S. Agnon - A Guest for the NIght

“I see, Hanoch, that you do not know what theaters are, so I will tell you. A theater is a house to which respectable householders go. And why do they go there when they have houses of their own? Because sometimes a man tires of his own house and goes to another house.

“That other house, the theater, is like this: People perform there who have never seen a house in their lives, but they pretend they know everything that there is in a house; so they show the householders all that there is in their own houses, and the householders are delighted and clap their hands and say: Fine, fine. Surely they should know that it is not fine, because it is not true. But there are two groups, and each believes that what is shown in the theater is true of the other. Yet there is one man who does not believe this, for that man is at home in both houses, and knows what is to be found in each of them.”

Let us leave the theaters and the plays and speak of other things. Once I told Hanoch in what year he was born, and Hanoch was surprised that I knew even this. And he did not know that from the name of a pious Jew one can tell the year of his birth. “How so? Because you were named Hanoch after that pious man Rabbi Hanoch of Olesca, for if you had been born a year before his passing or a year after, your father would have called you after another pious man who passed away the year you were born.” Similarly I revealed to him the name of his horse. The true name of this horse, which Hanoch calls “My right hand” and the children call “Pharaoh’s steed,” is neither “My right hand” nor “Pharaoh’s steed,” but Henoch, for Henoch is the everyday form of the name Hanoch, and because it is not fitting to call an animal by a holy name, therefore I call him Henoch.

“Now it is worth while inquiring into the name of your cart. It is impossible to call it a chariot; first, because a chariot is usually harnessed to many horses, and second, because of the verse in Haggai : ‘And I will overthrow the chariots, and those that ride in them.’ You are a modest man, Hanoch; you are fit to be a shepherd. The shepherd walks beside his sheep or sits facing them and recites psalms like King David, may he rest in peace, and the whole Land of Israel is open before him, east and west, north and south. If you like, you sit by streams of water and say: ‘He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters.’ Or, if you wish, you go up to the mountains and say: ‘Who maketh grass to grow upon the mountains; He giveth the beast his food.’ Perhaps you are afraid of robber bands, but you need not be afraid. It happened once that a child went up to the heights of the mountain of Ephraim to graze his lamb. A certain Arab came, stole the child’s lamb, and slaughtered it. The child began to cry. A certain shepherd came and judged the Arab according to the verdict of the Torah, which is prescribed in the section on judgments in the twenty-second chapter of the Book of Exodus. The Arab went and brought the child’s father four lambs instead of one. The child’s father asked the Arab, ‘What is this?’ ‘I stole your son’s lamb and slaughtered it,’ the Arab replied, ‘and a shepherd of your folk, of the sons of Moses, came and ordered me to make the fourfold payment.’ When this became known in the village, all the Jews went up to the top of the hill to the shepherd and said to him: ‘Master, son of Moses our Teacher, every day we are robbed, every day we are slaughtered, every day we are killed; come and guard the sheep that are led to the killing.’ He said to them: “‘Hide thyselves as it were for a little moment, until the indignation is past.” Wait a little until the indignation of the Almighty passes away and He gives us permission to return to the Land of Israel, and rely upon His blessed mercies that He will protect you as a shepherd his flock.’”

Since the day I first met Hanoch I had not seen him rejoice so much as when he heard the story of the shepherd. And to add to his joy, I told him more things about the hills of the Land of Israel, which fill with gold at evening time, and about the valleys and gorges, whose color is like the blue of the sky, and about the sun that wraps a man around like a prayer shawl, and about the rains of the Land, which the Almighty brings down when the people of Israel do His will, and every single drop is enough to fill a mikveh. And if a little snow falls, the Almighty immediately brings out the sun and melts it. For the Land of Israel is not like the lands of the other nations, where the snow comes down without a stop and the sun hides itself and does not come out, and a man is covered and hidden by the snow and his wife and children cry and are not answered. And where is the sun? Has it no mercy on the children of Israel? In those days the sun is busy ripening the oranges in the Land of Israel and cannot visit the lands of exile.

You cannot find a better man to talk to than Hanoch. But one must be careful or one might be led to pride, for he imagines that because you are a wiseacre you are a prophet.

And it was for this that I had already rebuked him, explaining that a prophet knows nothing by himself and is only the agent of the Almighty, neither adding to nor taking away from the Almighty’s message, and since the day the vision was blocked, prophecy has been taken away. And I returned to the beginning of the matter and explained to him the difference between imagination and reality. Reality is bother without bliss, and imagination is bliss without bother.

After I had explained all of this to him, I said farewell; first, so as not to weary him with words, and second, because his horse was already impatient at standing still. As he left, I told him he should bring wood to stoke the fire, for on account of our many sins we have been exiled from our Land and we cannot endure the cold.

It is to Hanoch’s credit that he does his work properly. Every three or four days he brings to the Beit Midrash a cartful of chopped wood, which I lay behind the stove and arrange very neatly. Wood is all the glory of a stove, so I bow before the stove and kindle the fire in it.

The fire blazes up in the stove; the wood crackles in the fire; the resin drips from the wood and sizzles in the fire. Sometimes a maggot appears on a log and is consumed together with it. I say to the maggot, “And in the priest’s stove would you be any better off than here?” But it writhes and makes no reply. And since it does not answer I refrain from speaking further to it, not because I look down on it, but a worm that writhes because it is being burned in the Beit Midrash is not worth speaking to.

Who let men in on the secret that a fire is being lit in the old Beit Midrash? A bird from heaven spread the news. For many days no one had looked at the Beit Midrash, then along came a bird from heaven and stood on the roof and found the chimney warm. He called his wife, his sons, and his daughters, who came and surrounded the chimney. Their neighbors saw and joined them. Before much time had passed, the entire chimney was surrounded by birds.

A woman raised her eyes and said to her friend, “Friend, what have the birds seen that makes them gather there? Look! There is smoke coming out of the Beit Midrash.” “Friend,” said her friend, “I have heard that that Jerusalemite is keeping the fire going in the stove, and the birds are coming to warm themselves by the chimney.” “Friend,” said her friend, “I am going to my husband to tell him.” “Go and tell your husband,” said her friend, “I have no one to tell, for my husband died in the war.” So she went and told her husband. He went into the Beit Midrash, where he found the place warm and the stove lit. He stretched out his hands and said, “What a pleasure!” When his hands and feet and the rest of his body had been warmed, he took a book and sat down to read, until his eyelids were gripped by sleep and he dropped off. After a time he awoke and said, “Paradise, paradise!” I feel certain that in a dream he had been shown paradise open, with the pious sitting and studying the Torah, and looking just like our Beit Midrash.