“Yes, I know that story. And in which way did you find this interesting?”
“In our discussion we raised many questions. For example, why didn’t Rabbi Yohanon simply cure himself?”
“And of course the class discussed the point that the prisoner cannot free himself and that the reward of suffering lies in the world to come.”
“Yes, I know that is very familiar, perhaps tiresome to you, but for someone like me, such discussions are exhilarating. Where else would I have the opportunity for such soul-searching conversations? Some of my class said one thing, others disagreed, others wondered why certain words were used when another word might have had greater clarity. Our teacher encourages us to examine every little scrap of information in the text.
“And to take another example,” Franco continued, “last week we discussed a story about a famous rabbi who lingered near death, suffering great agony, but was kept alive by the prayers of his students and fellow rabbis. His handmaiden took pity on him and threw a jar from the rooftop that shattered with such a great din that they were startled and stopped praying. At that very moment, the rabbi died.”
“Ah, yes—Rabbi Yehudah haNasi. And I am certain you discussed such things as whether the handmaid did the correct thing or whether she was guilty of homicide and also whether the other rabbis lacked mercy in keeping him alive and delaying his arrival in the joyous world to come.”
“I can imagine your response to this, Bento. I remember all too well your attitude toward belief in an afterlife.”
“Exactly. The fundamental premise of a world to come is flawed. Yet your class was not open to questioning that premise.”
“Yes, I agree, these are limitations. But even so, it is a privilege, a joy, to sit with others for hours and discuss such weighty matters. And our teacher instructs us how to argue. If a point seems overly obvious, we are taught to question why the writer even said it—perhaps there was a deeper point lurking beneath the words. When we are fully satisfied in our understanding, then we are taught to ferret out the underlying general principle. If some point is irrelevant, then we learn to question why the author included it. In short, Bento, Talmudic study is teaching me how to think, and I believe that may have been true for you as well. Maybe it was your Talmud study that honed your mind so keenly.”
Bento nodded. “I cannot deny there is merit in that, Franco. In retrospect I would have preferred a less circuitous, more rational route. Euclid, for example, gets right to the point and doesn’t muddy the waters with enigmatic and often self-contradictory stories.”
“Euclid? The inventor of geometry?”
Bento nodded.
“Euclid is for my next, my worldly education. But, for now, the Talmud is doing the job. For one thing, I like stories. They add life and depth to the lessons. Everyone loves stories.”
“No, Franco, not everyone! Consider your evidence for that statement. It is an unwarranted conclusion that I personally know to be false.”
“Ah, you don’t like stories. Not even as a child?”
Bento closed his eyes and recited, “‘When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child—’”
Franco interrupted and continued in the same tone. “‘When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.’ Paul, Corinthians 1.”
“Astonishing! You are now so quick, Franco, so self-confident. So different from that disheveled, uneducated young man just off the boat from Portugal.”
“Uneducated in Jewish matters. But don’t forget we conversos had a forced but full Catholic education. I read every word of the New Testament.”
“I had forgotten that. That means you’ve already started some of your second education. That’s good. There is much wisdom in both the Old and the New Testament. Especially in Paul. Just a couple of lines earlier he expresses my exact view toward stories: ‘when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.’”
Franco paused, repeating to himself, “‘Partial’? ‘Perfect’?”
“The ‘perfect,’” Bento said, “is the moral truth. The ‘partial’ is the wrapping—in this case the story that is no longer necessary once the truth is delivered.”
“I’m not sure I accept Paul as a model for living. His life, as it is taught, seems out of balance. So severe, so fanatic, so joyless, so damning of all worldly pleasures. Bento, you are so hard on yourself. Why forsake the pleasure of a good story, a pleasure that seems so benign, so universal? What culture doesn’t have stories?”
“I remember a young man who railed against stories of miracles and prophecies. I remember an agitated and volatile and rebellious young man who pushed back so hard against Jacob’s orthodoxy. I remember his reactions to the synagogue service. Though he had no Hebrew, he followed the Portuguese translation of the Torah and was outraged at the stories in the Torah and referred to the madness and the nonsense of both the Jewish and the Catholic service. I remember him asking, ‘Why is the season of miracles over? Why didn’t God perform a miracle and save my father?’ And the same young man agonized that his father gave up his life for a Torah riddled with superstitious beliefs in miracles and prophecies.”
“Yes, all that is so. I remember.”
“And so where are those feelings now, Franco? You speak now only of joy in your studies of Torah and Talmud. And yet you say you still fully embrace my critique of superstition. How can that be?”
“Bento, it’s the same answer—it’s the process of study that gives me joy. I don’t take the content very seriously. I like the stories, but I don’t take them for historical truth. I attend to the morality, to the messages in the scriptures about love and charity and kindness and ethical behavior. And I put the rest out of mind. Plus, there are stories, and there are stories. Some stories of miracles are, as you say, the enemy of reason. But other stories elicit the student’s attention, and that I find useful in my studies and in the teaching I am starting to undertake. One thing I know for sure—students will always be interested in stories, whereas there will never be a long line of students eager to learn about Euclid and geometry. And, oh, my mentioning my teaching causes me to remember something I’ve been eager to tell you! I’m starting to teach the elements of Hebrew, and guess who one of my students is. Be prepared for a shock—your would-be assassin!”
“Oh! My assassin! A shock indeed! You, my assassin’s teacher! What can you tell me?”
“His name is Isaac Ramirez, and your guess about his circumstances was entirely correct. His family was terrorized by the Inquisition, his parents were killed, and he was maddened with grief. It was the very fact that his story is so similar to mine that prompted me to volunteer to teach him, and so far it is working out well. You gave me some strong advice about how I should regard him that I’ve never forgotten. Do you remember?”
“I remember telling you not to tell the police where he was.”
“Yes, but then you said something else. You said, ‘Take a religious path.’ Remember? That puzzled me.”
“Perhaps I haven’t been clear. I love religion, but I hate superstition.”
Franco nodded. “Yes, that was how I understood you—that I should show understanding and compassion and forgiveness. Right?”
Bento nodded.
“So that, too, a moral code of behavior, not only stories of miracles, is in the Torah.”
“Without question that is so, Franco. My favorite Talmud story is the one about a heathen approaching Rabbi Hillel and offering to convert to Judaism if the rabbi could teach him the entire Torah while he stood on one foot. Hillel replied, ‘What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah—all the rest is commentary. Go and study it.’”
“You see you do like stories—”
Bento started to respond, but Franco quickly corrected himself: “—or at least one story. Stories can act as a memory device. For many, more effectively than bare geometry.”
“I see your point, Franco, and I do not d
oubt that your studies are sharpening your mind. You’re turning into a formidable debate opponent. It is obvious why Rabbi Mortera selected you. Tonight I discuss some of my writing with Collegiant members of a philosophy club, and how I wish the world were such that you could be there. I would attend more to your critique than to that of anyone else.”
“I would be honored to read anything of yours. In what language do you write? My Dutch is improving.”
“In Latin, alas. Let us hope that will be part of your second education, for I doubt it will ever see a Dutch translation.”
“I learned the rudiments of Latin in my Catholic training.”
“Aim toward a full Latin education. Rabbi Menasseh and Rabbi Mortera are well trained in Latin and may permit it, perhaps encourage you.”
“Rabbi Menasseh died last year, and I’m afraid Rabbi Mortera is failing quickly.”
“Ah, sad news. But even so you will find others to encourage you. Perhaps there is a way you could spend a year in the Venetian Yeshibah. It is important: Latin opens up a whole new—”
Franco stood up suddenly and rushed to the window for a closer look at the retreating figures of three men who had passed. He turned back. “Sorry, Bento—I thought I saw someone from the congregation. I am more than a bit nervous at being seen here.”
“Yes, we never got to my question about the risk. Tell me, how great is your risk, Franco?”
Franco bowed his head. “It is very great—so great it is the one thing I cannot share with my wife. I cannot tell her that I put at risk everything we have struggled to build in this new world. It is a risk I take only for you, not for anyone else walking this earth. And I shall have to leave soon. I have no reason to give my wife or my rabbis for my absence. I’ve been scheming that, if I were seen, I could lie and say that Simon approached me for Hebrew lessons.”
“Yes, I thought of that, too. But don’t use Simon’s name. My connection with him is known, at least in the Gentile world. Better to give a name of someone else that you could have met here, perhaps Peter Dyke, a member of the Philosophy Club.”
Franco sighed. “Sad to be entering the land of lies. It is a terrain I have not trod since my betrayal of you, Bento. But before I leave, please share something of your philosophical progress. Once I learn Latin, perhaps Simon may make your work available to me. But for now, today, all I will have is your spoken word. Your thoughts intrigue me. I still puzzle about things you said to Jacob and me.”
Bento raised his chin quizzically.
“The very first time we met you said that God was full, perfect, without insufficiencies, and needed no glorification from us.”
“Yes, that is my view, and those were my words.”
“And then I remember your next comment to Jacob—and it was a statement that made me love you. You said, ‘Please allow me to love God in my own fashion.’”
“Yes, and your puzzlement?”
“I know, thanks to you, that God is not a being like us. Nor like any other being. You said emphatically—and that was the final blow for Jacob—that God was Nature. But tell me, teach me. How can you be in love with Nature? How can you love something not a being?”
“First, Franco, I use the term ‘Nature’ in a special way. I don’t mean the trees or forests or grass or ocean or anything that is not manmade. I mean everything that exists: the absolute necessary, perfect unity. By ‘Nature’ I refer to that which is infinite, unified, perfect, rational, and logical. It is the immanent cause of all things. And everything that exists, without exception, works according to the laws of Nature. So when I talk about love of Nature, I don’t mean the love you have for your wife or child. I’m talking about a different kind of love, an intellectual love. In Latin I refer to it as Amor dei intellectualis.”
“An intellectual love of God?”
“Yes, the love of the fullest possible understanding of Nature, or God. The apprehension of the place of each finite thing in its relationship to finite causes. It is the understanding, in so far as it is possible, of the universal laws of Nature.”
“So when you speak of loving God, what you mean is the understanding of the laws of Nature.”
“Yes, the laws of Nature are only another, more rational name for the eternal decrees of God.”
“So it differs from ordinary human love in that it involves only one person?”
“Exactly. And the loving of something that is unchanging and eternal means that you are not subject to the loved one’s vagaries of spirit or fickleness or finiteness. It means, too, that we do not try to complete ourselves in another person.”
“Bento, if I comprehend you aright, it must also mean that we must expect no love in return.”
“Exactly right again. We can expect nothing back. We derive a joyous awe from a glimpse, a privileged understanding of the vast, infinitely complex scheme of Nature.”
“Another lifetime project?”
“Yes, God or Nature has an infinite number of attributes that will forever elude my full understanding. But my limited comprehension already yields great awe and joy, at times even ecstatic joy.”
“A strange religion, if religion it may be called.” Franco stood. “I must leave you still perplexed. But one last question: I wonder, do you deify Nature or naturalize God?”
“Well-phrased, Franco. I need time, much time to compose my response to that question.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
BERLIN—1936
The Myth of the Twentieth Century—that thing that no one can understand written by a narrow minded Balt who thinks in a fearfully complicated way.
—Adolf Hitler
Few of the older members of the party are to be found among the readers of Rosenberg’s book. I have myself merely glanced cursorily at it. It is in any case written in much too abstruse a style, in my opinion.
—Adolf Hitler
“Sigmund Freud Receives the Goethe Prize”
The Goethe Prize, the greatest scientific (scholarly) and literary prize in Germany, was given to Freud on August 28, 1930, Goethe’s birthday, in Frankfurt, in the context of great festivities. The Isrealitische Gemeindezeitung rejoiced with cymbals and trumpets. The monetary award was 10,000 marks. . . It is known that notable scholars have rejected the psychoanalysis of the Jew Sigmund Freud in its entirety. The great anti-Semite Goethe would turn over in his grave if he discovered that a Jew had re- ceived a prize that carries his name.
—Alfred Rosenberg in Völkischer Beobachter
“Mein Führer, please look at this letter about Reichsleiter Rosenberg from Dr. Gebhardt, the chief physician at the Hohenlychen Clinic.”
Hitler took the letter from Rudolf Hess’s hand and scanned it, paying particular attention to the sections Hess had underlined.I have found it remarkably difficult to make contact with Reichsleiter Rosenberg . . . As a doctor, I have, above all, the impression that his delayed recovery . . . is in large measure attributable to his psychic isolation. . . In spite of my, if I may say so, tactful efforts to construct a bridge, these miscarried . . . due to the way in which the Reichsleiter is spiritually constituted and to his special position in political life. . . He can only be freed from restraint if he can open his mind to those who are at least entitled to speak to him on equal terms and out of similar intellectual capacity, so that he can find again the calm and determination necessary for action and, indeed, for everyday life.
Last week, I inquired whether he had ever fully shared his innermost thoughts with anyone. Quite unexpectedly, he replied, offering the name of a Friedrich Pfister, a childhood friend in Estonia. I have since learned that this Friedrich Pfister is now Herr Oberleutnant Pfister, a well-regarded Wehrmacht physician stationed in Berlin. May I request that he be immediately ordered to assume duties as Reichsleiter Rosenberg’s physician?
Hitler handed the letter back to Hess. “There is nothing in this letter that surprises us, but take care no else sees it. And issue the order to transfer Herr Oberleutnant Pfister immediately. Ros
enberg is insufferable. Always has been. We all know that. But he’s loyal, and the party still has use for his talent.”
The Hohenlychen Clinic, one hundred kilometers north of Berlin, had been established by Himmler for the care of ailing Nazi leaders and high-ranking SS officers. Alfred had already spent three months there for an agitated depression in 1935. Now, in 1936, he was experiencing the same disabling symptoms: fatigue, agitation, and depression. Unable to concentrate on his editorial work at the Beobachter, he had totally withdrawn into himself for several weeks, rarely speaking to his wife and daughter.
Once hospitalized, he submitted to Dr. Gebbardt’s physical examinations but persistently refused to answer questions about his mental state or his personal life. Karl Gebbardt was Himmler’s personal physician and good friend and also treated the other Nazi leaders (aside from Hitler, who always kept his personal physician, Theodor Morell, close at hand). Alfred had no doubts that any words he uttered to Gebbardt would soon enough be broadcast to the whole brood of his Nazi enemies. For the same reason, Alfred would not speak to a psychiatrist. Stymied and fed up with sitting in silence facing Alfred’s contemptuous stare, Dr. Gebbardt longed to transfer his irritating patient to another physician and took great pains in composing his carefully worded letter to Hitler, who, for reasons no one understood, valued Rosenberg and from time to time inquired about his condition.
Dr. Gebbardt had no psychological training, nor was he psychologically minded, but he easily recognized signs of great discord among the leaders—the incessant rivalry, the mutual contempt, the relentless scheming, the competition for power and Hitler’s approval. They disagreed about everything, but Gebbardt discovered one thing they held in common: they all hated Alfred Rosenberg. After spending a few weeks visiting Alfred daily, he now saw why.
Though Alfred may have sensed this, he kept his silence and spent week after week at Hohenlychen Clinic reading the German and Russian classics and refusing to engage in conversation with the staff or any of the other Nazi patients. One morning, during his fifth week at the clinic, he felt extremely agitated and decided to take a short walk in the clinic grounds. When he found he was too fatigued to tie his own shoes, he cursed and slapped himself hard on each cheek to wake himself up. He had to do something to stop his slide into irreversible despair.