Our Master continued to observe me. He was trying to determine just how much I could stand to hear. He was always very careful to adjust what he said to the capacity of his listeners. Rabbi Yitzhak the Chastiser once told me about a goldsmith named Reb Moshe of Buczacz. He told it in the name of his father Reb Yedidiah Lieberman, the nephew of Rabbi Mikhl of Nemirov, may God avenge his blood, who heard it in the name of the holy Rabbi Shimshon of Ostropol, may God avenge his blood. Reb Moshe was a goldsmith, and he once received precious stones and pearls from the king’s vault to make a pair of earrings for the princess. He calibrated the earrings according to the weight her ears could bear.
Our Master kept on looking at me and then said, “What were you asking?” He wanted to see how important my question was to me. Sometimes the mouth wants to ask more than the heart wants to know. I did not dare ask, but the desire to know gnawed at me. The question was evident in my eyes, as when someone raises his eyes quizzically. Our Master paused for a moment and then said, “The people that you saw are all illustrious men. Some of them are rabbis, some are heads of yeshivot, some are officials, leaders, and regional rabbis. It is because of their stature that they have their own compartment of Gehinnom.” He added, “The wicked in Gehinnom are punished with the very sin for which they were found guilty. The people you saw are punished with the opposite of what they committed. Because they sinned by speech, they are condemned to be mute.”
Here our Master stopped and pointed to the lantern I was holding. I looked and saw that the candle was about to burn out. I quickly pulled out another one and lit it with the one that was reaching its end, sticking the new one on top of the old.
Seeing this, our Master recited the verse The soul of man is a candle of the Lord. He always paused a bit when he quoted a Biblical verse so as to set it apart from his own speech. Then he said to me, “Some candles shine right to their end and even as they go out they burn brightly. And some candles go out while still burning. Happy is the one whose soul shines forth in this world and its light continues on in the world to come. Now, as for what you asked me, the people you saw sitting far apart sat right next to each other in their lifetime, and all the synagogues and study houses were filled with their talk. Now they cannot utter a word, not because they are dead but because they chattered during prayers and nattered while the Torah was being read. Though they are allowed to devise ḥidushim, they are punished thus: when they wish to present their ḥidushim to others, their lips fly apart and their tongues are impaled on their teeth. Their colleagues see this and start to scream, but the sound dies in their mouths.”
Our Master added, “The people you saw are not new arrivals. Among them are scholars who have been sitting there for generations, some from before the expulsion from Spain, some even from the time of the Talmud. Happy is he whose transgression is forgiven. But there is one sin about which the Holy One, blessed be He, is very particular, and that is talking during the service and the Torah reading. God Himself is truly compassionate and gracious and forgives iniquity, but the angels created by transgressions are an unforgiving lot. Happy is he who does not talk while praying. His prayer ascends to the Gates of Mercy and becomes a crown for his Creator.”
13
Our Master’s words disturbed me more than anything my eyes had seen. I knew that talking during prayers and Torah reading is a serious offence, but I had no idea how serious.
I was mortified. Who can say that he has never committed that sin? Who among us keeps his lips and tongue under control at all times? Who has not talked during the service or the Torah reading? And if those learned in Torah bear such a punishment, what about the rest of us? Even if the ḥidushim that scholars come up with do not always spring from the purest motives, there is still a scintilla of sincerity behind them. May you good people of Buczacz never know the dread I was feeling.
Adding to my anxiety was my astonishment at the duration of the punishment. Can that be the penalty for talking during the service or Torah reading? Even if one could explain it as the consequence of the bother the angels had to go to in separating true prayers from idle talk, the matter still remains unsettled and unsettling.
A verse in the Torah occurred to me: The sword shall not cross through your land. I interpreted the sword to refer to metaphysical speculation, and the verse to be saying that as it passes through your mind it will not only not undermine your faith, it could even strengthen it. In my heart I recited the verse I am racked with grief, sustain me in accordance with Your word. Our Master looked at me and whispered, “It is time to go back.” My heart broke within me and I followed him.
Here the shamash suddenly stopped to survey the room. After he took in with one glance a group of scholars, his eye caught sight of some others who were not learned but who had a voice in civic affairs. While he was still looking around he continued:
Now listen to me all you people of Buczacz. You think that Gehinnom is only for Torah scholars. Well, let me tell you otherwise. There is one area there compared to which all the rest of Gehinnom is like Gan Eden. I never noticed it at first because it was covered in dust. But the voices that could be heard through the dust suggested that there were people there. I could not tell if they were people or cattle or fowl until I went in and saw that it was one huge market fair, like the ones our great-grandparents and those who came before them used to tell about, before Khmelnitski, may his name be blotted out. There were traders, dealers, noblemen and noblewomen, goods galore — like you’ve never seen before. Silver and gold and all kinds of expensive things. Then suddenly the whole fair was thrown into a panic. The Tatars had arrived. They came on swift horses in rumbling hordes. My body trembles even now as I recall it. I will stop talking about it and go back to where I left off.
So our Master was looking at me and said, “We have to go.” My heart broke within me, but I followed him.
The earth was drenched in dew and the firmament moist with the perspiration generated by the stars in their efforts to illumine the world. The whole way along, our Master said not one word. Was he ruminating about Aaron’s death, or about liberating the young agunah from her bonds? Who am I to say? Once or twice our Master looked up at the heavens and I could hear him whisper, “The stars are bunched together like a brood of chicks under a hen.” Truthfully, I have no idea if he really said that or if I just thought he did. Because on the eve of Yom Kippur, at first light, when I went into the chicken coop to get the atonement chickens for my wife and me, may she rest in peace, I saw chicks roosting under the mother hen and I was reminded of a line in the Book of the Angel Razi’el, “many stars are clustered together like chicks under a hen.” And so when I saw our Master look upward and whisper, those words came to me. By the time the sun rose, we were back in the courtyard of the synagogue.
Our Master kissed the mezuzah and then placed his walking stick in the courtyard behind the door and the mezuzah. I really should have taken it from him, but our Master never let anyone help him with his walking stick. After all, when Samson was blind he never asked anyone to get his staff for him in all his twenty-two years of judging Israel, and the Sages praised him for that. Our Master always took his stick and put it back by himself. But whenever he went to the sink to wash his hands, I would go and place it right near him so he would not have to bend down to get it.
He washed his hands, dried them and with his customary humility recited the Torah blessings in his sweet voice. I am not among those who claim to know what goes on in Heaven, but I am reasonably sure that when our Master said those blessings, each one was answered with an “Amen” from on high.