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1 The Fishpond Rav visited a certain town. He decreed a fast, but no rain fell. A member of the congregation also tried to bring rain. He said, “He Who causes the wind to blow”—and the wind blew. He said, “He Who causes the rain to fall”—and the rain fell. Rav said to him: “What do you do?” He said to him, “I teach children. I teach the poor as I teach the rich, And if anyone cannot afford to pay, I teach him free of charge. And for any child who will not learn— I have a pond with fish.1 I win the student over with a fish: I call to him, and appeal to him, until he learns to read.” —B. Taanit 24a We were twenty-five students sitting before the teacher during that parched summer. He was young, still wet behind the ears, and he taught us by playing melodies. Sometimes he would play a tune slightly differently than we were accustomed to, adding pleasant trills. He was tall and thin as a reed, and his beard had still not filled out. I loved his school room, where we sat in groups of four, crowding around the parchment scroll. The teacher’s house became a home for me. One after another my friends began reading the letters of the alphabet , and soon some could combine words to form sentences with sense and meaning. I sang the melodies we learned along with everyone else, but the names of the letters eluded me. No matter how hard I tried, I 2 The Fishpond saw only lines—stripes and shapes like the full or crescent moon, written in black ink atop a scroll that smelled heavenly. Whenever the teacher wasn’t looking, I would lean toward the scroll to sniff it. As time went on, I tried to conceal my weakness: I couldn’t read. Once, one of the children made fun of me by imitating my stuttering. Tears trembled in my eyes, and I was gripped by a cold paralysis. I forgot the teacher’s rules of decorum. Before my tears could betray me, I lunged at the offending boy and hit him. The bench collapsed on him, and together both boy and bench fell to the ground, accompanied by the tittering of the class. I felt relieved: I had managed not to cry, and my friends had delighted in my mischief. Suddenly I heard the teacher coming toward me, and my shoulders shrank, fearing the pinch that would follow. I was surprised to feel a gentle palm resting on my shoulder. Long fingers spread out over the length of my back. The teacher spoke my name and asked that I get up and leave the room with him. The other students followed me with their eyes, excited about my banishment. I was terrified, convinced that my days at school were over and that now my father would send me to work as an apprentice to the cobbler. All my friends would sleep until the hour when kings arise and then head to their studies, but I would be up from the crack of dawn working with cold hands on disgusting leather. We went out. The teacher told the other students to review their letters . The sun fell behind the hills. The sky lay suspended over the city as if giving it a once-over. I could hear the chirping voices of the rest of the class, singing the “Aleph-Bet” as instructed. We walked over to the yard behind the teacher’s house, which concealed a garden with a path running along its length. I walked slowly beside him, conscious of his presence. At the end of the path I saw a fishpond, round as an eye, like a patch of sky. The teacher stood still and encouraged me to move closer to the pond. I approached cautiously and caught a glimpse of the sky reflected in the water. A small mass of water vapor, almost unnoticeable in the sky above, appeared as a heavy rain cloud on the surface of the water. My own thin face, when reflected in the water, looked like the face of an older boy with full, round cheeks. A light wind came and scattered the surface of the water into thousands of circles, and my face broke into innumerable tiny ripples that were all me. Life was pleasant [18.222.35.77] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 03:32...

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