Crossroads

ACHRONICLE has it that the celebrated Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyady was locked up in a St. Petersburg prison after being denounced by a foe of the Hasidic movement as an agitator against the Czar.

One day the warden came to see him in his solitary cell, and this is what he said:

“I am told you are a rabbi, a Master. So explain to me a passage I fail to understand in the Bible. It says in the Book of Genesis that, after having bitten into the forbidden fruit, Adam fled, so that the Lord had to ask him: ‘Ayekha, where are you?’ Is it possible, even conceivable, that the Creator of the world did not know where Adam was hiding?”

Whereupon the rabbi smiled and answered: “The Lord, blessed-be-His-name, knew; it was Adam who didn’t know.”

And Rabbi Shneur Zalman went on: “Do you believe the Bible to be a sacred book?”

“Yes.”

“And that it speaks to all mankind, of all times, therefore also to ours?”

“Yes, I believe that.”

“In that case, I shall explain to you the real meaning of the question God asked of Adam. Ayekha signifies: Where do you stand in this world? What is your place in history? What have you done with your life, Adam? These are fundamental questions that every human being must confront sooner or later.

“For every one of us, the book of life goes back to Adam. It is he who embodies the mystery of the beginning. But it is to each of us that God speaks when He says Ayekha.”

•   •   •

… To write, to write about oneself, one’s past, one’s burden of memory, is somewhat like that: to keep alive this first question in the Bible.

As I reread my notebooks, I question their subject as he is propelled from page to page, event to event. At which crossroads is he now? What perils lie in store for him, what voices is he following? Where is he going: toward solitude or his need to escape from it?

Before me, always, is the photograph of the house in which I was born. The door that leads to the yard. The kitchen. I want to go inside, but I am afraid. I want to look at the house, if only from afar. With all that has happened to me, it is essential for me to remember that place.

In the first volume of my memoirs,^* I tried to describe the secret, almost reclusive life of a young Talmudist-turned-writer when he returned from the death camps. My peaceful childhood, my turbulent adolescence, the uncertainties of my formative years. Full stops and shaky beginnings. Wanderings, wrong turns, changes of direction. Years marked by messianic dreams and challenges, ecstasy and mourning, separations and reunions. A little girl with golden hair, a wise and loving mother. An ailing and defenseless father. Moshe the Madman, Kalman the Kabbalist. Shushani and his mysteries. Saul Lieberman. The Lubavitcher Rebbe. Sighet, Auschwitz, Paris, New York: each place a world unto itself. My journal ended on April 2, 1969, in Jerusalem when my life took another turn, this time toward hope. Toward Marion. I got married.

THESE DAYS I dream a lot, more than ever before. It all comes back to me with unexpected clarity rendered sharp and painful by the fear of awakening. An immense garden is in bloom. It is spring. I look at the blue and red sky. A window opens and my grandfather appears. I hear his voice ordering the sun to set, for mankind is waiting. He knows how to make others obey, my grandfather. Night falls and suddenly the garden is transformed into a house of prayer. A huge, motionless crowd waits silently for services to begin.

I am afraid I have forgotten the first verse of the first prayer. I look for a familiar face. All the faces are veiled, lifeless. I am panic-stricken. I step backward, toward the exit, but a voice inside me tells me I mustn’t. Mustn’t what? I don’t know. Perhaps what I mustn’t do is wake up.

The days move slowly, the years take flight. I work on two or three projects at once. Writing becomes an obstacle course. Have I become more self-critical? I used to rewrite some texts three times; now I sometimes agonize over the same page for hours before tearing it up in a moment of clear-sighted rage.

These are feverish, convulsive years, woven from aborted attempts and exalted renewals. My life now unfolds under the dual sign of change on a practical level and loyalty on the level of memory. Inside me happiness and distress seem to spark a fire that is both somber and luminous. Could it be that I fear happiness?

Notwithstanding my doubts about language, and perhaps because of them, I plunge deeper and deeper into the whirlwind of the words I try to capture and tame. I cling to the notion that in the beginning there was the word; and that the word is the story of man; and that man is the story of God. If praying is an act of faith in God, then writing is a token of trust in man.

I write more than ever. I pause at every page: That which I have just written, have I not said it elsewhere? And I go on writing because I cannot do otherwise.

I have a wife I love, and yet I write not about love but about solitude. I have a home filled with warmth, and yet I write about the misery of the condemned. Around us, our circle of friends becomes larger. I no longer boycott social events with the old determination. With novelists we discuss politics, with politicians we speak of art. Miraculously, I don’t suffer from writer’s block, the familiar complaint of those around us. Nor is a lack of topics one of my problems.

Madness and laughter are constant themes in my work. Ever since I heard Moshe the Madman and his song, I am unable to free myself of either—nor do I want to.

The mystical madmen of Sighet, the beggars, bearers of secrets—drawn to doom, they all appear in my fictional tales. But I am afraid to follow them too far, outside myself or deep within me.

Sometimes to elude them, other times to confront them, I work; never have I worked as hard: essays on the Bible and the Talmud, analyses of Hasidic tales, novellas, outlines of novels.

Travel no longer tempts me. I prefer to stay at home and study. There was a time when I considered family life an obstacle to literary creation. I was convinced that it was impossible to be both a good husband and a committed writer. Well, I now assert the opposite. For only now do I fully understand the expression Ezer kenegdo, which God uses in the Book of Genesis when He speaks of wishing to create Eve to serve as Adam’s “helpful opposition.” I owe much to Marion. She knows how to suggest, to correct, to critically evaluate texts and decisions.

Still, extraliterary pressures soon make themselves felt. In fact, they are not always negative.

With Saul Lieberman I continue to study the wealth of talmudic texts; with Abraham Joshua Heschel I share the beauty of Hasidic tales. We visit my sisters Hilda and Bea in France and Montreal. Serious, even tragic events take place in the world, while in my private life I discover the vulnerable but dazzling joy of a man who beholds the first smile of his child.

This may well be the time to open parentheses: This volume is different from the preceding one, both in approach and intent.

Until now I have attempted to narrate mostly that which I see within myself; from here on I am also obligated to turn my attention to those who have been judging me.

If, for me, the first volume is a kind of formative work, the second evolves under the sign of conflict. So do not expect a discreet and passive stance from me. The introvert will yield to the extrovert.

And yet I shall omit things that are too private, too personal. I shall not speak of certain friends and other persons I have met who have marked me, for better or worse, since the seventies. All that I hope to include in a separate volume, “My Masters and My Friends.”

On the other hand, I shall break a vow I made in All Rivers Run to the Sea. I shall take a stand against some of my adversaries, those who have, in my estimation, transgressed the limits of dialogue, having chosen obfuscation as their weapon and “demonization” as their goal. In most instances, it is not my person that is targeted. But in others, less numerous, I am the target, either as a symbol of something or as a witness whose testimony is troubling. Of course I have always rejected the notion of myself as a symbol. Symbols can be repudiated or even erased with impunity. Man is something else, a human being, not a symbol.

What I have said earlier I now reiterate: I detest polemics, but there comes a time when Shtika ke-hodaya dami, as the Talmud says, “Silence easily becomes acquiescence.”

One must be willing to say no to lies, no to rancor. Will I succeed in being less mean than the mean ones, less perfidious too? I hope so. I have learned not to respond to rudeness. Why stoop to that level? A Master advised me, long ago, never to use a hatchet in my responses.

Let us close the parentheses.

We left off on Tuesday, April 2, 1969, after a wedding ceremony in the Old City of Jerusalem; let us stay there one more moment.

We had, in fact, thought of getting married a day earlier, but at the last minute Marion chose to postpone the ceremony by a day: “April first doesn’t sound right,” she said laughing. “Our friends will think we’re not serious.”

The day before the wedding is hectic. In Jerusalem one rarely is allowed to rest. Why would anyone call Jerusalem the City of Peace? What an idea! In Jerusalem you are never left in peace, not even on your wedding day. Friends and strangers come knocking at your door without warning, to ask whether you need anything, or whether you would like to meet this mystical merchant in Mea She’arim or that exotic madman near the Wall.

At 6 on Tuesday the telephone rings. It is Teddy Kollek. The dynamic mayor of the city is inviting me to breakfast. Half asleep, I tell him that just like on Yom Kippur, on his wedding day the bridegroom-to-be is forbidden to eat or drink before the ceremony. “Come anyway,” says Teddy, “I need to talk to you. It’s urgent.” With him everything is urgent, since everything concerns his city. In truth is there in all the world a city that lives more with urgency than Jerusalem?

This time the mayor is wrong—our talk could have waited. But he is preoccupied with current events. Who isn’t? He seems more so than anyone else, more so than appears warranted. He fears a hostile initiative by the U.N. to internationalize the Holy City. He would like to preempt it by creating a worldwide commission or association for the defense of the universality of Jerusalem. That is his reason for getting me out of bed on my wedding day. I tell him that his idea seems good, but that there is no hurry and, anyway, the name of the association would have to be changed; the one he has in mind is too long. I suggest “The International Committee for Jerusalem.” He accepts. Can I go back to my room now?

By now it is after 7, and the ceremony is set for 11 a.m. I need to prepare myself. But no, Teddy is not done with me yet. Now he needs names of important people for this committee. Whom does he have in mind? It’s up to me to find them. I run to get my address book; he knows his by heart. At 9 o’clock, he finally allows me to prepare for my wedding. My nephew Steve, Bea’s son, joins me in my room. I shave and change my clothes. Twenty-five years later, I shall keep him company his entire wedding day.

An unforgettable Passover: In an ultrakosher Jerusalem hotel, my closest relatives celebrate a Seder conducted by my Master and friend Saul Lieberman. Bea is there with her husband, Len, and their two children, Sarah and Steve; Hilda with her son Sidney. I read the story of Exodus, and Lieberman dazzles us with his commentaries. But I have trouble concentrating. It has been a long and mentally exhausting day. I feel the presence of some, the absence of others. Which weighs more heavily? I think of my last Seder at home, far away.

The telephone does not stop ringing. No, it isn’t Teddy again. The callers are colleagues. Every one of them has an idea, a project to propose. A paper on American-Jewish literature? If I am to believe my caller, the cultural fate of Israel—perhaps even the God of Israel—is at stake. I don’t have time? Then how about an interview on that very subject? There follow interviews for radio, for a morning paper and an evening paper. Haïm Yavin, a national television star, a young, earnest man who does not as yet know how to smile, would like me to appear on his weekly show. I’m to take questions from four intellectuals, one of them the poet Haïm Gouri, translator of Night. When? The day after tomorrow. It won’t take long, he promises. I ask around; my friends think it is a good idea. Very well, let’s do it. The questions are easy, the comments typical. The goal of the writer? To testify. To say “Amen,” which signifies: “That is how it is, that is how it was.” I quote Malraux: “To leave a scratch on the surface of the Earth.” All goes well. No trap, no arrow. Not yet.

A few minutes before the end, Yavin decides to provoke me: “What do you feel, you whose mind overflows with memories, when you meet Arab children in the Old City?” What I feel now is the blood draining from my face. Fortunately television is not yet in color; the television audience does not see me blanch. I try not to show my embarrassment as I respond: “It does actually happen that I come across Arab boys and girls. They ask me for money or chocolate. But sometimes they ask for nothing; all they want is for me to look at them. They want the Jew in me, thus the victor, to confront their defeat. And then, in the face of their suffering, their humiliation, I lower my eyes.”

The telecast elicits praise and criticism. Moshe Sneh, the Communist member of Parliament, stops me in my hotel to tell me that he approves my words. What he says moves me, for to me he represents a living enigma. How could this Polish Zionist leader, this former chief of the Haganah, this brilliant mind, this fervent Jew, become a supporter of Stalin? Public opinion casts him as a renegade, or worse. I would like to spend an hour with him to question him, to get to know him better, and perhaps to understand him. But I don’t dare intrude thus upon him. Will he ever return to his own? Will he ever find his way back to his roots? I know that later he instructed his son Ephraim, a young general and future minister under Yitzhak Rabin, to recite the Kaddish over his grave.

Marion and I had intended to stay another week or so in Israel, but we change our plans. Too many people to see, too many places to visit, too many invitations to accept or decline. Here it is just as traumatic to say yes as to say no. Marion reminds me that I am no longer a bachelor and that if I don’t wish to become one again on the spot, I had better take her away, anywhere.

Before we leave, we meet with Paula and Noah Mozes, Dov and Lea Judkowski, Ruth and Eliyahu Amiqam (all from “my” newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth). They fall in love with Marion. We pass many pleasant hours. I visit Binyamin Halevy, the Supreme Court justice. We have known each other for some time. His daughter, Ofra, one of the young beauties of Jerusalem, was a friend of Nicolas, my comrade since 1945.

A handsome man, the judge. He has sharp features, contrasting with his warm gaze. He is refined, elegant. I had had several opportunities to discuss with him the two trials in which the Tragedy was central, those of Rudolf Kastner and Adolf Eichmann. Halevy presided over the first and participated in the second. I remember his resounding conclusions about Kastner, the Zionist leader who he said “sold his soul to the devil” in Budapest. And I remember the questions he asked, in German, of Eichmann.

But now I feel like discussing religion with him. For beyond the esteem in which I hold him professionally, he intrigues me as a man. A practicing Jew, he had opened the Kastner trial with his head covered by a kipa. But then suddenly, toward the middle of the trial, he appeared bareheaded. My question: What had precipitated the religious crisis revealed by this act? What had provoked it? A word of the accused, a gesture of the prosecutor, the tears of a survivor? Or perhaps a point made by Shmuel Tamir, former officer of the Irgun and future minister of justice under Menachem Begin?

He does not answer. Instead he asks me a question in strictest confidence. Begin has offered him a seat in the Knesset. What to do? Forsake justice for politics?

Who am I to advise him? The skeptic in me distrusts politics and, even more, politicians. In the end the judge succumbed to temptation. And came to regret it.

The Côte d’Azur. I love that place of bliss. I love the climate, the atmosphere, the free spirit of its inhabitants. We frequently go there to spend a few days or weeks in the small villages around Nice, Monaco, or Cannes. Hours spent reading, walking, listening to music. The saying is true: One can live like God in France—that is to say, not badly at all.

We settle down to spend the summer in a house Marion found in Roquebrune. I am working on The Oath while at the same time preparing my Hasidic lectures. The writer Manès Sperber and his wife, Jenka, spend some peaceful moments with us. I have already spoken of my ties to Manès. I love to listen to him, and he loves to teach. Adler, Trotsky, Silone: He knows so much on so many subjects. Thanks to him, I make considerable progress in oenology. I also owe Manès everything I know about the behavior of mosquitoes, though I still don’t know why, even in the middle of a crowd, I remain their chosen target. To console me he says, “It is always the females that bite. And then they die.” Of happiness?

Marion has discovered a villa close to ours, “La Souco,” where Malraux lived during the Occupation. She would love to buy it. I discourage her, and that’s a mistake. I have come to realize often that her instincts are good, her intuition infallible. Had we followed them more often, her husband would be a wealthy man today.

For a change of scenery we drive to San Remo, where Yossel Rosensaft and his entourage of Bergen-Belsen survivors welcome their Israeli, English, and American friends. They sing and laugh, laugh and sing, even as they evoke their dark memories of long ago.

I rise before the others, around 6 a.m., to go down to the Hotel Royal’s swimming pool, where the instructor gives me lessons I desperately need. I tell myself that if one day I have a son, it will be incumbent on me, in accordance with the injunction of Rabbi Akiba, to teach him to swim. Best to be prepared. I am a poor student and tend to flee as soon as I hear steps approaching. Consequently I still don’t know how to swim.

The past resurfaces. I remember the day when I first discovered the Côte d’Azur. The immensity of the sea at Bandol. My first trip as a journalist. The immigrants who came from the displaced persons camps. A young girl named Inge. My excessive shyness. My first journey to Israel. All that was long ago, in 1949.

Marion is eager to go home. So am I. We must return to New York, where little Jennifer is anxiously waiting for us. Marion’s daughter is often sad, but it is easy to make her smile, so easy.

Here I am, a married man, responsible for a family. For the first time, at age forty, I experience daily life with a woman. In the old days, in Sighet, people married at eighteen. A twenty-five-year-old single woman was considered a spinster, and a thirty-year-old unmarried man a confirmed bachelor. What was the hurry? Were they really mature enough to lead independent lives at such a young age? For me, the discovery of life as a couple includes a series of challenges and traps. I must unlearn certain habits, acquire new ones, learn to bring together two sets of friendships, solder two natures, forge a complicity. There are innumerable problems of adaptation. Will love solve them? What is happening to us happens to everybody. The husband seems always to be cold, while the wife insists on turning on the air-conditioning. She can spend hours in a store; he becomes restless after five minutes. He regularly attends synagogue; she hardly ever does. She loves movies; he is immersed in his books and only occasionally “sacrifices” himself and accompanies her to a film. Never mind. They love each other. Even the disagreements are a source of wonder. Doesn’t a life in common signify discovery and sharing? Whatever they undertake, they do together, in perfect harmony. Even their trivial and, mercifully, infrequent quarrels are worthwhile: They allow for stimulating reconciliations.

My friends are happy to see me happy. They’ve had to wait long enough for this. Rebbe Menahem-Mendel Schneerson of Lubavitch had often scolded me, quoting Scripture: “It is not good for man to remain alone.” Among the letters I received from him before my marriage, there was one in particular that made me smile. Three strong pages on theological topics like “Is it possible to believe without believing in God?” followed by a simple question that he said “has nothing to do with theology: Why don’t you get married?” I told him that the question actually had a lot to do with theology….

Saul Lieberman, too, pushed me toward marriage in his own way: by describing to me the often tragic fate of bachelors in talmudic literature. Abraham Joshua Heschel had limited himself to a few allusions. When we returned from Israel, he and his wife, Sylvia, hosted a dinner in our honor. On meeting Marion, he gave her his trust with characteristic warmth. That day, in his wonderfully courtly way, he crossed half the city to find orchids for the new bride.

As for me, I try to remember why I was so fearful of “losing my freedom.” Was I afraid to detach myself from the past and its ghosts? Afraid of a stability I confused with complacency? No doubt these fears were real, but they were of secondary importance. Why did I wait so long to create a home? True, I worried about not being able to support a family, but was there a deeper reason, a general lack of confidence in the future?

Back home people would have said that I was waiting for my zivvug, the being who was destined to be mine in the civil registers on high.

A story, why not?

When the famous German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn reached the age to be married, it was natural that the richest, most beautiful, most cultivated young girl was chosen for him. Both sets of parents declared themselves delighted and saw no need to consult the two intended. An agreement was reached as to the wedding date, and the cream of society and the most notable rabbis were invited.

On the day of the wedding, following custom, the bridegroom gave a drasha, a lecture, that his friends interrupted at intervals with appropriate songs. In another room, the bride and her friends were being entertained by the best musicians and minstrels of the region.

At the moment when the groom had to raise the veil of his bride-to-be, he was dazzled by her beauty. Unfortunately, at the same time, she saw him and fainted. For the philosopher was as famous for his ungainly appearance as for his erudition. He had a small, pointed nose, bushy eyebrows, two dissimilar eyes, and a hump. One can understand the bride’s reaction. As soon as she came to, she asked for her father and said, “I’d rather die than marry him.” The father begged her to relent, to be patient and obedient. To no avail. The mother also pleaded. In vain. Both lamented: What a scandal, what a shame, all these guests, the uncles, the aunts, what will they say? In the end Moses’ father had to tell his son. The groom was not a philosopher for nothing: He had guessed everything. “I understand,” he whispered. “Please explain to her that I am not angry. In return, I’d like to speak to her alone; I’d like her to give me fifteen minutes. Thereafter, she’ll be free to return to her parents.”

In those days such a request seemed preposterous. What? Two young people alone before the wedding? Still, the rabbis agreed. A quarter of an hour, no more. Mendelssohn welcomed the young girl, smiling. He invited her to sit down and to listen to him. “I shall tell you a talmudic legend,” he said.

Before coming down to Earth to be born, every soul is escorted by an angel. Together they leave the heavens, while a divine voice announces: The son of so-and-so will be the husband of so-and-so’s daughter…. Well, when I heard this voice, I turned to the angel and told him that I would like to meet my future wife. “Impossible,” answered the angel, “that is strictly forbidden.” Since I was born a philosopher, I knew how to defend my cause. “Listen,” I said, “if you don’t show her to me, I shall simply refuse to go down to Earth.” That’s when the angel panicked: “You cannot disobey. This command comes directly from God. Don’t you know that it is He Who keeps souls in a coffer that none other can open?” “No matter,” I said. “Either you show her to me, or I stay here.” Eventually this angel gave in, making me swear that I would never betray him. Then he showed me the woman God had, perhaps inadvertently, chosen for me. And when I saw her, I fainted. To say that she lacked beauty and grace would be charitable…. She had a hump, her nose was crooked, better not dwell on it…. In a rage I began to shout, “I don’t want her, do you hear me, I don’t want her; I’d rather die than live one day at her side!” “It’s my fault,” sobbed the angel, “I shouldn’t have given in. I shall be punished, and the punishment inflicted on angels is the worst of all….” I felt sorry for him and offered him a deal: I would consent to go down and marry the young girl, but on one condition: that I could take her ugliness upon myself.

And the beautiful girl believed him. And her wedding to the philosopher was celebrated with great joy.

Bit by bit I move away from professional journalism, which no longer satisfies me. I feel like changing—if not my profession, then my workplace and my schedule. I still visit the U.N. on a regular basis. In the absence of great speakers, its discourses and goals lack vision. I have to force myself to “cover” its political and diplomatic events. Its cast of characters is usually uninteresting. In truth, my heart is no longer in it. Even scoops no longer excite me. I propose to Gershon Jacobson, my colleague with ties to the Lubavitcher movement, that he take over. Dov Judkowski, my boss in Tel Aviv, agrees. But how will I manage financially? I still send weekly columns to Yedioth and occasional special features to the Forverts, for whose news desk I stopped working some time ago. I am tired of repeating the same formulas, just changing the names. “Mr. X met last night with ambassador Y….” “It appears that … Z formally denies that …” I feel my vocabulary getting poorer and poorer by the day. Fortunately, there are my studies with Lieberman, my walks with Heschel.

And yet there would be plenty of topics for a journalist with a passion for his profession. While years ago space was allotted to me parsimoniously at Yedioth, today I could command as much as I’d like. Noah Mozes is happy: The daily has increased in size, circulation, and influence. But Dov advises me to give up my column; he thinks I should be writing more “serious” material. At the Forverts, my editors are more indulgent; they would publish my thoughts on the theological dimensions of Chinese gastronomy if I so chose.

The times are dramatic—intervals of freedom punctuated by brutal interventions. The sadness of the 1968 Prague Spring: “Wake up, Lenin! Your children have gone mad!” A demented Australian youth sets fire to the El Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem. Richard Nixon sinks ever more deeply into the filthy war in Vietnam, the wretched legacy bequeathed to him by his predecessors. Two hundred thousand demonstrators converge on Washington to vent their anger. The bloody name of My Lai drips over the headlines: How could a lieutenant wearing an American uniform coldly order the massacre of a hundred or more men, women, and children? An officer explains that there are times when it is necessary to save a village from Communism by destroying it. A tragic conclusion.

Meanwhile the Concorde triumphantly soars over the Atlantic. Modern man moves faster and faster without knowing how to utilize the time he saves. In France, in an ultimate gesture of contempt, General de Gaulle steps down, slamming the door behind him. Justice Abe Fortas resigns from the Supreme Court for having accepted a $20,000 bribe from a shady businessman. Then comes Chappaquiddick: Does young Mary Jo Kopechne’s death signify the end of Teddy Kennedy’s presidential dreams? As for man’s first walk on the moon: I spend a sleepless night on the Côte d’Azur waiting for the historic moment. I explain to Marion: “One day we may have a child and he will ask us what we were doing when the first man ‘conquered’ or ‘liberated’ the moon. What will we answer? That we slept?”

Then there was Woodstock: 400,000 young people gathered to experience the ecstasy of collective rebellion. Joy, love, and freedom all in one. The thrill of learning that Beckett has been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature: But where does Godot fit in? How I would love to decipher their silent dialogue.

Not content to change just my marital status and place of residence, I also change publishers in America. Through Lily Edelman, B’nai B’rith’s director of educational programs, I meet Jean Ennis and Jim Silberman. Jim is editor in chief of Random House, and Jean heads its publicity department. They introduce me to their chairman, Robert Bernstein, a tall, attractive man with red hair, whom Marion perceives as the reincarnation of Huckleberry Finn. Soon I am their author. Lily offers to translate A Beggar in Jerusalem with the help of her husband, Nathan, professor of Romance languages at Columbia University. The result does not satisfy Jim. I take back the manuscript and try rewriting it, but my English is not up to the task. I turn to Marion. She reworks the translation.

It is 1970. The publication by Random House of A Beggar in Jerusalem goes smoothly, perhaps as a result of its winning the French Prix Médicis. There are enthusiastic reviews in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other newspapers throughout the country. This is the first time that one of my books gets such a reception.

A Beggar in Jerusalem does not make for easy reading. I conceived of it as a sort of collage, every chapter a separate tale. Together they were to be more than the sum of their parts. My intention was to contain in one tale basic elements of both Jewish history and my own. To recount the Six-Day War, I called upon characters from my earlier novels, biblical figures and Hasidic Masters, mystical madmen and roving visionaries: I summoned them all to the Wall in Jerusalem. I even invited a certain Joshua of Nazareth to take his place there. Shlomo the Blind, who had previously met him, had predicted what his disciples would make of his teachings. And the son of Joseph the carpenter began to weep, saying over and over: “This is not what I wanted, this is not what I meant to happen….” But it was too late.

Of all my novels, readers say this is the least accessible. It requires explanations I feel incapable of providing. American tourists, returning from Israel, wrote to complain that they had gone to the Wall but had not encountered “my” beggars.

In One Generation After, published in France in 1970, I return to the Six-Day War, which has a place in the collective memory of more than one people. There I recall a conversation with Colonel Motta Gur, the liberator of the Old City of Jerusalem, about a radio broadcast of his that had touched the Israeli public so deeply that it was rebroadcast several times. I asked him if he was religious.

He seemed incredulous: “Of course not! For God’s sake, why would you think that?”

“Because your account was suffused with religious overtones.”

His expression was one of bewilderment: Where on earth did I get that idea? Suddenly, the roles were reversed; now he was interrogating me:

“Did I speak of God?”

“No.”

“Of the Bible?”

“No again.”

“Did I discuss issues other than those relating to the confrontation? Did I quote the Torah?”

“No.”

“There! You see? Your question is groundless. All I did was tell a story. My own.”

But what a story. It has elements of prophetic delirium. Listen: Under his command, the paratroopers began to run through the Old City, from one street to the next, from one turret to the next, obeying an irresistible force. The situation was mad, exalted, insane. Every soldier knew, however obscurely, that he had lived only for this moment, for this race. Then, in the midst of the roaring battle, Gur’s voice was heard shouting his report to headquarters: “The Temple Mount is in our hands!” And everywhere—on every front, in every house, in every place of business, in every yeshiva—officers, soldiers, children, and old men wept and embraced. And there was in these tears, in this explosion of emotion, something unreal that set the event apart, this event that changed forever those who lived it, and the others as well.

Motta Gur shrugged and said: “You make it sound too poetic; that’s not my style.”

“So for you it was nothing but another war episode, a battle among so many others?”

“I won’t go that far. After all, Jerusalem was not only a military objective. It was something else. Jerusalem is … Jerusalem.”

“What is it that makes Jerusalem … Jerusalem?”

“Why, its history, of course. It is Jewish, isn’t it? It touches me, it … it’s part of me!”

“Jericho, too, has a past linked to ours. So does Hebron. And Gaza. And Bethlehem.”

“Enough of your comparisons! Jerusalem cannot be compared to any other place.”

I was smiling. He had fallen into the trap. Here he was speaking in mystical terms.

“Strange,” he said at the end. “What started as a strictly military operation ended as something else entirely. Suddenly we were fighting as if in a trance. We understood at that moment that our true objective was no longer to occupy this or that strategic position, but to liberate history itself….

“But, no, I’m not even religious, surely not observant. How many times do I have to tell you? Yes, I occasionally go to synagogue. So what? My children go; I accompany them. What does it prove? Only that I fulfill my duty as a parent.”

I met him a few years later. He pretended to be angry; he scowled: “If you knew what problems you caused me….”

People close to him told me how, after the battle was over, he came home to his wife and children and spent several days and nights sobbing. Never explaining.

Many years later, in 1995, a victim of cancer, fearing the inevitable decline, he committed suicide. All Israel wept for him.

In the Bible, one generation represents forty years. But I collected and published the texts that compose One Generation After twenty-five years after the Event. That is what I sometimes call the Holocaust, for the latter name does not seem adequate.

Some scholars contend that I was the first to give the term “Holocaust” a modern usage by introducing it into our contemporary vocabulary. Why did I choose that word over another? At the time I was preparing an essay on the Akeda, the sacrifice of Isaac; the word ola, translated as “burnt offering” or “holocaust,” struck me, perhaps because it suggests total annihilation by fire and the sacred and mystical aspect of sacrifice, and I used it in an essay on the war. But I regret that it has become so popular and is used so indiscriminately. Its vulgarization is an outrage.

In truth, as I have said over and over, there is no word for the ineffable. Shoah? This biblical term, now officially used in Israel, seems equally inadequate. It applies to an accident, a natural catastrophe striking a community. As such it has appeared in official speeches and in the press since the very beginning of anti-Jewish persecutions in Nazified Europe, long before the implementation of the Final Solution. Clearly the same word should not be used to describe both a pogrom and Auschwitz.

After the liberation, Yiddish-speaking survivors referred simply to “the war” or the Churban, a word that signifies destruction and recalls the ransacking of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem. Yet with the passage of time I become more and more convinced that no word is strong enough or true enough to speak of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, … And yet.

In The Town Beyond the Wall, I divided society of that time into three categories: the killers, the victims, and the spectators. Later, in my first speech at the White House, I observed that if we allow the victims to be relegated to oblivion, we would in fact be killing them again.

As the years go by, this witness grows increasingly weary of correcting “experts,” of trying to limit the trivialization of memory, of fighting public indifference. Hate crimes, religious wars, ethnic conflicts, collective violence, the rise in xenophobia and anti-Semitism—to think that we had imagined that the demons would no longer come howling in the night.

These may be the reasons for the pervasive feeling that a grave error has been committed, that something has gone awry. We must have been wrong to trust mankind, wrong to hope that we could defeat death by remaining faithful to its victims. Perhaps we should have remained silent, so as not to violate the secret entrusted to us by the dead. Perhaps we were wrong to expose the mystery of Auschwitz to the inevitable profanations we are forced to witness more and more frequently.

MY GRANDFATHER continues to haunt my dreams. Hands clasped behind his back, he wanders through the Beit Midrash as if he were looking for someone. He is alone. But not completely: I am keeping him company. But he is alone nevertheless. From time to time he stops, picks up a book, and, with an air of deep concentration, leafs through it. He puts it down, and I, in turn, open it. A shiver runs through me: All the pages are blank and faded. I utter a frightened sound, but my grandfather signals me to be silent. And to come closer. He stands before the Holy Ark. Inside are human beings instead of the sacred scrolls. I cry: “But they are dead, Grandfather, they are all dead.” My grandfather nods as if to say: True, we are all dead. “But the sacred scrolls, Grandfather, where are they? With the dead?” My grandfather doesn’t answer. Panicked, I turn and prepare to run away. I run toward the exit, but it is blocked. I rush to the window, but it opens on a wall. A stranger has scaled it; he is sitting on top. Eyes wide, I try to identify him. It is my grandfather. In his arms he holds the sacred scrolls. He cradles them as if they were his grandchildren. I lean over to capture his song and I fall, or rather I feel that I am falling, only to find myself at the very spot where my grandfather had been sitting. I don’t know how, but now I am the one who is holding the scrolls. I want to rock them, but I don’t know the song that filled my dream.

In Israel, the so-called war of attrition is devastating. In Munich, where an El Al plane is attacked by Arab terrorists, killing one and wounding eleven, the Jewish Center is set on fire. A Swissair plane explodes: Forty-seven people, passengers and crew, lose their lives. Violence becomes more frequent, more intense. Planes are hijacked. We witness the massacre of Palestinians by the Jordanian army and the birth of the Black September movement.

One evening, having been invited to Golda’s home, Marion and I arrive to find her distraught. The army has just shot down five Soviet MiGs that had violated Israeli airspace. Golda fears reprisals. Chainsmoking as usual, she complains: “These Russians, what do they want from us? Why are they always against us, always on the enemy’s side? Why do they provoke us? Is it war they’re looking for? With a small state like ours?”

Next day, in the restaurant at the Knesset, we chat with Ezer Weizman, the former air force commander, a minister without portfolio in Golda’s government, and the future president of the State of Israel. “Everybody is worried,” I say to him. “Aren’t you?” No, he is not. The enfant terrible of Israeli politics is, as General de Gaulle would say, “sure of himself” and of Tsahal, the army. “The next war will not last six days but six hours,” he tells us. “The plans are ready, success guaranteed.” “Then why is Golda so worried?” I ask. Weizman shrugs as if to say: What can you expect of a woman who has never done military service?

An hour later we have coffee with General Bar-Lev, commander in chief of the army, and famous for his strategic genius. I first met this brilliant military man in New York, where he was doing postgraduate work at Columbia University. He is a fine man—intelligent, reserved, sophisticated, and loyal. His speech is slow and deliberate; his gaze, penetrating. He inspires confidence and is admired by the military, respected by the politicians, trusted by the public.

We discuss the current tensions. He is nearly as optimistic as Weizman. He whips out his pen and scribbles numbers on a paper napkin. Of course, he says in his low, halting voice, there are those who are afraid—not of the Arabs, naturally, but of the Russians. Those Russians are powerful. Their numbers are overwhelming. But they are far away. What would be dangerous for us would be a war with infantry and armored vehicles…. If the Red Army sends more than a hundred thousand soldiers, that might pose a problem…. But they would need transport planes…. And, yes, their pilots are good. But ours are better.

I must admit that I was frightened by his calm. I thought to myself: The entire world is afraid of the Soviet Union, but he is not. France fears the Russians, Washington is wary of them, China distrusts them, and the tiny Israeli nation is fearless. If Bar-Lev’s equanimity had been based on a belief in divine intervention rather than in strategic arguments, I would have better understood his attitude.

Let us stay another moment with One Generation After, whose French title, Entre deux soleils, was suggested by Manès Sperber. What does it mean, “Between two suns”? It means dusk, the mystical hour worshipped by Hasidic dreamers. At that hour on the first Friday of Creation, according to Pirkei Avot, The Ethics of Our Fathers, ten things were introduced into human history: the abyss that swallowed Korah and his accomplices; Miriam’s well, which accompanied the Children of Israel into the desert to heal them; the mouth of the ass that answered Balaam; the rainbow in Noah’s time; the manna; the staff used to effect the biblical miracles in pharaonic Egypt; the shamir, the tiny worm that split the stones used in the construction of Solomon’s Temple; the rectangular shape of the letters engraved in the Tablets of the Law; their capacity to be read at four different angles; and the tablets themselves. Certain sages add the demons, who were also created at this hour between daylight and darkness. And the tomb of Moses. And the ram Abraham sacrificed instead of his son Isaac on Mount Moriah.

This title reflects, less clearly than the American, the content of this work, which deals, however sketchily, with generational conflicts and also the fate of children of survivors, their dramatic confrontation with their parents’ past. There is the tragic story of one young man, the son of a distant cousin from Queens. He was twenty, a student of literature, filled with literary dreams. One morning he rose, took his typewriter, and walked into the sea.

•   •   •

Years after the publication of One Generation After, I am invited by Yossel Rosensaft’s son, Menachem, to address the first meeting of “the Second Generation,” that is, the children of survivors. Facing these young men and women, some of them now fathers and mothers themselves, all caught between their parents’ wounded memory and their own hopes covered with ashes, I have difficulty hiding my emotions. For these people belong to my internal landscape: I look at them and see them through the prism of the past. Some of them were my students at City College. They affect me deeply because every time I see them, I cannot help but see other children through them, behind them, marching in the distance toward the blazing abyss.

I look at these young people and tell myself, tell them, that they were the enemy’s target as surely as were their parents. They were the ones he had hoped to annihilate. By killing Jews, he hoped to prevent their children from being born.

I tell them the talmudic legend of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai and his son Eleazar. Fleeing the Romans, they found refuge in a cave and stayed there twelve years. When they emerged they were unable to conceal their astonishment: The world outside had not changed. So angry were they that their eyes burned down all that they looked upon. As a result, a celestial voice ordered them back into the cave for another year, at the end of which the son was still angry, though the father was not. And the Talmud comments: “Whatever the son’s gaze wounded, the father’s gaze healed.”

Rembrandt’s beautiful painting of Abraham and Isaac comes to mind. It shows them, after the test, embracing with a tenderness that must have moved the Creator and his angels.

Is there a tenderness more profound, more intense, more human than the one that links the survivor to his child? What goes on in the mind of a son who watches his father praying or simply staring into space? What are the thoughts of a daughter who senses the pain of her mother, who has lost two infants to the executioner? Surely there comes a moment when such children become their parents’ parents.

My thoughts turned toward them once again when I wrote The Fifth Son and The Forgotten. I speak to them even when I think I am speaking to others.

In One Generation After, I try my hand at a new literary genre. My wish: to convey the essential in the form of dialogue alone. Dialogues between individuals separated by death—or life. Brief questions and clipped answers. I wanted these dialogues to be anonymous. Voices. No, I wanted them to be echoes that reach us from far away. I strain to hear the last conversation between a young boy and his little sister, a grown man and his mother, a Hasid and his grandfather. He is a witness who grasps at scraps of dialogue with the dead man inside him. He wants every word to contain a sentence, every sentence a page, every page a book, a life, a death, and the history they share.

—Hey you! You look like you’re praying!

—Wrong.

—Your lips don’t stop moving!

—Habit, no doubt.

—Did you always pray that much?

—More than that. Much more.

—What did you ask for in your prayers?

—Nothing.

—Forgiveness?

—Perhaps.

—Knowledge?

—Possibly.

—Friendship?

—Yes, friendship.

—The chance to defeat evil? The certainty of living with truth, or

   living, period?

—Perhaps.

—And you call that nothing?

—I do. I call that nothing.

*

—Will you remember me?

—I promise you.

—How can you? You don’t even know who I am, I myself don’t know.

—Never mind; I’ll remember my promise.

—For a long time?

—As long as possible. All my life perhaps. But … why do you laugh?

—I want you to remember my laughter too

—You’re lying. You laugh because you’re going mad.

—Perfect. Remember my madness.

•   •   •

—Tell me … Am I making you laugh?

—Not just you. No, my little one, not just you.

I make my first trip to Norway, a nation that will become important to me in my life as writer and activist. Must I mention the awful, embarrassing fact that in Sighet I knew nothing of this nation and its people? Norway for me was one of those places of which I didn’t even know that I knew nothing.

Invited by the publishing house Aschehoug to promote The Jews of Silence, I go there rather skeptically. No sooner have I landed than a journalist advises me to meet Johan Borgen. Who is he? And why should I make his acquaintance? The journalist explains that when The Town Beyond the Wall had come out a few years earlier, it was warmly received, largely because of a very favorable article by this great writer, the revered dean of Norwegian letters. “He is our own Mauriac,” the journalist tells me. “Evidently he has taken you under his wing.” This explains the presence of the large number of journalists at a press conference organized by Max Tau, my editor at Aschehoug. I speak of Russian Jewry’s plight; of their struggle, nonviolent but determined; of their hopes, nourished by their thirst for identity as much as by their need for freedom. The Norwegian people are always on the side of the victims, and I sense this among the listeners. Norway is one of the rare countries to have opened its doors to “displaced persons,” the sick ones who were rejected by the big Western powers at war’s end. It is easy to become attached to this country, to these rather reserved men and women who are respectful of your moods, your need for privacy and friendship. Like the British, they favor understatement. In Norway, reticence is a national virtue. (Do you know the story of the young Norwegian who was so in love with a woman that he finally told her?)

For me a city, a country, is first of all a face. Oslo has many.

Professor Leo (his friends call him Sjua) Eitinger is the author of an important study on the psychosomatic effects of the Holocaust on its survivors. I speak of him in Night: He was present at my knee operation at Buna concentration camp. He is a distinguished-looking man. His gaze is open, his voice authoritative. “I have read your testimony,” he says. “I believe we come from the same place.” Astonished, I ask: “From Sighet?” “No. From a place that could be called anti-Sighet.” “Auschwitz? Buchenwald?” I whisper. “Both.” Suddenly an image comes back to me: the infirmary. That voice, I recognize that voice. “It’s you who …?” He smiles: “Possibly.” I tell him that I owe him a debt of gratitude. “For taking care of you?” No. For showing me that even over there it was possible to have faith in mankind.

During that same trip, I meet someone who is in fact from Sighet. Better: We attended the same heder. Surprised, I call out to him: “What are you doing here?” He bursts into laughter. “And you?” he asks. Haim-Hersh Kahan left with the first transport, together with the town’s rabbis and my two mad fellow disciples of Kalman the Kabbalist. After the liberation he returned to Sighet via Vienna and Budapest. How did he come to settle in Oslo? Like all survivors’ stories, his had much to do with chance. On his way to the United States, he went through Sweden, where he met a beautiful local Jewish girl, Esther. Haim-Hersh stayed in Scandinavia, went into business, and made a fortune; he now plays an important role in Oslo’s Jewish community. He still sings as he did long ago and tells stories of times that only he and I remember.

And so death did not triumph everywhere. Nor did evil. Old bonds are renewed, and new ones are formed.

Max Tau, my editor, is an original. Small, agile, and ever watchful, he appears to be in constant fear of missing something—a rumor, a thought, an encounter. To him I owe the Norwegian publication of my first books. He introduces me to my translator, Gerd Host Heyerdahl, poet and professor at Oslo University. Max, a writer and Jewish immigrant of German origin, had fallen in love with a Norwegian, Tove (taller and less talkative than he), and with Norwegian society.

Since I don’t know his language and he doesn’t know mine, he speaks to me in German and I respond in my Germanized Yiddish. In company he pretends to understand everything, but in reality he hears nothing for the simple reason that he’s deaf, which does not prevent him from participating in the conversation. He laughs at the right moment or becomes serious when required. What upsets him about me? My refusal to “forgive.” A Germanophile, he has introduced the important German writers to Norway and proclaimed himself an advocate of reconciliation with Germany. When he obtains a German literary prize for me and I tell him that I do not feel right about accepting it, he does not conceal his hurt.

We have a shared admiration for the great Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis, author of Zorba, whom he has known and celebrated for years, and about whom he tells me a thousand anecdotes and tales of adventure.

And then there is Johan Borgen, my ally, my friend. I owe him in Norway what I owe François Mauriac in France. Borgen lives two hours outside the capital and goes only rarely to the city. His house is isolated, protected. There are flowers everywhere. Several large, light-filled rooms. A few small cubicles—reminiscent of ancient monastic cells—are reserved for guests.

The friendship is instantaneous. From the first encounter, without preliminaries, we go straight to the essential. We speak of writing and of death, the eternal in the moment, the word and despair.

Long and thin, almost emaciated, Borgen radiates an air of rigor and flawless character: Nothing, neither honors nor adversity, can bend him. His intelligence is sophisticated, demanding.

His wife, Martha, is strange. People tell me that she was once one of Oslo’s most beautiful women. Now she insists on dressing like a witch, possibly to chase away the demons she believes in and whom, in order to blunt their evil powers, she hides in secret places in her enchanted garden. She lives only to protect her husband—from the living, of course, as well as the demons. After my second visit she confesses to me that her love for Johan is absolute and that she will do anything to keep it intact. I have the feeling that she sees a rival in every being her husband might love. In short, she is jealous of everybody, including me.

They have a beautiful daughter, Anne, a novelist who lives in Oslo. Her brother, Espe, does not leave his father’s side. Borgen tells me that years ago Espe was the victim of a serious accident. His body broken, his brain damaged, he lay day and night without regaining consciousness. The doctors said he would never recover, but Johan rejected their verdict: The word “never” did not suit him. Riveted to his son’s bedside, he held his hand. Day and night, he clasped his dying son’s hand in his own. How is one to explain the transfusion of energy and strength that occurred? Slowly, Espe came back to life.

And here he stands before me, smiling as he gazes at his father. There is between them a bond of tenderness, trust, and wisdom that I feel privileged to witness.

Johan is already ill when we first meet. How does he manage to be stronger than the cancer that is gnawing at him? He suffers in silence. And when we walk along the beach, we speak of other things. He is not religious, but the words we use are. He seems to know how to cope with the body’s failings. But the failings that attack the soul, the evil inherent in life—how is one to banish them without denying life itself? Could the saints possibly know secrets that are inaccessible to mortals? Is that what saintliness means: the art of freeing oneself from all temptation, therefore, from all human traits?

I am told that before he died, Borgen asked for a glass of champagne. He raised it to his family, turned his eyes toward the absent or perhaps toward absence, and emptied the glass after uttering the usual skol.

It was his last word.

In 1970 the free world is stunned and outraged by the Leningrad trials.

A quixotic episode. Heroic as well? No doubt. A group of young Russian-Jewish daredevils decided to hijack a commercial Aeroflot plane to Scandinavia. From there they intended to continue to Israel. Their effort was part of a larger plan devised in Jerusalem in hopes of attracting world attention to the plight of Soviet Jews. It was a dramatic but dangerous idea: You don’t play games with the KGB. The group was awaiting the green light from the Israeli authorities, when an informer who had infiltrated the dissident movement gave them away. The group’s members were arrested, imprisoned, judged, and condemned by a Leningrad tribunal. Several death sentences were pronounced, provoking waves of protest in all the capitals of the West. The largest demonstration took place in Brussels in February 1971, bringing together eight hundred delegates from thirty-eight countries. At the head of the Israeli delegation was David Ben-Gurion—an imposing presence, regal but melancholy. The lion of Judea was too old. Though physically still vigorous, he was barely coherent. Many of us regretted that he had been pulled out of retirement.

In my brief address I told a Hasidic tale: Rebbe Uri of Strelisk knocks at the door of his friend Rebbe Moshe-Leib of Sassov and asks for his help: He is collecting funds to enable a poor young girl to get married. However, since he himself knows only impoverished people, he has been unable to gather the required sum. Could Rebbe Moshe-Leib offer him some advice or help? And the Rebbe answers: “I, too, beloved brother, meet only those in need; I don’t know any rich men. Therefore I cannot give you any money. All I can do for you is dance. And that should be sufficient.” “In conclusion,” I said, “let me tell you that on Simhat Torah in Moscow, I have seen these young Jews dance. It was indeed sufficient.” I speak of their courage wherever I go. In Paris I find myself seated next to filmmaker Claude Lanzmann and his young colleague Efrem Sevella, just arrived from Moscow. In flavorful Yiddish the young man recounts the struggle of the scientist Mikhaïl Sand in confronting the Soviet regime. Sevella explains that his comrades had all pitched in to enable him to “ascend” to Israel. He speaks with emotion and conviction. But a few years later, Sevella publishes in France a vicious book, Farewell Israel. Every possible negative statement about the Jewish state can be found there.

These demonstrations of solidarity were not in vain. They succeeded in obtaining the commutation of death sentences. In time, all the accused arrived in Israel.

These events have left me with a manuscript, an unpublished novel called “The Trial of Krasnograd.” Together with my diary, it remains in my private genizah. Soon I begin work on the story of Paltiel Kossover, the proud but star-crossed hero of my book The Testament, which deals with the Communist experience, not the Holocaust. You see, mostly I keep my word. I stay away from the “forbidden theme.”^* At this moment I am also working on Souls on Fire, a book I live and retell with joy. I put into it everything I received from my grandfather Reb Dodye: his love of his people, his passion for songs and stories. As I write, I see him on a Friday night as he enters the light-filled house with dancing steps. He sings and I sing along with him into my very prayers and silences. It is with him and his youngest daughter, my mother, in mind that I compose my Song of Songs in homage to Hasidic tradition; it was their tradition and it remains mine. This explains why that particular book occupies a special place in my work and in my life. More than my fictional tales, it is linked to my early life, to my childhood. I have said it often: Hasidism is a world that is mine; it contains my murdered dreams but also my efforts to bring them back to life.

How to define Hasidism? A group in revolt against the establishment? A mystical sect? A religious movement with social overtones?

In my novels Hasidism becomes framework and vantage point; the Besht (the Baal Shem Tov) or Rebbe Levi-Itzhak of Berditchev comes to the rescue of my characters, just as they responded to my requests long ago.

A strange destiny, that of the Hasidic movement. It survived the Holocaust, whereas the majority of its followers became its victims. The killers succeeded in assassinating millions of Hasidim but not the ideal of Hasidism, which is now popular once again, especially with the young.

As the apotheosis of an evolving humanism, Hasidism places the emphasis on the sacred aspect of man and that which makes him human. In a society dominated by the awesome magic of technology, young people discover with wonder the Beshtian precept that the mystery of the universe resides in man, just as the secret of life resides in life itself.

And then, let us not overlook the sociophilosophical elements: Our generation resembles that of the Baal Shem Tov. Just as in his time, it is necessary today to build on ruins, to hold on to something—another human being, a faith. Hasidism? An antidote to resignation. What is its lesson to its disciples? Is it difficult to sing? Never mind. It is because it is difficult if not impossible to sing, to pray, to hope that we must try. Even if living in a world dehumanized by its own guilt is difficult, never mind. Let one person, just one, extend his hand to a beggar, a fugitive, a refugee, and life will become meaningful for others. Evil exists? Death is triumphant? Never mind. Nothing is as whole as a broken heart, said Rebbe Mendel of Kotzk.

There is in Hasidism a quest for nature’s beauty, a glimpse into its secrets. In his youth, the Besht was a tutor. He accompanied children to heder and taught them not only to sing but also to see. He prevented them from moving too quickly. Look at this tree, he would say; and the sky; and these mountains. At a time when Jewish children were used to walking fast, fearful of being assaulted by hooligans, the Besht made them slow down, to take in the beauty of the landscape. A human being in God’s universe, that is a thing of beauty.

Yes, I do like to celebrate the movement that personifies celebration.

But celebration of what? Of Torah? Yes. Of God? Yes again. Of life? Even if it is made of poverty, misery, and suffering?

These are troubling questions that I discuss in another volume, Somewhere a Master. In it I describe the great Masters’ challenges to the sadness and despair in which they and their disciples lived. How did they succeed in overcoming the pain they must have experienced as they listened to a barren woman, a father reeling under the burden of debt, the parents of a dying child? How did they manage to keep their faith intact as they confronted the injustices that befell their followers and the entire Jewish people?

My generation needed to hear their answers and to follow their example.

Thanks to my Hasidic tales, I am able to speak publicly with less apprehension. I emphasize their wisdom and humor. To shed the image people have of me—the messenger returned from over there—I try to elicit a smile or even laughter. As much as I resist speaking about the Tragedy, I delight in opening the gates to the Hasidic garden. To my surprise, there is an audience for this kind of pilgrimage. Unquestionably, people prefer stories and anecdotes to scholarly analyses. And so I try to combine the two by encouraging the public to reflect.

I care about people learning to savor the meaning of the Hasidic message in particular, of the messianic wait in general. I feel good when I evoke the fervor and wealth of a tale by Rebbe Nahman or a parable of Rebbe Mendel of Kotzk. There I feel no need to censor myself. I am less fearful of revealing what ought not to be revealed. There is no danger of blasphemy. I know what words need to be said; I only have to repeat those I heard from my grandfather’s lips.

—Sing, Grandfather. I beg of you. I need to hear you sing.

—I cannot.

—Make an effort. Try, Grandfather. You always said one had the right to fail, but not without trying.

—I cannot. Not anymore. I cannot even try.

—I shall help you.

—You cannot help me any more.

—Are you forbidding me to try?

—I am not forbidding you anything, my little one. I am only telling you that I can no longer sing.

—Not even for me?

—For nobody.

—For God? For God, whom you have loved?

—Not even for Him.

—Why, Grandfather?

—That’s how it is. We cannot help it. Neither you nor I.

—Is that your punishment?

—No. It has nothing to do with punishment.

—Then what does it have to do with, Grandfather?

—I am dead, my little one. The dead no longer sing.

—What about me, Grandfather …?

—What about you?

—May I then sing for the dead?

The Jewish tradition tells us that it is through study that we may—no, that we must—honor the memory of the dead. We study a Mishna, and in so doing affirm our attachment to those who have preceded us in this quest.

Is that why my passion for study continues unabated? Indeed, it grows. King Lear is mistaken: One is never too old to learn. To rediscover ancient texts is to celebrate them; to celebrate them in their diversity, their timeless beauty. Prophetic, talmudic, philosophical, poetic, ethical celebrations. One must approach Jewish tradition through its fervor and present it with the help of its illustrious and inspired thinkers.

That is what I strive to do in my Messengers of God. The book is based on lectures delivered at the 92nd Street “Y” in New York, at Boston University, and at the Centre Rachi in Paris. Adam or the mystery of the Beginning, Cain and Abel or the First Murder, the near-sacrifice of Isaac, the return of Joseph, the metamorphosis of Moses, the ordeal and triumph of Job—every chapter requires months of research. There again, Saul Lieberman is indispensable. I submit to him every essay and solicit his critical comments, which I carefully take into account. I say nothing, publish nothing, without his Haskama, his consent.

In my notebook I write:

As a child, I read the biblical tales with a mixture of wonder and anguish. I imagined Isaac on the altar, and I wept. I saw Joseph prince of Egypt, and I laughed…. Jewish history unfolds in the present. Unlike mythology it affects our life and our role in society. Jupiter is a symbol, but Isaiah is a voice, a conscience. Zeus is dead without having lived, but Moses remains alive. His exhortations, delivered long ago to a people about to be freed, resonate to this day; his Law commits us. Without a Jew’s memory, his determined collective memory, he would not be a Jew or would not be.

If Judaism, more than any other tradition, demonstrates such loyalty to its past, it is because it fulfills a need. Thanks to Abraham, whose temerity guides us, thanks to Jacob, whose dream intrigues us, our survival, prodigious in many ways, has maintained its mystery and significance. If we have the strength and the will to speak out, it is because our ancestors express themselves through every one of us. If the eyes of the world so often seem fixed on us, it is because we evoke a bygone era and a destiny that transcends it. Panim in Hebrew is used in the plural: Man has more than one face. His own and that of Adam. The Jew is haunted by the beginning more than by the end. His messianic dream is linked to David’s kingdom. He feels closer to the prophet Elijah than to his next-door neighbor. What is a Jew? Sum, synthesis, vessel. Every ordeal endured by his ancestors affects him. He is crushed by their sorrows and invigorated by their triumphs. For they were living creatures, not icons. The most pure, the most righteous among them was subject to moments of ecstasy and despair, and we are told about them. Their holiness defined itself in human terms. That is why the Jew remembers them, because he sees them at the crossroads of their existence. Anxious, exalted, singled out, they are humans, not gods. Their quest informs his own and influences his choices. Jacob’s ladder disrupts his nights. Israel’s anguish increases his solitude. He knows that to speak of Moses means to follow him into Egypt and out of Egypt. Whosoever refuses to tell his story stays behind.

This is true for all our ancestors and their journeys. If the near-sacrifice of Isaac concerned only Abraham and his son, their ordeal would be limited to their own suffering. But it concerns us…. Somewhere a father and his son head for a burning altar; somewhere a boy knows his father will die before God’s veiled gaze; somewhere a storyteller remembers and is overwhelmed by an ancient and nameless sadness; he wants to weep. He has seen Abraham and he has seen Isaac go toward death, and the angel, intent on singing the praises of the Lord, did not come to rescue them from the quiet, black night.

Quatre maîtres hassidiques (Four Hasidic Masters) and Cinq portraits bibliques (Five Biblical Portraits), which are part of the Célébrations, are entrusted in America to Jim Langford, editor in chief of Notre Dame Press, for I am close to the Catholic university of Notre Dame, and to its president, the liberal Theodore Hesburgh. Our dialogues both private and public are ecumenical and fraternal. Both of us are devoted to the same principles of tolerance. I respect his faith as he respects mine, and the fight against religious and political fanaticism has never failed to unite us. We have always confronted the merchants of hate together. Our signatures can be found at the bottom of many a petition in support of human rights. Eventually I welcome him to the President’s Commission on the Holocaust, created by President Carter. Ted is a believer of the kind I favor. No one could hope to have a better interlocutor or a more faithful ally.

For the moment, since I belong to no organization or movement, I feel free. When I take a stand, I commit to no one but myself. Sometimes I am right; often I am not. So what? I learn from my mistakes. To enhance discipline and intellectual rigor—that is the goal. To be more demanding of myself. And of others? The problem is that I don’t like to polemicize for fear of offending. When it does happen, I am ill at ease; but never mind, I start again. When the subject is one that is essential to me, I have difficulty controlling my anger even though I may instantly regret it. But I don’t always understand my hosts. Why do they invite me? Why do they want to hear me say things that will surely displease them? Who knows …?

Once, speaking to an important women’s organization, I barely contain my disappointment. The organizers had asked me to divide my address into two parts: the Holocaust and Soviet Jewry. On the day of the lecture, they express concern: “Please don’t take too long; we are planning to devote a few hours to receptions for our regional delegates.” Strange: The angrier I get, the more I show my displeasure, the more people applaud. I say things that shock and hurt, things that should prevent the audience from swallowing their meal. Instead they applaud and congratulate me … after the meal.

It’s all inexplicable to me.

I don’t understand, and yet I find myself unable to refuse the various invitations that reach me through my agent, Lily Edelman. My friends mock me: “Just because another Jew asks for you, you don’t have to accept.” They are not altogether wrong. It’s true that I always carry around the feeling of owing something to my people.

That is how it happens that I accept the invitation to address the Council of Jewish Federations. Its annual assembly, an important event that brings together donors and organizers of many kinds, is held in a different city every year. This year, 1971, it takes place in a big hotel in Kansas City, Missouri. My address is scheduled for Saturday night.

Since I must spend Shabbat there, I decide to use the time to gauge the mood, study the topics under review, meet the different committees. In short, to find out what preoccupies the leaders of North American Jewry. I shall then adapt my words to their concerns.

Why not confess? I was immediately overcome with a feeling of estrangement, as though I found myself attending a huge gathering of union leaders. The discussions center exclusively on budgets and fund-raising, old and new methods, statistics and forecasts. Everyone is a specialist in some field. How does one approach the millionaire who remains aloof? Who should be delegated to see him, and when—in the office in the morning or at home at night? So much for the spiritual atmosphere I was expecting.

Friday evening, the immense dining room is divided in two. In a corner a few tables have been reserved for those who observe the Jewish dietary laws.

The next day, in a small drawing room, I witness the strangest, most exotic Shabbat service of my life: In addition to prayers and the Torah reading, we are treated to a ballet in which beautiful young girls perform dances that, no doubt, have a religious basis. As I am accustomed to a different style of prayer, I feel somewhat excluded.

All afternoon I am solicited by delegates who are lobbying for one thing or another. Each asks me to include in my presentation the particular project he or she has come to defend, “in the name of what is dear to us”: Russian Jewry, support for Israel, child care, Jewish education in high schools, retirement homes, cultural associations…. They are funny, all these emissaries, militants, or bureaucrats, working for just causes and for odd ones. To them I appear as intercessor, mediator, defense attorney—in other words, a man of influence. I am not so sure, but how am I to explain this to them? Oh well; they will come to realize it eventually.

The evening begins with the pious chanting of the Havdalah, the prayer celebrating the separation in time of the profane and the sacred, and the end of Shabbat. Then comes the hour when dinner is served. There is the din of three thousand people crowded into the hall. People say hello, call to each other, leave their seats to greet acquaintances; the waiters do their work with difficulty. All the former federation presidents are seated at the dais. I sit to the right of the current president, Max Fisher, a superwealthy industrialist from Detroit who is close to both Presidents Nixon and Ford.

Suddenly I hear feverish whispering behind my back. Polite, I try not to listen. Delegates approach Fisher, evidently trying to persuade him of something. I have no idea what it’s about, but I begin to get worried. I sense a crisis looming. Intrigued, I question my neighbor to the right. Oh, it’s nothing, he answers. Whereupon a group of young people come over to our table. “We are students,” they tell me. “We come to ask you not to be annoyed with us: We are leaving the hall to protest, not against you, but against the leaders of this organization. We are observant and after the meal we wanted to recite together the Birkat Hamazon [the customary grace after dinner]. They wouldn’t let us.”

I turn to Fisher: “Is this true?”

“Yes,” he says, unperturbed.

“But why?”

“Because the prayer is not listed in the program.”

For a moment I am speechless. Then I try to explain to him that he should be pleased rather than annoyed: After all, what were these young people asking for? The power to control the council’s budget? No. They were requesting permission to sing a prayer that would last no more than three to five minutes. The gentleman remains unmoved: “I’ve made a decision; I’ve announced it to my colleagues; I cannot retract it without losing face.”

I persist. I point out to him that if this becomes public, as it inevitably will, he might look ridiculous to the entire Jewish community. However, I do understand his predicament. So here is what I propose: Let him announce that the guest of honor wishes to recite the traditional prayer; it would be discourteous to refuse. Max acquiesces. The incident is closed. The crisis is averted.

After dinner he invites me to have a drink with him, alone. “I owe you something,” he says. “What would you like?” This is my chance to act as intercessor. I repeat the delegates’ requests: more spirituality for this kind of gathering; more deference for the observant; priority for Jewish education, for Jewish memory; an initial budget of $100,000 to found a council for Soviet Jewry…. Max takes notes. All my requests are granted. Years later we will confront each other during the Bitburg affair. Still, in Kansas City, it is thanks to a simple prayer rescued in extremis that the most important Jewish organization in America became more Jewish.

We spend the winter of 1972 in Miami. Marion is pregnant and travels less. I don’t have a choice. Long-standing commitments force me to shuttle between Florida, New York, and other places.

It is during this time that I become embroiled in a political incident as pointless as it is absurd, and one I still regret today. It created a furor in Israel. I find myself, quite unintentionally, in an adversarial situation with Abba Eban, minister of foreign affairs in Golda Meir’s government.

There was a time when we had a cordial professional relationship. I admired his learning, his talents. As a young ambassador to Washington and the U.N. he elicited respect and admiration from his colleagues. A brilliant speaker and intellectual, Eban could be convincing even when he himself was not convinced.

The story is told that in the mid-fifties Ben-Gurion asked him to defend Israel’s position in a delicate affair. And even though Eban disagreed with that position, he defended it so well that Ben-Gurion told him: “In truth, I myself had doubts, but then I read your arguments, and you convinced me.”

Unquestionably, he was a great diplomat who represented his government with superb skill and ability. He brought honor to the state and to the people of Israel. I was attracted by his sharp wit; I appreciated his Jewish and classical erudition; I admired his televised appearances, his lucid analyses of international affairs, and the elegant way he had of eluding delicate questions. He was somebody I would have liked to know better, more intimately.

But then, the incident occurred. In fact, the word “incident” is inadequate. “Political scandal” would be more precise.

Its genesis was as follows: Having just returned from a lecture tour in the Midwest, I am spending a day in our Manhattan apartment catching up on a week’s mail when the telephone rings. The Israeli consul general—in New York—is on the line. “This concerns Minister Eban,” he informs me. “Are you aware of what is happening to him?” No, I’m not; I have been out of town. Could he enlighten me? He can and does. During a broadcast with the famous television interviewer David Frost, Eban was said to have answered the question, What do you think about the Nazi criminals who are still at large? by saying that after the Eichmann trial, the problem no longer interested him, or something like that. Allegedly he had repeated this several times. “You can imagine the uproar in Israel,” says the consul. “Menachem Begin and the entire opposition condemn his insensitivity and are calling for his resignation. Golda is furious. A censure motion has been introduced in the Knesset. Eban claims that only a statement from you can calm the storm.”

My answer to the consul is that, not having seen the telecast, I am hardly in a position to intervene. He understands and transmits my reply to Eban. One hour later he calls back: Eban has suggested that I read the transcript of the interview; perhaps then I could testify on his behalf. I accept, though I make the point that there is a critical difference between the spoken word on-screen and that presented on the written page. The consul insists that I read the transcript. I do. I study it, and I am appalled. Eban is, after all, hardly a novice in such matters, yet he had shown unbelievably poor judgment. I call the consul and express my regret at not being able to help his boss. “But,” I add, “it is inconceivable that a man like Eban, or, for that matter, any Jew, could show such insensitivity to Jewish memory and to those who remain faithful to it.” In other words, I cannot believe this is what he meant; surely, for once, he had misspoken. I suggest that the program be telecast in Israel. Let the public judge.

A few days later I happen to be visiting Jack Mombaz, the Israeli consul general in Toronto, where I have come to lecture, when Marion telephones to tell me that once again the consul in New York is trying urgently to reach me. In the presence of his colleague in Canada, I return his call. He assumes an official tone: “I have been charged by my minister to communicate the following message to you.” And he proceeds to read a statement that Eban plans to make public within the hour. It is a most flattering statement about me, thanking me for having come to his aid. As I listen, I feel the blood rushing to my face. I resent being manipulated. How am I to react? Protest? Expose the lie? My anger and agitation render me speechless. The consul asks, “Can you hear me? Are you there?” I don’t answer. He repeats his questions; I remain silent. Only after a long pause am I able to speak again. “You of all people know the truth; I never said anything that could be interpreted as a defense.” He denies nothing. My indignation does not surprise him, but he adds: “Try to understand him; he is fighting for his political survival.” He is right. Eban’s statement, resting on my “defense,” saves him from being censured by the Knesset. Golda Meir’s government, if by a remarkably small majority, remains in power.

I could publish a correction, if only for the record. But I don’t. First of all, Eban could have been acting in good faith: How could I be sure that his consul, out of loyalty, had not distorted my comments? And why hurt a man who has been pleading our people’s cause for so many years and with such distinction? He deserves special consideration. One does not condemn a man who, under desperate circumstances, resorts to the kind of behavior that he himself would normally find reprehensible. One does not condemn a man for a single misstep. After all, Eban occupies a place of honor in the diplomatic history of the Jewish state. To the friends calling me from Israel who are surprised if not shocked by my “defense” of Eban, I reply: Reasons of the heart are sometimes as important as the raison d’état. One does not push down a drowning man. Let’s turn the page.

The Israeli ambassador in Washington, General Yitzhak Rabin, is not close to Eban; that is well known. Still, he approves of my conduct. As does Gideon Rafael, Israel’s former ambassador to the U.N., appointed by Eban to serve as director general of his ministry. While in the United States on an official visit, Golda, too, congratulates me: “You know that I don’t like the guy, but Begin and his clique treated him savagely; you did well to defend him.” There being limits to my tolerance, I give her a summary of what actually happened. I did not defend Eban and deserve no congratulations. She does not seem surprised: “You did well anyway.”

This conversation takes place during a reception given in her honor by her diplomatic representatives in New York. Suddenly I glimpse Eban. He must have seen me in conversation with Golda. He does not come over. A little later he walks up to me. He shakes my hand with uncharacteristic warmth. He, too, thanks me. He adds a few comments on the scandalous accusations hurled against him by the opposition. He appreciates my support. What could I say? I say nothing.

A week or two after this reception, I read in Yedioth a long interview with Eban on his foreign policy. He speaks of this and that and suddenly tells of having met me in New York, where, he says, I expressed my indignation at the way he had been treated. Stunned, I reread the article. I fail to understand why, if the incident is closed, he is reopening it. And why does he put words in my mouth? His political career is no longer in jeopardy, the government is no longer in danger. Why this new provocation?

My friend Eliyahu Amiqam, a journalist, is visiting New York. I show him the interview, which disturbs him as much as it does me. He asks me for an interview to clarify the matter. Detesting polemics, I hesitate. The counterattacks that provoke more counterattacks are not my style; and then, despite everything, I still have great admiration for Israel’s spokesman. Eliyahu understands my arguments but restates his own: Truth must be reestablished. In the end, I accept his reasoning. The interview is published, triggering a whirlwind of declarations, commentaries, explanations. The affair is once again at center stage. Once again there is a tempest in the Knesset. A new censure motion is introduced by the opposition. The uproar is reminiscent of the notorious political quarrels between fanaticized blocs and groups. The government is in danger of toppling. Golda herself intervenes. In her address she speaks of her affection for me and of the friendship that binds us, but she defends her minister. Naturally she prevails. Her coalition represents a solid majority, and Eban is rehabilitated. Next, his entourage aims its heaviest artillery at me. The attacks come from unexpected quarters. I am punished for past errors and forgotten slights—letters I failed to answer, books I neglected to praise, phone calls I did not return. The gloves are off. I had no idea that so many people in Israel were waiting to take potshots at me.

With hindsight, I think that I may well have been unfair to Eban: How could anyone be sure that one of his subordinates did not embellish my comment to gain favor with him? And in the absence of an immediate correction on my part, Eban could have interpreted my silence as acquiescence.

We become reconciled in 1985. His letter of support, at the time of Bitburg, heals many wounds.

Marion and I have seen him often since, with his wife, Suzy, at the home of mutual friends. At this point, Eban is no longer minister. Why did his former political allies shunt him aside? Why did they betray him? After all, they had made certain promises to him.

Eban loses no time. He quickly turns to television. His programs on Jewish history are popular. His books sell well. He is never short of projects. I like listening to him as he tells of the war years in London and Cairo. His memories, touched with irony, his encounters with the great protagonists of late-twentieth-century American history, are fascinating.

Since his arrival in the United States he has had occasion to encounter outstanding people in all strata of American society. He has met Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, senators, writers, scholars. It was he who conveyed David Ben-Gurion’s invitation to Albert Einstein to come live in Jerusalem, where he would surely have been elected president of the State of Israel. The legendary Princeton scholar wisely refused. His reason? He did not know Hebrew.

Eban does know Hebrew, as well as Arabic and French. As analyst and spokesman of Israel’s policy, he has had no equal.

Meyer Weisgal was another man who had no equal in his realm—a colorful character charged with energy and bubbling over with imagination. It was impossible not to like him. His white mane reminded one of Ben-Gurion; in fact he was close to Chaim Weizmann, the legendary British scientist who became head of the World Zionist movement and eventually president of Israel. Weisgal was Weizmann’s right hand, and the prestigious Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot was built through his efforts. His clever and witty repartee helped him obtain unheard-of sums from the rich, sums no one else could extract from them.

Meyer considered Weizmann his god, his “secular Rebbe,” his guru, and his savior. Possessive in the extreme, he disliked anyone who did not fully appreciate “the boss.” As for those who claimed to revere Weizmann, Meyer was infallible in his ability to detect insincerity.

It was said that he was less admiring of Chaim’s wife, Vera. He found her too mannered, too aristocratic. He said she was a snob who deigned to speak only to God, and even to Him only when she felt like talking to someone. Referring to a woman who had recently lost her famous husband, he said: “As a wife, she was not so terrific, but as a widow, she is unsurpassed….”

His autobiography is a small masterpiece. I praised it in the New York Times. Later, when he was desperately ill, Meyer recovered his will to live when I persuaded him to write a second volume of memoirs. “Will you help me?” he asked. Of course I was ready to help him. Twice a week I went to see him with a little tape recorder. He spoke; I asked questions; he answered, rummaging in his memory for anecdotes, stories of his youth and the years spent at Weizmann’s side. Unfortunately, much of what he had to say he had already published. Even so I became enthusiastic as we recorded certain unpublished details. I don’t regret those weeks, those months I devoted to him. On the contrary, I remember them with a sense of fulfillment.

I am working on The Oath, a novel about a Jew and his community accused of ritual murder at the beginning of the twentieth century. The days and months rush by. And the dreams and the memories. Does memory become richer, or does it shrink as man leaves his early experiences farther and farther behind? What makes it surge back? How does one follow its upheavals? And how does one assimilate the traces it leaves behind?

I am fascinated by everything that touches on memory, its mystical force. Memory desires to encompass everything, but it merely illuminates fragments. Why this recollection rather than another? And what happens to all that I have already forgotten? And then: What is the relationship between individual memory and collective memory? Which enriches the other, and at what cost?

Memory is a key element in my work and my quest, but in truth I am painfully aware of how little I know of its nature. It is to me what poetry was to Aristotle: More than history, it contains Truth. To me it is indispensable. To write. To teach and share. Without it what would I be? Without it life has no meaning.

June 6, 1972: Elisha’s birth. A dawn unlike any other. It will mark my existence forever. This little fellow in the arms of his mother will illuminate our life. I look at him and look at him. And as I look at him I feel the presence of others also seeking to protect him.

Eight days later: the Brith Milah. “Let’s sing, I order you to sing!” shouts the old Hassid of Ger. It’s not every day that one attends a circumcision. The ceremony takes place under the sign of Abraham and, as such, is meaningful enough for the prophet Elijah himself to attend as guest of honor. It is on “his” chair that the eight-day-old infant is circumcised.

The men and women present come from different worlds. The former secretary of the Warsaw community, Dr. Hillel Seidman; the violinist Isaac Stern; the editor Jim Silberman; and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Assimilated intellectuals and militant Zionists. And, of course, special emissaries from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who, from his residence in Brooklyn, writes me that his heart and soul are overflowing with joy. Saul Lieberman calls from Jerusalem to tell us just how much he participates in our celebration: I have never heard him so excited.

The mother is in an adjacent room: Tradition, with the intention of protecting her, ordains that she not be present when her son gives his blood to enter into the Covenant. A messenger shuttles back and forth to keep her informed.

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.