by Elie Wiesel
“I know I have disappointed you,” he told them. “How can I justify my late arrival? At least let me explain it to you. On my way here I passed a house where an infant was crying. I knocked at the door; there was no one with the child. No doubt the parents had had to go out. So was I to go away too? And leave an infant alone with his fear, alone with his hunger? I approached the cradle and soothed the child. Do you understand? When a child is crying, the Messiah can wait.”
After that, the pupils were no longer surprised whenever Razziel interrupted his teaching to welcome a starving beggar or a widow in mourning. Who knows? Maybe they were messengers.
For his first lesson, Razziel had quoted Paritus:
In the beginning, tradition tells us, was the word. But before that? Before the first word spoken by God, what was there? It was from this silence that language was born. In wakening into life, and therefore to consciousness, man found himself enclosed in a silence that exceeded him and at the same time provoked him. He broke the silence in order to fulfill himself, in accordance with the divine will, and began, like God, to make use of language.
Thence comes this tension in us—the first tension, created by desire and violation—between spoken words, human language, and silence, which lays claim to being the language of God. The secret of the one matches the mystery of the other. But language, like silence, is not without its dangers; the poet and the visionary both bear the burning seal of the words behind words.
In childhood, searching for the truth of despair, man aspires with all his being to silence—to the mystic silence that suggests the inaccessible, the forbidden, and the beyond. Masters teach him how to purify everyday language through the silence of sacrifice, in order to hasten the end of all times. Let all men be silent, or speak without lying, without demeaning their souls, and the Savior will be there.
And when he will be there, men will come from all over to salute him with long cries of joy and songs of happiness.
But the Messiah, in his melancholy, will remain silent.
At that hour of the morning, Brooklyn is in turmoil. The streets are full of people in a hurry. Old Hasidim, with ritual objects under their arms, are running to shachris, the morning service. Ageless grandmothers, with black scarves over their heads, are going to open their husbands’ bakeries and grocery stores. Children are climbing into the yellow buses that take them to the heder or to the school for little girls. People are talking Yiddish with all the accents of Central Europe. Acquaintances call out to one another, exchange the morning’s news. Trouble in the outside world? That doesn’t concern them. In Brooklyn the focus is on life in Brooklyn. Who said what about which rabbi or against his court. Certainly, they talk about Israel too. The Satmarer Rebbe’s followers are passionately opposed to it; others defend it ferociously. Fanatics shout. Violence is in the air. Insults, threats, oaths; it doesn’t take much for them to come to blows. The fanatics invoke the Torah to justify their hatred of the other: They forget that whoever makes use of the sacred scrolls as instruments of murder is himself guilty of murder. And yet, there is also the general mood of study and prayer that somehow brings them all together.
For the Days of Awe are approaching; Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the days when the King of the Universe will judge the nations and cause men to tremble, are only a week away.
Elsewhere, in Manhattan and all over the planet, it is events of another kind that interest people. History, in the grip of upheavals, experiences highs and lows at a vertiginous pace. A wave of liberation has been sweeping across the continent of Europe. The dictatorship in Poland is finished. The bloody tyrants in Czechoslovakia and Romania have exited. The Berlin Wall has been demolished. Everywhere, joyful crowds celebrate the triumph of their democratic aspirations. Everywhere the chains are falling off. It seems that the last decade of the century offers a powerful message of happiness for generations to come.
But the forces of evil have not abdicated. The malevolent ghosts of hatred are resurgent with a fury and a boldness that are as astounding as they are nauseating: ethnic conflicts, religious riots, anti-Semitic incidents here, there, and everywhere. What is wrong with these morally degenerate people that they abuse their freedom, so recently won? Such questions are not posed in Brooklyn. In Brooklyn they are rather more concerned with the accounts that each one will have to render to God on the day of the New Year, on judgment day, Rosh Hashanah. Before this Judge there will be only one question to answer: How have you spent your days and nights, what have you done with your talent?
Razziel knew the answer: His own life had been wasted. Since Kali’s death he had reflected on it bitterly and resentfully, but it was too late to start again; Kali had taken it with her into the grave. His life’s book was written and finished; it was impossible to modify its substance.
“From the mother’s womb to the bowels of the earth,” Paritus used to say, “the journey is a short one and the same for us all.” “But where is the Eternal in all this?” the Jewish mystic Gdalya ben Jacob had asked him. “Can it not have some sway over the length—if not the direction—this journey takes?” “God watches, that’s all,” Paritus was said to have replied. “But it’s when he is not watching that things grow complicated and become interesting.” Too interesting, thought Razziel. Could that be man’s goal, to live an “interesting” life? For Paritus, the essential quality of action was not to dissipate itself but to inscribe itself in an immutable time. And was not this time the time of death?
Lord, look at me. Do you but see me? asked Razziel. Are you present with me in my solitude? Are you my shelter or am I yours? I have been deprived of everything and abandoned by all; you are all I have in the world. You, my judge, are my dispenser of justice, my secret. What have I done?
Across the river from Brooklyn, Manhattan soars toward blue heights that are close but unattainable. A symphony of smells and languages, a kaleidoscope of colors and dream-like events, a focal point for the daily brutality of men and of the fates that befall them, a center of attraction for ambitions, passions, aspirations, and conspiracies. People become rich or poor there, famous or forgotten, politically powerful or socially crushed—all in the twinkling of an eye. A chance encounter is enough to save you or ruin you. A handshake may carry you up into the seventh heaven or plunge you down to the ninth circle of hell.
Since Kali’s death, Razziel had never been back to Manhattan. Rather than live in the comfortable apartment his father-in-law had given him, he had preferred his modest furnished room close to the yeshiva. There he had the bare necessities. A bed, a table, a few shelves for his books, a bathroom, a kitchenette—that was enough for him. Luxury had never appealed to him; after his marriage he accepted it only grudgingly. Why did affluence make him feel guilty? Kali would tease him: “You may be born to suffer, but I’m not.” Was it true? Then Kali would say, “Look at you. If you’re not suffering you reproach yourself and you end up suffering even more.”
She understood so much, Kali. It was that wisdom that had attracted him. More than her beauty? Certainly as much, but differently. Even if it created tensions between them, their passion for truth reinforced their bonds. Kali was against self-censorship. She rejected constraints. Being both stubborn and adaptable, she helped her husband in his refusal of creature comforts and complacency. For Razziel, Kali represented an intellectual rigor and a spiritual ambition without which his inner strivings could never have reached their goal. Sometimes he quoted Paritus to her: “What people who are alternately attracted by language and by silence don’t understand is that there can be silence in talk and talk in silence. They don’t understand that what is revealed keeps its own mystery.” Kali’s reaction was always the same: “Tell your friend Paritus to stop getting on my nerves.” Was it Paritus who provoked the quarrels that sometimes seemed to come between them? Was she jealous of him?
It had certainly not spoiled the all-too-brief years of a perfect marriage. They were deeply in love. Bound to each other, body and soul,
they functioned as one. Life, for them, held the most prodigious of adventures, the most dazzling of passions. They loved to discover it, laughing, roaming in Central Park, visiting exhibitions. Sometimes, they would pretend not to know one another. Then they had to invent a new way of making an approach: “Are you a New Yorker, miss? No? May I be of assistance to you? Would you allow me to show you the way to the Statue of Liberty?” And Kali would join in the game. “Excuse me, I don’t know you. Who do you take me for?” When he insisted on “explaining” a Goya or a Velázquez painting to her at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she proved to him with disarming aplomb that she knew more about painting than he did.
Then things began to go wrong. The angels in heaven must have been jealous. As the years went by, Razziel seemed increasingly preoccupied with his buried past and this made him forget how to live in the present. He grew angry with himself for not being able to share everything with his wife. He would have liked to talk to her about his parents but he knew nothing about them. And he was tormented by his longing to see Paritus. His last message— from a remote province in India—had reached him three or four years ago. Was he ill? Dead, maybe? He had promised to see Razziel again, to help him unearth the secret of his past. Why had he not kept his promise?
And then Kali became pregnant. His joy did not last long, for she fell ill. Gravely ill. Even more than a husband, he had longed to be a father. “Everything will be all right,” he told his wife. “You’ll see. You’ll get well soon. We’ll have a son who—” And Kali would correct him in a weak voice: “Or a daughter.” Razziel kissed her brow. “If she’s like you, I agree.” But Kali’s condition grew worse. Doctors’ visits, various tests, nuclear medicine, all kinds of therapies: Though she was aware of the seriousness of her condition, she did not stop smiling, but from one day to the next her smile grew paler. Never leaving her bedside, Razziel neglected his duties at the yeshiva. He asked for and was granted the prayers of several masters. Children in the schools recited psalms for her. In his mind, Razziel begged Paritus to come to his aid: Kali must come through, must be strong enough to give birth. When her parents, crushed by worry, came to visit them it was he who offered words of comfort. They would repeat over and over: “Why not consult another doctor, a greater specialist? We’ll sell everything, we’ll give anything. . . .” But there was nothing to be done. Too weak to read, Kali liked Razziel to read to her: newspaper articles, poems and essays by all kinds of authors, ancient texts. She would doze as she listened. Yet when Razziel stopped she would surprise him with her comments. “I’m so proud of you,” he would say to her, kissing her. He learned to give injections and was always there when Kali needed them.
“How much time do I have left?” Kali asked him one morning, as he lay beside her.
“Everything to do with time is in God’s hands, not the doctors’,” Razziel replied in a murmur. “But the doctors are confident. And God tells you not to resign yourself but to hold on, to fight. You’re not alone. Take strength from me, from your parents, our friends.”
“They’re afraid to tell you the truth,” Kali replied softly.
She went into decline at an alarming rate. She stopped eating and slept all the time. When she opened her eyes and looked at Razziel, she seemed to be begging for death.
There was no need for explanations. As on their first day, they knew. They had crossed a threshold. Kali’s life was at its end.
Razziel also knew he would never be a father. His line would end with him.
It was a Jewish American industrialist, Arieh Leib Friedman, who had brought Razziel to the United States. Associated with an ultraorthodox organization concerned with Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe, he had learned from Paritus of the young prisoner’s plight. Making use of his connections in high places, he had succeeded in obtaining his release. Razziel arrived in New York, equipped with a political refugee’s visa, as a “relative” of his protector. Out of gratitude, as much as to ease the formalities, Razziel had adopted his surname. Accepted into a yeshiva in Brooklyn, yet again thanks to a recommendation from Paritus, who seemed to know everybody, he spent fruitful years there studying the sacred texts and the endless commentaries on them: the Talmud and its laws. Later, after his ordination, he was initiated into the esoteric sciences. He wrote an essay on the concept of exile in Jewish thought. Why does the Torah begin with the second letter, beth, rather than the first, aleph? Because the latter was already in exile. Exile is the principal theme of human existence. Adam and Eve were exiled from paradise. Thereafter the whole universe, and its creator too, lived in exile. In mourning, the prisoner of his creation, the Shekinah, weeps and cries out in silence; she desires to go home, return to her first dwelling, to be united with the source. Woe unto him who heareth not her lamentations. . . .
Razziel could have obtained a pulpit, but he preferred to devote himself to teaching, especially because his beloved Kali had refused to become a rabbi’s wife, a rebbitsin. Her brother, Binem, had been a student at the yeshiva. Invited by his father to come and celebrate the Sabbath with the family, Razziel had met Kali, a slim young woman with long brown hair, bubbling with wit and self-confidence. Even when she lost her temper, her angular face shone with her love of life. Some people thought of her as arrogant. That Friday evening at the dining table, she had become angry because her brother, who was both pious and timid, refused to talk about the obviously unscientific character of certain Bible stories. Though Razziel was immediately fascinated by the young woman, he made the mistake of coming to his pupil’s defense. Kali took an instant dislike to him and let him feel it. Seeing him in sudden distress, her father consoled him. “Pay no attention to my daughter; she’s only happy when she’s making someone miserable. Tonight, it happens to be you.”
The following week Razziel refused an invitation to spend the Sabbath with Binem’s family again, and the third week too. The following Thursday it was Kali herself who arrived on his doorstep with a letter from her father. “I have a great favor to ask of you: Come and spend the Sabbath with us again. It will be a special one. It falls on an anniversary that has marked my life: that of my parents’ arrival in America.” And Kali added with a smile, “I promise not to tease you. Mind you, it won’t be so much fun.”
When she opened her lips she smiled. And when she smiled her eyes sparkled. Her father did not wait long to speak privately to Razziel: Why didn’t he marry his daughter?
But Razziel was not ready for marriage. “I don’t know if I have the right to start a family. First of all I must learn who I am and who my parents are. Even if they’re dead, I have a duty to invite them to the wedding. Let us wait a little. Paritus will come to our aid. Kali will understand.”
Kali’s father sought the intervention of friends. Then he took Razziel to see Rebbe Tzvi-Hersh of Kamenets, the descendant of a celebrated Hasidic Master. The old man radiated kindness. Seated in his armchair, he welcomed Razziel with outstretched hands.
“I have heard a great deal about you, young man. What the Talmud says of Akiba ben Yoseph also applies to you: Your fame travels from one end of the world to the other. People speak to me in praise of your learning and your piety. But why do you wish to live alone? You should take a wife, build a house, assure the survival of our people—is that not the first commandment of the Torah?”
And without allowing his visitor to interrupt, he began enumerating the virtues of married life. You can serve God by making yourself useful to mankind; you can liberate the Messiah from his prison by consoling a being in distress; or you can celebrate divine law simply by bringing up a child in the faith of our ancestors.
Razziel listened to him with a heavy heart. Out of respect for the Rebbe, he chose not to show that his arguments had failed to convince him. But the old man guessed, for he invited him to come and spend the following Sabbath under his roof, so they could continue their conversation.
During the service and at mealtimes the Rebbe’s followers sang and danced, praising the L
ord for having made the Sabbath the object and soul of Creation. Razziel held back. He felt painfully like a stranger. Desolate, he wondered why he had been invited, since no one was paying any attention to him. But he was mistaken. During the third meal, while wistful regret was engulfing the Hasidim as the Sabbath drew to a close, someone joined him in his corner and asked him why he was not singing. It was G’dalia, a disconcerting young Hasid. Tall and emaciated, he exerted great influence on his fellow Hasidim: They called him “the dark one.” The Rebbe loved him because he stood up to him. “The best proof that I’m not a rabbi,” he would say, laughingly, “is that G’dalia is my Hasid.”
G’dalia went up to Razziel and touched his arm. “You have blasphemed. Sadness is the negation of the Sabbath, which reflects the joy of the Creator as he contemplates his creation. Why did you refuse to sing?”
“I was not capable of it.”
“You could have forced yourself.”
“Isn’t the use of force forbidden on the Sabbath?”
They had to break off their conversation. The third meal was coming to an end, they needed to attend maariv, evening prayers. The Rebbe withdrew, while his disciples gathered to start the week with study. At the other end of the room, old men were reminiscing: The great-grandfather of one of them had seen Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sassov dancing; the ancestor of another had been present when Rebbe Mendel of Kotsk, one Shabbat, had burst in on his followers and cried out with pain and rage. Terrified, they had all fled.
Razziel went out into the courtyard for some fresh air.
“Has the Rebbe upset you?”
G’dalia again. He was walking beside Razziel, who had not heard him approach.
“So, did he order you to get married?”
How did he know?
