The train disappeared over the horizon all that was left was thick, dirty smoke.īehind me, someone said, sighing, 'What do you expect? That's war. Standing on the station platform, we too were crying. And Moishe the Beadle was a foreigner.Ĭrammed into cattle cars by the Hungarian police, they cried silently. Not to learn it by heart but to discover within the very essence of divinity.Īnd in the course of those evenings I became convinced that Moishe the Beadle would help me enter eternity, into that time when question and answer would become ONE.ĪND THEN, one day all foreign Jews were expelled from Sighet. Together we would read, over and over again, the same page of the Zohar. That would present a danger not only for the one entering but also for those who are already inside.'Īnd Moishe the Beadle, the poorest of the poor of Sighet, spoke to me for hours on end about the Kabbalah's revelations and its mysteries. He must not err and wish to enter the orchard through a gate other than his own. After a long silence, he said, 'There are a thousand and one gates allowing entry into the orchard of mystical truth. One evening, I told him how unhappy I was not to be able to find in Sighet a master to teach me the Zohar, the Kabbalistic works, the secrets of Jewish mysticism. We spoke that way almost every evening, remaining in the synagogue long after all the faithful had gone, sitting in the semidarkness where only a few half-burnt candles provided a flickering light. 'I pray to the God within me for the strength to ask Him the real questions.' 'And why do you pray, Moishe?' I asked him. The real answers, Eliezer, you will find only within yourself. Because they dwell in the depths of our souls and remain there until we die. Man comes closer to God through the questions he asks Him, he liked to say. He explained to me, withgreat emphasis, that every question possessed a power that was lost in the answer. 'I don't know.'įrom that day on, I saw him often. 'I don't know,' I told him, even more troubled and ill at ease. 'Why do you pray?' he asked after a moment. because something inside me felt the need to cry. 'Why do you cry when you pray?' he asked, as though he knew me well. He had watched me one day as I prayed at dusk. I succeeded on my own in finding a master for myself in the person of Moishe the Beadle. He wanted to drive the idea of studying Kabbalah from my mind. 'There are no Kabbalists in Sighet,' my father would often tell me. As for me, my place was in the house of study, or so they said. Hilda, the eldest then Bea I was the third and the only son Tzipora was the youngest. The Jewish community of Sighet held him in highest esteem his advice on public and even private matters was frequently sought. He rarely displayed his feelings, not even within his family, and was more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kin. My father was a cultured man, rather unsentimental. First you must study the basic subjects, those you are able to comprehend.'

Maimonides tells us that one must be thirty before venturing into the world of mysticism, a world fraught with peril. One day I asked my father to find me a master who could guide me in my studies of Kabbalah.'You are too young for that. By day I studied Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple.

I was almost thirteen and deeply observant. He sang, or rather he chanted, and the few snatches I caught here and there spoke of divine suffering, of the Shekhinah in Exile, where, according to Kabbalah, it awaits its redemption linked to that of man. As for me, I liked his wide, dreamy eyes, gazing off into the distance. Physically, he was as awkward as a clown. He had mastered the art of rendering himself insignificant, invisible. As a rule, our townspeople, while they did help the needy, did not particularly like them. The Jews of Sighet-the little town in Transylvania where I spent my childhood-were fond of him. He was the jack-of-all-trades in a Hasidic house of prayer, a shtibl. THEY CALLED HIM Moishe the Beadle, as if his entire life he had never had a surname.

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