The Parable and Its Lesson: A Novella by S. Y. Agnon

offering in the Temple and then stood for the silent devotion. The evening service followed immediately. After the Aleinu prayer and the concluding kaddish, they all crowded around the shamash to find out how the matter ended.
    The old man looked at them and said, “If you are so intent on listening to stories, how will you be able to hear the sound of the Messiah’s shofar on the day when it is sounded? Why do you need to know the end of the story when it was already clear from the beginning? You heard then that we have to be very, very careful not to talk during prayer and certainly not while the Torah is being read.” The shamash repeated the word “very” so intensely that everyone began to tremble at the severity of the transgression. After that they stopped asking how the story ended.
    But he did not leave it at that and proceeded to tell the story to its end, and his words sank deep into their bones and stayed with them all their days. And when they passed away, they saw in another world everything the shamash had told them in this one.
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    The shamash continued:
    Because I treasure every word our Master uttered, I now return to what he said. The details of the story are clear, but the depths of his teachings—who can plumb them, especially now that fifty-four years have passed since they were spoken.
    And so our Master stood before the Holy Ark facing the congregation, with Reb Akiva Shas and Reb Meshullam on either side of him. I stood below facing the congregation so as to prevent anyone from pushing forward to go up the bimah, all the while keeping an eye on our Master to be ready at a moment’s notice in case he needed me.
    Our Master was reaching the end of his eulogy when it looked as if his talit was falling off his left shoulder, as it often did at the end of his sermons and never did when he stood for the silent prayer, when it stayed in place all the time. I heard from Reb Shmuel the scribe that Reb Yosef Halevi, who wrote a book about the victims of the 1648–49 massacres and another about the shofar that the Messiah will one day sound, once opined that our Master’s soul belonged to those Rabbi Yoḥanan had in mind when he made the statement in the Talmud, “Would that a person might pray the whole day long.” That is why our Master’s talit clung to him even after prayer. But this was not the case after his sermons, which in our time have largely become messages of moral instruction and rebuke for the Jewish people’s shortcomings. This whole matter can be explained in different ways, and I do not want to belabor it. In any case, it seemed to me that our Master was motioning to me, so I hurried up to him.
    He looked at me as if he were puzzled why I was standing next to him. He had definitely motioned me to come up, but since he had taken flight to worlds where people like us can never go, his visage had altered, and what people like us think they see is often not so.
    Our Master continued looking at me and quoted the verse that God said to Moses after the sin of the golden calf, But you remain standing here with Me . Then he added the verse from the laws in the book of Exodus By the word of two witnesses or three shall a case be established . I would be surprised if there was anyone in the synagogue who could fathom our Master’s intention. I myself began to understand it only when he was halfway through his sermon, for after he concluded the eulogy he continued to sermonize. That is one thing I take pride in: if I do not understand our Master’s words right away, later on I do. I heard from the saintly Rabbi Isaac the Chastiser, the son of Reb Yedidiah Lieberman, the nephew of the holy Rabbi Mikhl of Nemirov, may the Lord avenge his blood, that the deeds of the righteous correspond to their thoughts, and therefore their words are coherent from beginning to end.
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    Our Master began as follows: “My brothers, dear members of the congregation, you who love God, blessed be His holy name.