Jonathan Foer - Here I Am

“Abraham argues with God to spare Sodom because of the righteousness of its citizens. Not because life is inherently deserving of saving, but because righteousness should be spared.

“God destroys the earth with a flood, sparing only Noah, who was ‘ righteous in his own time .’

“Then there is the concept of the Lamed Vovniks — the thirty-six righteous men of every generation, because of whose merit the entire world is spared destruction. Humankind is saved not because it is worth saving, but because the righteousness of a few justifies the existence of the rest.

“A trope from my Jewish upbringing, and perhaps from yours, was this line from the Talmud: ‘And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.’ This is a beautiful idea, and one worth living by. But we shouldn’t ascribe more meaning to it than it contains.

“How much greater the Jewish people might be today if instead of not dying , our ambition was living righteously . If instead of ‘It was done to me,’ our mantra was ‘I did it.’”

He paused. He held a long blink and bit at his lower lip.

“There are things that are hard to say today.”

He almost smiled, as Irv had almost smiled when touching Jacob’s face.

“Judaism has a special relationship with words. Giving a word to a thing is to give it life. ‘Let there be light,’ God said, and there was light. No magic. No raised hands and thunder. The articulation made it possible. It is perhaps the most powerful of all Jewish ideas: expression is generative.

“It’s the same with marriage. You say, ‘I do,’ and you do. What is it, really, to be married?”

Jacob felt a burning across his scalp. Julia needed to move her fingers.

“To be married is to say you are married. To say it not only in front of your spouse, but in front of your community, and, if you are a believer, in front of God.

“And so it is with prayer, with true prayer, which is never a request, and never praise, but the expression of something of extreme significance that would otherwise have no way to be expressed. As Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, ‘Prayer may not save us. But prayer may make us worthy of being saved.’ We are made worthy, made righteous, by expression.”

He bit again at his lower lip and shook his head.

“There are things that are hard to say today.

“It is often the case that everyone says what no one knows. Today, no one says what everyone knows.

“As I think about the wars in front of us — the war to save our lives, and the war to save our souls — I think about our greatest leader, Moses. You might remember that his mother, Jochebed, hides him in a reed basket, which she releases into the current of the Nile, as a last hope of sparing his life. The basket is discovered by Pharaoh’s daughter. ‘Look!’ she says. ‘A crying Hebrew baby.’ But how did she know that he was a Hebrew?”

The rabbi paused, and held the agitated silence in place, as if forcefully saving the life of a bird that only wanted to fly away.

Max spoke up: “Probably because Hebrews were trying to keep their kids from getting killed, and only someone in that situation would ever put her baby in a basket and send it down the river.”

“Perhaps,” the rabbi said, showing no condescending pleasure in Max’s confidence, only admiration for his thought. “Perhaps.”

And again he forced silence.

Sam spoke up: “So, I say this fully seriously: maybe she saw that he was circumcised? Right? She says, ‘Look.’”

“That could be,” the rabbi said, nodding.

And he dug a silence.

“I don’t know anything,” Benjy said, “but maybe he was crying in Jewish?”

“How would one cry in Jewish?” the rabbi asked.

“I don’t know anything,” Benjy said again.

“Nobody knows anything,” the rabbi said. “So let’s try to learn together. How would one cry in Jewish?”

“I guess babies don’t really speak.”

“Do tears?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s strange,” Julia said.

“What is?”

“Wouldn’t she have heard him crying? That’s how it works. You hear them crying, and you go to them.”

“Yes, yes.”

“She said, ‘Look! A crying Hebrew baby.’ Look. She saw that he was crying, but didn’t hear .”

“So tell me what that implies,” he said — no patronizing, no self-righteousness.

“She knew he was a Hebrew because only Jews cry silently.”

For an instant, for a stitch, Jacob was overwhelmed by the terror that he had managed to lose the most intelligent person on earth.

“Was she right?” the rabbi asked.

“Yes,” Julia said. “He was a Hebrew.”

“But was she right that Jews cry silently?”

“Not in my experience,” Julia said, with a chuckle that drew a depressurizing chuckle from the others.

Without moving, the rabbi stepped into the grave of silence. He looked at Julia, almost unbearably directly, as if they were the only two living people left, as if the only thing that distinguished those buried from those standing was ninety degrees.

He looked into her and said, “But in your experience, do Jews cry silently?”

She nodded.

“And now I’d like to ask you a question, Benjy.”

“OK.”

“Let’s say we have two choices, as Jews: to cry silently, as your mother has said, or to cry in Jewish, as you said. What would it sound like to cry in Jewish?”

“I don’t know.”

“Nobody knows, so you can’t be wrong.”

“I don’t even have a guess.”

“Maybe like laughing?” Max suggested.

“Like laughing?”

“I don’t know. That’s what we do.”

For an instant, for a stitch, Jacob was overwhelmed by the terror that he had managed to ruin the three most beautiful human beings on earth.

He remembered when Sam was young, how every time he got a scrape, cut, or burn, after every blood test, every fall from every tree branch that was forever after deemed “too high,” Jacob would urgently pick him up, as if the ground were suddenly on fire, and say, “You’re fine. It’s OK. It’s nothing. You’re fine.” And Sam would always believe him. And Jacob would be thrilled by how well it worked, and ashamed by how well it worked. Sometimes, if a greater lie was needed, if there was visible blood, Jacob would even say, “It’s funny.” And his son would believe him, because sons have no choice. But sons do feel pain. And the absence of the expression of pain is not the absence of pain. It is a different pain. When Sam’s hand was crushed, he said, “It’s funny. It’s funny, right?” That was his inheritance.

The columns of Jacob’s legs couldn’t bear the weight of his heavy heart. He felt himself buckling, in weakness or genuflection.

He put his arm on Julia’s shoulder. She didn’t turn to him, she showed no acknowledgment of his touch, but she kept him standing.

“So,” the rabbi said, reassuming his authority, “what can we say about Isaac Bloch, and how should we mourn him? There are only two kinds of Jews of his generation: those who perished and those who survived. We swore our allegiance to the victims, were good on our promise never to forget them. But we turned our backs on those who endured, and forgot them. All our love was for the dead.

“But now the two kinds of Jews have equal mortal standing. Isaac might not be with his brothers in an afterlife, but he is with his brothers in death. So what can we now say about him, and how should we mourn him? It was not because they lacked strength that his brothers died, but it was because of his strength that Isaac lived and died. Kein briere iz oich a breire . Not to have a choice is also a choice. How will we tell the story of he who never had no choice? At stake is our notion of righteousness, of a life worth saving.