S. Agnon - A Guest for the NIght

This was one of the two windows of our old Beit Midrash that faced the hillside. When I was a boy I used to stand there at one of the tall desks studying and writing poetry. Often I would look out of that window and, as it were, try to teach the Almighty what He should do with me in the future. What a pity I did not allow my blessed Creator to do His will, for my teachings were not successful.

A wonderful light shone from the Beit Midrash upon the hillside and from the hillside upon the Beit Midrash, a light such as you have never seen in your lives, one light made up of many luminosities. Nowhere else in the world will you find such a place. I stood there and said to myself: I will not move from here until it be His will to take my soul from me. And even though I had thought of my death I was not sad. Perhaps my face was not joyful, but my heart was glad. And I am almost certain that not for years had I had this feeling: my heart was joyful but my face did not share its joy.

The elder knocked on the table and called out, “Additional Service!” So they put back the Scrolls in the Ark and the cantor took his place before the pulpit. He bowed low, laid his head on the prayer book, and said the prayer that begins, “Here I am, poor in deeds!” Then he recited the short Kaddish, but he mingled with the tune some of the themes of the mourners’ Kaddish. Again I stared at the hill facing our Beit Midrash and said to myself: From this side you can be sure that they will not come to kill you. That is why our forefathers used to build their Beit Midrash next to a hill, for if the murderers came to kill them they would take shelter there, so that the hill might defend them on the one side and the authorities on the other. Until a man’s last day comes, he has no better place than this.

Between the Additional and the Afternoon Service, the people came back and sat down to rest. I went over and sat down among them.

One of them spoke up: “Reb Shlomo took longer over the Additional today than ever before.” “If he takes as long over the Closing Service, we won’t eat before midnight,” replied another. Said a third, “Perhaps you have a pound of meat and half a liter of wine waiting for you at home, that you are so worried the prayer might take too long? You’ll be lucky if you have enough food for a tooth and a half.”

I broke into their conversation and said, referring to our old Beit Midrash, “A fine place you have.” One of them sighed and said, “Fine or not so fine, in any case we are leaving town immediately after the Holy Day.” “What do you mean, ‘leaving town’?” I asked. “Leaving town means that we are going away from the town,” he replied. “Some are going to America and some to other countries where even Adam never set foot.” “And where no one is sure he will be allowed to enter,” added the other. “How can you leave what is certain and go to seek what is in doubt?” said I. Said he, “Some things are certain, and not in any doubt; for instance, that we, who suffered from the pogroms, certainly cannot live here.” “I heard there were massacres here three or four years ago and the newspapers reported them,” I said with a sigh. “Yes, my dear friend,” said he, “there were massacres here — four years ago, three years ago, a year ago, and three months ago. But the newspapers reported only the first massacres, which were a novelty, when my Gentile neighbor and I were brothers in distress and stood together as one man in battle; but when we came out alive from the war and went home, he found his fields and gardens still there, while I found nothing, and in the end he raised his hand to kill me. Then, when the massacres were repeated a second and a third time, they were no longer a novelty, and the newspapers no longer reported them. And they were right not to report them. Was it really necessary to make all the Jews depressed, or to let the Gentiles far away hear about them and learn from their brothers? As I always say, ever since they gave publicity to what happened at Kishinev, there has been no period without its pogroms. Now I don’t say that Esau, the wicked one, hates blood, for Esau’s hands are hot, and when he is enraged he takes an axe and kills. But to go out in gangs and kill — that they learned from the newspapers. And once they had learned, it became a habit. As for help in money and clothes, by the time one town sends help to another, it is overtaken by the pogroms and needs help itself. Now you know, sir, why we are leaving this place. We are leaving the place because He whose place is on high has left us, though He has not left us any peace.”

“Can you leave like this a place where you and your fathers lived?” said I. “We never thought it was an easy thing,” he replied, “but a man wants to live and not to die.” I spread out my hands toward the walls of the Beit Midrash and said, “Will you leave this place where your fathers prayed?” “Perhaps you would like to settle down here, sir,” said Elimelech Kaiser, “and pray in the same place as your fathers? These tourists stay in fine great cities, and travel about all over the world, and they tell us to stay here where we are, where our fathers prayed, so that we should have the privilege of dying as holy martyrs and win the world’s praises by showing what fine people the Jews are, who willingly accept suffering and die for the glory of God. Esau butchers us because it’s the way of the powerful to raise his hand against the weak, and they come along and tell us that the Holy One, blessed be He, wants to purify Israel. Isn’t that so, sir? And another thing they ask of us, that we should make all our days either the Day of Atonement or the Fast of Av or Sabbath, to show that this people cleaves to its God and mourns for Jerusalem. But people’s simple needs for the Sabbath, and a morsel of bread after the fast, don’t interest them. You’ve heard the people talking; don’t you know they’ve been standing in prayer since last night? Do you think any of us knows what he’ll break his fast with?”

No man should be judged by what he says in distress. It was obvious that he too was one of those who did not know with what they would break their fast. He took my hand and said, “Perhaps you would like to know the story of one man — for instance, that old man who led the prayers? I’ll tell you. There are places in the Land of Israel they call kvutzot. Young lads and girls work there and live as laborers. His son Yeruham lived in a kvutza called Ramat Rahel. He wrote to his father: Come and stay with us, like other old men, my comrades’ parents. But before the old man could make the journey, an Arab attacked his son and killed him. Now he has no son and no place to live.”

“Slander, Elimelech,” broke in one man, “slander! Didn’t Yeruham’s comrades write to Reb Shlomo that he should come to them and they would give him a home and his keep as if his son were alive?” “And if they wrote, what about it?” retorted Elimelech. “Don’t you know that he doesn’t want to go? He doesn’t want them to have to keep him; he has pity on them, because they have to keep the orphan Yeruham left behind him, and they themselves can hardly make a living. The Almighty knows what He is doing, but in this we are entitled to have our doubts about His ways. For what difference would it have made to Him if Yeruham had lived? Didn’t he fully obey the commandment to honor one’s father? Isn’t that so, Reb Shlomo?”

Reb Shlomo raised his head from his prayer book, wiped both eyes with the corner of his prayer shawl, and said, “There was not a festival when I didn’t receive money from him, besides what he used to send me at other times.” As he was speaking, he fumbled in his prayer book and said, “I will show you something interesting.” He took out a letter from the book and smoothed out the envelope. I looked at it without seeing anything interesting. The old man noticed and pointed to the stamps, saying, “They’re from the Land of Israel, with Hebrew letters on them!” And Reb Shlomo continued, “When I received the first letter I put it in the prayer book next to the blessing ‘Who buildeth Jerusalem,’ and today I placed it in the festival book at the prayer ‘And because of our sins we were exiled from our Land,’ so as to bring to the Almighty’s attention the merits of the Land for which my son gave his life.”