“NOW THAT YOU HAVE INTERVIEWED ME, I’D LIKE TO INTERVIEW YOU. UNLESS YOU HAVE ANY OBJECTIONS?”
Harvey Swados (1920–1972) was a highly regarded American novelist and nonfiction writer, known for his naturalistic style. He is widely recognized for several works, among them Standing Fast and his classic, On the Line, a collection of stories set in an auto plant. Swados’s yechidus with the Rebbe took place in 1964; his wife, Bette, accompanied him.
The Rebbe’s most striking physical characteristic, the one most often commented upon, particularly by those who met him in yechidus, were his eyes; in Swados’s case, he recalled how “the pale blue eyes remain fixed upon [me] with an unblinking directness that could be disconcerting.” Of course, Swados, himself a keen possessor of a fine novelist’s eye, noticed far more details about the Rebbe than just his eyes. After his yechidus, he peppered his recollection of his encounter with just the sorts of details that illuminate what it was like to meet Menachem Mendel Schneerson in private. Among the first things that struck Swados was the Rebbe’s workspace: “[His] office was as bleak as the rest of the dingy building, the bare venetian blinds drawn against the beating snow outside, the walls bare also, and with nothing on his desk but a pad and a telephone. The Rebbe sat very still, attending to my queries with his head bent forward so that his broad brimmed hat shaded his face, which appeared deceptively ruddy. He is a strikingly handsome man, whose almost classically regular features are not at all obscured by a graying beard which is full but not bushy.”
Swados, then in his early forties, was on something of a quest, not searching for background material for a new book but seeking truths that he could incorporate into his own life.
… Three years earlier, Israel had publicly tried Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official in charge of the Jews’ annihilation. Filled with detailed testimony from survivors, the Eichmann trial had turned into a seminal event in Jewish life, fully acquainting Jews and interested non-Jews with what Jews had experienced inside the Nazi ghettos and inside the work camps and death camps. In the aftermath of the trial, Hannah Arendt, the well-known political philosopher who had covered the trial for the New Yorker, published a book of her reflections on the trial, titled Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. In it, Arendt leveled charges against the European Jewish leadership, accusing the local Judenraete (the Jewish councils appointed by the Nazis to be their liaisons to the Jewish community) of having acquiesced to the Nazis’ most terrible demands. When the Nazis ordered the Judenraete to supply Jews for deportation, they did so, fearing that if they didn’t cooperate, the Germans would murder even more Jews. Now, Swados began his discussion by asking the Rebbe his opinion of the behavior of the Judenraete and of the German masses as well. The Rebbe’s animus toward the Germany of the Hitler era was well-known and of course not surprising.... He pointed to political realities, to the incredible difficulties in maintaining one’s faith under a totalitarian regime.” The Rebbe started speaking about the persecution then being undergone by Jews in the Soviet Union and asked rhetorically, “How much more difficult do you suppose it was to keep hold of one’s integrity under the crushing weight of the German tyrants, who were so much more efficient than the Russians? No,” he said firmly, “the miracle was that there was any resistance at all, that there was any organization at all, that there was any leadership at all.” This sort of sober political analysis was clearly not the direction Swados had expected his conversation with a Chasidic Rebbe to take. Was it the Rebbe’s opinion, therefore, Swados found himself asking, that the tragedy was not a unique visitation upon the Jewish people and that it could happen again? “Morgen in der fruh,” the Rebbe replied without hesitation, “Tomorrow morning.” This was a particularly disconcerting statement from the Rebbe because of his long-standing belief that the Holocaust would never repeat itself. However, that latter belief was always expressed in a theological context. The Rebbe was convinced that God would never again allow such an attack against the Jewish people. But as his conversation with Swados was not about theology, but rather about history and human nature, the Rebbe was making more of a commonsense observation. According to the Rebbe, a society that does not inculcate in its citizens belief in a God who demands righteous and moral behavior could, if it has the military might to do so, carry out genocide against any ethnic group.
“Why [are you] so certain that so terrible a horror could occur again?” Swados asked the Rebbe. Swados reported what happened next: “The Rebbe launched into an analysis of the German atrocities in a rhetoric that shifted eloquently and unswervingly, often in the same sentence, from English (for my benefit) to Yiddish (for nuance and precision). He did not speak mystically, nor did he harp on the German national character and its supposed affinity for Jew-hatred. “Rather, he insisted upon the Germans’ obedience to authority and their unquestioning carrying out of orders—even the most bestial—as a cultural-historical phenomenon that was the product of many generations of deliberate inculcation.” The conversation continued a few minutes longer, then Swados, conscious of how many people were waiting outside to see the Rebbe, started to prepare for the meeting’s end. He thanked the Rebbe and half rose to leave, when the Rebbe restrained him with a motion of his hand.
… Three years earlier, Israel had publicly tried Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official in charge of the Jews’ annihilation. Filled with detailed testimony from survivors, the Eichmann trial had turned into a seminal event in Jewish life, fully acquainting Jews and interested non-Jews with what Jews had experienced inside the Nazi ghettos and inside the work camps and death camps. In the aftermath of the trial, Hannah Arendt, the well-known political philosopher who had covered the trial for the New Yorker, published a book of her reflections on the trial, titled Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. In it, Arendt leveled charges against the European Jewish leadership, accusing the local Judenraete (the Jewish councils appointed by the Nazis to be their liaisons to the Jewish community) of having acquiesced to the Nazis’ most terrible demands. When the Nazis ordered the Judenraete to supply Jews for deportation, they did so, fearing that if they didn’t cooperate, the Germans would murder even more Jews. Now, Swados began his discussion by asking the Rebbe his opinion of the behavior of the Judenraete and of the German masses as well. The Rebbe’s animus toward the Germany of the Hitler era was well-known and of course not surprising.... He pointed to political realities, to the incredible difficulties in maintaining one’s faith under a totalitarian regime.” The Rebbe started speaking about the persecution then being undergone by Jews in the Soviet Union and asked rhetorically, “How much more difficult do you suppose it was to keep hold of one’s integrity under the crushing weight of the German tyrants, who were so much more efficient than the Russians? No,” he said firmly, “the miracle was that there was any resistance at all, that there was any organization at all, that there was any leadership at all.” This sort of sober political analysis was clearly not the direction Swados had expected his conversation with a Chasidic Rebbe to take. Was it the Rebbe’s opinion, therefore, Swados found himself asking, that the tragedy was not a unique visitation upon the Jewish people and that it could happen again? “Morgen in der fruh,” the Rebbe replied without hesitation, “Tomorrow morning.” This was a particularly disconcerting statement from the Rebbe because of his long-standing belief that the Holocaust would never repeat itself. However, that latter belief was always expressed in a theological context. The Rebbe was convinced that God would never again allow such an attack against the Jewish people. But as his conversation with Swados was not about theology, but rather about history and human nature, the Rebbe was making more of a commonsense observation. According to the Rebbe, a society that does not inculcate in its citizens belief in a God who demands righteous and moral behavior could, if it has the military might to do so, carry out genocide against any ethnic group.
“Why [are you] so certain that so terrible a horror could occur again?” Swados asked the Rebbe. Swados reported what happened next: “The Rebbe launched into an analysis of the German atrocities in a rhetoric that shifted eloquently and unswervingly, often in the same sentence, from English (for my benefit) to Yiddish (for nuance and precision). He did not speak mystically, nor did he harp on the German national character and its supposed affinity for Jew-hatred. “Rather, he insisted upon the Germans’ obedience to authority and their unquestioning carrying out of orders—even the most bestial—as a cultural-historical phenomenon that was the product of many generations of deliberate inculcation.” The conversation continued a few minutes longer, then Swados, conscious of how many people were waiting outside to see the Rebbe, started to prepare for the meeting’s end. He thanked the Rebbe and half rose to leave, when the Rebbe restrained him with a motion of his hand.
“Now that you have interviewed me, I’d like to interview you. Unless you have any objections?” “Please,” Swados said, “go right ahead.” The Rebbe grinned. “But I am afraid that I won’t be as diplomatic with you as you have been with me.” As Swados later recalled: “After a few questions about my background, he asked me about the subject matter of my books. When I protested that it was no easy thing to sum up, in a sentence or two, books that had taken me years to write, he retorted, ‘Surely I can expect a better summation from you than from anyone else.’ He seemed particularly interested in my description of On the Line, a book in which I had attempted, by means of a series of fictional portraits of auto assembly workers, to demonstrate the impact of their work on their lives. “‘What conclusions did you come to?’ “The question nettled me. It struck me as obtuse, coming from a man of such subtle perception. “‘Did you suggest,’ he persisted, ‘that the unhappy workers, the exploited workers, the workers chained to their machines, should revolt?’ “‘Of course not. It would have been unrealistic.’ “‘What relation would you say that your book bears to the early work of Upton Sinclair?’ “I was flabbergasted. Here I was, sitting in the study of a scholar of mystic lore on a wintry night, and discussing not Chabad Hasidism . . . but proletarian literature! ‘Why,’ I said, ‘I would hope that it is less narrowly propagandistic than Sinclair’s. I was trying to capture a mood of frustration rather than one of revolution.’ “Suddenly, I realized that he had led me to the answer that he was seeking— and what was more, with his next query, I realized how many steps ahead he was of my faltering mind: ‘You could not conscientiously recommend revolution for your unhappy workers in a free country, or see it as a practical perspective for their readers. Then how could one demand it from those who were being crushed by the Nazis?’” The yechidus now shifted from the macro issue of the Holocaust and the repurcussions of totalitarianism to the micro, Swados’s own life.
The Rebbe started by challenging the novelist to think in terms of his own obligations as a writer and a Jew: “After all, you have certain responsibilities which the ordinary man does not; your words affect not just your own family and friends but thousands of readers.” “I’m not sure what those responsibilities are,” Swados responded. “First, there is the responsibility to understand the past. . . . Suppose I ask how you explain the past, the survival of Judaism over three millennia.” “Well,” Swados answered, “the negative force of persecution has certainly driven people together who might otherwise disintegrate.” Swados went on to argue that if antisemitism disappeared, Jewishness might well be weakened or destroyed. To this the Rebbe responded: “Do you really think that only a negative force unites the little tailor in Melbourne and the Rothschild in Paris?” “I wouldn’t deny the positive aspects of Judaism.” The Rebbe jumped on Swados’s concession: “Then suppose that scientific inquiry and historical research led you to conclude that factors which you might regard as irrational have contributed to the continuity of Judaism. Wouldn’t you feel logically bound to acknowledge the power of the irrational, even though you declined to embrace it?” “Hypnotized by the elegance” of the Rebbe’s argument, as Swados put it, he assented. But the Rebbe was not finished with his challenge. “You must have a certain talent, a gift for expressing yourself so that thousands are swayed by what you write. Where does that talent come from?” “Partly from hard work. From practice, from study.” “Naturally. But is it unscientific to suggest that you might owe some of it to your forebears? You did not spring from nothing. The point is, isn’t it, that something has been transmitted to you by your father, your grandfather, your great-grandfather, down through the ages? And that you owe them a debt, a debt which you have the responsibility to try to repay.” By this point, Swados found himself sweating heavily, his hands tightly clenched, as were those of his wife. The Rebbe, however, sat relaxed, waiting for the writer’s response. “Are you suggesting, Rebbe,” Swados finally said, “that I should reexamine my writing or my personal code and my private life?” “Doesn’t one relate to the other? Doesn’t one imply the other?” “That’s a complicated question.” “Yes,” the Rebbe responded amiably, “it certainly is.” He paused, then reminded Swados of what he had said earlier. “I warned you that I wouldn’t be diplo- matic, didn’t I?” At the meeting’s end, when Swados thanked the Rebbe for being so generous with his time, the Rebbe waved aside the complimentary words. “We’ll see what your writing turns out like in the time ahead.” At first, Swados thought that the Rebbe might be referring to something that he would write about the meeting, but he immediately realized that that was wrong. “Few things could matter less to him. For he is a man quite without vanity, and what he was expressing was the hope that my work would go well, certainly better than before.” The Rebbe then extended a bracha (blessing) to the Swadoses and their children. Minutes later, standing outside in the howling snow, Swados found himself surrounded by Chasidim who wanted to know what had transpired in the hour- and-a-half-long meeting. The author, profoundly moved, did not want to try to sum up so intense a conversation in a few words, although he offered a few impressions. “Tell me,” demanded one Chasid, beaming at the realization of how taken Swados seemed to have been with the Rebbe, “what kind of impression did the Rebbe make on you? I know it’s cold, but just tell me in one word.” Swados surprised himself by his own definition of what had struck him most about the Rebbe, and it was not the intellectual rigor of the discussion or all the personal challenges posed by the Rebbe: “If I had to choose one word to characterize him, I guess I would choose the word ‘kindly'.
[The Life And Times Of Rabbi MM Schneerson]
