S. Agnon - The Parable and Its Lesson - A Novella

Our Master could see the agony of his little relative who was not yet fifteen and was already an agunah. He put aside all his civic affairs and obligations and even his regular lectures on Maimonides and Alfasi and began to look into the matter of freeing this agunah. He had, apparently, abandoned all hope that Zlateh’s husband would ever return. He searched for some ruling that would permit this woman to be freed from the chains of the marital bond. But no such ruling could he find.

Our Master, may the memory of the righteous be for a blessing, possessed prophetic powers that enabled him to divine that Aaron was dead. If he were alive, he reasoned, the law would be clear: it would be an open-and-shut case for all the rabbinical authorities and I would not even look for a way to permit her to marry where there is none. Furthermore, he ruminated, when I ponder the legal status of this poor girl, my heart and my head are divided. My head knows the law on the books while my heart tells me that maybe, or quite possibly, she is no agunah. Yet so long as no one comes forward to say that they saw him dead and buried, she remains a married woman plain and simple, and there is no way to declare her eligible to remarry. Can you imagine the compassion that saintly man had for this last surviving member of his family, a girl not yet fifteen who faced the prospect of living out her years as an agunah? No, his heart told him, her husband is dead. But what could he do? Neither a Gentile’s idle talk nor a rabbi’s prophetic powers are sufficient to free an agunah. Our Master conferred with all the illustrious rabbis of Poland and Lithuania, and not a single one of them could champion the cause of freeing this girl from her shackled state.

4

We are now at Monday morning of the week of the Torah portion Behukotai . Our Master is being called up to the Torah and I am helping him step up to the bimah. I looked at him and saw that he was in another world and struggling to get back to this one. I think to myself: he is trying to get his mind off that poor girl’s predicament so he can concentrate on the blessings over the Torah.

After the reading, as I was helping him go down the steps and return to his place, he indicated that he wanted to tell me something. When he had taken off his tefillin, I went over to him. He looked up and said, “Ah, here you are.” He put his tefillin back in their bag, but he still had his talit on. He looked at me again and said to me these exact words: “I know that people do not frighten you. Go home and have breakfast and then come to me.” Since he had instructed me to go home and eat, I felt no compulsion to stand there and wait for him to summon me.

I went home. My wife, may she rest in peace, was still alive then. While we were having breakfast she commented that I looked preoccupied. I wanted to tell her all that happened, but not everything one sees in the beit midrash has to be told to one’s wife. I said to her, “I’m in a hurry now. Our Master is waiting for me.”

“Why?”

“Maybe he wants me to deliver something for him.”

She looked at me and said nothing. As I was leaving she said, “Do you remember that incident with the tax collector and the melamed?”

“Something like that you do not forget.”

“That must be what is going on now. He wants you to deliver a message for him.”

“If that is what it is, I would have been the first to know. Besides, a man is not banned by the community unless he has been summoned twice and refused to go both times. That tax collector paid for his sin in this world on top of what awaits him in the world to come. No one defies our Master. When he calls for his shamash, the shamash goes.”

Now what was the story of the tax collector? There was a wealthy tax collector who hired a melamed to teach his son. The melamed toiled with the boy all winter. When it got to be spring and the month of Nissan was approaching, the melamed got ready to go home to his wife. He went to the tax collector to receive his wages. The tax collector, however, first wanted to examine the son to see what he had learned. He asked him if he knew how to say the kaddish. The boy could not. In fact, the boy had no idea of what the melamed had taught him, never mind what he had not. The tax collector became enraged at the melamed and paid him not a penny. The melamed stated yelling and screaming at him. “You want your payment?” said the tax collector. “Well here it is!” And he slapped him in the face. The melamed took the tax collector to the rabbinical court, but he did not show up. Our Master then instructed me to go and tell the man that if there is no legal accounting here below, there certainly is one up above, and if he would not appear before the local rabbinical court he would absolutely be hauled before the beit din of Gehinnom. So I went to him without the least fear of him or his dogs or his servants. I remarked to my wife that this story shows that if our Master himself fulfills the commandment in the Torah “ Fear no man ,” even his assistants should be intimidated by no one. I said “his assistants” in the plural so that my wife would not be overly proud of me. Sometimes a wife’s pride in her husband can make him haughty and arrogant.

I went back to our Master’s house. He had been brought a cup of milk and a roll and taken off his pair of Rabbenu Tam’s tefillin, which he gave to me to put away. He had never done that before. I surmised that our Master was feeling weak and was seeking to revive himself. He smiled and said, “Hah! How people forget. They sent me food.” I realized that I, too, had forgotten that on Mondays and Thursdays our Master had the practice of fasting. But since one did not make small talk with our Master, I kept silent.

Then our Master said, “I would like to go to a certain place. Will you accompany me?” I was astounded. This great man whose company all seek is asking me to accompany him! If he asked me to go with him to Mountains of Darkness would I not go? Many times it seemed as though the look in his eyes told what he wanted to say to me. Our Master went on, “I want to go to a place where no living person ever goes. And should the attribute of justice begin to assert itself, the mercy of our blessed God will prevail.”

Our Master saw that I was having a hard time understanding his meaning. So he sat down and explained. “I have gone as far as I could on behalf of the poor girl. The rabbinic authorities have all determined that she shall remain an agunah for the rest of her life. And since no witnesses have come forward to affirm that her husband is dead and buried, I want to find out for myself if he is living or dead.”

I began to shake. I stood there trembling and aghast. Our Master reiterated, “If he is alive, he will surely repent. If he is dead, he is in Gehinnom, where all sinners in Israel descend. I will go there and see him. Will you go with me?”

I asked our Master which prayers I should say. He glanced at me and said, “A person should always feel as if the opening of Gehinnom were right underneath him. So when you pray you should feel as if you are standing on the very top of Gehinnom. The whole time you are praying it should feel as if these are the very last prayers you will utter in this world because you may never be given another chance. The grace of God allows us to pray but once in a lifetime. And what is that one and only time? That moment when you are standing in prayer.” I then asked, “What should I have in mind during my prayer?” Our Master gazed at me and said, “Have in mind to keep your eyes open. If he is hiding from me and I do not see him, your eyes will be open to notice where he is.”

5

On the Friday evening of the Sabbath of Repentance I went to our Master to ask him when he would give his discourse on repentance so that I could announce it. Truth be told, there really was no need to inquire. The normal order of things was that on the Sabbath of Repentance right after the midday meal, everyone would gather in the synagogue and recite psalms until the rabbi would get up to speak. But in those days nothing was done in our town without first asking our Master. I used to think that this was simply out of respect for him, until he once told me that all things require preparation in advance, especially repentance. A discourse on repentance certainly requires preparation of the heart. Our Master set the time. But right after I left him he called me back. I thought he was calling me back to tell me when we were departing for that place, I mean going to visit Gehinnom. He looked at me and said, “When you announce the time of my address, say in my name that people should be careful not to put up their Sukkah in an impure place.”