Every year a man takes on a kabbalah. Be a better father. Be more careful with brachos. Learn more. And by Cheshvan it is gone, and he decides it means something about who he is. Rabbi Issamar argues it means nothing of the kind, and that the problem is the sentence, not the man. Along the way: the fire lieutenant who walked his whole crew out of an ordinary house seconds before the floor collapsed into a basement he did not know was there, and was certain for years that it had been a sixth sense; the two kinds of doctors, one of whom calls the patient back three months later and one of whom never finds out what happened; a taxi in Yerushalayim nineteen years ago that cost one company tens of thousands of shekel; and the magazine article where Rabbi Issamar learned he had been consultant number two or three out of five. It ends on one uncomfortable question and one small kabbalah that a person can actually keep.

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