Chosen Tales: Stories Told by Jewish Storytellers by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781461627784
Publisher: Jason Aronson
Published: 2013-07-10T16:00:00+00:00

In Eastern Europe, there was a couple whose ten-year-old son did not want to study the Torah. This was a terrible problem. Admittedly, learning the Torah takes long hours of concentrated study. Admittedly, too, what their little boy wanted was to be out running in the fields, roaming the woods and discovering the ways of animals. But everyone knows that Torah is the key to happiness. Not only that, all the other little boys were studying Torah, so why shouldn’t their son?

The unhappy parents went to the Rabbi. Obediently, they took his advice, but the little boy still refused to study the Law. In fact, where he had once been merely bored, he now became defiant.

More desperate now, the parents asked their neighbors for help. When the aid of neighbors failed, they wrote to relatives in distant cities. They followed everyone’s advice in turn. The best of it had no effect, and the worst made their son resist them more than ever.

They began to despair.

Just then, word came that the greatest hasidic rebbe of their generation, Aaron of Karlin, was coming to visit their little stetl.

On the day that Aaron of Karlin visited their village, a long line of people waited for his blessing: the childless, the crippled, those who had failed in business—in short, nearly everyone in that shtetl stood in line, with their life’s greatest problem foremost in their minds. And there among them was our couple, with their ten-year-old boy.

When at last they were ushered into the great rebbe’s presence, they told him the whole story. After hearing it, the rebbe arose from behind his desk and stood looking at the little boy. The boy stood defiantly, his gaze down, his arms folded. The rebbe’s eyes turned to the parents. They looked nervously from their son to the rebbe to each other.

Suddenly, like thunder, the rebbe spoke. “So—he won’t study Torah!” he growled, so ferociously that the parents unconsciously took a step toward each other. “You leave him here with me for two hours. I’ll give him a talking-to that he’ll never forget!”

The parents looked at each other in fear. Should they leave their son with such a fierce man? But the advice of everyone else had already failed. He was their last chance.

As soon as the parents had left, the great rebbe approached their defiant son. Slowly, tenderly, he put his arms around the boy. The boy was stiff at first, but then, by degrees, he allowed himself to be hugged. He dropped his arms to his sides, relaxed the pout of his mouth, and finally let the great man pull him against his breast. He stood there, hearing the rebbe’s heart beat. By the end of the second hour, their hearts beat together.

When the parents returned after two hours, they said, “Did it work?”

“Did it work!” He was nearly shouting. “You just wait and see!”

All the way home, the parents looked at their little boy. Was there any change? Could there be any change?

They stopped at the butcher’s.

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