Rabbi Judah HaNasi needed to send a teacher to the town of Simonia. The community there required a sage who could teach Torah, render legal decisions, and guide the people. He chose Levi ben Sisi — one of the most brilliant minds in the academy, a man whose scholarship was beyond question.
Levi set out for Simonia with the confidence of a man who knew his own worth. He had been chosen by the greatest sage in Israel. He was bringing light to a town that sat in darkness. He arrived and seated himself in the place of honor.
Then the townspeople brought him their questions. Hard questions, thorny legal dilemmas, cases that required not just knowledge but wisdom. Levi opened his mouth to answer — and nothing came out. His mind was blank. The knowledge that had once flowed so easily was simply gone, as if it had been drained from him overnight.
The people of Simonia sent a bewildered message back to Rabbi Judah: "The man you sent us cannot answer our questions." Rabbi Judah was astonished.
The sages later explained what had happened: the moment Levi was promoted, pride had crept into his heart. He began to think of himself as the source of his own wisdom, rather than as a vessel through which God's Torah flowed. And the moment he claimed ownership of what had never been his, God reclaimed it.
Only when Levi was humbled by his failure — when he stood stripped of pretension, empty and ashamed — did the knowledge return. The lesson was seared into the consciousness of every student who heard the story: wisdom is a loan, not a possession. The moment you forget this, the Lender calls in the debt.