All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (38 page)

I had long dreamed of visiting India, drawn to it by a desire to meet not maharajahs but sages, yogis, and ascetics, for I had never abandoned my project of the Shushani years, my study of Jewish asceticism. Why not compare it to Hindu asceticism, contrasting the Jewish idea of redemption with the Hindu concept of nirvana?

I was fascinated by the Hindu tradition. I studied mantras, yoga, and most of all tantrism, but from afar. I loved the beauty of the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, the Vedas, and the cosmic connections they described. The Talmud’s Angel of Death and Shiva, god of destruction of Hindu texts, were both enemies of ignorance as much as of facile pleasure. Despite its apparent polytheism, Hindu mysticism was close to Jewish mysticism, except that my tradition rejects images, while they proliferate in Hinduism. A statuette of a Jewish Brahma would be inconceivable. Was the Vedanta a Hindu version of the Zohar? Was the world no more than a dream of God, and Creation but a wheel in eternal rotation?

The truth is that all mystical traditions have similar origins. It is only on the surface, on their most superficial levels, that religions seem opposed to one another or even incompatible. I wanted to find out if this was also true of Hinduism.

Travel expenses were a problem.
Yedioth
had no money, so I didn’t even bother asking. I wrote ten articles for various Yiddish newspapers, promised ten more for later, did a few translations, and bought a lottery ticket for the first time in my life. Miracle of miracles, I won a modest amount, and at last I had a ticket in hand, but not much more. The two hundred dollars in my wallet would not take me far.

There remained the question of a visa. Dan Avni, press attaché of the Israeli embassy and future writer and professor, phoned his Indian colleague and settled that matter for me.

During the crossing—with stopovers in Suez and Aden—I studied English, read translations of Rudyard Kipling and Somerset Maugham, and reread the teachings of Sakyamuni and the commentaries of Sri Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo. A fellow passenger—whose visiting card bore his name and profession: “future physician”—gave me the name of an inexpensive hotel in Bombay. Except that for me everything was expensive. The medical student advised me to play the ponies. Aboard ship? You didn’t need horses to play. My instructor showed me how. At first I lost, then I won, then lost again. Games of chance are not my forte. The future physician didn’t do well either. Broke, he asked me to lend him two hundred dollars, my entire fortune, promising to pay me back in Bombay. I should have known not to be a fool, but I could never say no. The night before we docked, I felt panicky: I should never have trusted the future physician, should never have set out on this “spiritual” adventure in the first place. I would have done better to look for the mysteries of India in Paris. How would I pay for lodging in this vast country? What would I live on? But it was too late to turn back.

On a wet January morning, after three hours of interrogation and negotiation with the border police and customs agents (the inspectors couldn’t understand why I was the only passenger without a trunk), I finally disembarked in Bombay, carrying a battered suitcase and my typewriter. I searched for the future physician in the crowd, worried that he was a crook and convinced that I was an imbecile. But there he was, two hundred dollars in hand.

Near the harbor, as I looked for a taxi or, preferably, a bus, I was suddenly surrounded by a swarm of half-naked waifs ravaged by various diseases ancient and new, known and unknown. One wept with tearless sobs, another muttered incomprehensible words, a third pointed to the stump of his amputated left leg. Some were young, others ageless. Despite their condition, they seemed beautiful and mysterious—black, disheveled hair, eyes like tombs reflecting nothingness, their only clothing shirts that might have once been white. Palms extended, they begged: “Sahib, a few annas … a rupee.” They were hungry. I remembered the boy in Barcelona. This time my hand did not fail me—it reached into my pocket. These were the children of hunger, the world’s most wretched, utterly devoid of hope. In
The Oath
I devote to them a passage I copied directly from my diary.

I met children like this, God’s most wretched orphans, all over
India. Devoured by leprosy, missing arms or legs, they were all starving. Some were still crying, others lacked the strength even to speak.

My thoughts were with them as I questioned first an old man with a delicate face, then a gravely silent spiritual master, and finally a prudent and reserved official. How could a civilized state like India tolerate such misery and agony? I became more concerned with this question than with theosophical research. I was answered with smiles, shrugs, and long speeches about the transmigration of souls, about India’s quest for self-improvement, its striving to approach perfection at whatever cost. I wasn’t satisfied. In Judaism it is in his earthly life that man is supposed to accomplish something: by participating in the life of his fellow men, by doing good, by combating the injustice inherent in existence. After that, it is too late. Surely the doctrine of reincarnation is not a valid response to suffering. I can accept and bear my own suffering, but not that of others.

Granted, national independence requires its share of political sacrifice. And yes, considerable progress had already been made. The system of castes had been officially abolished. Jawaharlal Nehru’s decision to name an Untouchable as minister of justice was both daring and ingenious. But what about the multitude of rickshaws hauled by men resigned to their misfortune? What about the shelterless people lashed by the bitter Bombay monsoon, awash in the detritus of Calcutta, infected by the pollution of the Ganges? What of the tattered men who slept in the streets, whom passersby stepped over with an air of indifference? What about the widows in the country’s heartland, who were still being burned to death along with their husband’s bodies, or the countless lepers roaming the streets? I was unable to consider their distress within any value system I knew, religious or otherwise. This mass of suffering hit me hard. I had no right to ignore it or to make my peace with it through specious rationalizations or magic formulas.

Sometimes curiosity got the better of me and I tried to talk to one or another of these poor souls. But since I knew neither Hindi nor Urdu, I could do no more than mumble in a jargon incomprehensible even to myself or utter a few undoubtedly mispronounced and inappropriate words of Sanskrit, a language that in any case has not been current in India for centuries.

I set out in search of the country. The beggar-monks who roamed in processions from place to place reminded me of the wandering
righteous. All masters look alike: you recognize them by the quality of their disciples. I met several Parsis, whose temples are off-limits to strangers and in whose cemeteries, known as Towers of Silence, bodies are not buried but exposed to the sun to be devoured by vultures. These towers confirmed how distant I was from this religion. I kept thinking of the biblical phrase “Born of ashes, to ashes man returns.” A Parsi journalist wondered at my astonishment: “Isn’t this more useful? In my tradition man nourishes living creatures even in death.”

I was revolted by the caste system, with its rigid, immutable rules. There were four castes, each with specified powers and privileges. At the summit of the hierarchy reigned the Brahmins; at the bottom were those without caste, the pariahs—or Untouchables—whose lot was misfortune. I got a better understanding of Gandhi, the towering apostle of nonviolence, whose philosophy, sadly, is rarely applied. But I couldn’t comprehend his anti-Zionism, despite everything I read about it, including his correspondence with Albert Einstein and his dialogue with Yehuda Nedivi, a Zionist emissary, in the mid-1930s. Why did he oppose Jewish immigration to Palestine? He wanted the Jews to stay in Europe, where, he felt, they enjoyed full human rights.

One day I met a rich and influential Parsi (most of them were). We chatted about this and that, and he found something about me intriguing. He was acquainted with several Jews but knew nothing of our customs, laws, and traditions. I told him of the Persian influence on Jewish culture in antiquity, especially during the Babylonian exile. I pointed out the curious similarities in our respective mysticisms. Several hours later, as he left to return to his associates, he gave me a calling card on which he had written a few words. “India is a vast country,” he said. “You will undoubtedly move around a lot. With this card you can take any domestic flight to any destination.” I didn’t know how to thank him. In fact, it took only a few weeks for me to appreciate the true value of his gift. Whenever I was hungry, I would get on a plane. By then I had discovered the identity of my benefactor: He owned the airline.

I regret that I did not go as far as Tibet. In the 1990s, when I met the Dalai Lama, I told him of that frustration. “Do you need me to tell you never to give up hope?” he asked with a smile. In 1992, when I was asked to introduce him at a gathering in his honor in Washington, he questioned me about the secret of Jewish survival, wondering how it could be applied to his own people, also exiled, its religion also threatened:
“Despite the persecution and hatred that surrounded you, you managed to keep your culture and memory alive. Show us how.” In his meetings with Jewish intellectuals he would often repeat: “We Tibetans have much to learn from our Jewish brothers and sisters.”

India is a country that makes one dream. Naively, I thought then that the nightmarish civil and religious wars might be things of the past. At the time it seemed so. Who would have predicted that forty years later, in 1993 and 1994, the country would again be ravaged by bloody rioting? Eleven bombs exploded on a single day, killing some three hundred and wounding about a thousand. In those days I was too optimistic. I thought hatred would at least recede. India was casting its spell on me: Hyderabad, Amritsar (site of the Golden Temple of the Sikhs), Jaipur; Varanasi and its sacred river carrying offerings of ashes to the sea; Calcutta and its dense and stifling crowds; Bombay and its B’nei Israel, the Jews of India whose ancestors served in King Solomon’s merchant marine; Cochin and its Jewish past, Cochin and its legends.

From the fourth to the fourteenth century an independent Jewish principality flourished in Cranganore in southern India. The leader of this Jewish state, a map of which is still on display in the synagogue of Cochin, was one Joseph Rabban. The prince of Cranganore, who was his friend and protector, ordered him to pass down his duties and privileges from father to son.

Where did these Jews of Cranganore come from? Palestine, of course. But opinions differ as to when they arrived. Were they among the Ten Tribes King Salmanasar III led into captivity, or were they among the people deported by King Nebuchadrezzar? Some say they were sent on a commercial or diplomatic mission by King Solomon.

What is “certain,” at least according to legend, is that in Cranganore they lived in peace. It is said that Rabbi Yehuda Halevy and Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra were so curious to see a Jewish monarch in the flesh that they came to visit. Even the great Saadiah Gaon speaks of India, expressing his conviction that anyone who went there got rich. According to one theory, Christopher Columbus set out for India solely to discover this Jewish state, which he thought might agree to accept future refugees and exiles from Spain and Portugal.

In Cochin there were memories of glory and distress, including the occupations by the Moors and by the Portuguese. Yet India has enjoyed a reputation as a tolerant, clement land. I have often heard Jews in Bombay and elsewhere assert that there has never been anti-Semitism
in India. It is a country of spiritual defiance and conquest, a land of infinite probabilities just as Israel is a land of infinite improbabilities. Could a European, a Jew like me, truly find his bearings here, and perhaps even fulfillment?

A sage approached me outside my hotel in Bombay. “For five rupees I’ll tell your future.” I told him I would give him ten if he could tell my past. Taken aback, he asked me to write down my date of birth and any other date on a piece of paper. He snatched it from my hand, turned his back, and remained still for a moment. What was he calculating? When he turned to face me, he looked terrified. “I see bodies,” he said. “Many bodies.” Now it was my turn to be taken aback. How could he have known what April 11, 1945, meant to me? And yet.

I spent a Shabbat with a Jewish family in Bombay. I went to synagogue. My hosts proudly told me of their success. The Sassoons and the Kadouris were super-rich families, veritable dynasties. But it had never occurred to anyone to discriminate against them because of their origins or their ties to Judaism. There were so many ethnic groups, languages, cultures, and traditions in this vast country that Jews did not attract special attention. In one of the synagogues I met a Jewish American student who wanted to convert to Buddhism. I asked him why, and his answer saddened me: “Judaism is egocentric while Buddhism is universalist.” Had he ever really studied his people’s tradition? Probably not, but …

I spent an unforgettable evening in an ashram learning to listen to the stars, and to listen to Him who listens in silence. I learned to receive offerings of smiles. I plumbed and absorbed the teachings of old sages. At night it was hard to tell whether I was dreaming. In the morning it was hard to tell whether the light came from above or from higher still.

This sort of pilgrimage was not yet as fashionable as it became later. In one place I was the only foreigner among one hundred young monks contemplating the meaning of suffering. When our eyes met, they would greet me with the graceful Hindu gesture of raised hands, smiling and nodding as I smiled back. I attended their prayers. Their chanting of
om
still echoes in my ears. One old master invited me to join him in his walks, yet I left the ashram without ever having heard his voice.

I was drawn to India and to the spiritual force and intellectual possibilities it represented. But in the end I had to tear myself away. Its concepts of existence and of God were too different, too distant from
mine. A Jew considers pain an insult to man. I have no right to turn my back on the suffering of others. Jews must “choose life,” in the here and now, and the living. In fact, the same word—
hayyim
—means both “life” and “the living.” I have no right to postpone my salvation for an eventual reincarnation.