All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [230]
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