In Shushani I had found a master. I would later discover that he had also taught the great French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and that his disciples included renowned professors who paid him fabulous fees. What he did with all that money I'll never know. Everything about him was a mystery. Where had he come from? Philosophy, Marx said, has no history, but what about philosophers? Don't they have a history? This one seemed not to, or else he meant to keep it secret.
No one knew his real name, his origin, or his age. What kind of family did he come from? What was he seeking to achieve, or to forget? Had he ever known happiness, had he ever known a woman? He spoke of himself only to obscure his tracks. Where did he acquire his immense knowledge? Who had ordained him a rabbi? Where had he learned all those ancient and modern languages? Where and toward what end had he studied Sanskrit? He mastered Hungarian in two weeks, just to surprise me. He knew the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds by heart, also Maimonides, Nahmanides, and Crescas, not to mention Yehuda Halevy, the poems of Ibn Gabirol, and the Greek and Latin classics as well. One Shabbat afternoon in Taverny he gave an entire lecture about the very first verse of the Book of Isaiah: "The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah." It lasted four hours, and even single words were courses in themselves. Chazon means "vision”, but is it an image or a word? Was it received from outside or did it come from within? In a waking or a dreaming state? What is its relation to individual piety and organized society? What is the difference between prophecy and vision, vision and hallucination? Can it be that one must be a Jew to have visions? What about Balaam in the Bible or the oracle at Delphi? And who was Isaiah? And why is he called the prince of prophets? What were his complaints against his people? Why was he so harsh with them? If we compare him, say, to Jeremiah, which of the two touches us more deeply? How to define his relation to language and to prophecy? Didn't other prophets, like Moses himself, or Jonah, try to escape their prophetic obligation? More generally, does a prophet have the right to reject his role and mission? Doesn't the law say that a prophet who rejects his prophetic mission merits death? Is that why he died an unnatural death, his body cut in two by King Manasseh? Why did all the prophets die tragically? Without ever departing from the verse, Shushani swept us along at a dizzying pace, as other realms and horizons opened before him and before us. He left us breathless, hovering between the summit and the depths of knowledge, the one as disturbing as the other.
One day he asked us to question him about anything we wanted, the Bible or politics, history or the Midrash, detective stories or the Zohar. He listened to our questions, eyelids drooping, waiting for everyone to finish. And then, like a magician, he gathered it all together to create a mosaic of stunning richness and rigor, harmoniously weaving our questions and his answers together. Suddenly each of us realized that all these themes, raised at random as if for his amusement, were in fact linked to a center, to a single focus of clarity. Yes, Cain's murderous act contained that of Titus. Yes, Jacob's wrestling with the angel heralded the adventure of the Jewish people defying their fate.
The village clock in the distance had long since tolled midnight, but the inexhaustible orator talked on, endowing his words with a thousand shining highlights and his thought with as many shadows, and it was our common prayer that his rough, monotonous voice would never fall silent.
Detractors called him a modern-day Faust. Had he sold his soul to Satan in exchange for limitless knowledge? A daring hypothesis, but I rejected it. I don't know if he was a holy man in disguise, a kabalist wandering the earth to gather "divine sparks" so as to reconstitute the original flame, or an eternal vagabond, the timeless outsider who embodies doubt and threat. But I am sure he did not belong to the powers of "the other side”, that of darkness.
One day, unable to contain my curiosity, I foolishly violated his sanctuary, asking him the question that haunted even my dreams: "Who are you? Who are you really? If I have children someday, I would like to be able to tell them about you. . . . I mean later . . ." He froze, and a cruel expression came over his face. I could hear his rasping breath. Then he unleashed his fury: "And who says there'll be a later?" Fortunately, his anger subsided as quickly as it had been aroused.
