The Hasidic Parable

It Is God Who Awakens Our Minds

It Is God Who Awakens Our Minds guest comes to the king to test the knowledge of the king's son, and the young child is unable even to understand the halakhah1 because of its deep and complicated logic. But because of the father's great affection for his son, he can't bear the distress his beloved son experiences in encountering such difficulty and in his incapability to comprehend. What does the father do? He finds a way to help his son begin to understand the halakhah and he shows him a path that might allow him to converse on that passage, virtually telling him the actual content of that legal passage. The guest poses questions, and when the young boy is able to respond and engage in dialogue with a clarity of thought, the father rejoices, feeling delight and pride in his son, even though the latter's very ability to answer and discuss the passage is admittedly the doing of his father. Cognizant of the father's delight, the guest goes on to raise further questions, and relying on his father's prodding , the son's understanding awakens and he proceeds to answer the difficulties posed by the guest. . . . (Or torahP 91 I t Is God Who Aw-akens Our Minds guest comes to the lzing to test the lznowledge of the lzing's son, and the young child is unable even to understand the halalzhah1 because of its deep and complicated logic. But because of the father's great affection for his son, he can't bear the distress his beloved son experiences in encountering such difficulty and in his incapability to comprehend. What does the father do? He finds a way to help his son begin to understand the halalzhah and he shows him a path that might allow him to converse on that passage, virtually telling him the actual content of that legal passage. The guest poses questions, and when the young boy is able to respond and engage in dialogue with a clarity of thought, the father rejoices, feeling delight and pride in his son, even though the latter's very ability to answer and discuss the passage is admittedly the doing of his father. Cognizant of the father's delight, the guest goes on to raise further questions, and relying on his father's prodding , the son's understanding awalzens and he proceeds to answer the difficulties posed by the guest. . . . (()r torah) 2 91 92 THE ttAflDIC PA~ABLE The Maggid, Dov Baer of Mezherich, who told this parable, identified the guest who comes to probe the child's learning-and possibly also to embarrass him if necessary-with the yetzer ha-ra (the Evil Inclination), and in the Maggid's homily, the mashal is said to exemplify an overcoming of that Evil Inclination. The guest, a person steeped in talmudic learning, occupies a role in the parable counter to that of the child, and his role in testing echoes the traditional role of a Satan figure in testing people in many folktales. Though the Maggid was himself an extremely capable talmudic scholar, that overtone suggests a critical attitude toward the learned class whose representatives, in the hasidic writings of that period, are often closely associated with pride. The parable provides its own answer to pride in conveying that one's accomplishments are not really one's own; even our own spiritual and intellectual attainments are really not of our own doing but rather depend upon God's awakening us, as the Maggid goes on to explain: We find that everything is of You and from You, and our own doing and endeavor is from You, of Your own power, and nevertheless You have great delight from this. And You feel pride in us as though we ourselves have really accomplished what we have done. And in this condition one can recognize the force of Your love and Your overflowing affection. (Or torah) 3 As noted, The Maggid's homily explains the above parable in more precise terms as it applies to the righteous person's ability to overpower the Evil Inclination (yetzer ha-ra). God takes great delight when such a person prevails over the Evil Inclination, over his own negative tendencies, even though the very capacity to prevail over the evil within one's own makeup is itself a gift from God, not something of one's own making. Nevertheless, the Maggid emphasizes, God takes delight in man's...