One Generation After (20 page)

You ask me: How is one to reconcile man and Jew? The question is badly put. I do not accept the commonly made distinctions between Jew and man; they are not opposites and do not cancel each other. By working for his own people a Jew does not renounce his loyalty to mankind; on the contrary, he thereby makes his most valuable contribution.

More specifically: by struggling on behalf of Russian, Arab or Polish Jews, I fight for human rights everywhere. By calling for peace in the Middle East, I take a stand against every aggression, every war. By protesting the fanatical exhortations to “holy wars” against my people, I protest against the stifling of freedom in Prague. By striving to keep alive the memory of the holocaust, I denounce the massacres in Biafra and the nuclear menace. Only by drawing on his unique Jewish experience can the Jew help others. A Jew fulfills his role as man only from inside his Jewishness.

That is why, in my writings, the Jewish theme predominates. It helps me approach and probe the theme of man.

Of course, had there been no war, I would have sought self-realization in other ways. I would not, for example, have become a writer, or at least, I would have written something other than novels. And in the small yeshiva where I would have stayed, indefinitely poring over the same page of the same book, I would never have imagined one could justify one’s existence except by strictly observing the 613 commandments of the Torah.

Today I know this is not enough. The war turned everything upside down, changing the order and substance of priorities. For me, to be a Jew today means telling the story of this change.

For whoever lives through a trial, or takes part in an event that weighs on man’s destiny or frees him, is duty-bound to transmit what he has seen, felt and feared. The Jew has always been obsessed by this obligation. He has always known that to live an experience or create a vision, and not transform it into link and promise, is to turn it into a gift to death.

To be a Jew today, therefore, means: to testify. To bear witness to what is, and to what is no longer. One can testify with joy—a true and fervent joy, though tainted with sadness—by aiding Israel. Or with anger—restrained, harnessed anger, free of sterile bitterness—by raking over the ashes of the holocaust. For the contemporary Jewish writer, there can be no theme more human, no project more universal.

As a child I knew all this without really knowing it, and above all, without being able to express it. Yet I still don’t know how one becomes a “good” Jew.

A certain Reb Zeira, the Talmud relates, decided to fast a hundred days so as to forget all he had learned. Only afterwards did he go to the Holy Land.

And so what must we do, my generation and yours, to learn anew what every day, a little more, we tend to forget? I don’t know. Throughout this letter I have told you that I attach more importance to questions than to answers. For only the questions can be shared.

As a child I believed that the Messiah would appear at sunrise, a prince disguised as beggar, and we would all be present to welcome him: the rabbis and their disciples, the scribes and their pupils, all dressed in prayer-shawls and wearing
tephillin
. Some would sing and dance or recite psalms, others would rejoice and drink from golden goblets filled with wine, the wine set aside since creation for that precise purpose, for that precise festivity.

Today I am convinced it will be different. The Messiah will come at night and will be received with burning torches and the silence will be such that even the angels in heaven will stop praising their Master.

The reason for my new belief?

Listen: it happened one Simchat Torah in Moscow, not too long ago. I have described it before, I shall repeat it, for the event itself was repeated more than once.

For many hours, thousands of Jewish students had been dancing in the street leading to the capital’s main synagogue. Suddenly the entire block was plunged into darkness. The crowd grew quiet, expecting the lights to go on again. But soon we realized that they had been turned off deliberately to end the
festivities. Enough dancing, enough singing. Come back next year. Don’t overdo your rejoicing.

For a moment there was confusion. Then a mighty roar of protest rose from thousands of throats. No one was willing to accept the implied order. But how does one fight darkness? Here is how: one youngster rolled up a newspaper and lit it. His friends did likewise. The flame was passed from hand to hand. A moment later we were in the midst of a bizarre torchlight parade.

No one had planned it; everything happened by chance. The street became a quietly burning river, a silent stream; its eerie stillness broken only by the crackling of burning paper.

I don’t remember how long it lasted. I only remember the dreamlike quality of the scene: students climbing onto a balcony, torches in hand, chanting in Hebrew and Russian: “
Am Israel Hai
, the Jewish people lives and will go on living!” And the crowd answering thunderously: “Hurrah, hurraaah!”

“Well?” asked a man I had met on a previous visit. “What do you think now? Are you more confident than last year?”

I nodded; I had trouble speaking. I recalled a question a close friend had asked me a few months earlier. He had wanted to know whether I still believed, even after the holocaust, in the concept of
netzakh Israel
, the eternity of Israel. And
during
the holocaust? What had my thoughts of Jewish eternity been then? Hadn’t I come to the conclusion that we were nearing the end and that soon there would not be even ten Jews left to form a
minyan
in this wicked world?

I had not answered my friend. I wished he were here, standing with me in this joyous, fearless crowd. Here he would answer his own question.

Now you understand what I meant about the coming of the Messiah, who is expected to answer all questions.

He will come at night. And he will be welcomed not only with songs and wine and not only by holy rabbis and their disciples, but also by young Jews expressing their Jewishness by parading with burning torches made of ordinary paper in the very heart of Moscow.

2

This year again there will be dancing and singing in Arkhipova Street in Moscow. Young Jews by the thousands will come and prove to the world that they have not forgotten Simchat Torah and what it symbolizes: a link with Jewish tradition and kinship with the Jewish people.

But this year I shall not be able to join them. For that I am deeply sorry. Since I first visited Russia I have come to think that Simchat Torah cannot be truly celebrated anywhere else. Just as Shavuot reminds us of Sinai and Tishah b’Av of the Temple, Simchat Torah will henceforth be associated with Russian Jewry. More than in Williamsburg, more than in Jerusalem itself, it is in Moscow, not far from the Kremlin, that one feels the depth and magnitude of Jewish commitment to joy and memory. The staunchest Hasid could learn from the most assimilated Jewish student in Moscow how to rejoice and how to transform his song into an act of belief and defiance.

Twice, in consecutive years, I witnessed street-dancing on Arkhipova Street, outside the synagogue. Never before and
never since have I felt such elation. Prior to my visit to Moscow, I had not known that Simchat Torah could be more than a holiday: an event and an experience as well.

Since my last visit, changes have taken place in the world, affecting Jewish life everywhere.

The Six-Day War brought about a renewal of the “anti-Zionist” slander campaign in the Soviet press. The infamous Trofim Kitchko has been rehabilitated, reinstated as a member of the Ukranian Academy and even given an important award. His
Judaism Without Embellishment
, once repudiated by world communism, is no longer a source of embarrassment to the Kremlin; on the contrary, his anti-Semitic theories, especially with regard to Israel, seem to have been accepted. So violent were the statements of Soviet representatives in the United Nations, and so frequently were they repeated at home, that there can be no doubt of their being aimed not just at Israel but at Russian Jews as well.

Officialdom embarked on a campaign of intimidation that reached proportions reminiscent of the Stalin days. Synagogue leaders were forced to sign petitions condemning Israel “aggressions.” Jews were threatened throughout the Soviet Union and warned to refrain from doing anything that might be interpreted as a move toward identification with Israel and world Jewry.

Too late.

Listen to this story: on June 5, 1967, one of my Israeli friends happened to be in a small town somewhere in Russia. It was
early in the morning when he heard the first radio bulletins announcing “Israeli defeats.” Since he did not know a soul in that faraway place, my friend, in desperation, decided to find the synagogue. It was already crowded. Hundreds of Jews, young and old, men and women, had gathered spontaneously, as though moved by the same impulse: to be together in a time of danger. When they noticed the visitor and the Israeli emblem in his lapel, they formed a line and each of them came to shake his hand. Some of the older men whispered in Hebrew: “
Al tira avdi Yakov
—do not be afraid, my servant Jacob.”

Long after his return to Israel my friend continued to hear the same voices, the same words: for weeks he heard nothing else.

Similar accounts reached us from other cities. When Israel was in danger, the Jews in Russia found ways to express their solidarity. Not all the tales can yet be told. But when the time comes and they are told, they will have the ring of legends. And I wonder: will we be worthy of them?

Are we worthy now of the Georgian Jews who, risking their freedom, send letters to Golda Meir and the United Nations announcing their desire to go and live among their own people in Israel? Or of those youngsters who publicly renounce their Soviet citizenship in order to dramatize their determination to be reunited with their families in Jerusalem, Haifa and Eilat? These acts take courage, just as it takes courage to organize and attend clandestine classes in Hebrew, Jewish history and Jewish literature, or to participate in Simchat Torah festivities.

In Moscow, Leningrad, Tiflis and Tashkent, more and more young people come to sing and dance with more and more enthusiasm each year. They know more and more songs. Here and there, incidents are reported, scores of students are arrested by the police, but the others keep on dancing. Once reawakened, these youngsters, in search of their past, cannot be suppressed. To express what they feel, they are prepared to wait a whole year for one single day, one single night.

Does that mean that they are rediscovering religion? No. They know nothing of Jewish religion, they cannot know. There are no formal Jewish schools, no specially trained teachers. They have nothing. Simchat Torah, for them, is not a religious holiday but something else, and perhaps even something more. For them it is a way, the only way, to identify with
Klal Israel
and enter its history. Therefore, they will not give up. They will go on singing and dancing even if it means imprisonment and reprisals. Simchat Torah represents to them all Jewish holidays combined; on that day and that night, each of them renews his personal covenant with the Jewish people.