decided, glancing sideways at him, not to let go of the matter. “The people I’m studying don’t seem to think so. The prevailing view is that once you make a leap of faith, it’s all easy.”
“Halivei, would it were so. Listen, I’ll tell you a story.”
Wendy liked the soothing cadences of his voice, the soft accent his first languages, Yiddish and Hungarian, lent to his English. His voice and tone were melodic, as though he would begin to chant a sacred text at any moment. She had never sat so close to a professor; their knees were aligned, virtually touching. His frail skinny body, forty or fifty years older than hers, wasn’t attractive. His stomach was practically concave, his skin pale and his clear blue eyes as sharp as the laser of his intellect, able to bore into unprepared students and terrify them, she had heard from departmental chatter. His soft smile and the crinkles at the edges of his eyes made her want to imagine what he’d looked like as a teenager, at ease, before he was taken to Auschwitz. Her qualms about being on the plane, whether she’d be able to do this project, how it would be to live in a foreign country, seemed insignificant and minor when she thought of the difficulties he had faced in life. She was ready to listen.
“There were two men, a robber and a rabbi. The rabbi was famed for his beauty, so much that he would stand outside the ritual bath as women left it and tell them to look at him and wish for children as beautiful as he.”
She listened and felt entranced by the lyric singsong of his voice telling a story. But she couldn’t stop her rational self from asking questions. “What kind of person would do that? It’s so . . . arrogant?”
“Maybe. Or, he knew the impact of his beauty? In any case, one day he was bathing in the Jordan River, and a robber jumped in after him, an incredible athletic leap. From afar, the robber thought the beardless rabbi was a beautiful woman; perhaps he wanted to rape her. When the robber got close to him, the rabbi said, marveling, ‘Your strength should be for Torah.’ The robber said, mocking him, ‘Your beauty should be for women.’ The rabbi said, ‘I’ll make you a deal. You like my beauty? Come, repent, use your strength for Torah in my yeshiva, and I’ll marry you to my sister, who is more beautiful than I.”
Wendy, intrigued, asked, “Did the robber take the deal?”
Lamdan continued, “Absolutely. He went and studied, and married the rabbi’s sister.”
“So, the robber saw the light. That’s it?”
“Everything is fine until one day in the study hall, they’re discussing weapons and how to determine whether a weapon is ready to use. The rabbi turns to the former robber and says, ‘Share your expertise. You’re a thief; you know your weapons.’”
“But he hasn’t been a thief for years now, right?”
“This is where the story gets interesting. The robber says, ‘How have you benefited me? I was called “rabbi,” master, among the thieves, and here I’m called “rabbi” too. You’ve done nothing for me.’ The rabbi became depressed about the robber’s anger, and the former robber became sick, physically ill. His wife, the rabbi’s sister remember, asked her brother to pray for her husband so she wouldn’t be a widow, and his nieces and nephews, orphans.” Lamdan looked over at Wendy and added, “The rabbi refused.”
“That’s terrible. Shouldn’t he have some responsibility for his student, his brother-in-law?”
Lamdan shrugged.
Wendy demanded, “What happened? Did the robber get better?”
“He died.”
“And the rabbi?”
“He mourned him. He died soon after, grieving for his friend and student.”
“But it was his fault; his insult led to the man’s death.”
“Yes, a hundred percent,” agreed Lamdan.
“But . . .” Wendy was frustrated, “Why? A rabbi tried to change the life of a thief and then threw his past back in his face. I don’t see a lesson.”
Lamdan said, gently, softly, in his European inflected accent, “It’s not simple. It seems to be a lovely narrative; one man convinces another to change. It turns tragic. Being religious, asking others to be . . . it’s not simple either.”
“In the narratives I’ve come across, subjects say, once they decide to be religious, everything else falls into place.”
“Your task should be to question that.” Lamdan looked at his seatmate. “Find the places where they doubt. Being a returnee is never simple. Even when someone has been religious a very long time, something can come along and disturb him.”
Wendy said, “I see.” She added, “That is part of what I am trying to do, to see how people talk about themselves and the changes they’ve made in their lives, to capture the fault lines and fissures in their identity.”
“Be careful. A rabbi caused a tragedy by throwing the past at his student and friend. You are asking people to tell their stories.”
“Yes?”
“Be aware of the effect you have on others.”
Wendy was unsure what it was that he was implying. The passengers around them were sleeping, the plane was dark, and she was sitting incredibly close to him. He added, “It takes training to get someone to speak about his life. That’s why we value psychiatrists; they help their patients create healing narratives. You aren’t trying to heal people, but the power you have in asking them to tell their story, it can’t be measured. You don’t want to remind a person he was once a thief, in the language of the story.”
Wendy shrugged her shoulders quickly. “You’re making me nervous. I’m talking to people but I’m not . . . well, I’m asking their life stories, but . . .” she stammered.
“I’ll tell you my story. I began life as a Hasid; I learned with my grandfather. I was a prodigy; wealthy men would come and give me a lei, a coin, for reciting Gemara. When I was deported, I kept learning and teaching others in the camp. My learning wasn’t the same; I could never go back to what I did as an innocent child. Before the war, when I learned with my grandfather, I heard the voices of the souls who commented on the text float out of the page and fill the room. After the war, instead of the Gemara niggun of study I used to hear, I’d hear the screams of my grandfather and the others who were murdered. I study the same texts, but I take a critical approach now. I had to see the text differently. This helped me remain in the framework of tradition, but without the mute relationship to the text I had in my early life. I needed to be critical to stay religious, to remain accepting of a God who could create a world in which evil wields such great power.”
Wendy decided silence was the best response.
“Religion is never an all or nothing proposition. There are cycles, ups and downs. The story I told you, the rabbi and the thief, things are fine until the rabbi insults the thief. Those careless words result in both their deaths. For me, religion . . . there’s no basherte . . . there is something to hold on to. I have faith in God; it’s a relationship. I can feel angry at God, furious, resentful. My wife has been gone almost a year now; she suffered so much at the end. I don’t know how or why a merciful God could inflict a painful illness on someone who had a lifetime of suffering before her teens were over. I can’t answer all my questions,
