All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [18]
Even when I tell Biblical, Talmudic, or Hasidic tales, it is from my town that they take flight. It is in the gardens of Sighet that the Sages compose the Talmud, in the flickering light of its candles that they weave legends for the Midrash, along its rivers that exiles hang their harps and weep when they remember Zion. It is in the darkness of its forests that Rabbi Itzhak Lurie and his disciples dream of ultimate redemption. That’s how it is, and there is nothing I can do about it: I left Sighet, but it refuses to leave me.
The closer I come to my native town, the farther away I am. The better I know it, the more I strive to discover it. For I do not know it well. I thought I did, but I was wrong. It had a secret life I never suspected. I never knew, for instance, that respected members of the community engaged in smuggling and illegal currency trading. Nor that there was a bordello in Sighet. According to stories I heard from Sighet’s inhabitants after the war, a few of the Jewish working girls spoke a highly literary Yiddish. One in particular liked to discuss religion with her customers. So yes, I freely admit that many things escaped my notice. Yet I loved to look and listen. I was interested in everything. A Hasidic quarrel? I was determined to learn the reasons, ramifications, and stakes. A young Jewish woman converted to marry a Hungarian officer? I worried about the tragedy of her shame-struck parents. Everything aroused my curiosity: a beggar who might be a tzaddik, a just man, in disguise; an abandoned wife scouring the province for the hundred rabbinical signatures that would allow her to remarry; a rich trader gone bankrupt; a novelist whose book described the turmoil in heaven when the Angel of Death went on strike; an apostate excommunicated by the community. Not only the people but also the trees, the birds, the clouds interested me. And I was taken most of all with the visionaries. Moshe the madman, whose laugh haunted my dreams; Kalman the Kabalist, whose veiled glance darkened mine; Schmukler the prince; my friend Itzu, with whom I studied the siddur—prayer book—of Rabbi Jacob Emden; my friend Yerahmiel, with whom I learned modern Hebrew—of course, I remember them all. Just as I remember the silent beggar who put his finger to his lips to show me how much he distrusted speech. And the family of five—or was it seven?—dwarfs, whom people came from far and wide to see; all of them survived Mengele’s selections and tortures in Birkenau.
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My bar mitzvah was celebrated by the Rebbe of Borsha, across the street from our house. Called to the Torah, I recited the appropriate blessings and silently read a passage of the Prophets. After the service the faithful were invited to a Kiddush. I can see myself now, as Rebbe Haim-Meir’l, successor to old Rebbe Pinhas, helped me strap the phylacteries onto my left arm and forehead for the first time, as the Bible tells us to do. And here I was a responsible adult, a full-fledged member of the community of Israel.
A new life began for me. I was now so obsessed with God that I forgot His creation. Was it Ernest Renan who wrote that the Greeks had reason, the Romans power, and the Jews the sense of God? I sought God everywhere, tracking Him especially to holy places as though He were hidden there. Was Giordano Bruno right when he said that light is God’s shadow? I sought Him everywhere, the better to love Him, to enjoy His gifts, to share His suffering in our exile: in the chapels of tailors and of shoemakers, in the great synagogue of the rich, and in the Houses of Study where the poor gathered.
In Sighet they used to say that everyone had his own synagogue, even atheists. We young people created the Tiferet Bachurim,