Legends of the Lamed-Vav Volume 1, Number 1: Simple Chaim

By Lable Braun

A young girl's world is falling apart. Her mother is deathly ill. Her over-bearing father lives in fear and has narrowed her world to the little farm they work in the Pale of Russia. Now rumors have come that the Czar has commanded the Cossacks to attack her little village. Only her frail mother's faith in an ancient legend, the Lamed-Vav, stands between Raizel and the total loss of all she loves. A simple tinker has come to the village. Could he be one of the mysterious Lamed-Vav? Could his simple acts of kindness, and his counter-intuitive wisdom be the village's salvation?

And what of the strange new youth who has come to the village? Who is he, and why does he cause Raizel to feel things she has never before experienced?

In this first in a series of stories, an old legend is introduced to help us face the challenges of our times. Our modern myth that people are only out for their own narrow interests, and that only strength and wealth prevails, is put to the test by an ancient myth of love and compassion being the true foundations of the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lable Braun
• Release date: Jan 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466123649

Lable Braun

Lable Braun has a diverse background. He is a philosopher who has spent decades as a corporate executive. He is a Mystic and a Phi Beta Kappa scholar. He reads Tarot Cards and is a certified Project Management Professional. Above all, in each of these roles, his essence is that of Storyteller. Lable has spent the last four decades studying the wisdom of 3,000 years. The response to his writing and his popularity as a dynamic public speaker have finally forced him to admit that he might have something worth saying.

Book preview

Legends of the Lamed-Vav

Volume 1, Number 1

SIMPLE CHAIM

By

Lable Braun

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

Lable Braun on Smashwords

Simple Chaim

Copyright © 2012 by Lable Braun

To stay in touch with developments regarding The Lamed-Vav Project, and with the series of stories about the Legends of the Lamed-Vav, please visit www.thelamedvavproject.org

Though influenced by historical events, this story is a myth. You may call it a work of fiction, if you must. But we must never let the facts stand in the way of a good truth.

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Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Raizel’s father grumbled as he read the newspaper. May all the czar’s teeth fall out, except one, and in that tooth may he have a cavity!

Papa! Raizel exclaimed.

What? Is my fourteen year old daughter going to teach me a lesson in etiquette? That madman in St. Petersburg is causing a lot of trouble. You’ll see. It will even reach the Jews here in our little shtetl.

Why would the czar want to hurt the Jews in our village? Raizel protested. We’re so far away from him.

The imperial bungler has lost his war with Japan, her father explained. The treasury is now empty and the peasants’ bellies are even emptier. He has to direct their anger somewhere – anywhere as long as it’s not directed at him. There is a long tradition of czars using the Jews to let the peasants blow off a little steam.

Papa, you’re always so sour, Raizel chided him.

Nathan Shlimovitz winced at realizing that his disposition was a disappointment to his daughter. But what did she know of life? He’d had such dreams. The only boy from this village, Jew or Gentile, ever to attend university. He hadn’t been sour then. He’d wanted to change the world, make it a better place. He tried to join with other students who had the same goal, but the students, and even the intelligentsia professors, always kept him at arm’s length. They made it clear that even the revolutionary movement had no use for an orthodox Jew.

A harsh cough came from the open bedroom door just off the kitchen where Shlimovitz and his daughter were huddled around the dying embers in the stove. They both snapped their heads in the direction of the sound, identical looks of concern and pain creasing their faces.

Raizel grabbed the teapot still simmering on the dying heat of the stove and poured its last contents into a cup. I’ll go to her, she said flatly, trying to hide the tears she felt in her heart.

Shlimovitz stared at the receding figure of his daughter as she disappeared into the bedroom with the tea. She had her mother’s kindness. Shlimovitz wished that he could be kind as well. But how could one be kind when they were trapped in poverty in this backwater village in the Russian Pale, instead of shaking the world as he knew he was capable of doing?

Shlimovitz had always overtly blamed his failures in life on his wife’s insistence on not leaving the village. God means for us to be here, she would always say, and he would tell her how she was trapping him in a small life. But, in his heart, he knew better. He knew he had come scurrying back to the safety of the familiar village because he did not have the courage to face those students and professors who had rejected him. Nathan Shlimovitz had tried to shake the world and it had struck back and shaken him instead. And when the world was through with him, he had come to realize what a small man he was after all. So small a man, that he blamed his kind, loving, beautiful wife Shaindele for his own failures.

Raizel re-entered the room with her mother leaning on her arm.

Shaindele! Shlimovitz exclaimed. You should not be out of bed.

Shaindele settled into a threadbare easy-chair. I can breathe a little easier when I am sitting up. I have been lying in bed too long anyway. Lying in that dark room, I feel like I am dead already. Shlimovitz and Raizel both winced.