All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [226]
Lieberman didn’t hesitate to discuss his complicated relations with Scholem. How could a rationalist and a scholar of mysticism get along so well? I had heard the following anecdote, whose authenticity Lieberman confirmed. Invited to deliver a lecture at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Scholem was introduced to an audience composed of New York’s intellectual elite by the seminary’s prestigious rector, Professor Lieberman. “Ladies and gentlemen, you surely know of Professor Gershom Scholem, who holds the chair of mysticism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. What, then, is mysticism?” He paused, then added gravely, “Mysticism is … nonsense.” The audience was stunned. People looked at one another. Lieberman waited for the shock to subside, then he went on. “Ladies and gentlemen, nonsense is nonsense, but the history of nonsense is scholarship.”
Lieberman attracted students even while imposing distance and respect. Everyone had to stand when he came in. They say his students feared him, and it’s true. In class he was fierce and demanding. Though he lightened the atmosphere with his humor, his students, most of them future rabbis, trembled before him, wondering how they would get through the reading of the daily passage from the Torah. He never raised his voice, never lost his temper. He could be charming, even soothing, but he had his intractable side. One evening one of the future rabbis ran into him in the elevator. He had an appointment for a final exam. (Lieberman’s exams usually took place late at night.) On the elevator they chatted about this and that, then walked to the door of Lieberman’s office, where the professor said, “Good night.”
“But what about the exam?” the student stammered.
“Knowledge may take a long time to measure,” Lieberman replied, “but ignorance does not.” Usually he was more merciful. Could it be that he was not aware of the terror he inspired? I believe he was, though we talked about it only once, on a flight to Israel.
When Lieberman lost his wife, we became even closer. He asked me to speak at her funeral service at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and of course I agreed. When I asked where the shiva, the week-long mourning period, would be observed, he told me he was taking Judith to Jerusalem for burial. I then asked who from the Seminary faculty would be going with him, and he said he was going alone. “In that case, I’m coming with you,” I said. At that he burst into tears. It was a tragic moment that clarified the relations between us: he was my master, but I was not only his disciple but his friend.
I will never forget that flight, which lasted fourteen hours. He told me of his childhood in Motele, his adolescence spent in the yeshiva of Slobodka, the center of the Musar movement, his experiences in Palestine, and his encounters with modern masters. Throughout the journey he mingled anecdotes, Talmudic findings, and intimate thoughts.
I was silent about my friendship with his Seminary colleague Dr. Abraham Joshua Heschel, the distinguished descendant of the Rebbe of Apt, a leader in Hasidism. Heschel and I fought for many of the same social causes. But he and Lieberman did not get along. In fact, they were not even on speaking terms. Was it still the old quarrel between the Mitnagdim and Hasidim? Or was there another explanation? I was told they had once been inseparable. What had changed? I never found out.
Which leads me to a funny