The Prison Rabbi

Last December I learned that the German Ministry of Propaganda had started a press campaign and lawsuits against me in all countries where my book “Murder—Made in Germany” appeared. So it happened that I was indicted in Holland, through an intermediary, for having insulted Hindenburg. I immediately betook myself to Holland in order to defend my work.

The presiding judge had to admit at the trial that I was not going to be sentenced for not having said the truth; but I was to be punished because I did speak out the truth. And although I was sentenced to a month in prison for “having insulted the head of a nation friendly to Holland,” my book had won the case — considering the above mentioned statement by the presiding judge. I refused to sign a petition for pardon, or to escape prison. On the contrary, I identified myself with my book and with the “insult” implied therein. And so I went to a Dutch prison for five weeks.

The prosecution took revenge on me, because the civilized world press saw in this trial an obeisance of Dutch justice to the German commercial treaty partner. He kept me in solitary confinement, denied me any visitor—a right that is granted any murderer—an confirmed me in my belief that, according to the demand of the German government, I would be extradited to Germany. Consequently I sat in my cell, walked five steps forward and five steps backward. I saw nobody, and heard no human voice, day after day, night after night.

One afternoon keys clinked suddenly before my door. It was very exciting. My heart hammered. The lock moved. My cell opened. What was the meaning of all that? I got up and stared at the door.

The heavy iron door moved on its hinges. Very slowly a slit appeared. A head appeared in the slit, a pale, bearded face, a big black hat.

I said nothing. The head looked at me gravely, then began to talk. I still remember quite clearly how startled I was by the sound of a human voice. It said: “You probably don’t want to talk to me, do you?”

I did not reply. The head waited, then it started again: “I should not like to intrude upon you, but perhaps you wish to talk to me. I am the Rabbi.

The Rabbi! Funny that I did not gues it right away. The prison Rabbi! Of course.

“Please step in,” I said. The Rabbi came, still hesitating a little, however. He was a young man, he had bad teeth and he was somewhat embarrassed. He carried a folding-stool under his arm. For there is only one chair in the cell, fastened to the wall by an iron chain (in order that the prisoners may not be able to use it as a weapon against the guards.) The Rabbi was clad in a dark suit. At the moment he entered, the lights in my cell were turned on from outside.

We sat down. The Rabbi was about as old as I. We were silent and looked at one another. I was aware of the strange situation, and he, too, as he told me later. He was accustomed to come to criminals, to hear their complaints, their longing, their despair, their loneliness and their remorse.

His greatest means of consolation in this place was his ability to listen. (Free people like to go to psychoanalysts for that purpose.) I, too, have been acquainted with some psychoanalysts in my life. After the second or third conference, to be sure, they for the most part, began to tell me of their own afflictions, and I had to listen.) This young Rabbi was intelligent enough to ask nothing and to tell nothing. After we had kept silent for a long time, he said: “I did not think that you would wish to talk to me.”

And then a long conversation followed. The Rabbi reconstructed this conversation at a later date. He wants to publish these dialogues, and whenever I recall them to my mind, I know that it was not only I who profited by them at that time, but that my partner equally profited by them.

And therefore I speak of them.

This Rabbi, as many of his colleagues, thought that we “western” intellectuals of Jewish stock, do not recognize any other but sociological ties, and that we, therefore, look upon a Rabbi as on a kind of dusty museum item of purely traditional value. This wording may sound, or really be exaggerated, but very few and quite insufficient relations indeed, exist between “western” intellectuals, as he termed them, and Rabbis.

We were sitting in a prison cell, and all of a sudden it dawned upon us that our professions are similar. With different means, we strive after the same unattainable aim. We spoke excitedly for a long time. We spoke of ourselves and of others, of laws and methods, of mysticism and dialectics, of tradition and politics, of homilectics and fiction, of pathos and technics.

The bell rang for supper. My bread and broth were pushed in through a slit. We went on with our conversation.

The Rabbi went away. He came back. Ke kept on coming and going. I learned, and I think he also learned, that a Rabbi is not a clergyman, that he is not only a religious guardian of the ritual—as an ecclesiastic functionary he had become estranged to us “western” intellectuals—but that he is, that he should be the mouth of our Jewish community; the one who knows how to express what we fell as Jews, without understanding it yet. We had lost our sense for our Jewish existence, we had forgotten it. We German citizens of the Jewish faith—

A deep current, I believe, goes through the western Jewish world. I don’t mean by that the flight into religious mysticism, or flight into nationalistic hysteria; but I understand it to be the increasing consciousness of the great folk source that nurtures.

A barred door, a grated window, a folding stool and a chair chained to the wall helped me and a pale young Rabbi to gain that understanding.