Sunday Theology: A Jewish Prayer in Isaac Bashevis Singer's Poland

Before I cut short the reading in German translation of Isaac Bashevis Singer's novel The Magician of Lublin, I copied a quotation into my notes:

"Was sind wir, was unser Leben, was unsere Gnade? Was unsere Frömmigkeit, was unsere Hilfe, was unsere Kraft, was unsere Stärke? … Alle Helden sind wie nichts vor dir, die berühmten Männer, als ob sie nie gewesen, die Weisen wie ohne Erkenntnis, die Einsichtigen wie ohne Verstand, denn die Menge ihrer Werke ist eitel, und die Tage ihres Lebens sind nichtig vor dir."

These words are spoken in a place of worship by an Orthodox Jewish man who is praying by himself. The character of the Magician (who is wrestling, like the author himself, with contradictory forces of secularism and faith) overhears him on one of his journeys from Lublin.

To translate roughly: What are we, what is our life, what is our mercy? What our piety, what our assistance, what our power, what our might? ... All heroes are as nothing before you, the famous men are as if they never existed, the wise are without knowledge, the perceptive without reason, for the mass of their works is in vain, and the days of their lives are nothing before you.

Whether it is an excerpt from a known religious text, as I assume, or Singer's own composition, I was struck by it.

From a literary perspective, its words are weighty. Atmospherically I feel pathos in it — a sadness about not living up to an individual ideal — rather than a brutal denial of humanity at large, although this is debatable.

What I like in a subjective, non-literary way is the sense of proportion of a human's role in the history of the world, and in the width and breadth of the present time. It appears healthy to follow a religion or philosophy that is not meant to coddle and feed ego, but rather to help us look beyond ego.

I also like the idea of a God who is forceful enough to influence our lives through the quieter inner paths of conscience and the path of outer events without clear cause and effect, not a thin-skinned, fragile narcissist who relies on human propaganda, vigilanteism and perpetual obeisance to achieve the good. (Whatever that good may be.)

On the other hand, I may have quoted before the thought that God is infinitely small as well as infinitely great. We do not need to worship a Nietzschean superman.

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On second thought, writing about a Jewish prayer on Sunday may be clumsy. So apologies for that, as well as for the perhaps frivolous habit of picking and choosing from religions what interests me and what doesn't, and offering an uneducated opinion without taking into account what the reactions may be.

Source: Der Zauberer von Lublin, by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Translation by Susanna Rademacher. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2017.