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Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 7 6 -1 7 ,9 8 3

GEALY, Marcia Booher, 1931- THE HASIDIC TRADITION IN THE WORK OF BERNARD MALAMUD.

The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1976 Literature, modern

Xerox University Microfilms , Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106

© Copyright by

Marcia Booher Gealy

1976 THE HASIDIC TRADITION IN THE WORK OF BERNARD MALAMUD

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillm ent of the Requirements for

the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate

School of The Ohio State University

By

Marcia Booher Gealy, B.A., M.A.

******

The Ohio State University

1976

Reading Committee: Approved By

John M. Muste Julian Markels Marc Lee Raphael Adviser Department of English For my husband, William J. Gealy ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank Professor John M. Muste, my adviser, who gave me the encouragement and direction that made the w riting of this dissertation a rewarding experience. I wish also to thank the other members of my committee, Professor Julian Markels, who introduced me to the study of Jewish lite ra tu re and Professor Marc Lee Raphael, who introduced me to the discipline of Jewish history. Finally, I am grateful to Bernard Malamud, who granted me an interview and who answered my letters with promptness and attention. VITA

November 19, 1931. . . . Born - Brooklyn, New York

1 9 6 1 ...... B.A. with honors in English, summa cum laude, Howard College, Birmingham, Alabama

1962-1964 ...... Instructor, Department of English, Howard College, Birmingham, Alabama

1965 ...... M.A. with honors in English and Compara­ tive Literature, Columbia University, New York, New York

1965-196 6 ...... Instructor, Department of English, Dallas Baptist College, Dallas, Texas

1966-1970 ...... Instructor, Department of English and Comparative Literatu re, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas

1970-1974...... Lecturer, Division of Comparative Litera­ ture, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1974- ...... Instructor, Department of English, Otterbein College, Westerville, Ohio

PUBLICATIONS

"Lonely at the Front of the Room" in The New Teachers. Edited by Don Flournoy and Associates. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1972.

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: Twentieth-Century British and American Literature. Professor John M. Muste

American Literature through the Nineteenth Century. Professor Julian Markels Romantic and Victorian Literature. Professor Ford Swetnam Modern Jewish History. Professor Marc Lee Raphael iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

DEDICATION...... i i

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...... i i i

VITA ...... iv

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Chapter

I . THE HASIDIC MOVEMENT ...... 5

I I . THE QUEST FOR SALVATION: THE NATURAL ...... 27

I I I . THE FATHER AS TEACHER: THE ASSISTANT...... 46

IV. THE SUPREMACY OF THE HEART: A NEW L I F E ...... 71

V. THE REALITY OF EVIL: THE F IX E R ...... 91

VI. THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE STRANGER: THE TENANTS ...... 114

V II. THE SANCTITY OF THE TALE: THE SHORT STORIES ...... 131

CONCLUSION ...... 157

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 162

v INTRODUCTION

The achievement of Bernard Malamud is dependent, in large measure,

on the way in which his writing reveals a Jewish past. His treatment

of Jewish trad itio n and Jewish history are the particulars which,

paradoxically, often give his best work its most distinctive claim

to universality, a point that has been noted by more than one c r itic .

Thus Sidney Richman, who published the f ir s t book-length study devoted exclusive to Malamud, writes:

Perplexingly, one finds that the best of Malamud's novels, and the best of his stories, willfully culti­ vate attitudes and backgrounds which are as sp ecifi­ cally Jewish as the author can make them and which often represent a return to conditions long past. Moreover, these are exactly the works which have re­ ceived the longest share of c ritic a l and popular acclaimJ

But neither Richman nor any other c r itic examines the Jewish influences on Malamud's w riting in any kind of extended study. While examining Malamud's work in relation to its Jewish backgrounds, I have been repeatedly struck by the Hasidic elements which inform i t . Modern

Hasidism, a Jewish religious movement, was founded shortly before the middle of the eighteenth century by the East European saint and mystic

Israel ben E liezer, the Baal Shem Tov. Though other c ritic s , including

Richman, have noted Hasidic strains in Malamud's work, none has investigated them fu lly .^ Thus some interpretations of Malamud's work are incomplete a t best and misleading at worst. Some of the most interesting aspects of the Hasidic movement, a

transformation or re-interpretation of an older Jewish mysticism which

made i t accessible to the masses of the people, are the emphasis i t

places on a personal, inner salvation, the concern i t shows for the

fo lk and the stranger, the importance i t attaches to the relationship

between teacher and pupil, the joy with which i t accepts the dark side

of lif e , and the significance i t places on the te llin g of tales. I

see these emphases reflected in the work of Bernard Malamud and have

attempted to show how an understanding of Hasidism can lead us to an

enriched appreciation of Malamud's most creative work.

In no way have I tried to prove that Malamud consciously utilized

Hasidic sources in his work. On the contrary, I believe that

Malamud's relation to a religious force like Hasidism is primarily a

result of his having lived in a culture which absorbed the tradition

rather than of his having studied i t d irec tly . My views were substan­

tiated when I spoke to Malamud,3 fo r he told me that he was aware of

no direct influence of Hasidism on his work and that he had read noth­

ing of Martin Buber's until after he had finished The Assistant. On

the other hand, he also said that he has been familiar with some

Yiddish fic tio n in translation (in particular, Sholem Aleichem and

I. L. Peretz) and "perhaps there's an indirect influence through it."^

What I find even more significant is that Malamud's parents were

Yiddish speaking Jews who emigrated to America from a shtetl in the

Ukraine, a center of Hasidic influence. Malamud's father came from

"Zbrish in or around Kamenetz Podolsk,"5* a city in the western

Ukraine and a former capital of Podolia. Podolia is the lengendary birthplace of the Baal Shem Tov and was an important early center of

Hasidic influence.® Thus while Malamud's family were not themselves

Hasidim, i t would seem plausible to surmise that they were exposed to

- a basically folk tradition which permeated the culture of the East

European shtetl until its destruction in the twentieth century.^ If

Malamud recalls for us the humor of Sholom Aleichem, and more s ig n ifi­

cantly, the irony of I. L. Peretz, if his tales infuse us with the

same sense of mystery that we find in the recreated Hasidic tales of

Martin Buber, i t is because he shares with a ll these writers a common

past.

Chapter I of this study is a discussion of the origin and meaning

of the Hasidic movement, Chapters I I through VI discuss Malamud's

novels in relation to Hasidic teaching, and Chapter VII focuses on the

short stores of Malamud which best illu s tra te Hasidic themes.® The

Conclusion is an attempt to evaluate the importance of Hasidism for an

enriched appreciation of Malamud's work. 4 Footnotes for Introduction

^Sidney Richman, Bernard Malamud (New York: Twayne, 1966), p. 20.

^See for example Richman, pp. 26, 70, 74, 106; Peter L. Hays, "The Complex Pattern of Redemption" in Bernard Malamud and the C ritic s , ed. Leslie A. Field and Joyce W. Field~(New York: New York University Press, 1970), pp. 227-232; Sanford Pinsker, "The 'Hasid' in Modern American Literature," Reconstructionist,, 6 March 1970, pp. 14-15; Sanford Pinsker, "The Schlemiel as Moral Bungler: Bernard Malamud's Ironic Heroes," The Schlemiel as Metaphor: Studies in the Yiddish and American Jewish Novel (Carbondale: S. Illin o is University Press, 1971), pp. 93-100.

^Interview with Bernard Malamud, New York City, 22 March 1974.

^Bernard Malamud, le tte r to Marcia Gealy, 9 February 1974.

^Bernard Malamud, le tte r to Marcia Gealy, 1 September 1975.

^Encyclopaedia Judaica, 1971 ed., s.v. "Israel Ben Eliezer Ba'al Shem Tov, by A[vraham] Ru[benstein].

?Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog, Life Is With People: The Culture of the Shtetl (New York: Schocken, 1962), pp. 185-188.

^For the purpose of my study I treat Pictures of Fidelman: An Exhibition as a collection of short stories even though it was pub­ lished as a novel. Pictures of Fidelman unites three early stories which were published separately with three new ones. I single out the opening story, o rig in ally called "The Last Mohican," as a tale which best exemplifies the Hasidic tradition. CHAPTER I

THE HASIDIC MOVEMENT

Hasidism has been called everything from "the greatest religious movement in the history of Israel in the Diaspara"^ to a religious movement which created "a new type of believing Jew," one with "more light in his heart," but with "more darkness in his head."2 Neverthe­ less, most modern scholars would agree with Newman that Hasidism is

"more than a cult; it is a culture," and that "side by side with

Rabbinism, Hasidism remains one of the major p illa rs supporting tra d i­ tional Judaism in contemporary life ." ^

The term "Hasid" lite r a lly means "the pious one" and refers to a devotee of Hasidism, a mystic sect founded in the middle of the eighteenth century in eastern Europe. Although the term had been used before, in modern usage it refers to a follower of the East European saint and mystic, Israel Baal Shem Tov (ca. 1700 - 1760). Hasidism had its first center in the Polish province of Podolia but it soon spread throughout Galicia and the steppe-like plains of the Ukraine.

The movement was especially strong in the southern areas of Russia and even made considerable headway in the northwest provinces of Lithuania and White Russia.^

Tradition tells us that Israel ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov

(Master of the Good Name), or "Besht" as he was called, was a simple, re la tiv e ly unlearned man who made his living at various times as a dig­ ger of clay, an innkeeper, and as a melamed (a teacher of small child­ ren). At the age of thirty-six, Israel reveaed himself to be a Baal

Shem, that is , a master of the name of God, one who because he knows the secret, holy names of God has special powers.5 His reputation as a great teacher and a fa ith healer spread throughout East European

Jewry; he was especially noted for his compassion, his humility» and his joyful acceptance of the simple and the lowly. He taught mainly in story and parable, and lik e many great teachers and founders of religious movements, he wrote nothing down. What we know of his lif e and his sayings we have learned both from the oral tradition and from the writings of his disciples, the f ir s t published collection of the legends concerning him having appeared in Hebrew in 1814,® over f if t y years after his death.

Many of us in the twentieth century have come to a knowledge of

Hasidism through the writings of Martin Buber,^ who for over f if t y years devoted himself to the re-tel ling and the re-creation of Hasidic tales and teachings. There has been some discussion as to whether

Buber's writing gives a complete or true picture of original Hasidic thought. Gershom Scholem, fo r example, though he praises Buber's presentation of Hasidic sayings and legends as "very great indeed," and one which "w ill to a large extent stand the test of time," never­ theless writes that Buber's selectivity makes his approach non- scholarly. Scholem argues that because Buber locates the chief sources of Hasidism in its legends rather than in its theoretical literature, what we have in Buber is not necessarily "the theology of the founders of Hasidism" but "the mood of some of its followers" which was popular­

ized or vulgarized in the world of legend.** These legends developed

during the closing year of the eighteenth century, crystallized in the

f ir s t h alf of the nineteenth century, and achieved a growing popularity

among the Hasidic masses. So great was the appeal of these ethical

folk tales that Baron te lls us that not only adherents of the movement

but Ukrainian peasants told stories about the mysterious personality of

Rabbi Is ra e l.9

Buber himself, in his introductory remarks to Tales of the Hasidim,

admits his s e le c tiv ity , but writes that he did not consider i t "permis­

sible or desirable to expand the tales or to render them more colorful

and diverse." He also admits that the legendary accounts are "not

authentic in the sense that a chronicle is authentic. They go back to

fervent human beings who set down their recollections of what they saw or thought they had seen, in th eir fe rv o r...." ^ 0 In another book,

Buber insists:

It is foolish to protest that the legend does not convey to us the reality of Hasidic life. Naturally, the legend is no chronicle, but it is truer than the chronicle for those who know how to read i t . One cannot reconstruct from it, certainly, the factual course of events. But despite its corruption, one can perceive in it the life- element in which the events were consummated, the element that received them and with naive enthusiasm told them and told them again until they became legend.11

What we are dealing with in Buber, then, is not so much history as literary and folk tradition, not so much fact as poetry. What is

important is that a comparison of Buber's re-created tales and the firs t tales published by the Baal Shem's disciples*2 shows the same emphasis on the omnipresence of God, the importance of inner salvation, compassion, and hum ility, and the enthusiastic acceptance of the myster­ ious, dark side of lif e . There is , furthermore, no attempt on Buber's part to hide the superstitious element which we find in the e a rlie s t version of the tales. Thus I believe we can call Buber a legitimate source for Hasidic folk belief, belief which permeated the culture of the Polish and Ukrainian shtetl until its destruction in the twentieth century.13

As Gershom Scholem points out, one of the distinctive features of

Hasidism is that while nothing i t taught was completely new, everything in it seems transormed or freshly inspired. Jewish mysticism, or that

"type of religion which puts the emphasis on immediate awareness of relation with God, on direct and ultimate consciousness of the Divine

Presence," may be said to be as old as the Psalmist who says, "0 taste and see that the Lord is good." I t is not that the mystic denies revelation as a fact of history, but that he considers the religious experience of his own heart equally important for religious truth. As a movement, mysticism is an attempt "to bring back the old unity . . . where the world of mythology and that of revelation meet in the soul of man." Therefore, mysticism usually signifies a revival of mythical thought. Actually, the f ir s t phase in the development of Jewish rrysticism before its crystallizatio n in the medieval Kabbalah may be said to date from the first century B.C.^

Dubnow, the historian, sees Hasidism as a part of a recurrent phenomenon in Jewish religious l i f e , and he points to what he calls a struggle between two opposing principles in Judaism, "the formalism of dogmatic ritu a l and the direct religious sentiment." In Dubnow's words: Such was the nature of the struggle between Pharisanism and Essenism in ancient times, between Talmudism and the Cabala in the Middle Ages, and between rabbinism and mystic-Messianic movements from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.15

The struggle between dogmatism and mysticism is , of course, a recurrent one in other faiths as w ell, and thus Gershom Scholem draws parallels between the Jewish mystics and "their sp iritu al kin" among Christians and Moslems and Martin Buber notes the sim ila ritie s between Hasidism and Chinese Zen Buddhism.15

Kabbalah (or Cabala), though generally conceived as an esoteric system of interpretation of the scriptures, is not the name of a certain dogma or system but rather the general term applied to the Jewish mystical movement which has existed from Talmudic times (5th century

C.E.) to the present day. Interestingly enough, Kabbalah means lite r­ ally tradition and is an excellent example of the paradoxical nature of

Jewish mysticism. That is , a highly personal form of knowledge is thought of as traditional wisdom.^Thus the Besht and his disciples, revolutionary as their teachings seemed in the mid-eighteenth century, may actually be seen as re-creators of traditional wisdom. The importance of the Hasidim is that they turned to the masses with th eir mystical knowledge and that Hasidism as a living phenomenon is s t i l l with us.

Various reasons have been suggested for the success of the

Hasidic movement among East European Jews of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Most scholars would agree that in some sense Hasidism was a response to the misery of the Polish and Ukrainian

Jews a fte r Ukrainian cossacks under Chmielnicki laid waste thousand of 10

Jewish villages and the economic basis of Jewish lif e in East Europe

was destroyed in the mid-seventeenth century. The Jewish masses were

in a state of insecurity and despair, ready for a teaching that

emphasized hope and salvation. On the other hand, the experience

with two false messiahs, Sabbatai Zevi, a Turkish Jew who presented

himself as a savior for corporate Jewry only to convert to Islam in

the seventeenth century, and Jacob Frank a Polish Jew who followed

in Sabbatai Zevi's footsteps, only to convert to Roman Catholicism in

the mid-eighteenth century, v/as enough to make East European Jewry

wary. Gershom Scholem^8 believes that i t was the Hasidic emphasis on

two aspects of redemption, not only the phenomenon concerning the whole

body of Israel but more, the individualistic salvation of the soul, which had a special appeal to a people disillusioned with two false messiahs.

In Dubnow's opinion the masses of poor, uneducated Jews of East

Europe in the eighteenth century were hostile toward th eir communal

leaders, who were usually the wealthy and Talmudic scholars. "The

everyday Jew," according to Dubnow, saw himself "alienated" from the

"upper levels of Jewish society, whose criterion for religiousness and dignity was the degree of scholarship, not the depth and genuineness of the religious feeling."^ The revolt against the authority of rabbinism was stronger in Podolia, G alicia, and the Ukraine than in

Lithuania and White Russia.

Dresner gives this point a s lig h tly d iffe re n t emphasis, noting that the "spiritual decline of the inner life of eighteenth-century

East European Jewry . . . was due mainly to the shortcomings of the rabbis and scholars of the time." He adds:

. . . the general attitude of scholars toward the masses, most of whom were without learning (and also without means) was one of contempt for and seclusion from them and contributed' to the disastrous condition of perud - that fearful break which divides man within himself, from his fellow man and from his God.20

Since Dresner sees the crisis of the age as brought about by "corrupted leadership," he also sees its solution as lying in the same area, that is, in the Hasidic zaddik (literally "righteous," the name applied to a Hasidic leader or rabbi). To Dresner, the zaddik, in his humility and concern for the common people, contrasted sharply with the conven­ tional rabbi, who in his pride of scholarship looked only inwardly to his own needs and desires.2^

Ettinger modifies this view somewhat by insisting that the success of Hasidism sprang from the fact that i t brought mysticism to the intelligentsia of the time in a form they could accept and that it found an echo among the masses because i t idealized the mystic who lives among the people.22

Whatever interpretation one accepts for the growth of a mystical movement amongst the masses of East European Jewry--whether i t was a response to economic insecurity and despair, a reaction to two false messiahs, or a rebellion against rabbinical authority and scholarship-- the time was ripe in the mid-eighteenth century for the acceptance of charismatic holy men who were willing to share their teachings with the people.23

The Hasidic emphasis on a personal, inner salvation may be seen, as has been noted, as a reply to the seventeenth and eighteenth cen­ tu ries' crises in messianism. But the Jewish mystic, no less than the 12

other religious mystics, has always insisted that the way to God is to

journey to the depths of the s e lf. Thus Hasidic teachers refer to past

sages when they speak of inner salvation. Rabbi Bunam teaches, "Our

sages say: 'Seek peace inyour own place.' You cannot find peace

anywhere save in your own s e lf. . . . When a man has made peace within

himself, he w ill be able to make peace in the whole world." And the

angels say to Rabbi Moshe in a dream, "Listen child you seem to think

that the Tannaim [sages] are in paradise, but that's not so: paradise

is in the Tannaim." With this precedent Rabbi Kotzk asks, "Where is

the dwelling of God?" and answers his own question, "God dwells wher­

ever man lets him in." Finally, the Rabbi of Lelov insists, "We can be redeemed to the extent to which we recognize ourselves."^

The quest for God means firs t the recognition of the self, a journey into the depths of one's own being which involves the awareness of death, repentance, and reb irth . People ask Rabbi Pinhas, "Why should the Messiah be born on the anniversary of the destruction of

the Temple - as the tradition has it?" And the rabbi replies:

The kernel which is sown in earth, must fa ll to pieces so that the ear of grain may sprout from it. Strength cannot be resurrected until it has dwelt in deep secrecy. To doff a shape, to don a shape - that is done in the instant of pure nothingness. In the husk of forgetting, the power of memory grows. That is the power of redemption. On the day of destruction, power lies at the bottom of the depths, and grows. That is why, on this day, we s it on the ground. That is why, on this day, we visit graves. That is why, on this day, the Messiah is born.25

That man must die before he can liv e is made e x p lic it by Rabbi

Yitzhak, who comments on the psalm, "I shall not die but liv e ," by explaining, "In order really to live, a man must give himself to death.

But when he has done so, he discovers that he is not to die - but to 13 liv e ." The Rabbi of Lublin adds to this: "Whan a man confesses and

repents, when his heart accepts understanding and is converted to i t ,

he becomes lik e a new-born child, and his turning to God is his

mother."26 If this Hasidic emphasis on repentance, death, and re­

birth reminds us of the teachings of Jesus, we must remember that

Christianity was o rig inally a Jewish movement and that much that Jesus

taught was part of Jewish tradition.

The Hasidic zaddik, in the early days of the movement, was often

a member of what Katz2^ calls the "sub-intelligentsia" (e .g ., preach­

ers, exhorters, miracle workers), and the Besht himself is not thought

to have held a religious position higher than a melamed. Neverthe­

less, most zaddikim were called Rabbi or Rebbe and were noted for the

intensity of their relationship with the Hasidic community. Unlike

the conventional rabbi, the early zaddik was distinguished not by his

knowledge but by his li f e . Because of his holiness, he had achieved closeness to God, and his love and compassion for the common people made him eager to show them the way. But as Jacob Yitzhak, la te r the rabbi of Lublin, learns, "the way cannot be learned out of a book, or from hearsay, but can only be communicated from person to person."

Thus, for the zaddik, "all his actions are a Torah," and that is why

Rabbi Leib can say, "I did not go to the maggid in order to hear Torah from him, but to see how he unlaces his f e lt shoes and laces them up again."28

Humility is one of the zaddik's central virtues, a virtue which is not new to Jewish thought, of course; over and over again, Moses is held up as an example because he was "meek above a ll men." The Besht 14 himself is known for his humility and his fear of pride. When the wealthy men of a community welcome him in th eir fin e s t clothes, he begins to play with the horses and behaves lik e a commoner or even a wagon driver who has very low status in the community. At another time the Besht takes the role of badhan, or one of the jesters, at a wedding of two orphans.29 The zaddik may be known as "God's fool" lik e

Rabbi Zusya, or like Rabbi Yehial Mikhal, before he was recognized, as

"the crazy man." An example of Rabbi Mikhal's craziness: at one time he took his book of Kabbalah to the store as a pledge in order to feed a stranger bread and herring.3®

This emphasis on humility that sees wisdom in foolishness and greatness in the lowest did not negate man's essential dignity. As

Rabbi Bunam te lls his disciples, "Everyone must have two pockets, so that he can reach into the one or the other, according to his needs. In the rig h t pocket are to be the words: 'For my sake was the world cre­ ated,1 and in his left: 'I am earth and ashes."l3^

The simple, unlearned person who achieves the highest sp iritual perfection in Hasidic legend is of course reflecting a much older Jew­ ish tradition. The Midrash (a body of interpretative literature, begun ca. 200 C.E.) tells the story of the common butcher who neglects Torah study, yet because of his pious deeds is esteemed as highly in paradise as great rabbis and scholars. In the Agada (the story-telling portion of the Talmud, ca. 4th-5th centuries, C .E .), Rabbi Eleazer is praised for the answers he gives to the questions, "What is the most desirable thing to strive for in life?" and "What is the thing that man should avoid most in life?" The best thing is a "a good heart" and the 15 thing to avoid most is "a bad h e a r t . " 32

The Hasidic emphasis on what may be called the heart over the head is dramatically portrayed in the story of Rabbi Aaron who is asked by a father to chastize a son for not persevering in his studies. When the father is gone, Rabbi Aaron lie s down with the boy and silently holds him to his heart. When the father returns, Rabbi

Aaron te lls him, "I have given him a good talking to. From now on, he will not be lacking in perseverance." Later, Rabbi Aaron tells his disciples, "That was when I learned how to convert men."33

The love that comes from man's heart is a measure of his relation­ ship to God, and to the Hasid, this "love for God can be determined by the love he bears his fellow man." Thus Rabbi Shmelke teaches: "Love your neighbor lik e something which you yourself are. For a ll souls are one. Each is a spark from the original soul, and this soul is wholly inherent in all souls, just as your soul is in all the members of your body." Man must even love the "evil doer and hater" more than the ordinary man, says Rabbi Pinhas, citing the Besht, "in order to compensate for the lack of power of love he fffmseTTTias caused in his place in the world."3^

The Hasidic acceptance of the stranger (or gentile) is also a return to an older teaching and tradition. "Love ye therefore the stranger," says the book of Deuteronomy (10:19), "for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." The Midrash te lls the story of Abraham who is chastized by God for refusing hospitality to a heathen. Only when

Abraham asks the heathen's forgiveness is he blessed of God. Medieval

Yiddish legend te lls the ta le of a good Christian neighbor who pro­ tects a Jew's property under an edict ofexpulsion.3^ 16

Nevertheless, the eighteenth century East European Jew had experi­

enced much persecution at the hands of his gentile neighbors and had

become wary. Even a fte r the devastating Cossak massacres of Jews under

Chmielnicki in the seventeenth century, the Jews were s t i l l victims of unfavorable edicts restricting their legal rights, their residence, and choice of occupation. False accusations of ritu a l murder were not uncommon. Yet somehow, as he appears in legend, the Besht has the

inner vision to see worth in the individual Gentile and the possibil­

ity for good relationships. He s t i l l observes the lin e between Jew and Gentile in religious areas, but his relations with his peasant neighbors are warm and friendly. Indeed, when Elijah firs t reveals himself to the Besht, the prophet sends a gentile to help him with his broken wagon. The peasant's words to the Besht are, "Israel tie your wagon to mine and I ' l l pull you to your home." Another gentile buys the dead horse and says to the Besht, "See that you use this money to dress yourself and your wife for the coming holiday."36 in a later tale the Besht teaches that "one should refrain from robbing the gentiles or else one is under judgment in heaven." In a dream the

Besht releases a gentile as well as a Jew from a sentence in Gehenna

(hell). And finally, when the'Besht treats a gentile kindly, the gentile blesses "the God of the Jews who has such a holy people."^

Those who revere the Besht follow th eir teacher's example. The

Rabbi of Koznitz is known for his prayer, "Lord of the world, I beg of you to redeem Is ra e l. And i f you do not want to do that, then redeem the goyim."^ Rabbi Leib lets a drunken peasant have a bed in his home for the night, for he explains, " I f God gets along with him, 17 can I reject him?" In another tale, Rabbi Leib says, "How to love men is something I learned from a peasant." The Yehudi (Jew) teaches that the stork, called "the devout or loving one" in the Talmud "because he gives so much love to his mate and young," is nevertheless classed with the unclean birds in the Scriptures "because he gives love only to his own."39 i n the most profound mystical sense, the Hasidim accept the gentile because of the b e lief in the in terrelation of a ll men through the one soul of God. As Rabbi Shmelke puts i t , "the original soul came out of the essence of God, and . . . every human soul is a part of God."40

The Hasidic attitude toward evil is well within the framework of the Jewish mystical trad itio n , for as Gershom Scholem has said, the existence of evil in the world may be called "the main touchstone" of the difference between philosophic and mystical Judaism. Generally speaking, "the philosophers of Judaism trea t the existence of evil as something meaningless in its e lf." To the philosopher or adherent of rational Judaism, "a power of evil exists only in myth," but to most Kabbalists or Jewish mystics, "as true seal-bearers of the world of myth," evil is a pressing r e a lity .^

Dresner maintains that the Jewish mystic's attitude is "not to escape e v il, but to conquer it . " A man must not try to escape the evil thought or the evil man, "but to take issue with them both, and turn them to the Lord." As the Zohar (principal work of Kabbalah, ca.

13th century C.E.) explains it :

In fact there can be no true worship except i t issue from darkness, and no true good except i t proceed from e v il. And when a man enters upon an evil way and then forsakes 18

i t , the Holy One is exalted in glory. Hence the perfection of all things is attained when good and evil are first of a ll commingled, and then become a ll good, for there is no good so perfect as that which issues out of evil. The divine glory is extolled thereby, and therein lies the essence of perfect worship.42

The Hasidim continued to emphasize the re a lity of evil and the need for man to accept evil as part of himself. Concerning the reality of e v il, Rabbi Moshe Leib says, "There is no quality and there is no power of man that was created to no purpose. And even base and corrupt qualities can be uplifted to serve God. When, for example, haughty self-assurance is uplifted i t changes into a high assurance in the ways of God."43 The rabbi of Berditchev uses the Talmudic teaching, "Those who are perfect in righteousness cannot stand in that place where those stand who turn to God," as a source to maintain that the un­ righteous man who turns to God is superior to "the stainless one who believes he has done perfect service, and persists in it." ^ Evil as a necessary component of good is emphasized by the maggid of Zlotchov, for evil is necessary for choice: "The fact that evil confronts good gives man the possibility of victory: of rejecting evil and choosing good, and only then does the good exist tru ly and p e rfectly."45

The necessity of identifying with evil is especially important to the Hasidic zaddik. As a mystic who dedicates himself as an inter­ mediary between man and God, the zaddik must often descend to the level of the unrighteous man in order to help raise him. "Ascent re­ quires descent" is the basic b e lie f, and the "descent of the rig h t­ eous" is one of the celebrated principles inHasidism.^ As Rabbi

Zusya, "God's fool" says, "Whoever is bold in his holiness may descend 19

to hell in order to raise what is base."47 The zaddik is likened to one "who would raise up his fellow from slime and rubbish--he too must go down near the slime and rubbish to raise him u p ."48 of course, one who lends a helping hand is in danger, for "the man who seeks to save his drowning friend may himself be pulled i n . "49 Yet, the zaddik is w illin g to make the descent, to identify himself with e v il, not only because his love and compassion for others endows him with a sense of responsibility, but also because he accepts evil and g u ilt as part of himself; "what happens to one man, in a sense reveals what happens to a ll men."50 In other words, a ll men share in each other's g u ilt and are responsible one for the other.

The Hasidic teaching on the joyful acceptance of the world as i t is receives special emphasis from Martin Buber, who writes in his introduction to the tales: "The hasidic movement did not weaken the hope in a Messiah, but i t kindled both its simple and in tellectu al followers to joy in the world as it is, in life as it is, in every hour of life in this world, as that hour is." Thus Rabbi Shmelke teaches,

"For the soul shall not abhor the body," and Rabbi Shelomo in sists,

"But because he has not fe lt the blaze of ecstasy in this world, he does not feel the ecstasy of paradise."5^ Nevertheless, Hasidism also teaches the necessity of transcending this world, of "breaking out of nature towards the sp irit."52 We are not to despise this world, we are indeed to enjoy it, but we must realize that "if the soul shall not abhor the body," neither shall the body abhor the soul. That is why Rabbi Barukh can say: "What a good and bright world this is i f we do not lose our hearts to it, but what a dark world if we do!"55 20

The Hasidic attitude toward the world then, is basically paradoxi­ cal; not unlike the older Jewish mystic, the Hasid strives to be at peace with the world, but he is also trying to transcend i t . As

Gershom Scholem points out, there is "profound ambiguity" in the Jewish mystics' outlook toward the world; this explains "the apparent self- contradiction inherent in a great many Kabbalist symbols and im ages."54 The tension between the physical and the sp iritual world is also reflected in many Hasidic tales where there is often a slim lin e between re a lity and fantasy and where the commonplace and the marvellous are often fused. As Rabbi Nachman explains it :

The world is like a revolving die, and everything turns over, and man changes to angel and angel to man, and the head to the foot and the foot to the head. So all things turn over and revolve and are changed, this into that and that into this, what is above to what is beneath and what is beneath to what is above. For in the root all is one, and in the transformation and re­ turn of things redemption is e n clo sed .55

The b e lie f that a tale could actually aid in the redemptive pro­ cess gave story te llin g a special sanction among the Hasidim. Of course sto ry-tellin g had been part of Jewish tradition before Hasidism.

Both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud contain two elements; one is called Halacha, the ju dicial interpretation of the law; the other is called Agada, the ethical and poetical interpretation of Scripture by means of story. As Ausubel points out, the sages of old described the complementary relationship between these two methods as follows:

"Bread— that is Halacha ; wine— that is Agada. By bread alone we cannot l i v e . "56

But Hasidism gave sto ry-te llin g a special emphasis. The Besht taught in tale and parable, and at one point even says that to tell stories in praise of the zaddikim is to be involved in "Ma'aseh

MerKavah," a form of mystical activity. This belief that tales could have a religious significance was "one of the factors which contrib­ uted to the development of the rich Hasidicfolklore."^ Gershom

Scholem sums up his critique on Hasidism by w riting:

When a ll is said and done i t is this myth which repre­ sents the greatest creative expression of Hasidism. In the place of the theoretical disquisition, or at least side by side with it, you get the Hasidic tale. Around the lives of the great Zaddikim, the bearers of that irra tio n al something which their mode of lif e expressed, legends were spun often in th eir own lifetim e. T riv ia l­ ity and profundity, traditional or borrowed ideas and true originality are indissolubly mixed in their over­ whelming wealth of tales which play an important part in the social l if e of the Hasidim.58

The abundance of Hasidic tales in existence by the nineteenth century may be said to have helped stimulate the Jewish lite ra ry imag­ ination. Howe and Greenberg write that "the unique contribution of

Hasidism to Yiddish lite ra tu re was not merely that i t lent prestige to the language or gave the Yiddish writers a reservoir of folk stories; it was rather that the stories and their meanings s till seemed fresh and new. . . ."59 The late nineteenth century, often called "the

Golden Age of modern Hebrew and Yiddish letters"60 was noted for Jewish writers lik e Sholem Aleichem and I . L. Peretz, who, although themselves not Hasidim, were deeply influenced by the Hasidic tradition. Peretz, in p articu lar, is noted for the way in which he refined the Jewish tradition "so that on its own, i t could enter the era of in tellectu al modernism which begins in the nineteenth century."6’ Sometimes Peretz re-tells Hasidic tales, sometimes he incorporates Hasidic values in a story of his own creating; always there is the distinctive mark of his 22 own style no matter what his use of tradition.

Actually Peretz's individualistic use of Hasidic tradition is very much in keeping with the Hasidim's paradoxical attitude toward tra d i­ tion. Not surprisingly, the attitude can best be explained by refer­ ring to a Hasidic ta le . Rabbi Noah is asked by some Hasidim, "Why do you not conduct yourself lik e your father, the Rabbi?" "I do conduct myself lik e him," retorts Rabbi Noah, "He did not im itate anybody and

I likewise do not imitate anybody."62 Thus the trad itio n of departing from tradition is established.

When a ll is said and done, the Jewish attitude toward trad itio n has always been a dynamic one. In practice, each generation always adds something of its own to the structure of tradition. This addi­ tion is partly the distinctive creative contribution of each generation and partly the result of each generation's reaction to its own time.63

Recognizing this truth Margaret Mead w rites, "With the traditional capacity of the Jews to preserve the past, while transmuting it into a breathing relationship to the present, much of the faith and hope which lived in the shtetl will inform the lives of the descendents of the shtetl in other lands."64 The w riting of Bernard Malamud, as I hope to demonstrate, is living testimony to the truth of Margaret

Mead's statement. The son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants, not them­ selves Hasidim but coming from a culture that had been deeply in flu ­ enced by the teachings of Hasidism, Malamud remains within the Hasidic trad itio n because consciously or unconsciously he shapes its basic beliefs and values to his own individual talent. 23

Footnotes for Chapter I

^Samuel A. Horodezky, Leaders of Hassidism, with a Foreword by Dr. M. Gaster, trans. Maria H. Magasanik (London: "Hasefer" Agency, 1928), preface.

2Simon Dubnow, History of the Jews: From Cromwell's Commonwealth to the Napoleonic Era9 trans. Moshe Spiegel, 4th d e fin itiv e rev. ed. (South Brunswick: Thomas Yoseloff, 1971), 4:395.

^Louis I. Newman, trans. and comp., The Hasidic Anthology: Tales and Teachings of the Hasidim (New York: Schocken, 1963), pp. x i, x ii .

^Salo W. Baron, The Russian Jew under Tsars and Soviets, Russian C ivilizatio n Series, gen. ed. Michael T. Florinsky (New York: Macmillan, 1964), p. 145.

^Ba'al Shem was a t i t l e given to one who had secret knowledge of the Tetragammaton or other "holy names" of God and who knew how to work miracles by the power of these names. The t i t l e was given in kabbalistic works and was used from the Middle Ages onward. There were large numbers of the ba'al shem in Germany and Poland a fte r the fifteenth century; some were important rabbis and talmudic scholars while others were devoted to the study of Kabbalah. In the seven­ teenth and eighteenth century an increasing number were not scholars, but seemed to have the power of healing the sick. See the Encyclo­ paedia Judaica, 1971 ed., s.v. "Ba'al Shem," by G[ershom] Sch[olemj.

6Dov Ber ben Samuel, Shivhei ha-Besht (Russia, in the former Polish province of Riessen, 1814). This book has been published in English under the title In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov: The Earliest Collection of Legends About the Founder of Hasidism, trans. and ed. Dan Ben-Amos and Jerome R. Mintz (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1970). Hereafter all references will be to the English edition.

^Buber's re te llin g of Hasidic legend began with The Tales of Rabbi Nachman (1906) but this was not translated from the German into English until 1956 (Horizon Press). The more popular Tales of the Hasidim were published in English in 1947-1948 (New York: Schocken).

^Gershom G. Scholem, "Martin Buber's Hasidism: A Critique," The Jewish Expression, ed. Judah Goldin (New York: Bantam, 1970), pp. 412, 414.

%aron, p. 145.

^M artin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters, trans. Olga Marx (New York: Schocken, 1947), pp. v i i i , i . Hereafter the t i t l e w ill be shortened to Early Masters. 24

^M artin Buber, The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, trans. and ed. Maurice Friedman (New York: Horizon, I960), pp. 27-28.

12dov Ber ben Samuel, In Praise of the Baal-Shem Tov.

13Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog, L ife Is with People: The Culture of the Shtetl (New York: Schocken, 1962), pp. 185-188. It is interesting to note here, as the authors point out, that in many shtetls the line between Hasidism and Misnagdim (opponents of Hasidim) became blurred and the two currents were integrated with shtetl society. Nevertheless, the blurring of the boundary lines does not negate the contrast between the basic characteristics of Hasidism and Rabbinical Jewry, but simply shows that both were often absorbed by the shtetl.

l^Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1961), pp. 340, 4, 8, 40.

^Quoted by Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg, eds., A Treasury of Yiddish Stories (New York: Schocken, 1973), p. 15.

^Scholem, Major Trends, p. 14 and Buber, The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, pp. 223-239.

^ Ib id ., pp. 18, 20.

18Ib id ., pp. 327-330.

19oubnow, p. 395.

^Samuel H. Dresner, The Zaddik: The Doctrine of the Zaddik According to the Writings of Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polnoy (New York: Schocken, 1974), p. 240.

211 bid., p. 241.

22s. Ettinger, "The Hassidic Movement-Reality and Ideals," Jewish Society Through the Ages, ed. H. H. Ben-Sasson and S. Ettinger (New York: Schocken, 1971), p. 255.

2 3 it is interesting to note here a not dissim ilar movement spreading amongst the "in telligentsia" i f not the masses of western Europe. What we call the Romantic movement in West European lite r a ­ ture is also an emphasis on inner vision, the emotion over the in­ te lle c t, the simple fo lk , the mysterious, irra tio n a l side of l i f e , as well as a return to myth. The poet, lik e the zaddik, may be seen as an intermediary between man and ultimate reality. Finally, there are poets lik e Wordsworth who, because of his experience with a false messiah (Napoleon), turns inward to the saving power of the imagination (see The Prelude, bks. XI-XIV). 25

24Martin Buber, "World-Peace and Soul Peace," "Paradise," "God's Dwelling," "Concerning Joseph's Brothers," in Tales of the Hasidim: The Later Masters, trans. Olga Marx (New York: Schocken, 1948), pp. 264, 190, 277, 187. Hereafter the t i t l e w ill be shortened to Later Masters.

25Buber, "On the Day of Destruction," in Early Masters, p. 123.

26Buber, "Dying and Living," in Later Masters, p. 291, and "The Second Mother," in Early Masters, p. 314.

37Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages (New York: Schocken, 1971), p. 241.

28Buber, "The Impure F ire ," "To Expound Torah and to Be Torah," "To Say Torah and to Be Torah," in Early Masters, pp. 256, 169, 107.

29dov Ber ben Samuel, tales 88 and 123.

^Buber, "The Bold-faced and the Shame-faced," "The Baal Shem's Messenger," in Early Masters, pp. 242, 140.

3lBuber, "Two Pockets," in Later Masters, pp. 249-250.

32Nathan Ausubel, ed., A Treasury of Jewish Folklore: Stories, Traditions, Legends, Humor, Wisdom and Folk Songs of the Jewish People (New York: Crown, 1948), pp. 504, 45.

33Buber, "Conversion," in Early Masters, p. 200.

34Buber, "Two Generals," "The Commandment to Love," "More Love," in Early Masters, pp. 227, 190, 129-130.

35Ausubel, pp. 456, 586-7.

36 dov Ber ben Samuel, tale 29.

37Ib id ., tales 90, 166, 236.

33Buber, "A Prayer," in Early Masters, p. 289.

3^Buber, "Imitatio Dei," "The Stork," in Later Masters, pp. 85-86, 232.

^Buber, "The Commandment to Love," in Early Masters, p. 190.

41Scholem, Major Trends, pp. 35-36.

42Dresner, pp. 181, 291, note 20.

43Buber, "When It Is Good to Deny the Existence of God," in Later Masters, p. 89. 26

^Buber, "Eternal Beginnings," in Early Masters, pp. 218-219.

^Buber, "The Help Meet," in Early Masters, pp. 218-219.

^Dresner, p. 178.

^Buber, "The Bold-faced and the Shame-faced," in Early Masters, p. 242.

^ E ttin g e r, p. 258.

^Dresner, p. 215.

50Ib id ., p. 208.

51Buber, "Introduction," "Body and Soul," "Without Ecstasy," in Early Masters, pp. 3, 107, 277.

52 r. Schatz, "Contemplative Prayer in Hasidism," Studies in Mysticism and Religion (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1967), p. 209.

53Buber, "The Twofold World," in Early Masters, p. 97.

54scholem, Major Trends, p. 34.

^M artin Buber, The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, trans. Maurice Freedman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962), p. 35.

56Ausubel, p. x x iii .

57 dov Ber ben Samuel, tale 194, see also the note to the tale on p. 349.

^Scholem, Major Trends, p. 349.

S^Howe and Greenberg, eds., A Treasury of Yiddish Stories, p. 25.

60Baron, p. 182.

^Howe and Greenberg, eds., Voices from the Yiddish: Essays, Memoirs, Diaries (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), p. 7.

^Newman, p. 118.

63|

^Zborowski and Herzog, p. 12. CHAPTER I I

THE QUEST FOR SALVATION

The Natural

"We can be redeemed to the extent to which we recognize ourselves."! The Rabbi of Lelov

"The interest in ethicality of the Jews has always excited me. The struggle against self is a basic struggle."2 Bernard Malamud

Harriet Bird, destructive temptress of The Natural, marveling at

Roy Hobbs' feat of striking out the mighty Whammer Wambold, compares the sight to "David jawboning the Goliath - Whammer, or was it Sir

Percy lancing S ir Mademer, or the f ir s t son (with a rock in his paw) ranged against the prim itive papa?"^ That Roy is symbolic of at least the la tte r two figures has been noted by many c ritic s , most particularly Earl R. Wasserman,^ whose superb study of Malamud's use of Arthurian legend and Jungian psychology is by now a classic of its type. But that Roy may in any way be likened to a Jewish hero, a David no less, has not to my knowledge evoked serious commentary.

The Natural is, after a ll, the only Malamud novel in which there are no Jewish characters. And although the novel is more related to

Malamud's subsequent work than some c ritic s haves a id ,5 nevertheless the myth of salvation which Wasserman and others have noted is

27 28

certainly within the framework of a pagan-Christian mythology. Roy's

obscure origin and his clumsy ignorance as a youth, his a ffilia tio n

with the "Knights," the way a rival player sees him "in full armor,

mounted on a black charger, coming at him with a long lance as thick

as a young tree" (212), all identify Roy with Sir Percival and the

quest for the Holy G rail. In Wasserman‘3 words, "Roy at bat is every

quester who has had to shape his own character to fu lfill his goal,

whether i t be the grail or the league pennant."8

In addition, Roy's quest for himself may also be seen in the not

so obvious framework of Hasidism where the quest for God or the quest

for the Father are equated with self-knowledge and where "the surest

way to God" is to journey into "the depths of the s e l f . "7 Roy, no less

than King David, must learn humility and come to terms with the lim i­

tations of his m ortality, the re a lity of e v il, and the te rrib le respon­

s ib ilitie s of freedom and fatherhood. The analogy with King David

need not be pushed too fa r, however; the point is that Roy fin a lly

becomes a hero and achieves salvation in an acutely Hasidic sense of

the term: he confesses, repents, and "his heart accepts understanding

and is converted to it." 8 No matter that Roy has lost the game at the

end; his choice of Ir is and his acceptance of suffering show that he

has found his soul.

When we f ir s t meet Roy Hobbs he is on a tra in and is peering at

his reflection in a window. As the reflection dissolves he feels "a

splurge of freedom," but the feeling is premature; not u n til the end of

the novel w ill Roy accept the responsibilities that bring true freedom.

The hero who peers at his reflection becomes a fa m iliar one in 29

Malamud's fic tio n , for one must know one's se lf to be free. Likewise, the metaphor of the journey w ill be used again and again, and i t mat­ ters, l i t t l e whether the hero, lik e Roy, is going from West to East or vice-versa (as for example Levin in A New L ife ), for the journey is fin a lly an inward one.

The young Roy is both a winsome and comical figure and in many ways similar to the schlemiel-schlimazel character that Malamud will develop la te r on. The schlemiel, of course, is that bungling clown of Jewish folklore that is not without his pathos. The schlimazel, his f ir s t cousin, "simply has no luck" and is often the butt of the schlemiel's ineptitude. The distinction between the two has been put succintly: "a schlemihl is a man who s p ills a bowl of hot soup on a schlimazl."9 Humorously enough, both types are combined in Roy Hobbs

(King of Bunglers) who, early in the novel, "a ll thumbs and butter fingers," sp ills water on himself as he contemplates H arriet Bird (9 ).

In addition to being a bungling clown, the schlemiel of Yiddish fo lk trad itio n is often an orphan, a lonely wanderer, and a holy fool.

Roy too is an orphan; in fact he had f i r s t played ball on an orphan asylum team (83). He is a wanderer, and even when he arrives at a destination

he was s t ill in motion. He was traveling (on the train that never stopped). His s e lf, his mind, raced on and he f e lt he hadn't stopped going where he was going be­ cause he hadn't yet arrived. Where hadn't he arrived? Here. But now i t was time to calm down, ease up on the old scooter, sit s till and be quiet, though the inside of him was s t ill streaming through towns and c itie s , across forests and fie ld s , over long years. (39)

He is also a loner: "Roy sat around, and though it said on his chest he was one of the team, he sat among them alone. . . . He traveled in 30

th eir company and dressed where they did but he joined them in nothing,

except maybe batting practice. . . (65).

Roy has even acted out lite r a lly the role of clown, recognizable

in a picture which the journalist in the novel, Max Mercy, digs out

from the past as "the snubnose Bobo, who despite the painted laugh on

his pan, seemed sadeyed and unhappy" (154). But Roy does not have the

holiness of the schlemiel, not until the end, when his choice and

knowledge of self place him once again in the position of fool and

outcast.

Pride is Roy's major shortcoming, of course, the defect in char­

acter which goes before his fa ll. After he defeats the "Goliath-

Whammer" Roy boasts to H arriet Bird: "You have to have the right stu ff

to play good ball and I have it. I bet some day I'll break every

record in the book fo r throwing and h ittin g ." Soon a fte r, he answers

her question, "What w ill you hope to accomplish Roy?" with the auda­

cious, "Sometimes when I walk down the street I bet people w ill say,

there goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was in the game" (26).

But Roy's pride is more complex than simply wanting to excel in

baseball; it involves a denial of his mortality; more specifically,

the limitations of time, suffering, and death. He is ashamed of his

past, takes pains to conceal i t from Max Mercy, the probing jo u rn alist,

and yet wishes "he could have lived longer in his boyhood . . . an old

thought with him" (105). Roy's preoccupation with his boyhood, no­ where seen more dramatically than when he conjures up the illu sio n of himself as a boy with dog, hit by the wild-driving Memo Paris, shows his ambivalence about accepting pain and maturity. Roy both envisions 31 the boy dead and yet insists on driving back, at the risk of danger, in the hope that the boy might be saved.

He denies the ravages of time to Red Blow, the player who trie s to warn him of the "short life in baseball," by asserting: "To hell with my old age. I w ill be in this game a long time" (55). However, no­ where in the novel is Roy's fear of suffering and death made more explicit than in the long conversation with Iris Lemon at Lake Michi­ gan. He has been explaining to Iris the importance of being "the best in the game" because "that way, i f you leave a ll those records that nobody else can beat - th e y 'll always remember you. You sorta never die" (142).

The shame of Roy's li f e , as he sees i t , is that "his fa te , some­ how, had always been the same (on the train going nowhere) - defeat in sight of his goal." His suffering, he feels, has been undeserved, and when Iris tries to explain what she has learned from suffering, he chooses not to understand:

"What beats me," he said with a trembling voice, "is why did i t always have to happen to me. What did I do to deserve it?" "Being stopped before you started?" He nodded. "Perhaps i t was because you were a good person?" "How's that?" "Experience makes good people better." She was staring at the lake. "How does i t do that?" "Through their suffering." "I have had enough of that," he said in disgust. "We have two liv e s , Roy, the lif e we learn with and the life we live with after that. Suffering is what brings us toward happiness." "I had i t up to here." He ran a finger across his windpipe. "Had what?" "What I suffered - and I don't want any more." " It teaches us to want the rig h t things." 32

"All it taught me is to stay away from it. I am sick of all I have suffered." She shrank away a l i t t l e . (142-143)

Roy sounds almost like Frankie Alpine in The Assistant, who at

firs t is disgusted with the suffering of Morris Bober and the Jews and

wants to disassociate himself from them. And Ir is ' words are lik e

those of a zaddik who quotes the Baal Shem Tov: "Suffering makes for

proper insight and compassion."10

What Ir is does not say but what the novel certainly shows is that

suffering is also a necessary consequence of love. Love anyone and

you are bound to suffer. Therefore, Roy's rejection of Iris may be

seen as more than a negation of a mother-grandmother type; his rejec­

tion is a negation of his deepest need to both give and receive love,

a need which manifests itself in the very next chapter as an unwhole­

some appetite for food. The association of food with love is probably

universal, but i t is certainly accentuated in Malamud's East European

Jewish background. Indeed, one of the chief ways a shtetl mother

showed her love was "by constant and solicitous overfeeding." The

Jewish mother sees food as a symbol of her love "and how could there

be too much of that?"^ Memo's insistence that Roy eat is ironic in

this lig h t, for the food she offers cannot satisfy Roy, whose hunger

is more for the love the food symbolizes. The colossal bellyache which Roy suffers is not very different from the pain in the butt which comes to another Malamud hero, S. Levin of A New L ife , soon a fte r he tries to deny his love for Pauline G illy . When Roy chooses Memo over Iris, he is choosing the way of debilitating appetite (or lust) over a love which would sustain and nourish him. Furthermore, Roy 33

must learn that there is no way to avoid suffering; at best, we must

affirm i t , for in Ir is ' words, " i t teaches us to want the righ t

things" - insight and compassion. I f , by the end of the novel, Roy has

been taught "to want the rig h t things," i t is not only because of his

own suffering but also because he has had apt teachers.

Even before Roy experiences the selfless love of a mother figure

( Ir is ) , he has known the care and dedication of devoted fathers (Sam

and Pop). Roy has ambivalent feelings about his own father who

"dumped" him "in one orphan home after the other, wherever he happened

to be working - when he did. . ." but nevertheless, his father did

take him out of the home summers and teach him how to play ball (25).

Sam is the surrogate father, not unlike Roy's own, who likes to drink

and tosses Roy the b a ll. Even though Sam stands to benefit i f Roy makes i t big in baseball, his solicitous concern for Roy goes beyond

that of a scout for a player. He insists at the beginning of th eir

journey that Roy take the pullman bed while he sleeps in the coach and

presses his w allet on Roy at the end of the journey when he knows he

is dying. I f we remember that in Malamud, as in Hasidism, the long­

ing for the father is equated with the longing fo r the s e lf, "Sam's reappearance in one of Roy's dreams at the end of the novel makes great sense. Roy is recovering from his bellyache in the maternity hospital (where his masquerade as a father is an omen of what is to come) when he dreams of himself as lost in a storm. The dream is ambiguous, however, for i t turns out that i t is Sam who is lost and

Roy is searching for him. When Sam is found he te lls Roy, "Don't do

it," an obvious forewarning to resist the temptation to throw the game 34

which Memo w ill soon present to him. Roy is aware, at some level of

his consciousness, that Memo, who is close to Gus, the Bookie, would

act as his agent to entice Roy to throw the game. When Roy in itia lly

resists Memo, he is listening to that better part of himself which

identifies not only with Sam, the caring father, but with Pop Fisher

as w e ll.

Pop Fisher is , of course, the obvious and humorous manifestation

of the grail legend's Fisher King. His f ir s t words in the novel are

"I should a been a farmer. . . I lik e to stand out in the fie ld s , tend­

ing the vegetables, the corn, the winter wheat - greenest looking stu ff you ever saw." But Pop Fisher is instead standing in a wasteland of

a ballpark caused by the "blasted dry season. No rains at all. The

grass is worn scabby in the outfield and the in fie ld is cracking." And

his "heart feels as dry as d irt," for his Knights are in a slump (37).

To further the humor, the Fisher King's famous wound has been reduced

to athlete's foot on the hands. Nevertheless, Pop Fisher is more than a private literary joke between Malamud and readers acquainted with the myth of the Wasteland; he is also a solicitous father figure, not that d iffe re n t in his concern from Sam who comes before him or the many

Jewish fathers who come after him and assume his role in Malamud's

later fiction.

At f ir s t , Pop rejects Roy: "Who needs a fie ld e r old enough to be my son?"; but soon repents of his words and offers Roy a place on the

team (41). His affection for Roy grows to the point where he warns him

to stay away from Memo, his own niece, because even though Pop loves

her, "she is always dissatisfied and w ill snarl you up in her trouble 35 in a way that will weaken your strength if you don't watch out" (115).

Pop also gives Roy a personal check for two thousand dollars to make up for the difference in pay which Roy had been promised but to which he was not legally entitled. Roy responds affirmatively to Pop's affec­ tion, as he had to Sam's, but his final decision to give up his depend­ ence on the magic of his bat, Wonderboy is his feeling for Mike Barney, the fin al father figure of the book. Mike, the father of a dying boy, appeals to Roy to h it a homer in order to save the boy's lif e . Even more than the sight of Ir is , i t is the picture of Mike Barney "doing exercises of grief" which touches Roy's compassionate nature and en­ ables him to give up Wonderboy and offer to return to the game. "How could he explain to Barney that he had traded his kid's lif e away out of loyalty to a hunk of wood?" (133). Of course it is Roy's willing­ ness to sacrifice that prompts Pop to allow him to keep Wonderboy; thus the game, the boy, and Roy's sense of decency are saved.

I f caring fathers set Roy an example of compassion and responsi­ b ilit y , i t is the judging mother figure who teaches the hero to endure and choose wisely. Roy's natural mother died when he was only seven and he remembers her as a "whore" who spoiled his "old man's life " and

"didn't love anybody" (168, 170). The firs t woman in the novel that

Roy identifies with his mother is Harriet Bird, for whom he feels a

"curious tenderness. . . a little as if she might be his mother (That bird.). . ." (27). Harriet's unwillingness to let Roy touch her breast, symbol of maternal love, aligns her with Memo Paris who also has or feigns a damaged breast, and with other Malamud bird women

(e .g ., Avis Floss in A New L ife ) who are basically ungiving and 36

destructive influences in the hero's life. Yet interestingly enough,

Harriet is in some way identified with Iris Lemon, the beneficient

earth mother figure, for each woman wears a white rose pinned to her

dress. Harriet, in black dress, drops the white rose when Roy firs t

sees her (8), and Iris, in red dress, is distinguished by the white

rose when she f ir s t stands to show her confidence in him (133).

H arriet, Memo, and Ir is may be seen as d ifferen t aspects of the

terrible-beneficient mother figure, each a necessary part of the hero's

maturing process. Sometimes Malamud w ill combine these seemingly con­

flic tin g elements in one woman as with Helen in The Assistant.

Harriet shows no joy when, in the role of judge, she sees that

Roy has failed the test of manhood; his eyes are "sad" when Roy's

self-centered answer shows, in Wasserman's words, that he is "com­

pletely infantile."^ And when Harriet pulls the trigger that sends

the silver b u llet to fe ll the hero, the noises she makes are not only

of "triumph" but also of "despair" (34); no less than Memo Paris who

follows her, she suggests an ambivalence.

Like H arriet, Memo dresses mostly in black, and though she does

not outwardly remind Roy of his mother, her selfish and unloving nature is the impetus which makes Roy remember his mother's cruelty.

Once, during the las t game, Roy stands on base wondering why Memo hasn't visited him since he left the hospital and soon afterward he remembers a time when his mother drowned a black tom cat in the tub

(200-201).

Memo's self-centeredness is accentuated when she explains to Roy that she couldn’ t be an actress because "you're supposed to forget who 37 you are but I couldn't" (108). Her materialism is shown when she tells

Roy:

Maybe I am weak or spoiled, but I am the type who has to have somebody who can support her in a decent way. I'm sick of living like a slave. I got to have a house of my own, a maid to help me with the hard work, a decent car to shop with and a fur coat for winter time when it's cold. (182)

And of course Memo's basically unloving nature is shown, as already noted, both by the suggestiveness of the damaged breast and the way in which her offered food fails to satisfy.

Nevertheless, Memo, like Harriet Bird, is not only a terrible mother figure, but also as Edwin Eigner points out, a "loathly lady," one who tests the hero and "seems bent on luring him to his destruc­ tion" but whose actions are attempts to prepare him for "his man­ hood ." 13

If Memo is the terrible-mother, Morgan leFay figure of The

Natural, Ir is Lemon is of course the earth mother, the beneficient

Lady of the Lake. Ir is ' plunge into the water of Lake Michigan in an effort to save Roy's life is little more impressive to him than the way she has sacrified her privacy by standing in the crowded ballpark to show her confidence in him. Roy at f ir s t cannot understand why she has done this for him and when she explains, "Because I hate to see a hero f a i l . There are so few of them" (139), Roy thinks she is talking only of his function as baseball hero. "I mean as a man too," she explains and soon afterwards adds, "I hoped you might become yourself again" (140). Ir is sees the importance of giving a ll to the game of l if e while Roy sees only the importance of being the best in the game of baseball. With these words in inind, Ir is ' fin a l conversation with 38

Roy, when she te lls him he "must win," means fin a lly he must become

himself.

That H arriet and Memo and Ir is are a ll complementary may be seen

not only in the white flower which links the f ir s t and the la s t woman,

but in the dream Roy has in the maternity hospital where he sees that

" Ir is ' sad head topped Memo's dancing body, with Memo's vice versa

upon the shimmying rest of Ir is , a confused fusion that dizzied him"

(175).

Actually red-haired Memo who generally wears black and black­

haired Ir is who likes to wear red may be seen as more than the Morgan

le Fay (te rrib le mother) - Lady of the Lake (earth mother) figures that

other critics have noted. The female as destroyer and preserver, as

demon and godly presence, is an interesting aspect of Jewish mysticism.

In the Kabbalah the demonic is seen as the offspring of the feminine

sphere, and in Kabbalah symbolism woman represents the quality of

stern judgment. Nevertheless, as Gershom Scholem points ,out, this is

not a negation of womanhood because of the paradoxical Kabbalistic

conception of the Shekhinah, the feminine element in God.^ The

Shekhinah or Divine Presence of God is thought of as the queen or

mother of the world of sanctity, just as Lilith, the "harlot, the wicked or the black," is thought of as the queen or the mother of the

realm of e v i l . ^ Here we must keep in mind the Hasidic insistence on

the unity of a ll things, and especially on the acceptance of e v il, for

" if there were no e v il, there would be no good, for good is the counter­

part of evil." In addition, "the fact that evil confronts good gives man the possibility of victory: of rejecting evil and choosing good, 39

and only then does the good exist truly and perfectly."^ Harriet and

Memo, the seducing, demonic L ilith figures test Roy's fin a l choice of

Ir is , who suggests the Shekhinah or Divine Presence of God.

Pictured in one Hasidic tale as a long-suffering woman with bleed­

ing fe e t, the Shekhinah, attended by two "winged beings," speaks of the

primacy of love and man's responsibility fo r his fellow man. Admon­

ishing a young Jew for his fa ilu re to love she says, "One cannot love me and abandon the created being." Her fin a l message is: "Approach me and my redemption w ill approach."^ Like Iris Lemon who says, "I don't

think you can do anything for anyone without giving up something of your own," (140) the Shekhinah preaches a bittersweet message of love, sacrifice, and salvation.

I f Roy is unable to fu lly accept, until the end, the goodness of

Iris, he initially rejects the evil he recognizes in Judge Goodwill

Banner and Gus, the Supreme Bookie. The Judge and Gus are manipula­ tors of the laws of chance and nature, and Roy must learn that they are reflections of his need to deny the consequences of his own m ortality. The scene in the "Pot of Fire," an obvious parody of the hero's v is it to the Underworld, shows Roy with only a short-lived victory over the Bookie, fo r Roy matches his magician's tricks with the magic of Gus' "eye." Roy must go beyond appearance and recognize the evil within himself; he must learn to trust in love and endurance; in Iris ', words, that freedom comes as "more a reward of standing i t so long than any sudden magic" (192).

When Roy dreams of wrestling with a black, rat-eyed vulture and wakes to see the Judge in dark glasses standing at the foot of his bed, 40

he has really been dreaming of wrestling with himself. If he eventually

succumbs to the Judge's bribery o ffe r, i t is because he has not yet been

freed from slavery to self. His lust for Memo and his fear of losing

her make him a w illin g accomplice to the Judge's plans, and i t is more

than humorous coincidence that Roy starts parroting the Judge's use of

scripture after he succumbs to his temptation (191).

Roy's almost total selfishness is also seen in his in a b ility to

relate with any depth to any of his teammates. He cannot see his

affinity to Bump, the self-centered jokester whom he tries to replace

in Memo's affections as well as on the b a llfie ld . Malamud's use of

the double figure is seen nowhere more pointedly in this book than in

Roy and Bump.

Early in the story Memo mistakes Roy for Bump in bed; a fte r

Bump's death Roy takes his place on the team and becomes lik e his predecessor, one of the leading hitters in the league. The crowds make no attempt to separate Roy's identity from Bump's and call him by

the same name. Even the sportswriters in sist on comparing the two:

one paper even printed pictures showing the livin g and dead facing each other with bats held high, as white arrows pointed at various places in th eir anatomies to show how much alike th eir measurements and stances were. (79)

F in ally, Roy mistakes his own mirror image for Bump's - an

"ancient hoary face" that speaks of "his past, his youth, the fleeting years" (127). The doubling of Roy with Bump may certainly be seen as the displacement of one f e r t ilit y hero by another (as Herman Young- berry will displace Roy at the end), but it also shows, to put it in the framework of Hasidism, that "all souls are one" and that "what 41 happens to one man, in a sense, reveals what happens to a ll men."^

I f we interpret Malamud's use of the double in the Hasidic sense, then i t is Roy's oneness with Bump rather than his displacement of him that gains significance. Malamud returns to this concept of the double over and over again, perhaps nowhere more stunningly than in his la t­ est novel, The Tenants, the story of a Jew and a black man.

When Roy decides fin a lly to choose Ir is and win the game, he is actually choosing victory over that part of himself which puts him in bondage to Memo, or lust and greed. From the beginning, Roy has had d iffic u lty in accepting his freedom. When Iris asks him why he picks the type of woman who brings him defeat, he replies, "They picked me.

It's the breaks" (142). Roy's salvation is initiated when he feels

"suddenly anguished at what he had promised the Judge" and takes hold of his freedom of choice (204). That Roy chooses the way of responsi­ b ility, love, and suffering is what completes his salvation. Seen in this light, the fact that Roy has lost the game, even that he does not perceive that he has indeed learned from his past, cannot nullify the fact that he has chosen wisely. I cannot agree, then, with Sidney

Richman who says of The Natural that i t concludes "on a note of total loss. In this respect, it seems, as many critics have noted, as a 19 contrast to the more affirm ative conclusions of the la te r novels."

Roy's fate may indeed be that of a "wanderer and a fu g itive," but in the promise of two Hasidim, "The most effective penance is to become a wanderer and a fu g itive," and "He who is f ir s t a wanderer and fugitive becomes cheerful afterward."^ 42

Roy may have lost the world, but he has gained possession of him­ self. If we remember that Baal Shem Tov's teachings, that " it is more important to possess oneself than to possess; more important to be than a p p e a r ,"21 Roy has achieved victory in his fin al defeat.

Seen as either a realistic baseball hero or as an Arthurian knight in quest of the grail, Roy Hobbs ends in failure, but seen within the framework of Hasidism Roy Hobbs has become a true schlemiel or holy fool, an inept blunderer who is destined to suffer but whose suffering gains dignity because of his moral stance.

The obvious symbolism of The Natura1--basebal1 as a d is tilla tio n of American li f e , the grail legend and Jungian psychology to suggest the psychic journey—should not blind us to the subtle truth that Roy

Hobbs is not that different finally from the penitent, suffering beggar-type fools of either Hasidic legend or later Malamud story.

And if the "quest motif" is, as Mark Goldman points out, "a classic mode in serious or tragic literature from Oedipus to Heart of Darkness where the sp iritu al or physical journey begins in innocence and ends in experience or tragic selfk n o w le d g e ,"22 we must also remember the insistence of the Jewish mystic, from the firs t to the twentieth century, that the quest for God or virtue begins and ends with a journey into the depths of one's s e lf. As long as man liv es, i t is never too late to make the righ t choice, to know and accept responsi­ b ility fo r the s e lf. In the Hasidic sense, Roy Hobbs arrives home safely.

Malamud's attempt to ground the highly symbolic method of The

Natural in a wealth of realistic detail from baseball's history has 43 by now been well documented. As Wasserman points out, Roy Hobbs lik e

Eddie Waitkus in 1949 is shot by a young woman, apparently without motive, in her Chicago hotel room. Like Babe Ruth, Roy comes from an orphanage, eventually joins a New York team, and switches from pitcher to fielder and record-setting batter.

Like Ruth too, his homerun cheers a sick boy into recovery, and a monumental bellyache sends him to a hospital, as i t did Ruth in 1925, and endangers the b attle for the pennant. Like the White Sox of 1919 Roy and another player sell out to Gus, an Arnold Rothstein gambler, to throw the crucial game for the pennant, and the novel ends with a heart-broken boy pleading, as legend claims one did to Shoeless Joe Jackson of the traitorous White Sox, "Say i t a in 't true, R o y ."23

All these allusions to baseball history notwithstanding, The Natural succeeds best in the realm of fantasy. The world Malamud creates is not so much convincing as entertaining, a point many critics have made when comparing The Natural to Malamud's la te r work. There are times when the story seems contrived, the humor forced to f i t the mythological framework of the Wasteland, as when Roy heals Pop

Fisher of his athlete's foot of the hands or when Herman Youngberry shows a penchant for farming.

Unlike the best of Malamud's work to follow , The Natural does not maintain a tantalizing balance between reality and fantasy. Though the book is brilliantly written, the reader is always conscious of a

"breaking free from experienced r e a lity ."24 Not un til the implied

Hasidic framework of The Natural is combined with the commonplace lives of everyday Jews, people he has admitted w riting about because he knows them best,25 does Malamud achieve that marvelous fusion of earth- born fact and visionary dream that places him firmly within the

Hasidic tradition. 44

Footnotes for Chapter I I

^Martin Buber, "Concerning Joseph's Brothers," in Tales of the Hasidim: The Later Masters, trans. Olga Marx (New York: Schocken, 1948), p. 188. Hereafter the t it le w ill be shortened to Later Masters.

^Quoted by Curt Levant, "Bernard Maiamud: My Characters are God-Haunted," Hadassah, June 1974, p. 19.

^Bernard Malamud, The Natural (New York: Pocket Books, 1973), p. 25. All subsequent page references are to this edition and will be included in the text. The Natural was originally published in New York by Harcourt, Brace, 1952.

^Earl R. Wasserman, "The Natural: World Ceres," in Bernard Malamud and the C ritic s , ed. Leslie A. Field and Joyce W. Field (New York: New York University Press, 1970). Among others who refer to or discuss the presence of the Arthurian-Wasteland myth are Norman Podhoretz, "Achilles in Left Field," Commentary, March 1953, pp. 321- 326; Leslie A. Fiedler, "In the Interest of Surprise and Delight," Folio 20 (Surmier 1955): 17-20; Jonathan Baumbach, "The Economy of Love: The Novels of Bernard Malamud," Kenyon Review 25 (Summer 1963): 438-457; Charles A. Hoyt, "The New Romanticism," in Bernard Malamud and the C ritic s , pp. 171-184; Sidney Richman, Bernard Malamud (New York: Twayne, 1966) , pp. 28-49; and James M. Mel lard "Four Ver­ sions of Pastoral" in Bernard Malamud and the C ritic s , pp. 67-83.

^See for example Samuel I . Bellman, "Women, Children, and Idiots First: Transformation Psychology," in Bernard Malamud and the C ritic s , p. 24, and Granville Hicks, "Generation of the F iftie s : Malamud, Gold, and Updike," in The Creative Present, ed. Nona Balakian and Charles Simmons (New York: Doubleday, 1963), p. 219.

^Wasserman, p. 47.

^Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1961), p. 18.

^The Rabbi of Lublin, quoted by Martin Buber, "The Second Mother," in Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters, trans. Olga Marx (New York: Schocken, 1947), p. 314. Hereafter the t i t l e w ill be shortened to Early Masters.

yNathan Ausubel, ed., A Treasury of Jewish Folklore: Stories, Traditions, Legends, Humor, Wisdom and Folk Songs of the Jewish People (New York: Crown, 1948), p. 343.

lOLouis I* Newman, trans. and comp., The Hasidic Anthology: Tales and Teachings of the Hasidim (New York: Schocken, 1963), p. 485. 45

^Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog, Life Is With People: The Culture of the Shtetl (New York: Schocken, 1962), pp. 293, 354. 1 ? Wasserman, p. 51.

^Edwin M. Eigner, "The Loathly Ladies," in Bernard Malamud and the C ritic s , p. 89.

l^Scholem, pp. 37-38.

^Encyclopedia Judaica, 1971 ed.; s.v. "Lilith," by G[ershom] Sch[olem].

^The Rabbi of Zlotchov, quoted by Buber, "The Help Meet," in Early Masters, pp. 144-145. 17 'Martin Buber, For the Sake of Heaven: A Chronicle, trans. Ludwig Lewisohn (New York: Atheneum, 1969), pp. 228-230.

l^Rabbi Shmelke, quoted by Buber, "The Commandment to Love," in Early Masters, p. 190; Samuel H. Dresner, The Zaddik: The Doctrine of the Zaddik According to the Writings of Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polno.y (New York; Schocken, 1971), p. 208.

^Richman, p. 40.

20jhe Yehudi and the Rabbi of Kotsk, quoted by Buber, "A Wond- erer and Fugitive," in Later Masters, p. 199.

^E lie Wiesel, Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidie Masters, trans. Marion Wiesel (New York: Vantage Books, 1973), p. 145.

^Mark Goldman, "Comic Vision and the Theme of Id en tity," in Bernard Malamud and the C ritic s , p. 155.

23wasserman, p. 46.

24pellizzi's definition of fantasy, quoted by William Flint Thrall and Addison Hibbard, A Handbook to L iteratu re, rev. and enlarged by C. Hugh Holman (New York: Oddyssey Press, 1962), p. 198.

25joe Wershba, "Not Horror but 'Sadness,'" New York Post, 14 September 1958, p. M-2; Marcia Gealy interview with Bernard Malamud, New York City, 22 March 1974. CHAPTER I I I

THE FATHER AS TEACHER

The Assistant

"I did not go to the maggid in order to hear Torah from him, but to see how he unlaces his f e lt shoes and laces them up again."' Rabbi Leib

"The apprentice character interested me . . . the man, who, as much as he can in the modern world, is in the process of changing his fate, his life."2 Bernard Malamud

Like Roy Hobbs, Frank Alpine, the guilt-ridden apprentice charac­ ter- of Ih£_Assistant, is a man in search of his soul. But i f Malamud's f ir s t novel suggests the myth of salvation in an obvious pagan-

Christian context, his second one clearly presents the myth in Jewish terms. Malamud himself has said of The Assistant that i t reflects the drama which he sees in the history of the Jews: "F irs t, the Prophets'

'way of gentleness'; the sins of the People, Punishment, Exile and

R eturn.M ore specifically, the novel may be seen as reflecting the teachings of Hasidism, for both theme and form suggest a hidden life beneath the surface of reality and the possibility of transformation.

Malamud's use of the Hasidic tradition in The Assistant has been noted by more than one c r itic . Sidney Richman, fo r example, twice cites Malcolm Diamond's book on Martin Buber to lin k Malamud with

Buber in th eir presentation of the "hallowing of the everyday" and the

46 47

notion of "holy insecurity.P eter L. Hays notes the similarity be­

tween the names Morris Bober and Martin Buber and links them in th eir

disdain for dogmatism and their emphasis on love.^ To Sanford

Pinsker, Hasidism "is often an ironic comment in the works of Bernard

Malamud" so that while Morris Bober suggests a Hasidic saint, he is also "undercut" by Malamud's irony.® None of these c ritic s suggests

that Malamud has used Hasidism consciously (and I am with them here), yet as I intend to show, Malamud's use of the Hasidic tradition in

The Assistant is more extensive and more significant for an appreci­ ation of his work than has been demonstrated. The relation between

Morris Bober and Frank Alpine suggests in many ways the relation be­

tween a Hasidic zaddik and his pupil. Helen Bober in her complex role of .female destroyer and preserver suggests the L ilit h - Shekhinah figure of Hasidic legend. And Frank's experience with Morris and Helen leads him to an identification with evil, pain, and death that ultimately promises salvation. The novel is prim arily concerned with freedom or,

to put i t in Hasidic terms, the release of a man from bondage to him­ self. Finally I would suggest that Malamud's style in The Assistant, his use of Yiddish syntax, his fusion of reality and fantasy, even his use of the double figure, a ll take on added significance when seen within the framework of Hasidism. Form and content combine in The

Assistant to present an aesthetic whole.

Frank Alpine's relation to Morris Bober, the father figure as much in search of a son as Frank is of a father, is a central concern of the novel. Frank, no less than Roy Hobbs, is fleeing from his past and desirous of a new life , but Frank's dependency on Morris is certainly more intense than Roy's dependency on the caring father

figures of The Natural. Morris Bober has the attributes of a zaddik,

the Hasidic holy man and teacher who shows his pupil the way, not from

book or hearsay, but from the power of his love and example. Clearly a schlemiel-schlimazel type, Morris is a luckless man and blunderer; once a drunk had heaved a rock at his neighbor's window but i t had shattered his, and in the in itia l robbery incident he neglects to

lock his door; but Morris is also the holy fool of Hasidism. Humble and long-suffering, he displays a basic honesty and concern for people that places him among the legendary. The story the Rabbi te lls of Morris, how he "ran two blocks in the snow to give back to a poor

Italian lady a nickle that she forgot on the counter" reminds Walter

Shear of an old legend about Abe Lincoln, but there is also an old

Hasidic tale that tells of the nearly absurd lengths to which a holy man would go rather than cheat another person.^

I f Morris is loved by his immediate fam ily, he is also unappreci­ ated. Ida and Helen judge him harshly; to his daughter, Morris with

"a l i t t l e more courage" could have been "more than he was"; for Ida, lif e with him had been one long "worry" (278). Even the rabbi who eulogizes Morris does so for some of the wrong reasons, calling him a "good provider" and a man with "many friends who admired him"

(276), neither of which is true. Rather than simply undercutting

Morris' basic saintliness, Malamud is showing us a type of hidden zaddik or "just man" whose virtue is often concealed behind "a mask of boorishness, poverty, and ignorance" and who goes unappreciated

O by those who should know him best. Morris, who genuinely believes 49 in his unworthiness, is unknown even to himself, and may be compared to that special type of "lamed-vov" or "just man" who, when he dies,

"is so frozen that God must warm Him for one thousand years between

His fingers before his soul can open itself to Paradise."9

The dominant quality in Morris, in addition to his honesty and hum ility, is his compassion. Though on the edge of bankruptcy, he is continually giving credit to people he believes can never repay him.

In one of the few places in the novel where Morris and Frank discuss the meaning of Judaism, Morris says, "My father used to say to be a

Jew a ll you need is a good heart." Afterward, he adds, "The impor­ tant thing is the Torah. This is the Law - - a Jew must believe in the Law" (149). But Law to Morris means more or something other than going to the synagogue or not eating pork:

This is not important to me if I taste pig or if I don't. To some Jews this is important but not to me. Nobody w ill te ll me that I am not Jewish because I put in my mouth once in a while, when my tongue is dry, a piece of ham. But they will tell me, and I will believe them, if I forget the Law. This means to do what is right, to be honest, to be good. This means to other people. Our l i f e is hard enough. Why should we hurt somebody else? For everybody should be the best, not only fo r you or me. We a in 't animals. This is why we need the Law. This is what a Jew believes. (149-150)

What we see in Morris1 words is the Hasidic insistence of the heart over the in te lle c t, the s p irit over the le tte r of the law, the concern for others which embraces the stranger. Such sentiments are expressed by the rabbi who eulogizes Morris at his funeral:

Yes, Morris Bober was to me a true Jew because he lived in the Jewish experience, which he remembered, and with the Jewish heart. Maybe not to our formal trad itio n — for this I don't excuse him -- but he was true to the spirit of our life — to want for others that which he wants also for himself. (277) 50

Morris' concern for Frank — the Italyener," a stranger — is in contrast to the more limited view of his wife, Ida, or his neighbor,

Karp, who thinks it is acceptable for a son to steal from his father, but for a stranger it is "slimy" (182). But Morris insists on taking

Frank in , feeding his soul as well as his body, performing what to

Maimonides is the highest form of charity: namely, to assist not only the reduced "brother" but the "stranger" in such a way that he may earn an "honest livelihood.

If Frank is attracted at first to Morris' caring nature, he is repelled by Morris's penchant for suffering, a quality he equates with the Jews. "That's what they liv e fo r," Frank thinks of the Jews, "to suffer. And theone that has got the biggest pain in the gut . . . is the best Jew. No wonder they got on his nerves" (105). We are re­ minded here of Roy Hobbs' reluctance to accept the re a lity of suffer­ ing, and like Roy, Frank is fleeing from the recognition that suffer­ ing leads to insight and compassion.

Frank's insight into himself grows by slow and arduous process, an inward journey that comes to an end and yet begins in the store which Malamud describes early as looking "lik e a long dark tunnel"

(3). When Frank first appears to hold up the store, his face is covered and he is drawn to staring at his reflection in the cracked mirror that hangs behind him on the w all. Frank cannot see himself clearly in this fam iliar Malamud symbol any better than he can under­ stand himself. He te lls Morris la te r in one of th eir early conversa­ tions: "I don't understand myself. I don't really know what I'm 51 saying to you or why I am saying it" and yet he can also recognize, "I have i t in my heart to do more than I can remember . . . something is missing in me, in me or on account of me" (42).

Yet Frank Alpine, the young Ita lia n wanderer, has more in common with the aging Jewish storekeeper than he suspects. Though not at firs t a holy fool like Morris, Frank certainly has some of the schlemiel-schlimazel characteristics. An orphan whose mother died and whose father deserted him, Frank simply has no luck. Farmed out to a

"tough fam ily," he runs away and becomes a wanderer. Though he f ir s t equates his bad luck with outside forces, Frank then comes to realize that "his luck had so often curdled, because he had the wrong idea of what he re a lly was and had spent a ll his energy trying to do the wrong things" (110). It is at this point that he ironically con­ ceives the powerful idea that he was meant fo r crime, joins Ward

Minogue in the hold-up of Morris' store, and yet finds out quickly that he has made the worst mistake yet. When he comes to Morris for direction and expiation, he feels "sure of his mercy" (111), but his actual identification with Morris he does not as easily perceive.

Frank needs, as he te lls himself when he takes charge of the store a fte r Morris' collapse, "the experience" (63).

Morris, interestingly enough, quickly senses his identification with Frank, for when the young man tells him of his restlessness and ill luck Morris thinks, "I am sixty and he talks like me" (42). And we find out later that Morris, like Frank, has been a fugitive from the law. As a young man in Russia he had listened to his father's advice and escaped from the Czar's army to find refuge in America. 52

Morris too has quit school because he "didn't have the patience" (99) and regrets his loss of an education as poignantly as does Frank. But perhaps the most subtle sim ila rity between Frank and Morris is their fundamental sense of decency, the value they place on honesty. I f

Frank has been a lia r and th ie f, i f he continues to lie and steal even while he is working for Morris in the store, i t is always with some consciousness that he is denying an important part of his nature.

When he firs t lies to Helen, he realizes that lying has made their talk useless, for "when he lied he was somebody else lying to some­ body else. I t wasn't the two of them as they were. He should have kept that in his mind" (77). When he spies on Helen in her nakedness he realizes he is "forcing her out of reach, making her into a thing only of his seeing" (90); in other words, perceiving her as an object rather than as a person. And when he is compulsively stealing from

Morris, because he needs the money and he has never been taught to borrow, he is afraid to look in the mirror (102). Even when Frank is planning to kill himself in fear and disgust at his behavior with

Helen, he has "a terrifying insight: that all the while he was acting like he wasn't, he was really a man of stern morality" (212).

Though Morris' basically honest actions make him seem a clear anti­ thesis to his young assistant, we note his gradual tendency to lie and even steal as the relationship between the two men deepens. He lies to

Ida about Frank in order to keep peace (53) and he withholds money from the cash register to give Frank a raise without Ida's knowing it

(155). If Frank is literally wearing Morris' cut down pants and sleeping in his pajamas, Morris is demonstrating the basic Hasidic 53

teaching: "We are, all of us, the errant sons of a single Father, some doubtless a little more foolish than others, but all so full of fa il­ ings that the differences among us are no great matter, nor the l i t t l e more nor the little less, sons ard brothers are we."^ Equally signifi­ cant, Morris as a father-teacher figure is exemplifying the basic

Hasidic b e lie f in the descent of the zaddik. The idea that "ascent requires descent" contains the idea that the zaddik, to turn his people from sin, must "go down into the dark night of the soul, into the dreary earthly life of his people." The zaddik is compared to a broom: " i t sweeps clean, but in doing so i t cannot avoid coming in contact with dirt." If Morris forgives Frank his transgressions it is because he has noted these transgressions in himself, has recognized his kinship to Frank and thus, in Hasidic terms, "there is no longer an endless distance between them."^ That the distance between them is shortened is verbalized by Ward Minogue who id en tifies Frank with

Morris by calling Frank, "You stinking Kike" (175).

The interrelationship between the two men becomes so intense, in fa c t, that Morris unconsciously acts out Frank's suicide wish when he forgets to light the gas before going to sleep (214) and Frank con­ sciously acts to put out the f ir e which Morris regrets having started

(258). The most dramatic symbol of Frank's transformation into Morris, of course, is when Frank, losing his balance, falls into Morris' grave.

Ida has ju st finished shouting at her husband's c o ffin , "Morris, take care of Helen, you hear me, Morris?" (279). Scrambling out of the grave, that is precisely what Frank sets out to do. 54

Helen Bober, as her f ir s t name suggests, is both the incorporation of ideal love and beauty and the seductive bitch-goddess of classical

legend. In ways she is a combination of Harriet-Memo and Ir is in The

Natural and Malamud uses the fam iliar bird and flower imagery of his f ir s t book to accent her awesomeness and loveliness. To Frank, Helen early appears "in her way a lone bird" (75); la te r, overcome by the sight of her naked beauty, he sees "breasts like small birds in flight, her ass like a flower" (89). The white flower that Harriet and Ir is wear, Helen throws to Frank in his dream, but i t disappears in his hand as surely as the love she seductively offers him. Actu­ a lly , Helen is a more complex and realized figure than any of the women in Malamud's previous novel; yet she too may be seen as des­ troyer and preserver, demon and godly presence, L ilith and Skekhinah of Hasidic tale.

As the inspiration and challenger of Frank's dreams, Helen shares with Frank a desire for "a larger and better life," a return of her

"possibilities" (49). The poverty of her parents has kept her out of college, working as a secretary in a job which she despises. Her sexual experience with Nat Pearl has disillusioned Helen with her­ s e lf; she had given herself to him in the hope that i t would lead to love; instead she has a sense of waste and shame. Next time, she has promised herself, " i t would go the other way; f ir s t mutual love, then loving, harder maybe on the nerves, but easier in memory" (15).

Helen's hunger for love is as poignant, therefore, as Frank's who recognizes "something starved about her, a hunger in her eyes he couldn't forget because i t made him remember his own. . . ." (72). I f Helen is drawn to Frank, i t is because she sees him, lik e her­ self, "struggling to realize himself as a person" (161). She takes it for granted that Frank comes to the lib rary often because, lik e her, he enjoys being among books; actually, Frank haunts the lib rary be­ cause of his attraction to Helen. She becomes Frank's mentor in the matter of his education, bringing him her favorite books, Madam

Bovary, Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, a ll of which he reads and can identify with in some way. Frank is a novice at first, telling her he prefers "the truth" to a novel; a novel is "the truth," Helen must answer him (117). Yet as the relationship progresses, Frank, in a sense, outgrows his teacher and can say to her, rig h tfu lly , when she keeps rejecting his pleas fo r forgiveness: "Those books you once gave me to read, did you understand them yourself?" (282).

With a ll her longing for love, Helen denies i t too. Perhaps her ambivalence is best expressed in the feeling she once has of "wanting to be a virgin again and a t the same time a mother" (282). Though she is hungry for love, she initially refuses Frank's gifts-- "for gifts you pay" (134) she thinks--and she stalls her love for Frank "with arguments" (159). Though she can defend Frank to Ida as "a man, a human being lik e us" (176), she deafens him with her screams of "dog— uncircumcized dog!" (227) a fte r th eir sexual encounter in the park.

As a complex human being, Helen displays the ambivalence of a per­ son in fearful denial of her most powerful needs who projects her hatred of herself onto the man who would f u lf il those needs, a truth she realizes when she fin a lly sees her hatred of Frank as a means "to divert hatred from herself" (288). As a complex symbol, Helen suggests the demonic-godly, L ilit h -Shekhinah figure, the way of des­

truction and the way of salvation. Helen Bober, lik e her namesake

Helen of Troy in Jewish fo lklo re, may be in some respects but another

manifestation of Lilith, the queen of the realm of evil.13 A seduc­

tive goddess who tempts a man to evil and then destroys him, L ilith 's

evil is nevertheless a necessary component of good as we remember the

Hasidic insistence that "if there were no evil, there would be no

good, for good is the counterpart of e v il.1,1 ^ Her seduction and

rejection of Frank is the way in which he learns "discipline," a word

which strongly moves Frank when he f ir s t hears Helen use i t (190).

As the Shekhinah who promises love and salvation, Helen is the female

counterpart of Morris, for she shows Frank the way of redemption

through judgment, suffering, and ultimate compassion.

Frank's initial attraction to Helen is characterized by lust; he

spies on her naked in the bathroom and hopes to manipulate her into

his bed. He thinks she doesn't "look Jewish" and this is "all to the

good" to him, though he has e a rlie r lied to Morris that he has always

liked Jews (43). As he experiences Helen's beauty and identifies with her goals, the struggle "to realize himself as a person" (161),

Frank is gradually transformed into the man he would be. Frank's

transformation is a slow and painful one, his compulsion to steal and

lie not easy to overcome. Here we should remember the Hasidic

teaching of "constant renewal through immersion in nothingness, a doctrine of dying and arising," which suggests a continual struggle and turning to God.15 When Frank says to Helen, "Even when I am bad

I am good" (169), he is accepting the evil within him while he hopes 57

fo r its transformation, and when Helen says that she understands, she

is in tu itin g the Hasidic teaching that the evil urge in man "wants to

become good by driving man to overcome i t , and to make i t good. And

that is his secret request to the man he is trying to seduce. . .

Thus with Morris and Helen as example and id eal, Frank Alpine is

freed from his compulsions in order to become himself. The man who

is at first repulsed by Morris' suffering can later say to Helen

"When I don't feel hurt, I hope they bury me" (140), and the lover who would turn the person of his beloved into an object of possession can eventually relate to her through the saving power of wanting to give her "something she couldn't give back" (286).

That Morris finally orders Frank from the store and that Helen w ill not fo r a long time believe that Frank is indeed "a changed man"

(239) is but a fin al test of Frank's endurance. What the rabbi says of Morris at his funeral, "He suffered, he endu-red, but with hope"

(277) ultim ately applies to Frank. Returning to the store a fte r his ascendancy from Morris' grave, Frank acts out Morris' role of holy fool. Serving the salesman Breitbart tea and lemon and getting up before daybreak to se ll the Polish woman her three cent r o ll, Frank nourishes his soul with simple acts of decency. And working tir e ­ lessly yet barely earning a living, he pays Ida enough money to allow

Helen to use her own money for night school. F in ally, a fte r a year of this expiation, Helen admits "there could be an end to the bad and a beginning of good" (293). Though she has e a rlie r buried his g ifts in the trash can, Helen now lets him know she is using his

Shakespeare. And when he sees her in fantasy, accepting his rose in 58

his guise of St. Francis, it is because he has intuited and believed in

her fin al acceptance of his love.

Malamud, we remember, has compared Frank's deliverance to the

history of the Jews: "First, the Prophets' 'way of gentleness'; the

Sins of the People, Punishment, Exile and Return. . . . I t is the

primal problem of man seeking to escape the tragedy of the p a s t."^

If we reflect on this history through the moral perspective of the

Jewish mystic, Malamud's analogy takes on even deeper significance:

The historical aspects of religion have a meaning fo r the mystic chiefly as symbols of acts which he conceives as being divorced from time, or constantly repeated in the soul of every man. Thus the exodus from Egypt, the funda­ mental event of our history cannot, according to the mystic, have come to pass once only and in one place; i t must correspond to an event which takes place in our­ selves, an exodus from an inner Egypt in which we are all slaves.18

Frank Alpine has known the tyranny of slavery to compulsion, of

lying and stealing when he yearned for truth and integrity. When he

decides to stay in the prison-like atmosphere of the store, i t is not

only for love of Morris and Helen, but for the idea of self-control;

“with the idea of self-control came the feeling of the beauty of i t —

the beauty of a person being able to do things he wanted to, to do

good i f he wanted. . . " (191). The store as prison or a kind of

death is accentuated by Malamud early in the book when he w rites, "in a

store you were entombed" (4 ). Morris te lls Frank when he asks for a

job, "A store is a prison. Look for something better" (37). And A1

Marcus, the salesman, warns Frank to leave Morris because "this kind

of store is a death tomb. . ." (70). Nevertheless through Morris'

example and Helen's judgment, Frank learns he must undergo imprisonment 59 to be free, must face death to liv e . He has known the tyranny of being imprisoned in the world of his actions; through the paradoxical way of the mystic, he learns how service to others frees from enslavement to s e lf.

The Assistant then is concerned with freedom, a theme Malamud en­ hances by the dominant image of imprisonment. Many c ritic s have com­ mented on Malamud's use of prison imagery. Robert A lter writes that

"Malamud's central metaphor for Jewishness is imprisonment, and even when no actual enclosing walls are present, his Jews remain manacled and hobbled to th eir own scapegrace ineptitude."^9 Ben Siegel notes that "Malamud's favorite vantage point is the dark prison of the s e lf.

From there he looks out upon a somber, cramped, and jyless world in which failure and calamity are daily staples."^9 I would add to these comments that Malamud's prison imagery also recalls Hasidism's myth of the way of redemption, where man must recognize the soul's imprisonment as a prime condition for freedom. As Martin Buber te lls us:

This is the way of redemption: that a ll souls and a ll sparks of souls which have sprung from the primeval soul and have sunk and become scattered in a ll creatures at the time of the original darkening of the world or through the g u ilt of the ages should conclude th eir wan­ dering and return home purified. . . . All men are the abode of wandering souls. They dwell in many creatures and strive from form to form toward per­ fection. But those which are not able to purify them­ selves are caught in the world of confusion. . . . I t is not only souls that are everywhere imprisoned but sparks of souls. No thing is without them. They live in all that is. Each form is their prison. And this is the meaning and mission of Kavana: that it is given to men to lift up the fallen and to free the imprisoned.21 In addition, Frank's allusion to a forgotten existence when he

says to Morris, "I have i t in my heart to do more than I remember" (42),

is suggestive of the Hasidic b e lie f that a ll souls were at one time

"part of the primeval soul" but that the soul forgets its previous

existence at the time of b irth . More than one hasidic ta le 2^ deals

with the belief in a forgotten existence and the notion of reincarna­

tion, a b e lie f by no means unique to Hasidism, but which the Hasidim

use to emphasize man's responsibility to his fellows.

The dramatic symbols of Frank's deliverance from bondage to free­

dom are of course his circumcision and ultimate conversion to Judaism.

In the fin a l pages of the story he is almost indistinguishable from

the grocer he has replaced, getting up early to serve the "Polisher,"

fixing tea for B reitbart, worrying about losing Nick Fuso's business.

He has also decided to grow a mustache, one with a surprising amount of

red in i t , suggesting a badge of the evil he has recognized in himself.

His fin al decision to be circumcized, an act which both "enraged and

inspired him" (292), has worried some critics. Ihab Hassan writes

that "the act is one of self-purification, of initiation too, in

Frank's case, but it is also an act of self-repudiation, if not, as

some may be tempted to say, of symbolic castration."^3 Sanford

Pinsker states that when Frank converts to Judaism, " i t is a Judaism which he does not understand and which cannot possibly sustain him.

. . . unlike the suffering of his employer, Frank's is a function of his penchant toward masochism. The old g u ilt must be punished . . . by circumcision."24 61

The pain of circumcision cannot be denied. But that Frank is a

masochist seeking symbolic castration can be argued. P urification,

initiation, yes. Actually the ritual is named for the pact "bris

mi 1 a" or convenant of circumcision and makes the newborn Jew subject

not only to the obligations but also the privileges of the Jewish

people:

The significance of the ceremony is expressed in the ritu a l blessing which accompanies the act of circum­ cision: dedicating the child to Torah (study of the law), to khupa (marriage), and to maasim tovim (good deeds).2b

In light of the fact that Frank has already started his study of law

(he has been reading the Bible, parts of which he thought he could

have written himself), that he hopes for marriage with Helen, and that

his good deeds are beyond question, Frank's circumcision is an appro­

priate symbol for a dedication to a new life that is already in

progress. I f he does not completely understand Judaism, that is not

important, either in the context of the novel or of the Hasidic tra­ dition. In the words of Morris' father, "to be a Jew all you need is

a good heart" (149), and in the words of Martin Buber, "This is one of

the primary Hasidic words: to love more. Its roots sink deep and stretch out fa r. He who has understood this can learn to understand

Judaism anew. There is a great moving force th erein."26

I t is especially fit tin g , of course, that the fin a l conversion

takes place a fte r Passover, the holiday that marks not only the deliv­ erance of the Jewish nation from slavery in Egypt, but also in the

Jewish mystical sense, the day that can symbolize an "exodus from an

inner Egypt in which we are a ll slaves."^7 That the formal conversion 62 itself is even necessary has disturbed some readers. After a ll, Frank, an Italian Catholic, if not a strong believer in his church, is at least a devotee of St. Francis of Assisi. As some c ritic s have pointed out, i f the las t paragraph in the novel deals with Frank's circumcision, the penultimate one deals with his vision of himself as St. Francis handling Helen the rose. To S. V. Pradham, Frank "must choose between

Morris and St. Francis for the two are mutually exclusive" and Frank's fin al acceptance of Judaism is a "repudiation" of St. Francis and "the romantic ethics of voluntary poverty." John Griffith is concerned with the numerous parallels between Frank and St. Francis--both at twenty-five commit reckless robbery, both go underground and resolve to reform, both develop cults of mistress-worship. I t is through such p arallels, says G riffith , that "Malamud gives to events which in themselves seem dreary and even sordid a glow of sp iritual triumph which is a reflection of the aureole of St. Francis."^ It seems to me, in the context of the novel, that there is no need to oppose

Morris to St. Francis, or Judaism to Christianity. It is more likely, as H. E. Francis points out, that

Frank's conversion is important because he discovers — not alone, but through another human being — a law of conduct which might give meaning to the burden of suf­ ferin g, to l if e . As he accepts fa ith , he paradoxically eradicates the barriers between theologies.30

That Frank as a dedicated Jew should be spiritually closer to a dedicated Catholic is not surprising if we compare the lives of Jewish and Christian mystics. Gershom Scholem has written of the sim ilari­ ties between Rabbi Jehuda the Hasid and his Christian contemporary,

St. Francis of Assisi.^ The gentle and loving Baal Shem Tov, 63 founder of modern Hasidism, is said to have known the language of the animals and birds, a g if t he passed on to certain of his disciples.32

The mystics of a ll religions, in fa c t, may have more in common with each other than the dogmatists of th eir separate fa ith s . The "fool of God" figure, for example, seen f ir s t in Morris Bober and then in his disciple, Frank Alpine, is one that is known not only to Hasidism but can be found also in the legends of the Chi nest Buddists, the oq Sufis, and, of course, the disciples of St. Francis of Assisi.

Frank's conversion to Judaism, then, may be seen as a symbol of his new found freedom and as the seal of his identification with a loving and caring father-teacher. Other religions have ideas sim ilar to those of the Jews, as Frank himself has noted (150), but Frank's particular way is the way of his particular mentor. If Malamud's moral vision is as accessible to other religions as it is to Jews, it may be in part because, as Theodore Solotaroff has pointed out,

"Malamud uses Jewishness as a type of metaphor fo r anyone's l i f e — both for the third dimension of anyone's lif e , the one of the s p irit, and for a code of personal morality and salvation that is more psychological than religious. . . ."34 Malamud's famous aphorism,

"All men are Jews . . . although few men know i t , "35 certainly lends support to Solotaroff's position. I can add, however, that Malamud's particular kind of Jew, the Morris Bober who best exemplifies the code and shows the way of salvation, is living within the Hasidic trad itio n . Seen in this lig h t, he is more than a secular metaphor; he is a mystical symbol who embodies the re a lity he expresses. I f

Hasidism seems more secular than religious, we must remember Gershom 64

Scholem's words that

I t [Hasidism] gives a new emphasis to psychology, in ­ stead of theosophy, a fact which must be deemed of high­ est importance. To put i t as b rie fly as possible, the distinctive feature of the new school is to be found in the fact that the secrets of the divine realm are pre­ sented in the guise of mystical psychology. I t is by descending into the depths of his own s e lf that man wan­ ders through a ll the dimensions of the world; in his own self he lifts the barriers which separate one sphere from the other; in his own s e lf, fin a lly , he transcends the limits of natural existence and at the end of his way, without as it were, a single step beyond himself, he discovers that God is "all in all" and there is "nothing but Him ."36

Malamud's style in The Assistant, his ability to capture in

English what has been called "an untranslatable quality of Yiddish, the admixture of the jocular and the solemn, 'the fusion of the sacred and the profane'" is noted by Sheldon Grebstein.^? Malamud's use of

Yiddish idiom— the inverted syntax, the mangled grammar, the mispro­ nunciations—gives the story a kind of homey realism which borders on the comic as well as the grim. "Mister" says Ida, trying to thwart

Frank, "is n 't here a school" (46). "Why you told me you had a sis­ ter?" Morris asks Frank (59). "Don't feel sorry for the insurinks companies," says the red-haired macher as he tempts Morris to set fir e to the store. But with all the attention to folk dialect and the grim descriptions of a store where garbage stinks in the nose, The Assist-

OQ ant is nevertheless, "more than the merely realistic." If Morris speaks a broken English, he can also speak with a simple dignity that borders on the poetical. " I suffer for you," he te lls Frank, which means, he explains, "You suffer for me" (150). And if the dark and dreary store with its practically windowless upstairs apartment provides a naturalistic setting, there is nevertheless a sense of

"placelessness" about i t a ll. Not only place, but time is ambiguous in

this novel; though the seasons change with an attention to some

verisim ilitude, they seem nevertheless, as Jonathan Baumbach points

out, to "mirror the inner condition of the centralcharacters."^

"Dream vision" then, to use Sidney Richman's words, might be an appro­

priate phrase to describe the texture of the novel, for the charac­

ters seem at times almost "spectral" and seem to "complement or op­

pose another in the form of doubles." In fact, writes Richman, there

is "the constant impression that the characters are in re a lity a

single fractured consciousness."^

I would add to these penetrating comments that Malamud's use of

Yiddish idiom, his visionary blending of the real and the fantastic, his timelessness and placelessness, even his use of the double a ll work together to complement the Hasidic themes which, as I have tried to show, control the story. The Yiddish idiom, of course, reflects the language of the original Hasidim. The special fusion of re a lity and fantasy suggests the Hasidic visionary world where man must ever keep in mind that he is tied to earth i f he would soar above it ; that if his body is dust, his soul was made for eternity. As Rabbi

Aharon of Karlin explains it, "Letmanstand erect, his feet solidly planted on the ground and his head w ill touch the sky."41 Rigid dis­ tinctions of time and space have always been blurred in Jewish learn­ ing, but especially in Hasidic story, time and space sometimes cease to exist. Particularly in Rabbi Nachman's tales, neither the hero nor the reader-1istener has any idea of where he is or what might 66 happen next; "he is helpless, lost in a strange land."42 As for

Malamud's use of the double figure, a device which c ritic s lik e Mark

Godlman associate with Dostoevsky, Conrad, Kafka, and other "masters of the modern psyche," we must remember that the double figure is not only as old as Jacob and Esau, but a familiar motif in Hasidic story.43 jt is a device which emphasizes the Jewish mystic's teaching that "in everyone there is something of his fellow man," and that the "stranger" is really oneself for "every human soul is a part of God."44 when we perceive the characters of The Assistant thorough the eyes of the

Hasidim, we see each as a spark from the original soul of God, mar­ velously distinct and yet mystically fused through a recognition of oneness.

To see The Assistant in the framework of Hasidism is to give the novel an added depth and glow, a kind of stark beauty, that is min­ imized without it. Malamud's use of his folk tradition is more than subsidiary or an ironical counterpoint; Hasidism permeates the theme and form of The Assistant to in sist on the hidden l if e beneath the external shapes of re a lity , the lif e of the s p irit and the promise of transformation. 67

Foortnotes fo r Chapter I I I

^Martin Buber, "To Say Torah and to Be Torah," in Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters, trans. Olga Marx (New York: Schocken, 1947), p. 107. Hereafter the t i t l e w ill be shortened to Early Masters.

^Note to the Norwegian translation of The Assistant, cited by Granville Hicks, "His Hopes on the Human Heart," Saturday Review, 12 October 1963, p. 32.

^Quoted by Joe Wershba, "Not Horror but 'Sadness,'" New York Post, 14 September 1958, p. M2.

^Sidney Richman, Bernard Malamud (New York: Twayne, 1966), pp. 70 , 74.

Speter L. Hayes, "The Complex Pattern of Redemtpion," in Bernard Malamud and the C ritic s , ed. Leslie A. Field and Joyce W. Field (New York; New York University Press, 1970), pp. 228-229.

^Sanford Pinsker, "The 'Hassid' in Modern American Literature," Reconstructionist, 6 March 1970, pp. 14-15.

7Bernard Malamud, The Assistant (New York: D ell, 1971), pp. 275- 276. All subsequent page references are to this edition and will be included in the text. The Assistant was originally published in New York by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957. Walter Shear, "Culture Con­ f l i c t , " in Bernard Malamud and the C ritic s , pp. 211-212. Pinsker refers to the Hasidic ta le , p. 14.

^Nathan Ausubel, ed. A Treasury of Jewish Folklore: Stories, Traditions, Legends, Humor, Wisdom and Folk Songs of the Jewish People (New York: Crown, 1948), p. 204. The notion of a hidden zaddik or "just man" is related to the Hasidic belief in the thirty-six hidden saints, referred to in Hebrew as Lamed-Vov-Tzaddikim and in Yiddish as Lamedvovniks. The b e lie f is based on the opinion stated by Rabbi Abaye in the Talmud: "There are in the world not less than th irty -s ix righteous persons in every generation upon whom the Shekhina (God's radiance) rests."

^Andre Schwarz-Bart, The Last of the Just (New York: Bantam 1961), p. 5.

^Maimonides writes of eight degrees or steps of charity. The eighth and most meritorious of all is to anticipate charity by pre­ venting poverty; namely to assist the reduced brother "in such a way as to teach him a trade or by putting him in the way of business so that he may earn an honest livelihood, and not be forced to the dread­ ful alternative of holding up his hand for charity. And to this Scripture alludes when i t says: 'And i f thy brother be waxen poor and 68

fa lle n in decay with thee, then thou shalt support him: Yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner, that he may live with thee.1,1 (Lev 25: 25). Quoted by Ausubel, pp. 124-125.

^Rabbi Jaacob Yitzchak, quoted by Martin Buber, For the Sake of Heaven: A Chronicle, trans. Ludwig Lewisohn (New York: Atheneum, 1969), p. 95.

12samuel H. Dresner, The Zaddik: The Doctrine of the Zaddik According to the Writings of Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polnoy (New York: Schocken, 1974), pp. 150, 178, 192.

^Encyclopaedia Judaica, 1971 ed., s.v. "Lilith," by G[ershom Sch[olem].

^The Rabbi of Zlotchov, quoted by Buber,"The Help Meet," in Early Masters, p. 144.

15Buber, "Introduction," Early Masters, p. 20.

^Rabbi Mikhal, quoted by Buber, "Man and the Evil Urge," in Early Masters, p. 145.

^Quoted by Wershba, p. M2.

ISGershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1961), p. 19.

^Robert A lte r, "Bernard Malamud: Jewishness as" Metaphor," After the Tradition (New York: Dutton, 1969), p. 120.

20[}en Siegel, "Victims in Motion: The Sad and B itte r Clowns," in Bernard Malamud and the C ritic s , p. 123.

2lMartin Buber, The Legend of the Baal-Shem, trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Schocken, 1969), p. 35. ~~”

22ibid. See for example "The Martyrs and the Revenge," pp. 73- 79; "The Soul Which Descended," pp. 121-130; and "The Return," pp. 162-171.

23ihab Hassan, "The Qualified Encounter: Buechner, Malamud, Ellison" in Radical Innocence: Studies in the Contemporary American Novel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 168.

24sanford Pinsker, "The Schlemiel as Moral Bungler: Bernard Malamud's Ironic Heroies" in The Schlemiel as Metaphor: Studies in the Yiddish and American Jewish Novel (Carbondale: S. Illin o is Press, 1971), p. 99.

^Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog, Life Is with People: The Culture of the Shtetl (New York: Schocken, 1962), p. 107. 69

^Buber, Legend of the Baal-Shem, p. 47.

27scholem, p. 19.

28$. v. Pradhan, "The Nature and Interpretation of Symbolism in Malamud's The Assistant," Centennial Review 16 (Fall 1972): 394-407.

29john G riffith, "Malamud's The Assistant," Explicator 31 (1972); Item 1.

E. Francis, "Bernard Malamud's Everyman," Midstream 7 (Winter, 1961): p. 94.

31Scholem, p. 83.

32dov Ber ben Samuel, In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov: The Earliest Collection of Legends about the Founder of Hasidism, trans. and ed. Dan Ben-Amos and Jerome R. Mintz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970), tale 237 and Buber, Early Masters, p. 266.

3%uber, "Introduction," Early Masters, p. 26.

34Theodore S o lo ta ro ff, "Bernard Malamud: The Old L ife and the New," The Red Hot Vacuum (New York: Atheneum, 1970), p. 73.

35Quoated by Milton Stern, "A ll Men Are Jews," Nation, 19 October 1963, p. 243.

36scholem, pp. 340-341.

37sheldon Norman Grebstein, "Bernard Malamud and the Jewish Move­ ment," in Contemporary American-Jewish L ietratu re: C ritic a l Essays, ed. Irving Malin (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), p. 196.

^Malamud, in talking of the novel of the future, called it "more than the merely realistic." Quoted by A[rnolcflG[inrich], "A Lively and Responsible Weekend a t Princeton," Esquire, July 1963, p. 6.

39jonathan Baumbach, "All Men Are Jews: The Assistant by Bernard Malamud," The Landscape of Nightmare: Studies in the Contemporary American Novel (New York: New York University Press, 1965), p. 120.

40Richman, p. 75.

4lElie Wiesel, Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters, trans1. Marion Wiesel (New York: Vantage Books, 1973), p. 86.

4 2 ib id ., p. 181.

43Mark Goldman, "Comic Vision and the Theme of Identity" in Bernard Malamud and the C ritic s , p. 155. For the Hasidic use of the 70 double figure see the story of the seer and the Yehudi in Buber, For the Sake of Heaven.

44Moses Cordovero (sixteenth century Jewish mystic), quoted by Scholem, p. 279, and Rabbi Shmelke, quoted by Buber, "The Commandment to Love," in Early Masters, p. 190. CHAPTER IV

THE SUPREMACY OF THE HEART

A New L ife

"... when one has departed from God, the love of man is his only salvation."' Martin Buber

"... our fiction is loaded with sickness, homosexuality, frag­ mented man, 'other directed' man. I t should be fille d with love and beauty and hope."2 Bernard Malamud

Bernard Malamud's willingness to experiment with new forms while adhering to old themes is exemplified in his third novel, A New Life.

A combination of satire and romantic love story, i t is , as Malamud himself has stated, "different" from anything he'd done b e fo r e .^

Missing is the bizarre fantasy of The Natural, the grim naturalism yet visionary dream world of The Assistant. Nevertheless, as I hope to show, Hasidic themes are s t i l l evident: the importance of inner revival, the need for accepting the seeming limitations of past and present, the dominance of the heart over the head. While Hasidism is not as relevant to A New Life as it is to The Assistant, it is in­ teresting to note Malamud's continued concern with the myth of redemption. Although A New Life is about a Jewish college instruc­ to r, he operates in a non-Jewish m ilieu, and the word Jew is never mentioned in the novel. In fact, it might seem that Seymour Levin's 72

Jewishness is not important either to him or to the novel as a whole.

Actually, I suggest that Levin's indifference to his Jewish past is not convincing, not only because Levin is presented as an extremely s e lf- conscious intellectual who is striving for self-knowledge but also because Malamud implies at the novel's conclusion that Levin's Jewish heritage is significant.

Before we have finished the f ir s t paragraph of A New Life we know we are in the presence of a fam iliar Malamud hero:

S. Levin, formerly a drunkard, after a long and tiring transcontinental journey, got o ff the train at Marathon, Cascadia, toward evening of the last Sunday in August, 1950. Bearded, fatigued, lonely, Levin set down a valise and s u it­ case and looked around in a strange land for welcome.4

Reversing the pattern of Roy Hobbs and Frank Alpine, Levin travels from east to west, but it makes little difference once we recognize that his journey, like theirs, is finally an inward one. Levin, no less than his predecessors, is the lonely stranger seeking a redemption that is already in process, but he has his own distinct individuality and his own way to arrive home.

The beard Levin wears is his attempt to hidea face he can't quite acknowledge, a face that reminds him of a too-painful past. The son of a th ie f who died in prison and a mother who went crazy and kille d herself, Levin the orphan becomes a drunk and a wanderer u n til, not unlike Frank Alpine, he wakes up in somebody's filth y c e lla r and has a vision of a new life. Levin's particular vision is of the sun shining on his rotting shoes, and though he does not fu lly understand its implications, I see here the Hasidic fusion of heaven and earth, the b e lie f that man is no more than dust and yet can touch the heavens. What Levin can understand is that " life isholy" and that he has been wasting i t ; he decides to become "a man of principle" (187). But Levin can more easily accept the lif e of the mind and the s p irit than he can his own m ortality. Though he is able to stop his drinking, he cannot respond to experience, and the thought of love is unbearable to him.

What re lie f Levin finds is in reading and here he gains the insight that the source of freedom is the human s p irit (187). But Levin must learn that in order to be free , the s p irit, lik e the sun, must embrace the body's "rotting shoes." At f ir s t , Levin gives himself up to the lif e of the mind; he decides to become a teacher because he wants "to keep civilization from destroying itself" (109), and he sees humanistic education as a guarantee of freedom.^ Actually, Levin is hiding from his past, and he sees teaching as an escape from the demands of his heart as much as i t is a sanctuary for the ideas of his head.

Levin, as a college instructor, is certainly more intellectual than either of Malamud's previous heroes. Nevertheless he shares with them the dominant characteristics of the schlemiel-schlimazel, the blunderer and victim . Before he has been in town more than twenty- four hours, Levin has had a hot tuna fish casserole spilled in his lap and been pissed on by a three-year old; la te r, when he walks in the countryside, he steps in cow pies. Actually, Levin is that very special type of schlemiel-schl imazel— the luftmensch or man of a ir , a term Levin uses to describe himself as a youth and by which he means a "sop of feeling, too easy to hurt because after treading on air he h it the pavement head firs t" (201). But the term was also used by

East European Jews to describe the man without a trade such as the 74

"unemployed scholar" who "seemed to draw his livelihood, such as i t was,

from the very a i r . "6 Levin, by the end of the novel, i f not a scholar,

is certainly unemployed, probably as much for his aggressive dedication

to good teaching as for his affair with his chairman's wife.

Malamud's attitude toward Levin's intellectual idealism is ambiv­

alent. Levin's philosophy of education, that it is a revelation that

gives you a better understanding of who you are and what lif e might

yield (85), and his assertion that he should be "teaching how to keep

c iv iliz a tio n from destroying its e lf" (109), remarkably echo Malamud's

own words used in d ifferen t interviews.7 Yet Malamud undercuts

Levin's humanistic statements by having him u tter them in front of a

class with his fly open or in front of a urinal to an imaginary audi­

ence. Part of this can be explained as Yiddish humor and self-

deprecation; but one should also see that Malamud is insinuating that

in tellectu al humanism is not enough. As much as Malamud admires and

agrees with Levin's ideas on the importance of the lib eral arts, that

they teach "what's for sale in a commercial society and what had better not be" (253), Malamud is also saying that more must be edu­

cated in man than his in te lle c t. In Hasidic terms, the heart is more

important than the head and i t is love more than knowledge that shows

the way to salvation. Thus while Malamud invites us to admire

Levin's dedication to the lif e of the mind, especially in the context of a shallow provincialism and a fourth rate college where the liberal arts degree was "lost" a fte r World War I , where English is simply a

"service" department, and where many of the teachers seem to care more about sports than they do about students, nevertheless he w ill not le t us forget that Levin would use the classroom as much as an escape as a confrontation with reality. And it is not simply the past that Levin would feel from, of course, but also the present. The time of the novel is the early 1950's, the time of the Cold and Korean wars, Hiss and Chambers, and the infamous career of Senator Joseph McCarthy. But

Levin is content to stay at peace, "to le t days go by without opening a newspaper or turning on a broadcast," to use the "warm four-walled classroom" as a "sanctuary" (90-91); lik e Yakov Bok in The Fixer,

Levin must learn that there is no such thing as an unpolitical man, and lik e a ll of Malamud's heroes, Levin must come to terms with the

"past-drenched present" (27).

Levin's transformation from the timid outsider who is afraid of doing anything that might cause him to lose his job to an aggressive instructor who runs against his own chairman is an amusing i f some­ what incongruous process to follow. Unlike Roy Hobbs and Frank

Alpine, Levin has no loving and caring father-figure to emulate; on the contrary, he runs into a series of false father types at Cascadia

College who are almost his undoing. Gerald G ille y , the red-haired

Director of Freshman English who f ir s t welcomes Levin to town and into his home, seems at firs t to be a friend, eager to give Levin a good office with a ll the comforts necessary. But G illey's friendliness is not friendship, and Levin soon learns that the director is courting votes fo r a suspected upcoming election for department chairman. I f it seems at firs t that Gilley might be not only a father but a model for Levin to emulate--during his first night in Easchester Levin is wearing G illey's pants, and on the second night he is sleeping in 76

Gilley's old room at Mrs. Beaty's house—we soon find out that Gilley is not what he seems to be. Actually, Gilley is more Levin's "other" than the one he should emulate, for i f Levin has given himself over too much to the lif e of the mind, G illey has too much negated that life in his bid to succeed at Cascadia College. Thus Gilley has given up the notion of either dedicated teaching or scholarly writing and spends most of his free time hunting, d ry-fly fishing, or watching athletic events. His negation of the written word is seen in his

"Picture book of American l i t . , " a project which Malamud nicely sat­ irizes by having G illey explain, "I thought the students would want to see what some of our writers looked lik e , the houses they lived in and such. Most of them can't te ll Herman M elville from the Smith

Brothers on the cough drop box" (33). Of course the ultimate mark of

G illey's s te r ility is that he has "no seeds" (179) and he seems to care l i t t l e more for his adopted children—using them as pawns in the divorce agreement with Pauline--than for the students whom he w ill manipulate in his bid for power in the department. As the red-haired v illa in (by now a fam iliar Malamud symbol fo r evil as we remember red-haired Memo in The Natural and the red-haired macher of The

Assistant) , Gilley is more pathetic and amusing than either vicious or convincing.

Levin early recognizes that G illey is his foe rather than friend, and the man he looks to as mentor is C. D. Fabricant, Ph.D. from

Harvard, publisher of more than twenty d iffe re n t articles and essays, a scholarly and introverted man of seeming integrity. Fabricant be­ lieves with William James "that the reason for getting a college 77 education in the f ir s t place is so you can te ll a good man when you see him" (69) and thus easily inspires Levin's admiration and support in his bid to be department chairman. But Fabricant in his own way is as sterile as Gerald Gilley is in his. If Gilley is aggressively anti­ intellectual, Fabricant (not so unlike Levin) has passively retreated to the world of ideas to escape human contact. His bachelorhood, in the context of his personality, shows his terror of sexuality, and even Levin must admit to himself that Fabricant is a man who "offered l i t t l e of s e lf," who "was not warm even to warmth" (213). I t is to

Levin's credit that while he admires the older man's principles, he eventually sees through Fabricant's mask of frightened self-servingness and stops supporting him. Ironically enough, it is Fabricant who is asked to execute Levin's idea of a Great Books program a fte r Levin is fire d , but the reddish whiskers he is growing suggest his alignment with the red-haired G illey.

The final father figure of any note in the novel, Professor

Orville Fairchild, is as false a mentor to Levin as either Gilley or

Fabricant. As the aging head of the department who is preparing to retire, Fairchild tells Levin bluntly, "I speak to you as a father to a son" (278). In their first interview, Fairchild announces to Levin his hatred of "misfits" and "aggressive pests" (which Levin w ill turn out to be), and he warns Levin against dating students and prowling among faculty wives (of course Levin does both). He identifies Levin's appearance with his own drunk father's and lectures him on the path to destruction. Fairchild's god-like appearance and mouthing of plati­ tudes put us in mind of Judge Goodwill Banner in The Natural, who is 78

as concerned about money and the mask of righteousness as is his aca­

demic counterpart. Levin sees through Fairchild as easily as Roy Hobbs

sees through the Judge and i t is not long before he is leading the

fig h t to have the old man's Elements of Grammar, revised, thirteenth

edition, replaced by a more suitable text for the college freshmen.

Like Gilley and Fabricant, Fairchild evokes humor and pathos, and he

dies muttering words about the "mystery of the in fin itiv e " (279).

There are, then, no suitable father figures to show Levin the way,

and before the deepening of his relationship with Pauline Gilley he has only the pain of his own mistakes and the examples of his predecessor,

Leo Duffy, and a young colleague, Joe Bucket, from which to learn.

Levin is able to learn from the pain of his teaching experiences and goes from a teacher who lectures his students on the thinness of th eir themes and th eir lack of c ritic a l sense, to one who more patiently accepts th e ir inadequacies and is w illin g to work from there. In his encounter with Albert 0. Birdless, mindless p lag iarizer, Levin, unable to quickly produce evidence, realizes he has created a victim and out of mercy drops the accusation. And i f he succumbs to the seductive advances of his student, Nadalee Hammerstad, he soon breaks o ff the affair because he must admit he feels "no true affection for the girl"

(146) and cannot exploit her.

Leo Duffy, the wild-haired Irishm an whom Levin replaces in the department, has all the marks of a liberal, even a "disagreeable radi­ cal," and may be seen as Levin's most obvious double in the book.

Duffy has been fired for being a "fellow-traveling radical" (47) as well as for his affair with Pauline Gilley. Levin, who dreams of 79

wrestling with Duffy, follows in the steps of his angel until he over­

comes him; instead of taking Duffy's path of suicide, Levin elects to

liv e with the pain of his responsibilities.

Joe Bucket, only fiv e years older than Levin, is probably the

closest Malamud comes to presenting an admirable father type in the

novel, father that he is of five children with another on the way.

In te llig e n t and w itty , Joe gives unlimited time to his students and

consistently behaves like a man of principle. Unfortunately for Levin,

Bucket's family responsibilities, his dedication to his students, and

the fact that he is continually revising a turned-down dissertation

leave him l i t t l e time to give Levin the friendship he so desperately

seeks.

Thus i t is Pauline G illey who does most in this novel to encourage

Levin in that acceptance of s e lf, his lim itations and p o ssib ilities, which leads to his ultimate salvation. Like Helen Bober and Iris

Lemon, Pauline is often associated with vegetation imagery to suggest

her life-giving beauty. When Levin first sees her she is dressed in white, like a "lily on a long stalk" (7); she visits Levin when he is

i l l , brings him fr u it , and leaves behind her the odor of "lemons and oranges" (156). Levin smells her body and i t is lik e "fresh-baked bread, the bread of flowers" (336). Pauline's maiden name was Joseph- son, and as Edwin M. Eigner points out, "Joseph in Jacob's blessing means 'a fru itfu l bough,' and here Levin, erstwhile bachelor instructor of the humanities finds his righ tful heritage."** Of course the pre­ viously barren Pauline finds hers with Levin when she discovers she is pregnant. I f Pauline as a loving earth-mother type helps Levin find fulfillment, it is Levin who likewise helps Pauline fu lfill herself.

Flat-chested, her "topography lik e an ironing board" (179), and barren

when Levin firs t meets her, her breasts are starting to grow and she is

pregnant as a result of encountering Levin. But Pauline is associated

with more than the fruits and flowers of this world. The first time

Levin is conscious of his attraction to her she is wearing a veil and r • he sees "mystery where none had been before" (169), something which

entices him. If Pauline is first seen as a flower, she is also seen

as a "star" (218), something out of this world. It is Pauline's love

for Levin, of course, which shows him the way to love and saving

knowledge of s e lf, a knowledge which she seems mysteriously to have

when she says to Levin, even before they are intimate: "My one talent

. . . is that I know people. I know you, Mr. Levin. Who you really

are. And you know me, don't you?" (178). Thus we see again in

Malamud the suggestion of a Shekhinah fig ure, the feminine element in

God, the mother of the world of sanctity who shows the way to salvation.

Pauline's counterpart in the novel, Avis Fliss, is the destruc­

tiv e , demonic "bird" woman, the L ilith figure that reminds us of Memo

Parks in The Natural. Full-chested and seemingly sexual, she has a

damaged breast and an evil intent that aligns her with the sterile and manipulative Gerald G illey. Avis is thwarted by Levin in her attempt

to seduce him and turns into Levin's adversary when she recognizes his

attraction to Pauline. Not unlike other Malamud Lilith figures, es­

pecially Zina Lebedev who appears in The Fixer, Avis is an ambivalent

suggestion of e v il, for she hungers fo r acceptance and love.

Levin's knowledge of himself, before his encounter with Pauline,

is mainly intellectual. Thus he knows enough to take responsibility 81

for his past mistakes and can say "Some blame the times for that, I

blame myself. The times are bad but I'v e decided I ' l l have no other"

(20). In his notebook under "Insights" Levin writes, "I am one who

creates his own peril" (57). But though Levin thinks he is accepting

responsibility for himself, his fear and denial of his past shows

otherwise. Thus while he can discern that "the past hides but is pres­

ent" and "the new lif e hangs on an old soul" (5 7), Levin would lik e to

hide his past, not only from others but from himself. He flees from

his past for he thinks it will endanger his career, his possibilities

for a new life . Like many intellectuals, Levin has more insight into

the faults of his society than he does into himself. Ironically,

then, he writes into his notebook R. Chase's remark, "Disaster occurs

if a country finally abandons its radical creative past" (212).

It is Pauline Gilley who encourages Levin to talk about his past,

who lovingly affirms i t with the words, "I sensed i t . I knew who you were" (188), when Levin tells her the story of his life. And it is

through Pauline that Levin learns to accept the responsibility of love,

a love he has desired in his intellect but fled from in experience.

"Could she ever know that before meeting her he had loved the idea of

Pauline Gilley?" Levin thinks (202). But Pauline as an ideal and

Pauline as real woman are not quite the same, and Levin, who values order and permanence, must learn to accept the disordering chaos of a mortal love.

If Pauline first identifies with Levin it is because she too is conscious of the "misuses" of her li f e , how quickly i t goes and how l i t t l e she does, but she blames herself and no other fo r her 82

"compromises" (175-176). Gerald sees her as always dissatisfied, want­

ing to be a better person than she is . She seems to be as afraid of

love as Levin is at first, telling him one day, "I'd be afraid of in­

tense love now," but admitting the next, " I ' l l never le t you go." I t

is Pauline who shortens Levin's name to "Lev" which she says is closer

to "love" (230). "Lev" is also the Hebrew word for heart^ and Pauline,

who loves freely from the heart, must show Levin the way.

As much as he thinks he desires love, Levin associates it with

transcience and is as afraid of love as he is of the passing of time.

Levin's need to control time is shown in his feeling for his alarm

clock; he likes having i t because i t helps "in a prim itive way, to

organize him" and "time not converted to good use tormented him" (57).

Levin, in general, likes things "to work out as planned, time and a ll"

(138). Behind Levin's need to control time, of course, is his fear

of his own mortality, a fear Levin externalizes in his attitude toward

the seasons: he is always hunting fo r spring, always nosing out the

new season, the new l if e , "a new birth in freedom." But though Levin

rejoices at the beauty of a warm March day,

his pleasure was tempered by a touch of habitual sadness at the relentless rhythm of nature; change ordained by a force that produced, whether he wanted i t or not, today's spring, tomorrow's frost, age, death, yet no man's ac­ complishment; change that wasn't change, in cycles eter­ nal sameness, a repetition he was part of, so how win freedom in and from self? (181)

Spring means winter and life brings death; perceiving this cycle, Levin feels trapped. Interestingly enough, just before he meets Pauline in

the woods, he remembers his idea that "happiness is not something you flush out in a planned expedition, a hidden complicated grail a ll at 83

once the beholder's"; rather i t is "grace settled on the s p irit in de­

sire of life " (181-182). But one cannot have lif e without death, of

course, anymore than one can have freedom without lim itation or love

without pain and disorder.

Thus Levin fights his love for Pauline at first, preferring to see

her in terms of experience, not necessarily commitment. Love goes with

freedom in Levin's world and freedom means no restriction s, "no tying

down with ropes" (200). But love repressed in Levin results in a se­

vere pain in the butt, a pain he recognizes as coming from withholding

what he has to give. No sooner does Levin give himself in love to

Pauline, however, before he decides he must give her up; the deception

and guilt of an adulterous affair is more than either of them can

take. When Pauline comes to him at the end, therefore, and tells him

she is divorcing Gilley and wants Levin to be her love again, he can

feel only a "blunted compassion" (309). He w ill take responsibility

fo r her and her adopted children, wants th eir unborn child, but some­

how feels only a "terrible emptiness" (312) and can love her only "on

principle" (319). It seems to me Malamud is trying to show here the workings of an unsentimental, non-romantic type of love, the kind of

love that can answer Gerald Gilley's question:

An older woman than yourself and not dependable, plus two adopted kids, no choice of yours, no job or promise of one, and other assorted headaches. Why take that load on yourself? with the simple but fo rcefu l, convincing words: "Because I can you son

of a bitch" (334). Though Levin is certainly not conscious of it, he

is acting under the impulse of his heart rather than his head, as his agreement to give up college teaching in exchange for Gilley's giving 84

Pauline the children certainly shows. Levin's heart has been educated in the ways of redemption and thus he can choose the pain and lim ita ­ tions of a future with Pauline; he will take responsibility for his love though "his doubts were the bricks of a windowless prison he was in . . . unless the true prison was to stick i t out chained in her ribs" (331). Love, pain, restriction, responsibility: Seymour Levin lik e Frank Alpine and Roy Hobbs has gone the way of the holy fool.

Jobless and penniless he sees himself as a fa ilu re , destined to become a wanderer again. Yet Malamud suggests he has fin a lly come to that knowledge and responsibility fo r se lf and others that paves the way to salvation.

Levin had at f ir s t come to his new home in the West hoping that a

"new place" would "inspire change" (20). I t is not only the classroom that offers Levin sanctuary, but the beauty of the natural countryside as w ell. Though i t might seem, as Mellard suggests, that Malamud is idealizing "benevolent nature"^ in this novel, actually the book is more what Goldman calls i t , "a comic critique of the fro n tie r myth in its modern phase: the faith in change of place as a substitute for change of soul, or a kind of moral primitivism."^ Nature, it would seem, substitutes for the past in Easchester; the town is "without visible or tangible connection with the past. Nature was the town's history, the streets and parks barren of fountain spray or sculpture to commemorate word or deed of any meaningful past event" (72). Levin at f ir s t gives himself up to the beauty of the countryside, though

Pauline has early warned him, "nature here can be such an esthetic sat­ isfaction that one slights others" (21). By the end of the novel, 85 however, Levin is w illin g to leave the "beautiful country" for the

"windowless prison" of his doubts and responsibilities toward Pauline

(335). No more than i t did for Morris Bober, nature gives "nothing"^ to Levin; the only escape from his past is to accept it; peace and salvation must come from within.

Though Malamud's themes in A New Life may be id en tified with

Hasidism, his re a lis tic method and direct attention to time and" place cannot. In an article which appeared before the publication of A New

L ife , P hilip Roth c ritic ize s Malamud fo r not yet having "found the con­ temporary scene a proper backdrop for his tales of heartlessness and heartache, of suffering and regeneration"; his people liv e in "a time­ less depression and a placeless lower East Side.11 ^ A New L ife is of course d iffe re n t. Though the place names are fic tio n a l, the novel's scene, a state-supported vocational college in the Northwest, has a verisimilitude that makes one wonder if Malamud patterned it after his experiences at Oregon State College where he taught from 1949-1961.

Malamud, who denies connection with Levin (lacking a beard and not being a drunkard), also w ill say no more about the connection between his own experience and Cascadia than "Let's say the switch from East to West suggested much of the m a te ria l."^ But anyone who has taught in a regimented English department where grammar counts more than ideas and instructors teach fo r the departmental exam, or in a voca­ tional college where "intellectuals" are derided and the liberal arts are at best tolerated, knows that Malamud has an eye and ear for truths that are s t ill too much with us. 86

The time of the novel is nicely pinpointed and dishearteningly

felt; it is the 1950's when "the country was frightened silly of Alger

Hiss and Whittaker Chambers, Communist spies and Congressional commit­

tees, flying saucers and fellow travelers, their friends and associates

and those who asked them for a match or the time of day" (211).

Malamud has said^5 that the book was w ritten under the influence of

Stendhal, and Marcus Klein has pointed out how Levin may be seen as a

contemporary Julien Sorel, who moves from the capital to the provinces

to secure his in itia tio n into society. "Like Julien Sorel's Paris of

the Bourbon Restoration," writes Klein, "Easchester is fallen into

betrayal of the ideals of its own recent past, but the ideals are, or

were, radical democracy, progress, and enlightenment, not empire and

glory." Thus, Klein continues,

fo r the f ir s t time in Malamud's fic tio n the real things have a real and, more to the point, a continuous sp ecifi­ city. The physical descriptions are frequent, detailed, and exact. The place in which Levin finds himself makes demands. And there is a fe lt social organization avail­ able to him, re-created by a scrupulous, and a consist­ ently ironic attention to its m a n n e rs .16

But i f Malamud impresses us with the re a lity of time and place in

A New L ife , he does not, as many c ritic s have noted, convince us of the

re a lity of the hero. To Ruth Mandel, Levin is "baffling" and his "ul­

timate sacrifice and affirmation really have nothing to do with his

experiences as an English instructor at Cascadia C ollege."^ Sanford

Pinsker calls A New Life an "artistic failure" because "the perennial bungler is more stereotype than character and when his role is split between that of naive persona in an academic satire and moral Id e a lis t in a corrupt world, the effect is a certain amount of distortion."^ 87

Robert A lter writes that Levin's "commic victimhood" and the "external- ality of slapstick" in the novel are "not particularly helpful estab­ lishing the inner life of an anguished intellectual struggling against both his own weakness and the resistance of the world around him to make himself a new m a n . " ^ Sidney Richman finds Levin's ennthusiasms

"a matter of tricks of style and not the character's own sensibility.

Most of the time, the hero seems only a disagreeable wanton."20

Though I believe there is some truth to the criticism that Levin is an unconvincing hero because of his comic stereotyping, I must come back to my e a rlie r statement concerning the unconvincingness of Levin's past as well as his lack of self-awareness in the present. Seymour

Levin didn't have to be a Jew to fu lfill the role of idealistic, frus­ trated college instructor, but Malamud invites us to think of him as such. Yet somehow the fact that he is Jewish never crosses Levin's mind, nor fo r that matter, does i t occur to anyone else who confronts him in Cascadia with the exception of Pauline, who te lls him at the end of the novel that he looks lik e an old Jewish boy friend (331).

Somehow this doesn't ring true; Levin is too self-conscious, too striving for self-knowledge, to be so completely indifferent to this part of his identity. And Gerald Gilley is too provincial and angry an antagonist by the end of the story to ignore it either. Theodore

Solotaroff insinuates the latter point when he writes, "The word

'Jew' is never mentioned in the novel, but Levin is the only Jewish name in the book and when G illey te lls him to go back to New York, he has something else in mind than its 'stinking subways. The novel Is concerned, a fte r a l l , with the search fo r id e n tity , a theme Malamud accentuates by the attention he gives to names. Starting out simply as S. Levin, the hero goes from Seymour to Si (G illey's name) to Lev (Pauline's name associated with love and heart) to "Sam, they used to call me at home" (Levin's declaration on the las t page).

But i f Levin, whose last name suggests a descendant of Is ra e l's priest­ ly Levites (teachers of law ),^ in affirming his past is reclaiming his

Jewish heritage, Malamud hasn't done enough to convince us that his hero even knew he had i t to lose. Malamud has w ritten of secular Jews before. Neither Morris Bober nor Helen, his American-born daughter, are religious in the traditional sense, yet they do know they are

Jewish and i t does color th eir thinking and way of lif e . I f i t were not fo r Seymour Levin's name we would not necessarily suspect he was

Jewish, not un til the end when Pauline says he looks like an old Jew­ ish boyfriend and Levin talks of himself as "chosen" (331). Perhaps

Malamud means to suggest that Levin is fin a lly awakening to his Jewish heritage, but i f so he has not prepared us fo r the importance of such acceptance.

A New Life is certainly Malamud's least successful novel. While the work presents the myth of salvation in an implied Hasidic frame­ work— the heart takes responsibility fo r the s e lf and others— the hero is not a believable Jew. The novel is entertaining in its satire, sometimes lyrical in its love story, but ultimately unsatisfying be­ cause of the shallowness of its hero. Somehow, Malamud does best when he writes of Jews who are conscious of th e ir id e n tity , when he gives himself up to the visionary world of Hasidism, where time and place lose th eir meaning and man meets himself w ithin. 89

Footnotes for Chapter IV

^The Legend of the Baal-Shem, trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Schocken, 1969), p. 46.

^Quoted by Joe Wershba, "Not Horror but 'Sadness,'" New York Post, 14 September 1958, p. M-2.

3Ibid.

^Bernard Malamud, A New Life (New York: D ell, 1970), p. 7. All subsequent page references are to this edition and will be included in the text. A New Life was originally published in New York by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1961.

5ln an interview with Wershba, p. M-2, Malamud has expressed the same sentiment concerning the w riter: "The purpose of the w riter is to keep civilization from destroying itself." In the same interview, Malamud says: "My premise is fo r humanism — and against nihilism . And that is what I try to put in my w ritings."

^Nathan Ausubel, ed., A Treasury of Jewish Folklore: Stories, Traditions, Legends, Humor, Wisdom and Folk Songs of the Jewish People (New York: Crown, 1948), p. 344.

^Wershba, p. M-2. In an interview with Marcia Gealy, New York C ity, 22 March 1974, Malamud emphasized the relationship between edu­ cation and freedom. Education is important, said Malamud, because "you must know who you are."

3Edwin M. Eigner, "The Loathly Ladies," in Bernard Malamud and the C ritic s , ed. Leslie A. Field and Joyce W. Field (New York: New York University Press, 1970), p. 100. Peter L. Hays associates Pauline's given name with the apostle Paul and writes that Pauline's "patient, kind" and "enduring" love suggests Pauline doctrine. See The Limping Hero: Grotesques in Literature (New York: New York Uni­ versity Press, 1971), p. 45.

^Noted by Ruth R. Wisse, The Schlemiel as Modern Hero (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 82.

^James M. Mellard, "Four Versions of Pastoral," in Bernard Malamud and the C ritic s , p. 75.

Mark Goldman, "Comic Vision and the Theme of Id en tity," in Bernard Malamud and the C ritic s , pp. 165-166.

12Bernard Malamud, The Assistant (New York: D ell, 1971), p. 248.

ISphiliD Roth, "Writing American Fiction," Commentary, March 1961, pp. 228-229. 90

^Quoted in "A Talk With Bernard Malamud," New York Times Book Review, 8 October 1961, p. 28.

^Quoted by Wershba, p. M-2.

^Marcus Klein, "The Sadness of Goodness," in Bernard Malamud and the Critics, pp. 250-251.

^Ruth B. Mandel, "Ironic Affirm ation," in Bernard Malamud and the C ritic s , p. 269.

^Sanford Pinsker, "The Schlemiel as Moral Bungler: Bernard Malamud's Ironic Heroes," in The Schlemiel as Metaphor: Studies in Yiddish and American Jewish Novel (Carbondale: S. Illin o is Press, 1971), pp. 107-108.

^Robert A lte r, "Bernard Malamud: Jewishness as Metaphor," A fter the Tradition (New York: Dutton, 1969), p. 120.

20sidney Richman, Bernard Malamud (New York: Twayne, 1966), p. 96.

^Theodore Solotaroff, "Bernard Malamud: The Old L ife and the New," The Red Hot Vacuum (New York: Atheneum, 1970), p. 85.

^Noted by Ben Siegel, "Victims in Motion: The Sad and B itte r Clowns," in Bernard Malamud and the C ritic s , p. 135. See also Tony Tanner who w rites, "I have i t direct from Mr. Malamud that by a pun on 'leaven' what the marginal Jew may bring to the American scene [is also suggested]." in "Bernard Malamud and the New L ife ," C ritic a l Quarterly, 10 (Spring-Summer, 1968): 158. CHAPTER V

THE REALITY OF EVIL

The Fixer

"Even wickedness may serve a man to bring about conversion. While the strands of cause and effect are being unravelled, we grope around, calling things good and e v il." 1 Rabbi Sussya

"Also, the history of the Jews is a great drama. Obviously, it's not one of pure darkness. I also lik e Jewish history as a metaphor for the fate of all m e n ."2 Bernard Malamud

The Fixer is Malamud's most distinctive use of Jewish history.

Based in part on the Mendel Beiless case of the early twentieth cen­

tury, the novel, as I intend to show, is a compelling recreation of

Hasidic themes. Yakov Bok, the schlemiel-type hero of the story, would

at firs t deny his past, suffering, and death; and his long imprisonment

in a Russian ja il is but a means of educating him in acceptance of

himself. The Fixer is concerned with freedom or the release of man

from bondage to himself. More than any of Malamud's previous novels,

however, The Fixer is e x p lic it about the Hasidic insistence on the

reality of evil and the need for man to accept the dark side of life.

Additional Hasidic themes such as the supremacy of the heart over the

head, the importance of the father-teacher, and woman as stern judge

and saving presence are also present. Finally, Malamud's style in

The Fixer, his a b ility to capture the flavor of Yiddish speech, his

91 92

fusion of reality and fantasy, and his use of the double may be seen

within the Hasidic tradition. As in The Assistant, form and content

combine in The Fixer to produce an aesthetic unity.

Interestingly enough, Maurice Samuel's Blood Accusation; the

Strange History of the Beil ess Case appeared in the same year (1966)

as The Fixer. Samuel's book a scholarly account of the historical

background of Malamud's novel, provides a fascinating contrast to

Malamud's treatment. The Russian Jew, Mendel B eiliss, was th irty-n in e

years old at the time of the t r ia l, a rather ordinary kind of person

who wore glasses but, as Samuel puts i t , "on him they did not suggest

a reading man."^ He lived with his wife and five children outside the

Pale in Kiev, in a district ordinarily prohibited to Jews, but had

been granted permission to liv e there because of his special job as a

dispatcher at the Zaitsev brickworks. Mendel's father had been a mem­

ber of the Hasidic branch of Judaism, but Mendel had fallen away from

his father's s tric t religious standards and adopted a rather secular way of lif e . He worked regularly on the Sabbath and most of the holy

days and is reported to have laughed out loud a t his tr ia l when a witness for the prosecution said that among the factory workers he had

the reputation of being a zaddik or holy man.^ Mendel was known for

his friendly disposition and got along well with his gentile neigh­ bors; therefore there was much shock among them when he was charged by the Russian authorities in 1911 for ritual murder: specifically,

for killing a young Christian boy and draining his blood for use in

the baking of matzot. The grotesque absurdity of such a charge fa lls into perspective in the context of its past history, which Samuel 93

summarizes well:

The Blood Accusation, as it is called, the accusation that the Jewish religion calls for the periodic ritualistic consumption of the blood of a Christian, was born in the Middle Ages at about the time of the First Crusade; i t was a revival, with certain changes of the accusation leveled at the early Christians by the Romans. Young William of Norwich (d. 1144) was the f ir s t victim to be claimed by the legend; a fte r him, lik e a pestilence that had lain dormant for a thousand years, i t kept reappearing here and there across the centuries. I t was denounced by four Popes [Innocent IV in 1247, Gregory X in 1272, Martin V in 1422, and Paul I I I in 1457] as a sinful slander; not one Pope, even among those whose attitude toward the Jews was the harshest, ever endorsed it. Nevertheless, the Blood Accusation persisted down into modern times, and nearly every reoccurrence was attended by the threat or perpetration of massacre or pillage. The nineteenth century was particularly rich in such episodes, the most famous among them being those of Damascus (1860), Saratov, Russia (1857), and Tisza-Eszlar, Hungary (1882). In the twentieth century, before the Beiliss case, there occurred among others, the case of Blondes, a Jewish barber of Vilna. . . . 5

We do not get as much historical background in Malamud's book as in Samuel's, and there are times when Malamud changes some of the facts to make them plausible, e .g ., he invents more circumstantial evidence to be used against Bok than the Russian prosecution had to use against

B eiliss. But i t is in the character of Bok that Malamud departs most from fact.® Unlike the friendly family man, Mendel Beiliss, Yakov Bok at th irty is presented as embittered and lonely. His w ife Raisl has deserted him, he is childless, and he is working at the brickworks under an assumed id en tity, having denied his Jewishness to get his job. Though he had been religious as a boy, Bok has become a free thinker and admirer of Spinoza; and though he is mainly self-educated, he is certainly more of an intellectual than was Beiliss. 94

I f Bok is a grim and embittered man, Malamud gives us ample in ­ sight into his past to help explain him. Like a ll previous Malamud heroes, Bok is an orphan, but the circumstances of his father's death and his ensuing misfortunes are more convincing than those of someone lik e Roy Hobbs or Seymour Levin. Bok's father had been shot to death by a Russian soldier out to k ill the f ir s t three Jews who crossed his path, and Bok had experienced a Russian pogrom as a young boy.

Malamud's description of the aftermath of a three day Cossack raid is not unlike the testimony given by those who have seen a pogrom or heard an eyewitness account:^

On the third morning when the houses were s t ill smoldering and he was led, with a half dozen other children, out of a ce llar where they had been hiding he saw a black-bearded Jew with a white sausage stuffed into his mouth, lying in the road in a pile of bloody feathers, a peasant's pig devouring his arm.8

The vituperative anti-Semitism that characterized a large segment of twentieth-century Tzarist Russia, and which Bok experiences as he grows to manhood, is perhaps best expressed by the bloody-eyed boatman who rows Bok across the Dnieper:

A Jew's a devil - - it 's a known fa ct . . . and the only way to save ourselves is to wipe them out . . . which we've sometimes tried but never done as i t should be done. I say we ought to call our menfolk together, armed with guns, knives, pitchforks, clubs -- anything that w ill k ill a Jew — and when the church bells begin to ring we move into the Zhidy quarter . . . bashing in their brains, stabbing th eir h e rrin g -fille d guts, shooting off th eir snotty noses, no exception made for young or old, because i f you spare any they breed lik e rats and then the job's to do all over again. And when we've slaughtered the whole cursed trib e of them . . .w e 'll p ile up the corpses and soak them with benzine and lig h t fires that people w ill enjoy a ll over the world. (28) 95

Thus we see in The Fixer a more dramatic representation of this world's evil than we have seen in any of Malamud's previous novels. Yet

Malamud insists, as he has done before, on the need to embrace this grim reality, not to flee from evil, but to conquer it and turn it into good. For Yakov Bok, in the words of one of the Hasidim, "what is needed is not to strike straight at Evil but to withdraw to sources of divine power and from there to c irc le around E v il, bend i t , and transform it into its opposite."^

When Bok decides to leave the shtetl i t is because he sees i t as

"a prison" (15), a place he associates with death (32); he wants, he tells his father-in-law Shmuel, "to know what's going on in the world" (16) or as he tells the Investigating Magistrate Bibikov later,

"a l i t t l e education" (65). And as Levin in A New Life grows a beard to hide the face that would remind him of his past, Bok shaves o ff his beard to escape his past, a past he calls "a wound in the head" (17).

Bok's attitude toward his fellow Jews is one of anger; he blames them for mouldering in the shtetl and lies about his id entity to get safe passage across the Dnieper. I f he is angry at the Jews, he is angrier a t th eir God who deserts them "when the Cossacks come galloping" (16).

Bok's rejection of his people is suggested symbolically when he sells the bony and decrepit horse that "looks like an old Jew" (28) to buy his passage across the riv e r; his rejection of Judaism is symbolized when he drops his bag of phylacteries into the river.

The rejection is nevertheless an ambivalent one, for though Bok denies his Jewishness, i t is mainly to get a job and some experience; inwardly he accepts his identity enough to feel self-contempt when he 96

assumes a gentile name (39). And though he curses and denies God, he is attracted to the philosophy of Spinoza for whom God is at least an idea

(55). It is Spinoza's emphasis on freedom that particularly moves

Bok, the idea that a man could achieve freedom in his thought. Bok can accept Spinoza's belief that man's mind is a part of God, but only "up

to a point"; his "experience is limited" as he tells Bibikov (68). If he disagrees with Spinoza, it is on the necessity for political in- vovement; he sees himself as a non-political person--politics is not in his nature (43). In a manner reminiscent of the more formally edu­ cated Seymour Levin, Bok writes l i t t l e essays:

I am in history, yet not in i t . In a way speaking I'm fa r out, i t passes me by. Is this good, or is something lacking in my character? What a question! Of course lacking but what can I do about it? And besides, is this re a lly such a great worry? Best to stay where one is , unless he has something to give to history, like for instance Spinoza. . . . (55)

Bok will learn that there is no such thing as an unpolitical person and that being a Jew means "being vulnerable to history, including its worst errors" (128). And the thought of Spinoza's impersonal God gives him small comfort when he is confronted with the te rrib le tribu lation of his imprisonment; somehow i t is the irratio n al workings of his own heart that sustain him best.

Before his imprisonment, Bok is not known fo r his loving nature.

"Charity you were always short of," his father-in-law says to him

(11) when he accuses Bok of driving his wife away. Raisl had been unable to conceive and Bok had stopped sleeping with her, reading

Spinoza a ll night in the kitchen instead. As he leaves the shtetl Bok refuses to share his little money with a beggar, inviting the man's 97

ominous curses and his father-in-law 's dismay. But Yakov Bok, lik e all

Malamud heroes, has more potential for goodness than he or the reader

at first thinks.

Not long inside Kiev, the "Jerusalem of Russia," Bok saves a drunk,

Nikolai Lebedev, from perishing in the snow. Lebedev, a member of the

Black Hundreds (an organization devoted to the persecution of the Jews),

would reward Bok for saving his lif e , but not before reading and lec­

turing to him from the New Testament. Like other Malamud v illa in s ,

particularly Judge Goodwill Banner in The Natural and Professor

O rv ille Fairchild in A New L ife , Lebedev talks goodness and works e v il.

Bok conceals his Jewish identity from Lebedev in order to accept his

offer of a job, but as he soon finds out "the more one hides the more

he has to" (39).

The overseer job which Bok takes in the brickworks is in a dis­

trict prohibited to Jews and he lives in fear of being unmasked. He

is hated by the foreman, Proshko, fo r he has caught Proshko stealing

and he knows he has heightened Proshko's suspicion by lying about his

papers. Nevertheless, Bok risks much in a simple act of charity: he

rescues an old Jewish Hasid who is being attacked by boys. The Hasid's

head is bleeding and Bok invites him up to his room where he tends to

his wounds. When the Hasid takes out his matzoh, Bok realizes i t is

Passover and is moved by so strong an emotion that he has to turn

away (59). Bok's Jewish past has more of a claim on him than he would verbally admit, either to himself or as yet to anyone else. Ironi­ c a lly enough, i t is his charity toward the old Hasid that provides his

prosecutors with the bloody rags and other circumstantial evidence 9 8 that will be used against him. The day after the old Jew leaves his care, the mutilated body of twelve year old Zhenia Golov is found in a cave, stabbed to death and bled white "possibly for religious purposes" according to a professor from the Kiev Anatomical In s titu te (61). A few days la te r Bok is accused and arrested. He immediately confesses he is a Jew; otherwise he says he is innocent.

Bok's quick declaration of Jewishness and the fact that he assumes responsibility for the troubles he is in , blaming his egotism and fool­ ish ambition, are important steps in his eventual salvation. In the past he had been prone to blame fate and spare himself (14); now he knows he has delivered himself into the hands of his enemies by pre­ tending "to be somebody he wasn't" (64). He refuses to be ashamed of the Jews, te llin g Bibikov, " if I am going to be ashamed of anyone i t might as well be myself" (76). In addition, he refuses to sign a statement implicating the Jews in the crime, te llin g Grubeshov, the

Prosecuting Attorney, that a t the very least, the Jews have le f t him alone (118). But Bok has a way to go before he reaches that insight and compassion that are the seals of transformation.

For one thing, at the outset of his confinement, Bok s t i l l be­ lieves in the supremacy of reason; he thinks i f he can explain his actions he will be free. He tells Bibikov he lied about his identity because he "wasn't thinking . . . and that's how a man comes to grief"

(74). But Bok's experience with his accusers teaches him to stop thinking of "relevancy, truth, or even proof. There was no 'reason,' there was only their plot against a Jew, any Jew; he was the accidental choice for the sacrifice. . ." (128). There are dark, irratio n al 99 forces in the world and man needs more than his in te lle c t to come to terms with them. Yakov's heart is the way to his salvation, and his heart must be chastened through redemptive suffering.

Though Bok blames himself for his arrest, the irrationality of the charges leveled against him and the realization that prison life will go badly for him make him reflect on the absurdity of his fate. "If I dealt in candles the sun wouldn't set," he thinks (119), alluding to the words of a classic schlemiel, Abraham ibnE zra But the magni­ tude of the sufferings he undergoes in the next two and one h alf years reminds the reader of the B iblical Job, "that archetypal suffering Jew who suffers because he exists - - and because he is innocent."^ Bok has neither the innocence nor fa ith of Job, of course, but he does share with him the agony of an unjust and overwhelming punishment.

That Bok rejects to the end both Job and his God does not negate the truth that Bok achieves salvation and the role of holy fo o l. I f we can see the novel through the framework of Hasidism, then we realize that the way of salvation can be love of man and that anger and rebellion at God are not only permitted, but are part of the tradition.

Hasidism does not encourage anger, but its wise men have recog-

>: ' TO nized that "anger comes to a man who must bear too heavy a burden."1

Anger can generate evil, but it can also generate good. In the words of the Rabbi of Lublin, "he who can burn with enmity can also burn with love for God"^ and thus it is not hatred, but indifference which is feared. Yakov Bok's attitu de toward the God of his people is anything but indifferent . Though he maintains he is not a religious man and has been attracted to Spinoza's idea of God, he finds out quickly this 100 idea will not sustain him in prison. He sometimes thinks God is pun­ ishing him for his unbelief; "he was, after a ll, the jealous God"

(127). When he thinks of the God of history, he sees him without pity for men:

They say God appeared in history and used i t for his purposes, but i f that was so he had no pity for men. God cried mercy and smote his chest, but there was no mercy because there was no p ity. Pity in lig h t­ ning? You could not pity anything i f you weren't a man; pity was a suprise to God. (171)

Bok identifies with the suffering servant of the Psalms and repeats aloud the words of travail, but when he looks or listens for God all he sees or hears is "his own imprisoned laughter" (172). When his captors throw him an Old Testament he reads i t and sees human experi­ ence as baffling God, who perhaps even wants to be human. But as his torments in prison grow, so does his anger at God whom he blames not only for his own suffering, but for the suffering of the Jews. "To win a lousy bet with the devil he killed o ff a ll the servants and innocent children of Job. For that alone I hate him, not to mention ten thousand pogroms," he te lls his father-in-law Shmuel (211).

Bok's rebellion against God, then, may be seen as a response to a concern for his people, and i t is this concern which id entifies him with the holy men of Hasidism. The story is told of Levi-Yitzhak, the Hasidic Rebbe of Berditchev, who actually threatened God pub- lic a lly on the day of Atonement with the words:

Today is Judgment Day. David proclaims i t in his Psalms. Today all your creatures stand before you so that you may pass sentence. But I Levi-Yitzhak, son of Sarah of Berditchev, I say and I proclaim that it is You who shall be judged today! By your children who suffer for You, who die for You and the santification of Your name and Your law and Your promise. 101

You order man to the aid of orphans. We too are orphans. Why do you refuse to help us?14

Yet ^he Rebbe's words are not counted as blasphemy by his people be­ cause they are spoken within the community and on behalf of man. As

E lie Weisel reminds us:

Jewish tradition allows men to say anything to God, provided i t be on behalf of man. Man's inner lib e r­ ation is God's justification. It all depends on where the rebel chooses to stand. From inside his community, he may say everything. Let him step out­ side i t , and he w ill be denied this rig h t.15

Yakov Bok, in all his rebelliousness, is certainly standing within his community.^ From the time of his arrest he has identified with the

Jews, refusing to implicate them in any way even though i t would mean a lessening of his tortures and possible freedom. When he questions

God's ju stice, he speaks on behalf of man. Led through an abyss of suffering Bok confronts himself, accepts his place in the community of men, and is transformed by that acceptance into a new person. The man who would early deny his people is ready to die (or liv e) to try to protect them: " if God's not a man he has to be" (223). Though he protests God's existence, he is willing to fast "for God's world"

(261); in such a man's suffering, in the Maggid of Kosnitz's words,

"the return to good is born and this return i t is which evokes redemption."I?

Like other Malamud heroes, Bok is aided in his journey into self- discovery by the father-teacher figure. His father-in-law Shmuel is not unlike Morris Bober, long suffering and compassionate, though certainly more traditionally religious. It is from Shmuel that Bok learns to love and accept the world, again as with Morris Bober and Frank Alpine, more from what his teacher does than what he says.

Shmuel's attitude toward suffering and God is what Friedman calls the

"traditional Jewish attitude of resignation and complaint," an a tti­

tude which expresses itself in the old Yiddish proverb, "God w ill

provide; but i f only He would t i l l He does."18 Thus Shmuel warns Bok

not to forget his God, but he also adds, "Remember, if He's not per­

fe c t, neither are we" (20). Shmuel feels free to curse his daughter

Raisl, for as he explains to Bok, "I ask God not to listen" (14). A

luftmench who peddles nothing and tries to sell i t , Shmuel tries to

borrow money to give to the beggar that Bok refuses. Though he is

continually admonishing his son-in-law, not only for his lack of faith but his lack of charity, Shmuel is ready to risk his all and bribes a guard in order to visit Bok in prison and give him what solace he can.

Though Bok complains and curses God, Shmuel implores him to keep his heart open and tries to give him a gift of food. Realizing that

Shmuel has risked his own lif e to come and see him, Bok dreams him dead and wakes up sighing, "Live, Shmuel, liv e . Let me die for you"

(222). It is here that Bok has the insight that he must not commit suicide and play into his captor's hands; though he hates suffering, he must liv e to see his day in court, for the sake of Shmuel and his fellow Jews. When Bok learns a t the end that Shmuel has died, his words are simple and to the point; "He was a good man, he tried to educate me" (247).

B. A. Bibikov, the Investigating Magistrate, is another father figure who with all his worldly sophistication resembles Shmuel. He id en tifies Bok with his own son who also has asthma, and he chastizes Bok for lying about his Jewishness. Basically a ju st and gentle man,

he depends on reason and law to win th eir case. However, Bibikov is

heart, as well as head, and impulsively v is its Bok once in the middle

of the night to give him solace. He encourages him to sustain himself

in his innocence and identifies his life with Bok's saying, "If your

l i f e is without value so is mine. I f the law does not protect you,

it w ill not in the end protect me" (145). Bibikov is apprehended and

either murdered or driven tosuicide; the reason and law in which he believed cannot ultimately save him. Bok mourns Bibikov's loss with great sorrow and bitterness, and when he sees him in fantasy on the eve of his tr ia l day he has grown to concur with the gentle man's advice: "the purpose of freedom is to create it for others" (259).

S till another caring father figure in the book, Kogin the night guard, is an example of the possibility of transformation. Blunt in word and action, Kogin does his job in a perfunctory way until his own sufferings and those of his prisoner move him to compassionate in­ volvement. The father of a criminal son, to be ja ile d lik e Bok, Kogin suffers anguish when his son commits suicide. He takes comfort from hearing Bok repeat the sayings of Jesus (the day guard has smuggled in a New Testament) and ultim ately gives his own lif e tosaveBok's on the day of the t r ia l. The s im ila ritie s between Shmuel, the Jewish father, and the gentiles, Bibikov and Kogin, are Malamud's way of showing again what he did in The Assistant—that saintliness is not exclusive to any religion; whether for Jew or Christian, the way to salvation is knowledge and giving of self. In addition we remember the Hasidic insistence on the community of a ll men: "every human soul is a part of God."1^ Of the false father figures in The Fixer the most dramatic is Tsar

Nicholas I I , the " l i t t l e father" of the Russian people. Nicholas never

appears in person but only in picture, dream, or fantasy. We see him

f ir s t in a picture at the home of the anti-Semite Lebedev, again in the

office of the Investigating Magistrate, Bibikov, where he seems to be

"staring critically at the fixer" during his interrogation (70). At

first Bok is in awe of the Tsar but as he comes to see that the Tsar's

subordinates are using him as a scapegoat to appease the Russian

masses, his awe turns to fury. In a fantasy reminiscent of Jacob and

the angel, Bok sees himself locked in combat with the Emperor, wrest­

ling beard to beard, until Nicholas proclaims himself an angel and

rises to the sky (187). But Nicholas is more demon than angel or, as

Eigner points out, a perversion of the God of Abraham and Jesus Christ

for he condemns the Jews for procreating and believes "they lust after

the blood of his haemophiliac s o n ."20 in his final fantasy as he

rides to his trial, Bok kills the tsar with a bullet in the gut--for

his own sufferings, for Bibikov, for Kogin, for the untold a fflic te d masses: "better him than us." The man who had e a rlie r disassociated

himself from politics has learned that "there's no such thing as an

unpolitical man, especially a Jew" (271).

•As in every Malamud novel thus fa r, the women in The Fixer sug­ gest demonic and Godly forces or L ilith and Shekinah figures. I f Bok

is to be saved he must escape the accusation of Zina Lebedev, the daughter of his employer, and Marfa Golov, the mother of the slain boy.

Zina, a lonely and crippled spinster, tries to seduce Bok, at firs t

(not unlike Memo Paris of The Natural) with an overabundance of food. 105

But Bok is hungry for other than what Zina can give; ultim ately re­

pulsed by her, he leaves her angry and untouched in her bedroom. Zina

turns on Bok in fury and becomes a willing witness in the case against

him. Marfa Golov, a more frightening presence than Zina, is along

with her accomplices her son's actual murderer. ^ Marfa's hat with

the a r tific ia l cherries and her dusty house help one critic 22 identify

her as one of Malamud's goddesses of s t e r ility , but as a mother who

drains her own son's blood, we can also see her as the demonic L ilith ,

the slayer of young children.23

Raisl, Bok's faithless wife, is of course both his tribulation and

eventual redeemer. In te llig e n t and dissatisfied, she reminds the

reader of Pauline Gilley and Helen Bober though she is not as realised

or complex a character. Demanding love from Bok before she w ill marry

him, Raisl remains barren and runs o ff with a musician when her hus­ band stops sleeping with her. As many critics have noted, Raisl's name" is an anagram for Israel and her behavior suggests the whorish wife of the prophet Hosea, whom the prophet must learn to love and forgive as God does the Jews. Once he has the Bible, Bok turns often

to the pages of Hosea for he obviously identifies with the cuckold prophet. But i f Raisl is a symbol of Israel whom Bok must embrace as he does his past, she is also a Shekinah figure who offers salvation through suffering and insight. Like the Shekinah, Raisl visits Bok in ja i l "in the shape of a woman who weeps and laments over the hus­ band of her y o u t h ."24 When she te lls him she has borne a son, Bok suffers the agony of the classical schlemiel, a cuckold whose wife presents him with another man's child. But lik e Gimpel, I . B. Singer's holy fool,25 Bok's past suffering allows him to rise above his fate and

he consents to claim the child as his own. Raisl's words, "As for

being a whore, i f I was I'm not" (232), show again the po ssibility of

transformation, and her declaration, "One reason I le ft was to make

you move," is an indication she has been trying to save Bok from the

very beginning. Bok's acceptance of Raisl's child Chaim (in Hebrew,

" life " )is not only the acceptance of the responsibility of father­

hood—as Raisl says—"whoever acts the father is the father" (236) —i t

is also the seal of the beginning of new lif e fo r himself. Without

the final tribulation and compassion that Raisl makes possible, Bok

could not experience that ultimate insight that frees him from bond­

age to s e lf. Accepting the role of father with a ll his heart, Yakov

Bok not only knows who he is , he is determined to share this truth

with the community of men.

The Fixer then is concerned with freedom, not simply historical

or p o litic a l freedom, but more significantly the freedom which a person

achieves within. Before man can create freedom fo r others, he must

know i t himself, must experience the paradox of choosing chains as Bok

does rather than accept the Tsar's pardon (239) and deny his own and

his people's integrity. Like very Malamud hero before him, Bok chooses what is in his case a very lite ra l form of imprisonment in order to

break free from the fears and concerns that would enslave him to him­

self. If he seems in one sense helpless before the forces of evil in

the world, he is in another sense stimulated by those forces to rise above his most severe lim itations. Yakov Bok would at f ir s t deny

responsibility fo r his s u ffe rin g -fille d past, and his long imprisonment 107 is but a means of educating him in acceptance of his own id entity. I t is therefore fittin g that the novel end with the beginning of Bok's

trial at the court of Justice, for the book has been concerned with

the more significant trial of his own knowledge of selfhood. The last lin e of the novel—"Some shouted his name"--is an acknowledgement that

Yakov Bok has achieved a recognizable identity, and the secular trial which is to follow would be anti climactic in context of thebook. 26

Yakov Bok's name is highly suggestive, as more than one c r itic has already noted. As Jacob he wrestles with his own dark angel and is f i t to become a father for his people. The name Bok in Yiddish means either "an unbendable piece of iron" or "goat" and Bok is cer­ ta in ly both stubborn and a scapegoat for the Tsar. Bok also suggests

"Bog," the Russian word fo r C h rist,27 and thus some c ritic s see Yakov as a Christ figure. In Mel lard's words:

the story coincides rather carefully with the period of Christ's ministry, since Yakov leaves his family and community at the age of thirty, "ministers" to his people for three years, and goes to his tr ia l and pos­ sible death at the age of th irty -th re e . Obviously there is a great deal of irony in such a use of a "Christ- figure" by a Jewish novelist, but Malamud's point in using i t is to in sist upon the universality of the pattern. . . .28

But I would also point out that Yakov Bok is a fix e r or makher as he would be known in Yiddish, and the term in shtetl culture means not only handyman, but also the "intermediary" who stands between the Jew­ ish community and the hostile, outsideworld. 29 Bok may suggest a

Christ figure as others point out—Malamud has always insisted on the universality of his pattern—but he is first a particular kind of shtetl Jew and he must accept himself as such for the novel's final affirmation. 108

Malamud's style in The Fixer, his a b ility to catch the flavor of

Yiddish speech, his fusion of the real and the dreamlike, and his use of the double a ll work together to evoke the world of Hasidism.

Malamud's technique of presenting The Fixer through the sen sib ility of

Yakov Bok, a shtetl Jew, gives the work a Yiddish flavor that is some­ what reminiscent of The Assistant. Unlike Morris Bober, however, Bok is self-educated and while he is not polished, he does not speak in the broken syntax of a Yiddish immigrant attempting English. Instead,

Malamud leads us to believe, Bok speaks in Yiddish (a t least to him­ self and fellow Jews), and his voice echoes the earthiness and ly ri­ cism, the terseness and inquisitiveness that is associated with the voice of shtetl Jewry. Thus Bok argues with himself about whether to approach Zina Lebedov:

Should I stay or should I go? . . . On the one hand it 's been a long season without rain. A man is not a man for nothing. What do the Hasidim say? "Hide not from thy own flesh." On the other hand what does i t mean to me? At my age it's nothing new. It means nothing. (48)

Or Bok philosophizes to himself on the meaning of the covenant:

The purpose of the covenant is to create human experience, although human experience baffles God. God is a fte r a ll God; what he is is what he is: God. Has he ever suffered? How much, a fte r a ll , has he experienced? God envies the Jews: It 's a rich lif e . Maybe he would lik e to be human, it 's possible, nobody knows. (197)

If the Yiddish flavor of The Fixer is somewhat reminiscent of The

Assistant, there is also a realistic yet dreamlike quality that is common to both books. The realism of The Fixer, especially as i t manifests its elf in Malamud's description of prison life , has prompted some critics to identify the novel with recent history. Thus Robert

Alter writes: 109

Alter writes:

One often feels in The Fixer that for Malamud 1911 is 1943 in small compass and sharp focus, and 1966 w rit large. The Beiliss Case gives him, to begin with, a way of ap­ proaching the European Holocaust on a scale that is imaginable, susceptible of fictional representation. For the Beiliss Case transparently holds within i t the core of the cultural sickness around which the Nazi madness grew, . . . .30

For Sheldon Grebstein, the re a lity of man's brutishness in The Fixer

01 teaches mainly one lesson: "how the death camps were possible."0

But if the realism of The Fixer ties it to recent history, there

is also a dreamlike quality to the book that suggests it be treated as

"myth, an endless sto ry."32 other than Yakov Bok, none of the charac­

ters is very convincing or real; false and true fathers, consuming and

giving women seem to re fle c t and oppose each other, often turn spec­

tral; Russian prisoners start to look like Jews (258). Malamud em­

ploys the double figure in The Fixer as he does in The Assistant, to

emphasize, as the Hasidim do, the in terrelation of a ll men and th eir

responsibility one for the other. Thus Shmuel, Bibikov, Kogin, and finally Bok become one with the caring father image of God. Raisl,

Zina, and Marfa become one as the reflections of the Shekinah-Lilith image, the way of judgment and ultimate salvation. The dream-like quality of the book is enhanced by our perceiving the action through

Bok's consciousness and since he spends much of his time in so litary confinement, we are immersed with him not only in comtemplative thought or tortured dream, but, as his suffering increases, also in bizarre fantasy and hallucination. We know that the bloody horse who calls him "Murderer!" does not actually visit his cell, but we cannot be sure of the seductive Marfa Golov (203-204); the line is crossed 110 between re a lity and fantasy and we are le f t somewhere between. Though

Malamud gives us frequent details to suggest seasonal changes and Bok tries to note months and days carefully in his cell, he eventually loses track not only of time but of place:

He passed through time he had no memory of and one day awoke to find himself in the same cell, not a new one with six doors and windows he had dreamed of. I t was s t ill hot but he couldn't be sure i t was the same summer. The cell seemed the same, possibly a bit smaller...... (206)

We are back then, in the timeless, placeless world of The Assistant, and of much Hasidic story. But it is mainly in his inner vision rather than in his hallucinations that the fixer can be identified with the Hasidim. In his solitary cell in Tsarist Russia Yakov Bok transcends his time and place and takes a journey through the self that results in transformation. Willing to die—or live—in his con­ cern for his community, he arrives fin a lly to the stance of holy fool:

"with one foot in seventh heaven and with the other in the depths of the abyss.By embracing the evil in the world about him, he has managed to soar above i t .

Awarded both the P ulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, The

Fixer is certainly one of Malamud's most powerful novels. Yet i t would be a mistake to read i t , as some people do, as a simple h is to ri­ cal account. Hasidism permeates the theme and form of The Fixer to insist on the possibilities of transformation and the life of the spirit. Man can free himself from the determining bonds of history, i f he w ill tap the resources w ithin. I l l

Footnotes fo r Chapter V

^Louis I . Newman, trans. and comp.; The Hasidie Anthology: Tales and Teachings of the Hasidim (New York: Schocken, 1963), p. 95.

^Quoted by Curt Levant, "Bernard Malamud: My Characters are God- Haunted," Hadassah, June 1974, p. 19.

^Maurice Samuel, Blood Accusation: The Strange History of the Beiliss Case (New York: Knopf, 1966), p. 55.

^ Ib id ., p. 60.

5Ib id ., p. 4.

®In an interview with Marcia Gealy, New York C ity, 22 March 1974, Malamud said that the Mendel Beiliss case was impressed on him by his father who talked about the case when he was a child. Malamud remem­ bered the case when he decided to w rite a novel about the way in which prison helps a man find his identity. He read Beiliss' The Story of My Sufferings and found him a not particularly attractive hero; for that reason he invented the character of Yakov Bok.

?See Chaim Nachman Bia lik , "The City of Slaughter," a poem based on the w rite r's interviews with survivors of the Kishinev pogrom in 1903, and Isaac Babel, "The History of My Dovecot," a story based on the writer's experience of a pogrom in Nikolaev in 1904 in Modern Jew­ ish History: A Source Reader, ed. Robert Chazan and Marc Lee Raphael (New York: Schocken, 1974), pp. 116-124.

^Bernard Malamud, The Fixer (New York: D ell, 1968), p. 10. All subsequent page references are to this edition and will be included in the text. The Fixer was originally published in New York by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966.

^Rabbi Abraham, quoted by Martin Buber, "Strategic Retreat," in Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters, trans. Olga Marx (New York: Schocken, 1947), p. 115. Hereafter the t i t l e w ill be shortened to Early Masters.

lOAbraham ibn Ezra is a sixteenth century poet who w rites: I f I sold shrouds No one would die. I f I sold lamps, Then, in the sky The sun, fo r spite, Would shine by night. Quoted by Nathan Ausubel, ed., A Treasury of Jewish Folklore: Stories, Traditions, Legends, Humor, Wisdom and Folk Songs of the Jewish People (New York: Crown, 1948), p. 343. 112

11Alan Warren Friedman, "The Hero as Schook," in Bernard Malamud and the C ritic s , ed. Leslie A. Field and Joyce W. Field (New York: New York University Press, 1970), p. 296.

12Newman, p. 12.

l^Quoted by Martin Buber, "The Enemy" in Tales of the Hasidim: The Later Masters, trans. Olga Marx (New York: Schocken, 1948), p. 189.

1 lie Wiesel, Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters, trans. Marion Wiesel (New York: Vantage Books, 1973), p. 110.

15I b id ., p. 111.

1^Jewish trad itio n w ill even allow a man to be an atheist and at the same time a "good Jew" i f he performs just action: "He who trans­ acts his business honestly and is pleasing to his fellow man is ac­ counted as having fu lfille d the entire Torah." See S. S. Cohon, Judaism: A Way of Life (New York: Schocken, 1962), p. 102.

^M artin Buber, For the Sake of Heaven: A Chronicle, trans. Ludwig Lewisohn (New York: Atheneum, 1969), p. 202.

^Friedman, p. 293.

^Rabbi Shmelke, quoted by Buber, "The Commandment to Love," in Early Masters, p. 190.

20Edwin M. Eigner, "The Loathly Ladies," in Bernard Malamud and the C r itic s , p. 106.

21 In the Mendel Beiliss case the murderer was the mother of the young victim's friend.

22sandy Cohen, Bernard Malamud and the T ria l by Love, M e lv ille Studies in American Culture, ed. Robert Brainard P earsall, vol. 1 (Amsterdam, Rodopi N.V., 1974), p. 80.

23in Kabbalistic demonology Lilith has two primary roles: slayer of children and seducer of men. See the Encyclopaedia Judaica, 1971 ed; s.v. " L ilith ," by G[ershom] Sch[olem].

24jhe Shekina appears to a zaddik in the Holy Land "in the shape of a woman who weeps and laments over the husband of her youth" in Martin Buber, The Legend of the Baal-Shem, trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Schocken,1969), p. 22.

25isaac Bashevis Singer, "Gimpel the Fool," An Isaac Bashevis Singer Reader (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giraux, 1971), pp. 3-21. Gimpel and Bok are unlike the classical schlemiel who is duped into believing a bastard child is his; Singer's and Malamud's schlemiels 113 accept responsibility for a child even though they know they are not the natural father.

^Among the c ritic s who recognize that The Fixer is more con­ cerned with the change in Bok than with his circumstances are Friedman, pp. 285-303; William J. Handy, "Malamud's The Fixer," Modern Fiction: A Formalist Approach (Carbondale: So. Illin o is University Press, 1971), pp. 131-158; Wesley A. Kort, "The Fixer and the Death of God" in Shriven Selves: Religious Problems in Recent American Fiction (Phila­ delphia: Fortress Press, 1972), pp. 90-115; Tony Tanner, "A New Life," in City of Words: American Fiction 1950-1970 (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), p p .322-343.

27sanford Pinsker, "The Schlemiel as Moral Bungler: Bernard Malamud's Ironic Heroes," in The Schlemiel as Metaphor: Studies in the Yiddish and American Jewish Novel (Carbondale: S. Illin o is Uni­ versity Press, 1971), p. 118.

28james M. Mel la rd , "Four Versions of Pastoral" in Bernard Malamud and the C ritic s , p. 72.

2^Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog, L ife Is With People: The Culture of the Shtetl (New York: Schocken, 1962), pp. 234-235.

30Robert A lte r, "Bernard Malamud: Jewishness as Metaphor," in A fter the Tradition: Essays in Modern Jewish W riting (New York: Dutton, 1969), p. 125.

^Sheldon Norman Grebstein, "Bernard Malamud and the Jewish Movement," in Contemporary American-Jewish L iteratu re: C ritica l Essays, ed. Irving Malin (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), p. 183.

32Malamud has said of The Fixer that i t "has a mythological quality. I t has to be treated as myth, an endless story. . . ." Quoted by Haskel Frankel, "Interview with Bernard Malamud," Saturday Review, 10 September 1966, p. 39.

33fhe Rebbe of Kotzk, quoted by Wiesel, p. 235. CHAPTER V I

THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE STRANGER

The Tenants

"A stranger is the friend of another stranger on account of th e ir strangeness on earth ."1 Hasidic saying

"A w rite r must say something worthwhile, but i t must be a rt; his problem is to handle social issues so imaginatively and uniquely that they become a r t . "2 Bernard Malamud

The Tenants, Malamud's most recent novel (1971), explores the relationship between white and black man or more sp ecifically between the Jew and the stranger. In a sense The Tenants may be seen as radically different from Malamud's previous novels, for his hero,

Harry Lesser, fails to achieve that significant self-knowledge which leads to salvation. The Tenants' ending is tragic; at best Lesser glimpses his relationship to the stranger only at the moment of his death. Yet I suggest that the book is characterized by fam iliar

Hasidic themes: the need fo r transformation, the importance of the heart over the head, the necessity of confronting the dark forces in life , and, in particular, the urgency of accepting the stranger as oneself. While these themes are not exclusive to Hasidism, I in te r- pret The Tenants within a Jewish tradition because of the Jewish protagonist and his Jewish landlord. Levenspiel the landlord is not

114 115 a father figure who shows the hero the way to salvation, but his own sufferings teach Levenspiel the importance of the heart. His continual plea of "hab rachmones" (have mercy), which also serves to close the novel, suggests at the end a ritu a l chant because of the constant repetition. In addition, Malamud's style in The Tenants, his fusion of reality and fantasy, and in particular his use of the double, reflect

Hasidic teachings and complement the themes.

I f Harry Lesser closely resembles any other Malamud hero i t is

Seymour Levin, the Eastern Jewish intellectual who would live in his head and deny his heart. But Lesser is a writer of some reputation rather than a bungling college instructor and there is l i t t l e trace of the comic schlemiel about him. And while Levin, lik e other Malamud heroes, is willing to embark on a journey to change his life , Lesser is determined to stay put in one place—an old abandoned tenement house in New York City. Lesser's refusal to move despite the pleas of his landlord, Levenspiel, is a sign of his general unwillingness to face change of any kind; he fears human involvement, love, and death.

Home, for Lesser, is where his book is; "he lives to write, writes to live."'* Redemption, for Lesser, lies clearly in his intellect; the author of one successful work and one fa ilu re , he sees the book he is writing as a source of salvation.

But Lesser is having trouble finishing the book; i t is as though the book is asking him to say more than he knows. The t i t l e of

Lesser's book is The Promised End and its epigraph reads, "Who is i t can te ll me who I am?" Both are from King Lear and are a fittin g and ironic commentary on Lesser's own situation, for his ending is also tragic and he too is a man who has "but slenderly known himself." The

book's subject matter is love and at one point Lesser thinks, "I w rite

about love because I know so l i t t l e about it" (144). The book's cen­

tral character is a thirty-five year old writer who suffers from the

realization that he has wasted more of his life than he was entitled

to. His name in the first draft is Lazar Cohen, an old and now dead

artist friend of Lesser's who could not finish a painting. Night

after night the writer in Lesser's book wakes in sweaty fright at

himself, stricken by anxiety because he finds it hard to give love.

"Love up to a point is no love at all. His life betrays his imagina­

tion." (176). Lesser's writer sets out to write a novel about someone

he conceives to be himself yet d iffe re n t. He thinks he can teach

himself to love by creating a character who will in a sense love for

him.

Lesser's writer is an obvious projection of himself and though

he shows some awareness of th is, Lesser does not seem to realize why

he can't w rite his own ending. Actually, Lesser is afraid to finish

his book because he can't face death. Malamud shows us Lesser's unconscious fear of death by te llin g us that he types "wither" fo r

"jjither" a ll the time (169). Also, as he w rites, Lesser remembers certain fleeting images of the disjunct past: the death of his mother in a street accident when he was a child, the death of his older brother in the war. These are "useless deaths" to him and he thinks as he w rites, "One thing about w riting a book, you keep death in place; idea is to keep on writing" (182). Lesser is as afraid of death as he is of love; he does not re a lize , as one of the Hasidim 117 would put it, that "in order really to live, a man must give himself to death.

Like a ll Malamud's heroes, Harry Lesser is a man whose fears and insecurities make him a stranger to his own motivations. He thinks of himself as basically well-meaning and in some ways his actions show that he is . When he f ir s t meets W illie , the black man who seeks a sanctuary on the same floor of the abandoned tenement, Lesser feels empathy for him as a writer and stores W illie's typewriter in his apartment at night to keep i t from being stolen. He even shares his own apartment with W illie for a few days when the angry landlord is trying to find him and have him arrested for trespassing. Finally, he buys W illie some make-shift furniture to use in s till another apartment when the landlord destroys the old s tu ff. Of course the last is partly a means of getting Willie out of his flat, but the action is a decent one nevertheless.

We see Lesser's ambivalent feelings toward W illie when, at the black man's request, Lesser condescendingly takes time to read and criticize Willie's stories. He tells Willie he'll read his manu­ script if W illie really wants him to, and Willie responds with hatred,

"Would I ask you, i f I d id n 't want you to?" (52). Lesser finds the odor of W illie's manuscript offensive and wonders if it is an odor of decay or i f the black man's tears had "stunk up the pages" (60).

The odor that Lesser objects to is associated with suffering and death, realities that Lesser would deny if he could. When he attacks

W illie 's w ritin g , he does i t on the basis of its form, though he knows he has questionable credentials as an authority on the art of 118 fiction--fifteen years writing one good book, one bad, one unfinished.

Actually, Lesser finds fault with the violence of W illie's form be­ cause he fears any kind of violence, especially that which is within him. Thus, though Lesser pretends even to himself that he is W illie 's friend, he secretly takes pleasure when the black man cannot cope with his criticism : "The black, eyes tumid, beats his head against

Lesser's wall, as the writer not without pleasure looks on" (69).

As Lesser deceives himself about his feelings for W illie , he does also about his relationship with women. In his seduction of

Mary Kettlesmith, the black girlfriend of W illie's friend, Sam, Lesser trie s to convince himself that he has done nothing wrong—but he must face Sam's tears and the h o s tility of Sam's friends. Lesser also te lls himself, "It's a free country," when he thinks he is falling in love with Irene Bell, Willie's white girlfriend, and tries to deny Willie's love for her. But when he reads the poem which W illie has w ritten to

Irene after he has lost her, he has to change his thinking:

Irene White Bitch You Ditch Black Knight W illie fuck His luck Howdo Sadeye Blues (189)

Lesser also insists that he has to te ll W illie about the a ffa ir with

Irene because "there was no chance" not to, but Irene retorts with percepti on:

Shit there was no chance. It 's your goddamn pride. You had to be the one to te ll him. It 's your profes­ sion to tell everybody everything. You couldn't wait. (156) We may see Lesser, then, as a man who becomes more and more ob­ sessed with the need to control his world through a rt. He swears that no man or woman w ill ever persuade him to give his book up. He thinks he has "no choice," but must bring it to "its inevitable and per­ fected end" (103). W illie must be told about his involvement with

Irene before it gets "sticky"; he doesn't want to mess up his mood for writing (137). Near the end of the novel, after W illie has burned

Lesser's manuscript and le f t , Lesser starts rewriting and decides that if a bum or strayed hippie settled in any of the empty apartments, "he would call a cop or have the cat ejected. Awful thing to do to some­ body without shelter but he had to fend off distraction" (180). But it is W illie who returns to distract Lesser, or to put it more pre­ cisely, to force Lesser to look more closely at himself.

The fascination of W illie Spearmint is that while he is a fu lly realized character in his own rig h t, he may also be seen as a double for Harry Lesser. When Lesser f ir s t meets W illie , the black's eyes are described as having "a detachment so pure i t menaced; at the same time a suggestion of frig h t Lesser f e lt reflected Lesser's" (25-26).

Different as the two men seem on the surface, the more we learn about

W illie the more we can identify him with Lesser. He too is a writer who feels he needs isolation to work w ell. He sees Irene only on weekends; the rest of the time he spends working on his book. Also lik e Lesser, he has high aspirations about his w riting; "I sear to myself I w ill be the best w rite r, the best Soul W riter," he thinks Furthermore, I f Lesser's book is concerned with a man who can't love, W illie 's stories are fille d with blacks who can only hate. In one of his stories a black kills a white man to taste a piece of his heart; he starts cutting him up but can find the heart nowhere. The violence in W illie's stories shows the depth of his unspent rage; in five of his stories there are five deaths, four blacks and one white.

W illie hates the white man, but he hates himself more—a truth he sus­ pects when he beats his black woman for no plausible reason and the panic of his g u ilt causes him to run. He fears that i f he looks in a mirror i t w ill show that he has turned white, "but the depression that affects him is because he is black" (56). W illie, like Lesser, cannot face himself, and he takes refuge in his a rt as an escape from lif e .

W illie seems different from Lesser in his negation of form, but in his violent behavior W illie is acting out Lesser's suppressed hostilities. When Lesser first criticizes Willie's writing, his retort is

A rt can kiss my juicy ass. You want to know what's really art. I_ am art. Willie Spearmint, black man. My form is myself. (68)

When W illie destroys Lesser's manuscript he writes much the same sen­ timent on the wall with its ashes: "REVOLUTION IS THE REAL ART. NONE

OF THAT FORM SHIT. I AM THE RIGHT FORM" (163)

Nevertheless, W illie's stories, filled with violence and hatred, reflect Lesser's hatred of himself as a human being. Lesser has virtually isolated himself from his own feelings as well as from com­ mitment to another; he fears and negates his m ortality and thus vio­ lates his own humanity. When Lesser meets W illie on the s ta irs , long 121

after the destruction of the manuscript he suppresses his hatred and says, "I forgive you, W illie, for what you did to me," to which Willie

replies with insight and fe lt anger, "I forgive you for forgiven me"

(206). I t is not until he is unable to w rite that Lesser can sup­ press his rage no longer, and waiting un til W illie leaves the apart­ ment, hacks up the black man's typewriter with fu ll barbaric abandon.

By in it ia lly refusing to accept the fury within him as his own, Lesser invites that fury to overwhelm him and lead him on a path of destruc­ tion. As the Hasidim teach, a man must accept violence and hatred as part of himself if he would turn them into the service of good.5

In his relationship with Irene, each man mirrors the other for each thinks more of his book than he does of her. Once Lesser becomes established in his relationship with Irene, his behavior is no differ­ ent from W illie 's . He starts working at nights and seeing Irene on weekends only. He borrow money from her and, lik e W illie , promises to pay i t back when he gets an advance on his book.

W illie, in his turn, acts out Lesser's role as writer. In spite of his protests, he worries about form and can't finish his stories.

He changes his name to B ill Spear, an attempt to deny his identity.

In one particularly revealing story he writes about blacks who k ill a

Jew slumlord, taste his flesh, and go to a synagogue where they put on yarmulkes and make "Yid noises, praying." In an alternate ending the synagogue is taken over and turned into a mosque; "the blacks dance hasidically" (186). What is clearly happening in the story within the story is the old tale of the victim izer and the victim becoming one. 122

As the novel nears its conclusion, each writer is searching the

trash cans to read the other's writing. They stalk each other in the

halls and listen to each other writing. Lesser grows a limp, Lenin-

esque goatee that matches W illie 's . W illie te lls Lesser, "You think you are Chosen People. Well you are wrong on that. We are the Chosen

People from as of now on" (206). F in ally , neither one can w rite and

each searches the trash cans of the other for evidences of writing and finds nothing. In their final confrontation, Lesser is willing

to face his anger as well as his own mortality and that is why he thinks that "each feels the anguish of the other" (211). At the moment of his death, Lesser sees the black man and himself as one.

"Alive and with his eyes open he calls us his murderers," reads one of Malamud's epigraphs. "I got to make it. I got to find the end. . ." reads the other. The f ir s t is by Antiphon and could apply to W illie's continual accusations; the second is from a song of

Bessie Smith and could easily be Lesser's theme. I t is no coincidence that a white speaks for a black, a black for a white in Malamud's epigraphs. Harry Lesser and W illie Spearmint are one and the same, and Lesser must feel this truth before he can meet his end, tragic though i t be.

If Lesser differs from Malamud's previous heroes in his failure to achieve salvation that may be due in part to the absence of either a strong father or mother figure to show him the way.

Levenspiel, Lesser's landlord, is the one important father figure in the book, yet he has an anger and weakness that m irror Lesser's own.

He is trying to evict Lesser so that he can sell the apartment 123 building, and his family problems and need for money become more and more bizarre. Of his own father, Levenspiel says near the beginning of the novel:

My father was a worry-wart immigrant with a te rrib le temper who couldn't do anything rig h t, not to mention make a living. He wiped his feet all over my youth, a bastard, thank God he's dead. (15)

Furthermore, i t is Levenspiel who calls a policeman and destroys

W illie's furniture and sanctuary. We are a long way from Morris

Bober or Shmuel who show the way to salvation by th eir kindness and love. Nevertheless, Levenspiel does have the insight to evaluate

Lesser's situation accurately when he shouts at him through a closed door: "Art my ass, in this world it 's heart that counts. Wait, yo u 'll get yours one of these days Lesser. Mark my words" (19).

As the novel progresses and Levenspiel's family problems increase, his heart softens toward Lesser and he speaks to him "as to a sick relative." When he finds Lesser bleeding after his struggle with

W illie , he says with perception, "My God, Lesser, look what you have done to yourself. Your're your worst enemy. . ." (155). But it is too late; Lesser entrapped in his own compulsion to deny lif e refuses to move from his self-appointed prison, levenspiel's continued plea fo r Lesser to "Hab rachmones" (have mercy) reaches the force of ritu a l by the end of the novel where the repetition of the words "mercy" becomes a chant:

Hab rachmones, I beg you. Mercy on me Mercy mercy mercy mercy mercy mercy mercy mercy mercy mercy mercy mercy mercy mercy (211)

The r itu a lis tic chant suggests the compassionate love of God, the sav­ ing grace that enables a man to achieve freedom from himself. 124

Of the women in the novel, Irene Bell seems at firs t to be a

typical Malamud heroine: discontented but basically loving and giving,

the means to a new lif e i f the hero would but choose i t . But somehow

she is not strong enough to inspire Lesser's transformation, or per­

haps she is a reflection of Lesser's own inner weaknesses which have

him enslaved.

Basically, Irene does not like herself as her name change (from

Belinsky), bleached h a ir, and badly made-up face show. She shows

some awareness of this when she te lls Lesser that "I wanted to act mainly so that I could stop being myself" (108), also when she says

of her relationship to Lesser and W illie: "I'm attracted by characters

like both of you, men more deeply involved in their work than with me, maybe because that's the way I really want it" (174). For a while, when th eir love a ffa ir is going w ell, i t seems that Irene and Lesser might redeem each other; Lesser talks of marriage, Irene stops bleach­

ing her h a ir, lets her nails grow in , and her face seems "redeemed"

(141). We remember the words of the Shekinah figure: "Approach me and my redemption w ill approach."6 But Lesser ultim ately retreats from

Irene, denying her love and the salvation i t promises. Irene's las t words to Lesser are sparse, judgmental, and to the point: "No book is as important as me" (208).

Malamud's style in The Tenants is characterized by that now familiar fusion of realism and fantasy which we associated with the sacred and profane world of Hasidism. As in The Fixer, the point of view is lim ited to the main character and we get nothing of the world that does not impinge upon the hero's consciousness. The world of 125

Lesser's tenement with its rats and roaches and broken lig h t bulbs seem

real indeed, yet i t is also a powerful symbol of Lesser's inner sick­

ness and lack of insight. It is fitting that Lesser meet W illie, his

dark double, in the abandoned apartment of his neighbor, Holzheimer,

for the walls are papered with scenes of primitive jungle violence:

orchidaceous flowers eating alive a bewildered goat as a g o rilla and

two snakes look on (9 ). The setting is appropriately symbolic of the

destructive forces that W illie represents and Lesser would deny. As

Lesser deteriorates in his relationship with W illie , the environment becomes increasingly putrid:

Fog seeped into the building, f illin g each empty flo o r, each freezing room with deadwater smell. A beach stank at low tide. A flock of gulls, wind-driven in a storm, had bloodied the c l i f f and lay rotting at the foot of i t . (203)

These are the odors of decay which Lesser fears and associates with

W illie and which therefore overcome him. By the end of the novel

Lesser's apartment has become a place of ambiguity and a ll fa m iliar things are touched with strangeness. There is green mold on a pencil.

The flo o r t i l t s . Lesser cannot recognize a cup he drinks from (206-

207).

As with place, so with time; the seasons seem to mirror Lesser's inner condition. The time span of the novel is from one winter to the next, but a ll the v ita l action occurs during the cold weather. I t is bleak, it is dreary, and we are continually reminded of the iciness of death. The wind in the street is compared to "a liv e ghost haunting its e lf" (52); by the end of the novel the wind is "weird sad sea music" that haunts the empty rooms (207). Thus time and place become 126

spectral and ambiguous in The Tenants as they do in The Assistant and

The Fixer, and as they do in the mythical world of Hasidism. To

Malamud, as to the Hasidic teller of tales, what is important occurs

within his character. Furthermore, Lesser's fantasies mold his ac­

tions and it is increasingly difficult to distinguish one from the

other.

There are, in fact, three symbolic endings to the novel and while

the first two are clearly part of Lesser's dream world, it is d iffi­

cult to tell how much of the final one is real, how much is vision.

In his f ir s t fantasy Lesser imagines himself destroyed in a fir e set

by Levenspiel, the "mysterious stranger i f not heart of darkness"

(20); his fears project an apocalyptic ending to his reluctance to

move. In the second ending, the longest fantasy in the book, Lesser

envisions a double wedding between Irene and W illie , Mary Kettlesmith

and himself. It is probably one of the most ironically humorous

scenes that Malamud has written and is distinguished by his special

talent fo r blending the comic and the profound. The two couples are

in the heart of Africa attended by an old trib a l chief, a middle-aged

rabbi, and friends and relatives from the states as well as local

natives. Lesser is wearing a ra ffia s k irt over his jockey shorts.

Mary Kettlesmith is wearing a short maternity s k irt. The chief

preaches Lesser a sermon on brotherhood: "Do not push your spear into

the belly of them which is not your enemy. I f somebody do bad i t do

not die" (194). Lesser's impotent father, sitting in a wheelchair, complains of the marriage: " It's my own fa u lt because I d id n 't give you a Jewish education" (156). The rabbi who marries Irene and W illie 127

is a Litvak (East European) with a disordered bear. He tells Irene and

W illie who stand under a white s ilk canopy: "My rabbinical colleagues

will criticize me strongly for performing this ceremony, I know this,

but I ask myself would God le t me do i t , so I did it" (198). Then he

ends his sermon with the prophetic, "Someday God w ill bring together

Ishmael and Israel to live as one people. It won't be the first miracle" (155). Comedy has become profoundity: Ishmael and Is ra el,

the stranger and the Jew, symbolically united in Lesser's fantasy; the

ending of his book i f he dared.

But Malamud's book ends in a marriage of violence and not in a marriage of love. In the fin al scene of the novel, the apartment

house has become a jungle: "the trees in Holzheimer's room had moved

o ff the walls onto the dank floors in the f la t . Taking root, they

thickened there and spread into the hall. . ." (211). Willie and

Lesser meet in a grassy clearing in the bush. How much is dream and how much is fact becomes unimportant, for when Lesser thrusts his jagged ax through the bone and brain of W illie and when the black uses his razor-sharp saber to cut the white's balls from the rest of him, each has become an effective symbol fo r his race's destructive forces. The ending is tragic, a relentless vision of what might be; the affirm ation comes when Lesser perceives that each feels the other's anguish and thus knows that W illie and he are one. Levenspiel's fin al plea is for mercy, as well as daring, to accept the pain that comes from immersion in lif e .

After the intial book reviews, The Tenants evoked little critical commentary. Robert A lte r calls i t "clearly the weakest volume of 128

fic tio n Malamud has published and adds:

In The Tenants the insistent presence of the new black militancy impinges upon his [Malamud's] imagination, but one senses his lim itations here precisely because in the end he can only make of a crisis in national con­ sciousness g ris t for his private m ill. W illie Spearmint duly recalls for us ghetto squalor and degradation, Southern persecution, black anger and pride, but all this finally dissolves in Malamud's claustrophilia, his fixation on the allures of with­ drawal and sordid self-interm ent, and that preoccupation has no in trin s ic connection with the racial s itu a tio n .7

Sandy Cohen is more affirmative in her critique, writing that "Malamud has made of contemporary lif e a significant a rtis tic statement" but she adds, "Malamud does not explore the dark side of the a rtis t ade­ quately."8

I must take issue with Alter's statement and qualify Cohen's for

I think The Tenants, while not as moving a novel as The Assistant or

The Fixer, is nevertheless a powerful work which has in trin s ic meaning for the racial situation. If we see the novel through the eyes of the

Hasidim, The Tenants shows the necessity for coming to terms with the dark or black man in all of us. Harry Lesser, as a well-meaning but life-denying Jewish intellectual, is different from most men only in degree, for he isolates himself from his deepest feelings and fears human commitment. He violates his own humanity when he negates love and death, and W illie Spearmint is the man he can tre a t no better than he does himself. Seen in this lig h t, Malamud's story is a sig n ifican t commentary on the relationship between the races: the Jew,

Malamud's "everyman," must affirm lif e for himself i f he is to affirm it for the stranger for, finally, the Jew and the stranger are one.

Underlying the surface re a lity of The Tenants again is the Hasidic 129 b e lie f that a ll souls are one, and that "each being a part of the other, is in the deepest sense, responsible for the other.

While it is clear that The Tenants does not incorporate Hasidic teachings as extensively as do Malamud's previous novels—Lesser fa ils to achieve salvation and his "prison" is not a way of accepting re­ sponsibility but a retreat from the world—The Tenants does emphasize important Hasidic themes apparent in Malamud's work since his firs t novel. The Tenants shows us the need fo r transformation, the impor­ tance of the heart over the head, the necessity of confronting the dark forces of lif e , and, in particu lar, the danger of denying the stranger as oneself.Malamud's style in The Tenants, his fusion of realism and fantasy, his use of the double, and his ritualistic ending suggest the work be taken in a sp iritual sense: as the Hasidim teach us, mercy or love can free man from the destructiveness of self. 130

Footnotes fo r Chapter VI

^Martin Buber, The Legend of the Baal-Shem, trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Schocken, 1969), p. 22.

^Interview with Malamud, New York Times Book Review, 13 October 1963, p. 5.

^Bernard Malamud, The Tenants (New York: Pocket Books, 1972), p. 19. All subsequent page references are to this edition and will be included in the text. The Tenants was o rig in ally published in New York by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971.

^Rabbi Yitzhak, quoted by Martin Buber, "Dying and Living" in Tales of the Hasidim: The Later Masters, trans. Olga Marx (New York: Schocken, 1948), p. 291. Hereafter the t i t l e w ill be shorted to Later Masters.

^Rabbie Moshe Leib, quoted by Martin Buber, "When I t Is Good to Deny the Existence of God," in Later Masters, p. 89. • ^Martin Buber, For the Sake of Heaven: A Chronicle, trans. Ludwig Lewisohn (New York: Atheneum, 1969), p. 230.

^Robert A lte r, "Updike, Malamud, and the Fire This Time," Commentary, October 1972, p. 72.

^Sandy Cohen, Bernard Malamud and the Trial by Love, M elville Studies in American Culture, ed. Robert Brainard Pearsall, Vol. I (Amsterdam: Rodopi, N.V., 1974), pp. 117, 119.

^Samuel H. Dresner, The Zaddik: The Doctrine of the Zaddik Accord­ ing to the Writings of Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polnoy (New York: Schocken, 1974), p. 207. CHAPTER V I I

THE SANCTITY OF THE TALE

The Short Stories

"When once someone appears before you from a foreign land and tells you your story, that will be a sign of liberation from the getters of your deeds. The Baal Shem Tov

"In a sense, the w rite r, in his a rt, without d irectly stating i t . . . must remind man that he has, in his human striv in g , in­ vented nothing less than freedom; and i f he w ill devoutly remember th is, he w ill understand the best way to preserve i t , and his own highest value."2 Bernard Malamud

The Hasidic belief in the sanctity of the tale, the notion that

a story could have potency to effect change, led to the development of a vast and rich folklore. Hasidic tales remind us of the need for redemption, the power of a holy man, the terror of e v il, and the supremacy of love. Even today the Hasidim conceive of the ta le as a potential for the "powerful, even magical, equivalent of action."0

I f one w ill listen and understand, as the Besht te lls his listen er in the quotation above, the story has power to set a man free. In the best short stories of Bernard Malamud, Hasidic themes dominate and compel the reader to see: freedom comes from the knowledge and giving of self. When Malamud is at his best, and I believe that those short stories that illu s tra te Hasidic themes are his supreme achievement, his a rt borders on the magical. We are in the presence of a power that

131 132 suspends us between this world and another; the se lf becomes the other and we experience the mystery of transformation.

Of his four collections of short stories,^ Malamud's earliest one,

The Magic Barrel, is certainly his most impressive. While the stories deal with a variety of themes and people in old and new world settings, the outstanding stories, as I see them ("The F irst Seven Years," "The

Mourners," "AngeT tevine," "The Last Mohican," and "The Magic Barrel") deal with old world Jews displaced or in tension with the world around them.

"The First Seven Years," the opening story of the collection, is a tale somewhat reminiscent of The Assistant for it revolves around the relationship of a storeowner and his helper. In a reversal of the pattern of Morris Bober and Frank Alpine however, Feld, the shoemaker, learns from the example of his helper, Sobel, a Polish refugee "who had by the skin of his teeth escaped Hitler's incinerators" (17). A well-meaning and honest man, Feld is nevertheless insensitive both to

Sobel's worth and to his daughter Miriam's needs. He thinks i t

"queer" that Sobel reads so much when he is without formal education and he cannot understand why Miriam should reject the college boy,

Max, simply because he is "only interested in things" (14). That

Sobel has worked for him fiv e years and demanded so l i t t l e in return,

Feld interprets as the refugee's reaction to his te rrib le experiences and fear of the world. He refuses to see the love that has grown between his assistant and his daughter, for he cannot accept what to him would be the ugliness of their poor life together. But Feld has a “heart condition" (10) and is dependent on Sobel's aid; only when he 133

seeks out his assistant in the privacy of his fla t is he compelled to

face both Sobel's suffering and theintensity of his love. Almost

against his better judgment, Feld bends to Sobel's dream and gives him

leave to ask for Miriam in two more years.

Part of the power of a story like "The First Seven Years" lies in

the wealth of its suggestiveness. What would be a simple love story

becomes a rich and allusive tale, for the situation and title remind

us of the Biblical story of Jacob and Laban.^ W ill Feld require Sobel

to work seven more years before he can speak to Miriam? In the context

of both stories, of course, it does not matter. Love means sacrifice

and service to another; Sobel will gladly pound leather for his love.

As the Hasidim teach, where the heart is concerned, suffering leads to

insight; Feld accepts Sobel and walks home with a stronger stride (18).

In addition to its allusiveness, "The First Seven Years" compels

us by the rough magic of its tone. Both Feld and his assistant speak

in the broken syntax of old world Jews, but the intensity of th eir

feelings gives th eir speech an awkward beauty. "So why you look for

strange boys in the street they should go out with Miriam? Why you don't think of me?" Sobel complains to Feld as he passionately vents

his frustrated love (16).

In addition, there is the narrator's own voice, sometimes clumsy, often lyrical, evocative of the Yiddish that colors the speech of his

landsmen. Note his description of the refugee, Sobel:

He was a stocky man, poorly dressed, with a bald head that had once been blond, a severely plain face and soft blue eyes prone to tears over the sad books he read, a young man but old - no one would have guessed thirty. (10-11) 134

We are seeing Sobel through the eyes of Feld but somehow refined by the author's vision. The tension between the severity and the softness of

Sobel's face is not unlike Malamud's own tone—-a cross between the com­ passionate, the matter of fact, and the boldly ironic. There is no doubt that Malamud's sympathies lie with these old world Jews, and he is surely on the side of the heart over the head, but he does not le t us forget that Sobel's choice means hardship and that Feld's dream of a secure l if e for his daughter is dead. The victory, of course, belongs to the spirit, but it is a bittersweet victory that promises suffering and deprivation.

In a somewhat more subdued tone, "The Mourners' presents the fa m iliar Hasidic theme of redemptive suffering. Kessler, an old and embittered man, lives alone in a decrepit tenement on New York's East

Side. Having deserted his wife and children thirty years ago, he lives in isolated contempt for his neighbors. Once he has a quarrel with the ja n ito r, however, he is warned and then evicted by the land­ lord, Gruber, an old world Jew, who with his "consistently worried face" and "yards of baggy clothes" (20) is no less grotesque than

Kessler. The climax of the story occurs when the authorities evict

Kessler from his f la t and place him with his dispossessed goods in the middle of the sidewalk. Most of the neighbors ignore Kessler, who sits staring at the snow until he is rescued by an Italian family who carry

Kessler and his goods back to his apartment. A German neighbor, Hoff­ man, cuts the padlock o ff the door. The news of the old man's return enrages Gruber who comes back to the apartment to evict him again.

Only this la s t time the sight of Kessler in the traditional Jewish attitude of mourning, s ittin g without shoes in the middle of the flo o r, affects the landlord to the quick. Kessler is in fact mourning his own death, for the terror of his eviction has set his past life in proper perspective; he bemoans his miserable lif e and the way he abandoned his family. Gruber cannot know this; he can only project the mourner's ritu a lize d behaviour onto his own gu ilty conscience and believes that i t is he who is being mourned. Thus the story ends with both mourners frozen in a ritualized tableau, each one sitting on the floor mourning his own death, yet a death that is the f ir s t promise of regeneration.

The power of "The Mourners" lies in the contrast between the economy of its te llin g and the complexity of human emotion and behav­ iour which are presented. Kessler, we are told, is "a quarrelsome type" and "a troublemaker" (19). His neighbors are simply a "wizened"

Italian woman, her three middle-aged sons and a "sullen," childless

German couple, named Hoffman, none of whom speak to Kessler, nor he to them. Yet it is these seeming hostile or indifferent Gentiles who when confronted with Kessler's evictioncome to his aid and return him to his room. Kessler, in the shock of his displacement does not even seem to be aware of what they are doing, yet Malamud suggests that his remorse and redemption are as much a response to th eir acts of charity as to his own anguished predicament. Gruber, an old world Jew no less than

Kessler, is a man who insists on the sanctity of the law, but his terror at the sight of his tenant's suffering compels him to intuit, i f not completely understand, that in his violation of Kessler he has destroyed his own s p irit. Only in the acceptance of his own death, symbolized by the ritu alized act of mourning, can he accomplish the 136

promised hope of redemption. The story is true to the teaching of the

Hasidim: "In order to really liv e , a man must give himself to death.

But when he has done so he discovers that he is not to die—but to

liv e ." 6

S t ill within the grim New York tenement world of "The Mourners,"

"Angel Levine" is marvellously lightened by the introduction of fantasy.

Manischevitz, a ta ilo r, has suffered the misfortunes of Job: the loss

of his children, his livelihood, his wife's health and his own. One

night as he sits reading the Jewish newspaper, expecting, with some

astonishment "to discover something about himself" (43), he is visited by a black man who claims to be a Jewish angel. He calls himself

Levine and offers his assistance to Manischevitz, but the old man feels mocked and calls him a fake. Levine leaves for Harlem and Manischev-

itz's sufferings continue. But when his wife Fanny is at the point of death, he dreams of Levine with wings and takes i t as a sign. There­ a fte r he seeks him out in Harlem, finds him in a honky-tonk, and fin a lly acknowledges him a Jewish angel. The acknowledgement brings a reciprocal blessing, fo r Fanny is healed and Levine grows wings.

Like "The First Seven Years," "Angel Levine" derives part of its effectiveness from its allusion to the Bible. But if Manischevitz in his suffering is a modern Job, the insignificance of his person and the tone of his complaining make him a humorous contrast to his B ib li­ cal counterpart. The story is also rich in allusion to Hasidic folk­ lore. When the tailor complains to God it is with a familiarity that has been associated with- the Hasidic Rabbi Moshe Leib, who is said to have spoken to God with a "half-coaxing, half-affectionate tone of a 137 child and the language used by the common people."^ In a quite sim ilar way, Manischevitz questions and entreats his Maker:

My dear God, sweetheart, did I deserve that this should happen to me? Give Fanny back her health, and to me for myself that I shouldn't feel pain in every step. Help now or tomorrow is too late This I don't have to te ll you. (43)

Another Hasidic note in the story is the b e lie f taught by Rabbi Shmelke that "no angel is complete unless someone says 'Amen'" and the sim ilar one taught by Rabbi Moshe that "even the ascent and descent of the angels depends upon my deeds.In addition, there is also the Hasidic insistence on the oneness of the Jew and the stranger, for Manischev­ it z , we note, has as much trouble with Levine's blackness as his angelhood (46).

The special charm of "Angel Levine" is in its artful fusion of the real and the fantastic, though some readers probably want to assign more of i t to the world of fantasy thun is necessary. Black

Jews who consider themselves descedants of Ethiopian Hebrews or

Falashas, "the lost sheep of the House of Israel," are not uncommon in

New York City.^ When Manischevitz comes upon the four blacks engaged in Talmudic study in a store converted to a synagogue, Malamud is describing a scene that has a link with reality. It is Levine's angelhood, his "magnificent black wings" (53), which fin a lly takes us into the realm of the fantastic. And it is Manischevitz's last line,

"Believe me there are Jews everywhere" (53), which suspends us some­ where between the secular world and the world of the s p irit--th a t wonder-fi 11ed world of Malamud and the Hasidim where acceptance is given to a ll men without distinction and thus a ll men becomes Jews. The motif of the journey as a means to the discovery of s e lf, a motif Malamud uses in his f ir s t four novels, is employed most success­

fu lly in "The Last Mohican." Arthur Fidelman, a "self-confessed f a i l ­

ure as a painter" (136) travels to Italy to become an art critic and

learns instead to become a mensch. Fidelman's mentor in Rome is Shimon

Susskind, a refugee from Is ra e l, a combination schnorrer (beggar), wandering Jew, and V irg il. Fidelman, lik e most of Malamud's young

Jewish intellectuals, is out of touch with his past and reluctant to give of himself. He comes to Italy to study Giotto and with an intense passion for Ita lia n history. When Suskind asks Fidelman for his su it, the student reacts with annoyance; he is, after a ll, supporting him­ self with hard-earned money and is the owner of only two suits him­ s e lf. Pursued by Susskind through the streets of Rome, Fidelman turns into a pursuer when he suspects the beggar has stolen his briefcase.

His search for Susskind leads him to a Sephardic synagogue, a Jewish cemetery, and ultim ately the beggar's meager hovel. Confronted with the realization of his own people's history, but more with the knowl­ edge of Suskind's particular suffering, Fidelman is finally able to identify with the beggar and gives him his suit. Even when he realizes that Susskind has burned his manuscript (probably fo r fu e l), Fidelman finally has the insight to forgive all. After all, as Susskind him­ s e lf has noted, "The words were there but the s p irit was missing" (160).

Fidelman's id entification with Susskind starts early in the story.

As he departs from the railway station in Rome he has a vision of him­ s e lf, an "unexpectedly intense sense of his being" that has been stimu­ lated by the appearance of Susskind, a person of about his own height, who in spite of his emaciated frame and bizarre dress somehow suggests

Fidelman (137). The student protests against his identification with

Susskind, wanting to give him token recognition at best, fo r he has come to Ita ly to know Giotto. But Susskind in his hounding of Fidel­ man is suggesting that he w ill never know the Italian s until he knows himself. The student does not s ta rt to. suspect this until his pursuit of Susskind compels him to face the refugee's suffering. As his understanding grows, even his dress changes, for he puts on the beret and pointed shoes that lin k him with the refugee (152). But i t is only when he decides to stay in Rome, more to find Susskind in order

"to know man" (155) than to hope for the recovery of his manuscript, that we can be sure that Fidelman is on the way to salvation. When the student dreams of Giotto's fresco of St. Francis giving a cloak to a poor knight and is able to identify himself with St. Francis,

Susskind with the knight (159), he can do so because he has f ir s t recognized Susskind as a fellow Jew, a man fo r whom he is responsible.

As a Jewish Virgil, Susskind leads his initiate into a journey through Hell that promises transformation. But unlike Dante's Virgil,

Susskind is no exemplar of cool and dispassionate reason. On the contrary, he has a ll the bravado, a ll the chutzpah (arrogance), asso­ ciated with the common beggar or schnorrer of East European shtetl society JO Because he is a product of this society (138), Susskind knows that as a beggar he is an occasion for mitzvos (good deeds) and thus an instrument of grace. If he feels himself at an advantage, if he does not hesitate to demand his due, it is because he realizes that the more fortunate need him as an object of charity. In the culture 140 of the shtetl it is the schnorrer who opens for the more fortunate man

"the protals of heaven.The Hasidim emphasize this b e lie f with the words of Rabbi Shmelke:

The poor man gives the rich man more than the rich gives the poor. More than the poor needs the rich man, the rich is in need of the poor.12

Like most schnorrers, Susskind is also a luftmensch, who lives on air

(144), and is usually on the run. But there is also a sense of mystery about him; he is , after a ll , a refugee from Is ra e l, homeless even in the homeland, destined i t seems to keep on running. In the fin al analysis, the power of "The Last Mohican" can be attributed to Shimon

Susskind who, with a ll his grotesque humor, can be id en tified with the wandering beggars and fools of Hasidic fo lklo re. Like them he is an enigmatic mixture of the commonplace and mysterious, the saintly and demonic; lik e them he makes people dream and leads them to themselvesJ3

Of the thirteen stories in The Magic Barrel I would call the t i t l e story the best short story Malamud has written to day. A tale which lik e so many of Malamud's better stories suspends us between the real and the supernatural, "The Magic Barrel" also contains within it an artful fusion of Hasidism's basic teachings. Leo Finkle, a young rabbinical student, must learn the lesson of the heart over the head.

Pinye Salzman, a questionable mentor, leads him through a tortuous journey and an experience of evil. Only by identifying with and em­ bracing this evil can Leo find himself and the love he so desperately seeks.

As a tormented Yeshiva student in search of a wife because "he might find it easier to win himself a congregation if he were married" 141

(169), Leo is more concerned with the law than with its s p ir it. Even

his coming to a marriage broker, an "ancient and honorable" profession

in the Jewish community (170), is more the result of his fear of find­

ing a bride for himself than of his respect for Jewish tradition (179).

Leo lets himself be manipulated into a meeting with L ily Hirschorn, an

old maid school teacher, because of his desperation. But his experi­ ence with L ily , who in her poignant honesty sparks Leo’s own, reveals

to the young student a terrifying insight: he had come to God not be­ cause he loved Him, but because he did not (179). Once he is con­ fronted with the knowledge of his own unworthiness and terrorized by what he feels is an inability to love, Leo suffers mightily. But he accepts his suffering with some consolation; "perhaps with this new knowledge of himself he would be more successful than in the past"

(180). The proof of his success is his attraction to Stella, the matchmaker's renegade daughter, in whom Leo sees a suggestion of e v il.

That Leo can identify with evil and say "It is thus with us all" (183) is the mark of his maturity and ultimate redemption.

As an old world shadchan (matchmaker), Pinye Salzman represents a classic type in Jewish fo lklo re. Noted for a tendency toward "humbug" and a "genius for euphemistically glossing over the physical and character defects of clients," the shadchan is not without a "comic pathos."^ As the guide who shows the lost one the way through the mysterious maze of love and redemption, Salzman is reminiscent in some ways of Shimon Susskind of "The Last Mohican." S ligh tly b u ilt to the point of wasting away, in ill-fittin g clothes and smelling of fish,

Salzman, lik e the refugee from Is ra e l, is comic and grotesque, yet not 142 without a sad dignity. I f there is a suggestion of the demonic about

Susskind, i t also clings to Salzman, for Leo sees him as a "commercial cupid" (185) and a "cloven-hoofed Pan" (177). I f he is an angel, he is a dark one related to Levine; to trust in him the Yeshiva student must suspend his rationality. Also, following Susskind, Salzman is a luftmensch who lives on a ir as well as in his socks (185), the im pli­ cation being that he "lives on hopes and miracles."I5 Finally, as with Susskind, there is an a ir of mystery surrounding Salzman. Does his magic barrel exist or is it a "figment of imagination" (183)? Did he plant his daughter S te lla 's picture in the envelope to entice Leo or was i t ju st an accident (187)? In the world of the Hasidim what the imagination creates has its own kind of tru th , and as the Besht himself taught, "there are no accidents."'6 Thus the whole tenor of the story suggests that Salzman planned the fin a l meeting between the student and his daughter for their mutual benefit, and if he chants the prayers for the dead at the story's conclusion, it is within the context of a culture where death is but the f ir s t step in the process of transformationJ^

As the embodiment of evil ("she should burn in hell" Salzman says of her (186)), yet with eyes that suggests a "desperate innocence"

(187), S tella incorporates that wonderful mixture of experience and innocence that we associate with a Malamud heroine lik e Helen Bober.

She is not a realized character of course; we never hear her speak and see her only in picture, first in the photograph that Leo finds in

Salzman's envelope, fin a lly in the stunning tableau that Malamud pre­ sents us at the end of his tale. In the photograph that first 143

captivates Leo, Stella is hauntingly familiar yet absolutely strange; her face reflects deep suffering and somehow gives an impression of

evil (183). Yet Leo sees in her "his own redemption," for as the matchmaker puts i t , " If you can love her, then you can love anybody"

(187-188). S tella is , in other words, lik e Helen Bober a combination

Li 1 ith -Shechinah^ figure who tests the hero and offers pain, judgment, and ultimate insight. Finally dressed in red and white, the tradi­ tional colors for sin and purity, Stella waits for Leo at the end of his quest, an emblem of the good and evil that the hero must embrace as a seal of his redemption.

The fin al tableau—Leo running toward S tella with violets and rose­ buds, violins and l i t candles revolving in the sky— transports us into a dream world where anything is possible. Lionel Trilling, writing of this scene, remarks on its a fin ity with the paintings of Marc Chagall, fo r lik e Chagall Malamud projects us into a world "in which fantasy suspends the laws that govern the behavior of solid bodies, giving to fa m iliar objects . . . a magical and emblematic lif e of th e ir own."^

I would add to T rillin g 's comment that Malamud's world, lik e Chagall's, is the visionary world of Hasidism where good and e v il, death and lif e , all God's creation swirl together in a unifiedwhole. 20

The Hasidic belief in inner salvation, an important theme in

Malamud's early stories, is not as prevalent in his later work. Yet other Hasidic teachings such as the potency of love (or hate) and the terrors of evil (both of course associated with the process of trans­ formation in the e a rlie r work) are more common in the la te r stories.

Three stories which s k illfu lly demonstrate these themes are "Idiots 144

First" and "The Jewbird" (in Idiots F irs t) and "The S ilver Crown" (in

Rembrandt's Hat). I place these stories within the Hasidic tradition not only because of th eir themes but also because of th eir emphasis on the life of the spirit and their use of Jewish folklore.

"Idiots First," the title story of the second collection, is based on a common motif in folk literature: the confrontation of a mortal with the Angel of Death. In Jewish legends "some exceptional act of piety or benevolence" can often prevail against death, as is seen in the folk exegesis on Proverbs:10:2; 11:4--"Charity delivers from

Death.in the culture of the Hasidim, though death is accepted, even embraced, there are times when death is postponed because of special circumstances. The tale is told of the Besht who, wanting the recovery of Rabbi Leibush, "scolds" the Angel of Death and causes him to run away.^ There is also the story of Rabbi Levi Yitzhak who prays fo r a four day extension to his lif e so that he might accomplish cer­ tain tasks and as the tale goes, i t was so.^3

Within the same trad itio n , Malamud weaves a story of old Mendel and his id io t son, Isaac, and Mendel's attempt to fo restall the Angel of

Death until he can safeguard Isaac's passage on a train to California.

Desperately in need of thirty-five dollars to complete the purchase of

Isaac's tic k e t before midnight, Mendel v is its a pawnbroker, a Jewish philanthropist who gives "only to institutions" (8), and a poverty- stricken rabbi who tosses Mendel his new fu r-lin ed caftan over the screams of his w ife. During the length of his quest, Mendel is pur­ sued by Ginzburg, "a bearded man with hairy nostrils and a fishy smell"

(13), the East European Jewish version of the Angel of Death. With 145

enough money in hand to fin a lly purchase Isaac's train tic k e t, Mendel

is stopped by the tic k e t collector—Ginzburg in uniform—and told his

time is up. He pleads for a short extension to put Isaac on the train

and when Ginzburg won't relen t, lunges at him crying, "You bastard, don't you understand what i t means human?" (14). Wrestling nose to nose, Mendel sees reflected in Ginzburg's eyes the depths of his te r­

ror, but Ginzburg sees in Mendel's eyes the extent of his own wrath

(15). Utterly astounded, Ginzburg relents and allows Mendel the extra

time to put Isaac on the tra in . Afterwards, Mendel returns, seeking

Ginzburg.

The power of "Idiots First" lies in its masterful tension between terror and hope and the artfulness with which we are suspended between the real and supernatural. Death is a messenger who croaks "Gut yontif" (Good holiday) (9 ), an omnipresent force that talks of "cosmic universal law" (13), but who picks his teeth with a matchstick (14).

I f Ginzburg is on the one hand inexorable, he is on the other able to re fle c t on himself (15). There is again Malamud's g if t in creating a dream-like landscape, for while the setting is New York, the deserted streets and the reappearance of the bearded stranger transport us to somewhere beyond. Finally, there is Malamud's special way of com­ bining affirmation with a suggestive mocking irony. Mendel has con­ quered death but only for a few minutes; Isaac, a h a lf-w it, w ill go to California, but to the care of an eighty-one year old uncle, and how long will Uncle Leo live? In the context of both the story and the Hasidic tradition, however, neither such qualifications nor such questions ultimately matter. As an idiot Isaac is an example of the 146 world's unfortunates, but the blessed of God.24 i f Mendel forestalls

Death for only a l i t t l e while to perform a good deed, Hasidic holy men have prayed for the same. F in ally, Death is not the ultimate enemy but a friend to be embraced when the righ t time comes. Thus Mendel ascends the stairs to seek out Ginzburg (1 5 ).25

The "Jewbird," a combination of beast fable and parable, empha­ sizes the Hasidic teaching of the reality of evil. If a man will not accept evil as part of himself, i f he cannot say with the Hasidic rebbe, "I experience it [evil] when I meet myself,"2® if he is deter­ mined to project it on to another, then evil has the power to destroy a man rather than lead him on the pathway to good. Malamud incorpor­ ates this teaching in his story of the Cohen family and th eir encount­ er with a talking bird—a "skinny," "frazzled," "black-type longbeaked bird" (101)—who flies into their New York apartment one day and announces "I'm a Jewbird" (103).

According to Samuel Bellman,2? the Jewbird as a talking "crow" seems to hark back to "The Raven," but i t would seem to me more appro­ priate to place it within the context of Jewish tradition. Talking animals are common in Jewish folklore and are distinctive for the ways in which they take over Jewish mannerisms and modes ofspeech. ^8

Malamud's Jewbird, Schwartz, who smells of herring and speaks with a

Yiddish accent, is an obvious product of the East European s h te tl.

In addition, there is the Hasidic belief that a man can be turned into an animal under special circumstances. The tale is told of the

Besht's encounter with a man who has been turned into a horse fo r neglecting to pay a d e b t.^ Mrs. Cohen wonders i f Schwartz "might 147

be an old Jew changed into a bird by somebody." Schwartz's answer to

the supposition is simply "Who knows? Does God te ll us everything?"

(104).

But the story may be related to Hasidic teaching in a more pro­

found way, for Harry Cohen could be any man who rejects evil as part

of himself, projects i t on to another, and destroys the other without

realizing that the other is part of himself. When Schwartz flies into

Cohen's apartment asking for sanctuary, he says he is fleeing from

"Anti-semeetes" (102), but Cohen's fear and persecution of Schwartz make him the anti-Semite who does Schwartz the most harm.

Cohen can't stand Schwartz's eating habits, his bedraggled appear­

ance, his bad smell; he even suspects Schwartz might be some kind of

"devil" (108). But Cohen's wife and child beg that the bird be allowed

to stay and soon Schwartz becomes a tutor to the son. Though the boy's grades improve, the elder Cohen is simply resentful and wants

Schwartz to keep on migrating. One night when his wife and son are out of the apartment, Cohen attacks the Jewbird, whirls him round and round his head—in the way that the scapegoat fowl is whirled round the head of the penitent on Yom Kippur30__and tosses him into the night. Cohen destroys the Jewbird fo r what he thinks is the bird's offensiveness; actually, as the Hasidim would see it, he is destroying that frightening part of himself which is necessary fo r his completion.

The terror and pessimism of "The Jewbird" are lightened, at least until the end, by Malamud's use of whimsical fantasy. The bird's fractured English, his preference fo r "matjes" over "schmaltz" herring, his request for the Jewish Morning Journal (104-105) a ll add an element 148

of humor to an otherwise grim story. The fin al effect is melancholy,

however; as the ancient tradition teaches and as Hasidic story con­

firm s, a Jew (man) can be his own worst enemy.

In an even more somber tone, "The Silver Crown," the opening story

of Rembrandt's Hat, is also concerned with the reality of evil; in

particular, the terrors of repressed hatred. Interestingly enough,

Malamud has said that the story is based on a New York Times story of

the arrest of two Hasidic fa ith healers in the Bronx, but that the

characters are his own creation.33

Albert Gans, a high school biology teacher in "The Silver Crown,"

desperately seeks aid from a wonder-working rabbi to heal his dying

father. The elder Gans suffers from a mysterious ailment, cancer "of

the heart" the old man calls it (13). The Young Gans, "naturally

empiric and objective—you might say non-mystical" (19), goes to the

faith healer against his better judgment; it is his last attempt to

"repay" his father for his generosity towards him (21). The faith-

healer, Rabbi Lifshitz, though not specifically identified as one, is almost certainly a Hasid. He studies a mystical book "like the

Kabbalah" (20) and seems to have inherited the power of healing from

his father and grandfather (30).^3 He insists his idiot daughter,

Rifkele, is in the reflection of God (17), for it is love, not reason or faith, that puts us in the closest touch with Divine Grace (21).

The rabbi says that it is Albert's love that will heal his father, but he charges a fee to construct a sign of this love, a s ilv e r crown.34

Though Albert reluctantly agrees to purchase the crown— the biggest, most expensive one ,to accomplish the miracle—his pride in ra tio n a lity 149

and his doubts about the rabbi so overwhelm him that he returns the

next day to demand his money back. In the fin a l confrontation, as the

rabbi pleads with Albert to think of his father, the young Gans in his

fury at what he thinks has been a deception, unmasks his own feelings

and wishes his father dead. Calling him a "murderer," the rabbi rushes

into his daughter's arms; fleeing from the revelation of his own feel­

ings, Albert rushes down the stairs. An hour later, the elder Gans

expires (38).

The co n flic t in "The S ilver Crown" is not so much between doubt

and fa ith as between love and hate. In the rabbi's words:

Doubts we a ll got. We doubt God and God doubts us. This is natural on account of the nature of exist­ ence. Of this kind doubts I am not afraid so long as you love your father. (21).

Two times the rabbi asks Albert i f he loves his father and two times

Albert avoids answering the question d irectly (19,25). I f Albert wants

to save his father i t is from a sense of gratitude and from a concern

that his own "conscience be in the clear" (24). But A lbert's in itia l

unwillingness to face his repressed hatred for his father and his

closing cry of "He hates me, the son-of-a-bitch, I hope he croaks" (38)

suggest that the fin a l unmasking w ill leave him with a lifetim e of

regret. When he runs down the stairs with a "spike-ridden headache"

(38), he is fleeing from a terrifying recognition of self that his pride cannot accept.

The power of "The S ilver Crown" comes from the tension i t evokes between the mysterious and the commonplace, the a rt with which i t ex­ plores the complexities of human nature. Is the rabbi a "clever con­ fidence man" (24) or a genuine magician lik e the Baal Shem Tov?^ Did Gans "murder" his father as the rabbi claims, or did the father die of

natural causes? As with so many of Malamud's tales, the answers to

such questions do not ultim ately matter. What matters is that Gans in

his unwillingness to face his feelings has denied both his father and

himself. That the elder Gans has sensed his son's true feelings is

implied in his cancer "of the heart" (13). I f hate would be turned

into love, a man must firs t accept it as his own. Albert is ensnared

in "the conceit born of self-deception," a sin that to a Hasid weighs more than "a ll the sins of the world."36 Though there is some ques­

tion about Rabbi Lifshitz's authenticity in "The Silver Crown," there is no doubt that the arch-deceiver of the story is Albert Gans himself.

In many ways "The Silver Crown" is a recreation of characters and themes that Malamud has shown us before. Albert Gans, the Bronx biology teacher, is another of Malamud's young intellectuals, skeptical to the bone and reluctant to love. His quest for his father is u lti­ mately tied to his knowledge of s e lf, a knowledge he would deny rather than face. Rabbi Lifschitz is another of Malamud's enigmatic holy men, ready to lead the young man into an experience with e v il, the instru­ ment for grace or damnation as the hero would choose. The notable difference between "The Silver Crown" and the e a rlie r tales which resemble i t , of course, is the pessimism which prevails in the more recent story. Albert Gans, unlike Arthur Fidelman or Leo Finkle, does not achieve salvation. Yet this tale, like "The Jewbird," while it does not evoke the delight of the earlier stories of transformation, nevertheless may be seen within the framework of Hasidism. Though

Hasidic teaching emphasizes inner salvation and joy in all that is, it 151

does not deny the dark side of lif e and man's freedom of w ill. In some

Hasidic stories, a man chooses H e ll; ^ in Bernard Malamud's fic tio n he

sometimes chooses the same.

Looking back on Malamud's short stories, we see a reflection of

the same concerns found in his novels. The quest for salvation, when

achieved, is ultim ately tied to the acceptance of s e lf. I f a man fa ils

another, he has first failed himself. Yet I think none of the novels

can match his short stories, perhaps becasue as Philip Roth has w rit­

ten, Malamud's imagination is "essentially folkloric and didactic,"3®

and such an imagination, I would think, lends its e lf more readily to

the terseness associated with the traditional ta le . Malamud, of course, is both similar to and different from the traditional teller of tales, as many critics have noted. Thus Earl Rovit writes:

Bernard Malamud is quite obviously within the trad itio n of the Yiddish teller of tales -- tales narrated with a discernible echo of the eternal chant, tales of misery, frustratio n, insensate violence, greed, man's inhumanity to man, and nature's inexorable victory over both the proud and humble of f l e s h .39

Nevertheless, Rovit soon adds,

though Malamud captures elusive tones and shadows of the traditional Yiddish tale, he is not at all a teller of tales in the traditional manner. He is an extremely self- conscious short story writer, keenly sensitive to the for­ mal demands of the short story. . . .40

It is here I think that Rovit's judgments must be qualified, for it seems clear to me that Malamud in the twentieth century is doing with the Yiddish tale what Peretz did with it in the nineteenth. As

Howe and Greenberg point out, Peretz "rediscovered and redefined the

Jewish tradition so that, on its own, i t could enter the era of in­ tellectual modernism which begins in the mid-nineteenth century."41 Peretz, one of the founding fathers of modern Yiddish lite ra tu re , is

certainly one of its most conscious s ty lis ts . His concept of tradition

is a dynamic one. Thus he starts his essay "What Our Literature Needs"

with the phrase: "F irst of a ll , trad itio n ." But not long afterwards he

adds, "Let there be no misunderstanding. I am not proposing that we

lock ourselves in a spiritual ghetto. We must leave it — but with our

own soul, our own sp iritual wealth. We must make exchanges."^2 I t is

in this context that Peretz, who himself broke away from traditional

Judaism, puts his own stamp on Hasidic tales. What he does in these

tales, especially in his later and stronger stories, is to rework folk

and Hasidic materials "in a way that appears to be folklike but is

actually the product of a sophisticated lite ra ry in te lle c t."43 Or to

put i t another way, what Peretz accomplishes in his tales, through his

sense of distance, his use of irony, his control of tragic vision is,

in the words of the Yiddish poet, Jacob Glatstein, "to give the agnos­

tic legitimacy" and "to preserve Jewish life for him."44

Malamud's reworking of Hasidic themes is not unlike Peretz's;

there is the same controlled tension between skepticism and wonder, the

same yoking together of "Jewish past and Jewish present in a bond of

tense affec tio n ."45 But in the best sense of the tra d itio n , Malamud

too has broken away and found his own distinctive voice. While both writers excel in a kind of bittersweet irony, while both can be ambivalent, even sour in tone, there is often a warmth and humor to

Malamud which is more d iffic u lt to come by in Peretz. Nevertheless, each writer at his best proves the sanctity of the Hasidic tale, for each by reminding man of his kinship with the past suggests the possi­ b ilitie s of change and the promise of freedom. 153

Footnotes for Chapter VII

^Martin Buber, The Legend of the Baal-Shem, trans. Maurice Fried­ man (New York: Schocken, 1969), p. 120.

2Quoted by John Fischer and Robert B. S ilvers, eds., "The W riter's Task," Writing in America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1960), n.p.

^Jerome R. Mintz, Legends of the Hasidim: An Introduction to Hasidic Culture and Oral Tradition in the New World (Chicago: Univer­ sity of Chicago Press, 1968), p. 8.

^Bernard Malamud, The Magic Barrel (New York: D ell, 1970), orig­ in a lly published by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1958. Bernard Malamud, Idiot's First (New York: Delta, 1965), originally published by Farrar, Straus, 1963. Bernard Malamud, Pictures of Fidelman: An Exhibition (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969). Bernard Malamud, Rembrandt's Hat (New York: Pocket Books, 1974), o rig in ally pub 1ished by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973. All subsequent page references are to the first edition cited rather than to the one of original publication.

^Genesis 29: 1-28. Laban requires Jacob to work for him a total of fourteen years before he will give him Rachel in marriage.

^Rabbi Yitzhak, quoted by Martin Buber, "Dying and Living," in Tales of the Hasidim: The Later Masters, trans. Olga Marx (New York: Schocken, 1948), p. 291. Hereafter the t i t l e w ill be shortened to Later Masters.

^Rabbi Shmelke, quoted by Buber, "How Long," in Later Masters, p. 84.

^Martin Buber, "The Amen to the Blessing," in Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters, trans. Olga Marx (New York: Schocken, 1947), p. 194. Hereafter the t i t l e w ill be shortened to Early Masters. Buber, "The Ladder," in Later Masters, p. 170.

^Howard Brotz, The Black Jews of Harlem: Negro Nationalism and the Dilemmas of Negro Leadership (New York: Schocken, 1970), p. 1, 15. There are Black Jews in New York who contend "that the so-called Negroes in America are really Ethiopian Hebrews or Falashes who had been stripped of their knowledge of their name and religion during slavery."

^Nathan Ausubel, ed., A Treasury of Jewish Folklore: Stories, Traditions, Legends, Humor, Wisdom and Folk Songs of the Jewish People TNew YorkL Crown, 1948), pp. 267-268. Israel Zangwill popularized the shtetl beggar in his book King of Schnorrers (1898). Zangwill's schnorrer wears knee-breeches (as does Suskind) and is known fo r his disordered and disproportionate dress. 154

llMark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog, Life Is with People: The Culture of the Shtetl (New York: Schocken, 1962), p. 211.

^Buber, "Poor Man and Rich Man," in Early Masters, p. 191.

^Malamud continues the story of Arthur Fidelman in this third collection of tales, Pictures of Fidelman: An Exhibition, which unites three earlier stories (including "The Last Mohican") with three new ones. The stories share a zany humor but none of them, I believe, compares in excellence with "The Last Mohican."

^Ausubel, p. 413.

^Zborowski and Herzog, p. 258.

^Dov Ber ben Samuel, In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov: The Earliest Collection of Legends about the Founder of Hasidism, trans. and ed. Dan Ben Amos and Jerome R. Mintz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970), tale 186.

^Richard Reynolds notes that the prayer for the dead or Kadish is closely associated with "Messianic times when resurrection w ill take place" so that Salzman's fin a l prayer is fo r effecting S te lla 's resur­ rection. See Richard Reynolds, '"The Magic B arrel': Pinye Salzman's Kadish," Studies in Short Fiction 10 (Winter, 1973): 100-102.

^Encyclopaedia Judaica, 1971 ed., s.v. "Lilith," by G[ershom] Sch[olem]. In Jewish folklore S tella or star would suggest the angel Astaribo who is sometimes associated with L ilith .

l^Lionel Trilling, The Experience of Literature: A Reader with Commentaries (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1967), p. 809.

^ A lfre d Werner points out the importance of Hasidism as an in­ fluence on Chagall's work. Unlike Malamud, Chagall came from a family in which Hasidism "prevailed." See Encyclopaedia Judaica, 1971 ed., s.v. "Chagall, Marc" by A[lfred] W[erner].

^ Encyclopaedia Judaica, 1971 ed., s.v. "Angel of Death," by Do[v] N[oyJ.

22dov Ber ben Samuel, tale 91.

23Buber, "A Period Extended," in Early Masters, p. 233.

24Elie Wiesel, Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters, trans. Marion Wiesel (New York: Vintage, 1973), pp. 13-14.

25sidney Richmari writes that "'Idiots First' ends at the moment Mendel leaps at Ginzburg's throat and not as Malamud has i t , when Ginzburg relents," in Bernard Malamud (New York: Twayne, 1966), p. 155

127. I believe i t is important to note how a holy man can prevail against the Angel of Death and ultimately be willing to accept him.

26Martin Buber, For the Sake of Heaven: A Chronicle, trans. Ludwig Lewisohn (New York: Atheneum, 1969), p. 57.

27Samuel I . Bellman, "Women, Children, and Id io ts F irs t: The Transformation Psychology of Bernard Malamud" in Bernard Malamud and the Critics, ed. Leslie A. Field and Joyce W. Field (New York: New York University Press, 1970), p. 25.

28Ausubel, pp. 623-624.

2 9 D o v Ber ben Samuel, tale 215. See also Malamud's tale "Talking Horse" in Rembrandt's Hat, a delightful Jewish version of the birth of a centaur.

SOzborowski and Herzog, p. 394. In ancient days the scapegoat was sent out to the desert carrying the sins of the community. In shtetl lif e , the fowl was substituted fo r the scapegoat and consumed by the family at Yom Kipper feasts.

3lBuber, Early Masters, p. 322. Buber notes a talmudic tradition (G ittin 55b) which holds that a petty quarrel between two Jewish families caused one to denounce the other to the Romans, an event which set o ff the Roman war against Judaea and led to the destruction of the Temple.

32Quoted by Curt Leviant, "Bernard Malamud: My Characters are God-Haunted," Hadassah, June 1974, p. 19.

33it is not unusual for a zaddik or holy man to pass on his special powers to his descendants. See Buber, "Introduction," Later Masters, pp. 8-9.

34The crown is an image for God in Kabbalah. See Harold Bloom, "Kabbalah," Commentary, March 1975, p. 60.

35The Besht was known as a magician and a healer of the sick. In one ta le he buys a diamond, grinds i t down, and gives i t to a sick friend to drink; the friend recovers. See Dov Ber ben Samuel, tale 62.

36Mendl of Kotz in Wiesel, p. 234.

37qov Ber ben Samuel, tale 66.

38philip Roth, "Imagining Jews," The New York Review of Books, 3 October 1974, p. 25.

39Earl H. Rovit, "The Jewish L ite ra ry T ra d itio n ," in Bernard Malamud and the C ritic s , p. 5. 156

40Ib id ., p. 6.

4^Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg, eds., "Introduction," Selected Stories: I. L. Peretz (New York: Schocken, 1974), p. 11.

42l. L. Peretz, "What Our Literature Needs," Voices from the Yiddish: Essays, Memoirs, D iaries, ed. Irving Howe and Eliezer Green- berg (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), pp. 25, 27.

4^Howe and Greenberg, eds., "Introduction," Selected Stories: I . L. Peretz, p. 14.

44Jacob Glatstein, "Peretz and the Jewish Nineteenth Century," Voices from the Yiddish, p. 59.

45Howe and Greenberg, eds., "Introduction," Selected Stories: I . L. Peretz, p. 18. CONCLUSION

In the foreword to The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism Martin Buber explains his more than fifty-year concern with preserving the teach­ ings of Hasidism. Buber writes simply:

I consider the truth of Hasidism v ita lly important for Jews, Christians, and other men, and at this particu­ la r hour [1959] more important than ever before. For now is the hour when we are in danger of forgetting for what purpose we are on earth, and I know of no other teaching that reminds us of this so forcibly.'

Malamud has nowhere identified himself so directly with the teachings of Hasidism as Buber has and yet, as I have tried to show, Hasidism permeates Malamud's w riting with varying intensity from his f ir s t novel to some of his latest short stores. Furthermore, i f we understand the

Hasidic strains in Malamud's writing we are led to an enriched appreci­ ation of his most creative work. As in Buber's recreated Hasidic tales, so in Malamud's best w ritin g, the concern is prim arily ethical and form combines with theme to remind man that he can be whole.

The struggle to know the self is the principal motif in Malamud's w ritin g , a theme by no means unique to Hasidism, but evocative of

Hasidic teaching when set within a Jewish context. Even in Malamud's firs t novel, The Natural, in which there are no Jewish characters, the hero, Roy Hobbs, is enough of a schlemiel-schlimazel character and his journey into self-discovery is enough dependent on caring father figures to imply an Hasidic framework. When we see The Natural through

157 158

the point of view of Hasidism, Roy's fin al defeat is turned into victory

because of his concern and responsibility for others. I t would be a mistake to stress the Hasidic undertones of The Natural too much,

however, and the work succeeds best in the realm of fantasy.

Malamud's attempt to present the theme of self-discovery in a

re a lis tic mode is shown in A New L ife , a combination of sa tire and

romantic love story. Malamud's ambivalence toward academic lif e fa lls

into clear perspective when we view the work through the Hasidic empha­

sis on the heart over the head, for Seymour Levin tries to use his

in te lle c t as an escape from the demands of his heart and the univer­

s ity as a tre a t from involvement in the world. Like a ll of Malamud's heroes, Levin must learn to accept the sanctity of his past and the painful responsibilities of freedom, yet he remains an unconvincing and shallow hero. In part because Malamud fa ils to convince us of the reality of Levin's past, and in part because the romantic love story is not sufficiently integrated with the zany satire, A New Life is

Malamud's least successful novel.

Malamud does best when he fuses realism with fantasy, when he evokes an Hasidic dream world of acknowledged lim itatio n and unlimited p o ssib ility. The Assistant and The Fixer are Malamud's most successful novels for they explore the theme of self-discovery within an aes­ thetic mode that intensifies our experience of a visionary journey.

When we understand the Hasidic elements in The Assistant, the rela­ tionship between Morris Bober and Frank Alpine takes on the added lustre of a zaddik and his disciple, and Frank's transformation is as dependent on his identification with Morris as it is on Morris' 159

identification with Frank. That freedom must be interpreted as the release of bondage to the self is emphasized in both The Assistant and

The Fixer, most notably in The Fixer where Malamud transforms the familiar metaphor of the prison into an historical setting. While

The Fixer is Malamud's most distinctive use of Jewish history, when we see i t in the framework of Hasidism, we realize man's potential to free himself from the determining bonds of past and present i f he w ill but take the journey within.

Malamud's latest novel, The Tenants, differs from the earlier novels since the protagonist, Harry Lesser, fa ils to achieve the significant self-knowledge which leads to salvation. Yet there are implied Hasidic strains in The Tenants, the understanding of which en­ able us to read the work as a prophetic warning. Man must come to terms with the dark forces in lif e and accept the stranger as himself.

While he balances us between re a lity and a su rrealistic dream world,

Malamud reminds us that man w ill never relate well to the stranger in his society until he learns to love the stranger in himself.

Finally, we see in Malamud's most artistic short stories a re­ flectio n of the same basic theme found in his novels: freedom and joy come from the knowledge and giving of self. In his fusion of the sacred and profane, his evocation of Yiddish humor and irony, his sympathy for the oppressed, and his wry awareness of man's most pain­ ful limitations, Malamud reminds us of the great Jewish tellers of tales, in particular, I. L. Peretz who was himself, like Malamud, not a Hasid but influenced by the Hasidic trad itio n . Yet Malamud, in the best sense of the tradition, shows his own distinctive voice when he 160

echoes the past. A sophisticated American literary artist of the

twentieth century, Malamud reworks Hasidic teaching to f it his own

individual talent. Thus he fu lfills the requirement of Peretz who

said of the relationship between the Jewish writer and his culture: 2 "To take yet to continue to be oneself — that is the important thing."

Hasidism is not the only influence on Malamud's w riting, of

course. Malamud himself has called his work a "fusion" of three tra-

ditions--the American, the Jewish, and the Western. Yet I am saying

of Bernard Malamud what T. S. E lio t has said of the poet: "not only

the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most

vigorously."^ In addition, the very distinctiveness of Malamud's

Jewish themes and characteristics gives his work a universal signifi­

cance. I t has become a clich§ to talk of our time as an age of anxi­

ety, but such it is. The problem of alienation, the reality of evil,

the need for man to come to terms with the dark side of l i f e are not

new, but the crisis of the Holocaust and the p o ssib ilities of world­ wide destruction have certainly inter* * »ed modern man's awareness of his plight. One does not have to be a Jew to suffer, to feel alie­

nated, to be forced to come to terms with the problem of e v il, but as

the sages have said, " i t helps*"' Whether we agree with Martin Buber

that "we are in danger of forgetting for what purpose we are on earth" and that "no other teaching reminds us of this so forcibly" as

Hasidism,^ the w riting of Bernanrd Malamud, permeated as i t is with the s p irit of Hasidism, reminds man that he has the creative potential to be one with himself and the world in which he lives. 161

Footnotes for Conclusion

^Martin Buber, The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism, ed. and trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Horizon, I960), p. 22.

^I. L. Peretz, "What Our Literature Needs," Voices from the Yiddish: Essays, Memoirs, D iaries, ed. Irving Howe and Eliezer Green­ berg (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), p. 27.

^Quoted by Curt Levant, "Bernard Malamud: My Characters are God- Haunted," Hadassah, June 1974, p. 19.

^T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," Prose Keys to Modern Poetry, ed. Karl Shapiro (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), p. 66.

^Buber, p. 22.

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