Rebecca Goldstein - 36 Arguments for the Existence of God

Cass recognized the proof from Men of Mathematics . It was Euclid who first discovered it, though his proof had been slightly different, more geometrical than Azarya’s. And the Alexandrian giant had not been six years old.

The angels pour their beauty down on us, Azarya had said. They are above, yes, but also here, in everything. 36 descends from on high to sit at the Rebbe’s tish . It carries the beauty of its own composition, and of its invisible bonds with the immaculate others of its realm, transporting this beauty down to us to grace our humble table. As it is, so it must be, and that is the nature of the beauty. In every row, in every tier, in the whole assembled crush of Valdeners, carried on cantillated waves of explosive love, blasted with their gratitude for having been born Valdeners, there are numbers, and this very room, filled with so much shifting strangeness, which before had been an undifferentiated black and bubbling sea, and then had resolved into individual men, now yields its surface again so that Cass can glimpse the silent presence of Azarya’s angels conspiring with one another to bring about what is, because as it is, then so it must be, and this is the nature of the beauty.

The room is reeling for Cass with Azarya’s angels, beating their furious wings of diaphanous flames, this is what it must be like for the child, what he must see out of those luminous blue eyes, only Cass knows that for Azarya there is infinitely more to be seen, even now, at six years old, and this is all the divine that we need, this is the strange fire that is worth almost anything, the angels within angels in their infinite and necessary configurations, a fleeting glimpse, let it last a little longer, let me savor this tiny bit tossed from the shirayim , the remains, of the infinite that is ayn sof , without end, emanations of the extraordinary that burst on us in rapture, and look how that small boy is laughing and clapping his hands, riding up on top of his adoring father’s shoulders, and Cass thinks that he can hear a child’s laughter rippling like water over the din.

The melody continued. The Valdeners were deep into their ecstasy. They loved their Rebbe’s son, the Dauphin of New Walden, heir to the most royal of all lineages, necessary to the continuity that made their lives worth living, this small, laughing boy who was bouncing on his dancing father’s back, with the Valdeners kissing their prayer shawls and reaching them out to touch him as they do when the Torah scroll is paraded among them. The wonderful child was to them a proof more conclusive than Euclid’s of all that they believed. They couldn’t know who it was they were loving. But Cass knew, and his face was as wet with tears as any in the room, his trance as deep and ecstatic as that of any Hasid leaping into dance.

Cass’s cup of tea has grown cold while he was speaking with Lucinda, and he is going back to the kitchen to put the kettle back on when the phone rings again.

It’s Roz.

“So how did it go down with Shimmy?”

“Not so great. He’s pretty upset.”

“Over your leaving?”

“That, but also that whole fraternity-fracas thing you helped to stir up on Tuesday.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“There are posters, protesters, banners hung from the dorms, petitions. Shimmy called it a tinder keg, a powder box.”

“The slim edge of the wedgie!”

“Don’t laugh, Roz.” She’s laughing. “He made me feel so sorry for him that I promised him I’d think about what kind of retention package would tempt me to stay.”

“Oh, Cass. He’s playing you for a shlemiel, using that Saturday Night Live sketch of a protest to guilt you into staying. What an ox-shit artist.”

“Well, maybe. But Shimmy really did seem shaken.”

“I can imagine. It’s Gamma Gamma Gamma, or he can just forget about his yes indeedee.” As an alum, Roz has kept abreast. She even knows the name of the expert doctor that Deedee and her sorority sister Bunny share.

“His weak spot is that woman.”

“Isn’t it always?”

“I could feel his pain. He kept talking about being squeezed.”

“That Southern belle of his can probably squeeze them like they were limes for mint juleps.”

“Ouch.”

“Oh, Cass! I’m sorry, but this is one beautiful hoot!” She breaks off a spell to demonstrate just how beautiful a hoot she thinks it is. She’s a bit breathless when she returns. “I guess I might have contributed some to this kankedort.”

“Don’t start getting a swelled head.”

“Did any of the kids use my motto?”

“At least a dozen. I have to say, though, that the banner I liked the best was one that had “Toga Party!” written out in Greek letters. Tau, omicron, gamma, alpha, pi, alpha, rho, tau, iota!”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, give me a moment to think.” He gives her a moment to think. “Okay, here’s what we do to end Shimmy’s Hanukkah Wars. Tell him to Hebraicize the Greeks! So, instead of some fraternity named Alpha Delta Kappa, make it Aleph Daleth Qooph!”

He can’t help joining in her laughter. “Deedee’s Gamma Gamma Gamma could be Gimel Gimel Gimel.”

“Instead of sororities and fraternities, they can call them sisterhoods and brotherhoods-like in a synagogue! It’s so ridiculous, it just might work!”

“As Shimmy likes to say, ‘Stranger things have gone down the tubes.’”

“But whether it works or not, you’re out of there! Stop letting the Shim-mys of the world work you over. Get it through your head, you’re a star. Speaking of which, I can’t wait for your big God debate tomorrow.”

“What big God debate?”

“The debate with Felix Fidley! I was over at Harvard today, and there are posters plastered all over the place! ‘Resolved: God Exists.’ You can’t have forgotten!”

“But I did! Fuck! I totally forgot. Fuck!”

“It’s upsetting when you curse, Cass. You’re the only person I know who only curses in extremis.”

“Fuck, Roz. Fuck.”

“Really upsetting.”

It’s all coming back to him. Felix Fidley, a Nobel-laureate economist who has been taking his stand on a wide range of issues by publishing in the neoconservative magazine Provocation , has been challenging the so-called new atheists to debate him on the existence of God. He’d written to Cass with a mixture of arrogance and flattery:

I’m having too easy a time with these debates. The reason is that some of the “new atheists” know something about one thing but very little about other things. Twickenham, for instance, admits he knows nothing about science. Fitzroy seems to know little about anything else. You, on the other hand, with your extensive knowledge of religion, psychology, philosophy, science, and history, would present a more than worthy adversary. A Fidley-Seltzer debate would be a real highlight, entertaining but intellectually provocative.

“What do you think of Felix Fidley?” he had asked Lucinda. They were in bed, Lucinda tucked neatly into the pockets of the comforter, reading.

“Felix Fidley?” Lucinda looked up from A Proper English Murder . She’s addicted to mysteries. “He’s got a Nobel.”

“Yes, but what do you think of him?”

“He’s one of the most brilliant economists of the last twenty years. In fact, I co-authored a paper with him, ‘Mandelbaum Equilibria in Hostile Takeovers.’ Why?”

“He wants to debate me.”

“Really?” Lucinda marked her page with her bookmark and set A Proper English Murder down on her night table. “About what?”

“The existence of God.”