Rebecca Goldstein - 36 Arguments for the Existence of God

“Ah.”

“You still believe in love, though, don’t you?”

“As if it were a matter of belief,” he moans, and she moans softly in response, and takes his hand, and then, remembering where they are, lets it drop.

There’s another long silence as they walk past the synagogue and then circle back.

They’ve stopped walking, poised midway between the menner entrance and the froyen entrance to the Valdener synagogue, and the shadows and the shimmers of the day are rippling over their closely watched faces, and both of them say nothing.

“I made a rational-actor matrix, figuring out whether it’s ever rational to say ‘I love you’ first,” Cass says after a while.

“What’s the conclusion?”

“It turns out not to be rational.”

“That’s depressing.”

“Only for rational actors.”

“I still say your mate-selection module got knocked out of whack twenty years ago.”

“And I say you’re right. I’m thinking of following my brother’s lead and yielding responsibility for my life to the Grand Rabbi. Maybe we Valdeners don’t have the instincts anymore for choosing our own mates. Maybe I should let the Valdener Rebbe pick one out for me.”

“But he did. We promised to invite him to the hasana.”

He laughs and places his large hand on her shtreimel and mashes it down.

“Hey,” she says, “have a little respect! That’s mink on my head.”

“I’d rather you were in a purple towel.”

“That can be arranged.”

They enter their gender-appropriate doors, and as soon as Cass is inside he hears the explosive euphoria of the thousands of rejoicers, singing and stamping, and he’s slammed hard by the sight of that vast room’s life, it sends him reeling and jostles his senses out of alignment, so that he can discern the spicy fragrance of the melody and the shifting colors of the emotions, and what does it feel like for Roz up there looking down, what is she making of the soulful wildness of the Valdeners?

He’ll never find a seat and has no intention of trying, but if he stands here in the aisle he will have a sight line to the clearing in the middle of the room, and he might catch a glimpse of the grand event.

A flushed man comes hurrying down the aisle and says to him, “Excuse me? You’re maybe Cass Seltzer?”

“Yes, I’m Cass Seltzer.”

“I’ve been looking! You don’t remember?”

“I’m sorry.” The man is neither young nor old, and he has a sweet yeasty blandness that makes Cass think of his bubbe’s round babka.

“I’m Berel! I’m Cousin Berel!”

“Berel! Cousin Berel! How are you? How have you been?”

“I’m well, baruch Ha-Shem!” Bless His Name. “Mazel tov, mazel tov!”

“Mazel tov!”

“Come, come. I have a seat in the front saved for you. The special friend.”

Berel leads Cass down the narrow aisle between the crushed tiers to the front row of seats, probably occupied by dignitaries, though Cass doesn’t know one from another, but the beards and shtreimlach are impressive, and everybody is on his feet, singing and exulting.

As Cass makes his way to his space, everyone he passes interrupts his singing to shout “Mazel tov!” into his face, and to wrap an arm around him or thump him on the back.

Somewhere up there in the women’s gallery, hidden from sight, is Roz in her shtreimel , savoring the absurdities to their succulent cores, the wild-ness and pang that will always confound us; even if she gets her way and we live for centuries, still we’ll be confounded, as nobody in all the world knows better than the young man who is now standing quietly in the center of the room and smiling, dressed in a white satin kaputa streaked with gold, so that the singing rises to a crashing crescendo and the floor is heaving with the weight of frenzied exaltation, and they come and place the swathed infant in his outstretched arms.

Somewhere in the women’s gallery is Tirza, the daughter of the Grand Rebbe of the Borshtchavers, a girl from Israel who was brought here to marry the Rebbe, a mating between two royal lines that’s brought joy to Hasidim around the world. This baby is their firstborn, destined to be the future Valdener Rebbe, delivered a week ago during a long and difficult labor, while Cass had been desperately trying to reach Azarya.

It’s one of the traditions of the Valdeners, distinguishing them from other sects: the dance of the Rebbe with his firstborn son on the first Shabbes of his life.

It had begun with the current Rebbe’s great-grandfather Rav Eliezer ben Rav Bezalel, the one known as ‘der shvagte Rebbe,’ the silent Rebbe. Perhaps Rav Eliezer had wanted to dance so that he wouldn’t be forced to speak. He was the one who composed this melody, sung only on the occasion of welcoming the future Rebbe into their midst.

It’s surprising how well everybody seems to know the niggun , since it hasn’t been sung in twenty-six years. It seems to Cass that even he knows it as it’s being softly hummed, a sumptuous melody that’s an abrupt change in tone after the stampeding boisterousness.

The melody is frothy white and streaked with gold and sung exactly as it had been sung when the current Rebbe was placed in his own father’s arms, and when his father had been placed in his father’s arms, and when his father had been placed in his father’s arms, in the little town in Hungary that the Valdeners refuse to forfeit to the flames and to forget-fulness.

The Rebbe raises the child up to the heavens as his father had done before him, so that the Valdeners’ collective heart can soar as they behold their future, and the Valdeners lift as one with his upward motion until they seem to hover several inches from the floor.

What does he think at this moment, what does he feel? Cass is certain he knows the Rebbe better than anyone else, and Cass has no idea. At the heart of Azarya Sheiner is the solitude that he had prophesied for himself when he was sixteen. The decision was made for him in the agony of a terrible moment, when he was far too young to have to decide. But he’s decided since then, and if he struggles still, then he struggles alone and he never lets on.

To the Hasidim, their Rebbe is not a human like others, and Cass knows it is true of this Rebbe. Cass is awed by the grace with which the Rebbe accepts the responsibilities that come from his being loved by his Hasidim as much as they love existence itself, so that they batter him with the needs of their love every day of his life, from early morning until late at night. Only in the small, lonely hours does the Grand Rebbe let himself return to being Azarya, wandering among the abstractions, pursuing reason wherever it takes him, especially in the questions that his way of life might seem to answer but doesn’t at all. As Cass had once been astonished by a little boy’s genius, so he’s been astonished by the way in which that genius has been laid aside. It grieves him, and it moves him, and for Cass Seltzer, Azarya Sheiner will always stand at the place where our universe touches the extraordinary.

Still, if to be human is to inhabit our contradictions, then who is more human than this young man? If to be human is to be unable to find a way of reconciling the necessary and the impossible, then who is more human than Rav Azarya Sheiner?

And if the prodigious genius of Azarya Sheiner has never found the solution, then perhaps that is proof that no solution exists, that the most gifted among us is feeble in mind against the brutality of incomprehensibility that assaults us from all sides. And so we try, as best we can, to do justice to the tremendousness of our improbable existence. And so we live, as best we can, for ourselves, or who will live for us? And we live, as best we can, for others, otherwise what are we? And the Valdener Rebbe holds his son and dances.