All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [68]
Night had long since fallen. We could have recited the prayer of Maariv, performed the Havdalah, and lighted the lamps, but no one dreamed of it. While this orator spoke, we lived outside time in paradise.
In the end he broke the spell himself, putting his hands on the table, pushing himself up, and emitting a soft grunt as if to say, That’s it. We dropped back down to earth, and a new week began.
On Sunday he treated us to a “real” lecture—on Job, of course; to “rehabilitate him,” as he put it. It was a dazzling, stimulating, provocative, enriching exposition the likes of which I had never heard: Job and Abraham, Job and the Prophet Elijah, Job and Balaam; the language and philosophy of Job; the Jewish attitude toward suffering and injustice; the commentaries of Rabbi Yohanan and Resh Lakish; truth and myth; the possibilities of the Midrash, but also its limits. Of course everyone looked at me almost as much as at him, as though deriding me: now that’s what you call an analysis of Job. I felt ashamed. Having lost face, I wanted to flee. But I stayed, and afterward he buttonholed me as we filed out. “Now at least you’ll be able to talk about Job a little more intelligently,” he said. I made an attempt to pull away, but he held my arm and added, “Admit you haven’t learned anything yet.” And I heard myself answer, “Help me learn.” He made one last nasty comment and disappeared. It was a game that went on for several days.
But I refused to give up. I sensed in him such great intellectual power and such a deep fund of knowledge that I actually began to pursue him. In fact, I already belonged to him. I gave him my reason and my will. His words banished distance and obstacles. It was as though he were explaining to the Creator Himself the triumphs and defeats of His creation. If he shook my inner peace, that was what I wanted. If he overturned certainties, so much the better, for they were beginning to weigh heavily upon me. Man is defined by what troubles him, not by what reassures him. I needed to be forced to start all over.
In Shushani I had found a master. I would later discover that he had also taught the great French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and that his disciples included renowned professors who paid him fabulous fees. What he did with all that money I’ll never know.
Everything about him was a mystery. Where had he come from? Philosophy, Marx said, has no history, but what about philosophers? Don’t they have a history? This one seemed not to, or else he meant to keep it secret.
No one knew his real name, his origin, or his age. What kind of family did he come from? What was he seeking to achieve, or to forget? Had he ever known happiness, had he ever known a woman? He spoke of himself only to obscure his tracks. Where did he acquire his immense knowledge? Who had ordained him a rabbi? Where had he learned all those ancient and modern languages? Where and toward what end had he studied Sanskrit? He mastered Hungarian in two weeks, just to surprise me. He knew the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds by heart; also Maimonides, Nahmanides, and Crescas, not to mention Yehuda Halevy, the poems of Ibn Gabirol, and the Greek and Latin classics as well. One Shabbat afternoon in Taverny he gave an entire lecture about the very first verse of the Book of Isaiah: Khazon Yesbayahu ben Amotz … “The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.” It lasted four hours, and even single words were courses in themselves. Khazon means “vision,” but is it an image or a word? Was it received from outside or