Memory is the key word. Thus the lecture begins and ends with a legend: King Solomon would read the inscription on his ring, “this too shall pass,” whenever he was happy or sad. (Was the Russian Yiddish poet Itzik Feffer, whose ring bore same inscription, wearing it when executed by his beloved Stalin?) The 19th year lectures teach that Abraham was the moral minority; that Ben Azzai and Ben Zoma show us the limits of knowledge, though not of the quest for it; that the Shpole Zeide celebrates the significance of a single gesture. Reading an excerpt from “The Solitude of God” (from the book Paroles d’etranger) shows a shift from protest to pity. The Book of Job’s prologue offers a clue as to how Reagan and Kohl’s unfortunate visit to Bitberg could have happened. The concluding legend: the emperor asks the sage, is the bird in my hands alive, or dead? The sage responds, the answer is in your hands.