First you must study the basic subjects, those you are able to comprehend." My father was a cultured man, rather unsentimental. Maimonides tells us that one must be thirty before venturing into the world of mysticism, a world fraught with peril. One day I asked my father to find me a master who could guide me in my studies of Kabbalah.
By day I studied Talmud and by night I would run to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple. I was almost thirteen and deeply observant. He sang, or rather he chanted, and the few snatches I caught here and there spoke of divine suffering, of the Shekhinah in Exile, where, according to Kabbalah, it awaits its redemption linked to that of man. As for me, I liked his wide, dreamy eyes, gazing off into the distance. Physically, he was as awkward as a clown.
He had mastered the art of rendering himself insignificant, invisible. As a rule, our townspeople, while they did help the needy, did not particularly like them. The Jews of Sighet-the little town in Transylvania where I spent my childhood–were fond of him. He was the jack-ofall-trades in a Hasidic house of prayer, a shtibl. They called him Moishe the Beadle, as if his entire life he had never had a surname.
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