THE PARABLE AND ITS LESSON

S. Y. AGNON

TRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED BY JAMES S. DIAMOND

AMONG THE LINE OF RABBIS who ruled in our town was the illustrious and godly Rabbi Moshe, a rabbi who, in his lifetime, journeyed to Gehinnom in order to free an agunah. Two purposes motivate me to record this story. One is to tell of the greatness of that saintly rabbi. The other, as I have already noted, is to admonish those among us, old and young alike, who permit themselves to talk during the prayer service and the Torah reading. In Buczacz no one talks during the service and the reading of the Torah. That is the long-standing local custom. But every city has someone who hails from somewhere else, and so it happened that there was in Buczacz just such a man who was unaware of the local custom and chatted while the Torah was being read. This story is about him. It is a story from which we will come to learn what the punishment is for those who conduct conversations during the prayers and the Torah reading. To be sure, some things related here will not square with those who maintain that Buczacz was unaffected by the Khmelnitski pogroms. I leave it to the One who reconciles all matters to settle this one too.

1

There was in our old beit midrash an elderly shamash named Reb Yeruham ben Tanhum. Some insist that his name was Reb Tanhum ben Yeruham and that the Great Synagogue was where he served. Then there are those who claim that this name belongs not to the shamash but to the man who got involved with the him. I, who know only the names of the men who served as shamash in the ten generations before I left my hometown, cannot make this determination. I can only tell the story. Besides, the name itself is immaterial to what follows, even though it is known that a person's essence, not to mention the incarnations through which his soul passes, can be discerned in his name. Let me, then, put aside what I cannot explain and relate what I do know.

A wealthy man from the upper crust of our town took as his son-in-law a learned young man from a prominent family. The boy was skilled at advancing all kinds of novel interpretations of our holy texts, even when their meanings were already transparent. In fact, sometimes, in his encounter with a text, he would pronounce his own interpretation before he had even digested its plain sense. I refer here not to the nature of his insights but to the fact that his eagerness to propose them overrode any capacity he had for self-restraint. That is the gist of this tale, and the details now follow.

One Sabbath, while the Torah was being read, he was sitting in his regular seat against the eastern wall of the synagogue, a prestigious place that his father-in-law bought for him from an old man who had emigrated to the Land of Israel. A Bible with commentaries was in his hands. The reader was chanting from the scroll and the entire congregation was sitting in rapt attention listening to the words of the Torah, when the young man had a brilliant new hidush on that week's Torah portion or on one of its commentaries. He raised his talit over his eyes, leaned over to the man sitting next to him, and shared his hidush with him. The latter looked at him dumbfounded, stunned that someone dared to talk during the Torah reading. As if the words of a mere mortal were superior to those of the living God.

Do not wonder at that man's astonishment, because in our town there was absolutely no talking during the service and certainly not during the Torah reading. From the moment the Torah scroll was opened until the reading of the weekly portion was concluded everyone strained to listen and concentrated so as to catch every word that issued from God Himself. The elders of that time, going by what they had heard from their fathers, and their fathers from their fathers, said that their forebears would never interrupt the Torah reading even to congratulate the person who had just been called up to the Torah. Three times a year, however, on Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot, after the Yizkor memorial service, the senior member of the congregation would take the Torah scroll in his arms and one by one everyone would come up and tell him his name, his father's name, and the amount he would contribute. The elder would bless that person and his household and there would be no mention of money. Contributions were brought after the festival. In later times, when expenses increased, they started doing this on every Sabbath, but again, money was never mentioned in the presence of the Torah scroll. Then later, when the number of donors who wanted their charitable intentions made public increased, every penny that had been pledged or contributed would be announced. And then even later, when expenses for nonessential items increased, like the fees for cantors who showed off their vocal talents and turned the prayers into ridiculous performances, all prior restraints were removed, and they would stop between sections of the Torah reading to bless both the one who was called up and the person he instructed the gabbai to bless. Soon they began to exceed the regular number of seven people called up to the Torah, until the Torah readings were sliced up like olives. Eventually things reached the point where there was not only jealousy and enmity among the honorees but insult and invective.

So there sits our young scholar during the Torah reading when he gets this new insight into the Torah portion. He leans over to the man sitting next to him and regales him with his discovery. The shamash sees this and throws him a look of rebuke. When this is ignored the shamash gives him a wrathful look. When the talking does not stop he thumps his middle finger with a "Nu! Nu!" When this has no effect the shamash thumps his finger again in order to silence him. When this has no effect he steps down from the bimah, walks over to the eastern wall, grabs the young man by the arm and ushers him out of the synagogue.

The town was in an uproar. Never in the whole history of Buczacz had anyone embarrassed another person in such a holy place, much less ejected him from it. Certainly no lowly shamash had ever done that to a Torah scholar, especially one from a prestigious family and the son-inlaw of a local grandee to boot. And even though everyone knew that the shamash had acted for the sake of Heaven, the consensus was to fine him and even to dismiss him from his position.

On Monday they arraigned him before the beit din of the chief rabbi. The chief rabbi recused himself on account of his admitted partiality to Torah scholars. Thereupon they went and constituted an alternate beit din.

The dayan asked the shamash how he proposed to argue his case. The latter replied, "Is anything more meritorious than not kowtowing to a Torah scholar from a prominent family who commingles the Sacred Word with his own prattle?"

The dayan then asked, "But was he not talking words of Torah?"

"Yes, but it was during the reading of the Torah."

"It was sufficient that you stopped him. What impelled you to embarrass him in...