Provocation is a good example of what Cass was describing. It was founded by left-wing intellectuals in the 1940s, but its editors had been profoundly insulted by the new leftism of the sixties and reacted by lurching to the right. By now Provocation’s policy of opposing anything advocated by the liberals—a word it had helped besmirch—has carried it into open warfare against the entire project of the Enlightenment. Darwin has come in for multiple attacks, and religious scientists have shown off their creativity. There was an article by an Orthodox Jewish linguist who used Noam Chomsky’s theory of a universal grammar to vindicate the Bible’s story of the Tower of Babel. There was an article authored by a fundamentalist geologist on the movement of the tectonic plates of the earth as consistent with a worldwide flood on the order of Noah’s. There was an article by a Catholic anthropologist arguing against the liberal denial of distinct races and backing it up with Genesis 10, where the begettings of Noah’s three sons are explained. Provocation’s review of The Varieties of Religious Illusion had been so negative as to border on the actionable.
“Are you going to debate him?” Lucinda had asked him, turning over on her side so that she was facing Cass, her head propped up on her palm.
“Do you think I should?”
“What day did you say this thing is?” he’s asking Roz now on the phone.
“February 29. I think that’s tomorrow.”
“It is tomorrow! I’m fucked. And that’s when Lucinda is getting back from Santa Barbara. What was I thinking?”
“Well, if anyone is worth debating on this issue, then Felix Fidley is,” Lucinda had said. “It would certainly be a major win for you, and I don’t see how you could fail to win.” She’d smiled, and her delicate nostrils flared ever so slightly. “I’d like to see that.”
She’d reached out her hand and laid it on Cass’s stomach and then had slid it slowly up his chest. She reached up for Cass’s glasses and gently removed them, leaning over him to place them on his night table, her brandy-glass-shaped breasts just grazing his uplifted face.
That minute adjustment had come over her face, unstiffening her upper lip and unloosing the full extravagance of her beauty, flooding all of Cass’s modules, seizing him up with the one and wordless premise that composes the Argument from Lucinda.
“I’m fucked for real,” he says now to Roz.
XXI
The Argument from the Remains
Jonas Elijah Klapper had intimate knowledge of all the prominent thinkers across the ages. There was not a novelist, poet, essayist, critic, historian, metaphysician, ethicist, theologian, or belletrist worth the reading (an emphatically necessary qualification) of whom he had not taken the reckoning. He had expended himself in exhaustively computing the ranking of anyone meriting mention in the great chain of genius. His project had been demanding. It had demanded neither more nor less than omniscience. The (all but) universal ovation was not disproportionate to the accomplishment. He had organized the vast reaches of human thought in a way that could be compared, mutatis mutandis, to the commendable efforts of Miss Ching in helping him to settle into his Frankfurter suite of offices, her admirable zeal in conceiving categories for the color-coded files, craftily alphabetized.
So, when Jonas Elijah Klapper stated that the Grand Rabbi of the Valdener Hasidim was a religious genius on the order of Meister Eck-hart, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Nathan Benjamin ben Elisha ha-Levi Ghazzati (also known as “Nathan of Gaza” or “Nathan the Prophet”), it was quite a statement. Professor Klapper confided in Cass that the Valdener Grand Rabbi was among the most extraordinary men of his lifetime—and he had met all the extraordinary men of his lifetime, including the pre-eminent secular scholar of Qabalah, one of the few non-Americans granted membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Jonas had been initiated as a mere pup of thirty-eight), the Jerusalemite Yehuda Ickel.
Cass had liked the Valdener Rebbe quite a lot, almost in spite of himself, and certainly in spite of his mother. In fact, one of the Rebbe’s most endearing traits, at least to Cass, was the warmth he still harbored toward the former Devorah Sheiner. The Rebbe seemed to regard her with none of the severity with which she regarded him, though perhaps this was just part of his Socratic slyness. Still, listening to Professor Klapper’s assessment, he had to conclude that it was probably his own ignorance of Yiddish that had blocked him from seeing the full extent of the Rebbe’s extraordinariness, though he couldn’t dismiss the possibility that the blame lay in his intrinsic soul-shortage.
According to Professor Klapper, the Valdener Grand Rabbi was like the Palomar Observatory, which he had been compelled to visit with his fulsome hosts at the University of California at San Diego when he had been out there to deliver, soon after the publication of “my little book The Perversity of Persuasion,” the prestigious John Shade Lecture in Literature and Truth. They had organized quite the tour for him, in consequence of which he had immediately resolved never to accept another invitation from anywhere in the entire state of California, a ban he had, over the years, gradually widened until it included everything west of the Hudson. Jonas Elijah Klapper was ready to confess his vagueness on such details, since Sigmund Freud was as far as he would venture in the direction of the hard sciences, but he had carried away the impression that the contraption took the compass of the infinite cosmos. If that was so, then it was still as nothing compared with the observatory that was the Valdener Grand Rabbi.
“For it is the measure of the infinite soul that is taken by your inestimable relation, Reb Chaim.”
Everything the Valdener Rebbe said and did was both liminal and luminant. That is what Jonas Elijah Klapper might choose to call the graduate seminar next year:
“The Liminal, the Luminant, and the—”
The professor was brought up short by a rare aposiopesis. He looked over to his erstwhile student to see whether he might offer some help. The word that seditiously leaped into Cass’s mind was so inappropriate that Cass suspected Roz’s insidious sense of humor was infecting him again—long-distance, since she still hadn’t returned from the Amazon.
“Well, never mind that for now. We shall think of the apposite trinomial in time,” the professor was continuing.
The Valdener Sage had the capacity to speak the liminal words that transported the Self through the narrow threshold within the Self to enter into the hushed precinct where the Sublime sat on its throne of glory, an ecstatic knowledge that transformed the Self even as it revealed the Self, for it awoke within the Self the knowledge of what is immortal in the Self, not in the sense of duration, definable by time, but, rather, the Self that dwells, like the Place—or Ha-Makom, one of the monikers for YHVH— outside of time, the Self that cannot die because it was never born, begotten by no seed of man.
Professor Klapper had found everything relating to the Grand Rabbi fraught with hidden meanings, the humblest word or action setting off tremblings in the highest spheres, in what the Qabalists refer to as the Keter, the Crown of Being, the last gate behind which the Ayn Sof, That Without End, has withdrawn itself, coiled within the End of Thought.
“It is as the Valdener Rebbe himself masterfully put it: the Acharay Acharon, the One Who Comes After the Last.”
“That was Azarya.”
Cass couldn’t help himself. He had spoken before he had thought. “Azarya? Who is Azarya?”
“The Rebbe’s son. He was the one who spoke about the Acharay Acharon.”
Klapper widened his eye into his practiced glare but then, deciding upon leniency, waved Cass’s irrelevance away with a magisterial flourish of his hand.
“I am quite certain you are mistaken. The little boy sang a niggun, which I believe he had composed. Perhaps that is the source of your errancy. The child decidedly did not delve into the mysteries of the Ayn Sof. The suggestion is a preposterition.”
“Preposterition,” meaning “preposterous proposition,” was a neologism of his own coinage, and, employing it, he felt irked all over a
gain by this presumptuous young person who was crowding his office and squandering his time. But then he recalled the young man’s lineage, the majestic luster that clung to his bloodline, manifesting itself in the very tint of his hair, and decided to forgive.
“The Valdener Rebbe has supplied some information that may yet prove to be surpassingly significant. It is as I suspected. To non-initiates it appears as if the denizens of New Walden have closed themselves off to the increments in human knowledge that have, it is commonly believed, proceeded pari passu with the so-called advancements in the sciences, which too often amount, I am forced to inform you, to no more than the merest scientism. Unlike the colossal confusions of pedantry in which I have been forced to collude—by which I mean a pedagogical cartel that could not begin to understand the meaning of the term ‘higher education,’ which misprision it manifests in its increasing insistence that every Tom, Dick, and Harry should misspend his youth, not to speak of his parents’ lucre, by parking his dullard head at an undergraduate institution for four years—the Valdeners recognize that not every Tevye, Dudel, and Hershel are meant to be introduced to subjects beyond their comprehension. The Rebbe, as an exalted master, does the learning for them and then transmits to each according to his capacity to receive. And of course his mastery extends to full command of the non-verbal lineaments of communication. There was no doubt in my mind that transmission at the profoundest level was taking place during the ritual of the shirayim. Each person who partook of the Rebbe’s food received a communiqué that was fashioned for his individual quiddity, the measure of which the Rebbe takes in ways that can only be divine.”
Cass was surprised to hear Professor Klapper’s impression of the shirayim. For his part, Cass had found the proceedings anything but edifying. It had not been quite as civilized as Cass’s mother had been led to believe. There had been a grab for the actual remains on the Rebbe’s plate, and it had seemed to Cass, though he could not be sure, that Frankfurter’s Extreme Distinguished Professor had gotten the better part of what was there. The Rebbe had then begun to pitch the apples and oranges from the great cut-glass chalices on the table, and as the fruit flew, so rose the Valdeners. They looked like the fans in Fenway Park when a long foul ball was hit into the grandstand. Hasidim had flung themselves onto the gigantic table, squirming forward on their bellies to get a piece of fruit that hadn’t made it into the tiers. There had also been pieces of potato kugel that the Rebbe had distributed with his bare hands. The pandemonium of the event—there was shouting and tussling, not to speak of food being flung—had ripped Cass entirely out of the rapture that had seized him while Azarya spoke. He had found nothing to inspire him in the shirayim.
But Jonas Elijah Klapper had. He did not reveal, not even to Reb Chaim, the full extent of what had been received in the Rebbe’s remains. He had been awakened to a knowledge that he had always held within him, nestled inside like something rare and precious, now delivered into the conscious Self that had been prepared for its reception.
It had concerned food, since that, after all, at its simplest level, is what the ritual of shirayim concerns. Here, too, the soul of Jonas was in a state of heightened preparation. It had been given to him to experience the profounder intimations of food since his earliest childhood. At three years of age, he had devised his two-fork method, one in each hand, so that he would not have to wait between mouthfuls. Sometimes his mother made a dish—her Friday-night chicken fricassee with dumplings, her brisket braised with potatoes, her calf liver fried with onions—that moved him to a hedonic delirium far beyond the carnal.
The most exquisite of these experiences had been afforded by her chicken soup—always suffused with emanations of the divine, but most especially when it came blessed with what she called fleishig eier, or “meat eggs.” This was a delicacy as indescribable as it was rare, dependent as it was upon circumstances beyond anyone’s control.
His mother purchased her slaughtered chickens from the poultry market on Essex Street. She would then have to open and eviscerate them, soak and salt them, in accordance with the laws of kashrut (taboos he had discarded, with the exception of that relating to the flesh of the pig). The fleishig eier were the unlaid eggs, clustered in varying stages of immaturity and circumference, that his mother would sometimes find nestled within an old laying hen. They were called fleishig eier because the rabbis had ruled that they belong to the meat category (a logical decision, since they were still a part of the chicken) and thus were immiscible with dairy. His sainted mother would put the fleishig eier in her chicken soup, and they would be served to Jonas alone, placed reverentially before him by one of his sisters. They were orbs of pale yellow, all yolk, their texture denser and firmer than that of matured yolks, and with a concentrated flavor that held suggestions of an otherworldly sweetness.
The rituals prevailing over the Rebbe’s tish harked back to the rites of the High Priest Aharon making his offerings on the altar, which had been described in such an abundance of detail in the Torah portion fated to be read the very Shabbes of Jonas’s visit to New Walden, when the Valdener Rebbe had explained the secret meaning of the aysh zarah, the strange fire, that the sons of the High Priest had introduced, immolating themselves to the cosmic agenda. None of the allusions had been lost on Jonas. He had, at long last, received (the very meaning of the term “Qabalah”) a complete and clarified understanding of (among other receptions) a truth he had always instinctively known—to wit, that the appetitive soul is emphatically not the unrefinable sensibility that the pagan thinkers, through either ignorance or cunning deception, had described. Intelligence operating through longing—orektikos nous—or longing operating through thought—orexis dianoetike —has always been essential to the spiritual and intellectual exertions that alone can redeem.
Jonas was brought back, with a start, to the student sitting inches away from him in his office. He had a task for him. He wished the student to explore the full implications of the traditional Jewish menu. Each of the traditional dishes had symbolic significance: gefilte fish, the balls of ground pike or carp simmered in broth; blintzes, stuffed pancakes; kishke, a sausage made by stuffing a cow’s intestines with a filling of carrots, onions, and matzo meal; farfel, a kind of pasta; tzimmes, a sweet stew made with carrots, sweet potatoes, and prunes; cholent, the Sabbath stew of beans and potato, a bit of beef if one was well-to-do, put into a low oven before sundown on Friday and served hot on Saturday for lunch; luckshen, or noodles; and, of course, kugel, the sacred pudding.
“All of the dishes have Qabalist significance, which must be why, as I have finally come to understand, a Jewish high cuisine never developed. If nothing can, hermeneutically speaking, exceed the potato kugel, then there can be little point in culinary refinement. The refinements are of an entirely different order.”
Professor Klapper reached into the chaos reigning on the surface of his desk and pulled out a book. He opened it to a page that had been marked, pulled his bifocals down from the top of his head, bringing tufts of hair down along with them, and read from the Yiddish, looking up at Cass, when he had finished, in a quizzical fashion.
“Is this not extraordinary?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t understand it.”
“What?”
“I don’t understand Yiddish.”
“Indeed.” The professor examined him closely over the top of his glasses, his chin ruffling out against his shirt front. “Is that not unusual for someone of your background?”
“We’re fallen-away Valdeners, my mother and I. My father doesn’t come from that background at all.”
“In any case, with your privileged pedigree, it should not be difficult for you to assimilate the mama lashon, the mother tongue, with winged speed. In the interim, I shall translate. ‘The tzaddikim, or righteous ones, proclaimed that there are profound matters enfolded in the kugel. For this reason they insisted that every Jew must eat the Shabbes kugel. Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Rimanov recalled that once, when he went o
ut for a walk with the holy rabbi of Ropshitz, all that they talked about for three hours were the secrets that lie hidden inside the Shabbes kugel.’”
He gave Reb Chaim a meaningful gaze and then pulled another book out of the pile on his desk, found the place he had marked, and read:
“‘Reb Itzikel of Pshevorsk taught that there is a special chamber in paradise in which the particular reward for eating kugel on the Shabbes is granted. Even he who has eaten kugel out of low physical desire will receive his reward.’”
Jonas closed the book, at the same time closing his eyes and sighing, sinking into reflection. Suddenly he roused himself with a start, eyelids snapping open like a window shade out of control.
“All of these primary sources, I am certain you will be delighted to learn, Reb Chaim, have been recommended to me by your sanctified relation, the Sage of the Palisades. There is a treasure trove more. Here is one by Rabbi Aaron Roth, of Jerusalem, which leaves no doubt concerning the covenantal significance of the kugel. ‘Kugel is the one special food that all Jews eat, one food in the service of the one God, so that anyone who does not eat kugel on the Shabbes in this country should be investigated for heresy.’”
He placed the book down on his pile, as always making certain to keep the space around the framed picture of Hannah Klepfish cleared.
“You can see the direction in which I am going here.” Again he stared at Cass over his bifocals, the high dome of his forehead corrugated with the inquisitorial ascent of his brows.
“To tell you the truth, Professor Klapper, I’m not exactly sure.”
“I am, I believe, your dissertation adviser?”
There was no need to answer.
“I venture to assert that I have located in this matter a topic that will not only satisfy the requirement of Faith—you have, I may remind you, to attain competence, under my supervision and to my satisfaction, in the areas of Faith, Literature, and Values—but might very well provide you with a topic for your dissertation for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor. You shall embark by first confronting the intriguing mystery of the kugel, both noodle and potato, although the sages favor potato. The potato stands for Yesod, which can be translated as Foundation, and is one of the ten Sephirot, the emanations of the revealed God radiated throughout the created physical world. Beyond the ten Sephirot is where the Ayn Sof lurks. Yesod is the channel through which the emanation Tiferet— another of the ten Sephirot and to be translated as Beauty, Glory—strives to unite with the Shechinah, which is God’s indwelling Immanence and which shares the cosmic exile that must be redeemed through the processes of ongoing history.”
36 Arguments for the Existence of God Page 26