S. Agnon - A Book that Was Lost

From morning to evening the quill wrote on the parchment and beautiful black letters glistened and alighted on the parchment as birds upon the snow on the Sabbath when the Song of Moses is read. When he came to the writing of the great and awesome Name he would go down to the ritual bath and immerse himself.

Thus he sat and wrote until he completed the entire Torah scroll.

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But the doing does not flow as fast as the words. Raphael sat at his toil a long time before he completed the writing of the scroll. His face shrank, his cheeks became hollow, his temples sunken, his eyes larger and larger, as he sat bewildered in the emptiness of his desolate house. Near its hole a mouse plays with a discarded quill, and the cat lies dejectedly on the abandoned oven. A month comes and a month goes, and time sprinkles his earlocks with gray. Raphael prods himself with the sage’s saying: “Raphael, Raphael, do not forget death because death will not forget you.” Month comes and month goes and there is no action and no work done. The sheet of parchment lies on the table and the quill lies in the sunshine, and the sun’s reflection out of the quill shines as the hidden light from among the wings of the celestial creatures. Sunbeams come down to bathe in the scribe’s inkwell, and when they depart in order to bid welcome to the shadows of the night, the sheet of parchment lies unchanged.

At times Raphael summoned strength, dipped the pen in ink, and wrote a word, but this did not lead to any more work because his eyes filled with tears. When he sat down to write a single letter in the Torah, immediately his eyes brimmed with tears which rolled down to the parchment.

In vain do builders build palaces

If a flooding river sweeps away their foundations;

In vain do people kindle a memorial candle

If the orphans extinguish it with their tears.

And when he swallowed his tears and said to himself, Now I will work, now I will write, he would reach such a peak of devout ecstasy that his quill spattered droplets of ink, and he was unable to write even a single letter properly.

It is told of the Rabbi of Zhitomir that he once asked the Rabbi of Berditchev about the biblical verse “And Aaron did so,” on which the commentator Rashi, of blessed memory, commented that Aaron did not deviate from God’s instructions. This is puzzling; how could it have been otherwise? The Holy One, blessed be He, told Aaron to kindle the lights; would it have been possible for Aaron to deviate? Had God instructed an ordinary man to do this, would that man have deviated? Therefore, what is so praiseworthy about Aaron’s not having deviated? However, if the Holy One, blessed be He, had told the Rabbi of Berditchev to kindle the lights, he would surely have felt ecstasy and awe and fervor, and if he tried to kindle them he would spill the oil on the ground, and, because of his awe, would not succeed in kindling them. But Aaron, even though he surely possessed ecstasy and awe and fervor more than any other person, when he came to kindle the lights, he did as God commanded, without any deviation.

That winter it once happened that the bathhouse in Raphael’s town was closed down by the authorities because it was near collapse, and when Raphael reached a place in the Torah scroll where the Name had to be written, he could find no bath of purification. He took an ax, went down to the river on the outskirts of the town, broke the ice, immersed himself in the water three times, and returned and wrote the Name with the joy of wondrous fervor. At that moment Raphael attained the merit of discovering the divine secret that before a man is able to rise to the height of joyous fervor he has to be like a man who stands in icy water on a snowy day.

From then on Raphael sat, physically weakened, in the joy of silence, and with emaciated hand he wielded the quill on the parchment until he completed his scroll. The wooden rollers on which the parchment sheets are rolled, and other sacred implements, he made himself. In this he may be compared to a host who always had guests in his house and had several servants waiting on them. Once he made a feast for the king. Who should properly wait on the king? Surely the host himself.

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And now let us recall the custom — a custom in Israel is like a law — observed at the completion of the writing of a Torah scroll.

When a scribe is about to complete a scroll, he leaves several verses at the end unfinished, in outlined lettering, in order that any Jew who had not himself had the privilege to fulfill the biblical admonition “And now ye shall write down this song for yourselves” may be afforded the opportunity to come and fill in one of the letters of the Torah. And whoever is so favored takes a pen, dips its tip in ink, and fills in the hollow, outlined letter. Raphael put down his quill, having left several verses in outlined letters, and said to himself: I shall go and invite a quorum of ten Jews, so that the Torah will not be lonely, and saintly Jews may see and rejoice in the completion of a Torah. He walked over to the mirror to look into it and straighten out his earlocks and his beard in honor of the Torah and in honor of those who would come to rejoice with him.

The mirror was covered with a sheet. From the day of Miriam’s death, peace be with her, no one had removed this sign of mourning. Raphael pulled aside the end of the sheet, looked into the mirror, and saw his own face, and the east-wall embroidery across the room, and the scroll he had written, with the hollow, outlined letters at its end. At that moment his soul stirred and he returned to the table, took the quill, and filled in the letters in the scroll he had written in memory of his wife’s soul. When he completed the task he rolled up the scroll, raised it high, dancing with great joy, and he leaped and danced and sang in honor of the Torah. Suddenly Raphael stopped, puzzled about the melody he was singing in honor of the completion of the scroll. He felt sure that he had heard this melody before but could not remember where he had heard it. And now, even when he closed his lips the singing of the melody continued by itself. Where had he heard this melody?

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Having mentioned the melody, I shall not refrain from relating where he had heard it.

It was the evening of Simhat Torah. That evening the rabbi’s house of study was full of bright lights, every light fixture glowing with a radiance from on high. Righteous and saintly Hasidim clothed in white robes of pure silk, with Torah scrolls in their arms, circled the pulpit, dancing with holy fervor and enjoying the pleasures of the Torah. A number of Hasidim as well as ordinary householders get the privilege of dancing with them, and they cling to the sacred Torah and to those who selflessly obey the Torah, and they forget all anger and all disputes and all kinds of troublesome trivialities. And their young children form an outer circle around them, each child carrying a colored flag, red or green or white or blue, each flag inscribed with letters of gold. On top of each flag is an apple, and on top of each apple a burning candle, and all the candles glow like planets in the mystical “field of sacred apples.” And when young boys or girls see their father receive this honor, carrying a Torah scroll in his arms, they immediately jump toward him, grasping the scroll, caressing, embracing, kissing it with their pure lips that have not tasted sin; they clap their hands and sing sweetly, “Happy art thou, O Israel,” and their fathers nod their heads toward the children, singing “Ye holy lambs.” And the women in the outer lobby feast their eyes on this exalted holiness.

When the seventh round of the procession around the pulpit is reached, the cantor takes a Torah scroll to his bosom and calls out to the youths, “Whoever studies the Torah, let him come and take a Torah scroll,” and a number of fine youths come and take scrolls in their arms.