Free Legends of Our Time by Elie Wiesel Page A

it up. The jam? In the cupboard! Come with me, I’ll show you.” And he made him a present of his life, and of a large hunk of bread.
    We no longer knew what to think.
    Soon after this, the winter selection took place. It was the Prophet’s last, and fatal, trial. The camp doctor pronounced him unfit for work. The whole camp was shocked at the news, and it was decided that something must be done to save him.
    An emergency committee was formed. There was only a week left to rescue him. A week in which to raise funds, make representations to influential people, bribe guards, work out a plan of action. There was solidarity on a scale unprecedented in the camp. More than a hundred people were involved. Never had so much been done by so many prisoners, and all to save a single Jew.
    Why him? Because everyone loved him. There was notone of us whom he had not helped at some time. Everyone owed him a debt of gratitude. Moreover, we felt obscurely that he symbolized our ability to rise above circumstances. It seemed to us that our own survival depended upon his. We still did not believe that he had the gift of prophecy, but we acted as though he were the arbiter of our destiny.
    He, for his part, made light of the matter. Did he know of our tremendous efforts to rescue him? Yes. And it amused him. He realized before we did, better than we did, that our efforts were doomed to failure. There was no appeal from the death sentence.
    Just a week after the selection, on a bright winter morning, the Prophet was ordered to stay in the hut. He was excused from work that day. We knew what that meant. So did he. His friends’ eyes were full of tears, but not his. Up to the last minute he was still playing his chosen part, still offering consolation and encouragement.
    He smiled as he took leave of us. “There is no need for tears. Take your choice: either I am myself or I am he. In either case, one thing is certain: he will not abandon you. So what is there to weep for?”
    He left us. We never saw him again. I still know nothing about him. Who was he? Where did he come from? I know only where he went.
    I often think of him, especially when I hear the Hasidic chant,
Ani Maamin
, which proclaims the faith of the Jew and the coming of the Messiah. As a child, I believed fervently. I still believe, but now chiefly in the hope that faith will restore the old fervor.
    In any event, the promise made by the Prophet on the night of his “revelation” was kept: we, all of us who were with him, survived.

8.
Testament of a Jew from Saragossa
    One day the great Rebbe Israel Baal Shem-Tov ordered his faithful coachman to harness the horses as fast as he could and drive him to the other side of the mountain.
    “Hurry, my good Alexei, I have an appointment.”
    They came to a stop in a dense forest. The holy man stepped down, went over to lean against an oak, meditated for a moment, then climbed back into the carriage.
    “Let’s go, Alexei,” he said, smiling. “We can go back now.”
    Though accustomed to not understanding the behavior of his master, the miracle-worker, the coachman still had the courage to be astonished.
    “But your appointment? Did you miss it? You, who always arrive on time, who never disappoint anyone? Did we come for nothing?”
    “Oh no, my good Alexei, we did not come so long a way for nothing. I have kept my appointment.”
    And as happened whenever he banished a bit of misery from the world, the Rebbe’s face radiated happiness.
    According to Hasidic tradition it is not given to man to measure the extension of his actions or the impact of his prayers, no more than it is given the traveler to foresee his precise destination: that is one of the secrets of the notion of
Tikkun
—restoration—which dominates Kabbalism.
    The wanderer who, to purify his love or to free himself from it, travels around the world and does not know that everywhere he is expected. Each of his encounters, each of his stops, without his knowing,