ABSTRACT
In Nemirov, a small town in eastern Europe not unlike the town where the now famous Tevye of Fiddler on the Roof fame lived, a story is told of a Chassidic rabbi, his devoted flock, and a skeptic. The people, of course, were very, very poor, the rabbi very, very holy, and the skeptic very, very unbelieving. The story is as follows: The people believed that each year, just prior to the Penitential Season marking the Days of Awe that began the Jewish New Year, their rabbi went to heaven. After all, the Jews, however poor, still needed to eke out some kind of a livelihood, even as they needed good health and good matches for their sons and daughters, and they believed that their rabbi went to heaven to intercede on their behalf. One day, a skeptic, a Jewish shoemaker from Lithuania, arrived in town, and on that day the Jews of the town were very happy because sometime within the next twenty-four hours their rabbi was going to heaven, they said, to plead for them before the Throne of the Most High.
