Rebecca Goldstein - 36 Arguments for the Existence of God

“Please give your blessed mother my regards.”

Cass was surprised that the Rebbe seemed to harbor no hard feelings toward his mother.

The Rebbe had retreated again behind his desk-for a small, round man he moved very quickly, giving the impression of forceful rolling- and now sat down. Cass and Klapper did the same.

“So your mother, Devorah Gittel, left the Hasidim. But you, Chaim Yisroel, have returned. You, too, are a Hasid.”

Cass remembered how his bubbe used to call him a little Hasid. Had she told the Rebbe one of her bubbe meisahs , her grandmother tales? Cass felt compelled to clear up the confusion, as delicately as possible.

“I haven’t been raised as a Hasid, Rebbe. I’m sorry. I don’t think it’s for me.”

“Of course you’re a Hasid! How can you deny that? Especially sitting right there beside your Rebbe!” he said, gesturing grandly toward Jonas Elijah Klapper.

A look of beatitude settled over Jonas Elijah Klapper’s face. The Valdener Rebbe clearly recognized him as a fellow charismatic.

“We have many interests in common,” Professor Klapper said now to the Rebbe. “I have a consuming passion for the esoteric texts of Jewish mysticism.”

“You are an educator on the highest order. An Extreme Distinguished Professor at an accredited university. We Valdeners value education to the highest degree, too. Every Valdener Hasid is a scholar. Our boys are learning from the age of three on. In our kollel , which is our adult-learning institute, we have over fifty percent of our married men learning Talmud full-time, and for the first year after their marriage, every single man learns full-time, supported by the community until he has to go out and earn for his family. But even those who have jobs come in the evenings to study two or three hours. The ones with jobs support the ones who sit and learn full-time to the best of their abilities. All our men, young and old, are scholars, though some have special needs. You can imagine how hard it is on the community to support such demands of scholarship. In the outside world, only the chosen few, such as yourself, Rav Klapper, are permitted a life of study, but for the Valdeners every butcher, baker, and bus driver is also involved in a life of study.”

“Indeed. The scholarship is, I presume, intensely esoteric. I am a student myself of Yehuda Ickel, the pre-eminent secular scholar of Jewish Kabbala. Ickel shrewdly brings the strategies of Heideggerian hermeneutics to the study of Jewish mystical texts. Heidegger lamented man’s forgetfulness of Being, at the same time pointing out that it is Being that now hides itself from man. I quote now from memory: ‘We come too late for the gods and too early for Being.’”

“But not, fortunately, too late or too early for help from the federal government,” responded the Valdener Rebbe. “The United States government believes, together with you, Rav Klapper, and with your own Rav Heidegger, in the importance of education. And they have made available special grants both for advanced study and for those among us who have special needs if their divine spark is to reveal itself. You do believe, Rav Klapper, that all our holy children have divine sparks?”

“Ah, you refer, of course, to the ‘breaking of the vessels,’ the shevirat hakelim . I am familiar with the opinion of Chaim Vital, the foremost disciple of Isaac Luria, the holy Arizal, that the vessels are to be thought of as representing the womb of the Cosmic Feminine Presence, so that the shattering of the vessels signals not only the broken waters of birth but also the erotic displacements that the catastrophic aspect of creation unleashed.”

“It is very true what you say, Rav Klapper. We have here right now in New Walden many families who are shattered because they have children who have been, from their birth, in need of whatever additional resources the government-federal, state, and county-can provide so that their divine spark, too, can be rejoined to all of Klal Yisroel.”

“Ah, the work of tikkun olam , the healing of the world! Yehuda Ickel, who is a close and valued friend, has…”

“Exactly as you say, Professor Klapper. And we have received letters of support in our efforts to get the needed funds from many prominent people such as yourself. Well, no, I shouldn’t really compare. We don’t yet have an Extreme Distinguished Professor, though Dr. Platinsky, a leading cardiologist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, has been very helpful in backing our application for Pell funds.”

It was a shame that Roz was missing this exchange between the Valdener Rebbe and Jonas Elijah Klapper, though things had livened up in the windowless waiting room where she’d been stored.

A little group of four had entered the room, arranged in height like a stepladder, all of them wearing identical long black winter coats. Very pretty girls, the oldest about nine or ten and the youngest about three or four.

No, Roz had been wrong. They had taken off their coats, the oldest one helping the youngest with the row of buttons, and when the coats came off Roz saw her mistake. The second-to-smallest was a boy.

The three girls were dressed in identical pleated brown plaid skirts that came down to their mid-calves, even the baby of three or four, and in starched white button-down blouses and brown wool cardigans, while the boy was dressed in black pants and a white button-down shirt, with a black velvet vest that was buttoned over the shirt. He was also wearing the knee-high leather boots that Cass had said the men wore only on the Sabbath, his pants tucked into the tops. The girls were wearing clunky lace-up brown shoes. The whole ensemble had the sort of eerie charm you see in photographs of Victorian children, dressed up in the somber clothing of adults. The girls had their hair severely held back in elastic bands, plastered down smooth and solid on their heads. They looked like nuns in training. They were blonde like the little boy, but because his hair was allowed to flow into the long swirling side locks, his looked shades lighter and silkier.

It wasn’t just the hair that made him outshine his companions. He was an exceptionally beautiful child. His eyes were large and luminous, and there was something about the delicate folds around them that made him look both vulnerable and wise. He had the white skin of the very fair and a sculpted, round little chin. He might have been a cherub in the sort of paintings that would be deeply offensive, Roz suspected, to his community.

He turned his eyes and stared at her, and she stared back, and the effect he produced was even stronger. Was it the odd getup, the little velvet vest and the knickers and boots, that made him seem as if he had traveled far to get here, from some other time or even farther?

The oldest girl said something to him in a low chastising voice, unintelligible to Roz, presumably in Yiddish. She heard “froy,” and assumed he was being told not to stare at the lady. But then the sister, maybe regretting her tone of voice, kissed him on the top of his head, right on his black velvet yarmulke. He whispered something in her ear, and she shook her head.

“Are you all brother and sisters?” Roz asked.

The oldest girl took it on herself to nod yes.

“How nice that there are so many of you. It must be fun! I always wanted to have a sister or brother.”

“You don’t have?” It was the little boy who spoke.

“No, I don’t. It was just me when I was growing up.”

“Were you sad?” The child’s voice was high and chimelike.

Again the older sister felt compelled to issue a gentle “shah.”

“No, I don’t think so. I had lots of friends. And my parents were my friends, too. They were my playmates!”