h excitement and became silent, and in that interruption
Meir's pure and sonorous voice resounded:

"Reb, they are very poor!"

"En-Sof is revengeful and merciless!"

"They are much persecuted!"

"The Incomprehensible persecutes them!" shouted Reb.

"The Eternal does not command us to persecute. Rabbi Huna said: 'Even
if the persecution is righteous, the Eternal will take the part of
the persecuted one!'"

Reb Moshe's cheeks were red as flame. His eyes seemed to devour the
face of the young man, whose looks had now grown bold, and his lips
quivered with the words that came rushing to them, but were not
pronounced.

The whole gathering was astonished--frightened--depressed. Such a
quarrel with the melamed seemed to some of them a sin, to others a
danger for the bold young man, and even for the whole family.
Therefore Saul looked up sharply from beneath his bushy gray
eye-brows into his grandson's face, and hissed:

"Sh-a-a-a!"

Meir bent his head before his grandfather, in token of humility and
obedience, and one of Saul's sons, in order to pacify Reb Moshe's
anger, asked him:

"What is the difference between the authority of the books of Talmud,
and Zahora, the Kabalistic book?"

Having heard this question, the melamed put his elbows on the table,
and fixed his eyes motionlessly and with an expression of deep
reflection on the opposite wall. Then he began to speak slowly, and
in a solemn voice:

"Simon ben Jochai, the great Rabbi who lived a very great while ago
and knew everything that happened in the heavens and on the earth,
said, 'The Talmud is a vile slave, and the Kabala is a great queen.'
With what is the Talmud filled? It is filled up with small, secondary
things. It teaches what is clean and what is not clean. What is
permitted and what is not permitted. What is decent and what is not
decent. And with what is filled Zohar--the book of light, the book of
Kabala? It is filled with great science; it tells what is God and his
Sefirots. The author of it knows all their names, and he teaches what
they do and how they built the world. There is said that God's name
is En-Sof and his second name is Notarikon and his third name is
Gomatria and fourth name Zirufh. The Sefirots are great heavenly
forces called: human source, fiancee, fair sex, great visage, small
face, mirror, celestial story, lily and apple orchard. And Israel is
call Matron, and Israel's. God is called Father, God, En-Sof. He did
not cr