“Praised be the Name of the Lord who hears the prayers of His people Israel. He will not reject those who have been banished. There is not a prayer or a single word of Torah that goes to the wrong place. Still, a person should be very mindful about talking or conversing during the service and the Torah reading so that his prayers not go to a place where we do not want them to go.”
Our Master took the corners of his talit, one in each hand, and tucked them into his sash. Or maybe it was just his hands he tucked in and not the corners of his talit — I do not recall. In any case, when he was praying, his tzitzit swung around freely. I mention this because I have seen a new practice that our ancestors never imagined, that of tucking the corners of the talit into the sash the way laborers on the job fold the hem of their shirt under their belt.
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Our Master added, “Our days are as a passing shadow, but each day itself is long and drawn out, so let us temper our remaining time of mourning and fasting with another parable.
“It is common wisdom that there is no person who does not suffer, and who knows this better than the people of Israel? My parable is about such a person. There was a person to whom trouble befell, and he was unable to deliver himself from it. He looked all over for help. He heard that very near him, not far away, there lived a lord in a castle, a ruler who was as powerful as he was righteous and as righteous as he was caring. The man rose early and went to see him. When the lord of the castle saw this Jew walking about in the courtyard, he commanded that the man be brought to him. The man went in and began to tell the lord of his trouble. The lord of the castle was filled with compassion for him. Remember that this lord of the castle had many means at his disposal, and when he took pity on a person he had the ability to help him. As the Jew stood and recounted his heartaches, he began to digress about other things and brought up all sorts of irrelevant matters. Talk of one thing led to talk of another and very soon the man was uttering the most frivolous things that in any other place would not even be worth mentioning, all the more so before the lord of the castle. Whereupon the lord of the castle said to himself, Why need I bother with his trifles? If he is looking for trivial things, what is he doing here? There is verse that confirms him in this judgment, as it is written, Who has asked this of you, that you come and trample My courts.
“So now consider that the lord of the castle is the Master of all worlds who has the power to help us and deliver us at all times. When a Jew comes before Him to beseech Him for help and to plead for his life, is it not perfectly obvious and self-evident that when he opens his mouth he should be careful not to utter anything unnecessary and not to burden God, so to speak, with having to listen to things that are inappropriate and irrelevant? The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon him in truth, and not to those who talk of empty things and engage in idle conversations.
“This in regard to prayer. Now let me say something about the Torah reading. There was a certain poor man to whom the lord of the castle took a liking. He extended to him the kindness of letting him settle on his land, confirming his consent in writing so as to prevent anyone from seizing what had been granted to him or cheating him out of it. The lord then read to the poor man the document of attestation so that he would know what was his. One would assume that the poor man would listen, since his whole right to live and dwell on the land depended on that document. The poor man not only did not listen, he interrupted the lord in his reading, thus showing contempt for the one who sought to do him good and harming himself by not paying attention to what was being given to him.
“My friends and dearly beloved brothers, the Holy One, blessed be He, has shown us a special love and extended to us the kindness of giving us the Torah, which is the document that attests to Israel’s existence and to the right we have merited to live in this world, our right to be here at all. So when we open the Torah and read it in public, we should sit in fear and awe, in dignity and in joy in knowing what God has given us. But what do we do? We interrupt His words and chatter away. We not only are heedless of what God has given us, we are also, heaven forbid, showing contempt for the living God.
“Where there is too much talk, blame will not be lacking. All of us here are afflicted, downtrodden, and hurting, no part of us has not been ravaged, and so I will put an end to words. We who are Israel, the people of God, who trust in the shelter of our Creator, let us gather strength for the honor of the synagogue, which serves us in place of the Holy Temple, and let us pay attention to our prayers, which are our conversation with God, and listen to the words of our Torah, God’s conversation with us, the people of Israel. May the One who in mercy and in favor hears the prayer uttered by every single person of Israel, receive in mercy all our prayers. And may we merit fulfilling all the words of the Torah. Amen. May thus be His will.”
After kissing the Ark curtain, our Master turned toward the congregation and his face showed great sadness. I have heard two reasons for this. One is that he grew sad after every sermon, because, being a great preacher, he was worried that the beauty of his words overshadowed the message he was imparting. The other is that he worried lest he had said something that was not for the sake of Heaven. Years later, after I had remarried, and Zlateh, may she rest in peace, was my wife, I heard from her that after every sermon he delivered, our Master took upon himself a full-day fast of silence.
Since I have mentioned the matter of abstaining from speech, I shall relate something I heard from the leader of the service, Reb Ḥizkiah. Reb Ḥizkiah’s forebears came from Aleppo and before that from Babylonia. Circumstances required them to wander through many lands until one day they came to Poland. Reb Ḥizkiah heard from his elders that there were in the lands where they wandered great sages who took upon themselves a full-day fast of silence not only during the Ten Days of Penitence, as do some Jews here in the Kingdom of Poland, but who were silent almost all the time. No worldly or mundane word came out of their mouths. In their eagerness to assist those sages, people tried to learn their different gestures so they could fathom their wishes. But the desire for things of this world is rooted in the power of speech, and the sages eventually lost all such desire. There is a verse in the book of Proverbs that hints at this, but Reb Ḥizkiah never told it to me. I think the one he had in mind is in chapter 30.
The shamash further related another story in the name of Reb Ḥizkiah: There was a porter in Aleppo named Benjamin who never uttered one unnecessary word even if it involved his work. This Benjamin’s face glowed with a light that was not seen even on the faces of great scholars, and when he died the one who eulogized him quoted the verse in Moses’ final blessing, Of Benjamin he said, Beloved of the Lord, he rests securely beside Him; ever does He protect him, as he rests between His shoulders. The local rabbi heard about this and became angry. In a dream he heard declaimed to him the verse in Jacob’s final blessing Benjamin is a ravenous wolf and he understood that his life was in danger. He rose early, gathered ten men, and went and prostrated himself on the porter’s grave and begged his forgiveness.
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The shamash’s words left Buczacz astounded. Talking generally brings people together and dispels worry, while silence is usually a sign of sorrow and suffering, as we see in the verse Let him sit alone and keep silent. But now each one began to spout his own personal interpretation of what had been said, and they very nearly forgot the incident that touched off the whole story. The story itself they knew, but its import they forgot.