36 Arguments for the Existence of God (34 page)

“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the Qabalists refer to as the Keter, the Crown of Being, the last gate behind which the Ayn Sof, That Without End, has withdrawn itself, coiled within the End of Thought.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 again 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 out 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.”

He took a pause, perusing the face before him to see whether he could safely assume his meaning had been received. Satisfied, he continued.

“Nothing, Reb Chaim, is as it seems. The homeliest object or act can be of cosmic proportions. That which is common, undignified, vulgar—
proste
in Yiddish, which I submit to you is related to the ancient Greek
prostychos
—a potato or the
fleishig eier
floating among the shining globules in a mother’s chicken soup—is, when contemplated by the singular Self, numinous.
Mysterium tremendum et fascinans
. The Qabalist masters were able to divine that the potato symbolized Yesod, but how they did so I am not yet sure.”