And the Sea Is Never Full (3 page)

My friends are happy to see me happy. They’ve had to wait long enough for this. Rebbe Menahem-Mendel Schneerson of Lubavitch had often scolded me, quoting Scripture: “It is not good for man to remain alone.” Among the letters I received from him before my marriage, there was one in particular that made me smile. Three strong pages on theological topics like “Is it possible to believe without believing in God?” followed by a simple question that he said “has nothing to do with theology: Why don’t you get married?” I told him that the question actually had a lot to do with theology….

Saul Lieberman, too, pushed me toward marriage in his own way: by describing to me the often tragic fate of bachelors in talmudic literature. Abraham Joshua Heschel had limited himself to a few allusions. When we returned from Israel, he and his wife, Sylvia, hosted a dinner in our honor. On meeting Marion, he gave her his trust with characteristic warmth. That day, in his wonderfully courtly way, he crossed half the city to find orchids for the new bride.

As for me, I try to remember why I was so fearful of “losing my freedom.” Was I afraid to detach myself from the past and its ghosts? Afraid of a stability I confused with complacency? No doubt these fears were real, but they were of secondary importance. Why did I wait so long to create a home? True, I worried about not being able to support a family, but was there a deeper reason, a general lack of confidence in the future?

Back home people would have said that I was waiting for my zivvug, the being who was destined to be mine in the civil registers on high.

A story, why not?

When the famous German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn reached the age to be married, it was natural that the richest, most beautiful, most cultivated young girl was chosen for him. Both sets of parents declared themselves delighted and saw no need to consult the two intended. An agreement was reached as to the wedding date, and the cream of society and the most notable rabbis were invited.

On the day of the wedding, following custom, the bridegroom gave a
drasha
, a lecture, that his friends interrupted at intervals with appropriate songs. In another room, the bride and her friends were being entertained by the best musicians and minstrels of the region.

At the moment when the groom had to raise the veil of his bride-to-be, he was dazzled by her beauty. Unfortunately, at the same time, she saw him and fainted. For the philosopher was as famous for his ungainly appearance as for his erudition. He had a small, pointed nose, bushy eyebrows, two dissimilar eyes, and a hump. One can understand the bride’s reaction. As soon as she came to, she asked for her father and said, “I’d rather die than marry him.” The father begged her to relent, to be patient and obedient. To no avail. The mother also pleaded. In vain. Both lamented: What a scandal, what a shame, all these guests, the uncles, the aunts, what will they say? In the end Moses’ father had to tell his son. The groom was not a philosopher for nothing: He had guessed everything. “I understand,” he whispered. “Please explain to her that I am not angry. In return, I’d like to speak to her alone; I’d like her to give me fifteen minutes. Thereafter, she’ll be free to return to her parents.”

In those days such a request seemed preposterous. What? Two young people alone before the wedding? Still, the rabbis agreed. A quarter of an hour, no more. Mendelssohn welcomed the young girl, smiling. He invited her to sit down and to listen to him. “I shall tell you a talmudic legend,” he said.

And the beautiful girl believed him. And her wedding to the philosopher was celebrated with great joy.

Bit by bit I move away from professional journalism, which no longer satisfies me. I feel like changing—if not my profession, then my workplace and my schedule. I still visit the U.N. on a regular basis. In the absence of great speakers, its discourses and goals lack vision. I have to force myself to “cover” its political and diplomatic events. Its cast of characters is usually uninteresting. In truth, my heart is no longer in it. Even scoops no longer excite me. I propose to Gershon Jacobson, my colleague with ties to the Lubavitcher movement, that he take over. Dov Judkowski, my boss in Tel Aviv, agrees. But how will I manage financially? I still send weekly columns to
Yedioth
and occasional special features to the
Forverts
, for whose news desk I stopped working some time ago. I am tired of repeating the same formulas, just changing the names. “Mr. X met last night with ambassador Y….” “It appears that … Z formally denies that …” I feel my vocabulary getting poorer and poorer by the day. Fortunately, there are my studies with Lieberman, my walks with Heschel.

And yet there would be plenty of topics for a journalist with a passion for his profession. While years ago space was allotted to me parsimoniously at
Yedioth
, today I could command as much as I’d like. Noah Mozes is happy: The daily has increased in size, circulation, and influence. But Dov advises me to give up my column; he thinks I should be writing more “serious” material. At the
Forverts
, my editors are more indulgent; they would publish my thoughts on the theological dimensions of Chinese gastronomy if I so chose.

The times are dramatic—intervals of freedom punctuated by brutal interventions. The sadness of the 1968 Prague Spring: “Wake up, Lenin! Your children have gone mad!” A demented Australian
youth sets fire to the El Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem. Richard Nixon sinks ever more deeply into the filthy war in Vietnam, the wretched legacy bequeathed to him by his predecessors. Two hundred thousand demonstrators converge on Washington to vent their anger. The bloody name of My Lai drips over the headlines: How could a lieutenant wearing an American uniform coldly order the massacre of a hundred or more men, women, and children? An officer explains that there are times when it is necessary to save a village from Communism by destroying it. A tragic conclusion.

Meanwhile the Concorde triumphantly soars over the Atlantic. Modern man moves faster and faster without knowing how to utilize the time he saves. In France, in an ultimate gesture of contempt, General de Gaulle steps down, slamming the door behind him. Justice Abe Fortas resigns from the Supreme Court for having accepted a $20,000 bribe from a shady businessman. Then comes Chappaquiddick: Does young Mary Jo Kopechne’s death signify the end of Teddy Kennedy’s presidential dreams? As for man’s first walk on the moon: I spend a sleepless night on the Côte d’Azur waiting for the historic moment. I explain to Marion: “One day we may have a child and he will ask us what we were doing when the first man ‘conquered’ or ‘liberated’ the moon. What will we answer? That we slept?”

Then there was Woodstock: 400,000 young people gathered to experience the ecstasy of collective rebellion. Joy, love, and freedom all in one. The thrill of learning that Beckett has been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature: But where does Godot fit in? How I would love to decipher their silent dialogue.

Not content to change just my marital status and place of residence, I also change publishers in America. Through Lily Edelman, B’nai B’rith’s director of educational programs, I meet Jean Ennis and Jim Silberman. Jim is editor in chief of Random House, and Jean heads its publicity department. They introduce me to their chairman, Robert Bernstein, a tall, attractive man with red hair, whom Marion perceives as the reincarnation of Huckleberry Finn. Soon I am their author. Lily offers to translate
A Beggar in Jerusalem
with the help of her husband, Nathan, professor of Romance languages at Columbia University. The result does not satisfy Jim. I take back the manuscript and try rewriting it, but my English is not up to the task. I turn to Marion. She reworks the translation.

It is 1970. The publication by Random House of
A Beggar in Jerusalem
goes smoothly, perhaps as a result of its winning the French Prix Médicis. There are enthusiastic reviews in the
New York Times
, the
Washington Post
, and other newspapers throughout the country. This is the first time that one of my books gets such a reception.

A Beggar in Jerusalem
does not make for easy reading. I conceived of it as a sort of collage, every chapter a separate tale. Together they were to be more than the sum of their parts. My intention was to contain in one tale basic elements of both Jewish history and my own. To recount the Six-Day War, I called upon characters from my earlier novels, biblical figures and Hasidic Masters, mystical madmen and roving visionaries: I summoned them all to the Wall in Jerusalem. I even invited a certain Joshua of Nazareth to take his place there. Shlomo the Blind, who had previously met him, had predicted what his disciples would make of his teachings. And the son of Joseph the carpenter began to weep, saying over and over: “This is not what I wanted, this is not what I meant to happen….” But it was too late.

Of all my novels, readers say this is the least accessible. It requires explanations I feel incapable of providing. American tourists, returning from Israel, wrote to complain that they had gone to the Wall but had not encountered “my” beggars.

In
One Generation After
, published in France in 1970, I return to the Six-Day War, which has a place in the collective memory of more than one people. There I recall a conversation with Colonel Motta Gur, the liberator of the Old City of Jerusalem, about a radio broadcast of his that had touched the Israeli public so deeply that it was rebroadcast several times. I asked him if he was religious.

He seemed incredulous: “Of course not! For God’s sake, why would you think that?”

“Because your account was suffused with religious overtones.”

His expression was one of bewilderment: Where on earth did I get that idea? Suddenly, the roles were reversed; now he was interrogating me:

“Did I speak of God?”

“No.”

“Of the Bible?”

“No again.”

“Did I discuss issues other than those relating to the confrontation? Did I quote the Torah?”

“No.”

“There! You see? Your question is groundless. All I did was tell a story. My own.”

But what a story. It has elements of prophetic delirium. Listen: Under his command, the paratroopers began to run through the Old City, from one street to the next, from one turret to the next, obeying an irresistible force. The situation was mad, exalted, insane. Every soldier knew, however obscurely, that he had lived only for this moment, for this race. Then, in the midst of the roaring battle, Gur’s voice was heard shouting his report to headquarters: “The Temple Mount is in our hands!” And everywhere—on every front, in every house, in every place of business, in every yeshiva—officers, soldiers, children, and old men wept and embraced. And there was in these tears, in this explosion of emotion, something unreal that set the event apart, this event that changed forever those who lived it, and the others as well.

Motta Gur shrugged and said: “You make it sound too poetic; that’s not my style.”

“So for you it was nothing but another war episode, a battle among so many others?”

“I won’t go that far. After all, Jerusalem was not only a military objective. It was something else. Jerusalem is … Jerusalem.”

“What is it that makes Jerusalem … Jerusalem?”

“Why, its history, of course. It is Jewish, isn’t it? It touches me, it … it’s part of me!”

“Jericho, too, has a past linked to ours. So does Hebron. And Gaza. And Bethlehem.”

“Enough of your comparisons! Jerusalem cannot be compared to any other place.”

I was smiling. He had fallen into the trap. Here he was speaking in mystical terms.

“Strange,” he said at the end. “What started as a strictly military operation ended as something else entirely. Suddenly we were fighting as if in a trance. We understood at that moment that our true objective was no longer to occupy this or that strategic position, but to liberate history itself….

“But, no, I’m not even religious, surely not observant. How many
times do I have to tell you? Yes, I occasionally go to synagogue. So what? My children go; I accompany them. What does it prove? Only that I fulfill my duty as a parent.”

I met him a few years later. He pretended to be angry; he scowled: “If you knew what problems you caused me….”

People close to him told me how, after the battle was over, he came home to his wife and children and spent several days and nights sobbing. Never explaining.

Many years later, in 1995, a victim of cancer, fearing the inevitable decline, he committed suicide. All Israel wept for him.

In the Bible, one generation represents forty years. But I collected and published the texts that compose
One Generation After
twenty-five years after the Event. That is what I sometimes call the Holocaust, for the latter name does not seem adequate.