Love and Exile

by Isaac Bashevis Singer

  The librarian smiled and marked something down on cards. He handed me the books, and I barely restrained myself from kissing his hand. A great surge of affection swept over me toward this good person along with the desperate urge to read what was written in these books.

  Six

  I finished the Yiddish book that same day. I became so engrossed in it I even forgot my hunger. There were only a few pages devoted to most philosophers in this book. Some of them—Plato, Aristotle, and Democritus—were familiar to me from browsing through Guide to the Perplexed, The Khuzari, and Faiths and Opinions and other volumes in our house as well as the Book of the Covenant. I understood only a little of what I read, but I plowed right through lest my father catch me, tear these heretical books to pieces, and slap me besides. I was anxious to discover as quickly as possible why men and animals had to suffer. The philosophers offered various opinions regarding the creation of the world, but I clung to the question “How do they know?” Since they weren’t in heaven, and neither God nor the First Cause nor the Entelechy spoke to them, how could I reply to them? I encountered such words as idea, form, categories, substance, monads, idealism, materialism, empiricism, solipsism, but the questions of how things could exist forever, how the world could be without limit, and why cats caught mice remained unanswered. Only one philosopher, Schopenhauer, mentioned the sufferings of men and animals, but according to this book, he offered no explanations for it. The world, he said, consisted of a blind will, of passions that had no reason and that the intellect served them like a slave ….

  After a while, I turned to the Hebrew book. Reading about philosophy in Hebrew was even harder for me than in Yiddish. Actually I didn’t read but scanned through the pages for parts that would answer my questions in clear fashion, but there was less clarity here than in the books on the cabala, particularly The Pillar of Service. The pleasure that I got from these two books gradually turned into despair and rage. If the philosophers didn’t know and couldn’t know—as Locke, Hume, and Kant themselves indicated—what need was there for all those high-flown words? Why all the research? I had the suspicion that the philosophers pretended, masked their ignorance behind Latin and Greek phrases. Besides, it seemed to me that they skirted the main issues, the essence of things. The question of questions was the suffering of creatures, man’s cruelty to man and to animals. Even if it provided answers to all the other questions but this one, philosophy would still be worthless.

  Those were my feelings then, and those are my feelings still. But in reading about these philosophers I got the impression that the question of suffering was of little consequence to them.

  My brother had left a dictionary of foreign words and phrases in the house, and I looked up the more difficult words. On one page of one of the philosophy books it discussed whether the sentence “Seven and five equals twelve” is a priori or synthetically a priori. I looked up the meaning of a priori and “synthetic” as well as of “analytic,” which was mentioned there, too, and at the same time I thought: “How can it help the chewed-up mouse or the devoured lamb whether the sentence ‘Seven and five equals twelve,’ is analytic or synthetic?” I know today that the whole Kantian philosophy hangs on this question, but the problem of problems is still to me the suffering of people and animals. I have the same feeling today when I try to read the convoluted commentaries of Wittgenstein and his disciples who try to convince themselves and others that all that we lack is a clear definition of words. Give us a dictionary with crystalclear definitions (if such a thing is even possible) and the pains of all the martyrs of all times and of all the tortured creatures would become justified forever ….

  In the course of the month that I kept the two books (I don’t know to this day who their authors were) I read them virtually day and night. I constantly referred to the dictionary, but the more I read and probed in these books, the more obvious it became to me that I would find no answers to my questions in them. Actually, the philosophers all said the same thing I had heard from my mother—that the ways of God (or of nature or of Substance or of the Absolute) were hidden. We didn’t know them and we couldn’t know. Even then I detected the similarity between the cabala and Baruch Spinoza. Both felt that everything in the world is a part of God, but while the cabala rendered to God such attributes as will, wisdom, grandeur, mercy, Spinoza attributed to God merely the capacity to extend and to think. The anguish of people and animals did not concern Spinoza’s God even in the slightest. He had no feelings at all concerning justice or freedom. He Himself wasn’t free but had to act according to eternal laws. The Baal Shem and the murderer were of equal importance to Him. Everything was preordained, and no change whatsoever could affect Spinoza’s God or the things that were part of Him. Billions of years ago He knew that someone would assassinate the Austrian archduke and that Nikolai Nikolaevich would have an old rabbi in a small Polish town hanged for being an alleged German spy.

  The book said that Spinoza proposed that God be loved with a rational love (amor Dei intellectualis), but how could you love such a mighty and wise God who didn’t possess even a spark of compassion toward the tortured and beaten? This philosophy exuded a chill, though still I felt that it might contain more truth (bitter truth) than the cabala. If God were indeed full of mercy and benevolence, He wouldn’t have allowed starvation, plagues, and pogroms. Spinoza’s God merely fortified the contentions of Malthus.

  When the Germans entered Warsaw, the hunger became even worse. An epidemic of typhus broke out. My younger brother, Moishe, caught the spotted typhus and was taken to the municipal hospital. His life was in danger, and Mother cried her eyes out begging God (or whoever was in charge) in his behalf. Spinoza taught me that prayers couldn’t help in any way, but the cabala books said that prayers recited with fervor went straight to the Throne of Glory and could avert the worst decree. How could Spinoza be so sure that God had no will or compassion? He, Spinoza, was no more than blood and flesh himself, after all. Thank God, Moishe recovered.

  Between 1915 and 1917, hundreds of people died on Krochmalna Street. Now a funeral procession passed our windows and now the ambulance taking the sick to the hospital. I saw women shake their fists at the sky and in their rage call God a murderer and a villain. I saw Chassidim at the Radzymin study house and in the other study houses grow swollen from malnutrition. At home we ate frozen potatoes that had a sweetish, nauseating taste. The Germans kept scoring victories, but those who foretold that the war wouldn’t last longer than six weeks had to admit their error. Millions of people had already perished, but Malthus’ God still hadn’t had enough.

  In the midst of all this, the Revolution broke out in Russia. The Tsar was overthrown, and the Jews in the Radzymin study house promptly began to say that this was an omen presaging the coming of the Messiah. The dead rotted, but new hopes were aroused in those still living. It was possible that this Revolution was an act of Providence, but the hunger and sicknesses in Warsaw grew steadily worse. Father became so dejected by the situation that he just about stopped paying attention to me, and I was free to read all the books I could get my hands on. Nor did I neglect to study the Gemara and the commentaries. I studied, read, and let my imagination soar. Since both the cabalists and the philosophers made everything up out of their heads, why couldn’t I ferret the truth out with my own brain? Maybe it was destined that I should uncover the truth of Creation? But all my ruminations came smack up against the exasperating enigma of eternity and infinity and against the even deeper mystery of suffering and cruelty.

  Seven

  In the summer of 1917 my mother took me and my younger brother, Moishe, to Bilgorai where her father had been the town rabbi for forty years. He had fled from the Russians to Lublin and had died there of the cholera. My grandmother Hannah was no longer living either. My uncle Joseph, Mother’s brother, had become the Bilgorai rabbi. I have described this trip in detail in my book In My Father’s Court. The library in Bilgorai was a small one, but I had already started reading P
olish then, and I also had the opportunity to read the history of philosophy as well as Spinoza’s Ethics in German. I even read Karl Marx’s Das Kapital in Yiddish. Materialism—historical materialism particularly—never attracted me. In my worst moments of doubt I knew that this world hadn’t evolved on its own but that behind it lay some plan, a consciousness, a metaphysical force. Blind forces couldn’t create even one fly. But in Spinoza’s Ethics I found a kind of cheerless greatness. Since according to Spinoza substance possessed an endless number of attributes, this left some room for fantasy. I even toyed with the notion of changing some of Spinoza’s axioms and definitions and bringing out a new Ethics. You could easily say that time was one of God’s attributes, too, as well as purpose, creativeness, and growth. I had read somewhere about Lobachevski’s non-Euclidian geometry, and I wanted to create a non-Spinozian pantheism, or whatever it might be called. I was ready to make will a divine attribute, too. This kind of revisionist Spinozism would come very close to the cabala.

  There was an enlightened Jew in Bilgorai, Todros the watchmaker, who took an interest in science and philosophy, I tutored his daughter—a beautiful girl—in Hebrew, and her father and I discussed the loftier matters. He subscribed to several scientific periodicals from Warsaw, and I learned from him about Einstein, Planck, and the fact that the atom was a kind of solar system with electrically positive protons and electrically negative electrons. The indivisibility of the atom had always puzzled me. No matter how small a thing was, you could always imagine a half of it, a quarter of it, and so on ad infinitum. I said to Todros in a Gemara chant: “Since the atom is not the final measure of smallness, why should it be the electron? A few years hence scholars will probably discover that the electron can be split, too, that it also consists of a system, and so on without an end. If bigness has no limit, then neither has smallness. It’s altogether possible that each atom is a universe and that the electron is actually a planet inhabited by tiny people and animals. It’s not inconceivable that on one of these planets sit an Isaac and Todros carrying on more or less the same discussion as we are.”

  A half-burned match lay on the table, and I said: “Nor is it inconceivable that this match contains countless worlds where people study, learn, marry, and breed—that there are universities there and philosophers writing books.”

  I wanted to add that there were loves there, too, since I was in love with his daughter, my pupil. Todros smiled and gazed at the match stub.

  I went on: “Maybe our world is also part of some cosmic match. Maybe there exist such persons in the infinite universe who could stick our solar system in their pocket, and maybe they actually do this without our knowledge …”

  “Well, well, the things that all could be …. Science speaks only of things known to exist, not of the possibilities.”

  “I read that there are such rays that vibrate a million times a second. Maybe there are creatures, too, that can experience in one second what we experience in a hundred years.”

  “Yes, maybe. But meanwhile the situation on our planet grows ever worse. In the Ukraine they’re slaughtering Jewish children like in Chmielnicki’s times. I got a bunch of newspapers from Warsaw yesterday. It’s hard to believe that such savageries are being committed in the twentieth century.”

  “The same savageries will be committed in the thirtieth century, in the fiftieth century, and in the hundredth century.”

  “Why do you say this, eh? Don’t you believe in progress?”

  “God wants murder—He must have it,” I said. “Did you ever hear of Malthus?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of him and I’ve read him. But you can control human birth. French women have only two children. If people would stop breeding like rabbits, you wouldn’t need all the wars and epidemics. In the civilized countries they’ve just about eliminated cholera. Typhus is rare there. Even here, smallpox is becoming extinct. You can regulate everything with knowledge and patience.”

  “If they will eliminate one sickness, others will crop up. God is evil,” I said, astounded at my own words. “A good God wouldn’t arrange it that wolves should devour lambs and cats should catch innocent mice.”

  “He is neither evil nor good,” Todros said. “He doesn’t exist and that’s all there is to it. And nature doesn’t care about morality.”

  “Where did nature come from?”

  “Where did God come from? Nature is here and we must come to terms with it and use its laws for the good of humanity.”

  “What about the animals?”

  “We can’t worry about the animals.”

  The wick in the kerosene lamp cast a bright glow; the stove gave off warmth. My pupil brought two glasses of tea from the kitchen. Her face was pale, but her eyes were coal-black. She listened to our conversation and smiled. Girls never discussed such matters. They talked about shoes, dresses, engagements, weddings, and bargains you could pick up in the market ….

  My new friend, Notte Schwerdscharf, made speeches and proposed that the Jews go to Palestine, but the girls didn’t take him seriously. What difference did it make what Notte said anyway? Each Monday and Thursday he got a new crazy notion. There were already communists in Bilgorai, too. There was even one Jewish youth who was a Polish patriot and had enlisted in Pilsudski’s Legion. The pious Jews had organized an Orthodox party.

  When my mother took me and my brother Moishe to Bilgorai, my brother Joshua remained in Warsaw. He hadn’t the slightest desire to bury himself away in such a Godforsaken hole as Bilgorai. My father went back to Radzymin to help the Chassidic rabbi there compose his books. The Radzymin rabbi had a poor handwriting, and his spelling in Hebrew was atrocious. His commentaries were fatuous, and the scholars scoffed at him. The rabbi needed a “wet nurse,” and my father fulfilled this capacity. Eventually, my brother went to Kiev, which the Germans had occupied, and he worked there in the local Yiddish press.

  Later came the Bolshevik Revolution and with it, the bands that committed pogroms. Long months went by that we didn’t hear from my brother. My sister Hindele had been living in Antwerp with her husband, and when the Germans invaded Belgium, the couple fled to England. He being a Russian citizen, the English authorities sent him back to Russia to report for military duty. However, the Revolution had broken out in the meantime and he was stuck in Russia. My sister lived with a child in London without any means of support. The mails didn’t function between England and Poland. For all these problems Mother had but one solution—praying. Compared to us, Todros lived in luxury and it was peaceful there. Todros’ wife had a candy store which stayed open until late. I drank the tea, nibbled along on a cookie, and discussed the higher matters with Todros.

  I argued: “If there is no God and if nature knows of no morality, why should man behave in a moral way? Why actually shouldn’t he make pogroms?”

  “And if—as you say—God is evil, why should man be good?” Todros countered my question with a question in Jewish fashion.

  “To spite God,” I replied. “Just because God wants men to kill each other and to slaughter innocent animals is why man must help man and animals, thus demonstrating that he doesn’t approve of the way God runs the world.”

  “If God exists, don’t you think He would have His way anyway? You think man is stronger than God?”

  “No, I don’t mean that at all. But man still has the right to protest if he considers God’s deeds unjust.”

  “And how will this protest help?”

  “It doesn’t have to help. This is a form of statement that one opposes God’s ways. If God kills and man kills, too, it means that we approve of the killing, and we can no longer blame God for the evils of the world.”

  I don’t guarantee that these were my exact words, but this more or less was my contention. Todros shrugged. He was a humanist, a liberal, and an atheist, and he could conceive of no reason for reckoning with a God that didn’t exist anyway. His approach was pragmatic. If you didn’t kill others, others wouldn’t kill you. Todros, incide
ntally, had been a pupil of my grandfather’s. When Todros began to utter heretical remarks, Grandfather ordered him out of his house. My mother often spoke of Todros, and I had the feeling that as a young girl she had figured on becoming his wife. Mother was sixteen and a half when she married my father.

  Another time, we got to talking about evil spirits. Todros, enlightened man that he was, naturally didn’t believe in such things. I asked him if he recalled the incident of the spirit knocking on Avromele the slaughterer’s window. The question apparently embarrassed Todros, for he began to stutter and shook his head.

  After a while, he said: “I don’t only remember it, I was there. We, the boys from the study house, went there every evening after the services.”

  “Did it really knock?”

  “Yes, it did.”

  “A demon, eh?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Who then did the knocking—a person?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “Is it true that the nachalnik sent police and soldiers to see if someone was playing tricks?”

  “I didn’t see it, but it seems it was so. The whole town talked about it. Not only soldiers, other people searched around, too.”

  “Who was it that did the knocking?”

  “I really don’t know. There must have been some cause for it. One thing is sure—it wasn’t a spirit because there are no such things.”

  I told Todros about my mother’s dream, three days before the numbers were drawn, that a Bilgorai woman would win the lottery, and Todros said: “Yes, I remember that they spoke of this in your grandfather’s house. It was nothing but a coincidence.”