Though our universities, seminaries, and foundations often seem to forget it, the house of learning, both Jewish and “general,” builds itself on this rock: one man studying one book. Herbert Weiner, one of our younger rabbis, heard of one such surviving Cabalistic “learner” of the great tradition, and conceived the idea of studying with him; to this venturesome inspiration we owe the portrait we here present of S. H. Setzer. In a basement on East Broadway, this devoted scholar, mystic, and original thinker has been giving years of unremitting study to the understanding of the Zohar, the great book of Jewish mysticism. Selections from the Zohar, with an introduction by Rabbi Weiner, appear this month in our “Cedars of Lebanon” department, page 486.
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“Four there were who entered pardes— the ‘garden’ of the esoteric Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Acher, and Akiba. Ben Azzai looked and died. Ben Zoma looked and went mad. Acher became an apostate. Only Rabbi Akiba entered in peace and came out in peace.” So does the Talmud warn those who are tempted to study the Cabala, that body of esoteric tradition and teaching which would lift the veil from the mysteries of life and creation.
The most sacred book of the Cabala is the Zohar, which means the “Radiance” or “Shining.” Cabalists claim that the book was revealed in the 2nd century c. E. to Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai while he hid in a cave from the Romans, who then controlled Palestine. Most modern scholars, more skeptical, detect evidence of medieval authorship. They assert that most of the book was written by a Hebrew literary figure of 13th-century Spain, who merely credited his own work to the 2nd-century rabbi in order to enhance the value of the copies he was trying to sell. Whatever the authorship, the book has been sanctified by centuries of Jewish tradition as one of the holiest writings, almost equal in importance to the Bible and the Talmud. Its interpretation of the inner meaning of the Bible, and its own mystic doctrines, have lifted the souls and made fertile the imaginations of mystery-seekers of all religions.
The Zohar has been translated into a number of languages, including Latin, French, and English,1 and it has been commented upon extensively. Yet there are very few today who can claim to grasp the deeper meanings of its imagery and symbolism. One of these is a man who studies the Zohar in the evenings in a basement office on East Broadway. He is one who both understands and is able to communicate the Cabala’s insights in a fashion intelligible to a modern mind. His name is S. H. Setzer.
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Jewish tradition sets three qualifications for him who yearns to wander in the “garden” of the esoteric: that “his stomach be filled” with knowledge as well as food, that he be more than forty years of age, and that he be married. S. H. Setzer eats very little and sometimes forgets to eat at all, but his “stomach is filled” with the vast literature and thought of Judaism. And he is seventy-six years old, considerably past the minimum required. However, as a bachelor, he has sidestepped the third provision, which would confine the heady and sometimes erotic dimensions of this exalted atmosphere to those who are well fastened to the earth connubially.
If, nevertheless, this East Side scholar has been able to avoid the emotional pitfall which Cabala presents to the unmarried, he owes this, he might well say, to a highly disciplined and rationalistic mind—and then again, he might remind us, the Zohar itself reflects and encourages, not the senseless irrational, but the higher rationality. For Jewish mysticism, Setzer maintains, is not a flight either from reason or from the observed world, but only a more sensitive form of observation, revealing a domain outside the world for which science seeks to account. It is a world whose facts and laws are not open to the casual observer, but it is also not completely closed. To this world the mystic is peculiarly sensitive. At times he senses its reality directly. More often, he apprehends its “will” through the interstices of the ordinary facts and accidents of life. In what to somebody else will seem an insignificant accident, the mystic may catch a glimpse of some higher design unraveling itself through the unconscious medium of seemingly purposeless events. This thinking, which is part of what Setzer calls his “mystic philosophy” of life, pervades all aspects of his own life—even a phone call, as I discovered.
When I first called him and tried to make an appointment to discuss the possibility of our studying together, I got a quick refusal and was referred to some articles he had published in a Hebrew journal. I persisted, and on my third telephone call Setzer invited me to his office. He later explained that his “mystic philosophy” had caused this change of mind: when a call comes in as often as three times, it is possible that “they” are involved and are trying to carry out some design. “They” is Setzer’s familiar way of referring to the hidden but ultimately controlling powers of the “other” domain.
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“They” having seemed to indicate that a visit from me was in order, I went to find the office on East Broadway. I saw him through the basement window before I entered, bent over a litter of books and papers. When he rose to open the door he seemed very tall, but it was mostly his extreme thinness and his very long face that gave the illusion of height. His suit was brown, ancient, and formless, and in sharp contrast with the frayed but clean and starched shirt. He seemed tired, and his discolored nose and red-rimmed eyes showed that he was suffering a cold. Despite his extended hand and high-pitched, tense greeting, he appeared somewhat unfriendly and suspicious and he motioned me to a chair near the table. I proceeded to explain my presence by telling him I had heard of his unusual understanding of the Zohar and wondered if he would be willing to make professional arrangements for teaching me.
He ignored my proposal but grunted at the word “understanding.” “Yes, understanding,” his long face twisted in bitterness, “they all talk and write about it, but the Zohar is the only book that people dare to translate without understanding it. Thirty years ago, I spoke with Ginsburg—you know the famous Ginsburg who wrote the articles on Jewish mysticism in the Encyclopedia. Even then he said to me”—here he imitated Ginsburg’s voice—“Of course Mr. Setzer, I haven’t read in the Zohar as much as you.” He grunted again. “Then he hadn’t read as much as I have—and that was thirty years ago, yet. He tried later to get me a subsidy for work on the Zohar.”
He seemed to warm up a bit at his recollection of this compliment and absentmindedly accepted the cigarette I offered him. He broke it in two, placing one half in his upper jacket pocket and pushing the other into his cigarette holder.
“No,” he finally returned to my proposal, “I haven’t the time to give lessons in the Zohar. Years ago I gave them a chance. It’s one of our precious pearls, one of the most beautiful treasures of the Jewish spirit, and they know nothing about it at the seminaries. We have such big schools, why shouldn’t one of them have at least a chair in Jewish mysticism?”
He went on brooding over the Jewish institutions, and over their neglect of both Cabala and Setzer, until it was time for me to leave. He did agree, however, to see me again, specifying that I must come only in the evening, after seven. Later I learned the reason for his unusual working hours. Years ago, after a long siege of illness, Setzer had found himself without an office. A charitable organization, which leased the premises on East Broadway, agreed to keep his books and provide him with a temporary address until he located himself. Since then Setzer has spoken often about moving, but it is almost twenty years now that the arrangement has persisted. This office is available to him only in the evening, after the paying tenants have left. Necessarily, he has developed an unusual schedule, commuting from Seagate in farthest Brooklyn in the evening and returning there in the early hours of the morning. The people who use the office during the day have become accustomed now to seeing the shelves crammed with pamphlets and books, though Setzer tries to clean and brush the table before he leaves.
It was, then, at seven o’clock the next evening that I went to the “office” again. I was received a little more warmly. Setzer again began with complaints, this time about the difficult circumstances that kept him from working properly. He showed me the shelves piled high with thousands of copies of Das Wort, a magazine he writes, publishes, addresses, stamps, and mails once a month to the surviving members of the Setzer Pen Club. “Look,” he pointed to the debris, “how can I do anything here? It’s all so mixed up. I just have no time. Last week I got an order from a man who wants some of my books at a discount. Who can bother? I told him to take his own discount.”
I offered my help in cleaning up the office. He seemed to respond, and I began to hope that I might yet again broach the subject of our studying together.
I told him that he should certainly be teaching the Zohar in a Jewish institution, but, unfortunately, the only institution whose support I could personally obtain was my own temple. I was, unhappily, being facetious, and was about to continue and suggest private instruction, but he surprised me by saying, “Nu— so all right—so let them do it. Only put a notice in the papers and send a notice about the class to the Hebrew journals.” I was somewhat taken aback by this sudden turn and expressed some doubts about the attendance that could be secured for a class in the Zohar, to be conducted in Hebrew and Yiddish, at a Reform temple. Setzer reassured me: “Just announce it in the papers. Don’t worry, the name of S. Setzer is not so unknown.”
The announcements were duly made and the class began on schedule at the temple. Setzer was the teacher and I was the sole pupil. He made no comment, but turned to the first page of the Zohar and we began our studies together.
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“ ‘As a lily among the thorns,’ the Zohar begins, quoting from the Song of Songs,” he said. “What is this lily? It is the community of Israel. Even as the lily among the thorns is tinged with red and white, so in the community of Israel there are the qualities of justice and mercy. And even as the lily has thirteen leaves, so . . . .” Setzer read the portions and then slowly began to outline some of the ideas that underlie the writings of the Zohar.
The central theme of the Zohar, he explained, is the mystery of the Creator and the Creation, and the relationship between them. The mystery of an infinite God cannot, of course, be fully fathomed by a finite mind, yet questions can be asked. And these very questions imply some knowledge. Thus to ask “What?” already implies a certain degree of knowledge. To analyze further the nature of “what” is to reveal the existence of a non-mechanical personal power, and thus to replace the “what” with a “who.” To go further into the nature of the “who” makes even this pronoun inadequate for the reality. So the “who” falls away, and there remains only a soundless question without a word to express it. Yet even in this question, which is more akin to awe and inarticulate wonder, there is still implied a certain knowledge of the existence and nature of Something.
But how can we finite creatures know anything about that infinite which is ultimately responsible for our existence?
The unspoken but necessary assumption is, Setzer went on to expound, that in every creation a creator reveals something of his personality. It may be much or little, but the creation, having been touched by the creator, must bear his stamp. On the basis of this assumption, the Zohar tries to move by speculation from the microcosm of man and nature in their creative functioning to the macrocosm of God and his process of Creation.
Thus this book, drenched in piety and spirituality, has much of that erotic symbolism which is always to be found in profound mysticism. It sees a linkage between the creative process (as it occurs in nature and in man) and the Creator. It is concerned, said Setzer, with the dialectics of the tensions, antagonisms, and oppositions which necessarily precede all synthesis and creative unifications. It is concerned with the mystery of the nothing becoming something, and tries again and again to probe this mystery by drawing analogies from the manner in which an immaterial thought or urge in a human being becomes real, becomes even flesh and blood. Thus the Zohar contains deep and subtle psychology and philosophy as well as poetic flights of the religious soul.
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Setzer was a tactful teacher, not avoiding the erotic explanations without which the Zohar cannot be understood, but communicating them always on their spiritual as well as physical levels. He spoke in a mixture of English, Hebrew, and Yiddish, and often his sentences would trail off into a gesture or an allusion. But gradually the symbolism became meaningful and what at first was only poetic imagery—a tree and its fruit, the moon and its light, a word and its significance when the letters were reversed—all these became concepts and ideas, psychological and philosophical truths equally valid on many different levels. All the levels—biological, sociological, psychological, philosophical—all were merged in the words of the Zohar like “the links of many chains all connected with each other so that when one link is touched, all respond.” Thus, the Biblical phrase in the story of the creation —“the tree of life yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself”—referred literally to the story of creation, but it is equally significant, he pointed out, on other levels: the tree and the seed symbolize the physical creative process in man; they refer also to the intellectual and spiritual fructification of a human being by the “seed” of the Divine wisdom; the passage hints also at the way in which all cosmic creation takes place, the mysterious process by which “fruit” comes from seed and seed comes from intangible thought, and thought from the realm of the unknown and the unknowable.
Setzer took great pride in being able to formulate and communicate the subtle and slippery thoughts of the Zohar. But once in a while his satisfaction at the successful elucidation of a passage was alloyed with some bitterness. After a particularly difficult portion he would look up to see if the extent of his accomplishment was sufficiently appreciated. “Nu,” he would ask, “now you understand, yes? On this point the Ari and the Cordovero [great medieval commentators on the Zohar] struggled and struggled and finally came up with nothing. It took me thirty years to understand it, and now I’ve given it to you in five minutes.” There seemed a note of regret at his parting so easily with the knowledge so painfully acquired.
A similar bitter irony colors his feelings about his fine collection of books on Cabala. The thought of leaving the books to an institution—one of the institutions that had been so indifferent to him—pained him. He talked facetiously about how he wished he could somehow take the books with him, and he spoke without facetiousness about trying to make a commercial arrangement with some hotel owner: he was willing to exchange the books, which he estimated were worth about three thousand dollars, for three years of board and room. It would be a good risk for the hotel, he pointed out, for if he died before the three years, the books would still go to the hotel and they would profit on the arrangement. He was sure that many a hotel owner would be interested in the proposal.
This jealous possessiveness of his hardwon knowledge makes him reluctant to write articles on the Cabala. “Why should I give it to them so easily?” Yet he is far from miserly with his meager material possessions. Apart from a small subsidy from a foundation, and a few dollars garnered from an occasional published article, or the sale of some of his old books, Setzer has almost no income. But he responds to every monetary appeal that comes to him, and always distributes some charity on the eve of the High Holidays. With his spiritual and intellectual “capital” he parts only reluctantly.
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If Setzer is bitter surely it is understandable. He has been a writer for well over fifty years. In Europe he was literary editor of one of the first Hebrew quarterlies and one of that dedicated circle that helped to bring about a renaissance of the Hebrew language. His name and his articles are known to almost every reader of the Jewish and Hebrew press, and he has published over a dozen well-received books on Jewish history and thought. For several decades now, he has written and published a Hebrew and Yiddish pamphlet on a monthly basis, sending it out to subscribers throughout the world. In spite of all this, he finds himself today in that meager, borrowed office on East Broadway. The labor of writing, addressing, and mailing his pamphlets is becoming burdensome, even though he has worked out a system whereby his time is not completely wasted: he places a large folio of the Talmud on his left and has trained himself to read from it while automatically addressing and stamping the pamphlets piled on his right.
Still the feeling of frustration gnaws. More and more of the pamphlets mailed to members of the Setzer Pen Club come back marked “addressee deceased” or “unknown,” and most of the two hundred and fifty remaining recipients have for years neglected to send in their three-dollar subscriptions. Even that small satisfaction which used to be his at being recognized by the Yiddish and Hebrew readers of the neighborhood seems to have disappeared. Some time ago a bearded rabbi of the neighborhood walked into the basement office in error, and happened to notice that Setzer was bent over the sacred text of the Zohar and was not wearing the usual head covering. He didn’t recognize Setzer and began to rebuke him for lack of reverence in handling so sacred a text without proper respect. He received a sharp and ready answer: “You are the one who should be ashamed, not me. You come in and see somebody sitting alone and studying Torah for the honor of Torah. You don’t think to yourself how good it is that in these days it is still possible to find a man who sits alone at night and studies the Holy Word. All you can think about is a hat.” Though he tells this story with evident delight, Setzer was hurt by the stranger’s lack of recognition.
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Setzer was born in Novogrod-Volhynsk in the Ukraine, the cradle of the Hasidic movement which, originating in the early 18th century, sought to bring a new enthusiasm and immediacy to Jewish piety; perhaps this is why Setzer has always been attracted to the mystic stream in Jewish life. In an environment abundant with keen Talmudists, he was early recognized as an
ilui—a child prodigy—and went on to further study at the Talner Klaus in his native town. Here his reputation as an unusually brilliant student brought him the friendship of a man who remains warm in his memory to this day. Mordecai Zeeb Feierberg, the leader and intellectual spokesman of the “enlightened” Jewish youth of that period. Feierberg had written a semi-autobiographical novel in Hebrew, entitled Whither, in which he described the searchings of a soul that had been uprooted from the soil of traditional Judaism but was unable to place its roots elsewhere, and was therefore disintegrating. Feierberg’s laments found an echo in the hearts of many of the “Maskilim,” as they came to be known. The word literally means the “enlightened,” but the poet Bialik, himself one of the Maskilim, more aptly termed them “children of the dusk,” for they were born after the sunset of one world, and before the sunrise of another. One of the objectives of the Maskilim in Novogrod-Volhynsk was the “capture” of brilliant young Talmudists like Setzer. Feierberg accomplished it: the yeshiva student became a leader of the young intellectuals.
The days in Novogrod-Volhynsk were days of excitement and happiness, full of study and enthusiastic discussion of all subjects. Setzer developed a reputation for a sharp and slashing style in both the spoken and written word, and he came to be known far beyond the local environs for his angry attacks on the philosophies of Ahad Ha’am and Spinoza. Toward Spinoza he was particularly bitter. “I could never forgive him,” he recalls now, “his scraping and bowing before Christianity, his constant attacks on Judaism and his apologies for Christianity. I could never forgive him his lack of feeling for the martyrdom of the Jews which he himself saw. And I had no respect for him because he borrowed much of his philosophy from the atmosphere and thought of the Zohar—and never acknowledged or mentioned it by a single word.”
Setzer’s literary star rose rapidly when he went to Zhitomir, and later to Warsaw. All those days were more than days of success: they were filled with warm and stimulating comradeship. “We used to go walking in the evenings to the edge of the city and there in the fields carry on our discussions till early morning. We would lie down for a few hours of sleep, only to rise again and continue the talk.”
Setzer was with Feierberg at the hour of his death at the age of twenty-five and later was chosen to deliver the eulogy over his grave. The picture of his friend’s end has remained deeply etched in Setzer’s memory. During the last moments of Feierberg’s life he asked Setzer for the time and Setzer, looking at the clock, saw that it had stopped. He did not tell this to his dying friend, for he remembered that the clocks had stopped also when the Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism, died.
The coincidence impressed him deeply. Later, in one of the books which he published after his coming to America in 1912, Setzer described in detail the death of the Baal Shem as recorded by tradition. The Baal Shem had whispered to the disciples gathered around his bed that when both clocks in the house stopped, he would enter the next world. The disciples burst out into a wail, but the Baal Shem comforted them saying, “Let us better have a little shmus [a chat] with the Master,” in this way indicating that it was time for daily prayer. After the prayer, the disciples saw that the small clock in the room had stopped and they quickly crowded in front of it lest the Baal Shem notice. Shortly afterwards, the Baal Shem was seized by great pain and began to murmur softly. When they bent down to hear what he was saying, they heard the words of the Psalm, “Lead me not to the foot of pride,” and repeating these words, he died. At that moment, it was observed that the other clock in the hall had stopped.
Setzer also wrote a book about another great Hasidic leader, Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav.2 “Nahman,” Setzer says, “was primarily a story-teller, a great literary talent. In order to express himself within his environment, he specialized, of course, in religious and moralistic tales, but primarily he was a literary genius, and he used to say that good story-telling could be a way of worshiping God.” Setzer’s large volume on the Bratzlaver was published in 1929, and shortly thereafter completely sold out. Setzer himself has only one copy left, and recently he inserted a number of advertisements in the newspapers offering to purchase a copy of his own book. When someone offered to sell him the book, but asked fifteen dollars for it, Setzer felt both outraged and complimented.
From time to time other advertisements appear in the newspapers under Setzer’s name, offering his services as a lecturer. He suggests such themes as “Spinoza and the Zohar,” “The Pythagorean Theory of Numbers,” “A Page of the Pentateuch as Seen Through the Talmud,” etc., etc. These are the lectures he delivered more than thirty years ago. There has been no response to these ads in more than twenty years. Nor, evidently, is Setzer eager to receive a response, for when I offered to arrange a lecture, he seemed uninterested.
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As he looks back over his long life, two episodes stand out as particularly meaningful, not only because they were occasions when he was close to death, but because he was on both occasions particularly conscious of the intervention of “them”—of some higher design in the affairs of his life. Of course, the whole of life, as Setzer sees it, carries out a design and purpose of which we are not usually conscious. Even as a person who is under the influence of a post-hypnotic suggestion goes about his business for what he thinks are his own reasons, but is actually following a pull that is not revealed to him, so all the events of life are unconsciously carrying out the will of the hidden powers whom Setzer refers to as “them.” Sometimes, however, “they” reveal their hand almost unmistakably.
The first occasion on which Setzer was almost perceptibly conscious of “their” guiding presence was during a pogrom in Zhitomir. He likes to blame that episode on the Western Jewish writer and Zionist Max Nordau. Setzer had read an essay of Nordau’s on leadership in which the leader is described as one who is willing to go ahead of his people. So struck was Setzer with this simple and uncompromising definition that when an emissary was needed to approach the “pogromchiks” and attempt to dissuade them from their designs, he stepped forward. The Jewish youths were gathered at one end of the street ready to protect themselves, and the mob was at the other end of the street, ready to attack. Setzer walked slowly toward them, and the closer he came to them the less optimistic he grew. “When I saw the violence in their faces, I knew it was no use, but I kept on walking.” When he had come close enough, one of the mob stepped quickly forward and struck the emissary over the head with a heavy piece of wood. Later, they managed to bring Setzer to a doctor as the first pogrom casualty, and he found out that but for a fraction of an inch the blow would have been fatal. During that whole episode, however, Setzer had felt no fear. He simply had the feeling that “they” did not yet want him to die.
He had the same confidence and sense of “their” wanting him to live when, in 1914, he became ill with a rare disease that the doctors declared was incurable and fatal. The name of the disease was myasthenia gravis and Setzer was proud of the fact that it seemed to strike only millionaires and intellectuals. But he was not willing to accept the fatal prognosis of the doctors. “The first few months at the hospital they told me to lie still, and so I was still. I didn’t want to cause them any bother. But then I saw that I wasn’t getting any better and I said to myself, ‘Vus, meshuga bin ich?’ Am I crazy, to die at such a young age? I just wasn’t ready, that’s all, and I began to tell them what I thought I needed. I told them to put me in the fresh air, and I told them what food I thought I needed. And then I began to use my will power. This is the key to my whole life: akshonus— stubbornness. Every day I took one more step until I finally walked out of the hospital. Akshonus— this has been the secret of all my studies and that is how I began to really understand the Zohar too. I just would not let a sentence or a phrase go without squeezing from it completely what it was trying to say.”
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It was during those many months in the hospital that Setzer again took up the Zohar, which he had not seriously read since his youth. Now he began to reread it, not only with the akshonus and iron will that he used in fighting his illness, but aided by the wide knowledge of formal philosophy that he had acquired since he had left the yeshiva. For the first time, the complex symbolism of the Zohar appeared to yield a logical meaning, and he discovered what seemed to him the key to its proper understanding. Contrary to the opinion of many who read and comment on it, this classic of mysticism was no dogmatic religious statement or religious mythology, but contained and reflected the classic philosophic problems which agitated both Arab and Christian scholars in the Middle Ages. Its thought was to be understood only by comparison with the Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic ideas of the time. It was concerned, like Spinoza and Kant, with the problems of substance and attribute, of noumena and phenomena, of the finite and the infinite, but, in Setzer’s opinion, its subtle probing and analysis anticipated and went deeper than theirs.
Of course, the philosophical discussions of the Zohar are disguised by a complex symbolism which misleads the uninitiated. The author or authors of the Zohar, as pious Jews, were committed to the classic texts of their tradition and had to assume that they embodied all wisdom, even the wisdom of the philosophers. This meant that the ancient texts could not be discarded, but had rather to be so ingeniously interpreted that they revealed the desired meaning. The literal meaning of words was not disputed; as compared, however, to the inner, deeper truth, it was but as “clothes are to the body, or the body to the soul.”
Not all of the Zohar is philosophy. In its pages there spring up the deeply repressed and subterranean currents of Gnosticism and mythology, disguised in forms and symbols that escape the reach of interdiction by the rabbis. Fancy and the dream at times burst away from the bonds of official doctrine, and the interpretation and text often seem connected by the thinnest of threads.
Setzer explains in interesting fashion these poetic excursions of the text. “If you were sleeping, and someone touched you lightly, but not enough to awaken you, then something in your dreams would reflect that touch. It would of course be reflected in your own dream language, but still it would be connected somehow with that touch. Often the Zohar is like that; Simeon ben Yohai or one of his comrades quotes a Biblical text and asks its secret. Then they seem to go off into a different world, with its own language and symbols, but it is yet connected with the original text, even as the dream is connected to the touch.”
Setzer has written books not only on mystic themes, but also on problems of Jewish law and legend, and Jewish history. He has been several times awarded prizes in recognition of his creative scholarship in a wide number of fields. Of late, though, he has been drawn more and more to the elevated and mysterious world of the Zohar, to regions far removed from the multitudinous and distracting problems that go with the business of daily living.
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The wealth which the Torah promises its students is by no means exchangeable for rent and food, Setzer has found out. His needs are incredibly small. Besides his donations to charity and the rent for his room, and the small meal which is at times completely forgotten and never missed, he needs little. Yet his income does not quite match up to even these needs. Years ago, when he lived socially as well as intellectually, he needed and secured through his writings a much higher income. But at no time, despite his recognition and acceptance as a writer and scholar, was he free from the pressure of economic need. At times he has rebelled against this situation, and his attempts to achieve some financial independence, if not successful, were often ingenious, to say the least. One of these attempts Setzer describes now with a good deal of amusement, though he was quite serious at the time. That was when he decided, some fifteen years ago, to become a race-horse gambler.
“After all, I thought, why should it be so difficult? The Talmud is difficult; the Zohar is difficult; but why should it be so hard to make money if you really put your mind to it? So I decided to make money in a way that would leave me the maximum amount of time for my studies and writing. I developed a system for playing the horses. At first the system had a simple basis, though later I complicated it considerably. First, I assumed that they were all ganovim, all thieves. Second, I knew it had nothing to do with the narishkeit of tracks, clocking, and handicaps. After all, if you could win by studying these facts, everybody would win who just studied hard enough.
“In fact, I didn’t pay attention at first to the horses at all, but to the owners. After all, I said to myself, these owners like Whitney and others, they have a reputation to keep up. They can’t show their faces to their friends if they don’t have a certain percentage of winners. With all their fixing, they still have to manage to win a certain number of times. So I used to watch the big owners and their stables all over the country, and after they had a losing streak, I began to play their horses. I used the same system with the jockeys. After all, they have to make a living, and their living depends on their reputations, so they too have to fix up a certain percentage of winners. Later I developed more complicated systems, but for two years I was able to keep ahead of them. I never played less than three hundred dollars a day and sometimes as much as a thousand.” After two years, however, he wound up with as little money as he had begun with.
Recently the desire to “adjust his financial position” has flared up again.
It began with a recording machine I brought to his office to record the chanting of the Aramaic of the Zohar. Setzer was immediately interested in the machine and its possibilities. He wanted to hear how his voice sounded and brought down an old volume of Das Wort from some thirty years ago. He read some poems he had written. One began something like, “I am like a shadow . . . where others go, there am I and yet I am not”; another ended with a sentence about his desire to “dig a pit between himself and others.” When we played back the recording, he was greatly pleased with the way his voice sounded and mentioned the possibility of preparing himself for some lectures with the aid of the machine. Later he asked if a smaller size couldn’t be purchased that he might use at home.
“Sometimes a thought comes to my head,” he explained, “even when I am shaving, and just the right way to put it into words. If the machine could be going I could catch it.”
A few weeks later, he began work seriously recording a portion of the Zohar called “The Mystery of the Sabbath,” a traditional selection which is reproduced in the prayer books of the Hasidim. It is a beautiful meditation on the “oneness” which unites all creation and integrates all souls on the Sabbath, and tells how only in such integration is there the fullest functioning of the creative flow, the fullest contact between Creator and Creation:
The mystery of the Sabbath, the Sabbath . . . that unites itself through the mystery of the One. In order that it may be inspired by the mystery of the One to become as a reflection of Him. . . .
Setzer spent many hours with the recorder trying to get all the proper nuances of the chant, and his voice was very pleasant to hear. When it was finished to his satisfaction, he announced that he was convinced of the commercial possibilities of a record carrying his version of “The Mystery of the Sabbath.” The more he listened to his recording, the more enthusiastic he became, finally venturing the opinion that it was perhaps just for this purpose that we had been brought together.
Unexpressed was the thought: if not for this, then for what did “they” arrange our meeting? For indeed there had been no great change in Setzer’s life and circumstances as a result of my phone call. We no longer spoke, as we did at the beginning, of publishing a full shelf of books on Jewish philosophy, or of arranging for courses on the Zohar sponsored by official institutions. Nevertheless, I expressed doubts as to the appeal of “The Mystery of the Sabbath” on the market place. Setzer remained unconvinced and decided to take the recording to a commercial radio station.
The officials of this station were under considerable obligation to him, for only a month before, without his permission, they had broadcast portions of his book on the Baal Shem Tov, and had remained noncommittal as regards financial compensation when Setzer finally asked them. Consequently, they were only too happy to make two records of his tape recording, and give them to him as a gift. At first, it seemed to Setzer, they were also interested in the commercial possibilities of the record. Upon further discussion, however, they seemed to lose their enthusiasm. Setzer somewhat suspects that they may still be interested but would like to find a way of issuing the record without giving him any share of the profits.
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Since the recording machine was kept in my office in New Jersey, Setzer finally consented to visit with me for a weekend. Previously he had resisted my urging, claiming that he had given up all social engagements. “What do I need it for, the tenseness and the strain?” However, in order to complete his recording, he consented to come, and I picked him up Friday afternoon at his office. He was waiting, his overnight clothes packed in an ancient brief case, and he himself carefully dressed in a white and black checkered suit and straw hat. He noticed my interest in his suit and informed me that it was of the vintage of the 1920’s when they really made good clothes. The suit attracted some attention in temple that evening, where I took him for services, not only because of its unusual if well-preserved style, but also because it had shrunk considerably around the ankles.
Most of the people at the temple, and especially the young matrons, were quite attentive to their unusual guest when coffee was served afterwards, and sat with him as he tasted various cakes pressed upon him by the hostesses. He seemed flustered but by no means displeased by all the attention. I wanted to protect him from “overstrain” in his first venture into social life in years, and when some people invited him out for ice cream, I put them off. Later, when we left the temple, he said to me in a rather hurt tone, “Why did you have to speak for me? It’s been so many years since I’ve been out in company, we could have gone with them.” I apologized, and my mind went back to the poem he had recited on the recording tape about “digging a pit between himself and others.”
On another evening the words of that poem occurred to me again. Setzer was discussing the problem of the origin of evil according to the Cabala. The point of origin of evil, in the doctrine of the Cabala, he explained, occurs when there is separation and division. Of course, there must be such separation in the process of any creation. In the terminology of the Zohar, if the creative flow never ceases, there can never be any definite form, even as there is never form in that which has no limitation, which is not bounded and separated, so to speak, from other substance. Thus there must always be a holding back as well as a giving in creation if it is to be comprehended, for we comprehend and can deal only with that which is limited. Yet it is precisely when the creative flow and grace cease, even in the interests of creation, that evil has its origin. For evil is that which is present when the creative flow is absent. Evil is that which creeps in when the force that wants to give life must be limited. Evil arises when separation and division begin. On the other hand, only in the yearning for the fusion and unity of things, ideas, and people, is the higher truth and good approached. This is the mystic and also the practical theological and psychological meaning of the oneness which is stressed in the central phrase of Judaism: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” It is this oneness of all reality and all dimensions of existence that is continually stressed in the mystic literature.
The words of his old poem and the incident at the temple came back to me as Setzer explained these matters. How is it possible to deal constantly with the theme of “oneness” and “togetherness,” and yet remain a bachelor who wanted to “dig a pit between himself and others,” and who would rather avoid the “strain” of social contact? Or again, in the puzzling dialectics of this world, who is more conscious of the need for fusion and togetherness than he who is gripped in that tension of separation and division?
Setzer would probably call his lonely walking through life “independence” rather than “separation.” So eager is he to avoid troubling people that he will lie alone in his room through a week-long siege of illness rather than call for help. But this independence becomes more difficult with the years. He is not so sure as he used to be that he is not yet ready for death. He thinks frequently now of moving to Boston, where his only sister lives, but his reluctance to become a source of trouble to anybody is holding him back. He feels, however, that some change in his living habits must be made.
Last year there was a brief possibility that his problem would be solved. A rich Californian, who knew and admired Setzer’s writings and scholarship, came to visit him. He spoke about a new Jewish institution of higher learning which was being formed in California, and proposed that Setzer take a position there which would give him both security and time for study. Setzer waited more than a year for the offer to materialize. “They may force me yet to become rich,” was all he would hint. Then one day he disclosed the whole proposition bitterly: the man from California had died before completing the arrangements, and so Setzer remains in New York.
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This event was only the latest in a long series of frustrations. The scholar’s akshonus and iron will are still with him, but the daily ride from his room in Seagate to East Broadway is wearing. He has been ill and alone in his room a number of times this year, and lately his conversation has turned often to death. These discourses are philosophic soliloquies, and they come forth at the most unlikely moments. Recently a mutual friend, who had just returned from Israel, dined with Setzer and me. This friend began speaking of his trip. Soon we became conscious of the fact that Setzer was also speaking—but with no apparent attempt to participate in the general conversation. He was launched on one of his half-whimsical monologues: “I have come to the conclusion lately that something which is completely evil, or almost without any mixture of good, can exist with a strong will to life. For example a complete murderer or evil genius can have a powerful drive for life. But I don’t think this is the case with a good person. He must have an admixture of evil to live and want to live strongly. If he loses it, then he is finished. I know myself that much of my striving and accomplishment and power come from my yetzer hara, my evil impulse. Until a few years ago, I used to bathe all year long in the ocean, even in the winter. It was healthy, but I know I did it also partly because I liked to show off a bit, and when I studied the Zohar, I was interested in it not only for its own sake, but also I wanted the satisfaction of knowing that nobody else knew it as well as I. Not that I wanted glory or some other reward, but 1 did want that satisfaction. The results were good, but it was the admixture of the evil impulse that gave me power. I think about it now because lately I just haven’t been concerned with knowing more or less than the other person. The evil is weakening. It’s not good.”
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He smiles himself at these little meditations, and yet he is rather serious about them. In fact, he has made some rather startling changes in the habits of his religious life. Since his early youth, Setzer has been unconcerned with the formal ritualistic observances of his tradition, though he is deeply religious in spirit Whenever one asked why there was so little connection between his personal religious habits and his studies and interest in Jewish law, he would half avoid the question with the admonition to let ritual observances “come naturally without strain”—he liked to drop in on a synagogue when he was in the mood. But lately he has been saying the old prayers more regularly and, most surprising of all, he has resumed the practice of eating kosher food, something he had abandoned for over fifty years. In announcing his new dietary regime, he smiled almost apologetically, “After all, I’ll have to meet the Cordovero and the Ari soon. Nu, about putting on tefillin and praying three times a day, they won’t ask me. But to eat treife, it’s just not nice.” Again he smiled, but he was not unserious.
On the actual facts of life beyond death, Jewish tradition encourages little speculation, and even the mystics were not given to letting their minds dwell on the “world of truth”—as the life beyond life is called, in order to distinguish it from this world of “comparative truth.” One evening, however, Setzer broke from the tradition and told me a strange story. We had been reading the Zohar at his office and the hour was sufficiently late for the neighborhood to be very quiet. It had become a custom for him to chant the Aramaic text, after which I translated. The passage we were reading described the mysterious appearance on earth of a famous scholar and saint, Rab Hamnuna, in the guise of a donkey driver. I translated: “. . . and Rabbi Eleazar and Rabbi Abba bowed before him, and then they saw him no more. They stood up, looked on all sides, but saw him no more. They sat and cried and could not talk one to the other. After an hour had passed, Rabbi Abba said, ‘Is not this what we have learned, that in every path where good men travel, if the words of Torah are between them, then those who have already merited the next world, come before them. . . .’”I noticed then that Setzer’s attention was no longer on the passage. He had risen from the table, and was walking back and forth in the quiet office as if trying to make a decision.
“It should be told in different circumstances,” he suddenly began. “This is not the proper atmosphere, but I would like to tell you of an incident in my own life. You know, I am a rationalist, but still, if something actually happens to me, I have to accept it.” It was almost midnight, and only the occasional sound of muffled footsteps on the pavement outside could be heard as he spoke.
“I had two sisters. One of them, about five years ago, became seriously ill. One day I was sitting alone in my room and suddenly … I am a rationalist, but still, it happened … I saw something dressed in black and it was my sister. She came close to me and kissed me, then suddenly she dropped away. Then I heard a voice very clear, whispering clearly in my ear, ‘Your sister died, vour sister died.’ The whole next day I heard music, beautiful music of a song I used to know and like very much, but I can’t recall it lately. I heard this music so loud and clear that I was sure it was a radio or something which the neighbors also heard, but I found out that they didn’t. Then I got a telegram telling me that my sister had died. I figured out the time and hour and it was the exact moment when I had heard the whispering.” He paused and sat down again to the Zohar. His long, thin face seemed softer and wearier. He didn’t begin reading for a few minutes.
It may be that he was thinking about his sister who had passed away and of the mysteries that no mysticism could open up. Or perhaps he was trying to throw off the mood with a phrase of the Baal Shem Tov which he often repeats these days. “It is forbidden,” commanded the Baal Shem, “to be old. One must continue always to make large plans and projects, to look to the future even as a youth.”
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Yet Setzer is seventy-six years old now. He has not lost the akshonus that has always driven him on, but the physical conditions in which he lives and works are not comfortable. He would like to spend less time now on the subway, and would like to worry less about getting out another article to bring in a little income. He would like to live some place where he would not be isolated in case of illness, though, of course, he wouldn’t want to be in anybody’s way or lose his independence. He would like to spend more and more time in the world of the brown leather volume which lies at the edge of his pamphlet-littered table—the book that opens up a warmer, softer world where the great “holy trees” of wisdom, Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai and his companions, walk and discuss the Torah and through their words seem to merge the boundaries of heaven and earth, of flesh and spirit.
I told him that I was writing this article about him and asked whether he cared to read it. He hesitated and then decided that it wouldn’t be proper. He did suggest that “The Prayer of a Mystic,” which he wrote in an essay on mysticism, be used. In this essay Setzer describes the mystic as being like the boy Samuel in the narrative of the Bible. The young lad heard a call, but at first refused to yield to its implications, for it seemed to be at variance with his reason and usual experience. But the voice called again, and then again, until he could not deny its reality. So it is with the mystic.
“And even as he [the mystic] attempted at first to be untouched by this other ‘will’ which wanted to place him under its rule, even as in the beginning he struggled stubbornly not to perceive the mystic truth which wanted to force itself upon him, so now he hastens to take upon himself the discipline of this will.
“Even as at first he made himself deaf and blind to the voice of God which had sounded in his ears, and to the signs and proofs which He had shown him, so now are his ears quickened all day to absorb the word of God that is sent to him, and his eyes are opened wide continually to the different signs shown him from the heavens.
“But his heart cries, within him he is filled with despair and his spirit is bent when it happens that at the moment of his sorrow, at the hour when he remains without guidance, and his soul knows not how to turn, and at a certain moment in life he finds it impossible to decide which path to take—that then, these wondrous hints for which he waits, which might guide him through his straits, fail to come.
“And at times it happens that the ‘inspiration of spirit’ which has been given him is not wholly removed. The different ‘hints’ for which he waits continue to appear to him. He still hears the voice of God reverberating in his ears. But it is impossible to fathom the meaning of these hints. It is impossible to combine the sounds into words. He knows they seek something from him but he knows not what they seek. And he summons all his strength and strains to lift the veil before him, but his effort peters out in confusion and emptiness. His Striving leads him only to sadness of heart and hollowness of soul.
“And he feels crushed, desolate, and abandoned—and a prayer of the heart, broken and torn, bursts then from his mouth.
“‘O cause the flow of Thv graciousness to descend upon me, and show me the way which is for me to follow. Enlighten, my God, my eyes, that they may see and understand Your wonders and signs; that I may know how to save my soul from the heaviness of this oppression which Thou layest upon me.
“ ‘May the flow of blessing from above be drawn forth to descend upon me, that I may be able to do the will of my Father who is in heaven, that I may be able to properly assume the yoke of His kingdom, and fulfill all that He asks of me.
“‘Grace me, my God, with the understanding and knowledge to find the meaning of the wonders and signs which I see, to comprehend the intent of all those things from out of which You speak.’”
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1 The Zohar, an English translation in five volumes, was issued by the Soncino Press (London) in 1931–34, and reprinted in 1951.
2 See Martin Buber's “Israel's Land: Habitation of God,” in COMMENTARY, October 1951.
