The father seems elsewhere, lost in thought. Whom is he trying to reach, to assuage? “Don’t,” says one of the Hasidim, shaking him. “Do you hear me? You cannot give in to melancholy, not today! Don’t forget, we have recovered a name, that of your father. Now your son will bear it! That is what we must celebrate!” The celebration continues for hours, and the melody of that ceremony still resonates inside me.
The Hasidim are shouting: Open yourselves to joy! Easily said. For my generation, no joy can be whole. I look at my son, who will never know his paternal grandparents. Silently I beg them to protect the one who has been called upon to assure their continuity. Protect him, beloved ancestors. Thanks to him, the line will not become extinct. It is a line that goes back far, all the way to the Sh’la. And to the Tossafot Yom Tov. And to Rashi, thus to King David.
Protect your descendant Shlomo Elisha ben Eliezer ben Shlomo Halevi. Guide him to the right path. And may he make you proud of what his soul becomes. Mother, protect your grandson. I don’t know where you are resting, but please lean over his crib and help me sing him lullabies. Tell him your wondrous and strange tales that made me sleep peacefully. And you, Father, protect his dreams. Help him live his child’s life. Help me.
“May this little one grow up and enter the world of study, marriage, and good deeds.” It is Heschel who recites this customary prayer.
Beloved ancestors, please say: Amen.
So here I am, responsible for a family. A father. Even more than before, I think of my own father. Will I be able to follow in his footsteps? All his life he strove to help the needy, the anguished, the humiliated. And when the end came, nobody came to console him, not even his son in whom he had placed such hope.
He had done everything, within the limits of his meager possibilities, to save his brethren and sisters and to make the world around them warmer, more welcoming. I feel sorry for you, Father. I admire you; I love you; but I feel sorry for you: How naive you were, how innocent. Did you really believe that mankind would cease denying itself by denying you? That man could, that man would, transcend his condition?
The failure of my father and of all he symbolized long made me fear having a child. I was convinced that a cruel and indifferent world did not deserve our children. When I expressed this fear during a radio broadcast, I was violently reprimanded by Georges Levitte, the wonderful intellectual humanist to whom so many French writers, both Jewish and Christian, are deeply indebted.
It was Marion who persuaded me otherwise. It was wrong to give the killers one more victory. The long line from which I sprang must not end with me.
She was right.
And now? Because of my father and my son, I choose commitment.
* All Rivers Run to the Sea (New York: Alfred A. Knopf), 1995.
* See All Rivers Run to the Sea, pp. 150–1.
Scars
STOP DREAMING, a voice in my dream tells me this morning. It is time to act. The voice repeats the last words: to act. I want to ask: Can one not act and dream at the same time? But I don’t dare open my mouth. I am afraid to wake up. I prefer to dream. Where is this voice coming from that breaks down the walls protecting my slumber?
Whose voice is it? It has fallen still, but I can hear it. A man’s voice.
That of my father? Too harsh. My grandfather? Too sharp.
Suddenly I remember: It is the voice of a beggar I once wanted to follow. I was young, a child still. He laughed, and I asked him why. “To make you laugh,” he answered. Then he changed his mind and began to shout: “Would you rather I make you cry?” Making myself small, very small, I said: “What I’d really like is for you to make me dream.”
What is more important, asks the Talmud, what is essential: thought or action? The opinions are divided, but in the end all the Masters agree: Study comes first, because study incites action.
As a Jew, I question myself about the role of the Jewish writer. Is it to make readers spill one more tear into the ocean? What must the writer express, and to what end? Which story should be told, and to what audience? Some are convinced that he must devote himself exclusively to his writings, that his influence and his power derive more from his art than from his deeds. This may have been a valid notion long ago. Poetry does not prevent the torturer from beating his victims, and the greatest novel in the world remains powerless before a fanatic. Thus the need to act. But in what area, and by what means? And where does one begin?
Of course, the fight against anti-Semitism remains a priority. It is, after all, the most ancient collective prejudice in history. Its virulence and its capacity to survive remain inexplicable. It is said to be as old as the Jewish people itself. The Talmud detects its first signs at the time of the Revelation at Sinai. Even in antiquity Jews were hated, especially in the higher echelons of society. What did Cicero and Seneca have against the Jews? If one is to believe Flavius Josephus, Apion the Greek reproached the Jews for “belonging to a tribe of lepers capable if not desirous of contaminating the entire world.” Tacitus is annoyed with them because they show for each other an “obstinate attachment, an active commiseration in contrast with the implacable hatred they feel for the rest of mankind. Never do they eat with strangers, never do they live with foreign women.” Apion and Democritus accuse them of ritual murder. Since then anti-Semitism has become more modern, though it retains the same irrational arguments. One has only to compare those of Pharaoh’s counselors in the Bible to those of Haman in the Book of Esther, of Torquemada, Hitler, and Stalin: Their delusions are the same. All were convinced that the Jews were always greedy, determined to achieve political and religious domination and thus to control the affairs of the world. They see Jews everywhere and ascribe to them terrifying mystical powers. At the same time, they have contempt for those who appear helpless. In other words, the anti-Semites hate the Jews because they believe them to be strong but despise them when they perceive them to be weak.
The anti-Semite resents the Jew both for what he is and for what he is not. He blames him for being too rich or too poor, too nationalistic or too universal, too devout or too secular. In truth, he simply resents the fact that the Jew exists.
Thus, for a Jew, anti-Semitism remains the enemy. But it is not the only one. There are other hatreds, other exclusions, other human communities targeted. There is misery on all continents—hunger, ignorance, intolerance, silenced political prisoners, nuclear proliferation: Which of these challenges requires our immediate intervention?
And war, which mankind seems incapable of eliminating or at least restraining, more than fifty years after World War II. What is war? A perverse lack of imagination, of memory? A fascination with the end, with death? How to understand this madness that leaves so many graves in its wake?
• • •
Having virtually given up journalism—not without regret—I turn to teaching.
Once again fate intervenes at a crossroads. I owe my appointment as Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies at the City College of New York purely to chance.
One evening in a Manhattan hotel, after a lecture on behalf of Soviet Jewry, Rabbi Yitz Greenberg takes me aside. He speaks to me as head of the Jewish Studies department at City College. He wishes to recruit me. To teach what? Anything I want: Hasidic texts, Jewish or Holocaust literature, talmudic subjects. “Things that, in any case, you deal with in your work.”
I am very fond of Yitz. I have known him since the early sixties, when he was teaching at Yeshiva University. He is as tall as a basketball player, with a lively and open mind; his discourse is sharp but not aggressive. As he tries to convince me, I realize that if I accept I shall become a father and a professor in the same month.
I accept.
Two days later I find myself in the office of the young dean Ted Gross. He seems pleased, and so am I. It has all happened very fast. The contract has been drawn up; all that remains is the signature. Smiles, handshakes, congratulations. I am proud, I don’t deny it. City College is not just any college. It is
a place of real distinction.
Is this a new career? Let us say it’s a new path. As for the goal, it will not change.
I prepare myself like a student, rereading texts I thought I had known and fully understood. At the same time I put the final touches on Le serment de Kolvillag (later translated as The Oath in the United States), which is due to be published by Le Seuil in France in 1973.
Also on the agenda, inevitably, are a few trips. With Elisha, of course. In Israel, we meet friends from the newspaper for which I worked from 1950 to 1972. Dov and Lea, Noah and Paula, Eliyahu and Ruth: peaceful, comforting moments. Nostalgic as well.
Elisha in Jerusalem. How can I describe my happiness, my pride, as I carry him in my arms walking with Marion through the narrow streets of the Old City? And as I place his tiny hand on the Wall?
For the editors of Yedioth Ahronoth these are heady times: Circulation is up from one week to the next, as are salaries. I make my old friends laugh when I point out to them my poor luck as a journalist: Since I left, Yedioth has become better and richer.
As a result of the “war of attrition,” the atmosphere in the country is heavy. The security of the state is not yet in question, but the euphoria of 1967 following the Six-Day War has dissipated. Five years have passed and there is ever more talk of Palestinian terrorism. Nobody has forgotten the attack at Lod Airport committed by the Japanese Kozo Okamoto, linked to the PLO: twenty-five killed, among them the internationally renowned scientist Aharon Katzir. That was at the end of May 1972.
In early September of that year, during the Olympic Games held in Munich, Palestinian terrorists belonging to the Black September movement assassinate eleven Israeli athletes. The public follows the tragedy live on television.
The Games continue the very next day. And the whole world applauds.
In a difficult address given a few weeks later, before the leaders of the United Jewish Appeal (UJA), I speak of the implications of this wanton murder.
We must never forget that Munich is not only the capital of Bavaria, but also a symbol. Munich symbolizes the failure and cowardice of the West, its abdication before the powers of evil. It represents the triumph of paganism, of the gods of violence, of fanaticism and death. Munich equals shame. In 1938 the Munich agreements prefigured Dachau, the ghettos of hunger and fear, and the death ramp at Birkenau.
September 1972. The Jewish year begins badly—for Israel in general, for me and my family as well.
One morning, I am in the middle of teaching a class on Rebbe Nahman of Bratzlav when a secretary rushes in to tell me of an urgent call waiting for me at the office. I run to the phone afraid to breathe, afraid to say the word that will force me to listen to what follows. On the other end, my brother-in-law Len is silent. Then he gives me the news: My sister Bea is ill, gravely ill; they have just operated; she has cancer. Len is sobbing. Frozen, I cannot speak for a long moment. Never have I heard my heart beat so loudly. I fall into a chair and ask: “What can be done?” The physician in Len is pulling himself together: “Nothing unfortunately, nothing.” I ask him whether Bea knows. No, she doesn’t. Besides, she is still in recovery.
I return to my class. My students look at me, perplexed. They can sense my distress. I tell them: “Let’s go on, shall we?” But they look at me and remain silent. I don’t know how, but I make them speak. “Where were we?” I don’t know and they, evidently, don’t either. Fortunately, the moment to conclude comes soon.
Back home, Marion places Elisha in my arms to console me.
I begin a series of shuttles between New York and Montreal. Bea knows she had a tumor but believes it to have been benign and thinks it was successfully removed. That is what she says to me.
But then why this shadow in her gaze?
And then comes another blow. My sister Hilda loses her husband, Nathan, a gentle, infinitely kind man.
Hilda tells me: They were on the road. Nathan was driving; suddenly he stopped and asked for a piece of candy—he who had not eaten sweets since childhood. The next moment he was dead.
Born in Tarnów, Poland, he had emigrated to France between the wars. A fervent Zionist, he dreamed of living in Israel. He will be buried there.
Bea calls me from Montreal; she does not feel up to attending the funeral. She asks me to understand; she is afraid. Of course I understand: Cancer is frightening, and so are cemeteries, even to someone as brave as my sister. “Explain to Hilda that …” No need to explain. Hilda understands. I accompany her to Israel; I am at her side at the cemetery. The entire Israeli family is there.
By chance, at the cemetery entrance I meet Moishele Kraus, the former cantor of Sighet. At my request he sings the prayer for the dead at the open grave. A distant relative gives a brief eulogy. It is my first time attending a burial in Israel. I didn’t know that here men are buried only in their talit, without a coffin. It is also the first time that I hear the Kaddish recited here, so different from the one said by the orphan every day of the first year of mourning. It seems heavier, harsher. It is frightening. I am glad Bea did not come.
In the United States, the presidential campaign is in full swing, noisy as ever. And this time around, mean.
Robert Bernstein, head of Random House, is intent on my meeting one of the candidates for the Democratic nomination, the senator from South Dakota, George McGovern. Marion and I are invited to dinner in a quiet restaurant.
The senator makes a good impression. He appears to be a man of integrity, obsessed not with power but with the use he might put it to. He speaks softly without moving a muscle in his face.
I ask him: “Why do you want so much to be president? The campaign is harrowing; it depletes you. After all, you are an influential and respected senator. Wouldn’t it be wiser to strengthen that position, which is unanimously respected?”
McGovern responds: “Nixon must be defeated. He is evil incarnate. And I am the only one who can beat him.”
How naive of McGovern. He did not realize that he was the only one who could not defeat Nixon.
Moreover, the sitting president is doing rather well. The Watergate scandal is still to come. Foreign policy dominates the news. Sure planes are bombing Hanoi and Haiphong, but isn’t it Nixon who, together with his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, makes historic visits to China and Moscow? Not only will Nixon take the elections, he will win by a large margin.
The night the results are announced, I see young students weep.
It was in 1973 that Le serment de Kolvillag (The Oath) was published in Paris. It is a bleak novel, devoid of hope. With the exception of the later novel The Forgotten, it is without doubt the most depressing fictional tale my pen has ever committed to paper. While working on it, I am deep in a depression that on the surface seems unwarranted. Things are going well, both professionally and personally. Marion has become my translator, so I no longer worry about the English-language editions of my work. Our one-year-old son’s smile delights me. Teaching is exciting; my books are being bought by an increasing number of publishers abroad. Robert McAfee Brown at Stanford University, John Roth at Claremont, Harry Cargas in St. Louis, Lawrence Langer in Boston, and Irving Halperin in San Francisco all incorporate my books into their programs. And yet I sense disaster. As the writer Cynthia Ozick observes: “It is as though, in your novel, you foresaw the Yom Kippur War and the exasperating solitude of Israel.” In truth, never has the Jewish state been so close to catastrophe.
Why did I set the action of this novel at the beginning of the twentieth century? To dissociate it from my personal experience, to distance it from the era of Night?
The theme: A young stranger wishes to die, and it falls to a wandering old man named Azriel to dissuade him. What can he tell the young stranger that will renew his will to live? He tells him a story—his own, the one he had vowed never to reveal.
Through this story Azriel describes the life and destiny of an annihilated Jewish hamlet. It is all there: friendship and hatred; fanaticism and terror;
the chroniclers and their fate; the tensions between societies, religions, and generations; testimony and silence; silence above all; silence as means and as end.
October 5, 1973. The Yom Kippur War, terrible and shattering. We learn the news during services. Rabbi Joseph Lookstein, dressed in white as was the high priest of long ago, asks the congregation to pray with increased fervor. In the middle of the Musaf service I am called outside: I must urgently call the Israeli Mission. I remove my talit and go to the synagogue office. A diplomat requests a statement for the press. Is it true that the Germans often chose the Day of Atonement to heighten their campaigns of brutality against the inhabitants of the ghettos? As a rule I am wary of such analogies. But today I say: Yes, the Germans knew the Jewish calendar and used it against us. I return to my seat. The congregation is deep in prayer, reciting the Amidah. And I realize that this is the first time since liberation that I have violated the sanctity of the holiest day of the year.
The year 1973 contains more bad omens than promises. Yasir Arafat is reelected to head the PLO. In Chile, Salvador Allende is assassinated by the enemies of democracy. In Southeast Asia the war continues: Tons of explosives fall on Laos and Cambodia. In Paris the negotiations between Henry Kissinger, representing Nixon, and Le Duc Tho, Ho Chi Minh’s emissary, seem to be going nowhere. In America, the general public follows the news from the various fronts with resignation. But there is a new interest: Watergate. And the forced resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew, indicted for accepting bribes from private companies.
And now, the war against Israel.
This one is unlike the others. In past wars, the Israeli army had always imposed its own rhythm, its own strategy. In this war, the adversary managed to deliver the first blow, unleashing a striking offensive.
Depressing days, oppressive nights. I have trouble concentrating as I face my students. Rebbe Nahman and his princes, the Besht and his legends, no longer hold my thoughts, which leap toward Suez and the Golan on fire. The news reports from Israel are crushing. What am I to do? How could I help? Write articles, make speeches? The time for that is past.