A Parable for Shavuot — Tell Me What It Means to You

Like all Jewish holidays, Shavuot is a multifaceted celebration. Among its many aspects, Shavuot commemorates the giving of the Torah to the People of Israel at Mt. Sinai, seven weeks after the Exodus from Egypt. As I’ve written in the past, there’s a linkage in Judaism between liberation and Torah, between freedom and law, as though one doesn’t make sense without the other.

But in our rarified times, the concept of “law” has become complicated; some look at the law as something cumbersome and irritating that applies only to the “suckers and losers” who don’t advocate for lawless freedom. others think that the law has become irrational and unintelligible, the work of faceless bureaucrats without regard for the public good. And others still believe that the law is the expression of high values of justice, compassion, and goodness, the only way to live in a civilized society guided by fairness that guarantees the freedom of all.

Franz Kafka anticipated our ambivalent feelings about the law. In fact, he was prophetic about much of the turmoil of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. After all, his story “Metamorphosis” preannounced how a society can suddenly transform into something monstrous. So, for this holiday of The Law, I want to do something different: instead of writing my own message, I want to bring you another of Kafka’s iconic stories, one that is aptly called “Before the Law.”

This parable, like many of Kafka’s writings, admits many different interpretations. So here’s what I suggest: read it and reflect on it, and then, let’s make a deal – if you write me back and tell me what the story means for you, I’ll tell you what it means for me.

And here’s another suggestion: read this around the dinner table and then discuss what it means for each member of the family.

In the meantime, I wish you a meaningful holiday!

The following is Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law,” originally published in 1915 and later included in his novel The Trial (1925), translated to English by Ian Johnston.

Before the Law.

Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry to the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment.

The man thinks it over and then asks if he will be allowed to come in later.

"It is possible," says the gatekeeper, "but not now."

Since the gate to the law stands open as always, and the gatekeeper steps to the side, the man bends over to peer through the gate into the inside. When the gatekeeper sees that, he laughs and says:

"If you are so drawn to it, just try to go inside in spite of my prohibition. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the most lowly gatekeeper. But from room to room stand gatekeepers each more powerful than the last. I can’t even endure one glimpse of the third."

The man from the country has not expected such difficulties: the law should always be accessible for everyone, he thinks, but as he now looks more closely at the gatekeeper in his fur coat, at his large pointed nose and his long, thin, black Tartar beard, he decides that he had better wait until he gets permission to go inside.

The gatekeeper gives him a stool and allows him to sit down at the side of the door. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be let in and wearies the gatekeeper with his requests. The gatekeeper often interrogates him briefly, questioning him about his home and many other things, but they are indifferent questions, the kind great men put, and at the end he always tells him once more that he cannot enter yet.

The man, who has equipped himself with many things for his journey, spends everything, no matter how valuable, to win over the gatekeeper. The latter takes it all but, as he does so, says, “I am taking this only so that you do not think you have failed to do anything.”

During the many years the man observes the gatekeeper almost continuously. He forgets the other gatekeepers, and this first one seems to him the only obstacle for entry into the law. He curses the bad luck of his circumstance, and in his first years boldly and loudly. Later, as he grows old, he only grumbles to himself. He becomes childish, and since in his long study of the gatekeeper he has come to know even the fleas in his fur collar, he begs the fleas to help him and to persuade the gatekeeper to change his mind.

Finally his eyesight grows weak, and he does not know whether things are really darker around him or whether his eyes are merely deceiving him. But he recognizes now in the darkness an illumination which breaks inextinguishably out of the door of the law. Now he has little time to live.

Before his death he gathers in his head all his experiences of the entire time up into one question, which he has not yet asked the gatekeeper. He waves to him, since he can no longer lift up his stiffening body. The gatekeeper has to bend down low to him, for the difference in size between them has changed much to the man’s disadvantage.

“What do you still want to know, then?” asks the gatekeeper. “You are insatiable.”

“Everyone strives after the law,” says the man, “so how is that in these many years no one except me has requested entry?”

The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him:

“No one else could gain entry here, because this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m now going to shut it.”