The Funeral Party by Ludmila Ulitskaya Page A

dome of greying black hair.
    “The thing is, Rabbi, I’m dying,” Alik told him.
    The rabbi cleared his throat and laced his long fingers together on his knees; he wasn’t particularly interested in death.
    “You see, my wife’s a Christian and wants me to get baptized. To become a Christian.” Alik went on, and fell silent. He was becoming less and less keen on this game, and speaking was increasingly difficult for him.
    The rabbi too was silent. He stroked his fingers, and finally asked: “So how did this foolishness enter your head?” He hadn’t found the correct English word, having meant another kind of foolishness, and added: “Absurdity, I mean.”
    “Absurd for the ancient Greeks maybe. But for the Jews isn’t it a temptation?” The speed of Alik’s reactions hadn’t deserted him, despite the dull numbness he had almost ceased to feel in his body, but had been feeling for the last few days in his face.
    “Should a rabbi know the texts of your apostle then?” Reb Menashe flashed his bright, happy eyes.
    “Is there anything a rabbi doesn’t know?” Alik parried.
    They went on, throwing out questions and not getting answers, as in a Jewish story, understanding each other better perhaps than in reality they should have. They had nothing in common, their upbringing and experiences had been quite different, they ate different food, spoke different languages, read different books. Both were educated people, but the spheres of their education barely intersected. Alik knew nothing of Kalam, the speculative Muslim theology which Reb Menashe had studied for the past twenty years, nor about Saadia Gaon,on whose works he had written his painstaking commentaries; and Reb Menashe knew nothing of Malevich or De Chirico.
    “You have no one but the rabbi to seek advice from?” Reb Menashe asked with proud, humorous modesty.
    “Can’t a Jew seek advice before death from a rabbi?”
    In their joking conversation everything was beneath the surface; both understood this, and their banter brought them to the serious point which occurs when people connect, a connection which leaves an indelible trace.
    “I feel sorry for my wife, she’s crying. What shall I do, Rabbi?” Alik sighed.
    The rabbi removed the smile from his face; his moment had come. “Ai-lik!” He wiped the bridge of his nose and shuffled his large shoes. “Ailik! I have lived in Israel practically the whole of my life without leaving it, I’m in America for the first time. I’ve been here three months and it shocks me. I study philosophy, Jewish philosophy—it’s a completely special thing. For a Jew, at the heart of everything is the Torah. If he doesn’t study the Torah, he’s not a Jew. In ancient times we had this concept of the “captive child.” If a Jewish child fell into captivity and was deprived of the Torah, the Jewish way of life, education and upbringing, he was not guilty for this misfortune, nor was he perhaps even capable of understanding it as such. But the Jewish world must take responsibility for the care of these orphans, even those in their advanced years. Here in America I see a whole world consisting entirely of captive children. Millions of Jews living in captivity with the heathens. Never in the history of the Jews has there been anything like it. There have always been apostates, and those who are forcibly baptized—the captive children weren’t only in the times of Babylon. But now in the twentieth century there are more captivechildren than actual Jews. This is a process, and if it’s a process, the hand of the Almighty must be there. I think about it all the time, and I’ll go on thinking about it for a long time more. You talk about baptism. In other words, go from the category of captive child to that of apostate? But on the other hand you can’t be an apostate, because strictly speaking you’re not a Jew. The second is worse than the first in my opinion. But then again I may also say that I never had