Géza Röhrig: From the Fictional Hassidic Stories

From the Fictional Hasidic Stories Series

Rohrig Geza

About Truth

Once somebody turned to the Rebbe of Grujavitz and asked: “Master, why isn’t everything reversed? Why isn’t temptation written with tiny Hebrew letters in huge books? And why isn’t the truth walking braless on the street?

The Rebbe laughed at the pupil. “Why are you dissatisfied? The world is even better than you want. Don’t you know that the truth is written with tiny Hebrew letters in the books and the truth is the one who walks braless on the street!”

Speech and Action

One year before his death, the Rebbe of Grujavitz developed cancer. He lost his voice, so he had to use a throat microphone. “I am content”, he often said in the metallic voice of his machine, “because, for the first time in my life, I can realize the true unity of speech and action. The Almighty provided that I cannot even say a word without moving my hands.”

About Cowardice

In 1946, the Rebbe of Grujavitz took the boat to America. After his daily prayers, he gazed at the ocean. “This is how it is, and as long as it is like this, we do not have any chance,” he said once as he was leaning over the railing.

“The sharks knife the water and the dolphins should sew it together with their needle movements. That is how God ordered it. But tell me, my sons, why do the dolphins flee from the sharks? The face of the water is full of wounds, full of scars, full of blood.”

Confession

On his deathbed, the Grujavitzer Rebbe sat up suddenly, recalling a moment from his imprisonment in Buchenwald. “Once, when I fell down there, a Kapo leaped at me and began to hit my head with a wine stick. My stubbornness got the better of me, and I thought: “Beat me as much as you want. It’s useless.” Instead, I should have thought: “Maybe you will be successful, my son.”

The Stone

When the Grujavitzer Rebbe was on his deathbed, his seven year old grandson asked him a question: “Grandpa, a boy from the neighborhood asked me in the park if there really is a God who can do anything. Can this God create such a big stone that even He himself cannot lift it up afterwards? Grandpa, what can I answer him?”

“Tell him that God can. And that stone is me now”, breathed out the Grujavitzer.