Free The Oath by Elie Wiesel Page A

else does he tell us? That man is cast into the world and forgotten? That there is no eternity for him? That work is more valuable than meditation and slogans more important than prayers? That happiness negates faith, knowledge kills mystery? This is what he tells us. And he wants us to believe, this stranger, that his truth is more just than ours and his justice truer than ours. He claims to be able to explain everything, even suffering, even Jewish suffering.
    “Well, if he doesn’t understand that knowledge is a mystery in itself, that a man without a past is poorer than a man without a future; if he doesn’t understand that the miracle lies not in the beauty of twilight enveloping the forest, but in the eye of man beholding and sharing that beauty. If the stranger fails to understand that, then I pity him as I would pity anyone who lived alienated from his people and from all creation. For us there can be no salvation outside the community. Yes, the stranger has just told us that in order to save man, one must annihilate the Jew in man, and that our people must disappear so that mankind may prosper. His mouth betrays his ignorance. Whoever opposes man to himself becomes his enemy; whoeveropposes man-as-a-Jew to man repudiates both. If the stranger wishes to help us, let him remain in our midst. Let him eat at our table, participate in our festivities. A Jew’s place is among Jews. If the stranger agrees, I’ll see him tomorrow at study time. If not, I won’t see him again. If he decides to leave, let him leave right now; he has a long night before him.”
    Thereupon, without waiting for my reaction, he left.
    For one moment I was stunned. Mad thoughts whirling through my mind. Should I accept the invitation—stay, lose myself in studies and friendship, start all over? This time it was I who shook my head. I would not be tempted. I could not remain. A
Na-venadnik
must not remain in any one place. What had the rabbi said? That I had a long night ahead of me? Was that a threat, a blessing? I left the village with a sense of failure. I never returned.
    Later, in a nearby village, I learned that Abrasha had been summoned to Moscow. I waited for his return, in vain. Much later I learned why Abrasha had not come back. A victim of the first purges, he was killed by a bullet in the neck in the name of the dream he had awakened in so many hearts. This marked the end of my activities on behalf of the revolution.
    I don’t regret having believed Abrasha, nor having helped him. At my age one doesn’t regret the dreams that have carried us—and that we have carried—all over the world. They are what is left of a lifetime.
    The thing is that as a child I believed that the Messiah would deliver us all from solitude. It was dark and I shivered with fright. I contemplated the stars and heard nothing but the thumping of my heart, heavy with growing fear and anticipation.Fool that I was, I was convinced that at the end of night there lay redemption. But Satan interfered and man stood by idly. Man is strange; he is waiting for the Messiah, yet it is Satan he follows.
    And yet, and yet. I, an old man with one foot in the grave, persist in believing, in proclaiming that the world needs the Messiah, that men cannot survive without the hope that one day he will come to judge and free them—judge them in their freedom—so that the game may end, once and for all. He will come. Sooner or later. Oh yes, he will come, but it will not be a man—no, it will no longer be a man—who will redeem us. Mankind no longer deserves to be redeemed by God, but only by a demon, an evil angel. Man is strange—he clamors for the Messiah, yet it is death that fascinates him.
    A fierce sadness closes in on the old man. Abrasha shot; his dreams murdered. So many men betrayed by so many false prophets. So many promises flouted by so many idols. And yet, and yet. He recalls his father, his comrades, his mad friend, his mad friend most of all—for it was he