All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (60 page)

Several years later I returned to Sighet with an NBC television crew. Leibi, the Yiddish writer, was still there, not yet delivered from his political “friends.” The authorities ordered him to serve as our official guide. The cameraman was filming in the courtyard of my house, the cemetery, the railroad station. The main sequence would be my interview with Moshe.… But first I must tell you more about that strange gentleman.

The day before I had left New York, I had received a cryptic telegram from the NBC director, Martin Hoade, who was already in Sighet with his crew: “We’ve been lucky enough to find your Moshe. He will participate in the broadcast.” Marion and I read and reread that telegram, telling ourselves that surely Martin had lost his mind. Didn’t he know that “my” Moshe—the man I speak of in my writings, Moshe the beadle, also known as Moshe the madman, who returned from “there” to warn us of disasters to come—couldn’t possibly be alive? I had seen him depart with the first convoy. Was it possible he had survived and returned to Sighet? I rushed to the phone. Of course, it was impossible to get through to Sighet, but suddenly I could think of nothing but Moshe, the first of the Sighet Jews to have seen death at work in Kolomyya and Kamenets-Podolski.

When we landed at the Baia-Mare airport, I grabbed Martin before even saying hello. “What about Moshe? Is it true he’s still alive?” Martin’s reply was reassuring: “I guarantee it. I saw him just yesterday.” As we were driven to Sighet over terrible mountain roads, I bombarded Martin with questions: Where did you find him? Where is he now? What does he look like? In what language did he speak to you? Martin was evasive and I presumed that he was trying to maintain the suspense to make our reunion as dramatic as possible. My disappointment was all the greater. The man had the same first name and the same past—common to all of us—but he was not “my” Moshe. No matter, I liked him anyway. Like all my favorite characters, he seemed out of place. Dressed in the manner of Hasidim of long ago, he was
the very last Hasid of Sighet and its environs. He had a white beard, deep blue eyes, a wonderfully kind face, a childlike smile. Rembrandt would gladly have painted his portrait. After we had shaken hands, I asked him what he was doing in this godforsaken town, and he replied that he was the region’s
shokhet
, or ritual slaughterer. Martin was not disappointed. But he postponed the shoot until the following day. He wanted to film us in the context of two survivors from the same town exchanging memories and impressions. In the meantime, I chatted with Moshe. He lived alone, in a tiny, airless hut he had to crawl into on all fours. “Like a dog,” he told me, never having heard of Kafka and unaware that he was echoing one Joseph K. But he did not complain, for he felt he had a mission. There were still Jews in Sighet and its surroundings who kept kosher and therefore needed him. How many were there? A few in Sighet, two or three in this village, three or four in that village. “How many doesn’t matter,” Moshe said. “Without me they wouldn’t be able to eat meat on Shabbat.” Late that evening, before returning to my hotel, I asked him if he needed anything. He smiled. “Me? I don’t need anything. But there is something.… The community is suffering. We have only one synagogue still open here. Maybe you could help us repair the roof.… It leaks.…” I offered him money, but he refused. It was illegal to take money from a foreigner. Then I had another idea. On camera, during our filmed conversation, I would ask him to tell me his greatest wish, and he would reply that the synagogue roof badly needed repairs. I felt confident that after such public exposure the authorities would take care of the problem. Moshe agreed. We rehearsed my question and his reply, and he asked me, incredulously, “Do you really think …?” I told him I could guarantee it. The roof would soon be repaired.

I slept fitfully, assailed by my usual entourage of ghosts, who dragged me to the cemetery, where we gathered at the grave of my grandfather whose name I bear. But that’s another story.

The next day Moshe and I met for the filming. There was an atmosphere of tension on the “set,” namely the community “offices.” Martin gave his instructions, setting camera angles and positioning the lights and adjusting the sound. Then came the final commands: Quiet on the set, lights, camera, action! Moshe turned out to be a natural, as if he had studied dramatic arts somewhere. We talked about the Rebbe of Wizhnitz, who used to be our rebbe. I asked him about his childhood in the mountains, and his religious studies. Then about the war years, the deportation, the camps; the return to an
empty town, and, despite it all, his faith. How had he managed it? Moshe smiled. There was no point in asking him that, he said, the question should be addressed to the Holy One, blessed be His name. He quoted a Talmudic saying that love of God comes from God, but fear of God is the domain of man. He, Moshe, loved God and feared Him too. What was so hard to understand about that? Though they grasped not a word of our Yiddish, the entire crew had tears in their eyes. There was something surrealistic in our exchange. Fully at ease in his role, Moshe went on speaking, and I let him. Finally, after a silence heavy with meaning, I asked
the
question: “Do you have a special wish?” He waited a long time before replying softly, “Yes, I do.” Then he fell silent. I wanted to remind him of our plan for the new roof, but he seemed lost in thought. The silence dragged on, gathering weight. I pointed discreetly—I hoped—at the ceiling. Moshe didn’t react. Poor Martin, also at a loss, seemed frozen. Suddenly Moshe stared straight at me and sighed. “Yes,” he said, “I have a wish.” He paused. “I would like the Messiah to come. But please let Him hurry, for we can’t take it anymore. That is my deepest wish.” I was stunned. Had he forgotten our plan? Or was he the reincarnation of the other Moshe, my Moshe? I collected my thoughts. “Moshe,” I said, “dear Moshe. Might you perhaps be content with a little less?” No, he replied, he would accept no less. It was the Messiah or nothing.

I later learned that our first conversation had been bugged. A Jewish official who understood Yiddish had awakened Moshe and threatened him: Didn’t he know that it was forbidden to complain? Didn’t he know that complaints were tantamount to defamation of the socialist state? To say that the Communist roof of the only Communist synagogue in Sighet was in disrepair constituted anti-Communist agitation and therefore treason. Moshe had been unable to warn me before the filming.

Thereafter I found it hard to continue our dialogue. “You’re waiting for the Messiah, and so am I. You await Him here, I await Him in New York. We can wait for Him anywhere. What matters is to wait. But you are old and alone. Why not leave and await the Messiah in Israel?” His reply was poignantly pragmatic: “Israel needs young soldiers. I sent my three sons there. They need a mother, so I sent my wife. But me? They don’t need an old man like me. Here at least I can be of use to some Jews.…”

The interview lasted an hour. When it was over, I said: “Reb Moshe, don’t be angry, but I still don’t understand why you never went
to Israel, if only as a tourist. You could have gone and come back. Aren’t you curious to see Jerusalem, to wander through the Old City, to pray at the Wall?” Suddenly his smile was gone. “Curious?” he said faintly. “You ask if I’m curious? The word isn’t strong enough. I dream of going, ache to be there even for an instant, just long enough to utter a single ‘Amen.’…” Perhaps it was wrong of me to press on, but I did: “In that case, Reb Moshe, what stops you? Tell me.” He seemed to be gasping for breath as he searched for an answer, perhaps a justification. “It’s a question that troubles me,” he murmured. “I think about it all the time. I don’t understand it myself. Perhaps I’m unworthy of going.…” He tried to go on but could not. It was then that all of us—the crew, Marion, and I—broke down. This
tzaddik
of the Carpathians, as I call him in my journal, doubted that he was “worthy” of treading on Jerusalem’s soil. Once again I found myself thinking of “my” Moshe, the madman, the beadle, the beggar, he who never returned. And yet.…

Danny Stern had read the account of my “Return to Sighet” in a magazine. He phoned and asked to meet me. “I’ve published some novels,” he said as he shyly handed me a manuscript, “but they really don’t count. I think this may be my first true literary effort.” This very anxious, gentle man had a passion for literature, particularly contemporary literature. “Do you teach?” I asked. No, he worked in advertising and played the cello. Fine, I would read his manuscript. I felt flattered. It was the first time an American writer had sought my advice.

The title of his novel,
Who Shall Live, Who Shall Die
, was taken from the liturgy of the High Holidays. Its action took place in the camps, where the main character holds a post important enough to influence the inmates’ fate.

I tend to be suspicious of fiction whose theme is Auschwitz. Talent is not enough. Something else is needed. Danny knew it. There was a hesitancy in his writing, as though he were unsure, phrase by phrase, of how to continue.

Danny had never written on the subject before. A profoundly and authentically Jewish writer, he explores in his book the Jewish past through characters firmly anchored in the present. His publisher asked me for a few lines to help his novel. I was happy to do it.

Israeli authors were beginning to solicit my support in getting their works translated in America. I was suddenly feeling myself becoming “influential.” I recommended several of them to publishers and
editors. There were a few acceptances, more rejections. Still, Hanokh Bartov published his novel on the Jewish Brigade, Haim Guri his news articles on the Eichmann trial. Several magazines requested my collaboration. I met Philip Roth, who had recently written a harsh critique of
Exodus
, contrasting it to
Dawn
. I savored the philosophical humor of his short stories, admired the lucidity of his novels. Arnold Foster, who led the major battles against anti-Semitism as head of the Anti-Defamation League, spoke to me of his nephew Harold Flender, author of a Hemingwayesque novel called
Paris Blues
. We met and became friends. Harold later wrote a vivid account of the rescue of the Danish Jews, and never abandoned the theme of the camps. (When he died a suicide a few years later, I was devastated.)

I continued to ask myself harrowing questions. Had I finally made something of my life? Had I made something of my survival?

In 1964, twenty years after leaving my town and the mountains that surrounded it, I published
The Gates of the Forest
. It was an elegy to friendship, a hymn to solitude, a flight from myself into myself, and a song of remembrance for Maria. I developed various themes already touched on in
The Town Beyond the Wall:
the call of God, the provocation of His intervention in human history, the interrogation of silence by silence.
Gates
examines the implications of faith,
The Town
the rush toward madness. The two novels are of a piece but bear little resemblance to each other.

In 1965 an unexpected journey to the Soviet Union became a turning point in my life. Meir Rosenne and Ephraim Tari, two of the most effective and devoted young diplomats in the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, prepared me. Both spoke French, were interested in literature, and, as it turned out, belonged to a semiofficial government office reporting directly to the prime minister. Meir in New York and Ephraim in Paris oversaw clandestine activities on behalf of Soviet Jews. It was an arduous task, more dangerous than it appeared. Arduous because even the largest and most influential Jewish communities refused to become actively involved. They were delighted to aid Israel, but the desperate Jews behind the Iron Curtain were both distant and invisible. Nobody seemed to know what concrete action Soviet Jews really wanted Jews in the West to take for them. The fact was that it was far more comfortable to express solidarity with our heroic Israeli brothers than with our unfortunate Soviet cousins. Also, as Israel could not
afford to openly arouse the Kremlin’s ire, American and European public opinion followed suit. In any case, American and French Jews had other priorities. But Meir and Ephraim refused to give up. They tirelessly appealed to senators, congressmen, journalists, and clergymen. They organized seminars, colloquia, and petitions. At stake were countless human beings whose only claim was their right to dignity and hope. How many were they? There was talk of millions, but that figure seemed implausibly high. “You ought to go and see,” both Israelis told me. “You have been a witness before, now you must go and find out the Soviet Jews’ true situation and testify for them.” Gershon Jacobson, a Yiddish journalist originally from Soviet Georgia, helped prepare my itinerary. I was briefed by experts. There were strict warnings: Watch out for beautiful women who turn up naked in your hotel room or railroad compartment. They will be there not because you’re so handsome, but because they are KGB. Unfortunately, the warnings proved baseless. No female members of the secret police were dispatched to entrap me.