by Elie Wiesel
“Let's leave God where He is. Would you mind if we returned to Béinish?”
EXCERPT FROM DR. THéRèSE GOLDSCHMIDT'S NOTES
This very night, as usual, Martin and I exchange our impressions of the day that was coming to an end. At the library, in an old rare book, a researcher found manuscript pages by Paritus, that strange philosopher who had frequented Benedictus or Baruch Spinoza and twice met Don Itzhak Abrabanel, the exile from the Iberian Peninsula.
“And what are they about?” I ask.
“About the mystery of the original light,” Martin replies, “the one that allowed Creation to take shape. Paritus wonders about its origin: it had to have been hidden somewhere other than in the universe. But where?”
Of course I'm interested in my husband's work. I ask for explanations, details, interpretations, and reward him with a nice smile, both generous and promising. For him as for me, Paritus is a familiar figure. I've read fantastic stories about him in different narratives. We don't know much about his life, except that he wanted it to be secret. An intrepid traveler, he journeyed to many countries in Europe and Asia, visiting Jewish scholars and trying to interest them in his work. At one time, I considered writing a study of him, from the psychiatric point of view, of course. My curiosity never faded. I turn to Martin.
“Are there any new facts in these pages that could shed more light on this legendary character of yours?” I ask.
“Possibly. He describes the tragic and disconcerting fate of a woman abandoned by her husband, an agunah; he talks about her rights and hardships—”
“Really? What a coincidence! Just today, Doriel mentioned a similar case—”
“Maybe it's the same one?”
“No, the case Doriel cited happened a few years ago, not several centuries ago.”
“Oh, you know, with Paritus, nothing is impossible.”
“Stop! The story I heard today was about the brother of my patient's childhood friend.”
“And was his name Paritus, by any chance?” Martin insists, smiling. Then he grows serious again. “And how was your session with Doriel?”
I shake my head, wondering if I can go into detail without betraying my patient's trust.
“Your unhappy patient, how is he doing? Still as recalcitrant? Unpleasant maybe?”
“He used to be; he's less so now. In fact, at one point, not so long ago, I asked him if that was his temperament, if he was always so arrogant and unpleasant.”
“What did he say?”
“He said only with me. With other people, he's rather courteous, amiable.”
“Do you see this special treatment as a compliment?”
“I have no idea. But …”
“But what?”
“I made a discovery that might explain quite a few things,” I say in a hesitant voice. “Just imagine, my patient, perhaps because he's suffering from religious and other inhibitions, has never slept with a woman.”
Martin represses another smile. “At his age?”
“Yes. At his age. It would seem that women frighten him.”
“They remind him of his mother?”
“That's possible. An avenue worth exploring.”
Martin agrees with me and adds, laughing heartily, “I wonder if your discovery couldn't apply to our dear Paritus too.”
15
This day, for some reason—or maybe for no obvious reason—we talk mostly about happiness. I am more relaxed, Thérèse preoccupied. I tell her about my visit to a Communist writer who became a Buddhist, and she has trouble concentrating. I notice and change the subject, convinced that she is going to interrupt me. But since she remains silent, I stop talking, let the silence grow heavier, sit up, gaze at her intently, and ask: “Where are you?”
I have never seen her so absent.
She gives a start. “My mind is elsewhere; please excuse me.” “You don't seem yourself today. What's bothering you?” She shrugs, tries to smile, then sighs. “Oh, it's nothing. It'll pass. In fact, it already has. Where were we? Oh yes, your writer friend.”
I don't bat an eye. I nearly corrected her by pointing out that the writer in question isn't really a writer and certainly not my friend, but I don't feel like talking about it anymore. Some other time, not now. My main interest now is this woman's change of mood; for the first time since we've started seeing each other, she hasn't been listening.
“Tell me, what's wrong?” I ask. “Suddenly I saw your face cloud up in a way I'm familiar with: inattention close to distress. You who know so many things about me, you have no right hiding from me what's troubling you.”
Thérèse waits a minute, as though she is weighing the pros and cons, and finally gives in.
“Okay, it concerns my private life. I don't have children. There. While you were talking about some people's attraction to Buddhism, an unrelated thought suddenly wormed its way into my mind: he has a friend and I don't have children.”
“First of all, he's not my friend; second, you could still have children.”
She tries to smile but succeeds only in wincing to hide her embarrassment. “What if we talked about Israel?” she asks me.
I feel sorry for her. Who would have predicted it?
Béinish had agreed to meet me in a Tel Aviv café near the beach. He was sitting in a corner of the terrace, spotted me, and signaled me to join him. I asked him how he had recognized me; he answered with a hand motion and a shrug. As if to say, I don't do my kind of work for nothing.
Around forty, well dressed in a gray suit, white shirt, and dark blue tie, he looked like a diplomat, industrialist, or high-ranking government official. I tried to picture him as an adolescent, with a black felt hat and sidelocks, holding a prayer book or a bulky volume of commentaries under his arm. I also tried to picture the bridegroom being led by his father to the marriage ceremony to unveil and cover his intended bride. But not a trace was left of his religiosity or former life.
“My name is Tamir,” he said, without taking his eyes off me. “You wanted to meet me,” he added warily, in Hebrew, of course.
“Yes, I did,” I answered in Yiddish. “It's not so much your experience as the story of that story that made me want to meet you.” He listened to me with, I suppose, professional curiosity.
“Go on,” he said. “I understand Yiddish.”
Go on? Not easy. Actually I had no plan or goal in seeking this meeting. Should I quiz him on his abrupt break with everything that was part of his youth? On the motives that had led him to reject our ancestors’ tradition? On the gulf he had created between himself and his family? On the impression he gave of no longer being interested in them? What had happened to make him act in a way that he himself would have previously thought unthinkable? Had he become a renegade or madman overnight? Indifferent, perhaps? He would reply that it was his affair, not mine. In other words, his private life was none of my business.
“Are you happy at least?” My mouth blurted out these words: it was impossible to take them back. I had the feeling that they were like a slap in his face, for he turned as crimson as the flame of a simmering inferno darting into the forest in the dead of night.
“Why would you be interested in my personal happiness?” he asked, looking gloomy.
I could have told him that I was interested in everything, or that what I was particularly interested in was the quest for happiness in the life of a heretic, but I didn't want to provoke him further.
“I'm interested in it,” I answered, “because your happiness, if it exists, is built on other people's unhappiness.”
“How do you know? Who told you? And what gives you the right to meddle in something that's none of your business?”
“My apologies,” I said, lowering my head, embarrassed. “I'm a friend of your brother's …”
“Haïm-Dovid? You know him? He talks too much. He always did, even as a child. A deaf and blind fanatic who thinks he's still living in the Middle Ages.”
After a brief silence he spo
ke again: “How is he? I suppose he's engaged to a nice Jewish girl from a good family? In the hope of starting a large and above all pious family. And … my parents?”
I kept silent. I was afraid he would ask me if they were happy. Should I tell him his father never so much as mentioned his name? That he had disowned him?
He seemed to be making an effort to blot out that period of his life. “You still haven't told me why you wanted to see me,” he said. His tone of voice had changed from wary to impatient and unpleasant. I was taking up too much of his time.
“The break,” I answered.
“The … what?” he asked.
“I'm curious … The break with your family, with their past, which is also yours. I'm struck by its abruptness. And by its finality, too. What provoked it? What made it irrevocable?”
I had other questions to ask him; they were buzzing around in my feverish head, creating an infernal nucleus that took my breath away. I gave him a sidelong glance. He too seemed about to let slip something that he kept buried deep inside. Was it sorrow, or remorse, perhaps? Should I tell him that I was sorry I hurt him? That I thought it best to change the subject? It was wiser. It was less risky to talk about myself.
“Like you in those days, I feel I'm going through a crisis,” I said. “That's why—”
He didn't let me finish explaining; he lost his temper. “You're having doubts and you expect me to make them vanish? Is that it? You're obsessed by serious questions and you'd like me to give you the answers? Maybe you think that when you break with faith everything becomes clear and transparent? That the path opening before you will lead to a radiant goal that will warm your heart? That's why you saw fit to disturb me? Well, then, you're just a pathetic fool, and I resent you for wasting my time.”
He got up and acted as if he was about to leave, while I stayed seated, motionless. Did he notice that I had tears in my eyes? He sat down again and stared at me for a long time. Patrons and passersby glanced at us in surprise. I heard a woman with unruly brown hair say to her friend, “They look like two brothers who are quarreling; the elder is …” The end of her sentence escaped me. What was Tamir driving at? He checked his watch quickly, nodded, and said in Hebrew: “You don't speak the so-called holy tongue at all?”
“I do, a bit.”
“Are you prepared to make an effort?”
I was.
“It's late. I'll make a phone call and cancel an appointment. Stay put. It will only take a minute.”
I was anxious. What if he didn't return? But he did.
And he brought with him the depiction of a past as dislocated as mine.
“I was suffocating,” Tamir said, sipping a cup of black coffee. “That's the word that best describes how I felt in my parents’ house. My mother's silent looks, the overly rigid rules my father imposed on me. The constant and haunting presence of God in my life. With every step, I ran into Moses and Maimonides. I couldn't take it anymore. I needed more air and breathing space. Burdened by my body and my self, I began to feel self-hatred and self-disgust. I yearned for sleep as a refuge and the possibility of sinking into oblivion.”
His head bent forward, his eyes gazing at a faraway point in space and time, Tamir lit cigarette after cigarette, seeming to struggle against the grief or remorse, if not both, bottled up in his memory. Then he turned to me before resuming with a shrug. “A while ago you used a word that made me start: break. It's a hard word, a strong word, but it is fitting. And it hurts. It is brutal. It's like throwing salt on an open wound. Furthermore, in my case, I should use it in the plural.”
The story he began telling me didn't surprise me. I had vaguely expected it. Like him, others before him had experienced the same periods of doubt, the same heartbreak, the same crises ending in rebellion. The literature of the emancipation and the Haskalah are filled with such stories. And they abound in the literature of other cultures. A religious youth, crushed by the pressures of his faith and his expectations, feeling cramped as if he is in a cage or cell, reaches the point when he can't take it anymore: yearning for the unexpected, for new discoveries and escape, he tears himself away from familiar places and faces in order to start a new life and a new adventure, somewhere else.
For Béinish, the accident that caused his first break occurred a month after his marriage, one morning after he had left the study and prayer house. He was crossing the street, lost in thought, when he was hit by an army vehicle. He regained consciousness only in the hospital, where he underwent several operations on his head and cervical vertebrae. His visitors included his parents and his fellow students, of course, but also Peleg, the young officer who had been driving the car.
“You can't imagine how sorry I am,” he said in a hoarse voice.
“It wasn't your fault; it was mine,” Béinish said. “I should have looked before crossing the street.”
“What can I do so you'll forgive me?”
“Nothing. You're not responsible.”
The officer was clearly distressed. “Are you sure?” he asked. “Isn't there anything I can do for you?”
“Nothing … but I'll think about it.”
Peleg returned the next day, and the day after; he returned every day, until the morning when Béinish told him he was going home. His father had already signed the necessary insurance documents. “We could see each other again in a café …”
“Impossible,” said Béinish. “I've never had food or drink anywhere but at home or at the yeshiva. In fact I've never set foot in a café.”
“Can I come and see you at home?”
“What a question. Of course you can; you'll be more than welcome.”
“You're not afraid that your father will throw me out? After all, look at me: I'm not a Talmudist. I'm not even a practicing Jew.”
He's right, thought Béinish. The officer is clean-shaven and doesn't wear a kippa on his head. He'll shock my family, that's for sure.
“But why do you want to continue visiting me?”
Peleg smiled. “After all, I feel a bit responsible for your condition.”
Béinish protested. “Stop feeling guilty. It's not your fault. I've already told you that, and you know I'm right. So …”
Peleg looked at him without replying but seemed disappointed and sad.
“Fine,” said Béinish. “We'll see each other again. But in the park, not at home.”
In the evening, he talked to his father about it and was surprised by his answer. “Let him come here. Though he has no religious faith today, he might well have it tomorrow. Perhaps he needs you. Help him. Saving a soul is a big mitzvah. It's a true good deed.”
Naturally, things took a different turn.
At first, out of respect for his new friend's parents, Peleg never entered the house without wearing a kippa on his head, borrowed from a religious soldier in his unit. They talked about everything and nothing. Peleg preferred current events and Béinish the ancient texts.
“I'm interested in events,” Peleg said one day, “insofar as I can have an effect on them. As for you, can you change the biblical stories?”
“Why try?” asked Béinish. “God Himself can't change the past. But the past remains alive and active in time. By studying it I can understand what is happening to us.”
“And does that satisfy you?”
“What about you, does it satisfy you to work at trying to change the present when you don't even know how much longer we'll be alive?”
“Philosophically, you're right. Defining the present isn't obvious; but for a living being, for a suffering sick person, for a man in love, the first time he kisses his beloved, the present certainly exists, and how!”
“It becomes a memory almost instantaneously,” said Béinish. “Hence, for all practical purposes, it no longer exists.”
“And in the Bible, what exists?” asked Peleg.
“Nostalgia,” Béinish replied.
“Nostalgia for what?”
“For the beginnings. For origi
ns. For what preceded time. And what sheltered it. The first moments. The first cracks. The first signs of failure for the Creator in facing His Creation's downfall. The sorrow, the distress of the Master at worlds unworthy of His vision. That is what I seek and what I find in our still-relevant ancient great texts.”
“Relevant?” Peleg was surprised. “What connection do you see between all that and the anguish and heartbreak of every Jewish family whose children are doing their military service? Don't tell me that the Bible talks about terrorism!”
“It talks about conquest.”
“But not about victory.”
“Yes, it does,” said Béinish. “Or rather the commentaries do. Victory over oneself. The only valid victory.”
“And what about Samson?” asked Peleg, revealing his meager knowledge. “Don't talk to me about his spiritual or moral principles.”
Béinish didn't want to discuss Samson. Too great a womanizer, the warrior wasn't his hero, even if he had defended the community valiantly against the Philistine enemy. In order to redirect the conversation, he asked, “What does the Bible mean to you?”
“A treasure trove of episodes, of possible and impossible stories . Beautiful and sad, funny and not so funny. One day, when I'm retired and this country will be living in happiness and peace, I might reread them. For the time being, I have other worries.”
His worries were those of Israel. Threatened by too many enemies, its security was far from assured. The neighboring countries were becoming stronger militarily, and Israel didn't have the means to maintain a state of permanent vigilance.
With time, Béinish ended up sharing his friend's convictions. He left the world of the Talmud, where everything was open, for the world of the service, where everything was secret and where Peleg played a major role.
I saw Tamir again several times. He quizzed me on my habits, my knowledge, my tastes. At first I attributed his curiosity to his desire to learn more about his family. Wrong: it was purely professional. I understood this only at the end when, to my surprise, with a serious if not solemn air, he told me he wanted to recruit me. I told him that he was crazy.