As for Zahara, we had the impression that her heart was drawn to Avraham-and-a-half or Heinz the Berliner. But she suddenly seems attracted to someone else, who doesn’t measure up to the former in height or to the latter in intelligence. Who is he? Heinz from Darmstadt. In fact, he is also one of the founders of Ahinoam, a good fellow, too, with some virtues the others lack. But why should a girl wear herself out and be torn between so many? This was not her mother’s way. Before Henrietta knew Manfred, she didn’t look at another man, and as soon as she got to know him, she clung to him. Before Manfred knew Henrietta, his eyes were buried in his books. Other than Henrietta, no young woman, however scholarly or beautiful, distracted him from his studies, although he lived in Berlin, whose very air loosens the constraints of the heart and the eye. This daughter of theirs lives in a small kvutza in the Land of Israel, settled by young men and women who left Germany to live a pure life on the land. But, in the end, she doesn’t measure up to her parents. Which is especially perplexing, for she is a girl with a head on her shoulders and eyes in her head. Why should she be groping as if she were blind?
Let me get back to Dr. Herbst. His great work on burial customs of the poor in Byzantium is in progress — a mass of references, notes, index cards, notebooks, quotations, outlines that remain incomplete, material that is still not in order. Herbst sits at his desk, removes a slip of paper, and replaces it with another. He writes, erases, records, copies, pastes in quotation after quotation, and substitutes a more appropriate word wherever possible. A scholar’s wisdom is not like dough in a woman’s hand, from which a piece can be torn to make a cake for a doll’s birthday. It is bothersome, like the chickens in their coop when you reach for one and another comes flying into your hand; not only do you have to pursue the one you want, but you have to struggle to get rid of the one in your hand. This may be a false analogy; still, it applies to the scholar’s struggle with his material. However, it must be noted that Herbst’s struggles are not in vain. Any author would be proud of the data Herbst has amassed. When he surveys his material, he often thinks: I’ll sit down and organize, combine, and copy, and I’ll have a book. But wisdom has such scope and is contained in so many volumes that no scholar can know today what tomorrow will bring. He persists, continuing to do today what he did yesterday and every other day, in some cases to support his data and in others to avoid discovering later that he left something out. There are scholars whose expertise is bewildering. Their bibliography alone occupies a third of the book, and when you examine it you realize that most of the books mentioned are irrelevant. Other scholars, after citing many sources, add see and see also. In fact, they have copied their material from such see alsos, which is to say that the sources referred to by see also are the ones from which they have copied their data, never having seen the original books from which the data are derived. Still, should someone say, “Others have preceded you,” they can point out, sanctimoniously, that full credit was given. Other scholars quote extensively from their own books; that is to say, they cite themselves as authorities. If this isn’t a matter of extreme innocence, then it’s a game, for they play at showing how smart they are, how many books they have already produced. There are scholars who quote the opinions of others, not to support their own, but to dispute them.
Manfred Herbst did not behave in any of the aforementioned ways. One could say that he and his work were clean. So he ought to have been pleased with himself, but he was not. When he confronted his box of notations, his piles of cards, his collection of notebooks, bundles of papers and pads, and heaps of writings, he would sometimes pound the table and cry out, “May flames leap up and consume you.” But, as long as they existed, it was his duty to rework, amend, and update them. He went back to his work, continuing to do today what he did yesterday and all the other days. He worked without joy, for there is no joy in amassing papers, even if the papers are full of fine quotations. When Herbst first thought of writing his book, he was inspired by an idea. As he began to support it with facts, the facts took over, and the idea dwindled. Finally, his box was full of facts but short on substance.
Herbst left his desk and notes, lit a cigarette, and went to the west window, which was curtained in a colorful woven fabric. Under it was a bookcase that used to be filled with fine china from the era of Frederick iI, made in the royal factory. The pieces were passed on to Henrietta by her parents and grandparents, for the king, known as Frederick the Great, required every Jew in his kingdom who wished to marry to buy dishes produced in his factory. In time, these dishes were broken since the local help in the Land of Israel was unaccustomed to handling such fragile objects. What wasn’t broken, Henrietta sold to buy reproductions for Manfred or traded for books, and what they neither sold nor traded, they gave as a gift to the Bezalel Museum. When there was no china left on the shelves, Henrietta began putting volumes of poetry, stories, and novels there. Occasionally, when she was done with her work, she would come in and take a book to read. Manfred, too, when he was despondent and wanted to regain his composure, would reach for a book.
These books lie there, small volumes that don’t attract attention or catch the eye because of their form or content. They were written by individuals who, for the most part, never saw the inside of a university and never studied with the scholars of their day. They wrote in the recesses of their rooms, tormented by hunger and other trials. Their wisdom was gleaned in the marketplace and on the streets, from every man, woman, and child; from animals, beasts and birds; from dusty roads and chilly winds; from the sun, the moon, and the stars; from trees in the wood and streaming river waters. These are books about people of no consequence, yet, if one examines the plots, one finds insight as well as basic wisdom of the sort one has to struggle to extract from other sources, heavy tomes written in profound language and complex terminology.
Not all the books the Herbsts brought from Germany were still in the bookcase. Some had been borrowed and never returned. Zahara took some of them with her to the kvutza. Though the settlers in Ahinoam have truly turned their backs on Germany, Austria, or Czechoslovakia to make a new life in the Land of Israel, when it comes to books, they behave as they did in their birthplace. What they used to read there, they read here. Even Tamara, who can barely read German, began taking books off these shelves. When she had finished her courses and received a teachers’ certificate, she discarded all the books about yeshiva students, old men with earlocks, beggars, and eccentrics of all kinds — all those types celebrated by Hebrew literature — and turned to books in other languages that told about real people, the kind whose thoughts and actions a civilized person is interested in. After reading everything that had been translated into Hebrew, she began reading English and even German. It’s an odd thing: visitors who come from Germany say that, since the Nazi rise to power, they have begun to value a single line of Hebrew more than all of Goethe and Kant; yet this girl, conceived, born, and educated in the Land of Israel, whose friends were all born there, who speaks Hebrew fluently — she replaces Hebrew books with gentile books and, what is more, she calls the Hebrew books “drivel.” When Herbst’s supply of poetry, novels, and stories began to dwindle, he filled the space with biographies. Everyone should study the lives of famous men, as a source of strength and an antidote to despair, evidence that even the finest human beings were human and they too were subject to the wheel of fortune and often discouraged — although this is not stated explicitly, either because no one reveals everything or because biographers, wishing to glorify the lives of exemplary people, suppress whatever is not praiseworthy about them. Still, whoever can read between the lines is rewarded. Now that Herbst’s task seemed lighter to him, he reached into the bookcase and took out a book.