Amos Oz on his grandfather; I have no quarrel with a single word of this.
He considered all human beings to be reckless children who brought great disappointment and suffering on themselves and each other, all of us trapped in an unending, unsubtle comedy that would generally end badly. All roads lead to suffering. Consequently virtually everyone, in Papa’s view, deserved compassion, and most of their deeds were worthy of forgiveness, including all sorts of machinations, pranks, deceptions, pretensions, manipulations, false claims, and pretenses. From all these he would absolve you with his faint, mischievous smile, as though saying (in Yiddish): Nu, what?
The only thing that tested Papa’s amused tolerance were acts of cruelty. These he abhorred. His merry blue eyes clouded over at the news of wicked deeds. “An evil beast? What does the expression mean?” he would reflect in Yiddish. “No beast is evil. No beast is capable of evil. The beasts have yet to invent evil. That is our monopoly, the lords of creation. So maybe we ate the wrong apple in the Garden of Eden after all? …
“But what is hell? What is paradise? Surely it is all inside. In our homes. You can find hell and paradise in every room. Behind every door. Under every double blanket. It’s like this. A little wickedness, and people are hell to each other. A little compassion, a little generosity, and people find paradise in each other.
“I said a little compassion and generosity, but I didn’t say love. I’m not such a believer in universal love. Love of everybody for everybody—we should maybe leave that to Jesus.” …
—Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness 149-50 (2004)
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