even a month.
A lingering doubt: What if the doctors arehiding the truth from me? What if, in fact, I am dying? It could still happen: I may die any minute. But I am not dead yet. What does being resuscitated mean if not rediscovering one’s future?
21
THE OPPRESSION lasts thirty-six hours, perhaps two days. An eternity during which I can do nothing without help. Huge bandages cover my chest and the inside of my right leg. Electrocardiograms constantly control my heart rhythm. Attached to my body are long cables to analyze and measure the functioning of my vital organs. True, I had been warned that I would lose all notion of time and reality, except that every vanished reality makes way for another. Indefinitely.
On the third day, I am at last able to leave my bed. Then my room, to walk a few steps in the hallway. The state of my health improves, but the discomfort due to the incisions in the chest and leg persists. Yes, I do have medications, but they upset my stomach. It seems my brain is affected as well, for I am certainlythinking less clearly. I feel removed in time and space; I do not recognize myself. Who am I? What have I become? I know that I have escaped death. I also know that my life will never be the same again.
22
AND GOD in all that?
Am I asking myself that terrible question to chase away my anxiety and my pain?
Now that I am confined to the hospital bed, that question arises again, obsesses me as it haunts all I have written. And, lover of insoluble philosophical problems that I am, I remain frustrated.
A great journalist, a friend, in a televised conversation, asked me what I would say to God as I stood before Him. I answered with one word: “Why?”
And God’s answer? If, in His kindness, as we say, He actually communicated His answer, I don’t recall it.
The Talmud tells me: Moses is present as Rabbi Akiba gives a lecture on the Bible. And Moses asks God, “Since this master is so erudite, why did You give the Law to me ratherthan to him?” And God answers harshly: “Be quiet. For such is my will!” Some time later, Moses is present at Rabbi Akiba’s terrible torture and death at the hands of Roman soldiers. And he cries out, “Lord, is this Your reward to one who lived his entire life celebrating Your Law?” And God repeats His answer with the same harshness: “Be quiet. For such is my will!”
What will His answer be now, to make me be quiet?
And where shall I find the audacity and the strength to not accept it?
And yet, once I have left the antechamber of death, I ponder the question again. Why this illness? These pains, why did I deserve them? Even the possible success of the surgery leads me to inquire: “And God in all this?” Merciful God—as we say—did He not, after all, intervene and lend a hand to the surgeon? But again why, for what purpose?
When I was a child, I situated God exclusively in all that is Good. In all that is sacred. In all that makes man worthy of salvation. Could it be that for God, Evil represents just another path leading to Good?
In truth, for the Jew that I am, Auschwitz is not only a human tragedy but also—and most of all—a theological scandal. For me, it is as impossible to accept Auschwitz with God as without God. But then how is one to understand His silence?
As I try to explain God’s presence in Evil, I suffer. And search for reasons that would allow me to denounce it. Thoughts I expressed already in
Night
, in particular in the passage that describes a Rosh Hashanah service in Buna:
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.
But a few lines later I describe how during the same service I recite the traditional prayers and litanies, and proclaim my faith in Him, God of Abraham, Isaac and
A lingering doubt: What if the doctors arehiding the truth from me? What if, in fact, I am dying? It could still happen: I may die any minute. But I am not dead yet. What does being resuscitated mean if not rediscovering one’s future?
21
THE OPPRESSION lasts thirty-six hours, perhaps two days. An eternity during which I can do nothing without help. Huge bandages cover my chest and the inside of my right leg. Electrocardiograms constantly control my heart rhythm. Attached to my body are long cables to analyze and measure the functioning of my vital organs. True, I had been warned that I would lose all notion of time and reality, except that every vanished reality makes way for another. Indefinitely.
On the third day, I am at last able to leave my bed. Then my room, to walk a few steps in the hallway. The state of my health improves, but the discomfort due to the incisions in the chest and leg persists. Yes, I do have medications, but they upset my stomach. It seems my brain is affected as well, for I am certainlythinking less clearly. I feel removed in time and space; I do not recognize myself. Who am I? What have I become? I know that I have escaped death. I also know that my life will never be the same again.
22
AND GOD in all that?
Am I asking myself that terrible question to chase away my anxiety and my pain?
Now that I am confined to the hospital bed, that question arises again, obsesses me as it haunts all I have written. And, lover of insoluble philosophical problems that I am, I remain frustrated.
A great journalist, a friend, in a televised conversation, asked me what I would say to God as I stood before Him. I answered with one word: “Why?”
And God’s answer? If, in His kindness, as we say, He actually communicated His answer, I don’t recall it.
The Talmud tells me: Moses is present as Rabbi Akiba gives a lecture on the Bible. And Moses asks God, “Since this master is so erudite, why did You give the Law to me ratherthan to him?” And God answers harshly: “Be quiet. For such is my will!” Some time later, Moses is present at Rabbi Akiba’s terrible torture and death at the hands of Roman soldiers. And he cries out, “Lord, is this Your reward to one who lived his entire life celebrating Your Law?” And God repeats His answer with the same harshness: “Be quiet. For such is my will!”
What will His answer be now, to make me be quiet?
And where shall I find the audacity and the strength to not accept it?
And yet, once I have left the antechamber of death, I ponder the question again. Why this illness? These pains, why did I deserve them? Even the possible success of the surgery leads me to inquire: “And God in all this?” Merciful God—as we say—did He not, after all, intervene and lend a hand to the surgeon? But again why, for what purpose?
When I was a child, I situated God exclusively in all that is Good. In all that is sacred. In all that makes man worthy of salvation. Could it be that for God, Evil represents just another path leading to Good?
In truth, for the Jew that I am, Auschwitz is not only a human tragedy but also—and most of all—a theological scandal. For me, it is as impossible to accept Auschwitz with God as without God. But then how is one to understand His silence?
As I try to explain God’s presence in Evil, I suffer. And search for reasons that would allow me to denounce it. Thoughts I expressed already in
Night
, in particular in the passage that describes a Rosh Hashanah service in Buna:
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself.
But a few lines later I describe how during the same service I recite the traditional prayers and litanies, and proclaim my faith in Him, God of Abraham, Isaac and
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