The Rabbi Character Analysis

The rabbi is the chief religious authority in Frampol. He is one of the few people in the town who shows kindness and respect to Gimpel, and Gimpel frequently turns to him for advice. It is the rabbi who tells Gimpel what ends up being something like the main message of the story: “better be a fool all your days than for one hour to be evil. You are not a fool. They are the fools. For he who causes his neighbor to feel shame loses paradise himself.” The rabbi is also the person who orders that Gimpel divorce his wife, Elka, after he reports her for adultery. When Gimpel comes back with a new story, declaring that he had only imagined his wife’s betrayal and he would like to get back together with Elka, the rabbi surprises him by organizing a council of rabbis from neighboring villages to discuss the matter. Nine months pass before they decide that Gimpel can return to his wife. While Gimpel does not relish the long wait, the rabbi’s need for reflection and debate may actually be part of what attracts Gimpel to him and to the scholarly Jewish books he and his fellow rabbis study. Unlike the townspeople of Frampol, they do not consider it ridiculously simple to evaluate a story; they are sensitive to the many-sidedness of every situation and, like Gimpel, take unlikely possibilities seriously.