Tastiest Torah Treats

KOLEL
HOME Online
Courses Bracha Course Outline Class Discussion Help Glossary

Session Seven
Yom Kippur Dancing: Yiddish Radicalism

Part II

SECULAR AND HASIDIC

Not everyone involved in Yiddish secularism was straightforwardly anti-religious. Some had the breadth of vision to try to include the religious heritage in a new kind of Judaism. The great Yiddish writer, I.L. [Isaac Loeb, or Yehudah Leyb] Peretz, one of the creators of modern Yiddish literature and an important thinker and political activist, wrote a whole book, "Khsidish", of reworked Hasidic stories and stories about Hasidim. (Peretz lived in Poland and died in Warsaw in 1915 according to some books and 1917 according to others. He was the mentor of many Yiddish writers. Some good translations of his short stories are available in English and will, G-d willing, be mentioned in the bibliography which will be part of the final module of this course.) Looking at an earlier Hasidic version of one of these stories, and what Peretz did with it, can tell us a lot about the secular Yiddish approach.

THE SAME STORY TOLD BY A YIDDISH SECULARIST

Here is the same story as retold by I.L. Peretz in his book "Khsidish" (my translation from the Yiddish, p. 134ff. This is the whole story; the ellipses [...] are in the original text.) Probably Peretz was reworking the version of the story on the right, although he might have had an oral source for it. If his version is based on the one just cited, I'm not sure why he changes the name of the Rebbe; but there are good reasons for his other changes and additions, one being that the story becomes much more interesting. A HASIDIC TALE TOLD BY A HASID

Here is the Hasidic story told in Hasidic style, from the book Ma'aseh Tsadikim (Stories of Holy Men) published in the mid-1860s. (My translation from the Hebrew, working from the recent scholarly edition by Gedalyah Nigal, in _Menachem Mendel Bodek: Sippurim Hasidiyim_, p. 56-57).

IF NOT HIGHER

A Hasidic Story

...And the Nemirover Rebbe, at Slichos time [the early mornings of the week before Rosh Hashanah, when prayers for forgiveness are said], before dawn, would disappear, vanish! No one saw him anywhere: not in shul, not in either besmedresh [House of Study], not with any of the private minyans, and in his home? Certainly not! The house stood open, anyone who wanted to could go in and out -- no one would steal from the Rebbe -- but there was not a living creature in his room. Where can the Rebbe be? Where _should_ he be? Most likely in Heaven. Do you think a Rebbe lacks business there, before Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur? Our dear Jews need (kaynahoreh -- no evil eye!) money, peace, health, marriages; they want to be good and religious, but their sins are weighty, and the Tempter with his thousand eyes is looking from one end of the world to the other, and he sees, and accuses, and tells the Heavenly Court... Who should help us, if not the Rebbe? That's what everyone thought. But once there came to town a Litvak [a Lithuanian Jew] -- and he laughs! You know the Litvaks -- no inspirational reading for them, but they stuff themselves with Talmud and Halakhah. So this Litvak points to a text in the Talmud -- shoves it right in our eyes -- that says that even Moses, in his whole life, never made it into Heaven; ten handbreadths below Heaven was the highest he got! Nu, go argue with a Litvak! "So where does the Rebbe go?" "Do I care?" he says, and shrugs his shoulders -- but right then (typical Litvak!) he decides to find out.

That same evening, after evening prayers, the Litvak sneaks into the Rebbe's room, lies down under the Rebbe's bed, and lies there. He's going to wait through the night and see where the Rebbe goes, what he does at Slichos time. Someone else would probably have dozed and slept away the time; but a Litvak knows what to do -- he studies a whole tractate of Talmud, by heart! (I don't remember if it was the volume on kosher food, or vows.) Towards dawn, he hears the Shammes knocking on people's doors to wake them up for Slichos. The Rebbe has already been awake for some time. The Litvak has been hearing him groan for an hour or so. Anyone who has heard the Nemirover Rebbe groan knows how much of the suffering and pain of the whole Jewish people each groan expressed. Your soul would leave you, hearing the Rebbe groan. But a Litvak has a heart of iron; he listens, and lies there. The Rebbe is lying there too; the Rebbe, long may he live, ON the bed, and the Litvak UNDER the bed.

Next, the Litvak hears the beds in the house scraping the floors, as people get up, murmur a quick prayer, wash their hands; doors open and close; and everyone leaves the house. It's quiet and dark, the slightest gleam of moonlight is shining through the shutters... The Litvak admitted later that he felt afraid when he was left alone with the Rebbe. His skin was crawling; the roots of his peyos [side-curls] were pricking his temples like needles. With the Rebbe, at Slichos time, alone in one room... But a Litvak is stubborn. He trembles like a fish in the water, and lies there.

Finally the Rebbe, long may he live, gets up. He does what a Jew must do; then he goes to the clothes closet and takes out a bundle. A bundle of peasant clothing: linen trousers, big boots, a warm coat, a big fur hat, a long, broad leather belt studded with copper nails. The Rebbe puts it all on... Out of a pocket of the coat hangs the end of a coarse rope, a peasant rope. The Rebbe goes out; the Litvak follows. On his way out of the house, the Rebbe stops in the kitchen, bends down and takes out, from under a bed [perhaps one of the many children, or a servant, slept in the kitchen], an axe; he tucks the axe into the belt and goes out of the house. The Litvak is trembling, but he keeps following.

There is a quiet fear, fitting for the Days of Awe, hovering over the dark streets. Often a heartful cry is heard from the Slichos prayers of one minyan or another; or one hears the groan of a sick person from some window... The Rebbe moves along the edges of the streets, in the shadows of the houses; he emerges briefly between the houses, and the Litvak after him... The Litvak hears the sound of his own pounding heart mingling with the Rebbe's heavy footsteps; but he keeps going, and together with the Rebbe finds himself outside of town.

Beside the town is a small forest. The Rebbe, long may he live, goes into the little forest. Thirty or forty paces into the forest, he stops by a tree. The Litvak is amazed and astonished to see the Rebbe take out the axe from his belt and swing it at the tree. He sees the Rebbe chopping and chopping, he hears the tree groan and crack. The tree falls, and the Rebbe splits it into logs, and the logs into thin firewood. He makes a bundle of wood, ties it with the rope from his pocket, sticks the axe back in the belt, leaves the forest behind and goes back into town. In a back alley, he stops at a poor, half ruined house and knocks on a window. "Who is it?" asks a frightened voice inside. The Litvak hears that it is a Jewish woman's voice; a sick woman. "Ya!" answers the Rebbe in the peasants' language. "K'to ya?" asks the woman in the house. The Rebbe answers, still talking Malorussian: "Vassil!" "What Vassil, and what do you want, Vassil?" "Wood", says the disguised 'Vassil'. "I have wood to sell. Very cheap. Wood for practically nothing!" And without waiting for an answer, he goes into the house.

The Litvak sneaks inside too. In the grey light of the early dawn, he sees a poor home, with poor, broken furniture... In the bed lies a sick Jewish woman, wrapped in rags. She says, with a bitter voice: "To sell? With what should I buy? From where should I, a poor widow, get money?" "I'll lend it to you!" -- says the disguised 'Vassil' -- "six kopecks altogether!" "From where will I pay you back?" groans the poor woman. "Foolish one", the Rebbe rebukes her. "Look, you are a poor, sick woman and I am trusting you with a bit of wood. I am sure you will pay. And you have such a strong, great God, whom you don't trust, even for six silly kopecks for a bundle of wood?" "So who's going to stoke the furnace for me?" groans the widow. "Do I have strength to stoke the furnace? My son is still at work." "I'll stoke the furnace for you too", says the Rebbe.

Laying the wood into the oven, the Rebbe, groaning, chanted the first third of Slichos... Lighting the fire, as the wood began to burn merrily, he chanted the second third of Slichos, a bit more cheerfully... He chanted the last third when the fire was burning steadily and he closed the oven door...

The Litvak who saw all this became a Hasid of the Nemirover Rebbe. From then on, if ever a Hasid is telling about how the Rebbe gets up early in the morning at Slichos time and flies up to Heaven, the Litvak does not laugh; only, he adds quietly: "If not higher!"
The holy Rabbi, the godly Kabbalist, our teacher the Rebbe Reb Tsvi of Ziditshov, of blessed memory, told this story. He used to travel to Sasov to sojourn in the sheltering presence of Rebbe Moshe Leyb of Sasov, to learn Torah from him. One time the holy Rabbi, our teacher Reb Tsvi, said to himself, "I will direct my eyes to see the ways of Rebbe Moshe Leyb in the matter of the midnight prayers" [which are said by pious people in mourning for the destruction of the Temple]. For the great devotion of Rebbe Moshe Leyb in the matter of the midnight prayers was well-known and famous, and people said about him that at midnight the words of the Song of Songs, "the voice of my Beloved is knocking" were literally true for him. Therefore the holy Rabbi, our teacher Reb Tsvi, used to hide himself to see how Rebbe Moshe Leyb would behave.

One time at midnight the holy Rebbe, our teacher Rebbe Moshe Leyb, took non-Jewish clothing and put it on; he also took a big piece of wood, and a lamp, and went outside. The holy Rabbi, our teacher Reb Tsvi, went after him to see the end of the matter. And Rebbe Moshe Leyb went to a certain place where a Jewish woman had just given birth to a son. She was very poor, and it was very cold in her house, because it was a winter night of intense cold, and the bones of that woman who had just given birth were trembling from the bitter cold. The holy Rebbe went there, and said in the non-Jewish language, "I have a piece of wood to sell. Please buy it now, I'll sell it to you cheap." But the woman who had given birth answered, "But I do not have even a penny." And he answered, "I'll get the money from you tomorrow. Please take the wood." But she said, "What good is that thick piece of wood to me? I need small pieces of wood to stoke the furnace, and there is no axe here." And he answered, "I have everything, and I'll do everything for you."

And the holy Rebbe took an axe and chopped the wood into small pieces. And while he was chopping the wood, the holy Rebbe was saying the Tikkun Leah [the first half of the midnight prayers.] After that he stoked the furnace, and as he was putting the wood in the furnace he was saying the Tikkun Rachel [the second half of the midnight prayers]. Then he went quickly home and changed his clothing. And when the holy Rabbi Tsvi of Ziditshov saw this, it was wondrous in his eyes, and he thought of the verse from Scripture, "Your path is in the mighty waters, your ways are not known" [Psalm 77:20].

What has changed in this story as Peretz retells it? For one thing Peretz is a much better storyteller than his predecessor. He has dramatized plot elements that were only mentioned in passing in the original story, like the observer hiding to watch the Rebbe. He's also filled in a whole background for the story, giving a sense of Hasidic reverence for the Rebbe and the religious atmosphere of a Hasidic shtetl. This is not just good storytelling on Peretz' part; it's necessary because he's writing for a basically secular audience who wouldn't take these things for granted the way a Hasidic readership would. Maybe also because he's writing for secular Jews, he's left out the midnight prayers, which are pretty much only said by really pious people, and put in instead the Slichos prayers before Rosh Hashanah, which would still mean something to most secularists.

But the most important change is in who the observer is, the person who hides to check out the Rebbe. In the traditional Hasidic version, he is a Hasidic Rebbe himself, Tsvi of Zidatshov, described as a Kabbalist, a mystic. His response to seeing Rebbe Moshe Leyb doing an act of kindness while saying his prayers is surprise and puzzlement; the story concludes by saying in effect that Reb Tsvi couldn't make head or tail out of what Reb Moshe Leyb had done.

In Peretz' version, the observer is a also a religious Jew, but a skeptic. The issue at the beginning of the story is that he doesn't believe in miracles. At the end of the story he still doesn't believe in miracles -- but he has been won over by the Rebbe's act of kindness.

The essence of both versions of the story is actually the same. The Rebbe is supposed to be the epitome of spirituality. In the traditional version he is famous for his midnight prayers; Peretz translates this into imagery: he is believed to go up to heaven. To the surprise of an observer, the Rebbe disguises himself as a non-Jewish peasant -- the epitome of coarseness and materiality in the eyes of most religious Jews in Eastern Europe -- and spends the time of the prayers doing a very concrete, physical act of helping someone.

What's different in the two versions is the response of the observer. The contrast between the expected spirituality of the Rebbe and his very this-wordly behaviour is a big problem for the mystical observer in the traditional Hasidic story. It's not a problem at all for Peretz or his skeptical character; it's something to celebrate, because to Peretz the essence of "spirituality" is getting involved in the world and helping others. Where Peretz differed from many other Jewish secularists was that many secularists would contrast and oppose getting involved in the world to being religious. Peretz saw that there could be a unity between them.

Peretz was so successful in creating such a unity in this story that his version has been absorbed into Hasidic oral tradition and has been told by Hasidim with his distinctive ending, "if not higher..."

...conclusion


KOLEL HOME	Online Courses	Bracha	Course Outline	Class Discussion	Help	Glossary

	SECULAR AND HASIDIC Not everyone involved in Yiddish secularism was straightforwardly anti-religious. Some had the breadth of vision to try to include the religious heritage in a new kind of Judaism. The great Yiddish writer, I.L. [Isaac Loeb, or Yehudah Leyb] Peretz, one of the creators of modern Yiddish literature and an important thinker and political activist, wrote a whole book, "Khsidish", of reworked Hasidic stories and stories about Hasidim. (Peretz lived in Poland and died in Warsaw in 1915 according to some books and 1917 according to others. He was the mentor of many Yiddish writers. Some good translations of his short stories are available in English and will, G-d willing, be mentioned in the bibliography which will be part of the final module of this course.) Looking at an earlier Hasidic version of one of these stories, and what Peretz did with it, can tell us a lot about the secular Yiddish approach.

	THE SAME STORY TOLD BY A YIDDISH SECULARIST Here is the same story as retold by I.L. Peretz in his book "Khsidish" (my translation from the Yiddish, p. 134ff. This is the whole story; the ellipses [...] are in the original text.) Probably Peretz was reworking the version of the story on the right, although he might have had an oral source for it. If his version is based on the one just cited, I'm not sure why he changes the name of the Rebbe; but there are good reasons for his other changes and additions, one being that the story becomes much more interesting.		A HASIDIC TALE TOLD BY A HASID Here is the Hasidic story told in Hasidic style, from the book Ma'aseh Tsadikim (Stories of Holy Men) published in the mid-1860s. (My translation from the Hebrew, working from the recent scholarly edition by Gedalyah Nigal, in _Menachem Mendel Bodek: Sippurim Hasidiyim_, p. 56-57).
	IF NOT HIGHER A Hasidic Story ...And the Nemirover Rebbe, at Slichos time [the early mornings of the week before Rosh Hashanah, when prayers for forgiveness are said], before dawn, would disappear, vanish! No one saw him anywhere: not in shul, not in either besmedresh [House of Study], not with any of the private minyans, and in his home? Certainly not! The house stood open, anyone who wanted to could go in and out -- no one would steal from the Rebbe -- but there was not a living creature in his room. Where can the Rebbe be? Where _should_ he be? Most likely in Heaven. Do you think a Rebbe lacks business there, before Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur? Our dear Jews need (kaynahoreh -- no evil eye!) money, peace, health, marriages; they want to be good and religious, but their sins are weighty, and the Tempter with his thousand eyes is looking from one end of the world to the other, and he sees, and accuses, and tells the Heavenly Court... Who should help us, if not the Rebbe? That's what everyone thought. But once there came to town a Litvak [a Lithuanian Jew] -- and he laughs! You know the Litvaks -- no inspirational reading for them, but they stuff themselves with Talmud and Halakhah. So this Litvak points to a text in the Talmud -- shoves it right in our eyes -- that says that even Moses, in his whole life, never made it into Heaven; ten handbreadths below Heaven was the highest he got! Nu, go argue with a Litvak! "So where does the Rebbe go?" "Do I care?" he says, and shrugs his shoulders -- but right then (typical Litvak!) he decides to find out. That same evening, after evening prayers, the Litvak sneaks into the Rebbe's room, lies down under the Rebbe's bed, and lies there. He's going to wait through the night and see where the Rebbe goes, what he does at Slichos time. Someone else would probably have dozed and slept away the time; but a Litvak knows what to do -- he studies a whole tractate of Talmud, by heart! (I don't remember if it was the volume on kosher food, or vows.) Towards dawn, he hears the Shammes knocking on people's doors to wake them up for Slichos. The Rebbe has already been awake for some time. The Litvak has been hearing him groan for an hour or so. Anyone who has heard the Nemirover Rebbe groan knows how much of the suffering and pain of the whole Jewish people each groan expressed. Your soul would leave you, hearing the Rebbe groan. But a Litvak has a heart of iron; he listens, and lies there. The Rebbe is lying there too; the Rebbe, long may he live, ON the bed, and the Litvak UNDER the bed. Next, the Litvak hears the beds in the house scraping the floors, as people get up, murmur a quick prayer, wash their hands; doors open and close; and everyone leaves the house. It's quiet and dark, the slightest gleam of moonlight is shining through the shutters... The Litvak admitted later that he felt afraid when he was left alone with the Rebbe. His skin was crawling; the roots of his peyos [side-curls] were pricking his temples like needles. With the Rebbe, at Slichos time, alone in one room... But a Litvak is stubborn. He trembles like a fish in the water, and lies there. Finally the Rebbe, long may he live, gets up. He does what a Jew must do; then he goes to the clothes closet and takes out a bundle. A bundle of peasant clothing: linen trousers, big boots, a warm coat, a big fur hat, a long, broad leather belt studded with copper nails. The Rebbe puts it all on... Out of a pocket of the coat hangs the end of a coarse rope, a peasant rope. The Rebbe goes out; the Litvak follows. On his way out of the house, the Rebbe stops in the kitchen, bends down and takes out, from under a bed [perhaps one of the many children, or a servant, slept in the kitchen], an axe; he tucks the axe into the belt and goes out of the house. The Litvak is trembling, but he keeps following. There is a quiet fear, fitting for the Days of Awe, hovering over the dark streets. Often a heartful cry is heard from the Slichos prayers of one minyan or another; or one hears the groan of a sick person from some window... The Rebbe moves along the edges of the streets, in the shadows of the houses; he emerges briefly between the houses, and the Litvak after him... The Litvak hears the sound of his own pounding heart mingling with the Rebbe's heavy footsteps; but he keeps going, and together with the Rebbe finds himself outside of town. Beside the town is a small forest. The Rebbe, long may he live, goes into the little forest. Thirty or forty paces into the forest, he stops by a tree. The Litvak is amazed and astonished to see the Rebbe take out the axe from his belt and swing it at the tree. He sees the Rebbe chopping and chopping, he hears the tree groan and crack. The tree falls, and the Rebbe splits it into logs, and the logs into thin firewood. He makes a bundle of wood, ties it with the rope from his pocket, sticks the axe back in the belt, leaves the forest behind and goes back into town. In a back alley, he stops at a poor, half ruined house and knocks on a window. "Who is it?" asks a frightened voice inside. The Litvak hears that it is a Jewish woman's voice; a sick woman. "Ya!" answers the Rebbe in the peasants' language. "K'to ya?" asks the woman in the house. The Rebbe answers, still talking Malorussian: "Vassil!" "What Vassil, and what do you want, Vassil?" "Wood", says the disguised 'Vassil'. "I have wood to sell. Very cheap. Wood for practically nothing!" And without waiting for an answer, he goes into the house. The Litvak sneaks inside too. In the grey light of the early dawn, he sees a poor home, with poor, broken furniture... In the bed lies a sick Jewish woman, wrapped in rags. She says, with a bitter voice: "To sell? With what should I buy? From where should I, a poor widow, get money?" "I'll lend it to you!" -- says the disguised 'Vassil' -- "six kopecks altogether!" "From where will I pay you back?" groans the poor woman. "Foolish one", the Rebbe rebukes her. "Look, you are a poor, sick woman and I am trusting you with a bit of wood. I am sure you will pay. And you have such a strong, great God, whom you don't trust, even for six silly kopecks for a bundle of wood?" "So who's going to stoke the furnace for me?" groans the widow. "Do I have strength to stoke the furnace? My son is still at work." "I'll stoke the furnace for you too", says the Rebbe. Laying the wood into the oven, the Rebbe, groaning, chanted the first third of Slichos... Lighting the fire, as the wood began to burn merrily, he chanted the second third of Slichos, a bit more cheerfully... He chanted the last third when the fire was burning steadily and he closed the oven door... The Litvak who saw all this became a Hasid of the Nemirover Rebbe. From then on, if ever a Hasid is telling about how the Rebbe gets up early in the morning at Slichos time and flies up to Heaven, the Litvak does not laugh; only, he adds quietly: "If not higher!"		The holy Rabbi, the godly Kabbalist, our teacher the Rebbe Reb Tsvi of Ziditshov, of blessed memory, told this story. He used to travel to Sasov to sojourn in the sheltering presence of Rebbe Moshe Leyb of Sasov, to learn Torah from him. One time the holy Rabbi, our teacher Reb Tsvi, said to himself, "I will direct my eyes to see the ways of Rebbe Moshe Leyb in the matter of the midnight prayers" [which are said by pious people in mourning for the destruction of the Temple]. For the great devotion of Rebbe Moshe Leyb in the matter of the midnight prayers was well-known and famous, and people said about him that at midnight the words of the Song of Songs, "the voice of my Beloved is knocking" were literally true for him. Therefore the holy Rabbi, our teacher Reb Tsvi, used to hide himself to see how Rebbe Moshe Leyb would behave. One time at midnight the holy Rebbe, our teacher Rebbe Moshe Leyb, took non-Jewish clothing and put it on; he also took a big piece of wood, and a lamp, and went outside. The holy Rabbi, our teacher Reb Tsvi, went after him to see the end of the matter. And Rebbe Moshe Leyb went to a certain place where a Jewish woman had just given birth to a son. She was very poor, and it was very cold in her house, because it was a winter night of intense cold, and the bones of that woman who had just given birth were trembling from the bitter cold. The holy Rebbe went there, and said in the non-Jewish language, "I have a piece of wood to sell. Please buy it now, I'll sell it to you cheap." But the woman who had given birth answered, "But I do not have even a penny." And he answered, "I'll get the money from you tomorrow. Please take the wood." But she said, "What good is that thick piece of wood to me? I need small pieces of wood to stoke the furnace, and there is no axe here." And he answered, "I have everything, and I'll do everything for you." And the holy Rebbe took an axe and chopped the wood into small pieces. And while he was chopping the wood, the holy Rebbe was saying the Tikkun Leah [the first half of the midnight prayers.] After that he stoked the furnace, and as he was putting the wood in the furnace he was saying the Tikkun Rachel [the second half of the midnight prayers]. Then he went quickly home and changed his clothing. And when the holy Rabbi Tsvi of Ziditshov saw this, it was wondrous in his eyes, and he thought of the verse from Scripture, "Your path is in the mighty waters, your ways are not known" [Psalm 77:20].
	What has changed in this story as Peretz retells it? For one thing Peretz is a much better storyteller than his predecessor. He has dramatized plot elements that were only mentioned in passing in the original story, like the observer hiding to watch the Rebbe. He's also filled in a whole background for the story, giving a sense of Hasidic reverence for the Rebbe and the religious atmosphere of a Hasidic shtetl. This is not just good storytelling on Peretz' part; it's necessary because he's writing for a basically secular audience who wouldn't take these things for granted the way a Hasidic readership would. Maybe also because he's writing for secular Jews, he's left out the midnight prayers, which are pretty much only said by really pious people, and put in instead the Slichos prayers before Rosh Hashanah, which would still mean something to most secularists. But the most important change is in who the observer is, the person who hides to check out the Rebbe. In the traditional Hasidic version, he is a Hasidic Rebbe himself, Tsvi of Zidatshov, described as a Kabbalist, a mystic. His response to seeing Rebbe Moshe Leyb doing an act of kindness while saying his prayers is surprise and puzzlement; the story concludes by saying in effect that Reb Tsvi couldn't make head or tail out of what Reb Moshe Leyb had done. In Peretz' version, the observer is a also a religious Jew, but a skeptic. The issue at the beginning of the story is that he doesn't believe in miracles. At the end of the story he still doesn't believe in miracles -- but he has been won over by the Rebbe's act of kindness. The essence of both versions of the story is actually the same. The Rebbe is supposed to be the epitome of spirituality. In the traditional version he is famous for his midnight prayers; Peretz translates this into imagery: he is believed to go up to heaven. To the surprise of an observer, the Rebbe disguises himself as a non-Jewish peasant -- the epitome of coarseness and materiality in the eyes of most religious Jews in Eastern Europe -- and spends the time of the prayers doing a very concrete, physical act of helping someone. What's different in the two versions is the response of the observer. The contrast between the expected spirituality of the Rebbe and his very this-wordly behaviour is a big problem for the mystical observer in the traditional Hasidic story. It's not a problem at all for Peretz or his skeptical character; it's something to celebrate, because to Peretz the essence of "spirituality" is getting involved in the world and helping others. Where Peretz differed from many other Jewish secularists was that many secularists would contrast and oppose getting involved in the world to being religious. Peretz saw that there could be a unity between them. Peretz was so successful in creating such a unity in this story that his version has been absorbed into Hasidic oral tradition and has been told by Hasidim with his distinctive ending, "if not higher..."
			...conclusion