The Rabbi's Son Who Missed the Messiah at His Door

The only son sat in the attic with the books open and no taste in his mouth. He studied. He prayed. The pages were the right pages. The words were the right words. A hollow in him refused every line. He did not know what was missing. He only knew the prayers sat on his tongue like dry bread.

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Two young friends told him to travel to a certain tzaddik, a holy man who woke dead places in living people. The son went down to his father.

The Attic Had No Taste

The father was a rabbi, learned, pedigreed, sure. "You are more scholarly than he is. You are better born. It does not suit you to go to such a person. Desist."

The son went back up the stairs. The hollow grew. He came down again. The father refused again. This happened more than once. The house was full of books. The boy was full of silence.

At last the son begged so hard the father had to go with him. He would not send an only child alone. "I will come," he said. "I will show you that this tzaddik is nothing at all."

A Horse Fell on the Bridge

They harnessed the carriage. On the road the father set a test. If everything went smoothly, the trip was from Heaven. If not, they would turn back.

They reached a small bridge. A horse fell. The carriage overturned. Cold water came up through broken wood. They nearly drowned under the planks.

"You see?" the father said. "It is not going orderly. This is not from Heaven." They went home. The son climbed back to the attic. The hollow was still there, wider for the wet clothes.

Both Axles Broke

He begged again. The father had to travel again. He set the same test. On the road both axles broke. The father stared at the snapped wood.

"See. Is it natural that both axles should break? How many times have we ridden this carriage, and this has never happened?"

They turned around a second time. The son asked to drop the test. Horses fall, he said. Axles break. That is the world, unless something truly shocking happens. The father agreed to try once more, and he did not tell the innkeeper where they were going. He was ashamed to say he was traveling to that tzaddik.

The Merchant at the Inn

They spent the night at an inn. A merchant sat with them and talked the way merchants talk, about roads and prices and, after a while, about holy men. He named tzaddikim here and there. Then he named the one they were going to see.

"That one?" The merchant's mouth opened in a kind of wonder. "He is plainly a light one. Not an earnest Jew. I am coming from him now. I was there when he committed a transgression."

The father turned to his son. "Do you hear? He is telling it innocently. He is coming right from there."

They went home a third time. The son died. The hollow went into the ground with him, still unfilled.

Samael Opened His Mouth

The son appeared to his father in a dream, standing in great anger. "Why are you so angry?" the father asked. The son told him to travel to that tzaddik. The tzaddik would explain the anger. The father woke and called it a coincidence. The dream came a second time. He called it empty. The third time he understood it was not empty, and he went.

On the road he met the merchant. "Aren't you the one I saw at that inn?"

"Certainly you saw me." The merchant opened his mouth, too wide for a man. "If you want, I will swallow you."

The father asked what he was saying. The merchant answered with the whole road. "Do you remember the horse on the bridge? The axles? Then me, at the inn, calling the tzaddik a light one? Now that I have wiped out your son, you may go. Your son was an aspect of the Smaller Luminary. That tzaddik is an aspect of the Greater. If they had assembled, the Messiah would have come. Now that I have wiped him out, you are permitted to travel."

The merchant vanished. There was no one left to argue with. The father went to the tzaddik and cried, "Woe. Woe. A pity for that which is lost and cannot be found."

The merchant had been Samael, the Accuser, wearing a trader's coat. The son had been the smaller light. The tzaddik had been the greater. Together they would have been a banner the nations could seek, the root of Jesse that David's psalm already names. Honor from above would have sat on a living face. The father had read every broken axle as a command to stop. He arrived at the door after the Messiah had already missed the house.