I opened my reading selection to an author named Yitzhak Leib Peretz (1852-1915) born in a Polish city, under Russian rule.  He wrote and gathered Yiddish folktales while imprisoned in 1899. This little folktale is entitled:

“ And Maybe Even Higher” 

The rebbe (yiddish for rabbi) was from the town of Nemirov in the Ukraine.

 And every morning at the time for the penitential prayers, the rebbe from Nemirov would disappear; vanish!

He was nowhere to be seen; not in the synagogue, not in either of the study-houses, not at a prayer gathering, and surely not at home.  The house stood open.  Anyone who wanted to could go in or out; nobody stole from the rebbe.  But not a living soul was to be found in the house.


Where can the rebbe be?


Where could he be? 
In heaven, of course.  Do you think a rebbe doesn’t have a lot of affairs to attend to during the Days of Awe:  Jews, God save them, need to earn a living; need peace, health, good marriages for their children; want to be good and God-fearing.  But their sins are great, and Satan with his thousand eyes watches, and accuses and informs…and —who is to help if not the rebbe?

Once, though, a Litvak  (Lithuanian Jew scholar who studied the Talmud) arrived in town, and he scoffed!

To heaven? he sneered when he heard the story. What nonsense! Even Moses couldn’t get into heaven while he was alive.

So the Litvak wants to find out for sure where the rebbe goes. He sneaks into the rebbe’s house after evening prayers and creeps under his bed and lies there. He intends to wait all night and see where the rebbe goes; what he does during the time of the penitential prayers. He stays there all night. Before sunrise he hears the call to prayers, he hears the rebbe groan.

The rebbe, God bless him, on the bed; the Litvak under the bed.



Finally the rebbe, God bless him, gets out of bed…. He goes to the clothes closet and removes a bundle… peasant garments–linen trousers, great boots, a coat, a big fur hat, and a large leather belt studded with brass nails.  The rebbe puts them on.  From the pocket of the coat a thick rope sticks out; the kind of rope peasants use!


The rebbe leaves, the Litvak follows.  On his way out the rebbe goes into the kitchen stoops, removes an ax from under a bed, thrusts it through his belt, and leaves the house.  The Litvak trembles, but he doesn’t falter.

The rebbe keeps to the edges of the street, in the shadow of the houses and soon arrives outside of the town.  Beyond the town there’s a wood.

The rebbe, God bless him, enters the wood.  

The Litvak is amazed to see the rebbe take the ax from his belt and begin to hack at a tree.  He watches as the rebbe splits it into logs and the logs into chunks, and then ties them up with his rope.  He throws the bundle over his shoulder, sticks the ax back in his belt, and walks out of the wood and back to town.

In a back street he stops before a half-collapsed house and knocks at a window.

 
–Who is it?–a frightened voice of a sick woman calls from within.

 –Me!–the rebbe answers in a peasant dialect.

–Who “me”?

 And the rebbe answers again in Ukrainian:  “Vasil” (meaning woodcutter)

–Vasil who?  And what do you want Vasil“

 –Wood—says the supposed Vasil—I have firewood for sale.  Very cheap.  I’m practially giving it away!

And without an answer, he walks into the house.

The Litvak follows and sees rickety furniture and a sick woman in bed covered with rags.

–Buy wood?  With what should I buy it?  I’m a poor widow; what money do I have?

 –You can have it on credit!–answers the supposed Vasil,–it comes to six groschen altogether.

–How will I pay it?–the poor woman groans.

 –Foolish woman,–the rebbe lectures her,–here you are a poor sick woman, and I trust you for this bit of wood; I have faith that you’ll pay me.  And you have such a great and powerful God, and you don’t trust Him, and you don’t have faith in Him even for a silly six groschens’ worth of wood!

 –But who will lay the fire for me–the widow groans–Do I have strength to get out of bed?  My son had to stay away at his job.

–I’ll lay the fire for you, too–says the rebbe.

And having put the wood in the oven, the rebbe, with a groan, recited the first verse of the penitential prayers…
And when he had lit the fire and it was burning merrily, he recited the second verse, somewhat more cheerfully.. And he recited the third verse when the fire had subsided into a steady glow and he closed the oven door..

The Litvak who saw it all went on to become a follower, and when the townspeople told the story of their rebbe going up to heaven during the days of Awe, he would nod and add:

–And maybe even higher!

English: Jews of Galicia (western Ukraine) in traditional dress, posctcard of 1821.

English: Jews of Galicia (western Ukraine) in traditional dress, posctcard of 1821.