“It was a short cherem highly instructive about the importance of community cohesion.”
“And I learned last month that you told a woman who came from a small village without a Jewish baker that she could buy bread from a Gentile baker provided she tossed a wood chip into his oven so as to participate in the baking.”
“She came to me distressed and left my presence relieved and a happy woman.”
“She left a woman with a mind more stunted than before, a woman even less able to think for herself and to develop her rational faculties. This is exactly my point: religious authorities of all hues seek to impede the development of our rational faculties.”
“If you think our people can survive without control and authority, you are a fool.”
“I think that religious leaders lose their own spiritual direction by meddling into the business of the political state. Your authority or consul should be confined to counsel about inward piety.”
“The business of the political state? Have you not understood what happened in Spain and Portugal?”
“That is precisely my point: they were religious states. Religion and statehood must be separated. The best imaginable ruler would be a freely elected leader who is limited in his powers by an independently elected council and who would act in accord with public peace and safety and social well-being.”
“Baruch, you have now succeeded in persuading me that you shall live a lonely life and that your future will include not only blasphemy but treason as well. Be gone.”
As he listened to Baruch’s footsteps clattering down the stairs, Rabbi Mortera looked upward and muttered, “Michael, my friend, I have done what I could for your son. I have too many other souls to protect.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MUNICH—1919
Imagine the scene: a shabbily dressed, unemployed, unpublished immigrant youth, soup kitchen spoon in shirt pocket, barges into the office of a well-known journalist, poet, and politician and blurts out, “Can you use a fighter against Jerusalem?”
Surely an ill-fated beginning of a job interview! Any responsible, well-bred, sophisticated editor in chief would be quick to dismiss the intruder as puerile, bizarre, and possibly dangerous. But no—the time was 1919, the place was Munich, and Dietrich Eckart was intrigued by the youth’s beautiful words.
“Well, well, young warrior, show me your weapons.”
“My mind is my bow, and my words are—” Taking a pencil from his pocket and waving it aloft, Alfred exclaimed, “My words are my arrows!”
“Well said, young warrior. And tell me of your exploits, your assaults against Jerusalem.”
Alfred trembled with excitement as he recounted his anti-Jerusalem exploits: his near-memorization of Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s book, his anti-Semitic election speech at age sixteen, his confrontation with the suspected Jew Headmaster Epstein (he omitted the Spinoza part), his revulsion at the sight of the Jewish-Bolshevist revolution, his recent, rousing anti-Jew speech at the Reval town meeting, his plan to write an eyewitness account of the Jewish Bolshevists in revolt, his historical research into the menace of Jewish blood.
“An excellent beginning. But only a beginning. Next we must inspect the caliber of your weapons. In twenty-four hours, bring me a thousand words of your eyewitness account of the Bolshevist revolution, and we’ll see if it merits publication.”
Alfred made no move to leave. He glanced again at Dietrich Eckart, an imposing man with a shaved head, dark-rimmed glasses shielding blue eyes, short fleshy nose, and a broad, rather brutal chin.
“Twenty-four hours, young man. Time to begin.”
Alfred looked about him, obviously reluctant to leave Eckart’s office. Then, timidly: “Is there a desk, a corner, and some paper I might use? I have only the library, which is now crammed with illiterate refugees trying to stay warm.”
Dietrich Eckart signaled to his secretary. “Show this applicant to the back office. And give him some paper and a key.” To Alfred, he said, “It’s poorly heated but quiet and has a separate entrance, so you may work though the night, if necessary. Auf Wiedersehen, until tomorrow at precisely this time.”
Dietrich Eckart put his feet on his desk, tamped out his cigar in the ashtray, and leaned back in his chair for a catnap. Though only in his early fifties, he had been unkind to his body, and his flesh hung heavily upon him. Born into a wealthy family, the son of a royal notary and attorney, he had lost his mother in childhood, his father a few years later, and in his late teens had drifted into a drug-immersed Bohemian life, which soon dissipated the fortune left by his father. After a series of false starts in the arts and radical political movements, and a year of medical school, he slipped into serious morphine addiction, which necessitated psychiatric hospitalization for several months. He then became a playwright, but none of his work ever saw the stage. Fully convinced of his literary merit, he placed the blame for his failure on the Jews, who he believed controlled German theaters and were offended by his political views. His desire for revenge gave birth to a career as a professional anti-Semite: born again as a journalist, he launched Auf gut Deutsch as the latest of a series of publications intended to combat the power of the Jews. In 1919 the time was propitious, his journalistic style compelling, and soon his paper became required reading for those interested in nefarious Jewish machinations.
Though Dietrich’s health was poor and his energy level low, his thirst for change was huge, and he avidly awaited the arrival of the German savior—a man of extraordinary force and charisma who would lead Germany to its rightful position of glory. He saw immediately that this young handsome Rosenberg was not that man: Rosenberg’s pitiful craving for approval stuck out too obviously from behind his brash presentation. But perhaps there might be a role for him in preparing the way for the one yet to come.
The following day Alfred sat in Eckart’s office, nervously crossing and uncrossing his legs, as he watched the publisher read his thousand words.
Eckart removed his glasses and looked up at Alfred. “For someone who has a degree in architecture and has never written such prose before, I would say this work is not without promise. It’s true that these thousand words contain not a single grammatically correct sentence, but despite that inconvenient fact your work has some power. There is tension, there is intelligence and complexity, and there are even a few, not enough, graphic images. I hereby announce that your journalistic virginity is at an end. I will publish this article. But there is work ahead: Every sentence shrieks for help. Pull your chair over here, Alfred, and we’ll go over it line by line.”
Alfred eagerly moved his chair next to Eckart.
“Here’s your first lesson in journalism,” Eckart continued. “The writer’s job is to communicate. Alas, many of your sentences are unaware of that simple dictum and instead attempt to obfuscate or to convey that the author knows far more than he chooses to say. To the guillotine with every one of those sentences. Look here and here and here.” Dietrich Eckart’s red pencil started its work in a blur, and Alfred Rosenberg’s apprenticeship began.
Alfred’s revised piece was published as part of a series, “Jewry Within Us and Without,” and he soon wrote several other eyewitness accounts of Bolshevist mayhem, each one showing gradual stylistic improvement. Within weeks, he was on the regular payroll as Eckart’s assistant, and within months Eckart was so satisfied that he asked Alfred to write the introduction to his book, Russia’s Gravedigger, which described in lurid detail how Jews had undermined the Russian tsarist regime.
These were Alfred’s halcyon days, and to the end of his life he would glow with pleasure when he recalled working side by side with Eckart and accompanying him by taxi when they distributed Eckart’s fiery pamphlet, To All Workingmen, all over Munich. Alfred, finally, had a home, a father, a purpose.
With Eckart’s encouragement, he completed his historical research on the Jews and within a year published his first book, The Trace of the Jew Through Changing Times. It contained
the seeds of what would become the major motifs of Nazi anti-Semitism: the Jew as the source of destructive materialism, anarchy, and Communism, the dangers of Jewish Freemasonry, the malignant dreams of Jewish philosophers from Ezra and Ezekiel to Marx and Trotsky, and, most of all, the threat to higher civilization posed by contamination with Jewish blood.
Under Eckart’s tutelage, Alfred grew more aware that the German working man, oppressed by Jewish financial pressures, was yoked and trussed even further by Christian ideology. Eckart grew to rely on Alfred for the historical context not only for anti-Semitism but, by tracing the development of Jesuitism from the Judaism of the Talmud, for powerful anti-Christian sentiments as well.
Eckart took his young protégé to radical political rallies, introduced him to influential political figures, and soon sponsored Alfred for membership in the Thule Society and accompanied him to his first meeting of this august secret society.
At the Thule meeting, Eckart, after introducing Alfred to several members, left him on his own as he conferred privately with several colleagues. Alfred looked about him. This was a new world—not a beer hall but rather a meeting room in the magnificent Munich Four Seasons Hotel. Never before had he been in such a room. He tested the thick pile of the red carpet under his scuffed shoes and looked upward to an ornate ceiling depicting fleecy clouds and fleshy cherubs. There was no beer in sight, so he walked to the central table and helped himself to a glass of sweet German wine. Looking about at the other members, perhaps one hundred fifty, all obviously affluent, well-dressed, and overfed men, Alfred grew self-conscious about his clothes, each item purchased at a secondhand shop.
Aware that he was obviously the poorest and shabbiest man in the room, he tried his best to blend in with the Thule fellows and even tried to claim some distinction, referring to himself, whenever possible, as a philosopher-writer. When standing alone he busied himself practicing a new facial expression that combined a tiny curl of his lips with a minuscule nod and closing of his eyelids, by which he hoped to convey, “Yes, I know exactly what you mean—I am not only in the know, but I know even more than you think.” Later in the evening, he checked out the expression in the mirror in the men’s room and was pleased. It soon would become his trademark smirk.
“Hello! You’re Dietrich Eckart’s guest?” asked an intense-looking man with a long face, mustache, and black-rimmed glasses. “I’m Anton Drexler, part of the welcoming committee.”
“Yes, Rosenberg, Alfred Rosenberg. I’m a writer and philosopher for Auf gut Deutsch, and yes, I’m Dietrich Eckart’s guest.”
“He has told me good things about you. It’s your first visit, and you must have questions. What can I tell you about our organization?”
“Many things. First, I’m interested in the name, ‘Thule.’”
“To answer that I should start by telling you that our original name was ‘Study Group for German Antiquity.’ Thule, many believe, was a land mass, now vanished, thought to be in the vicinity of Iceland or Greenland and to be the original home of the Aryan race.”
“Thule . . . I know my Aryan history well from Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and I remember nothing about Thule.”
“Ah, Chamberlain is a historian and one of our finest, but this is pre-Chamberlain and prehistory. The realm of myth. Our organization wishes to pay reverence to our noble ancestors whom we know only through oral history.”
“So, then, all these impressive men are meeting here tonight because of their interest in myth, in ancient history? I’m not questioning it—in fact I think it admirable to see such calmness and scholarly devotion in a time so volatile that Germany may blast apart at any minute.”
“The meeting has not yet begun, Herr Rosenberg. You’ll see soon enough why the Thule Society holds your writings in Auf gut Deutsche in high regard. Yes, yes, we are keenly interested in ancient history. But even more interested in our postwar history, a history in the making that our children and grandchildren will one day read about.”
Alfred was exhilarated by the public addresses. Speaker after speaker warned about the grave danger facing Germany from Bolshevists and Jews. Each speaker emphasized the pressing need for action. Toward the end of the evening, Eckart, tipsy from an uninterrupted stream of German wine, put his arm on Alfred’s shoulder and exclaimed, “An exciting time, eh, Rosenberg! And it’s going to get more exciting. Writing the news, changing attitudes, steering public opinion—all noble endeavors. Who can deny it? Yet making the news, yes, making the news—therein lies the true glory! And you’ll be with us, Alfred. You’ll see, you’ll see. Trust me, I know what’s coming.”
Something momentous was in the air. Alfred sensed it keenly, and, too agitated to sleep, he continued pacing the streets of Munich for an hour after parting from Eckart. Recalling his new friend Friedrich Pfister’s advice for the relief of tension, he inhaled deeply and quickly through his nostrils, held his breath for a few seconds, and then exhaled slowly from his mouth. After only a few cycles he felt better and also surprised at the effectiveness of such a simple maneuver. No doubt about it—Friedrich was a bit of a wizard. He had not liked the turn their conversation had taken about a possible Jewish strain in his grandmother’s family but nonetheless felt positive toward Friedrich. He wanted their paths to cross again. He would make it happen.
Upon returning home he found a note on the floor dropped in through the mail slot; it read, “The Munich Public Library will hold Theological-Political Treatise by Spinoza for you for one week at the checkout desk.” Alfred read it again several times. How oddly comforting was this little frail library notice that had found its way through the roiling, dangerous streets of Munich to his tiny apartment.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
AMSTERDAM—1656
Bento wandered through the streets of Vlooyenburg, the section of Amsterdam where most of the Sephardic Jews lived, viewing everything with poignancy. He stared at each image for a long time, as if to imbue it with permanence, so it might be called back again in the future, even though the voice of reason murmured that all will evaporate and life must be lived in the present.
Upon Bento’s return to the shop, Gabriel, eyes full of alarm, dropped his broom and rushed over to him. “Bento, where have you been? All this time you’ve been talking to the rabbi?”
“We had a long, unfriendly talk, and since then I’ve been walking all over the city trying to settle myself. I’ll tell you everything that happened, but I want to tell both you and Rebekah together.”
“She won’t come, Bento. And now it’s more than just her anger at you—now it’s her husband’s anger. Ever since Samuel finished his rabbinical studies last year, he has taken a stronger and stronger stance. Now he forbids Rebekah to see you at all.”
“She’ll come if you tell her how serious it is.” Bento clasped Gabriel’s shoulders with both hands and looked into his eyes. “I know she will. Invoke the memory of our blessed family. Remind her we’re the only ones still alive. She’ll come if you tell her this will be the last talk we will ever have.”
Gabriel was visibly alarmed. “What’s happened? You’re frightening me, Bento.”
“Please, Gabriel. I cannot describe this twice—it’s too hard. Please, get Rebekah here. You can find a way to do it. It is my last request to you.”
Gabriel ripped off his apron, flung it on the back counter, and raced out of the shop. He returned in twenty minutes with a sullen Rebekah in tow. Unable to refuse Gabriel’s plea—after all, she had raised Bento during the three years between the death of their mother, Hana, and their father’s remarriage to Esther—Rebekah dripped with anger as she entered the shop. She greeted Bento with a frosty nod and splayed palms. “Well?”
Bento, who had already tacked a note on the door in both Portuguese and Dutch stating that the shop would reopen shortly, replied, “Let’s go home, where we can talk privately.”
Once home, Bento closed the front door and motioned to Gabriel and Rebekah to sit while he stood and paced abo
ut. “Much as I want this to be a private matter, I know it is not. Gabriel has made it clear how my affairs affect the whole family. I’m afraid that what I’m going to say will shock you. It is hard, but I must tell you everything. I want no one, absolutely no one in the community, to know more than you about what is going to happen.”
Bento stopped. He had the full attention of his brother and sister, sitting still as granite. Bento took a deep breath. “I’ll come right to the point. This morning Rabbi Mortera told me that the parnassim has met and that a cherem is imminent. I will be excommunicated tomorrow.”
“A cherem?” exclaimed Gabriel and Rebekah simultaneously. Both were ashen-faced.
“There’s no way to stop it?” asked Rebekah. “Rabbi Mortera will not stand up for you? Our father was his best friend!”
“I just spoke to Rabbi Mortera for an hour, and he told me it was not in his hands—the parnassim is elected by the community and holds all the power. He has no choice but to do as they bid. But then he also said he agreed with their decision.”
Bento hesitated. “I must hold nothing back.” Looking into the eyes of his sister and brother, he acknowledged, “He did say there might be a chance. He said that if I were to reverse all my views, if I were to publicly recant and proclaim that I would from this point forth embrace Maimonides’ thirteen articles of faith, then he would petition the parnassim with all his strength to reconsider the cherem. In fact—and I’m not certain he wishes this to be known because he whispered it to me—he offered me a lifetime pension from synagogue funds if I vowed to devote my life to the respectful, and silent, study of Torah and Talmud.”
“And?” Rebekah looked straight into Bento’s eyes.
“And . . .” Bento looked at the floor. “I declined. For me, freedom is beyond price.”
“You fool! Think what you are doing.” Rebekah’s voice was shrill. “My God, Brother, what is wrong with you? Have you lost your senses?” She leaned forward as though she meant to bolt from the room.