United States or Brunei ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I did all as I had been ordered. My dog was watching me intently, greatly bewildered; the pig groaned and groaned; the flames licked his body and embraced it and my dog was barking and yelping away up into the sky. That night I dreamt that my brother the Shohet and I were on trial in Heaven before the seat of judgment, with various animals complaining against us.
And it was with difficulty that I could decipher the inscriptions on the stones. I do not know why it was so: either my Hebrew had got rusty, or else graveyard inscriptions make hard reading in general. "Here lieth . . . . the righteous man . . . . modest, pious . . . . Rabbi Simhah . . . . Shohet. . . . "
It was a Saturday night, soon after the death of my elder brother Dovidl, within the period of the thirty days' mourning for him. Mother would not be consoled, for Dovidl had been her "very best." Three brothers had I. The first-born, Simhah, may he rest in peace, had been married long before; he was the junior Shohet in town, and a candidate for the Rabbinate.
And Simhah was a privileged person; he was not only the Shohet of the community and a great Lamdan, but also a married man, and the father of four children to boot. Only then, it seems, my parents understood what the rabbi had understood before: that it was not fair to deliver up my brother when I, the ignorant fellow, the lover of dogs, might take his place.
Out of sheer spitefulness I wanted to worry the poor old folks a little; may the Lord not consider it a sin on my part. I said: "Had Rabbi Simhah the Shohet been in his place, he surely would have withstood all temptations!" . . . . "What, converted?!" I kept silent, and the old people took it as a sign of affirmation. They hung their heads despondently, and kept silent, too.
Word Of The Day