"Many stories of Chabad have been told, but a few things may be mentioned to help me out of my poor plight, to illustrate my meaning. Thus, once upon a stormy day, when the rain and thunder and lightning became fearful and awesome, Motke was seen running through a street of Wilna, at his greatest possible speed, frantically waving his hands. A few Jews witnessing this, and overtaking him, stopped him, demanding what the trouble was. 'Such terrible thunder and lightning,' said he, all out of breath; 'I fear me that the Almighty is about to give us a new Law!' Here is a blessed bit of blasphemy which strikingly voices the protest of a law-entangled, ritual-ridden, tradition-tied people against the grinding yoke of the Torah. There is a story by another Ghetto jester, driving at the same evil. There came a time once--so the story runs--when the children of Israel became weary of this heavy yoke, when they could no longer live up to the laws forced upon them amid the dramatic effects of Sinai, when they could no longer bear all the sufferings and persecutions that living up to these laws entailed, and they prayed to God that they might be delivered from the Law, that they might be permitted to return to him the Tables of Stone; and the Uppermost consented to take it all back; and so, upon a day, the Jews from all corners of the earth started on a journey toward Mount Sinai, with heavy-laden trains and ships and caravans of scrolls and Biblical Commentaries. They came from all parts of the world--from East and West, North and South, from the Occident and the Orient; there were all manner of Jews, and they came by all means of transportation, but they all labored painfully under their tremendous loads, which they brought to be returned. At Sinai, they were to give up their burdens. Arrived there, they piled up their great packs of 'precept upon precept' around the holy elevation, until their luggage formed a mountain larger than Sinai. When the Uppermost appeared in his invisible, yet blinding glory, he asked for the meaning of this huge mountain of books, and the Jews, with their faces to the ground, cried, 'It is the Law. Take it, O Lord.' The Lord--so runs the story--was astonished at this, and he told the chosen people that only ten simple rules of living had been given to them at Sinai. He knew nothing of all these volumes. These multitudes of laws and endless commentaries were of men's making, not of his giving. They were empty vaporings of idle brains. He refused to take the Law back in its present form. So the Jews journeyed to their respective homes in all parts of the world, wiser, if not relieved of their burdens. I was irresistibly reminded of this story, and could not help telling it. It is the product of a far more subtle brain than Chabad's was. I do not remember the name of the author now, but he and Chabad unwittingly worked for the same cause."