There were a number of holy books in my father’s bookcase in which I sought the answers to my questions. One was the Book of the Covenant, which I believe was already at that time a hundred years old and full of scientific facts. It described the theories of Copernicus and Newton and, it seems, the experiments of Benjamin Franklin as well. There were accounts of savage tribes, strange animals, and explanations of what made a train run and a balloon fly. In the special section dealing with religion were mentioned a number of philosophers. I recall that Kant already figured in there, too. The author, Reb Elijah of Vilna, a pious Jew, proved how inadequate the philosophers were at explaining the mystery of the world. No research or inquiry, wrote he, could reveal the truth. The author of the Book of the Covenant spoke of nature, too, but with the constant reminder that nature was something that God had created, not a thing that existed of its own power. I never tired of reading this book. Things had already evolved in my time of which the author of the Book of the Covenant could not know. In the delicatessen near our house there was a telephone. From time to time, a car drove down our street. My brother said that rays had been discovered that could photo-graph the heart and the lungs and that an instrument existed that revealed the stuff of which stars were made. The Yiddish newspaper read in our house often printed articles about Edison, the inventor of the phonograph. Each such account was for me like a treasure find. Because of my deep curiosity about science, I should have grown up a scientist, but I wasn’t satisfied with mere facts—I wanted to solve the mystery of being. I sought answers to questions which tormented me then and still do to the present day.
The street was crowded with people, and our balcony swarmed with living creatures. Here came a butterfly and there a big fly with a green-gold belly; here landed a sparrow and suddenly a pigeon came swooping in from somewhere. An insect lighted on the lapel of my gabardine. In cheder we called it Moses’ little cow. Actually it was a ladybug. It was odd to consider that all these creatures had had fathers, mothers, grand-fathers, and grandmothers just like me. Each of them lived out his or her time and died. I had read somewhere that a fly had thousands of eyes. Well, but despite all these eyes boys caught flies, tore off their wings, and tortured them in every manner only man could conceive while the Almighty sat on His Throne of Glory in seventh heaven and the angels sang His praises.
There were cabala books in my father’s bookcase which intrigued me immensely. I was forbidden to study them. Father constantly reminded me that you couldn’t take to the cabala before you reached thirty. He said that for those younger, the cabala posed a danger. One could drift into heresy and even lose one’s mind, God forbid. When Father wasn’t at home or was talking his Sabbath nap, I browsed through these books. They listed names of angels, seraphim. God’s name was printed in large letters and in many variations. There were descriptions of heavenly mansions, transmigrated souls, spiritual copulations. The writers of these books were apparently well versed in the ways of heaven. They knew of combinations of letters through which you could tap wine from a wall, create pigeons, even destroy the world. Besides God Himself (there were no words or satisfactory terms to describe what He is), the one who had the main say above was Metatron, who ranked just a notch below God. A second mighty and awesome angel was Sandalphon. All the angels, seraphim, cherubim, had one desire—to praise God, to revere Him, to extol Him, to enhance His name. Their wings spread over many worlds. They spoke Hebrew. I had learned in the Gemara that God understands all languages and that you could pray to Him in your own tongue, but the angels resorted only to Hebrew. Well, but this wasn’t the same ordinary Hebrew that I knew. Holy names spurted from their fiery mouths, secrets of the Torah, mysteries upon mysteries. So vast were these heavens that three hundred and ten worlds were reserved for every saint. Every soul, big or small, the moment it passed the process of being cleansed in fires of hell, found a place in Paradise—each according to its origin and its deeds. All the heavens, all the upper worlds, all the spheres, all the angels and souls, were concerned with one thing—to learn the secrets of the Torah, since God and the Torah and those who believed in the Torah, the Jews, were one and the same … Every word, every letter, every curlicue, contained hints of Divine wisdom which no matter how often it was studied could never be learned, since, like God, the Torah was infinite. God Himself studied the Torah; that is to say, He studied His own depths. All the heavens, the entire eternity, were one great yeshivah. God even found time to study with the souls of little children who had left the world early. In my imagination I pictured the Almighty sitting at a heavenly table surrounded by little souls in skullcaps and earlocks, all of them anxious to hear the word of Him who was beyond words of praise and beyond human knowledge, and of Whom the best thing that could be said was silence.
Leafing through the cabala books, I discovered that even as they studied the Torah in the heavens, so did they indulge in fiery loves. In fact, in heaven Torah and love were two sides of the same entity. God copulated with the Divine Presence, which was actually God’s wife, and the people of Israel were their children. When the Jews transgressed and God grew angry at them and wanted to punish them, the Divine Presence interceded for them like any Jewish mother when the father is angry. The authors of the cabala books constantly warned against taking their writings literally. They were always afraid of anthropomorphism. Still, they did present a human concept. Not only God and the Divine Presence but all the male and female saints in the heavens loved one another and coupled both face to face and front to back.
Jacob again mated with Rachel, Leah, Bilhah, and Zilpah. The Patriarchs, King David, King Solomon, all the great people of the Scriptures and the Gemara, had wives and concubines in heaven. These couplings were unions performed for the glory of God. I already knew from reading the Book of the Covenant and maybe from glancing into my older brother’s books that there were male trees and female trees. Winds and bees carried the pollen from one tree to another and fructified them. But I realized now that even in heaven the principle of male and female prevailed. I myself began to long for the mysteries of the girls in our street and courtyard. They seemed to eat, drink, and sleep just like men, but they looked different, spoke differently, smiled differently, dressed differently. Their lips, breasts, hips, throats, expressed something I didn’t understand but was drawn to. The girls laughed at things that evoked no laughter in me. They thrilled over doodads that left me cold. They said words that struck me as silly and childish, yet their voices appealed to me. Not only God but also objects down here on earth had a language that defied interpretation. Hands, feet, eyes, noses—all had their own speech. They said something, but what? I had read somewhere that King Solomon understood the language of animals and birds. I had heard of people who could read faces and palms, and I yearned to know all this.