With Itzu Goldblat, a goldsmith and the son of a goldsmith, I shared an ambition as naïve as it was boundless: to hasten the coming of the Messiah. We were obsessed by it. Caught up in the Kabbala and its practices, we used our free time to mortify our bodies by fasting and our thoughts by silence. Determined to obtain in dream the “Gilui Eliyahu,” a meeting with the prophet Elijah, the herald of deliverance, we came to forget the reality of a world at war. Only internal fulfillment concerned us. Our incantations went on for hours. In the street they took us for sleepwalkers. Before every service, we made our way to the mikvah, to the ritual baths, to purify ourselves, otherwise our pleas would never reach their destination. Sometimes, seized with mad exaltation we thought we could almost hear the footsteps of the Messiah: soon the goal would be reached, the sound of the shofar, the prophet’s own trumpet, would shock the very heart of history and the blood of victims would no longer flow; soon our enemies, struck with humility and repentance, would realize that they would never succeed in annihilating the people of the covenant by slaughtering its children. Soon, but when? We were burning with impatience, time pressed, we had to hurry. Once again the German occupation put an end to our dream and—who knows?—perhaps to our work as well. The executioner arrived before the Messiah and somewhere, under the peaceful skies of Silesia, the eternal people with all that it embodied was consumed in flames, day and night, especially night, for nothing.
Of all my friends, Yerachmiel, was the one who refused to live on illusions. He fastened on to concrete things, tangible, realizable. He had discovered political Zionism and from then on he could not hold himself back. Without neglecting his Talmudic studies, he found the time to collect money for the Jewish National Fund, and never missed an opportunity to propagate his ideas among the young. A talented agitator, he appeared wherever he could find an audience. He got excited when he spoke, but in his speeches he appealed to reason rather than to that sense of nostalgia which every Jew must feel for Zion.
On Saturday afternoons, for the third traditional meal of Shabbat, he came to our small synagogue and spoke to us not about the Bible or the weekly Sedra, but about the situation in Palestine. That is how I learned that the Holy Land was under British mandate and that an underground Jewish movement had taken up arms to win independence.
Although I remained closed to the political aspects of his talks, I was won over by his enthusiasm. Every time he mentioned the name of Jerusalem, of Safed, of Mount Carmel, the blood rushed to my head: was it really possible, then, to reconstruct the Temple and the kingdom of David other than through penitence and tears? And God, what was his place in all this? Yerachmiel had an answer for everything. At his instigation, I began to learn modern Hebrew. He had managed to dig up, I have no idea where, a grammar book and he was never without it. He lent it to me for a week and I had to swear to him that I would watch over it as though it were the apple of my eye. Before returning this precious work to him, I had learned it all by heart and still today I can remember whole pages.
But Yerachmiel’s path led him far from Jerusalem the majestic, far from romantic Galilee. He left in the first transport. I followed him as far as the gates of the ghetto. Lost in the crowd, he did not notice me. He was dreaming. Of what? Of the Jewish national renaissance? Of the Hebrew resistance at the time of the Roman occupation? Like everyone else, he was carrying a bundle over his shoulder. I think I know what was in it. Besides food and clothing, an irreplaceable little Hebrew grammar.
Later on, among the post-war ruins, in France, in Israel, and in other places, I became friendly with this or that person long enough to walk a few steps on the road together. But the adventures which marked the beginning of my life—never again would I know their intensity, their burning.
I have grown older and today I know the value of words, of waiting. All roads lead to man; and he continues to wander from one desert to another. And the source, a mirage at dusk, moves further and further into the distance. Whoever claims to hear the footsteps and the heartbeat of the Messiah hears only the footsteps and stifled outcries of my friends, who left the country of my childhood, where the insatiable beast who devours our dead right down to the soul crouched in wait for them.
No use retracing my footsteps, looking for a trace of the orphan all the way back to the house of my first teacher. I already know the alphabet.
4.
An Evening Guest
Like all the persecuted Jewish children, I passionately loved the prophet Elijah, the only saint who went up to heaven alive, in a chariot of fire, to go on through the centuries as the herald of deliverance.
For no apparent reason, I pictured him as a Yemenite Jew: tall, somber, unfathomable. A prince ageless, rootless, fierce, turning up wherever he is awaited. Forever on the move, defying space and nature’s laws. It is the end which attracts him in all things, for he alone comprehends its mystery. In the course of his fleeting visits, he consoles the old, the orphan, the abandoned widow. He moves across the world, drawing it in his wake. In his eyes he holds a promise he would like to set free, but he has neither the right nor the power to do so. Not yet.
In my fantasy I endowed him with the majestic beauty of Saul and the strength of Samson. Let him lift his arm, and our enemies would fling themselves to the ground. Let him shout an order, and the universe would tremble: time would run faster so that we might arrive more quickly at the celestial palace where, since the first day of creation, and, according to certain mystics, long before that, the Messiah has awaited us.
A Yemenite Jew, I no longer know why. Perhaps because I had never seen one. For the child I then was, Yemen was not to be found on any map but somewhere else, in the kingdom of dreams where all sad children, from every city and every century, join hands to defy coercion, the passing years, death.
Later on, I saw the prophet and had to admit my error. He was a Jew, to be sure, but he came from no farther away than Poland. Moreover, he had nothing about him of the giant, the legendary hero. Pitiful, stoop-shouldered, he tightened his lips when he looked at you. His movements betrayed his weariness, but his eyes were aflame. One sensed that, for him, the past was his only haven.
It was the first night of Passover. Our household, brightly lit, was preparing to celebrate the festival of freedom. My mother and my two older sisters were bustling about the kitchen, the youngest was setting the table. Father had not yet returned from synagogue.
I was upset: we were going to partake of the ritual meal with only just the family, and I would have preferred having a guest as in preceding years. I recovered my good mood when the door opened and father appeared, accompanied by a poorly dressed, shivering, timid stranger. Father had approached him in the street with the customary phrase: Kol dichfin yetei veyochal (Let him who is hungry come eat with us).
“I’m not hungry,” the stranger had answered.
“That makes no difference; come along anyway. No one should remain outside on a holiday evening.”
Happy, my little sister set another place. I poured the wine.
“May we begin?” my father asked.
“Everything is ready,” my mother answered.
Father blessed the wine, washed his hands, and prepared to tell us, according to custom, of the exploits of our ancestors, their flight from Egypt, their confrontation with God and their destiny.
“I’m not hungry,” our guest said suddenly. “But I’ve something to say to you.”
“Later,” my father answered, a bit surprised.
“I haven’t time. It’s already too late.”
I did not know that this was to be the last Seder, the last Passover meal we would celebrate in my father’s house.
It was 1944. The German army had just occupied the region. In Budapest the Fascists had seized power. The Eastern front was at Körösmezö, barely thirty kilometers from our home. We could hear the cannon fire and, at night, the sky on the other side of the mountains turned red. We thought that the war was coming to an end, that liberat
ion was near, that, like our ancestors, we were living our last hours in bondage.
Jews were being abused in the streets; they were being humiliated, covered with insults. One rabbi was compelled to sweep the sidewalk. Our dear Hungarian neighbors were shouting: “Death to the Jews!” But our optimism remained unshakable. It was simply a question of holding out for a few days, a few weeks. Then the front would shift and once again the God of Abraham would save his people, as always, at the last moment, when all seems lost.
The Haggadah, with its story of the Exodus, confirmed our hope. Is it not written that each Jew must regard himself, everywhere and at all times, as having himself come out of Egypt? And that, for each generation, the miracle will be renewed?
But our guest did not see things that way. Disturbed, his forehead wrinkled, he troubled us. Moody and irritated, he seemed intent upon irritating us as well.
“Close your books!” he shouted. “All that is ancient history. Listen to me instead.”
We politely concealed our impatience. In a trembling voice, he began to describe the sufferings of Israel in the hour of punishment: the massacre of the Jewish community of Kolomai, then that of Kamenetz-Podolsk. Father let him speak, then resumed the ancient tale as though nothing had happened. My little sister asked the traditional four questions which would allow my father, in his answers, to explain the meaning and import of the holiday. “Why and in what way is this night different from all other nights?” “Because we were slaves under Pharaoh, but on this night God made us free men.” Discontent with both the question and the answer, our guest repeated them in his own way: “Why is this night not different from other nights? Why this continuity of suffering? And why us, always us? And God, why doesn’t he intervene? Where is the miracle? What is he waiting for? When is he going to put himself between us and the executioners?”
His unexpected interruptions created a feeling of uneasiness around the table. As soon as one of us opened his mouth, our guest would cut us short:
“You concern yourselves with a past that’s three thousand years old and you turn away from the present: Pharaoh is not dead, open your eyes and see, he is destroying our people. Moses is dead, yes, Moses is dead, but not Pharaoh: he is alive, he’s on his way, soon he’ll be at the gates of this city, at the doors of this house: are you sure you’ll be spared?”
Then, shrugging his shoulders, he read a few passages from the Haggadah: in his mouth, the words of praise became blasphemies.
Father tried to quiet him, to reassure him: “You’re downhearted, my friend, but you must not be. Tonight we begin our holiday with rejoicing and gratitude.”
The guest shot him a burning glance and said: “Gratitude, did you say? For what? Have you seen children butchered before their mother’s eyes? I have, I’ve seen them.”
“Later,” said my father. “You’ll tell us all about that later.”
I listened to the guest and kept wondering: who is he? what does he want? I thought him sick and unhappy, perhaps mad. It was not until later that I understood: he was the prophet Elijah. And if he bore little resemblance to the Elijah of the Bible or to the prophet of my dreams, it is because each generation begets a prophet in its own image. In days of old, at the time of the kings, he revealed himself as a wrathful preacher setting mountains and hearts on fire. Then, repentant, he took to begging in the narrow streets of besieged Jerusalem, to emerge, later as student in Babylonia, messenger in Rome, beadle in Mayence, Toledo, or Kiev. Today, he had the appearance and fate of a poor Jewish refugee from Poland who had seen, too close and too many times, the triumph of death over man and his prayer.
I am still convinced that it was he who was our visitor. Quite often, of course, I find it hard to believe. Few and far between are those who have succeeded in seeing him. The road that leads to him is dark and dangerous, and the slightest misstep might bring about the loss of one’s soul. My Rebbe would cheerfully have given his life to catch one glimpse of him, if only for the span of a lightning flash, a single heartbeat. How then had I deserved what is refused so many others? I do not know. But I maintain that the guest was Elijah. Moreover, I had proof of this soon afterward.
Tradition requires that after the meal, before prayers are resumed, a goblet of wine be offered the prophet Elijah, who, that evening, visits all Jewish homes, at the same moment, as though to emphasize the indestructibility of their ties with God. Accordingly, Father took the beautiful silver chalice no one ever used and filled it to the brim. Then he signaled my little sister to go to the door and ask the illustrious visitor to come taste our wine. And we wanted to tell him: you see, we trust you; in spite of our enemies, in spite of the blood that has been shed, joy is not deserting us, we offer you this because we believe in your promise.
In silence, aware of the importance of the moment, we rose to our feet to pay solemn tribute to the prophet, with all the honor and respect due him. My little sister left the table and started toward the door when our guest suddenly cried out:
“No! Little girl, come back! I’ll open the door myself!”
Something in his voice made us shudder. We watched him plunge toward the door and open it with a crash.
“Look,” he cried out, “there’s no one there! No one! Do you hear me?”
Whereupon he leaped out and left the door wide open.
Standing, our glasses in our hands, we waited, petrified, for him to come back. My little sister, on the brink of tears, covered her mouth with both hands. Father was the first to get hold of himself. In a gentle voice he called out after our guest: “Where are you, friend? Come back!”
Silence.
Father repeated his call in a more urgent tone. No reply. My cheeks on fire, I ran outside, sure I would find him on the porch: he was not there. I flew down the steps: he could not be far. But the only footsteps that resounded in the courtyard were my own. The garden? There were many shadows under the trees, but not his.
Father, Mother, my sisters, and even our old servant, not knowing what to think, came out to join me. Father said: “I don’t understand.”
Mother murmured: “Where can he be hiding? Why?”
My sisters and I went out into the street as far as the corner: no one. I started shouting: “H-e-e-y, friend, where are you?” Several windows opened: “What’s going on?”
“Has anyone seen a foreign Jew with a stooped back?”
“No.”
Out of breath, we all came together again in the courtyard. Mother murmured: “You’d think the earth swallowed him up.”
And Father repeated: “I don’t understand.”
It was then that a sudden thought flashed through my mind and became certainty: Mother is mistaken, it is the sky and not the earth that has split open in order to take him in. Useless to chase after him, he is not here anymore. In his fiery chariot he has gone back to his dwelling-place, up above, to inform God what his blessed people are going to live through in the days to come.
“Friend, come back,” my father shouted one last time. “Come back, we’ll listen to you.”
“He can’t hear you anymore,” I said. “He’s a long way off by now.”
Our hearts heavy, we returned to the table and raised our glasses one more time. We recited the customary blessings, the Psalms, and, to finish, we sang Chad Gadya, that terrifying song in which, in the name of justice, evil catches evil, death calls death, until the Angel of Destruction, in his turn, has his throat cut by the Eternal himself, blessed-be-he. I always loved this naïve song in which everything seemed so simple, so primitive: the cat and the dog, the water and the fire, first executioners then victims, all undergoing the same punishment within the same scheme. But that evening the song upset me. I rebelled against the resignation it implied. Why does God always act too late? Why didn’t he get rid of the Angel of Death before he even committed the first murder?
Had our guest stayed with us, he is the one who would have asked these questions. In his absence, I took them up on my own.
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br /> The ceremony was coming to an end, and we did not dare look at one another. Father raised his glass one last time and we repeated after him: “Next year in Jerusalem.” None of us could know that this was our last Passover meal as a family.
I saw our guest again a few weeks later. The first convoy was leaving the ghetto; he was in it. He seemed more at ease than his companions, as if he had already taken this route a thousand times. Men, women, and children, all of them carrying bundles on their backs, blankets, valises. He alone was empty-handed.
Today I know what I did not know then: at the end of a long trip that was to last four days and three nights he got out in a small railway station, near a peaceful little town, somewhere in Silesia, where his fiery chariot was waiting to carry him up to the heavens: is that not proof enough that he was the prophet Elijah?
5.
Yom Kippur: The Day Without Forgiveness
With a lifeless look, a painful smile on his face, while digging a hole in the ground, Pinhas moved his lips in silence. He appeared to be arguing with someone within himself and, judging from his expression, seemed close to admitting defeat.
I had never seen him so downhearted. I knew that his body would not hold out much longer. His strength was already abandoning him, his movements were becoming more heavy, more chaotic. No doubt he knew it too. But death figured only rarely in our conversations. We preferred to deny its presence, to reduce it, as in the past, to a simple allusion, something abstract, inoffensive, a word like any other.
“What are you thinking about? What’s wrong?”