At every anniversary Moses ordered the Jews to dig graves for themselves and to lie in them overnight. The next morning heralds ran between the trenches, shouting: Let the living separate from the dead, let the living detach themselves from the dead!

On the fortieth anniversary all rose, for by that time all of them belonged to the new generation; they were worthy of entering the Promised Land, for to them, bondage was no longer a temptation.

And the people of Israel mourned over Moses’ death in the desert.

And sometimes, at night, the solitary pilgrim still hears their cries.

JOB: OUR
CONTEMPORARY

ONCE UPON A TIME, in a faraway land, there lived a man, just and wise, humble and charitable. His riches and his virtues aroused jealousy in heaven and on earth. His name was Job.

Through the problems he embodied and the trials he endured, he seems familiar—even contemporary. We know his history for having lived it. In times of stress it is to his words that we turn to express our anger, revolt or resignation. He belongs to our most intimate landscape, the most vulnerable part of our past.

Job: a moment of obsession, a gleam of anguish, a cry contained but not stifled trying to pierce our consciousness, a mirror a thousand times shattered reflecting the image of a solitude bursting with madness.

In him come together legend and truth; in him come together silence and the word. His truth is made of legends, his words are nourished by silence.

Whenever we attempt to tell our own story, we transmit his. The opposite is true also: those of his legends we presumed invented, we lived through; those of his words we thought illusory, proved to be true; we owe them our experience of evil and death. In the midst of the blazing fire that ravages human forests, endowing them with ethereal beauty and mystery, we can but share his wonder.

In him we find the solitary conscience of Abraham, the fearful conscience of Isaac, the torn conscience of Jacob. Whenever the Midrash runs short of examples, it quotes Job, no matter what the topic—and it is always pertinent.

He reminds one of Abraham, for both their tragedies result from seemingly arbitrary ordeals. But unlike Abraham, he succeeded in maintaining a keen sense of humor. And unlike Abraham’s, his story is entirely determined by legend, so much so that his very existence is placed in doubt by legend.

Let us begin again.

• • •

Once upon a time . . . When? Nobody knows. His name is mentioned by Ezekiel in passing, along with those of Noah and Daniel—was he a contemporary of one or the other? Possibly. Other legends link him alternately to Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Samson, Solomon, Ahasuerus and . . . the Babylonian exile. He would thus have lived not just two hundred and ten years but more than eight hundred.