At first, indeed, the loss of Peninah, to whom I had become quite attached—for she honored my studies and earned our bread, and was pious even to my mother's liking—threw me into a fit of gloomy brooding. My longing for the living waters and the green pastures—partially appeased by Peninah's love as she grew up—revived and became more passionate. I sought relief in my old Cabalistic studies, and essayed again to perform incantations, thinking in some vague way that now that I had a dear friend among the dead, she would help me to master the divine mysteries. Often I summoned up her form, but when I strove to clasp it, it faded away, so that I was left dubious whether I had succeeded. I had wild fits of weeping both by day and night, not of grief for Peninah, but because I seemed somehow to live in a great desert of sand. But even had I known what I desired, I could not have opened my heart to my father-in-law (in whose house, many versts from my native village, I continued to reside), for he was a good, plain man, who expected me to do posthumous honor to his daughter by my Rabbinical renown. I was indeed long since qualified as a Rabbi, and only waited for some reputable post.
But a Rabbi I was never to be. For it was then that the luminous shadow of the Baal Shem fell upon my life.
II
There came to our village one winter day a stranger who had neither the air of a Schnorrer (beggar) nor of an itinerant preacher; nor, from the brief time he spent at the Beth-Hamidrash, where I sat pursuing droningly my sterile studies, did he appear to be a scholar. He was a lean, emaciated, sickly young man, but his eyes had the fire of a lion's, and his glance was as a god's. When he spoke his voice pierced you, and when he was silent his presence filled the room. From Eliphaz the Pedlar (who knew everything but the Law) I learnt at last that he was an emissary of Rabbi Baer, the celebrated chief of the Chassidim (the pious ones).
"The Chassidim!" I cried. "They died out with Judah the Saint."
"Nay, this is a new order. Have you not heard of the Baal Shem?"
Now, from time to time I had heard vague rumors of a new wonder-working saint who had apparently succeeded far better with Cabalah than I, and had even gathered a following, but the new and obscure movement had not touched our out-of-the-way village, which was wholly given over to the old Sabbatian controversy, and so my knowledge of it was but shadowy. I thought it better to feign absolute ignorance, and thus draw out the Pedlar.
"Why, the Baal Shem by much penance has found out the Name of God," said he; "and by it he works his will on earth and in heaven, so that there is at times confusion in the other world."
"And is his name Rabbi Baer?"
"No; Rabbi Baer is a very learned man who has joined him, and whom, with the other superiors of the Order, he has initiated, so that they, too, work wonders. I chanced with this young man on the road, and he told me that his sect therefore explains the verse in the Psalms, 'Sing unto God a new song; His praise is in the congregation of Saints,' in the following wise: Since God surpasses every finite being, His praise must surpass the praise of every such being. Hitherto the praise of Him consisted in ascribing miracles to Him, and the knowledge of the hidden and the future. But since all this is now within the capacity of the saints of the Order, the Almighty has no longer any pre-eminence over them in respect of the supernatural—'His praise is in the congregation of the saints,'—and therefore it is necessary to find for Him some new praise—'Sing unto God a new song'—suitable to Him alone."