In the shtetl, the Talmud was part of daily life. It was like putting on a white shirt for Shabbat, or looking up from the table at a mother’s face lit by candlelight every week as she sang the prayer.
These are the lingering images that come to mind for Elie Wiesel, who describes some of them in his new book, “Wise Men and Their Tales.” The Talmud, he writes, “is an unforgettable song, the song of my childhood.”
In the shtetl, biblical, talmudic and Chassidic heroes were discussed and studied almost like they were living members of the community. Ancient history blended into the present, making it easier to understand and forget the turmoil on the outside and the poverty on the inside of these small villages, remembers Wiesel.
These short profiles of Judaism’s leading men and some women are written with the affection and understanding that one has for his youth and for the people who helped shape it.
Wiesel, a Nobel Peace Prize-winner and author of more than 40 works of fiction and nonfiction, writes: “To follow these masters is to love them.” And to write about them as he does, is to occasionally show that love.
Although probably not as lively as his famous, dramatic lectures as a professor at Boston University, Wiesel’s writing is enthusiastic and witty — as if he is telling, rather than writing, these tales. He clearly wants us to know these men — their thoughts, habits and moods. Yet most of all, he wants us to ask why they do some of the things that they do.
Wiesel does not hold back from criticizing and questioning the actions of each legendary figure. He holds Abraham, Sarah, Rebecca, Jacob, Rabbi Tarfon, other talmudic sages and even God, up to high, modern standards of behavior. Women also get some attention, despite the title.
Not one individual is brushed aside with the excuse that, well, times were different back then, people did weird things — like have children with their servants and then throw both child and mother into the desert. Even the way that people in the Bible have the tendency to repeat themselves, or randomly give speeches on unrelated subjects — none of that is ignored.
Hannah begs God for a son. And after first submitting her request, she offers a parable by means of explanation, “in case God doesn’t understand,” quips Wiesel.
Samuel arrives at a victory celebration and, completely out of the blue, begins: “So tell me, in the presence of the Lord and his anointed emissary, whether I have taken an ox from someone or a donkey from someone else. And whether I have ever stolen anything from anyone or been bought by anyone.” He provides no explanation for his questions, no moral lesson.
Wiesel responds: “What happened to our beloved prophet? What was he talking about? Who ever accused him of stealing?”
Aren’t most of us trained not to question that kind of thing? These are very old texts and men and women very different from ourselves. Right?
Wiesel doesn’t think so. And in discussing them, he shows that those parts do count, which is, of course, reassuring.
Wiesel doesn’t limit himself to wondering about unnecessary digressions and inconsistencies in the Torah. The bulk of his musings consist of his inquisitive interpretations of Biblical, talmudic and Chassidic major plots and tales that for some reason seem immune to popular criticism.
Take Rebecca and Jacob. Rebecca has a plan: Jacob will trick his father into giving him the full inheritance, instead of passing it on to his older brother, Esau. When Esau comes home hungry, Jacob says he will give him some food in exchange for the inheritance. The hungry — no, starving — Esau accepts, but doesn’t know that Jacob will disguise himself as his hairy older brother in order to receive Isaac’s blessing.
Most of us learn this story and feel fine about it. Esau was the bad guy anyway and Jacob the deserving one.
Wiesel, however, isn’t so easily convinced. Looking for answers, he finds that traditional explanations for Esau’s punishment blindly favor the younger son.
Rabbi Yohanan says, “on that day — when he bought a plate of lentils to assuage his hunger — Esau committed five sins: he raped a girl who was already engaged to another man, he killed a man, he denied God’s existence, he ridiculed the resurrection of the dead and he gave up his rights as firstborn.”
Wiesel comments: “Really — all in one day?”
He also wonders about Rebecca, who seems to hate her oldest son and designs a family plot against him. Can you imagine a Jewish mother doing such a thing? And why is Jacob’s shrewdness immune to reproach? The way he lies to his father and takes advantage of his brother’s hunger is not even questioned.
As you warm up to Wiesel’s ever-critical approach, you begin to understand that his disquieting observations do actually bring us closer to these men and women. It suddenly seems obvious that if every quirk in the Torah is simply ignored, then other parts loose their credibility as well. And how are we to love these old masters of our past, as Wiesel does, if we don’t take them seriously?
Wiesel shows that our ancestors are not always easy to understand, nor are they always saintly. In fact, they are not saints at all. They are human, which is the reason that we learn from them and that they deserve our honest scrutiny.
These kinds of questions are nothing new to Jewish scholars. But for me, they are. I remember how I struggled to come up with something — anything — to say during my dvar Torah at my bat mitzvah. All that I can recall from the composition of that hurried talk on the bimah was that my mother had said, “Trees! Talk about trees!”
How could I have missed all of this?
Did Hebrew school serve us ready-made, wrapped up tales of our major biblical models that discouraged analysis?
But the Talmud, its ongoing debates and its sages were not a song of our childhood. We never even opened it. And the Torah was not linked to our daily lives the way Wiesel says it was for him. Perhaps the problem was that there was no shtetl to hold it all together.
Although one better understands them now, most probably won’t come to love these old masters as Wiesel does; the sketches are too short for that.
But I do wish that I could have been there — sitting around that rectangular table in the shtetl that Wiesel describes, listening to the old tutor talk about Galilee and Babylonia, waiting for the first person to spot the setting sun … To shout through the streets: “Yidden, greit zicht tzu Shabbes!” — “Jews, ready yourselves for the Sabbath!”
I wish that I had a shtetl song, too.
“Wise Men and Their Tales: Portraits of Biblical, Talmudic and Hasidic Masters,” by Elie Wiesel (368 pages, Schocken Books, $26)