My Misery Reaches Its Nadir. Rescue
THAT EVENING, I CAME TO AN INN where I met a poor wanderer, a Jewish beggar by profession (ex professo). I was very excited to meet one of my fellow brothers, whom I could talk to, and who knew the area very well.
I decided to wander around the region in his company as a way of keeping myself alive, even though you couldn’t find two people more different than we were. I was a learned rabbi; he was an idiot. I had supported myself in a respectable manner up until that point; he was a professional beggar.1 I had ideas about morality, propriety, and respectability; he knew nothing of such things. Finally, I was physically healthy but also rather weak; he [275] was a strong, well-built fellow who would have made an excellent soldier.
Notwithstanding all these differences, I joined him, for I was now forced to roam around in a foreign land to survive. During our wanderings, I tried to impart something of my ideas about religion and true morality, while he instructed me in the art of begging. He taught me the most commonly used expressions and made a point of recommending that I hurl abuse at anyone who turned down my requests.
As hard as I tried, I couldn’t put his teachings into practice. The lines that beggars used struck me as silly. I thought that when you are reduced to asking others for help, you should describe your condition quite simply. As for cursing, I couldn’t understand why someone who refuses another’s request deserves to be insulted. I also thought that verbally abusing people would only make them more hostile toward us, and thereby make our goal even harder to attain. [276]
So when I went begging with my companion, I acted as though I were asking and cursing just he did, but in truth I didn’t speak a single comprehensible word. When I went out alone, I didn’t know what to say. But just by looking at my face and appearance, people could see what I was lacking. Occasionally, my companion would scold me for being such a poor student, and I would accept his reproaches with great patience.
We spent almost six months this way, wandering around a district of only a few square miles. We decided in the end to make Poland our destination.
Upon arriving in Posen, we stopped at the Jewish poor house, which was run by a destitute tailor. Here I resolved to put an end to my wandering—whatever the cost.
It was fall, and the cold weather was setting in. Since I was barefoot and practically naked, this wouldn’t be good for my health, which hadn’t been holding up well. Proper [277] meals were out of the question for us. Instead I had been making do with moldy bread scraps and water. I had to spend the nights on old straw, sometimes even on the ground. In addition to all that, the Jewish holy days and days of penance were approaching. Being still very religious back then, I could not stand the thought of not observing these days while others were using them for the benefit of their souls.
I decided not to go any farther. If left with no other choice, I would lie down in front of the synagogue and either die there or arouse the sympathy of my fellow Jews, who would save me from my suffering.
And so when my companion woke up the next morning, got ready to go begging, and told me to do the same, I said that I wouldn’t. When he asked me how I planned to support myself, all I could answer was: “God will help me.” [278]
I went to the Jewish school, and there I met several young students. They were studying, but partly also taking advantage of their teacher’s absence and playing games.
I, too, picked up a book. Some of the students noticed my odd clothing. They approached me and asked me where I was from, as well as why I had come to the school. When I answered in my Lithuanian language, they laughed and mocked me.
But this treatment didn’t drive me away. Having remembered that a chief rabbi from my region had been named chief rabbi in Posen a few years earlier, and had brought along a good friend of mine as a scribe, I inquired about my friend. I was sad to learn that he was no longer in Posen. The chief rabbi had been made chief rabbi in Hamburg, and my friend had gone with him once again. However, my friend had left his twelve-year-old son with the current [279] chief rabbi, who was the son-in-law of the former chief rabbi.2
While this news was more than a little disheartening, what the boys said about my friend’s son gave me a bit of hope. I asked where the new chief rabbi lived and went to his house. Because I was nearly naked, I was too embarrassed to enter. Instead, I waited outside until I saw someone going into the house. I asked him to be so kind as to ask my friend’s son to come out.
The boy recognized me at once, though he was amazed to see me in such a deplorable state. I said that now wasn’t the time to recount all the misfortunes that had left me in such sad shape; the question was what could he do to alleviate my suffering? He agreed and approached the chief rabbi, introducing me as a great scholar and pious man who, due to a series of extraordinary circumstances, now found himself languishing in extreme poverty. [280]
The chief rabbi—a fine man, a perceptive Talmudist, and a kind person—was moved by my distress. He summoned me, and we spoke for a long time and discussed some of the most important issues in the Talmud. He found me well versed in all areas of Jewish knowledge.
Having formed this impression, he asked me about my plans. I said I hoped to find work as a tutor, but for the moment, I wanted nothing more than to celebrate the holy days and break off my wanderings—at least for a time. The sympathetic rabbi told me not to worry, called my request a small matter, and said I should consider it granted. He then gave me all the money he had with him, invited me to join him for every Sabbath while I was in town, however long that might be, and ordered his boy to arrange for me to have a proper place to stay.
The boy soon returned to take me to my new lodgings. [281]
Since I had assumed I would be given a bit of space in some poor man’s house, imagine my surprise when I found myself in the house of one of the Jewish elders. They had prepared an excellent room—the elder’s study, for both he and his son were great scholars.
I looked around, then walked up to the elder’s wife, pressed a few pennies into her hand, and asked her to make me some porridge for dinner. She smiled at my ingenuousness and said: “No, no, sir, this isn’t our arrangement. The chief rabbi didn’t send you here to make you pay for your porridge.” She explained that I would not only be lodging in her house, but eating and drinking there, too, for as long as I stayed in town.
I couldn’t believe this good fortune. I grew even more delighted after dinner, when I was led to a clean bed. It was incredible. I [282] couldn’t believe my eyes, and asked more than once: “Is this really for me?”
I can honestly state that never in my life, neither earlier nor later, have I enjoyed the kind of bliss I experienced upon getting into that bed and feeling my body, so exhausted for half a year that it was nearly lifeless, start to regain its former strength.
I slept until late the next day. As soon as I woke up, the chief rabbi sent someone to look in on me and ask me to come see him. When he inquired as to whether my lodgings were satisfactory, I could find no words to express what I felt. In my ecstasy, I shouted out: “I slept in a bed!” The chief rabbi was greatly pleased. He then sent for the school cantor and said: “H., go buy material for new clothes and bring them to H. S. I’ll take care of the bill.”
He turned to me and asked what kind of clothes I wanted. Overcome [283] by gratitude and respect for this excellent man, I couldn’t reply in words. Instead, a torrent of tears served as my answer.
The chief rabbi had new underclothes made for me as well. In two days, everything was ready. Wearing clean underclothes and the new clothes, I went to the rabbi to express my gratitude, but I was able to get out only a few broken words. This was a wonderful sight for him. He refused my thanks, telling me that I shouldn’t make so much out of what he had done. It was just a small favor, not worth mentioning.
At this point, the reader might be thinking that the chief rabbi was a rich man for whom the money for new clothes was actually a small matter. Let me assure you: This was hardly the case. The rabbi earned only a modest salary. Because he devoted most of his time to study, his wife, who had different views about charity, had to manage his affairs [284] and the household. Thus he had to carry out his acts of generosity without his wife’s knowledge, which meant telling her that others had given him money for the clothes. Moreover, the rabbi’s own way of life was very abstemious. He fasted during the day every day except the Sabbath, and he ate no meat during the week.
Still, in order to satisfy his desire to do good works, he had to take on debts. His austere life, with all its studying and working at night, weakened him so much that soon after he was made chief rabbi in Förde (to which a great many of his students followed him), he died young: He was around the age of thirty-six. When I think of this remarkable man, I can’t help but feel deeply moved.
I had left a few little things in my previous lodgings at the poor tailor’s, so I went back to pick them up. The poor tailor, his wife, and my former begging companion had heard about my glorious transformation and were eagerly awaiting me. [285]
A touching scene! The man who had arrived, just three days earlier, barefoot and nearly naked, whom the destitute inhabitants of the house had seen as human trash, whose own companion, clad in a canvas jacket, treated him with mockery and contempt, now returned, his reputation preceding him, with a cheerful face and dressed like a chief rabbi, a figure worthy of reverence in this shack.
They all said how happily surprised they were to see me in such changed circumstances. The tailor’s wife picked up her baby and requested, with tears in her eyes, that I bless it. My comrade movingly asked for forgiveness for the rough way he had spoken to me. He said he considered himself lucky to have had such a traveling companion but would be unhappy if I didn’t accept his apology for mistakes committed out of ignorance.
I was friendly to all of them. I gave the little one my blessing and my traveling comrade all the money I had. The scene caused a genuine stirring of emotion in me. [286]
Meanwhile, my reputation had grown and spread so much that all the scholars in the town sought me out to engage me in debate. This was due to the chief rabbi’s opinion of me, as well as to that of my host, a great scholar who after many disputes and discussions, had come to hold my talent and learning in high esteem. The more the town’s scholars got to know me, the more they respected me.
This time was, without a doubt, the happiest and most upstanding period in my life.
The young scholars of the town decided to provide me with a salary, in exchange for which I would give lectures on Maimonides’ famous, profound work More Nevochim. This decision was never put into practice, however, because the parents of these scholars were afraid that my lectures might lead their children astray and shake their faith by promoting independent thinking. [287] The parents acknowledged, to be sure, that I remained a pious man and orthodox rabbi, even as I displayed a certain tendency to contemplate religion freely. But they didn’t trust their children to exercise the same sort of judgment. They were worried—perhaps with good reason—that their children would go from one extreme to the other, from superstition to atheism.
After I had spent about four weeks here, the man whose house I was living in came to me and said: “Herr S.! Let me make a proposal. If you are inclined to study on your own, you may stay here for as long as you like. But if you want to concentrate on someone other than yourself, if you want to serve the world with your talents, there is a wealthy man—one of the most eminent in town—who has only one son, and who wants more than anything to have you as his son’s tutor. This man is my brother-in-law. If you don’t want to do it for his sake, then do it for mine—and as a favor to the chief rabbi. [288] My nephew is engaged to a member of the chief rabbi’s family, and the boy’s education means a great deal to him.”
I happily accepted. And so it was under advantageous conditions indeed that I became a part of this family as their new tutor, a position I kept for two years, receiving countless honors from the family. No one did a thing in this house without my knowing about it. Everyone greeted me with the greatest displays of respect. It was almost as though they saw me as superhuman.
Thus two wonderful years went swiftly by. Yet during this time, some little things happened that should not be left out of my story.
First, the respect these people harbored for me swelled to such an extent that they wanted to make me into a prophet, despite my protests. This situation came about in the following way.
My student was engaged to marry the daughter of a chief rabbi who was the brother-in-law of the chief rabbi in Posen. During the Shavuot holiday, the bride’s aunt and uncle picked up the girl—she was about twelve—and brought her to Posen. While [289] she was visiting, I noticed that she had a very phlegmatic temperament and was quite consumptive. I conveyed my observation to my employer’s brother, making it clear how concerned I was about the girl’s health. Indeed, I believed she would not live long. The girl was sent back to her parents after the holiday; two weeks later, a letter brought the news of her death.
After that, it was not only the people in the house where I worked who saw me as a prophet; the whole city did as well. They all believed that I had foretold the girl’s death.
Because nothing was farther from my mind than fooling someone, I tried to convince these superstitious people that anyone with some experience in the world could have predicted the girl’s death. But my attempts didn’t help. I had become a prophet, and I had to remain one.
The second incident to report was as follows. In one Jewish house, fish would be served for the Sabbath meal every Friday, [290] and on one occasion, the person cutting open the carp thought he heard it utter something. This terrified everyone. The rabbi was asked what to do with a fish that had ventured to talk, and he decreed, in accord with his superstitious outlook, that the fish was possessed by a spirit and should be wrapped in a shroud before being given a splendid burial.
This horrible event was a topic of conversation in the house where I was working. Having been able to escape such superstitious ideas thanks to my diligent study of the More Newochim, I laughed heartily and said that if they had sent the carp to me, I wouldn’t have buried it. I would have performed an experiment to discover how talking carps taste.3
This bon mot was soon famous in town. The scholars waxed indignant over it, accused me of heresy, and tried to undermine me in all kinds of ways. But I commanded as much respect as before in the house where I was working, which rendered their efforts fruitless. [291]
Because I felt protected—and because the spirit of fanaticism, rather than scaring me off, spurred me on to additional contemplation—I took things a bit further. I slept through prayer time more often than not, seldom went to synagogue, and so on. In the end, the accumulation of my sins was so great that nothing could prevent me from being the target of censure.
At the entranceway to the Jewish community’s house in Posen, there was a stag horn attached to the wall. It had been there since who knows when. All the Jews agreed that if you touched the horn, you would die on the spot, and they could give many examples of such deaths having occurred.
But I was not impressed. I laughed at what they said, and when I happened to walk past the stag horn along with some local Jews once, I remarked: “You Posen Jews are such fools. You think that anyone who touches this horn will drop dead. Watch me touch it.” [292]
These Jews stared in horror, expecting me to die on the spot. When I didn’t, their fear was transformed into hatred. They saw me as someone who had desecrated the holy temple.
Such fanaticism revived my desire to go to Berlin and wipe out whatever was left of my own superstition through enlightenment. Therefore, I asked my employer to let me go. He begged me to stay on longer, and he even promised to shield me from opprobrium and scorn. But my decision was firm. I took leave of my employer and his family, boarded the Frankfurt coach, and went to Berlin.
End of the First Part
1 On such Jewish beggars (betteljuden), who were not uncommon at the time, see Moses Shulvass, From East to West: The Westward Migration of Jews from Eastern Europe during the 17th and 18th Centuries (Wayne State University Press, 1971), pp. 79–125.
2 Maimon had been looking for Rabbi Raphael Kohen with whom he will later have a climactic confrontation in Altona, below bk. 2, ch. 14, pp. 219–20. The rabbi of Posen at the time was Rabbi Hirsch Janow (1733–85), who was known as “Hirsch Harif” (sharp or clever Hirsch), and thus well equipped to appreciate Maimon’s rabbinic acuity, though Janow was known as an opponent of Haskala, who opposed Mendelssohn’s controversial German translation of the Bible and accompanying commentary.
3 In part because the Bible speaks of both fish and the righteous as being “gathered,” when they die, there is a kabbalistic tradition that righteous dead who have committed only minor sins are reincarnated as fish. See, e.g., Rabbi Isaac Komarno (1806–74), who wrote that the Messiah will not come until “a fish is sought for a sick person and cannot be found,” that is, until humanity is sinless, in Morris Faierstein, trans. and ed., Jewish Mystical Visions and Book of Secrets (Paulist Press, 1999), p. 292. For an amusing twenty-first-century reprise of the incident Maimon describes in New Square, New York, see Corey Kilgannon, “Miracle? Dream? Prank? Fish Talks, Town Buzzes” in New York Times, March 15, 2003.