9
On the eve of New Year I completed the course with Zerach Kneip, and felt as it were the relief of the exodus out of Egypt.
I had been told that my new teacher, Reb Yozel, never pinched; never even hit you for nothing. I had been used to see Reb Yozel at prayers. He was a tall Jew, with huge eyebrows, so that his eyes were quite hidden. He wore his kaftan open, and the "little prayer-scarf" appeared on each side of his long, pointed beard. He walked softly and talked softly, as though of secrets. And while he talked, he nodded his head slowly, lifted his brows, drew his forehead together, thrust out his lips and whiskers, and slid both hands into his girdle; it seemed as though every word he spoke were of the greatest importance.
Reb Yozel had been "messenger" for a time to one of the great wonder-workers, and he had even now a certain amount of oils, coins, amulets, salves, etc.,[35] to sell on commission; he was reckoned the first exorcist in the town, and if the rabbi were poorly, he would preach instead of him on the Great Sabbath and the New Year, and deliver memorial addresses. The rabbi was a weak old man, and Reb Yozel looked to filling his place when he had accomplished his one hundred and twenty years.
Beside this, Reb Yozel was a celebrated blower of the Shofar, and when he repeated the blessing before blowing—how goes the saying?—fish trembled in the water.
And I was filled with pride at the thought of being his pupil.
We had not reached the Day of Atonement before I had an opportunity of questioning Reb Yozel about the soul.
The soul, with me, had become a sort of idée fixe; it was never out of my thoughts. The first thing Reb Yozel did was to empty my head of the notion of other people being our equals, and to fill it up again with "Thou hast chosen us."
"Not in vain," said he, "do we suffer exile, scorn, and other plagues not mentioned in the denunciations of the Pentateuch. Were we like to other nations, we should have this world the same as they have it; 'the child whom the father loveth, he correcteth,' so that it may study and enter the gates of knowledge.
"But even with us Jews," went on Reb Yozel, "souls are not all alike; there are coarse, ordinary souls, like Zerach Kneip's, for instance; your teacher, the heretic, has a soul like Korah; there are also very great souls, some of which come from out the space under the Throne of Glory; these belong to the category of kémach sòlet."[36]
I understood little, especially about the space under the Throne of Glory; I only knew the meaning of kémach sòlet, and supposed the difference between soul and soul was like that between rye-flour, corn-flour, wheat-flour, and the flour which was used for the Sabbath loaf. The greatest of all the souls must be mixed with saffron and raisins.