by Elie Wiesel
In fact, he had been there only once. At a time when he was still in mourning for the death of my grandmother. Disconsolate, inconsolable, he spent his days studying and his nights praying. A forty-eight-hour lightning-quick visit. Officially he was supposed to see an old companion who was ill. But his real objective was more sentimental: to stroll around the Old City of Jerusalem. Recite the Psalms there. Find an elusive nostalgia. Hear reverberations of the prophets’ tragic warnings. Commune in front of the Wall and think about our ancestor, the illustrious Cabbalist, Rabbi Petahia, whose interpretation of the Names fires the imagination. Why didn’t he stay there? Was he unwilling to part from us? Was he afraid of starting a new life? No. I think I heard him murmur that regardless of where he’s from, a Jew feels at home on the soil of the prophets. That, for a Jew, living in Israel is a privilege: the privilege of coming home again. And that this privilege he didn’t deserve.
But he came home a changed man.
“That whole story concerning the young German that you’re obsessed with, over there, you’ll understand it better, and more deeply,” he said to me one day. “So many enemies have tried to destroy our people; the most recent one, in Germany, almost succeeded. Could all civilizations be mortal? You might think so. But there is Jerusalem.”
“According to the wise Rabbi Shaul,” my grandfather said, “the God of Israel did not invest four thousand years of faith and defiance in the history of his people in order to one day see them annihilated. And yet, at the time of the great Tragedy, the enemy had almost succeeded at it. Far from Jerusalem, it had almost destroyed Jerusalem. You’ve read the book of Ezekiel, haven’t you? He describes his vision of dry bones in the desert. And he predicts that one day they will come back to life. And yet, son, for the first time in our history, the dead had no right to a grave. The enemy even eliminated their bones, threw their ashes in the rivers, or scattered them in the wind. Think of that in Jerusalem when you dream of my Jerusalem. You won’t forget?”
“No, Grandfather. I won’t forget.”
As fate would have it, on the day I arrived trouble flared up on the southern border. An Israeli soldier was killed and three others wounded. Widespread turmoil and a wave of anger swept over the country. An infernal cycle that had become routine. Attack and counterattack. Aggression and reprisals. Kill the killers. And invariably, blood flows. And some children become orphans. And where does peace fit in? And the suffering of the stranger, known and unknown? Invariably, it is Death that comes out victorious. I visit the southern and central borders. I ask questions and listen. Rabbis and pupils, soldiers and civilians. Young vagabonds and old beggars. Political personalities and writers. How much longer will this era of uncertainty last? How can hatred be stopped? But how can terrorism be defeated if not through counterterrorism, that is, by spurning the glorious principle according to which every human life is sacred? How can we act so that the tears of joy of one don’t cause the anguished sobs of another? So that the hope of one isn’t based on the despair of another?
An oriental rabbi, with a fiery gaze and an impassioned expression, demands that his entire generation exercise vigilance as it waits for redemption.
An eloquent novelist pleads for the universalization of the Jewish ethic: improve the human condition of the Palestinians in the Territories; recognize their abiding right to self-determination.
For a left-wing politician, there is no other solution but the creation of two independent sovereign states living side by side in security and peace.
His right-wing opponent sees this plan as utopian. The terrorist in the enemy camp doesn’t want territorial concessions; his dream is the creation of a single state. A Palestinian state. Built on our corpses.
A human rights activist blames me for not helping the Palestinian cause. I reply: “Let them stop the terrorist violence and there will be many of us embracing it.”
I dedicate my story to my grandfather. I address him. It is to him that I relate my discoveries, the things that make me proud, those that frighten me, those that rend my heart.
Suddenly I think of the great Nikolai Gogol: on returning from Jerusalem, he burned part two of his book Dead Souls. I can understand him: the experience of Jerusalem is too powerful, too intense. Faced with it, words inevitably lose their vigor. Purifying them by fire then becomes a possibility, as shown by Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav and Franz Kafka.
Let me explain.
A beautiful, aristocratic woman with a haughty bearing. Around forty. Her only son, a Tzahal lieutenant, was killed when he threw himself on a grenade to protect his comrades. She visits his grave every morning. She tells him about the events of the day. I ask her if she thinks she will ever know happiness again, in the near or distant future. She looks at me in silence. As though she had understood not the meaning of my question but the very nature of my Jewishness.
I feel like talking to her about my sons, but I’m afraid she will break down in tears. About Alika then? About my love for her, or my attachment to my grandfather? In spite of his past, so fraught with grief and bereavement, he remains open to joy, a joy so different from mine or the joy of most men: it seems drawn from a source known to him alone. But I am aware that this sort of comparison is displaced. Two instances of grief add up without canceling each other. One doesn’t justify the other, even if it explains it. Incapable of consoling her, I feel at loose ends, disoriented, useless. Should I kiss her on the cheek? I choose to do nothing and say nothing. May my respectful and wounded silence be an offering.
Let me explain.
My last hours in Jerusalem, in the Old City. I spend a sleepless night thinking things through.
I had promised my grandfather that I wouldn’t forget the past, the past that haunted him. How was I to reconcile Auschwitz and Jerusalem? Would the former merely be the antithesis, the anti-event of the latter? If Auschwitz is forever the question, is Jerusalem forever the answer? On the one hand the darkness of the abyss, on the other the dazzling light of daybreak? At Birkenau and Treblinka, the burning bush was consumed, but here the flame continues to warm the hearts of messianic dreamers.
What is the meaning of all this?
Let me explain.
I catch myself having a sudden desire to pray. I pray for Alika: may she find serenity. For my two children: may they find fulfillment in a world rid of all cruelty, cynicism, and pain, and all forms of fanaticism. For my uncle Méir: may his madness continue to bring beauty and not intellectual decline. For my grandfather: may he still live a long time, may he find the strength to recount what can only be expressed by song or silence.
Let me explain.
The beggars, whose palms and mouths were constantly open, even when there wasn’t a single tourist in sight. Not one answered my questions, but they all made me offerings that have greater weight than the best of replies. I collect their stories with a deep sense of gratitude.
The story of the two drops of water in the ocean that look for each other in vain and meet only when solitude and nostalgia turn them into tears—I got this story from one of them. I regard it as a treasure that it is incumbent upon me to safeguard.
I say to him: it could be that God set me on man’s earth for the express purpose of this meeting here tonight, in the shadow of the shades that roam before the Wall, and to listen to you.
Suddenly, facing the remains of the ancient Temple, where countless pilgrims have come to express their thirst for truth and redemption, I realize that, for the first time in a long time, far from Alika, I haven’t lived or even approached experience in theatrical terms.
Perhaps because here neither fate nor history appears as a spectacle that can be interrupted or canceled at will.
Like my grandfather, when I returned to New York I was no longer the same.
AND JOURNALISM? AND THE TRIAL? Werner and Anna. The young German would like to see me. What does he want to talk to me about? Does he want to compare notes, the notes of the actor with the notes of the spectator?
/> So I was a journalist. I began my career as a drama critic. Yet it had never occurred to me; it had never been one of my ambitions. Actually, I owe being cast in this part to our bearded professor with the mischievous expression.
During my third year of study, he gave me to understand—and hardly with kid gloves—that he couldn’t see me leading a useful or honorable life on the stage.
“You like the theater, that’s for sure,” he said to me one day. “It means a lot to you, that’s obvious, and I like that. But I can’t see you on the boards.”
And after a pause for dramatic effect: “I see you in the audience.”
Some of my classmates started to laugh while I felt crushed. Alika lost her temper. “You morons, you find this funny? Professor, how can you enjoy humiliating a student in public?”
He hastened to correct himself. “Pay no attention to the wiseguys, my son. You’re superior to them. In fact, you’re the best in the class. But …”
“But what?” Alika asked insistently. “Go on. Don’t stop in the middle of a nasty remark.”
He didn’t answer her, but invited me to come and see him after class in his office.
I expected criticism, or worse: a condescending lesson to make me understand, for once and for all, that I was a hopeless actor. And I wasn’t completely mistaken.
We were standing in front of the window giving out on a garden. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Listen to me carefully, my son. I’m convinced of what I said, though I was wrong to say it in the middle of class in front of everyone, and I hope you’ll forgive me. I’d like you to understand something very simple: there’s more than one way of being crazy about theater. It’s a love that can be expressed through writing, directing, acting, music, lighting design, and even—after all, we’re talking about gifts in the literal sense of the word—by financing shows. Yes, don’t look at me like that. Theater is a passion and also an art, and isn’t art the most sublime form of generosity?”
“In other words, Professor, your advice to me is to earn a lot of money first, is that it? To become a rich donor, the sponsor of a theater company, and to live my whole life as an onlooker?”
“No,” the professor replied, looking solemn. “That’s not my advice to you.”
“Then …”
“My advice to you is to never stray from the theater. It’s your world, your universe; I’m even tempted to say your salvation. It will justify your life and give it meaning.”
“But how am I to achieve this?”
He paused for a long time before replying, “I’ll give it some thought. When I come up with the answer, I’ll let you know.”
A few weeks later, he summoned me to his office again. On that day, he sat at his desk as he welcomed me in.
“You’ll become a drama critic.”
“But I’m not qualified! I’ve never written a thing. I’ll never be able to! I’m not a journalist!”
“You’re knowledgeable about theater, you love it, you live and breathe theater with all your heart and intellect. That’s all that matters.”
And that’s how, to Alika’s astonishment and the joy of all my relatives, including my grandfather, I became a journalist in spite of myself.
As drama critic for the Morning Post, a respectable daily, I worked with Bernard Colliers, head of the cultural pages, under the orders of Paul Adler, the all-powerful, respected editor in chief, my bearded professor’s former student. When I went to see him in his office, cluttered with newspapers, books, magazines, and other papers, Paul went on correcting a story without giving me so much as a glance. I couldn’t help being wary of the man: he had a piercing look and his face was thin and bony; the first impression he gave was of great severity. Later I learned to deal with his mood swings, his impatience, and his tantrums.
“So, young man, it seems you’re dying to become a journalist?”
“No. Not a journalist. I wanted to be an actor.”
“And like so many others, since you can’t do anything else, you’re falling back on the glorious profession of journalist.”
“No again. It was my professor’s idea, not mine.”
“I know. He told me.”
I kept silent, thinking: nothing is going to come of this. It’s a waste of time. A failure from the very start. Why should I have any illusions? This man doesn’t like me; it’s as clear as daylight. He’ll never like me. He’s not going to hire me just to please a professor, even if he’s the best, most prominent professor around. He’s going to dismiss me, promising to get back to me in a few days or a few years.
However, he continued our conversation. “What play have you seen recently, and where? I don’t mean a show put on by your friends. I mean real theater, with professionals. On Broadway or Off Broadway.”
In a faint voice I replied, “Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh.”
“Did you like it?”
“Yes. A lot.”
“Why?”
How could I avoid banalities? I told him that I had admired the dramatic intensity of the play, the actors’ sober performance, the austere direction …
“Fine,” he said. “Go into the next office. Tell me all this in writing.”
How can you write something intelligent and worthwhile under such pressure, when words are buzzing around in your head and your heart is pounding wildly?
I tried, God is my witness, I tried. But I knew it would serve no purpose. It was a losing battle.
Bah, I said to myself, never mind. It’s bound to be a slapdash job. What does it matter what I say and how I say it? Let’s be quick and move on. A poor student, I stuffed into my “assignment” everything I knew about the author, including the writers he was influenced by: Chekhov, Gogol, Joyce, Kafka—and why not?—the Midrash, and so on. I never wrote anything as mediocre.
A good hour later, I knocked on the boss’s door and handed him three typewritten pages, which I hadn’t bothered to reread.
He glanced at them and called out to me, “I’m busy right now. I’ll get back to you with my opinion tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Leave me your phone number.”
I shared an anxious twenty-four hours with Alika. She was more nervous than I, and more agitated. I knew the response would be negative. She was more optimistic. She tried to calm me and help me pass the time, by drinking, eating, making love with me—I got that out of it at least. But I expected the worst. I was annoyed at myself for having listened to my professor. I shouldn’t have gone and disturbed that editor in chief, who was so full of himself; it had been a mistake to expose myself to the ridiculous humiliation he inflicted on me; I’d never forgive myself for it …
There was no word from him all day.
A second sleepless night. Alika was fed up and so was I.
You stupid idiot, I said to myself for the tenth time. You let a stranger make a fool of you. Shame on you.
The following morning, Alika popped out to the corner grocery. She reappeared after a few minutes, out of breath.
“Look, Yedi. I bought the newspaper. Look at the first page.”
There they were, the opening lines of my piece. And then: “Continued in the Culture pages.” A little paragraph announced that the author of this review was the paper’s new drama critic and included a rather flattering biographical notice mentioning my bearded professor.
I was just dying to grab a cab to go share my joy with my parents. Alika stopped me.
“They’re still asleep.”
“They won’t mind being woken up.”
“Later. First, make love to me.”
I would have liked to call my grandfather. He slept very little and rose early. But Alika’s desire had priority.
Then I called Itzhak and Orli, Méir and Drora. I pictured their happiness. It was sincere and warmed my heart. Then I went to see my parents.
My father made the following comment: “Do you know the difference between a writer and a journalist? The journalist defines himself by what
he says, and the writer by what he doesn’t say.” Was he happy about my success? I had no idea.
My mother hugged me.
“I’m proud of you, son,” she said. “Of course, I still wish you’d been a lawyer.”
“A journalist is also a lawyer,” my father cut in. “He’ll stand up for the defenseless, the poor, the starving, for abused children and unlucky writers: isn’t that the lawyer’s finest mission? As well as the journalist’s?”
In response, I felt I should set him straight.
“That’s not the kind of journalist I’m going to be, Father. I’ll be writing about theater.”
My mother put coffee and cookies on the table. We had a warm, protracted conversation on the role of the press in contemporary society. My father believed that it is impossible to separate the areas of activity of individual men or communities. From the ethical point of view—the only truly significant one—everything is interrelated. Mom chose to see lawyers everywhere. As for me, I pleaded for the sovereignty of theater, its virtues but also its obligations.
Before I left them, my father gave me some advice that he attributed to an obscure author dating from the time of the Apocrypha whom the mysterious One-Eyed Paritus often claimed as a source of inspiration.
“The person who wants to serve his fellow men, hence the community, hence the individuals who comprise it, must observe the following rules: never flatter powerful men, and never submit to their whims. In other words, my son, never let anyone buy you or frighten you. And then this: if you wish to criticize, start by criticizing yourself; try not to disparage anyone, ever. When your opinion is negative, choose your words carefully so as not to humiliate the person you’re criticizing or put him to shame.”
My new boss gave me advice that was more or less the same. For on that very day, Paul Adler personally informed me that I was now a member of his staff, with the rights and duties this implied.
