Rebbe Nahman becomes our friend, our support, our Master. Sometimes we take an entire semester to analyze a single tale. That is because I am still influenced by Shushani.* Rebbe Nathan of Nemirov’s account of Rebbe Nahman’s death moves us to tears. At the end of the school year I invoke Rebbe Nahman’s protection for my students. On a trip to Uman in the Ukraine to visit his tomb, I implore his intercession for my family and for the people of Israel, with, again, a special plea on behalf of my students.
I find great satisfaction in being there for the graduate students whose doctoral theses I supervise. Among them are Rabbi Nehemia Polen’s work on the “holy fire” of a Hasidic Master killed by the Nazis; Alan Rosen’s essay on “The Theme of Catastrophe” in Shakespeare; Janet McCord’s thesis on the suicides of writers who were Holocaust survivors; the Jesuit priest Jean-François Thomas’s analysis of the work of Edith Stein; Joe Kanofsky’s analysis of Rebbe Nahman’s influence on Kafka; Yosef Wosk’s work on the Midrash; Marilyn Feingold’s study of problems in contemporary education. And my longtime friend Yossi Ciechanover’s “Suicide in Rabbinical Law,” which he started under Saul Lieberman and finished under my aegis.
Shortly after my arrival in Boston, I learned that Dr. Silber was controversial among certain members of the faculty who resented his “authoritarian” methods. I deliberately stayed out of this conflict. My attitude was a result of my New York experience: To please Yitz Greenberg, I had agreed to chair the executive committee of our department, though I had warned him that I would never vote against anyone. If any candidate hoped to obtain a post or a promotion, at least one vote—mine—would be his from the outset. Yitz thought I was joking, but by year’s end he released me from this duty, to the great joy of the other committee members.
In the more than twenty years I have spent at Boston University, I have attended only one plenary meeting of the academic body. I did so at Silber’s request: “My opponents,” he told me, “are going to propose a motion of censure against me. And it will pass. Their arguments will be in bad faith, lies. That doesn’t bother me: My position is not in jeopardy, I have the Board’s support. What does upset me, what revolts me, is that they are also accusing me of anti-Semitism.”
The meeting was stormy, spiteful. It may have been academic, but it was hardly intellectual. One after the other, professors took the microphone to accuse their president of being, in turn, Genghis Khan, Torquemada, and Stalin. When my turn came, I told them: “I left City College for this university because John Silber is its president. Today I learn from rumors that he stands accused of anti-Semitism. If that is true, let someone prove it, and I shall hand in my resignation on the spot. I shall never serve here or anywhere under the authority of an anti-Semite.” The faculty did vote on a motion of censure, but there were no more references to John as an anti-Semite.
When John Silber retired as president, he was succeeded by Jon Westling, a Rhodes Scholar who shares his passion for excellence. As chancellor, Dr. Silber continues to be actively involved in the affairs of the university.
In early 1980 I am invited to Yale as a visiting professor by its legendary president, Bart Giamatti. I suspect he knows nothing of my misadventure with his institution some fifteen years before. But I remember. And so I accept his offer. First of all, Yale tempts me for the old reason: How many yeshiva students from Sighet … Secondly, I still feel guilty toward Yale; I remember that as I accepted a doctorate honoris causa from the university, the then president had said to me: “Come join us, help us learn.”
Together with the dean of humanities, Peter Brooks, and his colleague Geoffrey Hartman, both professors of English literature, we establish my program: a weekly course per semester—twenty students at most—and a monthly course for faculty members.
For the first course I choose the topic: “Faith and Rebellion in Ancient and Modern Literature.” For the second I decide on the Book of Job. I know this book inside out. After all, I expounded on it for two years on French television.
Peter and his colleagues try to convince me to admit at least fifty students to the first course. Stubbornly I refuse, telling them that in order to work seriously it is vital for the students and their professor to keep the class small.
On the eve of my first class at Yale, I spend the night in New Haven, to take in the ambiance. At the suggestion of Peter Brooks, Geoffrey Hartman makes a final plea. Why turn away students who want to learn? I hold to my refusal.
The next day I visit the hall where my lecture is to take place. It is huge, frightening, profoundly empty. My assistant, a young doctoral student, reassures me: “It’s always like this: The students come in large groups to do their ‘shopping,’ to size things up. Then they may go elsewhere.”
I go out for coffee and come back five minutes before the hour. I almost faint; the hall is still empty. Anxious, I run to the bathroom to wet my face. I think of how ridiculous I will look. After all my talk about wanting “only” twenty students, I will be left with one: my assistant. I linger at the sink and hesitantly return to the big room. Did I take a wrong turn? The room is packed. It is impossible to get in. I ask a student: “What course is this?” He bursts out laughing, “Why it’s yours.”
There are now three hundred students waiting for me. I panic. What am I going to do? I beg them to leave. I spell out the details of my arrangement with the administration. In vain I warn them, I threaten them—the course will be difficult, demanding. They will have to read two books a week and write as many papers. They will have to write a major essay each semester. But they are not to be deterred.
Astonishingly, the Yale experience turns out to be one of the most stimulating and fruitful of my academic career.
The faculty seminar also provides a few surprises. I was counting on a simple run with no ambushes. After all, I know the Book of Job better than my own books. What I didn’t know was that Marvin Pope, one of the world’s greatest experts on Job, was teaching at Yale. As for Bill Hallo, another professor, he is well known for his work on Babylonian and Sumerian sources. In fact, he shows me the connections between Job and the texts on the “Suffering Righteous.” And so I find myself every month having to work harder than ever to lecture before this unreasonably talented, erudite audience.
I go on teaching—I’ll go on to the end. I have taught courses at Florida International University; at Eckerd College, also in Florida; and lectured at various American universities large and small. It is my vocation just as much as writing. The writer in me is a teacher, the teacher in me a writer. What is important is the ability to transmit, to have something to transmit, to have someone to transmit to.
My major problem with teaching in Boston has to do with distance: an hour by plane. And the weather: In winter, flights are often affected by snow. Delays then become intolerable. The train? Five hours each way. Too much, too tiring. Perhaps I should try to find a position closer to home? Closer? Why not in New York? An incredible opportunity presents itself. John Sawhill, president of New York University, informs me that a mutual friend has offered to underwrite a chair if I agree to occupy it. The terms are excellent, better than those at Boston—higher compensation, fewer teaching hours. There will be no more grueling trips, no more worries about the weather. I could be in class in ten minutes. And best of all, the university would provide us with an extraordinary place to live, the kind Marion loves—a town-house in a Greenwich Village mews. A document is drawn up. All we have to do is sign it. But how am I going to tell John Silber?
We develop a strategy: I’ll see John and explain to him that, contrary to what we had anticipated, and in spite of my promise, family reasons prevent me from moving to Boston. Considering that I hold the Mellon Chair at Boston University, it would seem inappropriate for me to continue living in New York indefinitely. Surely he would agree that this was a problem. Rather than prolong the situation, shouldn’t we confront it now? Thus we would part as friends. What could he possibly say? At that point I would call Marion from the
corner telephone booth to give her the green light. She would inform Sawhill, and then everything would fall into place.
The following Monday I knock at Silber’s door. Despite being busier than many heads of state, he has agreed to see me. I tell him that I have a serious problem and in a few words bring him up to date. As wily as the king of foxes, he eyes me silently and then, surely thinking he’ll please me, cuts me off: “No problem, I’ll rewrite our contract. If I must choose between one day a week and nothing at all, I’ll take one day a week.” Though he has just pulled the rug from under my feet, he is surely awaiting a sign of gratitude.
Calling from a telephone booth, I tell Marion: “I couldn’t disappoint him. You understand….” No house in the mews, no short commute—I am staying where I am.
To this day John Silber does not know what our friendship cost me.
But I hope he knows how much it has brought me.
On December 29, 1994, John’s son David dies of AIDS. I knew him. Earnest, delicate, a good listener, he spoke little and radiated tenderness. His parents adored him; his many sisters loved him. He worked in the theater, mostly off-Broadway. There was the promise of a luminous future.
His funeral draws a huge crowd. There are moving words from those who knew him well. His father gives the eulogy, and it is shattering. Every speaker adds an image, a shade to David’s portrait: the child, the adolescent, the dreamer. Nobody knew he had been so strong, nor so vulnerable. Even those who knew him best did not know him well enough. He had a gift for laughter—and love.
In his eulogy the university chaplain reveals that it was David himself who had “stage-managed” the funeral; it was he who had cast the parts, he who had chosen the biblical text and the music. “Let us applaud him,” says the chaplain, “this is David’s last stage appearance. Let us applaud the final performance of this great actor.”
With tears in our eyes we applaud for a long time. We are reluctant to stop, eager to compensate for all the applause he should have received.
* See All Rivers Run to the Sea, page 118.
Reviews and Polemics
IN A BOOK OF MEMOIRS one speaks about oneself but, inevitably, also about others. How is one to write without voicing judgments?
The only negative reviews I have written have been related to plays, movies, or television shows dealing with the Holocaust. As a rule, I prefer to praise, but it isn’t always easy.
I demolished, as they say, the Holocaust series broadcast by one of the networks following an astounding media blitz. Though reluctant to provoke a scandal, I allowed myself to be persuaded by editors of the New York Times to offer my opinion in its pages. Had the producers presented their series as a work of fiction, I would not have reacted so strongly. But since it was presented as a documentary, I felt it my duty to object.
My piece had enormous repercussions. The Times had to devote an entire tightly set page to the letters that poured in. The scriptwriter responded; I replied to his response. In short, the debate had been opened, and rather violently.
This is what I wrote in the Times:
The story is gripping, the acting competent, the message compelling—and yet.
The calculated brutality of the killers, the silent agony of the victims, the indifference of the outside world—this TV series will show what some survivors have been trying to say for years and years. And yet something is wrong with it. Something? No: everything.
Untrue, offensive, cheap: as a TV production, the film is an insult to those who perished and to those who survived. In spite of its name, this “docu-drama” is not about what some of us remember as the Holocaust.
Am I too harsh? Too sensitive, perhaps. But then, the film is not sensitive enough. It tries to show what cannot even be imagined. It transforms an ontological event into soap-opera. Whatever the intentions, the result is shocking.
Contrived situations, sentimental episodes, implausible coincidences: If they make you cry, you will cry for the wrong reasons.
Why is the series called “Holocaust”? Whoever chose the name must have been unaware of the implications. Holocaust, a TV spectacle. Holocaust, a TV drama. Holocaust, a work of semi-fact and semi-fiction. Isn’t this what so many morally deranged “scholars” have been claiming recently all over the world? That the Holocaust was nothing but an “invention”? NBC should have used the name in its subtitle, if at all.
The network should also have been more rigorous in its research. Contrary to what we see in the film, Jewish refugees who crossed the Russian border before the German invasion were not allowed to go free but were arrested, interrogated, and jailed; Auschwitz inmates were not allowed to keep suitcases, family pictures, and music-sheets; Jews do not wear prayer shawls at night; there is a blessing for Torah-reading and another one for weddings—the Rabbi who performs the wedding in the film recites the wrong blessing.
Other, more serious irritants: Mordechai Anielewicz, the young commander of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, is shown as a caricature of himself; stereotype Jews and stereotype Germans; the exaggerated emphasis on the brutality of Jewish ghetto-policemen and Jewish Kapos; the obsessive theme of Jewish resignation.
Are we again to be subjected to debates on Jewish passivity versus Jewish heroism? They were painful yet fashionable during the Eichmann trial; why renew them now? During the Holocaust, even the victims were heroes and even the heroes died as martyrs.
But I am more disturbed by the overall concept of the production. It tries to tell it all: what happened before, during, and after. The beginning and the end. The evil majority and the charitable minority. The bloodthirsty SS and Father Lichtenberg. Himmler and Eichmann, Blobel and Franck, Hoess and Nebe: hardly a name is omitted, hardly an episode obliterated. We hear their ideological discussions, we see them at work. We learn how they all used their abilities, their inventiveness, and their patriotism to achieve a perfect system of mass murder, for it took many talents on the part of many highly educated persons to bring about a catastrophe of such magnitude.
On the opposite side: the first signs, the first decrees, the first warnings. Expropriation, confiscation, deportation. The ghettos. The manhunts. Hunger. Fear. The shrinking universe will ultimately be reduced to the gas-chambers. But together with the dying victims, we are shown the fighting heroes: partisans, resistance groups, armed insurgents. Courage and despair displayed by both believers and non-believers: It is all there.
Too much, far too much happens to one particular Jewish family and too much evil is perpetrated by one particular German officer. Members of the fictional Weiss family experience the Kristallnacht, euthanasia, Warsaw, Buchenwald, Theresienstadt, Babi-Yar, Sobibor and Auschwitz. Somehow the most famous—or infamous—events and places have been rearranged to fit into the biographies of two families. Thus, Joseph Weiss helps save Jews at the Umschlagplatz in Warsaw, his brother is purchasing weapons for the Underground, his wife teaches ghetto children Shakespeare and music, his son is among the artists who clandestinely prepare their own testimony in the form of drawings, his daughter perishes as a victim of euthanasia, his youngest son Rudi survives Babi-Yar and joins the Jewish partisans in the Ukraine, where he participates in the armed uprising of Sobibor—and more, and more. Whatever happened anywhere, happened to this family. And more so.
The same applies to Erik Dorf: he too is everywhere. We find him involved in every salient event. Who advises Heydrich on how to deal with Jewish insurance claims after the Kristallnacht? Dorf. Who supervises the mobile gas units? Dorf. Who happens to be at Babi-Yar during the mass executions? Dorf. Who prepares the plans for Auschwitz? Dorf, again. Who purchases Zyklon B gas from respectable German industrialists? Dorf. It is simply too much action for one man, any man. One cannot believe that such a person existed—and, indeed, Erik Dorf did not exist. Neither did the Weiss family. In this “docu-drama,” the principal characters are fictitious, whereas the secondary ones are not. Yet, for understandable artistic reasons, all are treated as authentic. On this
level, the implications are troubling and far-reaching: how is the uninformed viewer to distinguish the one from the other? Chances are he will believe that they are either equally true or equally invented. The private lives of the two families are so skillfully intertwined with historical facts that, except for the initiated, the general public may find it difficult to know where fact ends and fiction begins. This would, of course, defeat the very lofty goal the film’s creators have set for themselves.
In film as in literature, it is all a matter of credibility. Were the film a pure work of fiction or straight documentary, it would achieve more. The mixture of the two genres results in confusion. And occasionally in scenes that I, for one, found in poor taste. One striking example: We see long, endless processions of Jews marching toward Babi-Yar—with “appropriate” musical background. We see them get undressed, move to the ditch, wait for the bullets, topple into the grave. We see the naked bodies covered with “blood”—and it is all make-believe.
Another example: We see naked women and children entering the gas-chambers; we see their faces, we hear their moans as the doors are being shut, then—well, enough: why continue? To use special effects and gimmicks to describe the indescribable is to me morally objectionable. Worse: it is indecent. The last moments of the forgotten victims belong to themselves.
I know: people will tell me that film-making has its own laws and its own demands. After all, similar techniques are being used for war movies and historical re-creations. But the Holocaust is unique, not just another event. This series treats the Holocaust as if it were just another event. Thus, I object to it not because it is not artistic enough but because it is not authentic enough. It removes us from the event instead of bringing us closer to it. The tone is wrong. Most scenes do not ring true: too much “drama,” not enough “documentary.” In all fairness, I must add that many Jewish and non-Jewish organizations supported the project and promoted it among their members. But they did so even before they could view the programs. This does not mean that people will not be moved. Some who saw previews have been profoundly affected. And I know, don’t tell me: the film was not meant for viewers like me but for those who were not there or not even born yet, those who are only beginning to discover the reality of death-factories in the heart of civilized Europe.