The Parable and Its Lesson: A Novella Read Online Free Page A

shoes. On Friday afternoons, before leaving for the bathhouse to get ready for the Sabbath, he would look in on the kitchen and ask, “Has she had her bath? Has her hair been combed?” Sometimes he would stand and make sure they were not hurting her when they combed her hair, which had gotten tangled during the long time in the forest.
    As she grew older our Master thought about a match for her. He cast his eye on his favorite student, a clever and knowledgeable young man with some proficiency in several languages. This student was the son of Zevulun the spice merchant. Zevulun, after his death, left a manuscript of a book on the prayer recited upon embarking on a journey. It contained some shocking things about disputations he had with freethinkers in various cities in the Ottoman lands. I heard that he had asked our Master to write an approbation for the book, and our Master declined the invitation. He said that since the questions it dealt with were of no concern to him, he was quite ready to forgo the answers it offered.
    So our Master married off Zlateh to Zevulun’s son Aaron. Because he loved the couple so much, our Master himself recited the seven nuptial benedictions at all seven wedding feasts. I remember that at the feast of the seventh day they were sitting around the table and there was no new guest present. The door opened and in came a young man with a volume of the talmudic tractate Kiddushin in hand. And so they recited the seven benedictions. Among the company was a scholar who loved to joke. He said to Aaron, “You see, tractate Kiddushin itself has sent you a new face so that all seven benedictions can be said.”
    About the young man who came in with tractate Kiddushin in hand I have nothing to say. But about the tractate itself I do. I once saw in a certain book, Kaftor vaferaḥ , a tale about a scholar who spent his whole life studying the tractate Ḥagigah. When he departed this world no one took any notice, until there appeared a woman who lamented him loudly, the way a bereaved wife keens for her husband. The woman was the tractate Ḥagigah, which took on the form of a woman because of that scholar’s lifelong devotion to it.
    Our Master made a place for the couple in his home and arranged with Aaron fixed times to study Torah together, before dawn and at night after the evening service. You had to see our Master sitting and learning with him to know the love of a master for his student. Matters that our Master would usually treat cursorily he expounded to him in minute detail. Our Master saw in Aaron and Zlateh his aspirations for a new generation that would serve God righteously in place of their parents murdered by the enemy.
    Suffering is hard, hard when it happens and hard afterward. Because of the many troubles that had befallen the Jews, Aaron began to inquire into what God had done to this people, into the great wrath that caused this people to be handed over to the Gentiles, Heaven forfend, to be destroyed by them.
    One inquiry leads to another, like one mouse that squeals out to another until very soon a whole horde of them come and chew up all the clothing and household goods. Because of His love for us, God encumbers us with suffering in order to purge us of the qelipot we have acquired in the lands of the Gentiles and thereby prepare us for the day of His Redemption. But this young man reached the false conclusion that God had withdrawn His love from Israel.
    Now when a person opens the door to speculation, if he is worthy he will repent, and God will bring him to inner peace, and nothing will unnerve him. Superior to him is one who never experiences any philosophical doubts. He will not be subverted by them; nor will he even have to expend intellectual energy to refute them. This young man, alas, was not worthy. His doubts were not only not dispelled, they multiplied. He became lax in his attitude to Torah and its observance. When he had the opportunity to perform a commandment,