Friendship and Rapture
I HAD A VERY CLOSE FRIEND named Moses Lapidoth.1 We were the same age, at the same level in our studies, and lived near each other. Our dispositions were very similar, too, except that I exhibited an affinity for science and scholarship early on, whereas Lapidoth had a gift for imaginative thinking, as well as considerable intelligence and powers of judgment, yet did not want to go farther in these things than plain common sense would take him. I often talked with this friend about matters close to both our hearts, especially about questions of religion and morality.
Of the people in our community, we were the only ones who did not merely reproduce the prevailing opinions. We ventured, rather, to think through everything [190] on our own. Since we differed from the rest of the community in our ideas and actions, it was only natural that we increasingly separated ourselves from the group. And since we were living off of the community, separating ourselves had the effect of making our material situation increasingly bad. We noticed this, needless to say, but nonetheless did not want to give up our prized independence for any worldly interest. We consoled ourselves for the loss as best we could, talking incessantly about the vanity of all things, as well as about the religious and moral missteps of the common horde, whom we looked down upon with a haughty pride and disdain.
In particular, we tended to rail against the falsity of human virtue à la Mandeville.2 Smallpox had raged where we lived, killing many children. The elders of the community met to identify the secret transgressions on account of which, in their view, they had been made to suffer. They ordered an investigation, and it turned out that a young widow who belonged to [191] the Jewish nation had been unduly free in her behavior toward several servants of the court. She was summoned, but all that their many questions could get out of her was that she had been suitably pleasant and forthcoming with these people, whom she served mead. She insisted that she was not aware of having committed a sin. Because there was no further evidence, they wanted to let her go. But an elderly matron, Madame F., came flying in like a fury screaming: “Whip her! Whip her until she confesses her crime! If you don’t, then you’ll bear the guilt for the deaths of so many innocent souls.”
Lapidoth, who witnessed the scene with me, said: “My friend! Do you think that Madame F. is accusing this woman so ferociously because a holy fervor has seized her and solely out of concern for the general good? No! She despises the woman because the woman is attractive, while she herself can no longer claim to be.” I assured him that we were entirely in agreement. [192]
Lapidoth’s in-laws were poor. His father-in-law was a Jewish sexton, and because his wages were meager, he couldn’t afford to feed his family adequately. Every Friday, this unfortunate man had to listen to all kinds of reproaches and insults from his wife, for he couldn’t even afford all the things essential to the Sabbath meal. Lapidoth described this situation, adding: “My mother-in-law wants me to believe that she becomes so outraged only on account of the holy Sabbath’s honor. In truth, she is outraged because of the honor of her holy belly, which she wants to be able to fill whenever she pleases. The holy Sabbath merely serves as her pretext.”
Once, as we were walking on the embankments discussing people’s tendency to deceive themselves and others—as Lapidoth’s mother-in-law so clearly did—I said: “My friend! Let us be fair and apply our criticisms to ourselves as much as to other people. The contemplative life we lead, which is so ill-suited to our circumstances, [193] is it not actually due to our apathy and penchant for idleness? If we reflect on the vanity of all things, don’t we come to think that we are merely trying to justify our idleness? We are content with our circumstances. Why? Because we cannot change them without first struggling against our idleness. Despite all our stated contempt for external things, we cannot deny having a secret longing to eat better and dress better than we are currently able to. We chastise our friends J., N., H., etc. as men of vanity devoted to sensuous desires, because they have abandoned our way of life and pursue occupations in line with their strengths, but how are we any better? We heed our penchant for idleness just as they follow their inclinations. Let us try to gain at least one advantage by admitting the truth, since they claim that their actions are driven by the desire to serve the community, rather than wanting to satisfy their particular desires.”
Lapidoth, quite taken with my speech, answered me [194] with feeling in his voice: “My friend, you are perfectly right. If we cannot correct our mistakes at present, we should at least be honest with ourselves about them and open the way to improvement.”
He and I—two cynics—spent the most pleasant hours carrying on such conversations, occasionally making fun of the world, occasionally making fun of ourselves. We certainly found much amusement in our shabby clothes. With his old filthy jacket fraying into rags, one sleeve having entirely come off because he couldn’t afford to have it mended, Lapidoth pinned the sleeve to his back and asked me: Don’t I look like a Schlachzig (a Polish nobleman)? For my part, I couldn’t boast enough about my tattered shoes with toes that were torn open, and I would say: “At least they don’t pinch.”
The similarities between our proclivities and ways of life, coupled with the differences in our talents, made our conversations all the more enjoyable. I was better at scholarship [195] and science, and, more than my friend, I tried to be thorough and accurate in understanding them. He, on the other hand, had the advantage of possessing a lively imagination and, accordingly, had the greater gift for oratory and poetry. Whenever I came up with a new idea, he could clarify it at once and make it more concrete through an abundance of examples.
Our affinity for each other went so far that, whenever possible, we spent day and night together; when we returned to the town where we both lived, after our work as family tutors, we would head straight for one another, without even seeing our families first. In the end, we began to neglect our customary prayer sessions. First, Lapidoth set about showing that even Talmudists didn’t always perform their prayers in a synagogue; they also performed them on occasion in a study. Then he demonstrated that not all prayers regarded as necessary were in fact equally necessary. Some of them could even be dispensed with completely. In truth, we cut back more and more [196] even on prayers we recognized to be necessary, until they too were no longer performed.
Once, as we were strolling on the embankment during prayer time, Lapidoth said: “Friend! What will become of us? We no longer pray.”
ME: What do you think about this?
L: I’m counting on the mercy of God, who surely won’t punish His children harshly because of a little omission?
ME: God is not only merciful; He is also just. It follows that His mercy won’t be of much help to us.
L: What do you think about that?
ME (having already derived from Maimonides more accurate ideas about God and our obligations to Him): Our calling is to achieve perfection through knowledge of God and by imitating His actions. Praying is simply an expression of our knowledge of divine perfections, and as the result of this knowledge, it is meant only for, and adapted to the way of thinking of, the common man, who is unable to come to this knowledge on his own. [197] Because we are able to recognize the goal of praying, and to arrive at it without such mediation, we can completely dispense with praying as something superfluous.
This argument seemed well founded to both of us. Thus we decided that we would avoid causing trouble. We would leave home each morning with all our taleth and tefilim (Jewish tools of prayer), but instead of going to the synagogue, we would go to our favorite retreat: the embankment. In this way, we successfully kept ourselves out of a Jewish inquisition court.
Like all things of this earth, our rapturous interactions had to end. Because we were both married, and our marriages had produced a lot of children, we had to take jobs as tutors in order to feed our families. As a result of this circumstance, we were often apart and could spend only a few weeks together each year. [198]
1 Maimon writes with more warmth, indeed love, for his friend Lapidoth than any other figure in the Autobiography. As far as we know, he is otherwise unknown. George Eliot, who, as mentioned in the editorial introduction, was a close nineteenth-century reader of Maimon’s autobiography, later took the surname Lapidoth for one of her Jewish characters in Daniel Deronda (1876).
2 Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733), whose Fable of the Bees, Or Private Vices, Publick Benefits (1705), whose subtitle adumbrates its scandalous argument.