The Parable and Its Lesson: A Novella Read Online Free

our Master, the esteemed Av Beit Din Rabbi Moshe, may the Lord illumine him in Eden until the coming of the Redeemer and may he plead well for us and all Israel. I am not worthy to tell of his greatness and his brilliance in Torah and piety. What I can relate is what is widely known, namely, that our Master Rabbi Moshe was, as you know, one of the students of the holy Rabbi Mikhl of Nemirov. On account of our many sins Rabbi Mikhel Mikhl was martyred in the massacres of 1648. Through the merits of one secret word in the Torah that that holy Tsadik communicated to our Master Rabbi Moshe, he was saved from the sword of that barbarian Khmelnitski, may his name be blotted out. Some say the word is in the weekly Torah portion Mishpatim . Some say it is in the portion of Ha’azinu . Others hold that it was not a word that he communicated but the meaning of one of the dots found above the Hebrew words in the passage haniglot vehanistarot . Who can say what that dot means? It is enough for a man like me to get through the weekly portion with Targum and Rashi’s commentary.
    Our Master had a relative named Zlateh. She was the sole survivor when her family was slaughtered in the pogroms of the abominable Khmelnitski, may the names of the wicked rot. This Zlateh was a granddaughter of Reb Naftali the wine merchant. He was a wonderful advocate for the Jews in his time and did much for communities and individuals alike. He met a tragic end. A government official who owed him four hundred barrels of wine set his hunting dogs on him and they devoured him. May God avenge his blood.
    The murder of Reb Naftali occurred not long before the pogroms of 1648. When the evil decree fell, the whole family perished, “some by water, some by fire, some by strangling, some by stoning,” as the poet wrote in the piyyut Unetanneh tokef . Those who were spared such gruesome deaths died of hunger or thirst. Through the mercy of God the little girl saved herself from death by hiding in the forest. Like an innocent lamb she lived on grass and very nearly forgot how to talk like a human being. She was found by some survivors who had come out of hiding when the pogroms began to abate. They took her with them as they wandered from town to town and from community to community. Some of them tried to return to their hometowns but could not find them. Most of the communities had been razed in the cataclysm and were unrecognizable. Some of these survivors got used to being on the road and never found a place to stop and settle down. During their wanderings they came to Buczacz and arrived at the house of our Master.
    The Rabbi’s wife looked at the little girl but had no idea who she was. The good qualities that she noticed in her endeared the child to her. She took her in and fed her, clothed her, put shoes on her bare feet. The Rabbi’s wife made an arrangement with the people who had brought the girl with them, paying them off so they would leave the child with her. And so they did. The Rabbi’s wife asked the girl about her hometown and where she came from and about her father and her mother. The child told what she remembered.
    The Rabbi’s wife listened to all this and related it to our Master. Upon hearing it he declared, “Is she not of our family? Why, she is a descendant of our relative Naftali!” Our Master raised his sacred hands and intoned, “Blessed be the One who is beneficent to the wicked and the good alike. Blessed is the One who has been beneficent to this granddaughter of Naftali, who has found her way to her family. And blessed be the One who has allowed us to raise this orphan girl in our home, the only one of our family left alive.”
    Our Master took the girl in and provided for all her needs—food, drink, lodging, clothing. Our Master, who was not particular about his own clothes except for his beautiful talit and tefillin, personally picked out the material for her dresses and personally sent for the cobbler to make her a pair of