The
great Yiddish/Hebrew poet writer I.L. Peretz (1852-1915), was best
known as a writer of short stories. In the early 1890s he began
contributing short stories to the socialist Yiddish newspapers that
had been founded in the United States; when the Yiddish daily press
exploded at the beginning of the twentieth century, he was one of
its most sought-after contributors. He also wrote stories in Hebrew
and translation, or supervised the translation of his work from
one language to the other.
A Pinch of Snuff tells of Satan who, disturbed by the clean
slate of the very righteous rabbi of Helm, sends out one his demons
to tempt the rabbi from the true path. The following is the closing
piece of that short story. |
Every Friday afternoon, having bathed for the Sabbath, the rabbi of Helm
used to go for a walk in the woods. He always took the same path, between
a wheatfield and a cornfield; and as he walked, he repeated by heart
as pious Jews are wont to do on Friday afternoons
the Song of Songs.
Now, knowing himself to be an absentminded man, and fearing that some
Friday afternoon he would wander out too far and fail to return in time
to receive the Sabbath (a grievous transgression), he had created, for
his own protection, a special device. He had measured the distance against
the time it took to repeat the Song of Songs and had found that
halfway through the prayer he reached a certain tree. There he would sit
down, treat himself to a hearty pinch of snuff from his goat's-horn snuffbox,
rest awhile, then get up and return, saying the second half of the prayer.
Thus, he would get back exactly in time to welcome the Sabbath.
One fateful Friday, just before the rabbi of Helm set out for his walk,
a spindly-legged little fellow, dressed like a German in a derby hat and
green-striped trousers, appeared on the scene, uprooted the tree mentioned
above, and carried it out farther into the woods; he replanted it and
sat himself down on the father side.
The rabbi, meanwhile, arrives on the spot where he has always found the
tree. He is halfway through the Song of Songs, and the tree, he
perceives, is quite a distance off. He is shocked. Obviously, he has been
repeating the prayer mechanically, rapidly, without absorption and contemplation
also a grievous transgression. He will do
penance at once. He will refuse himself that pinch of snuff until he has
reached the tree. His nose itches for the grateful tickle of the snuff,
his heart is faint with longing but no! Not
until he has reached the tree.
His limbs are feeble,
and his steps are tottering. It takes him a long time to get there. And
all the time there is this aching and longing, so that he can hardly see.
And now at last he reaches the tree; he sits down and snatches the snuffbox
from his pocket; but his hands are all atremble, and just at that moment
a wind begins to blow from the other side of the tree (it's that miserable
little German, of course, blowing) and the snuffbox falls out of the rabbi's
hands.
He
reaches for it. The wind grows stronger and the box rolls away. The rabbi
crawls after it on all fours, his body crying out for the strong taste
of the snuff. The wretched German grins, and blows harder. Then suddenly
he uproots the tree again, and replants it in its proper place. The rabbi
looks up, wondering what happened to the tree. He perceives that it is
night; the sky is studded with stars! The Sabbath has begun! The sun has
set, and he has not even noticed it, so furiously has his heart beenset
on the pinch of snuff.
But wait, my friends. The sin of the rabbi in failing to appear for the
Welcoming of the Sabbath was the lesser of the two sins into which his
lust for snuff led him that evil day. For the demon kept blowing, the
snuffbox kept rolling, and the rabbi, crawling after it in anguish, went
out beyond the limits of a permissible Sabbath walk.
The brilliant young demon, returning to the nether regions, was at once
entrusted with another highly important mission. Addressing the mephitic
assembly before his departure, he said: "Gentlemen, nobody stubs
his toe against a mountain. It's the little lusts that bring a man down."
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From
The IL Peretz Reader, edited and with an introduction by
Ruth R. Wisse. New York: Schocken Books, 1990. Reprinted with permission
of the publisher.
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