Over the Rooftops of Time: Jewish Stories, Essays, Poems

Preface

It is said that the Jewish homeland is alive in time. That each of us is poured like the contents of a vessel from Sinai to here. That even those not yet born will bear the inscription of Sinai. Whether the subject in these essays is language or memory, the intent is to provide a trace of that homeland. S. Y. Agnon tells the fable of a goat whose milk is so sweet it is a balm to the bones of an old man. But the goat keeps disappearing . The son sets out to follow the goat to discover where she goes. Eventually they come to a cave and when they emerge the son asks where this place is that is full of the choicest fruit and a “fountain of living waters.” “The land of Israel,” he is told, “close by Safed.” The story ends sadly; the easy way to the Land of Israel is closed off. “The mouth of the cave has been hidden from the eye.” Spiritual loss and exile are the order of the day. These essays tell of the remaining Jewish communities of Morocco; the Lithuanian Holocaust; a search for the birthplace of a grandfather; a woman’s struggle to embrace Judaism; resistance in the French town of Le Chambon; exile of the body in illness and the potential for healing through gene therapy and stem cell research. Like Isaac Singer’s portrayal of his most ordinary men and women in their vanished shtetl worlds dreaming their extraordinary dreams, it is hoped that these remnants will permit us to imagine the larger fabric of which they are made. Perhaps our narrator, like Isaac Singer’s Yasha the magician of Lublin, can also achieve flight. Perhaps she can gain access to the forbidden —whether it is against gravity she pits herself or against a tradition that for so long kept women on the other side of the machitza, the partition, tucked safely under their sheitels, their marriage wigs. Our flight may be like the bee’s, aeronautically unsound, but doable, permitting us at long last to become full participants. To point to the words x i Preface of the Torah ourselves. And perhaps this flying can be not only away from but toward. An embrace. Perhaps the single most important issue of our new century is whether the instinctual side of humankind will be kept in check or whether it will, as we have seen so clearly in recent days, erupt with murderous force. How can individual, parental, or cultural influences enhance our ability to sublimate our aggressive drives? In these works, this question is the reigning principle. As I believe it to be the main tenet of Judaism and the central Talmudic principle—a set of doctrines, flexible in nature, to govern our behavior. Writings sufficiently cognizant of human nature to remain valid and of use for the duration of time. Writings which contain the legal codes, halakhah, and superb illustrations , aggadah, story that is, according to Bialik, “the crucible of the halakhah.” I want to offer amnesty for those readers averse to science, but with a warning. The changes in science and medicine affect each of us. Drug resistance and the search for effective alternatives to the known antibiotics; the burgeoning cases of HIV infection—in Zimbabwe today one in three persons is infected; the difficult ethical issues posed by our increasing knowledge of the role of genetics in treating illnesses and in aiding reproduction; the use of viruses as vectors in treating disease; the enormous strides made in the neurosciences; and the advent of transplantation are subjects worthy of our attention and thought. On a more personal note, childhood illness and the threat of rheumatic heart disease as a consequence of untreated strep infections—there was no viable treatment at the time—kept me away from school and isolated for long periods. The combination of reading through my parents’ library, wandering about in the woods near our home, and spending time in my biochemist father’s laboratory, created in me an attentiveness to the natural world and to the world of science. The discovery of penicillin had a direct impact on my life, ending the years of isolation. Back then I took to growing bread mold on the windowsills of our house, urging the gray-green products of my experimentation upon my younger sister who, despite my ministrations, managed to survive! Though I have kept the various areas of my life separated...