Harold Fisch

127 Harold Fisch — My Patron Saint H a r o l d F i s c h — M y P t n S Parallel to pursing the emergence of the Jewish Christian movement, inspired by Jesus’ charismatic personality, I signed up for a class on English literature with an emphasis on Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, taught by Professor Harold Fisch. A Cambridge graduate and a scion of an Orthodox Jewish rabbinical family, Fisch seemed to elegantly straddle both worlds. He espoused the Creation as described in Genesis without rejecting the Big Bang theory, holding that both appealed to different human facets. Though not engaging in missionary pep talks either in class or on campus, he would nevertheless have liked his students to see their way to Heaven. Sporting a goatee that sprouted from a face covered with stubble, he strode the campus grounds projecting a contemplative aura. When in a thespian mood, he turned the class floor into a stage upon which he acted out the dramatis personae at hand. With the open text serving as a stage prop, Fisch would simulate the scene in which the stooped Lear lugs Cordelia’s corpse offstage amidst a dying whimper. As if with a magic wand, he could transform a text into a dramatic moment: voice modulated, body language shaped, facial expression delineated–all working in tandem to take on the role play of the moment. Macbeth, shuffling his feet across the floor, mumbling, “Out, out brief candle,” brought home the futility of ambition and the unalterable fate of man. He was ap at doing comedy as well as tragedy; Fisch’s Malvolio, strutting the floor while reading the letters supposedly from his mistress, sent the class into bursts of hilarity. Sometimes I came to his classes exhausted after working a nightshift at the radio station, but his analyses, burnished by histrionics, kept me awake. I made up for my sleep deprivation in other classes, where I vacillated between a nod and a wink. Indeed, theatre’s loss was academe’s gain. Fundamentally, the evil that hunted me down and hustled me into cattle cars that hauled me into a penned land absent of cause and effect — that same evil, in different permutations, drives the characters of the Jacobean plays. They are mostly fuelled by irrational impulses. Ferdinand of “The Duchess of Malfi,” for instance, is stirred by jealousy and fear of tainting the family’s blue blood, and has his sister, the Duchess, killed. But on seeing her dead body, he utters the famous line in a strange mixture of remorse and regret: “Cover her face; my eyes dazzle.” Archival documents report that after a day’s slaughter of men, women and children, the Nazi killers were plied with alcohol to calm their shattered nerves. I am not comparing the conduct of the Jacobean dramatis persona 128 with those of my tormentors, either the SS men or their collaborators. Rather, what I’m suggesting is that the evil that stalked me sprang from the same muddy source as the one that motivated the characters of the Jacobean plays, namely the dark side of the human condition. The analogy that comes to mind is attending a funeral procession, which naturally evokes intimations of mortality; by the same token, viewing a Jacobean play brought back to me intimations of a concentration camp. My everyday life encounters and the events happening globally reinforced my views that this malediction ingrained in the human species afflicts society when contributing socio- political conditions occur. The following story, told to me by Rabbi Brumur of Toronto, is a case in point. H a r o l d F i s c h — M y P t n S The year is 1961 or thereabouts. Adolf Eichmann is on trial in Jerusalem, his state of mind a subject of psychiatric inquiries: is this man in the booth, watching the newsreels showing piles of emaciated corpses shoved into collective pits, clinically normal? Has he regrets, and does he admit to being part of the death machinery? Or is he a psychopath incapable of human sympathy? Rabbi Cyperstein, a known Talmudic scholar, who is teaching a course in Talmud at the same time at Yeshiva University in New York, naturally takes an interest in these questions. One day he comes to class in a despondent mood. “The psychiatrists have established that Eichmann is normal,” he says, “and this frightens me, because I consider myself normal and therefore capable of committing atrocities as Eichmann has done,” he muses aloud to the astonishment of his listeners. “What shields my humanity from degeneration,” Rabbi Cyperstein continued, “is my faith in the Torah.” Rabbi Cyperstein’s deductive reasoning was validated by the so-called Frankfurt Denazification trials, at which scientists, physicians, and defrocked clergymen stood in the docks accused of genocide. The killings raging on the European and African continents in the last two decades of the twentieth century and at the dawn of the twenty-first century put to mockery the slogan “Never Again.” It’s a delusion to believe that people learn from history, and the delusion is easily dissipated by watching the evening news on television. The optimistic futurists may predict that bio-scientists may be able to implant a new gene in humans that will thwart their aggressive impulses and perhaps convert evil into the milk of human kindness. Professor Harold Fisch, like Rabbi Cyperstein, saw the skull beneath the skin, to quote T.S. Eliot, and I saw the skull insignia attached to my SS tormentors’ hats. Whether it was the emotional immediacy of my responses to his presentation of the dramatis personae in action or other aspects of my personality, Fisch must have intuited that I’d had an intimate rendezvous with evil. As Fisch 129 and I drew closer, thanks also to our shared love of the sea, I was tempted to tell him about my encounter with Man’s malediction, but inhibitions held H a r o l d F i s c h — M y P t n S me back. I wanted to be judged on my own merits and not on the basis of my experiences. If the experience factored into the sum of my merits and subsequently afforded me insights into the human psyche, I considered it a by-product. Fisch undoubtedly influenced many of his students, but on me he left a lasting impression. He would present an issue, generating questions that invited answers which in turn stimulated new questions. This made for a discourse of intellectual inquiry that led to new levels of discovery. He had a gift that combined inspiration and challenge. For all his seriousness and depth, he had a mischievous side to him, a trait often manifested in class and outside of it. In class, he often played to the gallery, so to speak, and at parties entertained his listeners. But a gift he passed on to me which has proved invaluable was the knowledge of how to formulate questions. When the spirit took him he could spice his analysis of a text with subtle ironies, sardonic comments and a colourful range of humour. I still remember one of his gibes aimed at curbing my flight of the imagination in interpreting a certain text. “Mr. Pfefferkorn is often original,” he enunciated, sprinting a couple of steps onto a low pedestal, “but equally often wrong.” The chuckles of my fellow students indicated approval. The gibe was like music to my ears, an acknowledgement of my presence; others, however, smarted under them. And then came my opportunity to have my own little jest at Fisch’s expense. The Jewish tradition observes two Dionysian festivals: One is Simchat Torah, which celebrates the giving of the Torah to the Israelites at Mt. Sinai; the other one is Purim, which celebrates the saving of the Jews from persecution in ancient Persia. Consuming liquor in abundance, dancing to the point of dizziness and singing with full-throated enthusiasm mark both festivals. These are times of merriment. Purim is also a mask festival that allows the celebrants to masquerade and do parodies. Its counterpart would be Halloween. Purim also provided an occasion to take on the professors who, in the course of the year, enjoyed immunity from parody due to the hierarchal structure of universities. The girls in the English department took it upon themselves to organize the Purim party and asked me whether I would do Fisch. “His outstanding physical characteristics and eccentricities,” they pointed out, “make for good parody.” This was true, and I felt that Fisch deserved a gentle dig, but prudence weighed in against the opportunity to show off my thespian skills. “But there are other students whose body build 130 and height are more similar to Fisch’s than mine,” I argued halfheartedly, “and some of them even grow stubble and goatees that resemble his.” “No, no,” they insisted, inserting a flirtatious tone into their persuasive efforts, “you’re a natural for this.” Few mortals would remain indifferent to such flattery coming from pretty maidens, their playful eyes squinting in the early spring sun. I finally succumbed, but not without apprehension. I knew that my thespian reputation was on the line and was not sure how Fisch might take it. I went into character, as the fashionable cant had it, and moulded myself into Fisch’s persona, body, psyche, mannerism and intonation. And on that angst-inducing evening, I walked into the small auditorium mimicking Fisch’s inflection and stride, carrying a pile of papers H a r o l d F i s c h — M y P t n S and all wrapped up in musings, lifted my eyes and uttered one line: “I’m awfully sorry, this must be the wrong class,” to which a rehearsed group of students shouted in unison: “No! No! This is the right class.” I turned on my heels and walked out.

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