Yeshiva Student

by Larry Lefkowitz

July 27, 2010

He did not stop as was his custom to read the notices pasted on the wall, not even one signed by the rabbinical council which denoted a matter of extreme importance. Once he would have devoured such a message – perhaps there would be a demonstration. For a respected yeshiva student like himself, one who drove himself to excel, demonstrations were a way of clearing his head, in addition to performing a mitzvah.

But today he did not even glance in the direction of the notices, ignoring their exhortations to read them via headlines and exclamation points and the vying colors of their paper. Today he walked rapidly but not to the yeshiva: he had actually taken a day off from his studies. Because of the thought. The thought that had crept into his mind as if inserted by Sammael, "But what if it is not true?" Wherever he turned – morning prayers, evening prayers, the prayer upon going to bed, upon waking up – he heard a voice whisper, "But what if it is not true?"

He had never questioned his world. The world: Heaven and earth as set out in the Torah. He had delighted in it, nestling within the emanations of the torah as within a quilt on a cold winter's night. Talmud allowed for questioning, but this was different. You questioned aspects of Torah, not Torah itself.

As he walked he strove to shut out the refrain, "But what if it is not true?" But how could it be not true – every man dressed in black like himself whom he saw on the street, his street, attested to the truth of it. Men far wiser than himself – even the head of the yeshiva – labored in its service, as he himself had always striven to do. And now, even as his body swayed back and forth in prayer, the words mocked his movements, "But what if it is not true?"

He felt himself close to collapse. Greetings on the street went unacknowledged. If it were summer, he could have gotten away on a summer recess tour. Climb some hill, or travel a wadi bed, and perhaps escape. But it was winter.

His walking brought him to the Western Wall at midnight. For a time, he prayed and the question did not assail him. But then it came, as if oozing from between the very stones, "But what is it is not true?" Even here, he thought. More the profanation. He wrote quickly on a piece of paper, "Help me!", stuffed it in a crevice, and fled.

The next morning he returned to his studies. Some of the  students looked at him closely  because he seemed agitated or because he had been absent the day before. "Are you alright?" asked Yonah, his study partner.

"No!" he sobbed. Yonah put an arm around his shoulder. "What is it, Moshe?"

"I can't tell you," Moshe said. "Let's continue."

Somehow he got through the day, even though between the lines of the text he studied crept the words, "But what if it is not true?"

After studied had finished, Yonah sat on the bed across from him. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"It?" laughed Moshe a laugh of helplessness. "Yes, it. 'It' is the problem."

"What 'it'?"

"All of it," gestured Moshe helplessly. And then he burst out, "But what if it is not true?"

"What?" asked Yonah.

"Torah," whispered Moshe.

Yonah seemed to draw back physically, or did Moshe only imagine it. His friend thought for a moment. "But how can that be?"

"I don't know. But that's what a voice says to me all the time." 'But what if it is not true?'"

Yonah was silent for some moments. "You've been studying too hard, Moshe."

"But if it is not true, don't you see, it's all for nothing. All of it – the yeshiva, the synagogue, our clothes, our ways, everything."

"Why?"

"'Why'? How can you ask 'why?" he pushed past Yonah and ran from the building. It was raining. This surprised him. When he studied, he didn't pay attention to anything else.

He began to run as if pursued by Sammael. He ran, and the whispering voice 'But what if it is not true?' matched him step for step, seemed to cling to his racing heels. He ran down the narrow street. A narrow street of Jerusalem, but what could have been a narrow street in the Jewish quarter of Prague a hundred other quarters, now or a century ago or some centuries ago. He drew his coat over his head to protect himself from the stinging rain, and from a desire not to be recognized. There flashed through his mind the picture of the Hassid in the tale who was ordered by a Messenger of the Lord to run from one village to another with his face covered with a prayer shawl so that no one would recognize him. On the third day he passed a man wrapped in a prayer shawl exactly like himself running in the opposite direction.

Moshe stopped inside a building entrance to catch his breath.

"Young man," a voice spoke to him. The voice belonged to an elderly man with a disheveled grey beard flecked with brown. Moshe started. "It's all right," the man brushed his shoulder with his hand.

"Why are you running, young man?" the man asked, scrutinizing Moshe. "Ah, I see."

"What do you mean?" Moshe stammered.

"I mean what I said. I see. Me'igra rama lebira amikta: 'From a high roof to a deep pit.' You have lost your faith."

Moshe stood dumbfounded, unable to utter a word. He had sought shelter and found instead a man who knew his innermost thoughts. Worse, his innermost fear.

"No, I am not Elijah. I simply have eyes. It is written on your face. You are not the first, you know."

Moshe didn't know. He looked toward the entrance, prepared to escape the man, if indeed he was a man.

The old man moved slightly, sufficient to block Moshe's path. "You can't escape lost faith by running. As Rebbe Nachman said, 'The edge of the void is never further away than a single false step.'"

Moshe leaned against the wall, feeling faint. "But what if it is not true?" he murmured.

A sad smile formed on the man's lips. "But what if it isn't . . . Torah is still the best of all worlds."

At these words, Moshe shivered. But now not from fear. From relief, like the last shiver of a fever beaten. The old man's words lightened his load. They had not removed it, but the difference was like balm to a wound. He wanted the man to continue, yet he was embarrassed to request it. "Are you a rabbi?" he asked.

His question was answered with a chuckle. "Every Jew is a rabbi, even if a small rabbi. You want me to continue" asked the man, deciphering his real question.

"Please," Moshe said.

"Suppose it is not true, young man." He paused and hunched his shoulders slightly. "It is still better than anything else."

"I do not understand."

Even if there is nothing but rock and gasses, stars and emptiness out there," the man seemed to gaze far beyond the doorway, "the beauty of Torah will still shine."

"But how? . . ."

"Torah is a way of life – a tree of life for those who grasp it. Torah is the best of what can be grasped. And if there are other beings on other planets capable of grasping, torah would be best for them, too."

"Even if there were no  . . .," his eyes glanced briefly upward.

"Perhaps even then, Heaven forbid."

Again Moshe stood dumbfounded. Yet freed of a burden. Tears of gratitude formed in his eyes.

"A tree of life to those who grasp it," the man repeated, grazing Moshe's shoulder with a sinewy hand."Yes, whispered Moshe. The voice of doubt had fled in confusion like Amalek before Moses.

He wanted to kiss the man's hand. "How can I ever repay you?"

A sad smile formed on the old man's lips; a smile that seemed a grasping in the face of the eternal. "Remember me," he said. After a few moments of silence, he added, "But you are not finished, young man. The rabbi from Kotsek once said, "If you feel pain, dance with it.' You still have to dance." Moshe wanted to ask him what he meant, but the man suddenly  raised his prayer shawl over his head, perhaps against the rain, pushed past him, and hurried away, a dark figure merging with the dark weather and the grey streets.

Moshe stumbled out, weak yet replenished. He wondered if the kabbalists of old had felt like this following a night of mystical contemplation.

"Are you all right, Moshe?" asked Yonah on his return. "You look like you have seen a ghost."

"I am all right." He turned to the assigned tractate and began studying.

In the days that followed, the stabbing question had not returned – and yet he felt something still vexing him. Subtle, not like the voice, but nevertheless there, as if an echo of his previous doubt. This he could live with, Moshe thought, although he hoped that it, too, would disappear. Sometimes he thought of the old man's strange parting words, that Moshe would have to dance with his pain. Yet he did not feel like dancing.

In the weeks that followed, he had almost forgotten the man's strange advice, and when he sometimes remembered it, he dismissed it despite a vague anxiety that refused to leave him.

When came that one night a year when it was the custom for the rebbe to dance in the synagogue of the yeshiva, Moshe was present there with all the students, yet he felt that something forgotten, something important, was trying to reach him. He wanted to grasp it, but his attention was distracted by the rebbe, who rose to his feet unsteadily from the chair of honor, urged on by his students and the teachers. How would the rebbe ever be able to dance, to carry out his mitzvah? wondered Moshe – this year when the  immaculately white bearded figure seemed so ancient.

Slowly, one foot moving into place, the second following, the rebbe began to dance. His hands raised over his head, he turned slowly. Moshe thought briefly of Moses raising his hands to drive off Amalek. He felt it important that the rebbe hold up his hands. Moshe made a movement as if to help, then stopped himself. Perhaps the rebbe noticed for he approached Moshe, still dancing, and beckoned to him.

Moshe was dumbfounded and froze where he stood. The others divined the rebbe's will. "The rebbe wants you to dance," they urged him. "It is a great honor."

"Dance, Moshe," Yonah hissed.

Hesitantly, Mose stood opposite the rebbe. The rebbe smiled and nodded.

Slowly, Moshe began to dance, hands held high. The students clapped their hands. Moshe forgot his self-consciousness. He danced with the rebbe, and as he danced, he felt the anxiety that still was a part of him, the last remnant of doubt, weakening. Suddenly, he remembered the man's words and he was seized with a joy, the joy that comes to one secure in his faith. Moshe began to dance as if his life depended upon it.