Books |
The Lamed Vav and “The Last of the Just”
By
Published: Apr 20, 2024
Category:
Spirituality
Passover. We were spared the obsessive preparation for this holiday: the special plates, the bitter herbs, the family gathered around the TV for the ritual viewing of the Cecil B. DeMille movie, the line that always cracked us up (Edward G. Robinson taunting Moses, “Where’s your God now?”), the scratchy wool pants — it wasn’t a holiday that generated reverence for us. I turned to the esoteric, and, at a tender age, learned about the Lamed Vav and “The Last of the Just,” said to be “the saddest book ever written.” When I was writing my novel, “The Next Dalai Lama,” I was able to use that special knowledge. I pass it along here, in the spirit of magic which is at the heart of Jewish holidays but which didn’t touch my teenage soul at Passover in a Philadelphia suburb.
I could share some scholarly writing about the Lamed Vav, but the cheat sheet is an easier read. It’s a conversation in my novel between the teenage Dalai Lama, Billy DeVito, and his friend Benji. They’re 13, trying to figure out what they believe when Benji shares this bit of Jewish lore.
“The 36 Lamed Vavs are the most important people in the world,” Benji said. “Literally, they keep it going, and if even one of them disappears, the world will end. We don’t know who they are — if someone claims he’s one of the Lamed Vav, that automatically means he’s not. But what’s really amazing is that the Lamed Vavs don’t know they’re Lamed Vavs. It’s like they’re walking down the street and they see someone suffering and they kind of inhale the trouble, and… poof… it’s gone, and they go back to their lives.”
“So how do we know about them?”
“There are stories.”
“Know any?”
“My parents have a book.”
“If they’re unknown…”
“The stories are second-hand. This is my dad’s favorite: A man comes to the rabbi to beg for the life of his sick son. The rabbi goes out and finds the ten biggest thieves in the city. The rabbi’s friends ask why he didn’t look for decent men to help with the healing. The rabbi says, ‘I saw all the Gates were not only closed to this boy, they were locked. I needed ten thieves to pick the locks… to break open the Gates of Heaven.’”
“The boy was healed?”
“Even before his father arrived home.”
Billy, thinking logically: “The rabbi made a miracle. He blew his cover.”
“That’s what I said. My dad said, ‘No, the rabbi was the miracle.’ But that’s an exception. The stories are usually about people no one notices — bus drivers, garbage men, the bum on the corner. And that’s the coolest thing about them. They’re God’s reminder that we should treat everyone with dignity and respect. Because you just never know.’”
That’s exactly right: you never know. And the Lamed Vav-niks don’t know either. That is, they don’t know they’re one of the 36 who hold the world in balance. And they don’t know any of the others. Tradition has it that if someone claims to be a Lamed Vav-nik, he isn’t, and he knows he isn’t. They have virtue that “precludes against one’s self-proclamation of being among the special righteous. The 36 are simply too humble to believe that they are one of the 36.” A more learned Jew than I informs me that the Hebrew word “Lamed” has two syllables. And that Lamed is the Hebrew letter L, whose numerical value is 30, and Vav has a numerical value of 6, which explains the phrase, Lamed Vav.
What is the lesson for lesser mortals? Behave as if you are a Lamed Vav-nik. That is, “lead a holy and humble life and pray for the sake of fellow human beings.”
There is a big, expensive book of Lamed Vav stories. They’re charming and short, and you’ll smile at the wit behind them. [To buy “Lamed Vav: A Collection of the Favorite Stories of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach” from Amazon, click here.]
There is also a great book, “The Last of the Just,” by Andre Schwarz-Bart, the son of a Polish Jewish family murdered by the Nazis. The story follows the “Just Men” of the Levy family over eight centuries, ending with a scene in a concentration camp that gives new definition to heartbreak — this book has accurately been described as “the saddest novel ever written.” In 1960, it won the Prix Goncourt. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
Do I believe there’s verifiable truth here? I’m agnostic. But ever since I read about the Lamed Vav and wrote about them, I’m consciously thanking bus drivers and grocery clerks and nodding to cops and giving thumb’s up to people struggling at the high school track — I’m more attentive to shared moments. I get smiles back and, on my block, fist bumps. If I keep this up, I may yet be someone who brightens our darkening world just enough to make a small difference in someone’s life.
