All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (67 page)

“Yes, Rebbe,” I said. “Give me your blessing.”

He blessed me and downed his vodka. I swallowed mine—and passed out. I awoke outside, stretched out on the grass, where I had been carried, again, by the same arms, above the heads of the crowd. Several paces away a young Hasid was offering a dozen or so men an eloquent explanation of the “profound” aspect, the mystical significance, of my exchange with the Rebbe.

One day the Rebbe sent me a long letter about my attitude toward God. It concluded: “But now let us leave theology and speak of a personal matter. Why aren’t you married yet?”

On the day of our wedding Marion and I received a superb bouquet with a card bearing his signature and his blessings. He sent us an even more beautiful bouquet the day of our son’s circumcision ceremony.

After my trip to the USSR I visited the Rebbe regularly to discuss with him the situation of Soviet Jews. I shared with him my frustration at the passivity and silence of the Jewish community. To my surprise, he justified that approach. He preferred silent diplomacy—a pity.

Also regrettable were the excesses to which their love and admiration for him drove his followers. They believed that he was capable of modifying laws of nature, that he had cured some of cancer, saved others from ruin. The same had been said before, about earlier masters, many of whom were famous for their miracles. If their followers felt the need to believe in their gifts, that was their business. But among the faithful of the Lubavitcher Rebbe were some who saw him as the Messiah. In February 1993 they even crowned him “King and Savior.” I found their attitude dangerous. Had they forgotten Shabbatai Tzevi, the false messiah of the seventeenth century? Whenever a community raises a man to the rank of messiah, it inevitably condemns itself to shattered hopes. I begged influential followers of the movement to halt this campaign because it was harming the Rebbe, who was too ill to defend himself.

On the rainy afternoon of June 12, 1994, I stood in the crowd of mourners surrounding his casket on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. Tens of thousands of men and women, some of whom had come from Europe and Israel, recited psalms as they accompanied him for the last time. Weeping children and adolescents lined the avenue. I thought of my encounters with the Rebbe, his solemn smile, his piercing blue eyes, the way he sang and made others sing. The last time I saw him he had asked me why I still hadn’t written a book on the founder of his movement. And he had given me a blessing for Marion and for our son Elisha. There had been huge signs on the walls of neighboring houses: “Long live our Master and Teacher and King, the Messiah.”

In 1968, preoccupied with the tragedy and courage of Soviet Jews, I looked for ways to aid them more effectively. I discussed the matter with a filmmaker friend, Hy Kalus, an American who had become Israeli, a redhead who radiated creative energy. To my question—What else can I do?—he replied without hesitation: “What about the theater? Why don’t you write a play?” I protested that I had never written for the stage, that I had no idea how to go about it. But Hy insisted: “Try it. What do you have to lose?”

So I tried, in secret. My subject was the solitude of Soviet Jews;
my main character, the chief rabbi of Moscow, Reb Yehuda-Leib Levin.

The rabbi was a tall, robust man with a graying beard and moustache and eyes that mirrored a boundless weariness bordering on resignation. During our first encounter—on the night of Kippur in 1965—I sat at his left on the
bima
(dais) with Israeli and foreign diplomats. I didn’t dare speak to him. At that time it would have been dangerous for him. There were undoubtedly many informers in the assembly. But I couldn’t take my eyes off him. The following year I saw him again, once more on the
bima
, for the solemn Kol Nidre ceremony. He recognized me and smiled as he shook my hand. Perhaps it was his way of thanking me for not having forgotten him, for having come back.

As I looked at him, I suddenly realized that he had an obligation to break the silence that had stifled his community for decades. He had to break free, to let his rage explode. In the presence of this community of thousands of Jews, he had to reveal what had secretly tormented him, the price that the oppressor had extorted from our battered people. I stared at him intently, silently imploring him: “Have courage, Rebbe! Lift your head! Stand up, stop being a martyr! Raise your fist and bang it on the pulpit, interrupt the service and cry out, shout that the Jewish faith is threatened here, that it is scorned and imprisoned. Do it, Rebbe, and you will become a living legend, a hero of Israel.”

Unfortunately, the chief rabbi of Moscow was exhausted. Having lived—excuse me, survived—so long under Communist rule, he no longer had the strength to raise his voice in protest. At the time and in the weeks that followed, I felt sorry for him, and for his community. I pitied him for being unable to fulfill the mission no one else but he could have undertaken: to overcome submission and fear.

As I pondered the play I now wanted to write, the tormented, resigned countenance of the chief rabbi came to mind. Malraux argued that it is literature’s task to redress injustice. Well, in my play I would seek to correct the injustice done to Rabbi Levin: on stage I would allow him to do what he never dared do. That would be my theme.

Since I always need a madman to enliven my fictional landscape, I confronted the rabbi with a madman, whom I called Zalmen. (In the buried chronicles of the Sonderkommandos I later learned about two astonishing men, both named Zalmen.) His role was to act as a catalyst to the rabbi, urging and inciting him to go mad on the evening of
Kippur, to hurl the truth of his suffering into the face of an indifferent, complacent, and complicitous world.

I needed a female presence in the play, and so I gave the rabbi a daughter, Nina, thirty or forty years old. She needed a husband, and I chose for her Alexei, a Communist Jew, more Communist than Jew, who would be the rabbi’s counterpoint. The couple had to have a child, so I gave them a son, Misha, twelve years old. When his grandfather asks whether he is preparing for his bar mitzvah, Misha replies, “What’s a bar mitzvah?” That would be Zalmen’s moment of triumph: “You see, Rabbi?” he would shout. “Your line is disappearing. Go mad, I tell you! Turn your truth into a cry! It’s your only chance—and mine, and your little grandson’s too! Your future and our people’s depend on you and you alone!”

Other themes involved the mystery of Jewish survival, the role of memory, the metaphysical aspect of laughter, the limits of coexistence and collaboration, and the potential impact of one solitary act. What price resistance? How far may one bend? In the end the rabbi does go mad. He cries out his truth, but it is all for naught.

I worked on the play full-time, thrilled at having discovered a new medium. Hy Kalus’s assistance was valuable. I also received help from Marion, who had studied drama and knew instantly when a line of dialogue seemed contrived or rang false.

After a few false starts René Jentet, a producer and talented director, accepted the manuscript for France-Culture radio. A private reading that included our friend the actor Joseph Wiseman was organized in New York at the apartment of Lily and Nathan Edelman near Columbia University. Wiseman showed
Zalmen
to his American producer and director friends. It was fortunate that Alan Schneider, director of plays by Beckett and Albee, found it to his liking. He spoke to Zelda Fichandler of the prestigious Arena Stage in Washington, who accepted it. Aided by Marion, who by now was my wife, Alan staged a polished, moving production whose reception was all we could have hoped for. Mel Gussow, after mentioning in
The New York Times
my having said I would not write for the stage again, commented that he hoped I would change my mind. PBS, the Public Broadcasting System, decided to film the play for prime-time television. Irving Bernstein, who was at that time executive director of the UJA, decided to preview the production at his organization’s annual congress—at Carnegie Hall.

Bernstein insisted I introduce the program. My brief presentation
was entitled “A Song of Songs for Russian Jewry.” After the film I hurried home for Shabbat. On my desk I found a letter from a woman in Brooklyn: “My name is Rivka, and I am the daughter of the chief rabbi of Moscow.” She said she wanted to meet me. I was amazed, for I had no idea Rabbi Levin had a daughter. I reread the letter several times, then picked up the phone to call her, but it was too late. It seems Shabbat comes to Brooklyn earlier than to Manhattan. I would have to wait more than twenty-four hours. Pious Jews would not answer their telephone until Saturday evening.

When the requisite three stars appeared in the frigid, gray-white sky that Saturday night, I called Brooklyn immediately. The phone rang and rang. No answer. I tried again. No luck. I dialed the number five times in succession. At last a human voice responded, a man. “Yes?” “May I speak to Rivka?” I blurted out. He asked who I was, and I told him. He voice hesitated briefly. “Are you sure she wants to talk to you?” “Yes, I have a letter from her right here in front of me.…” Finally, the voice said, “Okay, take it easy.” I heard the man shout her name—and at last the chief rabbi’s daughter was on the line. She confirmed her wish to meet me, and I told her it was mutual. “How about this evening?” I suggested. Impossible. Tomorrow afternoon was the earliest.

She turned out to be about forty—like my Nina. She was dark, with a sad face—like my Nina. She was accompanied by a relative; a pious Jewish woman must not be alone with a man. We chatted. I tried not to show it, but my impatience got the better of me: “Tell me,” I asked, “have you seen my play?” She then gave me a lesson in humility. “Play?” Rivka asked, her eyes wide. “What play? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I was stunned. “You didn’t know I wrote a play about you, a play that has been staged in Washington and is going to be on television?” Looking somewhat annoyed, she shook her head as if to reprimand me. “Last Friday you didn’t know I existed, and now you say you’ve written a play about me?” “Then why did you want to see me?” I asked. She answered without hesitation: “I read some of your works in samizdat, including the one about Russian Jews in which you mention my father.
Do
you remember him? Well, one day, when he was already quite old and sick, he called me in Odessa, where I worked as a dentist. He asked me to come to Moscow, said he needed me urgently. I left my husband and children and hurried to him. My poor father was very pale. He knew he was dying, and he wanted to tell me his last wish: ‘Rivka,’ he said, ‘promise me you’ll
make sure your children grow up Jewish. I know you can’t do that here, so I want you to go to Israel. If that’s not possible, then go to New York, to Brooklyn.’ Naturally, I promised. He insisted I swear it. Those were his last words: ‘Swear it!’ Of course, I want to keep my promise. But it isn’t easy. My husband … you see … he’s Jewish … of course … but to be Jewish annoys him … being Jewish bothers him …”

I felt like shouting: “Just like my Alexei, like Alexei in the play.” But I didn’t. I just listened.

“… and he refused to raise our children in the Jewish tradition. It was impossible to convince him, he just wouldn’t bend. Our children would be Communists like him, he said. Nonbelievers, atheists … I argued, wept, reminded him of my oath. In vain. We grew farther and farther apart until we fought day and night. The endless disputes finally wore me down, and I decided to get a divorce and to go to Israel with my children. Only my husband wouldn’t let me take my son. My two daughters, yes. They left with me. One married in Israel, the other will soon marry a Lubavitch Hasid in Brooklyn.”

Guessing what was coming next, I felt a lump in my throat. “And your son?” She lowered her voice. “My son stayed with my husband.”

Disturbed by the resemblance between this boy’s fate and young Misha’s in
Zalmen
, I remembered that when I had created the character, I couldn’t decide on his future. Should I give him to his Communist father? I didn’t have the heart to take him away from our people. Give him to his grandfather, the chief rabbi? I don’t like sentimental endings. As I was uncertain, I left the conclusion vague, ambiguous. Let the audience decide Misha’s fate. But now I had heard it from his own mother’s mouth: Misha would not be a Jew. Softly, I asked Rivka: “How old is your son?” She seemed taken aback by the intensity or my voice. “Today? He was thirteen a few months ago.” Perhaps she guessed my next question, for she told me: “To my great sorrow, he was not bar-mitzvahed. You see, his father was violently opposed.”

A special bond developed between us, as if I had somehow become a member of her fractured family, perhaps because we shared a nostalgia for our lost past. Or perhaps she was grateful to me for having guessed the secrets of her life. In January, after seeing
Zalmen
on television, she sent me a warm letter: “I wept throughout the broadcast, telling myself over and over that’s exactly how it was, exactly how it happened.” Then she returned to Israel.

Many months later I got a call from a rabbi in the New York metropolitan
area. “I know you like stories,” he said, “especially stories about Russian Jews, and I’ve got one I’m sure you’ll appreciate.” I invited him over that same day. “You won’t believe what just happened to me,” he began. “Last week I was in Israel,” he went on, very excited. “First in Tel Aviv and then Jerusalem, where I have family …” Sensing my impatience, he quickly came to the point. A friend of his who worked for the government took him to Masada, the fortress where, according to Flavius Josephus, Judea’s last surviving insurgents decided to kill themselves rather than surrender to the Romans. “That day,” the rabbi said, “I had the privilege of attending a remarkable ceremony there. About thirty war orphans were bar-mitzvahed under the direction of a military chaplain. When I was introduced to the chaplain, I expressed my astonishment that there were so many children whose fathers had fallen in combat. Yes, he said, the cruel consequences of human folly were indeed hard to bear. Then his face brightened. He pointed to a boy in the front row. ‘But take a good look at him,’ he said. That boy is not a war orphan but the grandson of the late chief rabbi of Moscow.’ I thought I should tell you.…” I must have turned pale because the rabbi asked if I was all right. I felt like showering him with gifts and screaming at him at the same time. He had just shown me, once again, that a Jewish writer works under a handicap: He cannot invent anything.