Shira (38 page)

Now that you have heard the story of Moritz Herbst, I’ll tell you his stepbrother’s story. His good fortune was not in abeyance either. He completed his studies and began teaching religion in a small town. His salary did not satisfy his material needs; teaching did not satisfy his spirit. He suffered, regretting both these facts, but he seemed resigned to his fate, like most teachers, who were in no way inferior to him. In the town where he taught religion, there was an agent for writing equipment and school supplies, whom he sometimes helped with his accounts, letter writing, and the like. Whatever he did was done with no thought of reward. In time, the salesman became paralyzed. His wife invited the teacher to help her with the business. He became the agent’s agent. The woman realized he was more adept than she was and left most of the business in his hands. Once he got a taste of commerce, he lost interest in the school.

He gave up his pupils and his fellow teachers, who had lorded it over him because the subjects they taught were needed by the world, whereas he taught religion, and who can say whether it exists to gratify God or to serve man? As soon as he went into business, earning in one month twice what he used to earn as a teacher in half a year, he became ambitious and was not satisfied with being a middleman. He wanted to own a factory. He heard of one that was about to come on the market: a factory that had been producing slates for schools and was operating at a loss, because in most countries students were being given notebooks rather than slates, in order to assess the progress of their handwriting. He quickly bought the factory, confident that he could recover what the original owners had lost. And he was not mistaken. In a few years he had repaid what he had borrowed to buy the factory and made enough profit to convert from the production of writing slates to that of roofs, like those produced by the big slate factories in Thuringia. All those years, the two stepbrothers were blessed by fortune and engaged in the acquisition of wealth; one, as we already mentioned, through office equipment and the like; the other, as we already mentioned, through religion, writing equipment, and slate roofs. Both were determined not to waste a minute on anything unrelated to the acquisition of wealth. They never asked about each other, and, if their paths hadn’t crossed, they would have gone through life without knowing one another.

How did they become acquainted? The manufacturer came to Berlin for a board meeting of the Academy for Jewish Studies. Strolling through the streets of Berlin, he passed the showroom of Rosenthal and Co., and went in to see what was new in the way of office equipment. He was browsing through the store, cane in hand, and smoking a thick cigar, since it was Saturday and it was his custom to honor the Shabbat with a cigar, making do with cigarettes on weekdays. The owner stared at him and said, “Didn’t you have a father in Myloslow?” He took the cigar out of his mouth, flicked the ashes, and said, “That’s right. My father’s second marriage was to a woman from Myloslow, whom he followed to her town.” The owner said, “And is your name Ringer?” He said, “Yes, my name is Ringer.” He said, “Then we are somewhat related.” “How?” “My mother, may she rest in peace, was your father’s wife.” He said, “How did you recognize me, considering that you never saw me?” He said, “I looked at you and thought to myself: I know this man, and I don’t know where I know him from. My stepfather’s image came to mind. I thought to myself: If I were to dress him in elegant clothes, replace his beard with a mustache, and stick a cigarette in his mouth, a fashionable cane in his hand, and a gold chain on his belly, I wouldn’t be able to distinguish between the two of you. Logic led me to conclude that, since you are not my stepfather, you must be my stepbrother. I immediately asked what I asked, and then you answered as you answered. Now, in the name of brotherhood, we ought to have a drink, though I’m hoping for more than that. I have a wife and son. Won’t you do me the honor, on behalf of my wife and son, of coming home with me and having dinner with us?” He agreed, and they went off together.

During dinner, Moritz talked about his favorite subjects: the elderly teachers in his town who used to irritate the rabbis with doctorates by sending the slaughterers to them with defective knives, in order to test how well versed they were in the rules of ritual slaughter, and other similar ruses to make a mockery of them. He also told the story of the cherry, the worm, the rabbi, and the coin. He told other things, most of which I have already written in my book. In the course of conversation, he referred to a biblical verse and stumbled over it, like an ignoramus. He laughed and said, “It’s because of you that I’m so ignorant.” “How?” He explained that, because his stepfather had to pay tuition for his own son, he couldn’t afford to have his wife’s son study Torah. As a result, both he and the Torah were deprived; he, alas, remained totally ignorant. Mr. Ringer listened and laughed. He had drunk a great deal of wine, and he said, “An injustice that can be corrected should be corrected. I would like to make up, through your son, for what my father did to you. Allow me to pay his tuition while he studies for his degree.” Moritz Herbst laughed and said, “How can a little brother turn his big brother down? If that’s what you want, fine. Whatever you say.” He said, “Let’s shake hands on it.” He said, “If that’s what you want, I give you my hand.” Herbst considered the agreement a joke. Ringer considered it an actual commitment. He didn’t leave the house before writing a check. He continued to pay Manfred’s tuition until his death and then left him enough stocks to pay his future tuition. These funds made it possible for Manfred Herbst to study wherever his heart desired.

When Germany collapsed, most of its industry and commerce was disrupted. The value of Mr. Ringer’s securities declined, and there was a chance Manfred Herbst would have to interrupt his studies, since everything his father had left him was lost. He was rescued by a relative. He had an old aunt in Leipzig, the sister of his mother’s father, who was married to a noted singer, adored by all the music lovers in Leipzig. When he realized he was losing his voice, he turned away from music and established an advertising agency, which was patronized by all his fans. So it thrived and prospered, and after his death – even during the war and in the years that followed – his widow was able to support herself and to help the son of her brother’s daughter, who was the only one of her relatives to survive the war.

Chapter nine

I
will now go back to Manfred’s beginnings, when there was still peace in the world, when Moritz Herbst was alive and Manfred was a student. In addition to his secular studies, Manfred took classes in religion and Hebrew. If the teacher was a scholar, he would call on a student to read something while he sat at his desk proofreading an article on Jewish studies. When the student paused, he would look up, call on someone else, and go back to his proofreading, giving no further thought to his teaching. If the instructor was not a scholar, he would pass the time with words that imparted neither Torah, wisdom, Talmud, nor Hebrew. In any case, Manfred learned neither the elements of religion nor anything related to Hebrew from these teachers. He didn’t feel he was missing anything; he pored over the literature of Germany and all the other nations without being aware that, although he was taking in foreign wisdom, his own people’s wisdom remained foreign to him.

As I said, there was peace in the world, but woe unto a world that is governed by hooligans. There was harsh news, from a land not so distant, about Jews being massacred. As a boy, he had heard about pogroms, about Herzl, about Zionism. Even before this, he had had a deep understanding of the issues and already tended toward Zionism. The Jewish community in Germany was still serene, diverted by the notion that there was no evil in Germany, that all the Zionist activity there concerned Jews in other countries whose governments oppressed them and instigated pogroms, that it was the duty of German Jews to assist their persecuted brethren in seeking a land that would offer them a haven. And where would these driven, worn-out people find such a haven? In Palestine, under the wing of consuls who would protect their subjects more effectively there than in their native lands. No one realized yet that Germany would be the major source of trouble for Jews, that they would seek refuge and not find it except in the Land of Israel. Since Zionism in no way interfered with the boy’s studies, his father didn’t interfere with his Zionist activities. He, too, would occasionally glance at Zionist pamphlets and nod affirmatively, saying, “What I see here makes sense, but, if the situation were really as the Zionists see it, our leaders would all be Zionists. Since they are actually hostile to Zionism, it’s best not to get involved.” Manfred’s mother was of another mind. Amelia Herbst loved life, and she loved enterprises that rewarded the people who undertook them. Zionism had neither of these attributes, so she should have rejected it. But, since her son, Manfred, was interested in Zionism, it could not be dismissed outright.

Zionism added little to Herbst’s knowledge, beyond the words that are familiar to every Zionist:
shekel, hovev ziyon, yishuv
, Ahad Ha’am, the names of all the settlements in the Land of Israel. From Zionist literature, he learned that those weary, tormented Jews, considered uncultured in Germany, had two libraries in two languages – one in the language they spoke and one in the language of the holy books.

From the time Herbst heard about this, a tune began to sing out from his heart, playing itself in those two tongues. It sounded sometimes like the dirge of an exile lamenting his devastated domain, sometimes like a noble cry. Victims from every era appeared, pouring out their souls in epic poems and stories. Countless events, from the binding of Isaac to the Damascus blood libel and the most recent pogroms, all spoke to him in verse. God’s spirit hovered over these poems, stories, and liturgical works, some of which he read in German translation, along with visions of the End of Days, glimpsed only by poets who suffered Israel’s pain. When he first read Yiddish literature in German translation, he didn’t eat, drink, or go to class. He curled up in a corner and sat reading these stories and poems. His eyes swallowed the letters; he fingered the text, hoping there was more there than was being revealed to him. When he had read an entire book, he studied the title page on the chance that there had been an error, that this volume was actually not from the body of literature he was after. He didn’t find what he was after, and whatever he found was not what he was after. Whether it was merely fine or very fine, he knew its counterparts in other languages and was not impressed. This happened again and again. Whether the book was merely fine or very fine, he had seen the genre elsewhere. He tried his luck with Hebrew, to see if he could find there what he hadn’t found in Yiddish. No complete works were available in German, only fragments. It is easy to translate from Yiddish into German, because the languages are akin, but it is hard to translate from Hebrew into German, because they are so alien to each other. I can see, Herbst used to tell himself, that Hebrew poetry refuses to appear in borrowed finery.

In those years, the Hebrew high school in Jaffa graduated its first class. Many of the graduates went to Germany for advanced studies. Foreign students commonly support themselves in a foreign country by teaching their native language, which is what those Jaffaites did. Because of the good name of the Land of Israel and of the first Hebrew high school, many people were eager to study living Hebrew with them. As a result, Hebrew teachers from other countries were rejected, although they were endowed with Torah and good manners.

Manfred Herbst was among the first to study with these graduates. He began his studies in a group, but, realizing he wasn’t accomplishing very much, he hired a private teacher. He didn’t learn from his teachers, nor did he learn from their books. He didn’t learn from his teachers because their nationalist sentiments exceeded their learning. As for their books, they used anthologies filled with fragmentary texts in translation. Still, Herbst remained grateful, recognizing that, if not for them, all Hebrew books would have remained foreign to him.

Herbst’s relation to Hebrew might have led nowhere, as is often the case, were it not for something he heard from a Christian student, a professor’s daughter, whom I think I mentioned at the beginning of this story in a conversation between Herbst and his wife. Among the medical students, there was a short, shriveled Jew, shabbily dressed, altogether sloppy, as if asking to be scorned. In the clinic one day, in front of the entire class, the professor presented him with a copy of his book,
Fundamentals of Pathology
, and inscribed it “In honor of a marvelous human being, a true lover of learning.” The gift from this professor, one of the greatest doctors of his generation, made a great impression. His dictum was well known: If I could, I would publish only three copies of my book; I would keep one for myself, and I don’t know to whom I would give the other two. In the end, he gave his book to that man and wrote those complimentary words in it. They learned what he had done to deserve the honor. Before enrolling in the university, he had been a rabbi in Lithuania. He gave up the rabbinate and came to Berlin, literally on foot, to study medicine. No one in Berlin knew anything about him. One day, a patient from some town in Lithuania was brought to the professor, and by chance this student dropped in. The patient saw him and cried out, “Rabbi, you are here?” The rabbi whispered, “Hush.” The patient ignored him and told the professor the entire story.

Herbst heard about that rabbi and thought: I’ll go and study with him. He found him and presented his request. The rabbi said, “When a Jew wants to learn, someone has to teach him.” But he was baffled when he heard what the student wanted to learn. How could anyone need to be taught to read such flimsy books? After much coaxing, he admitted to Herbst that he was familiar with only three such texts: Mapu’s
The Love of Ziyon
, the poems of Y. L. Gordon, and Bialik’s
The Talmud Student.
He considered
The Love of Ziyon
a florid book that did neither harm nor good; Y. L. Gordon’s poems were heresy, and he wouldn’t consider teaching them; he was willing to read the Bialik poem, although the diligent scholar depicted in the poem was not the one our sages described. It would, of course, have been best to study the books of Israel’s true sages, whose wisdom generates wisdom.