From the Kingdom of Memory (3 page)

The martyrdom of the great Rabbi Hanania ben Teradyon is beautifully told in a Talmudic legend. The Romans, having condemned the rabbi to perish at the stake for teaching the Torah in public, wrapped him in the sacred scrolls and set them afire. His disciples asked him, “Master, what do you see?” He told them: “I see the parchment burning but the letters are floating in the air.” For the letters cannot be destroyed; the enemy will always be rendered impotent by the power of language.

This legend is part of the liturgy of Yom Kippur, but it is valid every day of the year. It describes how a Jew felt whenever he was persecuted. “Our enemy may kill us but he is powerless against what we embody.”

“Lord,” declared Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev, “I want to strike a bargain with you. I would like to compose the eulogies and litanies you deserve but as I am no poet let me give you the twenty-two letters of your sacred tongue: you will make better use of them than I.”

For some part of every word is sacred; all words should lean toward the sacred. Today we are articulating
words which Yitzhak and Jeremiah uttered under other skies and in other contexts. If our words sound different, that is our fault; we forget that God is listening.

The children of Israel were rescued in Egypt, according to the Talmud, because they remained true to their language. If King David were to return to his city, he would be able to understand what its inhabitants are saying to one another; better still: they would understand him. The words of the Lord heard at Sinai still retain their full authority and freshness today.

Our own words are no more than a vehicle reflecting the divine communication. That is their justification. But does all this amount to excessive respect for human speech? It is language that connects us to the mystery of the beginning and, at the same time, to that of survival. God, at Sinai, uttered just one word,
Anochi
, I, but that word contained all the words which man, from the beginning, and till the end of time, will have spoken, whether to spread His glory or to bring His curse upon himself.

Nowadays, man speaks loudly and volubly. There has never been so much talk. Television, radio, satellite telecommunications, speeches, interviews, commentaries, news analyses: modern man is bombarded with so many voices that he no longer hears any. Least of all his own.

Might that be because of his fear of being overtaken
by events? Might man be afraid of not being able to express himself in time?

All this applies equally to writing. It seems there has never been so much of it. And definitely never so much in print. Was Ecclesiastes right to include literary inflation among the eschatalogical maledictions?

There was a time when a book, any book, aroused in me a feeling of reverence. I would stroke it, sniff it before opening it. If the volume was in Hebrew and dealt with religious matters, I would kiss it before closing it. If it chanced to slip and drop to the floor, I would rush to pick it up and ask its forgiveness.

Today it’s different. Mystics speak of “the exile of language.” Like the
Shekinah
, Divine Presence, language has followed Israel into exile. What does exiled language mean? It refers to the distance between words and what they mask. It signifies the tension between language and its subject.

This phenomenon is not restricted to one language or one society; it is virtually universal. In every modern country one witnesses this verbal inflation, and a resulting devaluation of words. Political parties “war” with each other, industrial enterprises launch “offensives,” critics “massacre” novels or plays, journalists praise or condemn the latest “revolution” in
haute couture
. On another plane, Stalin built the Gulag to “re-educate” his citizens and Lavrenty Beria (Soviet Intelligence chief during Stalin’s regime) annihilated
hundreds of thousands of people for the “salvation” of humanity; as for Hitler, he invented the terms “concentration camp” and “final solution,” and all for the “well-being” of the human race.

Hitler distorted language as never before. Neither Emperor Nero nor Attila the Hun concealed their crimes with grandiloquent phrases. The Inquisition called its tortures and executions by name. Marat and Robespierre did not seek a pleasant-sounding euphemism to justify the Terror. Until the Nazi reign, killers killed and said so; torturers tortured and were proud of it. But the Nazis assassinated thousands upon thousands of Jews and spoke of “special treatment.” “Things, objects,” meant human beings. “Relocation” signified deportation, evacuation, liquidation: extermination. Night and fog are evocative words; we now know what they hid. Similarly, the word “selection.” Thanks to this verbal technique, the assassins succeeded in convincing themselves that they were not assassins. By “obeying,” they were doing no more than “purifying” Europe of its Jews.

There are certain German words I can no longer use, said Nobel Prize-winning German-Jewish poet Nelly Sachs when I visited her in Stockholm.

Have I myself written too much about the camps? Some of my colleagues tell me so. If only, they say, you could speak about something else. As a matter of fact, I do. I write on ancient themes from the Bible and the
Talmud, and on the Hasidic world, Jerusalem, and Russian Jews in order to free myself from the theme which seems to me the most consuming, the most urgent of all. One day I, too, would like to compose a novel in which the landscape is not reduced to ashes; one day I, too, would like to sing of life and celebrate love. But not yet.…

In one of my novels, a character is shot at point-blank range but he cannot die: all his family are dead, all his friends are dead, he is the last one left, and because he is the last he is unable to die; but his killer says to him, “One day you will curse me for having spared you, even if I didn’t intend to; you will speak but no one will listen; you will tell the truth but it will be the truth of a madman.”

All survivors are a bit like that: our memories are those of madmen. How can we get the doors to open? What can we do to share our visions? Our words can only evoke the incomprehensible. Hunger, thirst, fear, humiliation, waiting, death; for us these words hold different realities. This is the ultimate tragedy of the victims.

What we suffered has no place within language: it is somewhere beyond life and history. The ghetto and the sealed cars, the children hurled alive into the flames, the dumb old men with slit throats, the mothers with crazed eyes, the sons powerless to relieve their fathers’ agony: a “normal” person cannot take in so
much horror. A normal person cannot absorb so much darkness, nor can he understand, or ever hope to understand.

Here lies the tragedy of the witness: What shall he do with his testimony? He incessantly asks himself the meaning of a survival some mistakenly call miraculous; he feels guilty toward the dead who have charged him with an impossible mission; he is destined to feel that he exists in the place of someone else.

Formerly, thoughts became experiences and experiences became words, but today this process is interrupted. Today we must admit that certain experiences defy language. Speech is no longer the logical result. And all the discourse on the “lessons” of Auschwitz and the “message” of Treblinka—lessons about ethics and politics, messages to do with theology—have nothing at all to do with the experience of Night.

The morning after the storm, facing a horrified world, the survivors of the camps could only repeat, “You cannot understand, you cannot understand.” Later, invariably for humanitarian reasons, they tried to explain. After all, people had to be made aware, warned of certain dangers, shown the paths it was perilous to take. Yet each time the witnesses had to suffer anew in order to reveal themselves even partially, in order to speak even haltingly of the most intimate things—is there anything more intimate than pain or
death?—and each time, it was a lost cause. The listener either failed to understand or missed the point.

But in that case, you will ask, how should we read all those books, all the novels, accounts, studies? Haven’t they so much as lifted the veil? Pointed out the wounds? Indicated the graveyard? Naturally, witnesses must write and readers must read. And yet, I know that their secret cannot really be transmitted.

I do not utter these words without discomfort, without sadness. But I must say them.

The Kabbala speaks of
shvirat hakelim
, the “breaking of vessels” at the moment of creation. In the same way, today we would do well to envisage the possibility of a similar break, on a scale no less vast than the first, involving the totality of being: a break between past and future, between creation and creator, between man and his fellow man.

But then, you will say, what is left? Is there hope despite everything, despite ourselves? Despair, perhaps? Or faith?

All that is left is the question.

Inside a Library

I
N HIS
“Society and Solitude,” Emerson said with typical simplicity:

True—but what about the books written by fools, literary technicians or fame-hungry authors who have nothing to say—and say it?

Of them, King Solomon said in his Ecclesiastes that their books will be the ultimate malediction: “Of the making of books there will be no end.…” Why should this be a curse? Solomon was wise—the wisest of all kings. He knew. He knew that there would be a time when more books would be published than written.

If the school is a temple, then the library is its sanctuary. In the classroom you teach, you learn, you argue; in the library you remain quiet. You read alone; you listen alone. And all of a sudden you discover that you are not alone; you are in the presence of masters and disciples of centuries past; and you grow silent. In the library you are always silent. Not only because you do not want to disturb your fellow students or teachers, but also because you do not raise your voice in a sanctuary: with Rabbi Akiba and Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai present, with the Ari Hakadosh and Rabbi Shneur Zalmen ben Baruch of Ladi in the room, you dare not speak except in a whisper.

That is why I have always felt such deep attachment to libraries. Here, within these walls, there is peace. The old quarrels subside. Maimonides no longer fears the arrows of the Raavid. The Rabbanites and the Karaites live side by side in harmony. The Gaon of Vilna and the Maggid of Mezeritch coexist in peace. All these writers and teachers, all these thinkers and lawmakers who engaged in disputations during their lifetime, now accept one another’s views with
tolerance and serenity. Because of the books? Because of the silence. Here, words and silence are not in conflict—quite the contrary: they complete and enrich one another. Is it possible? In our tradition—it is.

When the Torah was given at Sinai, says Rabbi Abahu in the name of Rabbi Yohanan, the birds did not chirp, the beasts did not growl, the sea did not roar, and the wind did not stir: the entire universe was silent. And then, when God spoke and said
Anochi
, “I,” the words entered silence without breaking it.

There lies the beauty and the enchantment of the library: within its walls, everything is possible.

But then—what is a library? Simply a room with bookshelves? The answer may disappoint some of you but it is Yes: any room with books and students can turn into a library—just as any home can become a house of study and prayer. Isn’t this the teaching we received from Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai? Wherever Jews gather to study Torah, the
Shekinah
dwells among them. Erected by man for God, the Temple does not imprison Him; quite the contrary, it frees Him and calls Him to join His creation. Thus every home becomes a sanctuary, every table is transformed into an altar, and every person performs the functions of the High Priest.

And so, any room can become a library; only, once it has been a library, it can never again be a simple room.

There are secret corners, hidden words in a library. A few words on the margin of a page. Dates of birth and death on the inside covers of prayer books. Tears, invisible but real, shed by a grandmother who wished to be heard by God—at least by God. Occasionally, you will discover a tale which encompasses another tale, a name which conceals another story.

Look there: the
Valley of Tears
, by Rabbi Mordechai Yoseph Hacohen of Avignon. Avignon occupies a special place in Jewish history—
and
literature. Jews lived there in peace, while around them Jewish blood was shed.

I never saw my grandfather without a book in his hands. Occasionally, when he was tired, he would doze off for a minute or an hour—but he continued, in his sleep, to chant the passage he was studying.…