the reading from the Torah.

  17 Gehinnom has seven names Babylonian Talmud, tractate ‘Eruvin 19a.

  18 twentieth of Sivan The day on which the Jewish community of Nemirov was destroyed in the Cossack uprising of 1648. It came to be designated as a minor fast day to mark all the Khmelnitski massacres. In the Middle Ages Rabbi Jacob Tam designated the same date as a day of mourning for the Jews burned alive in the blood libel in Blois, France, in 1171.

  18 Strypa A tributary of the Dniester river in Galicia, now western Ukraine, on which Buczacz is located.

  18 tashlikh ritual The water used for making Passover matzah must be “water that has stood overnight,” such that the dough will be sufficiently cool so as not to make it ferment quickly. The water must be drawn by a Jew from a river or well, placed in a clean vessel, and allowed to stand overnight or at least for twelve hours. Tashlikh (casting away) is the ritual performed on Rosh Hashanah afternoon or in the days following, in which one’s sins are symbolically cast away into a naturally flowing body of water.

  19 My beloved knocks Song of Songs 5:2.

  19 for Thou art with me Psalm 23:4.

  20 from the hollow of the sling The reference here is to the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Shabbat 152b, where the two parts of a biblical verse (1 Samuel 25:29) are cited and interpreted: “R. Eliezer said, ‘The souls of the righteous are ensconced beneath the heavenly throne, as it is written, May the soul of my lord be bound up in the bundle of life in the care of the Lord. But the souls of the wicked are perpetually confined [to the hollow of a sling] and an angel stands at one end of the universe and another angel stands at the other end of the universe and they sling the souls [of the wicked back and forth] to one another, as it is written, But He will fling the souls of your enemies as from the hollow of a sling’.”

  21 Ari Acronymic name of Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534–1572), Jewish mystic and a major theorist of Kabbalah.

  21 raising up the souls The four letters of the Hebrew word mishnah can be transposed to the word neshamah (soul).

  23 the Kanah and the Peli’ah Sefer ha-peli’ah and Sefer hakanah are works of cosmogonic and theosophic speculation. Their authorship is uncertain, as are their date and country of origin. Some scholars place them in Spain of the late fourteenth century. Both works are marked by a strong antinomian strain.

  23 will find the door open to him Babylonian Talmud tractate Menaḥot 29b and in other places with variants.

  23 what will be in the end The allusion is to Mishnah Ḥagigah 2:1: “Whoever gives his mind to four things, it were better for him had he not come into this world: what is above, what is beneath, what was beforetime, and what will be in the hereafter.”

  24 the superhuman sons of God See Genesis 6:1–4.

  24 over the surface of the deep Genesis 1:2.

  24 the domain of the qelipot Elhanan Shilo, in a private correspondence, notes that Agnon’s language here is citing Naftali Bacharach in his book expositing Lurianic Kabbakah, Emek hamelekh, 16:11.

  24 induced its curse within him See Numbers 5:11–31, where the procedure prescribed for a woman suspected of adultery is detailed.

  24 and an inner one Otzar hamidrashim, ‘olam katan, no. 4.

  25 to sleep in one’s house all alone Babylonian Talmud tractate Shabbat 151b.

  26 from transgression, says the Lord Isaiah 59:20.

  27 his share in the world to come Babylonian Talmud tractates Bava Metziah 59a and Sanhedrin 107a.

  28 than the flights of desire Ecclesiastes 6:9.

  28 a compartment they call Tsalmavet The idea that Gehinnom is composed of different compartments is found in the Babylonian Talmud tractates Sotah 10b and ‘Eruvin 19a.

  28 larger than Earth Job 11:9.

  29 wrapped in silver-crowned talitot Exodus 12:37 and Numbers 11:21 report that 600,000 adult males went forth from Egypt. This number is made more precise i
n the censuses noted in Exodus 38:26 and Numbers 1:46, where the figure given is 603,550 adult males. Accordingly, when women and children are added, the total of those who left Egypt would be over two million. Thus the number of people implied here is astronomical.

  29 chief rabbis and heads of yeshivot Chief rabbis or Landesrabbiner were regional head rabbis of districts and provinces in the countries of Central Europe. A Rosh Yeshivah is the head rabbi of a talmudical academy (Yeshivah).

  29 Sabbath boundary The Sabbath boundary (teḥum shabbat) is the distance beyond the defined city limits that one is permitted to walk on the Sabbath, stipulated in rabbinic sources as two thousand cubits or about three-quarters of a mile.

  31 has given to mankind Psalm 115:16.

  31 Otem This name comes from the Hebrew root ‘atom, to stop up, as in Proverbs 21:13 Who stops his ears at the cry of the wretched.

  31 what the living say Based on Babylonian Talmud tractate Berakhot 27b.

  33 their own compartment of Gehinnom See Midrash Ecclesiastes Rabbah 3:9 for the idea that individuals of like profession or vocation are assigned to their own particular compartment of Gehinnom.

  33 a candle of the Lord Proverbs 20:27.

  34 whose transgression is forgiven Psalm 32:2.

  34 forgives iniquity Exodus 34:6–7.

  35 cross through your land Leviticus 26:6.

  35 in accordance with Your word Psalm 119:28.

  35 in rumbling hordes After the Khmelnitski massacres of 1648, there were serious invasions of Galicia by Tatars and Turks in the 1670s.