This is the fifth story in this summers online Flash Fiction series. You can read the entire series, and our Flash Fiction stories from previous years, here.

In memoriam Rabbi Aharon Eliezer Ceitlin, 1953-2015

Reb Lev told the story on Purim, when you are supposed to get so drunk that you cant distinguish the hero from the villain in the Book of Esther.

Prayer, he said, is the sweetness of life, and to be able to pray, even when they arrest you with only clothes on your back and put you in dungeon in old Soviet Union near Minsk, is a miracle.

In prison were hoodlums, the worst scum, Jews among them who had renounced study of Torah and strayed from path of the righteous. In a corner apart I stood. It was Yom Kippur, most sacred of days. From memory I prayed the Kol Nidre in the evening and Shacharis in the morning but stumbled in the Musaf prayer that says all men are true believers. I looked around and thought, These hoodlums and crooks, surely they are not true believers.

From there they sent us to Vorkutlag concentration camp a hundred miles above Arctic Circle in East. I stood in my prayer shawl, closed my eyes, and shook gently back and forth, davening, when a strange man, a giant Uzbek with a big mustache and rugged face, came over to me and said, Reb Lev, you are praying, are you not? How did he know I was praying? But he knew, and he knew my name was Lev. Who was he?

Reb Lev, he said, I am also a Jewnamed after our patriarch Avrahambut raised in Communist state, and I do not know Hebrew except what my grandfather taught me: the Modeh Ani. And here is Yom Kippur and I must fast. May I pray with you?

Here he paused to take a sip of Covenant Neshama Proprietary Red (OU Kosher) 2015 ruby-red wine, while others of us drank the Barkan Pinot Noir or the same winerys Chardonnay.

You want to know how he prayed? He prayed by saying the Modeh Ani once and then twice and then again in a constant murmur.

And there, among the crooks, the hoodlums, the gangsters, I prayed, and understood for first time the Musaf prayer. All men are true believers, women, too, and worthy of the blessings of the Lord.

And therefore every morning, upon waking, I think of that blessed Uzbek oaf when I say the Modeh Ani and offer thanks to the living and eternal King, who has mercifully restored my soul within me.

The three rabbis were asked to sum up Judaism in a single sentence or Biblical verse.

Rabbi Baruch chose the first sentence of Genesis: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

And the people thought, Yes, that must be right. God is the creator of all things. To recognize Hashem is the first commandment.

The illustrious Ben Zoma chose the ShmaHear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is Onebecause that is what the martyrs uttered at the last moment. It was what Rabbi Akiva said when they tortured him. It was said by Jacob upon meeting his son Joseph after many years.

And the people thought, Surely, that is the correct answer. And consider the precedents that Ben Zoma wisely cited.

Then it was the Vilna Gaons turn. He said the others had spoken well but the true answer was this: the command to bring to the temple two lambs each day as an offering to the Lord, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

The effect of this statement was immediate. The other two rabbis stood on their feet and declared that the Vilna Gaon was right and had won the competition. The unanimous decision was applauded by all in attendance.

Rabbi Biegeleisen explained that to summarize Judaism in a single sentence or verse was nonsense. It was, he said, like supposing you could master the Talmud while standing on one foot. It was an act of chutzpah, of disrespect.

Nevertheless, Rabbi Biegeleisen said, the Vilna Gaon treated the questioner seriously. To such a questioner, lacking in tact or seriousness, or maybe just too young to know better, the affirmation of God as the creator, the sole Lord of Israel, was not sufficient. It was the easy part. The command to bring to the temple two lambs each day as an offering to the Lord, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, indicates what is required. A sacrifice, every day, twice a day.

Rabbi Biegeleisen was the most revered of all the rebbes in Vysotsk. Though loath to interrupt his daily schedule, which was as famously rigid as Immanuel Kants, he left for Odessa when word reached him of the uprising against the new rabbi there, Rabbi Simcha, who was considered too strict in demanding observance of all the major festivals and fast days.

When Rabbi Biegeleisen spoke at the Odessa synagogue, the people in attendance were skeptical, but he won them over. He argued that Rabbi Simchas policies were indeed strictpossibly too strict. After all, he told the congregants, look at all the other obligations in your life. How could you be expected to break the day into three parts, for morning and afternoon and evening prayers? The congregants liked what they heard.

Then he said he had to end his talk for the day but would speak again on the morrow.

This time, every seat in the synagogue was taken. There was even a line to get in. And it was now that Rabbi Biegeleisen reversed himself, repudiated all that he had implied on the previous day, and said that our sages should not be doubted. And even though Rabbi Simcha had white hair and a white beard so that he looked like a man of seventy when he was only thirty-nine years old, yet he was a sage! A sage! He had sacrificed two sheep to the Lord each day of the year. When he said the Modeh Ani, he saved the millions for whom he spoke.

This happened in the month of Elul, just weeks before Rosh Hashanah. Rabbi Biegeleisen produced a shofar. Why, he thundered, is the shofar crooked? No one said a word. To teach us humility, said Rabbi Biegeleisen.

Not an eye in the house was dry by the time he finished. The congregants left the temple and walked to the house where Rabbi Simcha lived. From the window he saw them coming and wondered whether they had come to lynch him.

Please forgive us, said the self-appointed spokesman for the group. And Rabbi Simcha forgave them. And months went by before the next popular rebellion.

Continue reading here:

Tales Told to Tevye - The New Yorker