The textual relationship with Hasidic tradition:

autobiographic elements in Patai’s Souls and Secrets

In discovering the difficulties of intertwined relationships of ontological author, his text (a Hasidic story-collection) and the Tradition (Hasidism and furthermore Jewishness itself) it is required to focus on rhetorics of identity and autobiographic elements of certain narratives which Patai’s Hasidic story collection contained.

Ágnes Heller, in one passage in her book Az önéletrajzi emlékezés filozófiája (Philosophy of Autobiographical Remembering) discussing the term of cultural memory introduced by Jan

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Assmann, mentions the genius of legendary (legendarium) in a family, a clan, or certain folk. As an example of this genre she mentioned Péter Esterházy’s untraditional saga novel, Harmonia caelestis, and points out a twofold and inseparable autobiographical narration of memories: the experience of Me (Self) and the We are intertwined.²¹

To focus on autobiographical narrative elements the disctincton of two types of experiences of memory appeared in the second extended second edition of Patai’s story collection in 1937 after his Alijah and death of parents. Comparing two editions, the dominance of ‘We-experience’ has grown with added texts. In the first edition (1918), a personal chain to Hasidic tradition is evident in the case of two texts (discussed further), where Reb Shaye (Sáje),²² tzaddik of Bodrogkeresztúr speaks from the position of the storyteller, while the autobiographical narrator remembers: Patai was Reb Shaye’ jeshiva boher.

The second, extended version of the story collection contains some new texts, in which experience of We produces in case of passing down the Hasidic tradition not only a scholarly relationship of master and his student. In these texts we can find signs of memory not only on cultural, but also on personal or, more precisely, familiar level – in both meanings of the word. Hasidism for the author is not primarily an odd but appealing trait of eastern Jewry – his Hasidism is not a strange thing, but a legacy which organically belongs to tradition. Among portraits of Hasidic masters and personal teachers appear also portraits of parents: in second edition Hasidism appears as a part of family legendary (legendarium).

21 Ágnes Heller, Az önéletrajzi emlékezés filozófiája, Budapest: Múlt és Jövő, 2015, pp. 143-144.

22 Rabbi Yeshaya Steiner of Kerestir (1851–1925).

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Right away at the beginning of the prose collection the reader is met with the dedication, which expresses this kind of author's personal relationship: “To my mother's, Zsuzsánna Chajla’s watching soul, who rocked me and kept me awake by her holy tales.”²³ This extremely personal and poetic overture on the second page determines the interpretation of the collection as well as the motto on the first page. The relationship with tradition signifies on one side the intellectual connection of an erudite mind, on the other side it is an emotional bond with the intimacy of childhood.

The opening dedication also forms a frame-like structure with the last text of the collection A Righteous Man Passed Away… (Egy igaz ember ment el…)²⁴ added to the second authorized edition (1937), which was first published – as the footnote informs the reader – “…in the September issue of Mult és Jövő from 1928 as a first article.”²⁵ The article was originally a necrologue written by Patai after the death of his father. The text contains a survey of the life of Moshe Klein and his wife from their peaceful rural and withdrawn religious life in Gyöngyöspata, to the time after the crisis caused by WWI and the anti-jewish attacks during the years of

‘white terror’ when they moved to Gyöngyös and finally, their plan to spend their last years together in Jerusalem, which was hampered by the mother's death in Satmar (then already Romania) where they lived after Gyöngyös. The portrait of the

23 „Anyám Zsuzsánna-Chajla virrasztó lelkének aki elringatott és ébrentartott szent meséivel.“ [For the awaken soul of my mother, Zsuzsanna-Chajla, who nestled me and kept wakeful with her sacred tales.”]

24 Intitulation makes clear, that the father belongs to chain of tzaddikim portrayed in previous stories (tzaddik = righteous one).

25 József Patai, Lelkek és titkok [Souls and Secrets], Budapest: Mult és Jövő, 1937, p. 196.

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father as a pious Hasid, who lives virtuously in devotion in everyday life is like an example of ideal life conceived by Hasidic religiosity – to sacrifice one's own life for moral values, prayer and Torah studies. Patai's mother who ran the household and small shop but was “The Grand Lady, telling mystical tales“²⁶. Zsuzsanna Chajla, the descendant and member of a rabbinic family, exceptionally educated compared to the ordinary type of housewife from orthodox circles, also contributed to the described idealistic picture of his family.²⁷ Also mentioned is the figure of his ascetic grandfather, Chaim Dovid Klein, who “At his seventy was still cutting ice on the frozen Tisza to take his daily ritual bath.”²⁸

For our viewpoint the most important thing, the father's relation to Hasidism is caught in the continuation of the above citation:

His son, Moses didn't take over this ascetic lifestyle. His soul was more drawn to Hasidism, which's tenet borrowed from Psalms was »Serve the Lord with joy«.

(…) Almost from his childhood he pertains to first pupils of »Maharam Schick« the famous gaon of Huszt, and spends the last years of his studies in the yeshiva of Talmudic authority, »Avne Chosen« the rabbi of Szécsény, where he soon became a famous young scholar and Hebrew stylist.²⁹

According to another article written by the author, his father was a believer of Rebe from Belz to who’s court he

26 „A misztikus meséket mondó bölcs Nagyasszony…” Ibid., p. 201.

27 Kőbányai, Szétszálazás és újraszövés, p. 93.

28 Patai, Lelkek és titkok, p. 197.

29 Ibidem.

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made pilgrimage every year.³⁰ The author furthermore in two instances calls his father tzaddik.³¹

The text on the few last pages of the book quotes the beautiful, however unfinished, testament of the author's father, full of citations from sacred texts sent to the author by his brother from Jerusalem where their father passed away.

The opening dedication alluding to their mother and the closing quotation of the father, the beginning and the ending of their family life can be read as an intimate legitimization of the author’s relationship to the living Hasidic tradition.³²

Other type of signs of legitimization of relationship to tradition in Souls and Secrets are mentioned personal bonds, but they are concerned with the education of the author in an orthodox manner, studies in the cheder and later in the yeshiva. In some short stories Patai incorporated portraits of his masters from yeshivas influenced by Hasidism which he attended. “Two years I laid before the feet of »world famous«

master, Reb Shaye, who nurtured on the knees of Torah his little disciples.”³³ – starts the narration of the story Story about the Story (Mese a meséről). The author incorporates into his text the memories of the first yeshiva years in Kisvárda at the age of eleven.³⁴ The narration indicates the honoration of the

30 Cited in Kőbányai, Szétszálazás és újraszövés, p. 93.

31 Patai, Lelkek és titkok, pp. 119 ; 204.

32 About this bond as well as about the portrait of parents, and the pittoresque description of childhood and the milieu of Jewish life in Gyöngyöspata, the author also informs us in his autobiographical novelette first published in 1927, Middle Gate [Középső kapu], Budapest, Múlt és Jövő, 1997.

33 “Két esztendeig hevertem a «világhírű» reb Sáje mester lábainál, aki a Tóra térdein nevelte apró tanítványait.” Patai, Lelkek és titkok, p. 109.

34 Kőbányai, Szétszálazás és újraszövés, pp. 95, 97.

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master and features of his personality, and also some anecdotes from this period. As the reader is informed, there existed a traditional form of ritual Hasidic storytelling – after the third Sabbath meal the religious song alternates with a tale in repetition. Into this narrative framework is incorporated the Hasidic story about The Forgotten Story retold by Reb Shaye.³⁵

In the short story The Prayer of the Flute a similar narrative method is used, where Reb Shaye speaks to his pupils about the power of prayer (a notorious Hasidic theme) and incorporates into his teaching about the mechanism and the right way of praying thematically relevant micro-narratives about the Baal Shem Tov as a examples of the abstract ideas.

There is one more text in which the author's relationship to the tradition is shown by the connection with his masters from the yeshiva. The Great Preparation. The Testament of »Balmy Flowerbed« deals with the figure of another one of his masters, rabbi Moshe Amram Grünwald, the Rav of Huszt (Chust) whose yeshiva Patai joined when he was around 14 years old.

This penultimate text of the collection greatly differs from the previous texts and was added to the second edition of the collection – as the footnote informs the reader, the text was first published in Mult és Jövő 1935, 273-278. It is not a short story, far more a portrait of the great master, the author of Balmy Flowerbed,³⁶ but a kind of memoir written on the

35 See a version of the tale and commentary in Yitzhak Buxbaum, Storytelling and Spirituality in Judaism, Northvale, New Jersey and London: Jason Aronson, INC, 1994, pp. 33-40.

36 In accordance with the Jewish tradition, the subtitle of Patai’s short story represents the name of the Jewish scholar who is well known by his work Balmy Flowerbed (Arugat HaBosem – Chust, 1913)

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occasion of the 25^th jubilee of his death.³⁷ Because of the autobiographical narrative, the text stands nearest to the following and last piece of the collection (the above mentioned The Righteous Man Passed Away). Its structure, however, is peculiar in the context of the collection due to many quotations borrowed from the rabbi's testament Hachana d’rabba (The Great Preparation – A nagy készülődés). Using these, Patai here presents a review of rabbi Grünwald's testament, teaching and preaching. The author draws a portrait of a tzaddik, the “grand believer of Hasidism”³⁸ in an intellectual manner of commentary – set between examples of his piousness and knowledge. The writer, because of his disease, compares the rabbi with the biblical figure of Job.

Finally, there is one added text, Reb Dovedl tehene (The Cow of Reb Dovedl) which revels a third special relationship (beside familiar and scholar) on the field of local Jewish culture of authors Gyöngyöspata, a place of his childhood, which is depicted in his Middle gate. Death of Reb Dovedl’s cow. The loss of a pious melamed of community and discussion about that event in circle of its other members serves as a narrative frame, into which are embedded/inserted several Hasidic anecdotes (among others about the Baal Shem) thematizing Kabbalistic topic of gilgul (reincarnation), more precisely, a rebirth of sinful souls into animal bodies as a penance. This narrative frame depicts a community of rural Jewry of Gyöngyöspata as a part of Hasidic universe, alongside other depicted, Polish or Ukrainian localities where stories are set.

37 After the death of rabbi Patai wrote a necrology „Rabbi of Chust.

Reminiscences.” dedicated to him, where he also mentions his memories which are bound to him. Secundus [József Patai], ‘A huszti rabbi. Reminiscenciák,’ Egyenlőség 29, no. 34 (21. August 1910), pp. 5-6.

38 Patai, Lelkek és titkok, p. 192.

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To summarize features of above mentioned texts of the collection, it can be said that all of these – through using a leitmotif of storytelling and accenting its role in passing down the tradition, in Hasidism as well as in the writer's childhood – are textual manifestations of the direct and intimate connection to the tradition. This fact made this short story collection unquestionably authentic, not only in an intellectual aspect of literary interest of the writer who, as a reader himself, can experience in previous Hasidic texts (as it will be elaborated below on the example of Lajos Szabolcsi), nor it can be only on the level of religious education (as in the case of Jiří/Georg (Mordechai) Langer, who became a Hasid in his youth in the court of Belzer Rebbe), but on the most primary level – the ‘We-experience’ of oral Hasidic culture from his earliest age. To put it poetically: the author gains knowledge about storytelling in parallel with learning the mother tongue – so to say, he has it in his veins. For this reason, this short story collection can be seen as an organic part of tradition and the author's act of writing i.e. his work can be seen as the last link in the chain of tradition.

IV. Textual view: Narrative structure, techniques of