The Rabbi as Allegory, The Cat as Fable
As I began reading The Rabbi’s Cat, I wasn’t quite sure what sort of story I was reading. Is it a children’s tale? Is it a book about religion? Is it a light-hearted tale about a talking cat?
One of my first inclinations was to categorize the book as an allegory, and yet when the Rabbi says that Jews don’t use allegories, they use analogies, I began to wonder anew what this book was. An analogy? The Rabbi’s Cat reminded me of a Simpson’s episode; where the conflict introduced at the beginning has nothing to do with what the rest of the episode/book is about. At first I thought, “ok, this is a book about a talking cat.” Then it turned into a dialectical discussion of Judaism. Then the cat looses its ability to speak, so I decided that it wasn’t a book about a talking cat. However, the talking animals did place the book pretty firmly in the realm of fables. OED’s definition of a fable seems quite fitting:
A short story devised to convey some useful lesson; esp. one in which animals or inanimate things are the speakers or actors; an apologue.
While The Rabbi’s Cat veers away from its preoccupation with discussions of religion for most of the book, it ends with a discussion of religion. If it is a fable, it is difficult to say what message or “useful lesson” it is trying to convey, unless the lesson is that we can’t know why people need religion. What is interesting to me is that it to Sfar the entire book to get to this point. The didactic air of children’s book does seem to exist in this book somewhere beneath the surface, and emerges most strongly in the dialectics of the beginning. Did Sfar set out to write a book about religion that veered away only to end up there again? Or did he set out to write a book about a cat that turned into a discussion of religion? In class, many people drew connections between religious and romantic devotion, which are two themes that it seems plausible to divide the book into. However, it is not a romance, it is not a story about falling in love. It is a story, or rather two stories about devotion; about love unrequited. The cat’s affections are never returned by the daughter, nor does the Rabbi ever witness any miracles from God. Even the nephew’s love for the Catholic singer is unrequited.
Going back to the fable, this story is not one with the strongest moral message, but it does discuss morals a lot. However, as said before it arrives at no final argument. It only arrives at the fact that we don’t know why we are devoted to certain things. And if the cat’s love is analogous to the Rabbi’s religion, then what the Rabbi says about religion in the final page also applies to love. We can’t know why we need to love people and it often seems that we’d be just as happy not bothering at all.
