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.
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"The great thing," said Reb Yozel, "is to suffer.
"No soul will be lost; they must all return to the state in which they were previous to their stay on earth. And the souls can be cleansed only by suffering. The Creator, in His great mercy, sends us suffering so that we may remember we are but flesh and blood, a broken potsherd, mere nothings, who fall into dust and ashes at His look; but in the other world also the souls undergo purification."
And he told me all that was done to the poor souls in the seven torture-chambers of Gehenna.