S. Agnon - Shira

Henrietta said, “If there’s a moral in that tale, what is it?” Manfred said, “I enjoyed the tale so much that I forgot most of the moral. I’ll try to tell some of what I remember.

“The man sitting on a heap of rags is the Creator. He tends His handicap, a reference to the world He has created. The passersby are human beings, passing through, only to return to dust. They throw a penny or two — people’s good deeds, which are worth but a penny. The favored son is the poet, engaged in poetry, and his brothers are scholars who derive honor from their livelihood. What did that father do? He rejected them all and gave everything to the son who was most precious to him, who had devoted himself to poetry and was unsuited to the pursuit of honor and a livelihood.”

Henrietta laughed and laughed. While she was laughing, the sun reached the middle of the sky and it was noon, time for a meal, although Henrietta had not so much as put a pot on the fire or made any other move toward lunch. Henrietta left Manfred, went to the kitchen, and turned to her pots. She checked the vegetables and the fruit basket, and actually made a meal of what she found there. Believe it or not, this meal, which she hardly fussed over, was more satisfying than most others involving far more fuss. Not only to Dr. Herbst, but to Mrs. Herbst as well, and you know Mrs. Herbst usually says how much she likes fruit and vegetables along with meat, but not when they pretend to be a main course.

The Herbsts sat in the garden, eating, drinking, discussing what we eat, what we drink, the sort of people that cross our paths. It happened that their conversation touched on Taglicht, who is endowed with two talents, one for scholarship and one for poetry. Neither leads him to action as poetry alienates scholarship, and he doesn’t value scholarship enough to engage in it. But he has another talent, the most supreme of all: he has a soul. Henrietta said, “The fact that he’s still a bachelor doesn’t speak well for the daughters of Jerusalem.” Manfred said, “You may remember that young woman — the relative of Professor Neu’s, who came to our house with him. I told you I met her at Ernst Weltfremdt’s when I went to congratulate him on his professorship and was introduced to two ladies, a mother and daughter. If Taglicht were to meet the daughter, the outcome might be good for both of them. What do you think, Henriett, should we invite the two of them together? I know you have a lot on your mind, and I don’t want to add to your burdens. But Taglicht is worth the effort. In any case, I’ll talk to Weltfremdt first, since he knows both the girl and Taglicht.”

Manfred Herbst and Ernst Weltfremdt both went up to Jerusalem when the university was first established, Herbst, because he was a bit of a Zionist; and Weltfremdt, because his luck was turning where he was. Weltfremdt was a lecturer in patristics at some German university. This subject is normally in the domain of the Department of Religion, but, since Weltfremdt was a Jew, not a Christian, he was made an adjunct to the Department of Philosophy. With the publication of his major work, Can We Assume Origen Was Familiar with “Hermes the Shepherd” as We Know It ? he gained renown and his audience grew. Because he had such a following, it was often necessary to assign him the large hall in the university, which had not been done for any other professor in several years. All in all, things were going well with him, but not with the world. In those years, after Germany’s downfall, the bewildered Germans were asking who had caused their decline. Inasmuch as no nation is likely to take the blame on itself, least of all the Germans, who pride themselves on their exemplary behavior, they began searching for someone to whom to attribute their stench, and found the Jews. They failed to remember that twelve thousand Jews had fallen in Germany’s war, which was two percent of the Jewish population of Germany. Weltfremdt began to feel the fist of malice. Students began to challenge him; colleagues he had supported began to make themselves scarce and avoided being seen with him in public. The newspapers began to berate him and to call him a parasite of German scholarship. He assumed his fellow professors would deplore these affronts. Not only did they fail to rally to his defense, but, when he asked them to respond to these charges, they begged him not to press them, explaining that, for various reasons that could not be enumerated, they could not get involved in the controversy, although they naturally did not agree with the anti-Semitic propaganda. As for the substance of the matter, in their scholarly journals they had already expressed the opinion that his papers were among the best research produced in German in this generation. At first, Weltfremdt saw himself as an academic martyr, which enabled him to accept the pain with love. They continued to torment him, and the university authorities refrained from protecting him, so he soon realized there was no future for him in a German university. He heard they were starting a university in Jerusalem. Weltfremdt imagined that, if Jews were creating a university, its language would be German. He intimated to the head of the Zionists in his city that he would not rule out the possibility of becoming a professor in Jerusalem. When he learned that lectures at the Jerusalem university were to be conducted in Hebrew, he withdrew and looked elsewhere for a position. He got no response, so he began to negotiate with the trustees of the Hebrew University. Before long, he went up to Jerusalem and was appointed to the Faculty of Philosophy, where he specialized in Jewish Hellenistic writings, first as an associate professor and then as a full professor.

Ernst Weltfremdt and Manfred Herbst were on the same ship when they went up to the Land of Israel. Inasmuch as they were shipmates who came from the same country, spoke the same language, and had the same purpose, a friendship developed, which endured so long as the university remained small, the yishuv population sparse, and Jerusalem’s neighborhoods few. When the trouble in Germany and other Nazi-controlled countries began to escalate, many Jews arrived. The yishuv grew, the university expanded, new teachers came. Everyone found new friends, and Weltfremdt and Herbst rarely met up with each other. Herbst didn’t notice that he no longer visited Weltfremdt, nor did Weltfremdt notice that Herbst seldom appeared at his door. When they noticed, they saw no reason for a change. When they did meet, they met as friends with an ongoing friendship. Occasionally Weltfremdt dragged Herbst home with him, and occasionally Herbst came on his own to borrow a book, more frequently as Herbst grew interested in patristics. Weltfremdt had brought his books on the subject with him, this being the field he had studied and in which he had earned renown. He was still hoping to return to it, at first in England or the United States, and later on in Germany itself. What was it that attracted Herbst to patristics? He apparently wanted to find out whether he could still deal with unfamiliar material, for he often wondered if what he did in his own field was largely habit.

A few days after Manfred and Henrietta’s conversation about Taglicht and Lisbet Neu, it happened that Manfred went into town. When he was in town, it happened that he was in Rehavia. Once he was in Rehavia, he stopped at Weltfremdt’s.

Weltfremdt was busy preparing lectures for the spring term. He used to write them in German, and Taglicht would translate them into Hebrew, adding comments he considered appropriate from the Gemara and the Midrash, but no one was aware that Weltfremdt was plowing with Taglicht’s horse. Were you to mention this, Weltfremdt himself probably wouldn’t know what you were referring to. How could this be? He paid Taglicht generously, giving good money for what he got. Furthermore, although Taglicht was praised by everyone and considered highly accomplished in every field and discipline, his learning was a mass of disjointed fragments. If not for Professor Weltfremdt, who used this expertise as a resource for lectures, articles, and books, that expert would be lost in his own wisdom.