When Moses ascended to receive the Torah (Exodus 19), an angel stood at the gate of Heaven and refused him entry. "This is not your place," the angel said. "You are made of earth. The Torah is not meant for those who stand below."
To make his point, the angel told Moses a story.
Once upon a time, a star grew curious about the earth. It wondered what life looked like from below — the small lights of human hearths, the rivers, the turning of wheat in the fields. So the star descended. It walked among people for a long time. Then it tried to go home.
But when the star reached the gates of Heaven, the other stars refused to let it back in. "You left your station," they said. "You cannot take up your place again." The star pleaded. Its case was brought before the highest angels, who heard the argument on both sides and ruled: the star belongs in the heavens; let it be restored. The star was readmitted.
"But you," the angel said to Moses, "are not a visiting star. You were born of earth. The heavens are not your home. You have no case."
Moses did not argue. He did not plead. Gaster's Exempla (1924), No. 448, preserves only this one line for his response: Moses pushed him aside and entered the Heavens. He took the Torah anyway.
There is something uniquely Jewish in that ending. The angel's logic was airtight. The star's precedent did not apply. Moses ignored it. Some gates, the tradition teaches, are not meant to be reasoned through. They are meant to be pushed. The Torah, in the end, belonged to the only creature willing to walk through a locked door to get it.