“It’s an Old Story” is a recent riff on a late-medieval Kabbalistic demon tale recounted by Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Kaidanover in his collection Kav HaYashar (“The Just Measure”), first widely published around 1705. (Here’s a direct link to a translation of the original story in-situ: Kav HaYashar 25:3.)
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“It’s an Old Story”
by David Erik Nelson
You wanna hear a story? It’s an old story; everybody’s heard it–everybody thinks they’ve heard it. Yet maybe still . . .
OK. Once upon a time, back in Poland, there was a man, a rich rich man. He had land, he kept a shop, he had fancy clothes, he had chests and chests full of gold and jewels with big locks and heavy keys.
But despite all these riches, he was a miser. Wouldn’t give a shekel to a beggar or a dime to charity, not even the burial society, not even on Rosh Hashanah. He couldn’t even stand to spend a penny to buy himself a sweet.
But this was not to say he was a total sonofabitch. He was a shopkeeper and a landlord and a miser, but also he was a mohel–you know what a mohel is?
A mohel does the circumcisions on the newborn boys, to consecrate them into the covenant with HaShem. To make them Jews. So he’s a little like a doctor who only knows one surgery, a little like a rabbi who knows only one prayer. But very respected. And in this, the miser was generous and joyful: no matter how far the journey, he went when called, whistling all the way. No matter how much the hassle, he refused all payment.
One day a stranger comes to town, comes to the miserly mohel, and says his wife has just had a son.
“Mazel tov!,” the miser cries. He’s only too eager to journey with the man–who warns him that it’s a long ways and bound to be a hassle. The miserly mohel won’t hear any it. He locks up all his chests and cupboards, locks his doors, hangs his knot of keys on their cord around his neck, and off he and the stranger go, up hill and down dale, over the river and through the woods, the miser’s keys jingle-jangling at every jaunty step, like wind chimes in the springtime.
All the while, the stranger makes light conversation: The weather’s been good (but not too good), the wheat has come in well this year (but not too well), and prices at the market are fair (neither high nor low, but just as they should be).
It grows late. The sun sets. The miser gets nervous being out in the dark in the woods with a man who, truth told, he doesn’t know from Adam.
They walk on in the dark of night. The moon never rises, the stars never come out, it is as black as a rabbi’s hat. The miser’s gut sinks. His chest gets tight. Not good out here. Not good at all.
He reaches out as he walks, but his hands don’t brush a single leaf or limb or trunk. He feels no breeze. He hears no bird, no cricket, no babbling brook, no browsing deer. The world has gone cold and silent, empty as the grave.
Silent, except for the stranger. The stranger, he never stops prattling about inconsequentialities, his tone never shifting. The sun’s been warm, the breeze cool. The rain has been wet, but the dust dry. Bricks have been quite heavy this year, and yet feathers still very light.
The miser follows that steady voice through the Void, his hand tight around the reassuring weight of his keys, solid and real in that dark that’s darker than dark.
Other men, in such moments of extremity–a soldier, for example–might find themselves caught between a desperate desire to flee home to their families and their iron-clad loyalty to their nation and ideals. The miser, he finds himself caught between his obedience to HaShem, and his desire to see his gold, safe and snug in his lockboxes. He knows this is a shameful dilemma, but also knows it’s true. No sense lying to himself, in the privacy of his own skull. He knows what he is.
Given how he passed the night, you’d think that the miser would greet the pinkening of the sky like a robin greets the melting of the snow. But no, if anything, the sunrise makes it all worse.
‘Cause when the sun rises, it does so in the east and west at once, like a man peering into your bedroom window and straight into the mirror on the other side. This double sunrise shows a landscape like the miser has never seen, not even in dreams: a misty mountain with sky both above it and below, trees rooted in the air with branches growing from both ends of the trunk. There isn’t a single mosquito or bird, not a buzz or a tweet. The only sound is little streams, crystal clear like heaps of broken glass, chuckling to themselves as they tumble up the rocks toward the peaks, and the gentle flutter of the tiny yellow leaves that rain down all around them without ever touching ground.
This stranger has brought him to a place where nature is unnatural. God forbid, the miserly mohel thinks, gripping his old familiar keys, I am in Sheol.
Soon they arrive at the stranger’s home, a lovely and sturdy chalet–which, of course, it gives the miser no joy to see. Seeing a lovely home in Hell is like finding a gold coin in your mother’s deathbed. Bitter. Worse than having nothing at all.
They go around back and enter through the cellar hatch in order to come out into the bright, sunny second-floor bedroom. There the miser sees a grand bed, four-poster with canopy and curtains, and in the bed a lovely wife with a beautiful baby boy at her breast.
In that moment, his joy at seeing such a scene, it overwhelms his terror and despair.
“Mazel tov!” he shouts. “What a lovely wife! What a beautiful child! You are truly a fortunate man!”
The stranger smiles a smile honest but unsettling, like a smirk bent down the middle by a funhouse mirror. “Indeed–“
“Dear,” the wife in the bed with the babe at her breast gently interrupts, “Do you mind terribly going down to check and be sure the cook is on schedule? I worry she won’t have everything prepared for the feast without me there–“
But already the proud papa is shushing his wife. “Or course! Of course my darling!” and he rushes from the room.
Immediately the new mother’s smile falls away, and her exhaustion shows through.
“Listen!” she hisses. “You are not among men. These are demons. All but me. I was lured here by their riches, their grace and beauty. But they contain no Spark of Creation, and so cannot have their own children. Now I cannot leave. My son cannot leave. Thank God you are here to perform his bris, and consecrate him to HaShem! As a show of my gratitude, I’ll tell you the one thing you must know: take nothing while you are here. Not a sip of drink, not a bite of food, no gifts or payment. If you accept nothing from the demons, then come nightfall–when the suns meet at the zenith of the sky and set into each other–you may leave. But only if you’ve taken nothing.”
Before the miser can ask any questions the stranger–the demon father–returns, eager to get the mohel down to the schul, where he is to be honored with leading the morning prayers before the brit milah ceremony.
The morning service runs smooth as silk, although the mohel is terrified. There is not an empty seat in the sanctuary–and yet, when he closes his eyes to say the Shema, it is as though he is in a deep cave, all alone in the cold dark. The crowd is completely attentive, hanging on his every word–but also completely silent: not a shuffled foot, nor a creaking pew, nor a single breath or cough.
Nonetheless, The bris, it goes off without a hitch. The baby boy, he is brave and strong and hardly fusses. The mother, she weeps with joy.
Then begin the festivities. There are long tables outside the schul, heavy with big braided loaves of challah, with roast meat, with vegetables and fruit in quantities like the mohel has never seen. Sweets and cakes. Wine and beer and cider and milk. Exotic liquors and tea.
Heedful of the young mother’s warning, he doesn’t nibble a single bite. Doesn’t sip a single drop. Just keeps his hands on his keys, a reminder that if he keeps to the straight and narrow he’ll be back home again soon.
“You don’t eat!” the demon father says. “If none of this is to your liking, then I’ll have anything you want made. Anything you could imagine.”
The mohel declines. He isn’t hungry, he says. Participating in this simcha is sustenance enough.
The demon nods, his smile symmetrical and knowing. He gets up and motions for the mohel to follow. They go back into the demon’s beautiful home, passing through the grand front door to find themselves in a long stone hall deep within the earth. The demon takes a lamp down from the wall and leads the miser to a stout door. He opens the door to display a treasure trove, silver cups and platters, tea services and samovars.
“Take your pick,” the demon says. “As fair payment, for having come so far.”
It is the finest silver Mr. Miserly Mohel has ever seen. Some primordial want in him cries out to touch it, to inspect this teapot, ring those forks. But the mohel steels himself, grips his keys, conceals his trembling, and scoffs. “Silver?” he scoffs. “I have all the silver I want.”
The demon shrugs and heads down the hall to the next door. He opens it, and the mohel is dazzled: the room is full of gold, gold chains and gold lamps, golden ewers full of gold rings, heaps of gold coins stacked high on groaning tables. “As much as you want,” the demon says, “my gift to you on this day of my son’s entering the covenant with the Lord.”
Is it beautiful? Yes! The miser’s fingers yearn to test the heft of those rings and chains.
But still, it’s not his gold, in his lockboxes, back in his home in his shtetl. And that gives him the little bit of steel he needs to hold back.
The mohel waves off the offer. “I couldn’t possibly. My gift and payment is to have served HaShem, to have made your wife smile, to have seen your whole shtetl feasting.” He says this in earnest, because it is true.
The demon smiles, shrugs it off. “A learnéd man once told me that all gold is demon gold: It glitters and dazzles, but contains no shard of the Spark of Divinity. It comes up from the mud and dirt, and can only glitter with the reflected light of HaShem.” He shrugs again, continuing down the hall to a third door. “I wouldn’t know. I’m not a learnéd man.”
With that he opens the third door. The mohel is speechless: this room is small, just a closet, plain and unfurnished. The walls are covered in iron nails. From the nails hang bunches of keys.
But none of that astonishes the miser. Not really.
“Not gold,” the demon muses knowingly. “Not silver. Those left you unimpressed. But something in this room catches your eye, does it not?”
“Those,” the mohel croaks. He tries to wet his lips, but finds himself completely dry-mouthed. “Those,” he repeats, pointing to a bunch of keys off to the left on the upper half of the far wall. “I would know those anywhere. Those are my keys.” The miser gropes around his neck. His keys are gone.
“Are they?” the demon asks. “Curious. Because these are all demon keys. Only demons can own them or use them. Are you certain they are yours? That you’ve used those keys?”
The mohel tries to speak, but he is so very dry.
“Tell me about your father,” the demon asks.
Such an easy question, the mohel is eager to answer. “He was a very fat thin man,” he wants to say. But somehow that’s not right.
The demon smiles and nods encouragement. But the miser, he feels jammed up, like a man who’s bit off more than he can chew, let alone swallow.
“Or your mother?” the demon cajoles. “Tell me about her. Tell me about your sisters and brothers, the place you were born, the first cutie who ever caught your eye. Details, details; it’s all on the details, nu?“
The mohel gawps like a fish flopping on the floor of a boat. He discovers that he recalls no father, no mother, no sisters or brothers or childhood. His whole life has been his shop and his land, his locks and his gold. “Why didn’t I know?” he wonders, feeling like an idiot. “It’s all so obvious.”
The demon smiles a broad and honest grin. He is glad to have brought back–well, if not precisely a rabbi or a doctor, something that was a little of both. A start, at any rate.
At last the unpalatable notion slips down into the miserly mohel’s gullet. He can see clearly now, like a drowning man who has finally finished failing to rise.
“Perhaps now you’ll accept a drink of our wine? Some little nosh from our table?”
It’s then that he feels it: a momentary, wrenching sense of loss. He wants it to be the knowledge that he’ll never see his neighbors or congregants or shopgirl or errand boy again. But it is not them he mourns; he mourns that he’ll never see his gold again.
And he is ashamed.
But in the murky depths of this shame he discovers that he would also miss those moments when he closed his eyes in prayer, a newly trimmed baby boy in his arms, and felt himself reflecting some faint glimmer of the light of God.
That had at least been a start, had it not? A hint of some possibility beyond Redemption or Salvation, perhaps? A hint that the worm who yearns to be a bird might at least aspire to being a moth.
Finally, the miser accepts the demon’s offered cup. He sips the wine. And the wine is good, refreshing his parched throat. The wine is, in fact, ambrosial, neither too dry nor too sweet, neither too lush nor too puckery.
He sighs, resigned, feeling the truth soak into his brain like the wine soaks into his stomach: He is home again, home again, for better or worse.
At least for a time.
Copyright © 2024 by David Erik Nelson All rights reserved
Cover art image generated by Descript’s janky AI
