From the Kingdom of Memory Read Online Free PDF

our brethren throughout centuries, in numerous places, than in documents. Jewish history may also be decipheredon tombstones. On prison walls. Some chapters were written, like the Torah, with fire on fire. Read their descriptions and your sleep will be haunted by their mute despair, and by their determination to overcome despair. Or, in more recent times, read the chronicles from ghettos and death camps: read the
Sonderkommando
documents and your life will be altered.
    Eventually, it is with regret that one leaves this place of meditation and memory—one leaves it, having been enriched, enhanced, and yet one does not want to leave it at all.
    But then, you do not really leave a library; if you do what it wants you to do, then you are taking it with you.

The Stranger in the Bible
    O N THAT NIGHT Abraham had a vision both magnificent and awesome. He heard God renewing His solemn promise that Abraham would not die without an heir. That his passage on earth, his journey among men, would be neither forgotten nor erased. And that the future would justify his past—for mankind would look at the world through his eyes. He, Abraham, would be the first of a line never to be broken, the founder of a nation never to dissolve.
    And yet—despite God’s soothing, reassuring voice, Abraham hesitated; he wanted to believe but could not, not really, not entirely.
    Abraham could not suppress his anxiety: so far God had promised him everything and given him little. How long could Abraham wait? Time was running out. He was almost a hundred years old. Thus, whenGod told him not to worry—he began to worry. God said, I shall protect you and reward you. And Abraham answered, Yes—but I am still alone. So once again God revealed his future to him: You
will
have a son, he
will
be your heir—lift up your eyes and behold the sky; your children will be like the stars—innumerable; and eternal will be their splendor.
    Strange, but Abraham still was not satisfied; he wanted more. He demanded proof: How shall I know that this land will be mine, stay mine?
    God’s response is astonishing. He told him to take a calf, a goat, and a ram—all three years old. And a pigeon, and a dove. And prepare them for sacrifice. Abraham obeyed. He cut them into pieces and divided them into two lots, one facing the other. And he waited. And when wild birds of prey arrived and tried to devour the sacrificial offerings, he chased them away. Then the sun set, and Abraham fell asleep, his entire being heavy with anguish. And God said unto him, “Know, Abraham, that your descendants will be treated as strangers in foreign lands; they will be sold into slavery; they will be persecuted, tormented. But it will not last forever. For their oppressors will be punished. So, you see, you may die in peace.…”
    By then the sun had vanished from the horizon and there was darkness from one end of the world to the other. Suddenly, out of the darkness emerged a smoking furnace and a flaming torch and they passed between the offerings. And God concluded His covenantwith Abraham: This land, He said, from the Nile to the Euphrates, will belong to your children and theirs.…
    Thus ends the description—intense and allegorical—of that most important moment in the destiny of our people. If we are what we are—if we are attached to a past which envelops so many years of yearning and so many centuries of exile—it is because on that fateful night, shrouded in secrecy, God and Abraham concluded a covenant which may be viewed as a prefiguration of all that was to follow—until the end of time.
    This passage in Scripture is disquieting, notwithstanding its beauty and meaning; its mystery is enhanced by its imagery. What began as vision ended as theater, deserving our scrutiny.
    Biblical commentators have all felt that the text was puzzling on more than one level.
    First of all, psychologically, Abraham—at this moment of his life—does not need to be reassured; he has just defeated