On Disillusionment As A Way of Life

On December 27th, a man was found dead next to his son’s grave, the bullet to his head an obvious mark of suicide.

The man’s name was Chaim Walder.

Just a few months ago, Walder was perhaps the most beloved children’s author of Israel’s sizable ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. His books were in every school and household, even the most stringent and conservative one. His influence ranged further and wider than the most preeminent Rabbi. Even non-ultra-Orthodox parents had some of his works.

In a community often known for its asceticism and stoicism, at least on matters of sexuality and emotions, he introduced his audience to a “kosher” version of children’s literature, where the world of children is OK and legitimate, where psychology is not just a secular devil, where pain is something that’s alright to discuss. Indeed, when people felt they’d been hurt or needed to consult with someone, he was the one they went to, the man who advised the advisers. He was the closest thing ultra-Orthodox Jews had to Fred Rogers.

Until a few months ago.

An explosive report in the newspaper Haaretz detailed a raft of accusations of sexual abuse and exploitation and tossed an atom bomb into the world of the community. Further investigation only revealed more alleged victims. At least some Rabbis insisted that all his books be thrown out or at least set aside until the investigation ended. Rabbinic courts who could in no sense be called progressive very much insisted that there was a raging fire behind the secular media’s smoke.

But the shock, the pain, the disbelief rattled and still rattles everyone, and Walder’s suicide has only poured gasoline onto it.

There’s a Jewish saying, “if the cedars have caught fire – what will the moss on the walls say?” (it sounds less clunky in Hebrew), which is a lament and a statement of fear: If our greats have fallen, what will be of the ordinary, small people? There were few greater cedars than Walder in my generation, he has fallen, and everyone wonders whether we moss have any hope.

We Live After

There are many reasons for the decline of faith in social institutions, communities, and families. Technology, increasing individualism, changing economic incentives, more accessible private entertainment. But even accounting for all that, I don’t think anyone would deny that the problem of sexual abuse and its coverup has played a significant and toxic, acidic role in helping to break the bonds that bind us.

The Catholic Church is only the most storied and famous institution in an endless list of associations of people – religious and secular, conservative and progressive – where not only did predators prey, but where their colleagues covered it up. Exposés of this sort have become so prevalent and predictable that I’ve no doubt some of you felt an “Oh, no” when I started to describe Walder’s career as a wonderful child’s author. So many of us practically expect the best people to turn out to be the worst now, or are not surprised when they do.

Obviously, sexual abuse has always existed, by any definition we wish to use, and I certainly would not under any circumstances wish to go back to the days where victims were simply collateral damage of “the system” or who were shunned or silenced in the name of “the community.” Some sins really are that great; I have seen one religious police officer compare it to spiritual murder, and it’s a term I agree with.

But there’s a very serious, painful cost to always being aware of this. Because predators are everywhere, indeed will always be everywhere, even if they are always only a very small part of the population, we live in a world where somewhere in the back of our mind even the most beautiful, intimate relationships of family, friends, or people can turn out to be the most nightmarish.

Noted literary scholar George Steiner acerbically of “western civilization” after the Holocaust:

We come after. We know now that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day’s work at Auschwitz in the morning. To say that he has read them without understanding or that his ear is gross, is cant. In what way does this knowledge bear on literature and society, on the hope, grown almost axiomatic from the time of Plato to that of Matthew Arnold, that culture is a humanizing force, that the energies of spirit are transferable to those of conduct?

The same is true now that we are fully exposed to the realities of abuse. We know a man (or more rarely, a woman) can be a good person most of the time. A kindly person, a generous person, who teaches religious values or espouses progressive ideas or creates beautiful music. A person whose interactions with most of those who know them is exemplary. Except for when he isn’t. When he becomes a mirror image of that person, to put Dorian Grey to shame.

Following Steiner, I and I’ve no doubt many others must wonder: What does that say about us? About the things we believe in, so easily manipulated by evil and wicked people? Is any of it of value? And what about all those relationships we hold dear? How can we have the kind of implicit trust in people needed for us to flourish in a world full of monsters? And even if the watchword is eternal vigilance – how can we do that without becoming paranoid, without suspecting perfectly innocent people of the most horrible desires, people who would indeed rather do what Walder did than ever hurt a living soul?

Statistical or logical arguments may be technically correct in stating that most people are not and will never be like that. But the human heart is not and never will be perfectly logical or rational. Something has been broken irrevocably here. We live in a world entirely disillusioned, one which will indeed not let us ever not be that way again.

The Will to Live

I wish I had some brilliant, witty answer or argument in rebuttal. I don’t. I’ve seen the “be balanced” or “respect, but suspect” arguments of the middle grounders who want abuse exposed but don’t want everything to fall apart or nihilism to reign and I think they’re bullshit. They’re an attempt to escape from the full horror and reality of the curtain turned back. A too clever by half attempt at “balance.”

The only answer I have, for what it’s worth, is that against the power of the disillusionment we have experienced throughout the modern period – whether in the trenches of WWI, the ashes of WWII, or the never-ending revelations of abuse for most of my lifetime – is an ancient, primal, irrational force that has helped us endure the absolute worst of life from our formation to today: the will to life.

It’s not a logical argument. Or something that always makes a hell of a lot of sense. But it is an irresistible drive to keep going, to keep striving, to keep building relationships and things, to keep making the world a better place. In spite of the monsters among us, in spite of nature, in spite of endless tragedy and heartbreak. Maybe even to spite them. An emotional, psychological, dare I say spiritual force must be met with an equal or greater one, and I know of none better.

I hope and pray we all find within ourselves to keep moving on and rebuild, and avoid succumbing to that ever-so-logical and appealing argument that all is lost, that it was all a lie. The will to live must win out.

May God help us all.