They will do it this year too, with new songs and new fervor. But this year I shall not be with them—and for this I cannot but feel guilty.
EXCERPTS FROM A DIARY
Very close to my Manhattan apartment, there is a modest Hasidic house of prayer—a shtibel—that reminds me of those I knew in my childhood. Except that in this one, services are held in the basement.
The worshippers are mostly refugees. Former residents of Warsaw and its surroundings, they bear traces of its long hours of agony. All have known the reality of concentration camps. None speaks of it except during the holidays. And as I listen, I understand what Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav meant when he expressed the wish that his tales be transformed into prayers.
Passover
Black kaftan, black felt hat, luminous eyes behind shell-rimmed glasses: Reb Avraham Zemba belongs to the world of my memories not for his mode of dress alone. He is pleasant, almost friendly, yet he addresses you only to let you share a commentary from the Sfat-Emet or the Khiddushei-Harim, pillars of Guerer Hasidism. When he prays, one sees nothing but his back, yet at times one can almost feel his body tremble.
“On the seventh day of Pesach we all say Kaddish here,” he tells me. “That was the day we arrived in Treblinka. We were among the last to leave the burning ghetto. In the midst of the uprising, hiding in the ruins, we nonetheless celebrated the Seder. With songs.”
And after a silence: “The Midrash relates that Rebbe Hanina ben Dossa prayed with such fervor that without being aware of what he was doing, he would pick up a huge stone and carry it elsewhere.”
He never finishes the legend, but in his eyes there is a sorrow so deep and a fervor so ancient that I understand: that stone of Rebbe Hanina ben Dossa now weighs on him, it crushes him, and yet, in his prayers, he does not ask to be relieved of his burden.
Shavuot
Holiday commemorating the revelation at Sinai. The encounter of the people of Israel with the God and Torah of Israel. We stand as we listen to the reading of the Ten Commandments: thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill. Naturally, it is always the victims who repeat them.
The reading ended, one of the worshippers makes the customary appeal on behalf of needy Talmudic students. Today it’s Yosseph Friedenson’s turn. Thin, tense and passionate, a militant orthodox and editor of a Yiddish monthly, he pleads movingly in the students’ behalf:
“God has given the Law one time only, yet He asks us to receive it every day. In exchange, all we ask is to be worthy of it.”
He stops to clear his throat, and then:
“As a matter of principle and in keeping with tradition, I should now praise the virtues of the Torah. I will not do so, for it would be superfluous. Contemporary history has done it for us by providing irrefutable proof that of all systems, all ideologies, the Torah is the only one that did not betray man. It produced neither camps nor death-factories. Nor do those who adhere to its precepts provoke racial riots or incite to hatred and contempt. They do not see man as object, as obstacle. They denounce no one and seek no vengeance. Their only wish is to devote all their time to the study of Torah. But they do not have the means this requires. Therefore, we must help them. They will not know where the money comes from, nor will we know to whom it goes. Indispensable anonymity on both sides, to avoid vanity and shame …”
Curious, this money-collection. Everybody contributes, even though everyone, almost without exception, has difficulty making ends meet. Their generosity reminds me of a humanity that is no more.
Rosh Hashanah
… It was in 1944. We had decided to organize a minyan, a communal service. A dangerous decision that could easily turn into disaster. But we were determined to welcome the New Year as before, forming a congregation by the sheer force and concentration of our fervor. And the barbed wires? We would have to ignore them. And the jailers? We would have to defy them.
Services took place in a barracks filled to capacity. Even the kapos, even the non-believers, in a rare impulse of solidarity, had decided to be present.
A cantor was found who remembered the Rosh Hashanah service by heart. He recited it aloud and the congregation repeated it verse for verse. We felt like weeping, so great was our self-pity. It was hard, but we controlled ourselves until one of the men, at the end of his endurance, burst into sobs. A moment later everybody was weeping with him. Together, we recalled family and friends, events dating to a time when Europe harbored rabbis and disciples, a thousand synagogues and millions of believers. We reminisced about a past when family meant presence, not separation. We mourned the dead and the living, the vanished homes and desecrated sanctuaries, we wept without shame or hope, and it seemed to us that we would go on weeping until the end of all exiles, until the last breath of the last survivor …
Suddenly an inmate stepped forward and began to speak:
“Brothers, listen to me. Tonight is Rosh Hashanah, the threshold of a new year. And even though we are starved, in mourning and on the verge of insanity, let us continue our customs and traditions of long ago. In those days, after services, we went up to our parents, our children and friends to wish them a good year. We don’t know where they are now, or rather, we do know, which is worse. Let us, nevertheless, pronounce our good wishes—and leave God to transmit them to whomever they belong.”
Whereupon the assembly cried out in unison and with all its might, as though wanting to shake heaven and earth: “A good year! A good year!”
And the speaker went on:
“Before we part, we should make the customary Kiddush, bless the bread and sanctify the wine. We have no bread; as for the wine, our enemies are getting drunk on it. Never mind, we’ll take our tin cups and fill them with our tears. And that is how we will make our Kiddush heard before God and His messengers on earth.”
… And now, many years later, in this humble Hasidic shtibel, I watch the same speaker—Shimon Zucker—gently swaying back and forth, during the same Rosh Hashanah service. And I tell myself that one day I shall muster the courage to go to his home and listen to him sanctify the wine and bless the bread.
Yom Kippur
This tale I heard from a morose, but extraordinary old Jew:
On Yom Kippur Eve the dead and the living intermingle. You don’t believe it? You say it’s superstition? I was like you. And yet …
The last Yom Kippur of the war. The entire camp listens as the cantor repeats three times the solemn invocation of Kol Nidre. Then comes Maariv, followed by the Vidui, the confession enumerating all the sins and transgressions a mortal could possibly commit or imagine, from his birth to his death. In the middle of the enumeration an incident occurs. An emaciated inmate, the color of ashes, brutally pushes the cantor aside and addresses the congregation:
“Brothers, I shall not permit you to lie! No, we have not sinned, we have not betrayed, we have not robbed our fellow man! Tonight, for the first time in creation, we are not the accused, we are the judges. We shall be the ones to pronounce the sentence. Otherwise, we should be failing in our duty!”
A man standing at my right grabs my arm. “It’s … it’s him,” he whispers, pale with fright. Craning my neck, I try to get a better look at the speaker and am in turn struck with amazement. We know him, he belongs to my work-team. Except that yesterday, before our return to camp, he was beaten to death by an overseer. His body was brought back and left in front of his barracks to be present at roll call.
“I have come back from there,” he says, pointing to heaven. “And I know the truth. Everything has been taken from us, everything has been killed in us, even our taste for joy. If ever, since the beginning of human experience, there have been men robbed of all earthly attachments, it is we. Our persecutors have stifled in us even the capacity to do evil. We observe all the Commandments. We do not kill, we do not covet, we are neither perjurers nor hypocrites. Unlike our executioners, who concentrate on finding ways to murder man. And so I ask you, brothers: why take their crimes upon ourselves? Let us have th
e courage to proclaim our innocence as well as our determination to sit in judgment …”
Recovered from our first shock, we make him stop. And the cantor, trembling, starts the Vidui again from the beginning. And the condemned once again recite with him the traditional deceitful formulas, and try to forget the interruption.
We say we are guilty, and perhaps that is what we believe. Perhaps we need to consider ourselves guilty because otherwise it would mean that God does not know what He’s doing, and does not do what He wants. Despite the barbed wire or because of it, we try to believe that God exists, and that in His book, everything is indeed inscribed, weighed, set right and fulfilled.
After services I catch another glimpse of the man come back to haunt us. There he is again: moving back and forth through the crowd, he entreats his comrades not to repudiate him, to let their eyes see what he sees and let their faith support his anger. But they refuse to listen.
Someone even says: “You pretend to be dead? The dead no longer impress us.”
And another: “You forget where you are. Your truth, you forget that it too is dead.”
And a third: “To deny God here, you don’t have to be brave; if anything, it’s too easy.”
Defeated by our unanimous disbelief, our comrade goes back to heaven. There he is advised that he is no longer welcome, having revealed things not meant to be revealed. He is sent back to earth. And if he comes to Kol Nidre service, it is to make amends.
… The old Jew has come to the end of his tale. I ask: “This angry dead man, who was he? What happened to him afterwards?” And I watch the old man’s eyes change color and expression, though they remain glassy. Visibly offended, he cries: “How dare you?”
Then he hurls insults at me and humiliates me because I am “too young to know everything.”
Shabbat
The following remark was made by the Israeli writer Moshe Prager:
In the camps, there were kapos of German, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Slovakian, Belgian, Ukrainian, French and Lithuanian extraction. They were Christians, Jews and atheists. Former professors, industrialists, artists, merchants, workers, militants from the right and the left, philosophers and explorers of the soul, Marxists and staunch humanists. And, of course, a few common criminals. But not one kapo had been a rabbi.
Prayer
I no longer ask You for either happiness or paradise; all I ask of You is to listen and let me be aware of Your listening.
I no longer ask You to resolve my questions, only to receive them and make them part of You.
I no longer ask You for either rest or wisdom, I only ask You not to close me to gratitude, be it of the most trivial kind, or to surprise and friendship. Love? Love is not Yours to give.
As for my enemies, I do not ask You to punish them or even to enlighten them; I only ask You not to lend them Your mask and Your powers. If You must relinquish one or the other, give them Your powers. But not Your countenance.
They are modest, my requests, and humble. I ask You what I might ask a stranger met by chance at twilight in a barren land.
I ask You, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to enable me to pronounce these words without betraying the child that transmitted them to me: God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, enable me to forgive You and enable the child I once was to forgive me too.
I no longer ask You for the life of that child, nor even for his faith. I only beg You to listen to him and act in such a way that You and I can listen to him together.
Hasidic Celebration
Attended yesterday, Saturday, an unexpected reception in honor of a young professor who comes to this shtibel for the same reasons I do: he loves and admires these miraculous survivors of another age who have remained steadfast in their fight against oblivion and sadness.
The officiant had already started the service when one of the worshippers went up to the leader of the small community—Reb Leibele Cywiak—and whispered into his ear: “They say our young visitor is getting married this week.”
The service comes to a halt and the Hasidim flock around the bridegroom-to-be to congratulate him and offer their good wishes. Gruffly, Rabbi Cywiak pretends to be offended: “Why didn’t you say anything? First of all, tradition requires that you be called to the Torah. Secondly, if I had known, I would have prepared a reception, a true-to-form Kiddush. But you wished to deprive us of that pleasure. That is not nice, young man, not nice at all.”
“Oh, you know … Why trouble you? After all …”
“Trouble us, you say? Do you hear him, friends? He deprives us of a good deed and expects us to thank him! It is now, by taking us unawares, that you trouble us … Not nice, I tell you, not nice at all …”
“Forgive me … Not important … Dislike receptions …”
“How selfish can you be? You only think of yourself! What about us? Don’t we count any more? It is written …”
“It is written nowhere that the bridegroom must be entertained before the wedding. During and after—yes. Not before.”
From the privacy of my corner, I observe the young man. He is moved, but his emotions are under control. He seems shy, intimidated, that’s all. Embarrassed. In the face of the rabbi’s exuberance, he makes an effort not to blush. He blushes anyway.
I notice the famous thinker A. J. Heschel. He too is watching the bridegroom.
“Why so melancholy?” I ask him.
“I look at this young man and I see him elsewhere. If not for the war …”
“If not …”
“… I know, I know. But sometimes, in my dreams, I put out the fire in time. I rediscover myself as I was before. And I remember. The customs of long ago. The Saturday preceding the wedding the whole town escorted the young man to the synagogue. He was treated like a prince and given the place of honor. As he was called to the Torah, the congregation rose. And after he had recited the traditional prayers, he was showered with nuts, raisins and other sweets: symbols of abundance and good wishes. Then he was escorted home with great pomp. For hours and hours, there would be singing and dancing and drinking in his honor. The old men told stories, the troubadours composed songs. While now …”
“What do you expect?” I say, answering for the young man. “Times have changed, so have customs. We have unlearned the art of inviting joy and fervor.”
We both fall silent. We know the young professor lost his parents. It is probably best to leave him to his thoughts.
Meanwhile, it is getting late. The service has been resumed. But Reb Leibele Cywiak and his friends are conferring in a corner:
“What? Let him leave like that, without anything?”
“Empty-handed?”
“Inconceivable …”
“Inadmissible …”
“Let’s arrange …”
“… a reception? In one hour? And on Shabbat, no less? Impossible …”
“Even so …”
The young visitor is not one of the regulars; but his new status entitles him to full consideration and honors.
All of Israel’s children are equal; one must love them equally and, if need be, prove it to them.
“All right,” says the rabbi, “don’t worry. We’ll manage. It will not be said that we are giving up our traditions.”
He quickly removes his ritual shawl and disappears behind the door leading to his private quarters. A half hour later he is back, more radiant than ever.
He catches up with the service; in the meantime we have reached the reading of the Torah. A conscientious stage director, the rabbi manages to communicate his secret instructions to the congregants without attracting the groom’s attention.
The young man is the last to be called to the bimah. He is reciting the closing benediction when, suddenly, in response to the rabbi’s signal, the other men take several steps backwards. Suddenly he finds himself alone. At first he looks lost and frightened. Then his face reflects profound and painful surprise, as nuts and raisins rain down on him, as in years gone by, as though he were
still living in a world protected by his father.
I watch him close his eyes and I see the trembling. Through the ripped veil, no doubt, he is seeing the same things my own imagination is retrieving out of the irrevocable past. No doubt he grasps the distance separating him from that past. Any second he will give in: the tears he has held back so long will be allowed to flow.
But no, not here, not now, he seems to be telling himself, I must not let go. Not here, not anywhere, not ever. Think of something else, turn back to the present. You cannot let go. Be careful. Clench your fists until they ache, bite your lips until they bleed: not one tear must be shed. After all, you didn’t train your will all these years just to come to this? And with an effort he hopes will go unnoticed, he reads the Haftarah and chants the benedictions; his voice does not betray him a single time.
His duty done, he withdraws into a corner for the second half of the service. More alone than ever, he seems even paler.
But the story does not end here. Reb Leibele Cywiak has further surprises in store: everybody is invited to an improvised reception. No sooner are we seated than we are served wine, liqueurs, vodka and everything else one may expect to find at a Hasidic celebration.
Someone calls out: “Rabbi Cywiak, we didn’t know you could work miracles!”
And our host, proud of his exploit, responds: “The continuation of a tradition, that is the true miracle!”
We fill the glasses, we drink to the young man’s health and future happiness, we intone one song and then another. Almost like before, almost like over there, on the other side of war. And still the young man remains silent and aloof, breathing deeply, heavily, as if to calm his pounding heart. He gasps for air; his forehead is bathed in perspiration. I know his thoughts are with those who are absent, for his face, his eyes are clouded. If only he knew their resting place, he would follow tradition and go anywhere at all, to invite them to his wedding. But there is no place to go.