All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [5]
When I read the first word aloud—Breshit, “in the beginning”—I felt transported into an enchanted universe. An intense joy gripped me when I came to understand the first verse. “It was with the twenty-two letters of the aleph-heth that God created the world,” said the teacher, who on reflection was probably not so old. “Take care of them and they will take care of you. They will go with you everywhere. They will make you laugh and cry. Or rather, they will cry when you cry and laugh when you laugh, and if you are worthy of it, they will allow you into hidden sanctuaries where all becomes …” All becomes what? Dust? Truth? Life? It was a sentence he never finished.
There was something terrifying and fascinating about reading ancient texts, something that filled me with awe. Without moving I could ramble through worlds visible and invisible. I was in two places at once, a thousand places at once. I was with Adam at the beginning, barely awakened to a world streaming with light; with Moses in Sinai under a flaming sky. I seized upon a phrase, a word, and distances vanished.
Yet reading isolated me. My classmates were no longer beside me. I no longer saw or heard them, for I was elsewhere, in far-off kingdoms ruled by the word alone. Even my mother remained behind, as if on the far side of a river. To rediscover her at home was always a joy, but how could I ease that wrenching feeling that preceded my return? I found a solution: take her with me. All I needed was determination and imagination. When I went to see Adam, Eve wore my mothers sensitive face. When I followed Moses in the desert, his sister Miriam became my mother. Now nothing could separate us. Even at heder. I had only to open a book and I would see her. Only when I paused, when there was no book before me, did I feel alone and abandoned.
Once, however, we made each other suffer. But the suffering came neither from her nor from me, but from Rabbi Israel of Wizhnitz when he came to Sighet.
I was eight years old. As usual, my mother took me with her to seek the Rabbi’s blessing: good health for her family, success and respect for the head of the family, good husbands for her daughters, fear of God for her son. A large crowd thronged the antechamber, spilling out into the corridor and onto the street. As the daughter of Reb Dodye, my mother did not have to wait on line. She herself, not the secretary, wrote out her request to the Rabbi, who talked with her about countless family matters as I stood holding my mother’s hand, not understanding everything they said, focused as I was on the beaming face of this rabbi, whose ahavat Israel (love for Israel, and therefore for every being in Israel) was legendary. I was captivated by his eyes, his eyebrows, his beard. Suddenly the Rabbi told me to approach. He put me on his lap and asked me tenderly about my studies. I answered his easy questions as best I could, stammering, almost incoherent. At which point the Rabbi asked my mother to leave us alone. “Good,” the Rabbi said when she closed the door behind her. “Now we can speak calmly.” About everything: the sidra of the week (a portion of the Torah read on Shabbat), the Rashi commentary, the chapter of a Talmudic tractate I was studying at the time. We were alone a few minutes. Or was it a few hours? At last he kissed me on the forehead and told me to wait outside. “Tell your mother to come back,” he said. When she reemerged from talking with him, what seemed like days later, I froze. I tried to run to her, but my legs would not obey. She was a changed woman. Violent sobs shook her body. People stared at her in commiseration. The Rabbi must have said terrible things to her, terrifying, painful things—about me. I must have shamed her with my bad behavior, or by giving wrong answers to the Rabbis questions. “Why are you crying?” I asked. She refused to answer. I repeated my question again and again, but in vain. I tried the next day too, and the day after that, to no avail. All I got were those same tears. I persisted stubbornly,