Two Scholars Who Were in Our Town and Other Novellas Read Online Free PDF Page B

entire town was filled with guests. Those who had come for the sake of Reb Shlomo and those who had come to see who else had come. There were those who were eager to see the new rabbi and others eager simply to report what they had seen. The erudite Torah scholars walked around hunched over and debating with themselves. One would say to himself, “If Reb Shlomo says this, I will ask that and if he responds this way, I will inquire that way.” And the way one man strategized, so precisely did his colleague, and so the next and the next. Among those that came you would have also found Reb Moshe Pinchas, who was sitting in the study house, busily ruminating on the precise Talmudic discussion that Reb Shlomo had announced as the topic of his sermon.
    The whole town assembled itself into the Great Synagogue, which was already packed with those who had remained after the morning prayers. And when Reb Shlomo entered with his father the sage to his right and his uncle the other great sage to his left, the eyes of most of the assembly welled with tears of joy at having been granted the privilege of beholding two such venerable sages who embodied Torah in human form. And so Reb Shlomo entered, and with him his father and his uncle, and with them several other rabbis and Torah learners, even the least of whom in our generation would have been considered a sage among sages. The entire congregation raised a mighty cheer in their honor and roared, “Welcome! May your arrival be blessed!” until the brass candelabras swayed from the clamor.
    12.
    Reb Shlomo ascended to the Holy Ark. He wrapped himself in a new prayer shawl and recited the Sheheheyanu blessing. He kissed the ark curtain and whispered several verses which are particularly suited for suppressing pride, and began to sermonize incisively and eruditely, argument and counter argument. Reb Shlomo was possessed of a gift of silver tongued eloquence, and even knew how to sermonize in the lingua franca and all the more so in the holy tongue which he had worked with his entire life. And once he had begun to speak all were filled with joy and they said, “What great fortune has been bestowed upon us to have this rabbi in our midst.” And even the simple folk recognized that great words were being uttered by him. Reb Shlomo endeared himself to them deeply. It’s been told that one butcher cried out in great wonder, “I am ready and willing to proffer my own neck for the slaughter on behalf of our new rabbi.” All the self-proclaimed debaters who had come intending to debate with the rabbi, set aside their arguments and stood trembling and quaking in trepidation lest they miss even one word of his oratory.
    Reb Shlomo stood there wrapped in his new prayer shawl crowned with silver ornamentation, his face full of humility, his voice going from the Babylonian Talmud to the Jerusalem Talmud, from the Jerusalem Talmud to the commentary ofRav Alfasi, from Rav Alfasi to Maimonides, and from Maimonides to the Rosh, from the early scholars to the later ones and back again. Torah elders are in the habit of telling that they had heard from several old rabbis that those rabbis had frequently struggled to reconcile the very same Talmudic query posed by Reb Shlomo, and when they heard Reb Shlomo’s solution they realized that their thoughts compared to his were like vinegar compared to wine. They also tell that at the time of Reb Shlomo’s sermon, tears were seen in the eyes of that venerable sage Reb Shlomo’s father and they saw that at times Reb Shlomo would nod his head to his father and his father would then point towards the Holy Ark. The pundits commented that the son was nodding towards his father as if to say, “Father, all of this comes from you,” and the father, in turn, was pointing to the ark as if to say, “Your learning, my son, derives from there.”
    13.
    Reb Shlomo was standing and sermonizing and his voice was like that of the humble nightingale on a summer night.