All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (7 page)

Having heard talk of our adventure, childish in more ways than one, my father took me aside one Saturday afternoon to question me. I replied not in words but with a nod: Yes, the rumors were true. “Aren’t you a little young to be exploring—or, worse, practicing—the Kabala?” he asked. I shook my head no. Had I not been bar-mitzvahed? Had I not given proof of my maturity? He wanted to know more of my extracurricular activities, but since my two classmates and I had taken a vow of silence throughout Shabbat, I was unable to satisfy his curiosity. This made my father angry. “I order you,
bigzerat ha’av
, in my capacity as father, to answer me.” Now I had no choice but to reveal our project to him. Inveterate rationalist that he was, he made a bargain with me: “You can do all you want with the Kabala, provided it does not stop you from studying what really counts: the Talmud and its commentaries on the one hand, modern Hebrew on the other.” Modern Hebrew? I protested. What for? But my father insisted: modern Hebrew, and modern Hebrew literature. He showed me some poems and stories by David Frishman, Hayyim Nahman Bialik, Saul Tchernichowsky, and Zalman Shneur. Some of them were so obviously infused with eroticism that they made me blush. Did my father really want me to study these? He did. But weren’t these authors heretics? In his eyes ignorance was worse than heresy.

In town our trio was looked upon askance. Parents warned their children: “Those fools are hurtling to their own destruction. Keep away from them.” Everyone knew that mysticism was dangerous to anyone unworthy of receiving its teachings. Eschatology was a forbidden domain, a minefield. One did not trifle with the fundamental mysteries of Creation and annihilation with impunity. That was to risk madness, heresy, or death, like the sages who penetrated the legendary orchard. It was easy to see why. The human brain is incapable of absorbing too powerful a light, just as the heart cannot contain too deep an emotion. There are limits that must not be transgressed. How could a weak, vulnerable mortal contemplate forcing the hand of God? Countless legends over the centuries recounted the traps and perils that threatened all who dared attempt it. “Yes, my children,” our master remarked, “the danger exists. Satan, not yet disarmed, will seek to sabotage our undertaking. But the stakes are worth the grief.”

Six months went by, and we suffered our first defeat: Yiddele, the oldest of the three of us, fell ill, losing the power of speech and his will to live. Stretched out on his bed from dawn to night, he stared vacantly, unreachable and lethargic. Rebbes were called in, psalms recited; prayers were said at the graves of the just, and special prayers during Shabbat services. Doctors were consulted in our small town and in the great cities of the region. My friend remained mute, his condition unchanged. Strings were pulled, and a renowned psychiatrist arrived from Budapest to spend an entire day at the young patient’s bedside. The next day he visited schools and synagogues and questioned parents, neighbors, and friends, myself among them. Sworn to secrecy as I was, I said nothing that might damage our project. No, I had seen nothing suspicious, nothing bizarre, in my friend.
He was not subject to fits of madness. He suffered no turmoil. The psychiatrist questioned my other friend, the second of our trio, but received no further enlightenment. Perplexed, he decided to call in a Swedish colleague, the famous Dr. Olivecrona. So it was, that one fine day our little Transylvanian backwater was honored by a visit from the great Swede. He strolled through town with a contemplative air, looking straight ahead but scrutinizing everyone who crossed his path before finally being escorted to the patient. Olivecrona examined him, tested his reflexes, questioned his parents, summoned his friends—and departed disappointed.

The following Shabbat my father spoke to me again. “1 hope you’ve learned your lesson.”

“What lesson is that, Father?”

“Stop this senseless business.”

“I can’t, Father.”

“Why not?”

“We’re not doing anything wrong. We’re deepening a teaching that is part of our heritage. Where is the sin in that?”

My father’s face darkened. “I understand,” he said. “But be reasonable. Promise me you’ll be careful.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. It had been a narrow escape. My friend Sruli and I resumed our work, still guided by our master. Ascetic exercises, feverish incantatory litanies, descent into the torments of the abyss in the hope of reascending toward dizzying heights. By night, beyond the howling of dogs, we heard the now faint, now heavy tread of the approaching Messiah. A little more effort and salvation would be at hand. One last burst of spiritual energy, of daring imagination, and the enemy of our people, the enemy of all peoples, would be brought to his knees.

But once again an alert Satan foiled our plan. My second friend fell ill, with symptoms similar to the first. Today I know the technical terms: aphasia and ataxia. Once again the city was abuzz. Funds were collected to bring in doctors from neighboring cities, psychiatrists from Kolozsvár, neurologists from Budapest. Olivecrona put in another appearance. This time he stayed for a week, asking questions, analyzing, rummaging in the mysteries of my friends’ unbalanced brains. Once again he left without answers.

Forty years later I was dining with my wife, Marion, and several psychiatrists who introduced us to a Swedish woman who turned out to be Olivecrona’s daughter. I asked her whether the name Sighet
meant anything to her. “Sighet,” she murmured. “Yes, wait a minute. My father made a trip there during the war, I forget why.” I reminded her of our childish adventure and she smiled. “Yes, I remember now. My father was completely baffled. You could have spared him quite a few sleepless nights.”

After Olivecrona’s departure my father made no secret of his mounting concern. “You have to bow to the evidence now. Your friends have been struck by an illness that looks very much like a curse. Stop before it’s too late.” I tried to argue. “Have confidence in me, Father. I’m cautious, and I’ll be seven times more so.” Did my mother know of all this? Until then she had said nothing to me. But that night she stared at me with a pained expression and said, “You look pale. I’m afraid you’re getting sick.” I reassured her. As God was my witness, I felt fine.

I feel fine, I told her whenever I noticed her anxiety. Have faith in me. She need not have worried. My friends’ illnesses had undoubtedly been smoldering for a long time. Anyway, I was all right. She, too, begged me to be careful.

I promised her I would be, but I knew it was a promise I wouldn’t keep. In fact, I was prepared to confront far greater perils, for my friends’ illness had convinced me of the importance of our mission. If Satan struck at us so hard, it was because we were hindering him. We therefore had to press on, going all the way.

Now as I recount this episode of my adolescence, I realize how naïve I was. I really believed that a few prayers and Kabalistic formulas could halt the hangman and save his victims. My friends believed it too. Was it because they came to understand their mistake that they slid into madness?

Alone with my master, I found him confident and full of ardor. “The Messiah will come,” he told me. “You’ll see, Eliezer, in the end He will come. It’s enough for a single being to want it, to want it sincerely and completely, and the universe will be saved.” That very evening we set to work again.

April 1943. It was the middle of Passover. My mother, busy in the kitchen, commented on a report she had just read in a newspaper. The Warsaw ghetto had rebelled, and the German army was conducting reprisals. The ghetto was in flames. “Why did our young Jews do that?” she mused. “Why couldn’t they have just waited calmly for the war to end?” That was the word she used—calmly.

My poor mother.

Years later I would learn the truth about the uprising, one of the most noble and admirable of Jewish history, the first civilian insurrection in occupied Europe. It lasted as long as the French army held out against the German invasion in 1940. The Jewish combatants knew they had no chance of winning, or even of surviving. Their battle was lost in advance. But they were determined to salvage what they called Jewish honor. On the first night of the revolt the insurgents congratulated themselves, embracing before the bodies of the first dead German soldiers. The hangmen were mortal after all. Mordechai Anielewicz, commander in chief of the Jewish Resistance, wrote: “The ghetto has risen.… It is the most beautiful day of my life.” But his aide, Antek Zuckerman, sent into the Aryan zone to purchase weapons, faced a wall of incomprehension and indifference. The ghetto burned, and on the other side lovers came to gaze upon the spectacle. Czesław Miłosz drew inspiration from this for his moving poem “Campo di Fiori.” “We were betrayed,” wrote Anielewicz before committing suicide in the underground shelters of Mila 18. In London, Artur Zygelbojm, a leader of the Zionist Bund and a member of the Polish parliament-in-exile, killed himself in an effort to arouse the conscience of humanity. But no one took notice of the poor man’s “gesture.”

The days passed quickly in my little town. We were getting ready for the next holiday, Shavuot, which commemorates the revelation at Sinai. “Thou shalt not kill,” the Lord ordered man on that day.

But men would be killers, as I would soon enough discover.

We didn’t take any vacation in 1943. Usually we went to Fantana, a mountain village near Borsha, where my father would join us for Shabbat. I loved that monthlong “change of scene.” Sometimes I played chess with my father’s friends. I often lost, but was delighted to be playing with adults, since it meant I was being taken seriously. In the afternoon I would take long walks by myself. But one day, as I left the village, I noticed a man and a woman lying on the grass. They were laughing. I recognized them and averted my eyes. A saying of the Besht came to my mind: If you see someone committing a sin in secret, it is a bad omen for you as well; you should not have been there, and should not have seen.

Perhaps we took no vacation that year because of money problems, or because the news was becoming more troubling. Everyone
knew that the Warsaw ghetto had been destroyed, but we were completely unaware of the Final Solution. Other families set out for the countryside, but I was happy to stay home. My master needed me. Jewish history needed our dreams, our dreams of children gone mad. On the night of Tisha b’Av, after the service in which the Lamentations of Jeremiah are recited, I went to my master’s and we stayed up all night, repeating passionate verses laden with mystery. I felt a terrible force pulling at me, dragging me down one precipice, then another. Near four in the morning I thought I saw a being with a hidden face chained to an enormous dead tree. As in the tale of Rabbi Joseph della Reina, a thousand dogs were baying, spitting flames, but the being remained motionless, his head supporting the heavens. “It’s him!” I cried. “Master, look! It’s him! Let’s free him!”

“Careful,” he answered. “Be careful, for …”

I awoke drenched in sweat, delirious, unable to tell dream from reality, not knowing who or where I was. My master sat on the floor in apparent despair, his body racked by sobs, hitting his head against a wall. At that moment I felt madness lurking, menacing us both, but I was determined to continue our quest at any cost. Even today I remain convinced that if the Germans hadn’t entered Sighet the following spring, I would have suffered the same fate as my two unfortunate comrades and would have awakened in the depths of the abyss. Thus it was the killers who “saved” me. Woe unto me, it is to them that I owe the fact that I was spared. Olivecrona did not make a third visit, and the Messiah did not come.

Anything but a good little boy, I was subject to phobias, outbursts of anger and jealousy, frivolous envy, and childish rebellion. If two friends seemed too close to each other, it would keep me awake at night. If one of the faithful looked at me askance in the House of Study, I wished I were buried alive. Meanwhile, the demon of eroticism visited me often. When Hilda and Bea had their girlfriends over to the house, I became too tongue-tied to answer their questions. And then of course there was the judge’s daughter: pretty, blond, her hair spilling shamelessly over her shoulders. I would wait for her to walk by in midafternoon, my cheeks flushed, breath halting, and even that made me feel guilty. One night I saw her close-up—smiling, beckoning me toward something I couldn’t yet manage to name—and I awoke in hell.

The time has come to take a last look at one of the villages near Sighet. It was called Bichkev (in Yiddish), Bocskó (in Hungarian), and Bochkoi (in Romanian), and it was there that my maternal grandfather, Reb Dovid (Dodye) Feig, lived until … But no, let us not yet speak of his death. First I need to see him alive.

And how alive he was, my grandfather, alive and magnificent. Yes, I know, most grandchildren adore their grandfathers. But mine was truly special. If that makes you smile, so be it, for it is with a smile that I recall him. He allowed me—obliged me—to love life, to assume it as a Jew, to celebrate it for the Jewish people. A devout follower of the Rabbi of Wizhnitz, he was the embodiment of Hasidic creative force and fervor. His father, Getzl, a man who loved to go into the forest at night to play his violin under a tree, with God his only audience, lived to be ninety-four. My grandfather surely would have reached that age too …

A burly man with broad, powerful shoulders, Reb Dodye Feig knew how to work the land, impose respect on tavern drunks, and break recalcitrant horses. But he was also a man of broad knowledge, respected in the village and the surrounding hamlets. He was a notable. When a rebbe of the Wizhnitz dynasty came to visit, he would stay at Reb Dodye Feig’s.

A cultured and erudite man, an avid reader of the Bible and of the Rashi and Ramban commentaries, and especially of the work of Rabbi Hayyim ben Attar, my grandfather was fascinated with the Midrash, with the works of the Musar—a movement founded in Lithuania to foster the teaching of Jewish values and ethics—and with Hasidic literature. He maintained a perfect balance between his quest for the sacred and the exigencies of daily life. He was a whole being.