Serious Delirium (eBook)

THE THIRD BOOK OF THE LAW

Why I went to the university, I don’t know really. It was just something I was expected to do, unwritten, unconscious, in the Jewish blood, I guess. There’s a whole other personality there having nothing to do with the self that wants always to be one of the gang, the club member, the frat boy. There is this other self, enjoying study, learning, reading, precision, problem-solving. It exists apart, in the classroom, at my desk at home. They are two personalities that never touch each other, never meet. When I entered the classroom, an invisible inner switch was pulled, my club jacket fell off, my brain became alive. Now that I look back on it, I never talked about my intellectual concerns with anybody. That was for me, and I kept it to myself, as if I was ashamed of it. If any of the guys made fun of my good grades and scholastic honors, rather than being proud I hung my head embarrassed, as if I had committed a sin, a sin against the herd. It was only at home that I could be proud, that I could receive recognition for my intellect with joy. On the other hand, if I came home drunk as a bum, and my father found me the next morning my head in the clothes hamper which I had mistaken for the toilet, my head laying in my own vomit (a mark of great pride for the herd), I had to hang my head again. I had sinned against the Holy Book. He didn’t say anything to me, my father, no bawlings out, no deprivals of pocket money, just the slow, silent shaking of the head which meant, ‘No hope, no hope for such a boy.’

My grandmother always used to say that one of our ancestors was a Talmudic scholar. How she knew this I do not know, but I am sure it is true, and I am sure as well that a gene or two of his has filtered down to me. I can see him now, a couple of centuries ago, in a poor Jewish village, a shtetl, perhaps in Lithuania, perhaps in Russia. He is rocking back and forth in the candlelight in a little wooden room, chanting under his breath. The wife, the little ones, are sleeping in their cots and so do not feel the hunger. For the moment, the rumors of a pogrom to come are forgotten. He is rocking back and forth on the hard bench, Torah in hand. It is very dark outside, and he is trying to understand an obscure text in Leviticus, the third book of the Law. Before him on the makeshift table is a worn yellow copy of the Talmud, the commentary on the Pentateuch. Now and then he picks it up, slowly and with reverence, turns to a passage in the Mishna, ponders it, weighs it, then goes on to its elaboration in the Gemara. He owns no other books. He needs no other books. Everything is here in the Law and the Commentaries. He only has to understand, to understand. He is poor, it is true, very poor. Almost nothing to eat. But when he walks down the street, the wealthy doff their hats to him; when he speaks, they stand in respectful silence; they murmur in agreement as he lets fall a particularly apt quotation. It is he as well that is given the honored place in the synagogue, who is seated at the head of the table; and when a dispute arises among the people, it is to him that they come for advice.

His whole life has been one of learning. At the tender age of three he had entered the dardeki kheyder, where from morning to night he swayed and chanted as he went through endless repetitions of strange Hebrew words. He had learned to read there without understanding and to recite the prayers under the lash of the melamed. He graduated then to the khumesh kheyder, where he had learned to translate as he read, to comprehend. Here, as well, he had begun to read from the Commentaries. A further step was made into the gemoreh kheyder. At the age of eight, he had begun there his Talmudic studies in earnest. No more vain repetition by rote, no more learning long passages by heart; now it was interpretation, imagination, understanding. Judged worthy by his teachers and the erudite of the village, he was sent to the yeshiva, a rabbinical academy, far away in the town, where he studied, interpreted, and discussed, for seventeen hours a day, the Holy Books of his people. There he honed his mind through long hours of study, intricate and enthusiastic debates, and an open ear to the words of his teachers. After several years he was given no official degree, no formal title, no list of letters after his name. He was a learned man, that was all, that was enough. People called him Rabbi. Now he spends his nights pouring over the same yellow books, always searching, always trying to understand what is beyond understanding. His days are spent in botched attempts to feed his family. Perhaps he is a teacher, perhaps a struggling tradesman. No matter. His thoughts are in the Torah, in the Talmud, in learning, in trying to understand an obscure passage in Leviticus.

As for myself, my real learning began in the toilet. It was my own idea. The encyclopedia was in the hallway next to the door, and every time I went I picked up a volume. My idea was to start at “A” and go through “Z”, reading five pages a visit. The way I calculated it, I should have been able to finish it in two years if I didn’t take any vacations and drank lots of prune juice. I thought I would know everything that way and so prepare myself for life. I was around eight or nine when I had this brilliant idea. It was working very well, too, at least for a couple of weeks, but five pages in an encyclopedia takes quite a long time to read and my parents couldn’t understand what I was doing in there so long. Maybe they thought I was sneaking cigarettes or playing with myself or something; I don’t know, but they kept asking me what the problem was every time I went to the can. I got sick of the questioning, but didn’t want to tell them my idea, so I dropped it and just started reading short articles at random.

I, like my ancestor, went to religious school, too—every Sunday for eight years. Here was another personality cut off from the rest. No gangs here, no intense intellectual stimulation, just a sort of Jewishness I was forced to bathe in. I never understood, though, why I was there. Couldn’t figure it out. My parents said I had to go, so I went. A few prayers, a little history, some Hebrew. It had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of my life. I was made to understand that I was part of a people, but nobody explained to me why that was important. At twelve years old you want to know these things. You want to know why. What was religion anyway? Nobody could really explain it all to me. Nobody even tried. Many a Sunday I pretended I was sick. Just didn’t see the point of it all. Unlike my ancestor, nothing ever went beyond learning things by rote: prayers, alphabets, customs, holidays, history. I knew it all, but nothing touched me, made me want to be there. Planting trees in Israel, aiding the Jews in Russia—what did that have to do with my life?

It’s not quite true that nothing touched me there, stirred something deep, but it wasn’t in religious school learning the dates of the Maccabean Revolt. It was in the synagogue during the High Holy Days, on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, New Year’s and the Day of Atonement. I never would have gone, of course, if I hadn’t been forced to. It was just too different from the life in the street I was leading where everything was so alive and unpredictable, where a casual smile from a girl in a car could be built in my imagination into the wildest fantasies, where some tough guy looking at me the wrong way could send terror through my bones, where every day my emotions were stirred in a thousand different ways: infatuation, anger, jealousy, fear, joy. Everything was immediately expressed, everything was lived. Sometimes Vikings, Huns, Goths spreading havoc across the neighborhood; sometimes knights, courtiers, troubadours in love with love. But always moving, in motion, engulfed in the savage intensity of raw life. In the religious school learning my lessons, on the contrary, everything was boring and dull and rational, and if I did well it was only because I was supposed to do well. Now and then I would sneak a cigarette in the john just to relieve the smell of “goodness” that permeated everything in the school, for I craved then the thrill of the forbidden. Yet I was touched there, only not in the school, as I said, but on the High Holy Days in the synagogue, on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, New Year’s and the Day of Atonement….

…Walking through huge wooden doors, seemingly made for giants. Women in mink and pearl, the smell of perfume mixed with that of fat Havanas. Low murmur of voices circulating like the sound of blood. The whole family is together for once. Tension, tension, be careful what you say. Secrets to be kept for a thousand years. The happy family, the bold front. I am glad, very glad, we are going into the main sanctuary. Last year it was the chapel with its aluminum, stucco, and balsa. The folding chairs. Who decides who goes where? God, maybe? If so, he had this year pity on our suffering. Here the walls are two feet of stone, the stained glass leaded. Quick, the yarmulkes! The doors closing with murderous finality. Death camp gates. No horns, no sirens, no blasting motorcycles. Sinking into the red pile, in front the lighted menorahs. Why bulbs and not candles? The dark everlasting light: suffering, God eternal, show Thyself! Ooo-ah! Ooo-ah! The shofar, like a bleating lamb, sounds. Rubbing...