Shira (39 page)

Herbst did not have the opportunity to learn very much from him. The strain of study, malnutrition, and whatever else is involved in the pursuit of knowledge depleted the rabbi’s strength. He was taken to the hospital and from there to eternal rest. But Herbst acquired a great gift from him: the ability to open any Hebrew book and learn from any text. Once he achieved this, he lost interest in the poetry of his own time. “What’s the point,” he used to say. “It doesn’t move me.”

It would be worth knowing why he wasn’t moved by our modern poetry. He did, after all, love poetry, and he was acquainted with the poetry of several nations in languages new and old. When he was weary with work and worry, he would soothe his soul with a poem, being truly fond of poetry. He said nothing explicit about our poetry. Still, if one can infer one thing from another, I am almost certain that a comment he once made explains why he said, “It doesn’t move me.” But first, a story.

The Friends of the University were honoring a Hebrew poet on the occasion of his birthday, and Herbst was among the guests. As is customary at such events, everyone who spoke lavished praise on the poet and his work. Finally, the poet himself took the floor. He spoke, not in praise of himself, but in praise of Hebrew poetry and those who created it.

It is in the nature of such celebrations that, when they are over, no one is really satisfied, so one goes out for coffee and conversation. Herbst was not a conversationalist. Those who are silent in company are always pressed to talk. Herbst was asked for his response to the speeches made in the poet’s honor. He answered, “Literature is not my field, so whatever an ignoramus like me says will neither add nor detract.” Because they pressed him, he said, “Modern poetry may be good, it may even be very good, but it can’t be compared to medieval poetry. And medieval poetry can’t be compared to even the most minor poetry of the Bible.” Someone laughed and said, “If you mean the Bible as emended by professors, even newspaper articles are preferable, so long as they weren’t written by those professors.”

Herbst was silent. He considered what he had said and was surprised that it had been so easy for him to speak from his heart. He was also surprised at his colleagues for not taking him seriously. He turned to them and said, “I should have remained silent, but, having begun, I will finish. If you want to hear, I’m ready to speak. For a people to have been granted such a book is quite enough, and it’s reckless to turn away from what is granted once in thousands of years in favor of what’s granted every day.”

These were some of Herbst’s attempts to master the Hebrew language. Now I will go back to where I was and recount what happened after that sleepless night.

Chapter ten

I
took a break between Herbst’s dream and Herbst’s actions, interjecting some personal history. Now I’ll go back and relate events in sequence, as they evolved, recounting one thing after another, incident after incident, as it occurred, as it unfolded, as it fell into place.

By morning, Herbst had recovered from the nightmares that accompanied that mad slumber. A small parcel arrived from the post office, along with other written and printed matter. The parcel was so small that he could have ignored it. But something made him take note of it immediately. After examining what else the mailman had brought, he turned to investigate the parcel.

He took a pencil and slipped it under the string, hoping to loosen it without letting it snap, so he would be able to pass it on to Henrietta in one piece. Good, strong string was no longer available, and what could be bought was rough and ineffectual, like most of the defective merchandise that came in with the war.

He slipped off the string and then the wrappings, treating the paper with the same care. He removed the paper slowly and carefully, so it wouldn’t tear in his hand. Good, strong paper was no longer available in stores, and what could be bought was as ugly as all the other defective merchandise that came in with the war. When the package was unwrapped, he found a book inside, one of those books that, as soon as you see it, you feel you have always been waiting for. The book was by Alfred Neu, a distillation of all his articles and papers.

After glancing through the book, Herbst sat down at his desk, as he did when he was about to work. He sometimes sat down to work wishing that he would be interrupted, for even a zealous and diligent worker has to stop. Ideas don’t always fly into his pen, and he has to take a break and be idle. No one likes to take this on himself, to admit that he himself is responsible for the fact that he is idle. If he is interrupted, he has someone to blame for his idleness, and he can believe that, if he hadn’t been interrupted, he would be working diligently.

Now he was afraid he might be interrupted. He read two or three pages, then sat up in astonishment. He was, after all, well versed in Neu’s theories. He knew them by heart, so that, even were he to be wakened from sleep, he could have outlined them without faltering. Still, he found new material in the book. That is the secret of a good book: whenever you read it, you find things you hadn’t noticed before. As for this book, there really was new material in it. Some of Neu’s conclusions, which had seemed a bit flimsy, were reinforced here. Herbst, who already accepted Neu’s theory and was deeply involved with it, made no distinction between what was previously implied and what was now stated with certainty. In either case, he approached the book as a new reader.

I have mentioned Neu on many occasions without mentioning what he does. I have made fleeting references, as if he were a figure that flits from void to void. If he has assumed any substance at all, it derives from Manfred Herbst, who owed his position to him and was introduced to Lisbet Neu because of him. Now I will tell a little something about him, as well as his books. I’ll begin with his forefathers, as I did with Herbst, having learned from experience that, if you want to ascertain a man’s character, it’s worthwhile to consider the preceding generations, to know the quarry whence he was hewed. Also, it is good to begin with childhood, before one has learned to camouflage his actions, a time when everything is still exposed. I will deal only with his early years, before he became famous, because whatever transpired afterward can be found in the monographs written about him.

Alfred Neu was the son of financiers whose business was linked with commerce and industry in several German cities. In the memoirs of the elders, printed only for the family and never made public, there is a detailed account of how the business developed and acquired such a reputation that it became connected with leading banks in almost every country. It was not their wealth that made them famous, for they were not rich, but their loyalty and integrity, for they were scrupulous and rejected any questionable enterprise, any hint of speculation. Whoever preferred loyalty and integrity to avarice did business with them. Until the enemy took over, annihilating them and their business.

In the beginning, it was assumed that Alfred Neu would also go into the family business. It was the custom in the Neu family that, when a son completes his secondary education, he learns banking. This was the rule: he begins at the lowest level. If he is worthy, he is promoted. When he becomes more proficient and more worthy, he is made an assistant branch manager. When he becomes still more proficient and worthy, he is made a branch manager. If there is no vacancy, he waits until there is a spot for him, or another branch is opened with him at its head. So it was with each member of the Neu family, Alfred Neu included. When he finished his secondary studies, he was sent to work in a branch of the bank located in some small town. He spent a year there. He did well, and everyone predicted that he would become a competent financier. No one realized that, what his fathers had done eagerly and willingly, he was doing only out of a sense of duty. He was not yet aware of what his heart was demanding of him, but, unconsciously, he was pursuing its mission. The Neu family, being observant, was careful not to violate the Shabbat, and, since all work stopped on the Christian Sabbath too, he had two free days every week. He used to spend Shabbat studying Torah, philosophy, and science. He spent Sundays hiking, rowing, catching grasshoppers, collecting plant specimens, or fishing, according to the season and the weather. Because it was a small town with a tight economy, in which everyone was worn out by work and the pressure of taxes, because it was becoming more and more difficult to engage in matchmaking because most young men were going off to the big cities, no one was free to invite young Neu for an evening meal, a cup of coffee, or simple conversation, even though he was a bachelor and they were encumbered with daughters. In any case, it seemed clear that a young man from such a wealthy family was not meant for the daughter of some local businessman. So Neu’s time was his own to spend as he wished. He reserved the free days for trips and the like, the nights for books. He read all sorts of things that year. I would be surprised if there was a subject he didn’t explore, ranging from the origins of the world and its development to the history of man and all living creatures. Whatever he saw, heard, or read, he summarized in his notebook. The order and precision to which he was accustomed in the bank characterized all his endeavors. On the face of it, what Neu wrote was a diary, the sort a young person writes out of idleness, when there is no one to talk to. But the intelligence for which he later became renowned was already apparent in those notebooks. What did he include in them, and what did he exclude? Conversations, epigrams, fables, the chatter of children, jokes, riddles, hyperboles, incantations, slips of the tongue, legal verdicts – whatever struck him as special – along with fundamental theories and assumptions. His basic assumptions about sight, sound, and smell were already apparent in those notebooks, as were his opinions on the influence of smell on human behavior. Before Neu achieved what he achieved, he followed many blind alleys.

Scholars who know what they are after early in life are fortunate. From the start, they prepare themselves for that task, wasting no time on other things. Perhaps still more fortunate are those who don’t know what direction they will take and give their attention to whatever comes their way. When the time comes to display their wisdom, they are experts in many areas, like a landowner who knows the lay of his land. Why do I compare Neu to a landowner? While he was in that small town, he made the acquaintance of landowners who had dealings with the bank and, unlike the townspeople, invited him to their homes. He used to go with them and hear what a particular field was worth, whether or not such a plant species was productive, whether rearing livestock or producing cheese was more lucrative, what things needed to be improved, and whether the landowners were doing well with the new machinery some of them had adopted. He also heard about the workers from other countries who came to help with the harvest, whose wages seemed low but were high in the end, because of the thefts and fires that followed on their heels. He sat listening and thinking: I’m here only to learn about business and finance. Providence had other thoughts: He’s here to prepare for what he was destined to do from the beginning, to pave the way for discoveries he is destined to make. He spent even more of his time with the farmers. Until he tramped through the countryside, he was as unaware of the fields as any city person. When he began going to the country, he observed the farmers, their practices, and their conversations with their cattle and their fowl; how they tended their bees and worked their land. In this period he began to want to settle in the country, either as a farmer or a landowner, working at work time, resting at rest time, reading books and learning from the wisdom of generations, offering counsel and insight to his neighbors. He did not know then that many people would benefit from his wisdom, though not the country people he was so fond of at the beginning, when he was first moved by the spirit of enlightenment. Neu pictured his future in the country in various attractive forms. But none of his visions was fulfilled, for anyone who wants to work in agriculture must work for a farmer first. All the farmers were gentile, because only Gentiles could own land, so kosher food would be unavailable. Even if he were to find kosher food somehow, his parents would never allow their son to become a farmer.

After two years in a small town, it was time for advancement. He was about to be promoted to a high position in a large city. Not only was he himself unhappy, but he made his father and mother sad by asking something no one in the Neu family had ever asked. He wanted to enroll in the university. When his grandfather heard this, he said, “I thought he was talented, and now I hear he wants to enroll in the university!” Upon being told that he was truly talented, the old man said, “Then why does he need the university? Let him leave academic learning to mediocre people. Those with real talent deal in commerce or banking.” To appease his father, Neu chose medicine, a field that offers financial security.

I will pause to say something about the Neu family. All the members of the house of Neu loved the Torah, promoted learning, cherished the rabbinate, patronized Jewish and secular studies, and subsidized needy students. One such student lived in their home, so they could study with him in their spare time. They provided him with room and board, and treated him with more respect than they treated rich men. But they never produced a rabbi or a scholar; nor did their daughters marry rabbis or scholars. The first member of the family to turn to philosophy or science was Alfred Neu, who enrolled in the university to study medicine. But he didn’t become a doctor.

Medical school is a full-time occupation. Nevertheless, this eager scholar managed to pursue other subjects. He became an expert in some of them, so inventive that he was considered a leader in the field. Before achieving what he achieved, Alfred Neu traversed a long and devious road. The details are known and preserved in monographs and encyclopedias, so there is no reason for me to dwell on them. I might as well get back to Herbst’s story. If, in the course of it, it becomes necessary to return to Neu, I will do so. But not at any length.