A ma'aseh preserved among the Gaster manuscripts tells the story of a rich man and his wife who were, by every measure, bad people. Their house had four walls, and in one of those walls stood a door. The husband, who had mysterious knowledge of the place, warned his wife: "Whatever you do, never open that door."

One day he left for a journey. His wife, as curious people in stories always do, opened the door. A hand reached out. It grasped her and pulled her through. The door slammed shut behind her.

The husband came home and found her gone. He searched everywhere. In the forest, a towering dark figure met him on the path and told him that if he sent a faithful servant, the servant would be allowed to see where his wife was. The servant was led down through a long darkness into Gehinnom. There he saw her — not chained, not whipped, not visibly tormented. She was sitting at a golden table, in a golden chamber, with beautiful food in front of her. The servant, confused, asked why this was called punishment.

A voice explained. Everything she saw — the gold, the chamber, the food — was burning red-hot. The golden chair was scalding. The golden table was searing her hands. The food was fire in her mouth. And there was no one to save her, because she had left no son behind to say Kaddish or to respond Baruch Hu u'Varuch Shemo on her behalf. She had committed, the voice added, every major sin. There was no lever of mercy left for anyone to pull.

But before the servant left, she slipped a ring from her finger and pressed it into his hand. "Take this to my husband."

When the servant returned and placed the ring in the husband's palm, the husband broke. He recognized it. He understood, at last, what kind of life they had been living together. He wept. He tore his clothes. He entered teshuvah — full repentance — and was saved from his wife's fate. The ring, preserved as exemplum no. 338 in Moses Gaster's 1924 The Exempla of the Rabbis, became his reminder for the rest of his life.

The story is relentless but careful. It does not say the wife was saved. The Kaddish that might have pulled her out had never been born. But it says, clearly, that the husband was still within reach of teshuvah — repentance — while he still walked on this side of the door. The opportunity does not last forever. What the Rabbis want the reader to understand is small and brutal: the door is real, and the time to change is now.