Uri laughed and left the room, pulling the classroom door shut behind him.
Lunch for Mr. Roth? Meaning what? The improbable fluency of that heavily accented English, the gracious amiability, the edge of paternal tenderness in that deeply masculine voice … all of it meaning what?
“He would have torn to pieces anyone who came within an inch of you,” Smilesburger said. “A more ferocious watchdog than Uri I could not have found for you. What is the book?”
But it was not for me to explain anything, even what I was reading. I didn’t know what to say, didn’t even know what to ask — all I could think to do was to start shouting, and I was too frightened for that.
Maneuvering his carcass into the chair, Smilesburger said, “No one told you? They told you nothing? Inexcusable. No one told you I was coming? No one told you you could go? No one came to explain that I would be late?”
No reply necessary to sadistic baiting. Don’t tell them again that they’ve got the wrong man. Nothing you say can make anything better; all you’ve said so far in Jerusalem has only made things worse.
“Why are Jews so thoughtless with one another? To keep you sitting here in the dark like this,” said Smilesburger ruefully, “without even offering a cup of coffee. It persists and persists and I do not understand. Why are the Jews so lacking in the fundamental courtesies of social intercourse even between themselves? Why must every affront be magnified? Why must every provocation initiate a feud?”
I had affronted no one. I had provoked no one. I could explain that million dollars. But to his satisfaction? Without Uri reappearing to feed me my lunch? I didn’t answer.
“The Jew’s lack of love for his fellow Jew,” Smilesburger said, “is the cause of much suffering among our people. The animosity, the ridicule, the sheer hatred of one Jew for another — why? Where is our forbearance and forgiveness of our neighbor? Why is there such divi- siveness among Jews? It isn’t only in Jerusalem in 1988 that there is suddenly this discord — it was in the ghetto, God knows, a hundred years ago; it was at the destruction of the Second Temple two thousand years ago. Why was the Second Temple destroyed? Because of this hatred of one Jew for another. Why has the Messiah not come? Because of the angry hatred of one Jew for another. We not only need Anti-Semites Anonymous for the goy — we need it for the Jew himself. Angry disputes, verbal abuse, malicious backbiting, mocking gossip, scoffing, faultfinding, complaining, condemning, insulting — the blackest mark against our people is not the eating of pork, it is not even marrying with the non-Jew: worse than both is the sin of Jewish speech. We talk too much, we say too much, and we do not know when to stop. Part of the Jewish problem is that they never know what voice to speak in. Refined? Rabbinical? Hysterical? Ironical? Part of the Jewish problem is that the voice is too loud. Too insistent. Too aggressive. No matter what he says or how he says it, it’s inappropriate.
Inappropriateness is the Jewish style. Awful. ‘For each and every moment that a person remains silent, he earns a reward too great to be conceived of by any created being.’ This is the Vilna Gaon quoting from the Midrash. ‘What should a person’s job be in this world? To make himself like a mute.’ This is from the Sages. As one of our most revered rabbinical scholars has beautifully expressed it in an admirably simple sentence not ten syllables long, ‘Words generally only spoil things.’ You do not wish to speak? Good. When a Jew is as angry as you are, there is almost nothing harder for him than to control his speech. You are a heroic Jew. On the day of reckoning, the account of Philip Roth will be credited with merits for the restraint he has displayed here by remaining silent. Where did the Jew get it in his head that he has always to be talking, to be shouting, to be telling jokes at somebody’s expense, to be analyzing over the telephone for a whole evening the terrible faults of his dearest friend? ‘You shall not go about as a tale bearer among your people.’ This is what is written. You shall not! It is forbidden! This is law! ‘Grant me that I should say nothing that is unnecessary. …’ This is from the prayer of the Chofetz Chaim. I am a disciple of the Chofetz Chaim. No Jew had more love for his fellow Jews than the Chofetz Chaim. You don’t know the teachings of the Chofetz Chaim? A great man, a humble scholar, a revered rabbi from Radin, in Poland, he devoted his long life to trying to get Jews to shut up. He died at ninety-three in Poland the year that you were born in America. It is he who formulated the detailed laws of speech for our people and tried to cure them of the bad habits of centuries. The Chofetz Chaim formulated the laws of evil speech, or loshon hora, the laws that forbid Jews’ making derogatory or damaging remarks about their fellow Jews, even if they are true. If they are false, of course it’s worse. It is forbidden to speak loshon hora and it is forbidden to listen to loshon hora, even if you don’t believe it. In his old age, the Chofetz Chaim extolled his deafness because it prevented him from hearing loshon hora. You can imagine how bad it had to have been for a great conversationalist like the Chofetz Chaim to say a thing like that. There is nothing about loshon hora that the Chofetz Chaim did not clarify and regulate: loshon hora said in jest, loshon hora without mentioning names, loshon hora that is common knowledge, loshon hora about relatives, about in-laws, about children, about the dead, about heretics and ignoramuses and known transgressors, even about merchandise — all forbidden. Even if someone has spoken loshon hora about you, you cannot speak loshon hora about him. Even if you are falsely accused of having committed a crime, you are forbidden to say who did do the crime. You cannot say ‘He did it,’ because that is loshon hora. You can only say ‘I didn’t do it.’ Does it give you an idea of what the Chofetz Chaim was up against if he had to go that far to stop Jewish people’s blaming and accusing their neighbors of everything and anything? Can you imagine the animosity he witnessed? Everyone feeling wronged, being hurt, bristling at insults and slights; everything everybody says taken as a personal affront and a deliberate attack; everyone saying something derogatory about everyone else. Anti-Semitism on the one side, loshon hora on the other, and in between, being squeezed to death, the beautiful soul of the Jewish people! The poor Chofetz Chaim was an Anti-Defamation League unto himself — only to get Jews to stop defaming one another. Someone else with his sensitivity to loshon hora would have become a murderer. But he loved his people and could not bear to see them brought low by their chattering mouths. He could not stand their quarreling, and so he set himself the impossible task of promoting Jewish harmony and Jewish unity instead of bitter Jewish divisiveness. Why couldn’t the Jews be one people? Why must Jews be in conflict with one another? Why must they be in conflict with themselves? Because the divisiveness is not just between Jew and Jew — it is within the individual Jew. Is there a more manifold personality in all the world? I don’t say divided. Divided is nothing. Even the goyim are divided. But inside every Jew there is a