"Sabbath! Sabbath!" shouted the melamed, jumping in his chair and gesticulating with his hands; "You, Meir, during the holy evening of Sabbath, instead of reciting Kiddish and filling your spirit with great joy and giving it into the hands of the angel Matatron, who defends Jacob's tribes before God, that he may give them into the hands of Sar-ha-Olama, who is the angel over angels and the prince of the world, that Sar-ha-Olama may give them to the ten serafits who are so strong in force that they crushed the whole world, in order that through the ten serafits your spirit may reach the great throne, on which is seated En-Sof himself, and join with him in a kiss of love--you, Meir, instead of doing all that, went to defend people from some attack--to watch their house and their life. Meir! Meir!
You have violated the Sabbath! You must go to the school and accuse yourself before the people of having committed a great sin and scandal."
This speech made an immense impression on the whole assembly. Saul and his sons looked threatening. The women were surprised and frightened. The dark eyes of Lija--she who had first betrayed her cousin's secret--shone with tears. Only Saul's son-in-law, blue-eyed Ber, looked at the accused boy with sad sympathy, and several young men, Meir's playmates, gazed into his face with curiosity and friendly uneasiness.
Meir answered in a trembling voice:
"In our holy books, Reb Moshe, neither in the Torah nor in the Mishma is there any mention of Sefirots and En-Sof. But there it is stated plainly that Jehovah, although he has commanded us to keep the Sabbath, permitted twenty people to violate the Sabbath in order to save one man."
Such a thing as any one daring to answer the melamed--the perfect pious and Rabbi Todros's right hand--was unheard of and astonishing; it was more, because in the answer there was a negation of his judgment. Therefore the melamed's convex eyes nearly sprang from their sockets. They opened widely and covered Meir's pale face with deep hatred.
"Karaims!" he shouted, tossing himself in his chair, and tearing his beard and his hair--"You went to rescue the Karaims, heretics, infidels, accursed! Why should one rescue them? Why do they not light candles on Sabbath--why do they sit in darkness? Why do they not kill birds and animals as we do? Why do they not know Mishma, Gemara and Zahor?"
He choked with excitement and became silent, and in that interruption Meir's pure and sonorous voice resounded:
"Reb, they are very poor!"
"En-Sof is revengeful and merciless!"
"They are much persecuted!"
"The Incomprehensible persecutes them!" shouted Reb.
"The Eternal does not command us to persecute. Rabbi Huna said: 'Even if the persecution is righteous, the Eternal will take the part of the persecuted one!'"
Reb Moshe's cheeks were red as flame. His eyes seemed to devour the face of the young man, whose looks had now grown bold, and his lips quivered with the words that came rushing to them, but were not pronounced.
The whole gathering was astonished--frightened--depressed. Such a quarrel with the melamed seemed to some of them a sin, to others a danger for the bold young man, and even for the whole family.
Therefore Saul looked up sharply from beneath his bushy gray eye-brows into his grandson's face, and hissed:
"Sh-a-a-a!"
Meir bent his head before his grandfather, in token of humility and obedience, and one of Saul's sons, in order to pacify Reb Moshe's anger, asked him:
"What is the difference between the authority of the books of Talmud, and Zahora, the Kabalistic book?"
Having heard this question, the melamed put his elbows on the table, and fixed his eyes motionlessly and with an expression of deep reflection on the opposite wall. Then he began to speak slowly, and in a solemn voice:
"Simon ben Jochai, the great Rabbi who lived a very great while ago and knew everything that happened in the heavens and on the earth, said, 'The Talmud is a vile slave, and the Kabala is a great queen.'
With what is the Talmud filled? It is filled up with small, secondary things. It teaches what is clean and what is not clean. What is permitted and what is not permitted. What is decent and what is not decent. And with what is filled Zohar--the book of light, the book of Kabala? It is filled with great science; it tells what is God and his Sefirots. The author of it knows all their names, and he teaches what they do and how they built the world. There is said that God's name is En-Sof and his second name is Notarikon and his third name is Gomatria and fourth name Zirufh. The Sefirots are great heavenly forces called: human source, fiancee, fair sex, great visage, small face, mirror, celestial story, lily and apple orchard. And Israel is call Matron, and Israel's. God is called Father, God, En-Sof. He did not create the world; the Sefirots, celestial forces, did it. The first Sefirot produced the strength of God; the second all angels and the Torah (Bible); the third all prophets. The fourth Sefirot produced God's love; the fifth God's justice, and the sixth, a power which ruins everything. The seventh Sefirot produced beauty, the eighth magnificence, the ninth, eternal cause, and the tenth, an eye which watches Israel continually, and follows him on all his roads and takes care of his feet--that they are not wounded--and his head, that misfortune does not fall upon him. All this is taught by Zohar, the book of Kabala, and it is the first book for every Israelite. I know that many Israelites say that the Torah is the more important, but they are stupid, and they do not know that the earth shall tremble from great pains before God and Israel, Father and Matron, shall be united in a kiss of love, until the slave will not retreat before the queen--the Talmud before the Kabala. And when shall that time come? It shall come when the Messiah shall appear. Then for all pious and scholarly people will there be a great feast of joy. Then God will order the boiling of the fish Leviathan which is so great that the whole world rests on it. And everyone will sit down and eat that fish--the scholarly and pious people from the head, and the simple and ignorant from the tail!"
When the melamed finished his speech he breathed deeply, and having dropped his eyes on the table he suddenly fell from mystical heights to earthly realities. On the plate before him was an excellent fish--not Leviathan, but excellent nevertheless. The melamed, living ascetically was very fond of Sabbath feasts, because he believed that it was necessary, to celebrate the Sabbath properly, to keep joyful the body as well as the spirit. Therefore, with the remains of the ecstasy in his eyes, he began to put the delicious dish into his mouth. The whole assembly was silent for a while. His clever speech made a deep impression on almost everyone. Old Saul listened to it with great reverence. His sons cast their grateful eyes on the table and thought over Reb Moshe's scholarly instruction. The women piously placed their hands on their bosoms, inclined their heads in sign of admiration and with smiling lips they repeated:
"Great student--perfect-pious. A true pupil of the great Rabbi Isaak!"
The one looking attentively on the faces of those sitting around the table would have seen two looks which, swift as lightning and unperceived by all present, had been exchanged during the melamed's speech. They were the looks of Ber and Meir. The former looked sadly at the other, who answered him with a look full of restrained anger and irony. When the melamed spoke of the fish Leviathan, so large that the whole world stood on it, and which, in the day of the Messiah, the scholars would eat from the head and the ignorant from the tail, a smile appeared on Meir's thin lips. It was a smile similar to the stiletto. It pierced the one on whose lips it appeared, and it seemed as though it would like to pierce the one who caused it. Ber answered this smile by a sigh. But the four young men who sat opposite Meir noticed it, and on their faces Meir's smile was reflected. After a period of silence, interrupted only by the clatter of knives on the plates and the loud movements of the melamed's jaws, old Saul said:
"Those are great things, scholarly and dreadful, and we thank Reb Moshe for having told them to us. Listen to the learned men, who by their great knowledge sustain Israel's strength and glory, because it is written that the wise men are the world's foundation. 'Who respects them, and questions them often about obscure things with which they are familiar, to that one all sins shall be pardoned.'"
Reb Moshe raised his face from the plate, and stuttered with his mouth full of food:
"Good deeds bring upon man an inexhaustible stream of blessing and forgiveness. They open for him the secrets of the heavens and earth and carry his soul among the Sefirots!"
A silence full of respect was the only answer. But after a few seconds it was interrupted by the sonorous voice of the youth:
"Reb Moshe! what do you call a good deed? What must one do in order to save one's life from sin and draw upon one's self a great stream of grace?" asked Meir aloud.
The melamed raised his eyes at the question. Their looks met again.
The melamed's gray eyes shone angrily and threateningly. The gray, transparent eyes of the youth contained silvery streams of hidden smiles.
"You, Meir, you were my pupil, and you can ask me about such things.
Have I not told you a great many times that the best deed is acquiring depth in the holy science? To whom does that everything will be forgiven, and he who does not do that will be cursed and thrust out from the bosom of Israel, although his hands and heart are clean and white as the snow."
Having said this he turned to Saul and said, pointing at Meir with his brown finger:
"He don't know anything. He has forgotten everything I have taught him!"
The old man slightly bent his wrinkled forehead before the melamed and said in a conciliatory voice:
"Reb, forgive him! When wisdom shall come to him, then he will recognise that his mouth has been very daring, and I am sure he will be pious and scholarly, as were all the members of our family."
He drew himself up, and pride sparkled in the eyes which age had long dimmed.
"Listen to me, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Our family--the family of Ezofowich--is not a common family. We--thanks to God, whose holy name be blessed--have great riches in chests and on vessels. But we have still greater riches in the records of our family. Our ancestor was a Senior, a superior over all the Jews living in this country, and very much beloved by the king himself.
And my father Hersh, the famous Hersh, had the friendship of the greatest lords, and they drove him in their carriages, and for his surprising wisdom they took him to the king to the diet which was then held in Warsaw."
The old man became silent and looked around with eyes brightened with pride and triumph. The whole gathering looked on him as on a rainbow.
The melamed became gloomy, and slowly sipped the wine from a big glass. The old great-grandmother, who was already slumbering, awakened at once, and peered with her golden eyes from behind half-closed lids, exclaiming in her soundless voice:
"Hersh! Hersh! my Hersh!"
After a while. Saul began to talk again:
"We have in our family a great treasure--such a treasure as has no equal in all Israel. This treasure is a long document, written by our ancestor Michael the Senior, and left by him, and in which there are written noble and wise things. If we could get that document of wisdom we should be happy. The only trouble is that we don't know where it is."
From the time Saul began to talk of the document left by his ancestor, among the many eyes looking at him two pairs sparkled passionately, with, however, quite contradictory sentiments. They were the eyes of the melamed, who laughed softly and maliciously, and the eyes of Meir who drew himself up in his chair and looked into his grandfather's face with burning curiosity.
"This writing," Saul said further, "was hidden for two hundred years and nobody has touched it. And when the two hundred years were ended, my father, Hersh, found it. Where he found it no one but our old great-grandmother knows."
Here he pointed to his mother, and then finished:
"And she alone knows where he hid that writing, but as yet she has told no one."
"And why did she tell no one?" laughed maliciously and softly the melamed.
Saul answered in a sad voice:
"Reb Nohim Todros--may his memory be blessed--has forbidden her to speak of it."
"And you, Reb Saul, why have you not searched for that writing yourself?"