And they have been studying the Kabbalah for some time!
Now they are sitting at the one long table. With everyone else it is "after dinner," with them still "before breakfast." They are used to that. The teacher rolls his eyes and holds forth; the pupil sits with both hands supporting his head and listens.
"Therein," said the teacher, "are many degrees of attainment: one knows a bit of a tune, another half a one, another a whole. The Rebbe of blessed memory knew a whole one with the accompaniment. I," he added sadly, "have only been found worthy of a bit like that!"
He measured off a tiny piece of his bony finger and went on:
"There is one kind of tune that must have words, that is a low order of tune. But there is a higher kind: a tune that sings itself, but without words—a pure melody! But that melody must have a voice—and lips, through which the voice issues! And lips, you see, are material things!
"And the voice itself is refined matter, certainly, but matter none the less. Let us say, the voice stands mid-way between the spiritual and the material.
"However that may be, the tune that finds expression through a voice and is dependent on lips is not pure, not entirely pure, not yet really spiritual!
"The real tune sings itself without a voice—it sings itself inside one, in the heart, in the thoughts!
"There you have the meaning of the words of King David: 'All my bones shall say,' etc. It ought to sing in the marrow of the bones, that is where the tune should be—that is the highest praise we can give to God. That is no human tone that has been thought out! It is a fragment of the melody to which God created the world, of the soul He breathed into it. Thus sings the Heavenly Family, thus sang the Rebbe, whose memory be blessed!"
The teacher was interrupted by a shock-headed lad with a cord round his waist—a porter. He came into the house-of-study, put down on the table, beside the teacher, a dish of porridge with a piece of bread, said gruffly: "Reb Tebil sends the teacher some food," turned his back, and added, as he went out: "I'll come back presently for the dish."