¶ … Andre Schwarz-Bart. Translated by: Stephen Becker. New York:
Atheneum Publishers. 1960. 374 pages.
The Last of the Just is a work of fiction that focuses on an old Hebrew legend of a group of men destined by God to be the culmination of the hearts of all mankind, aware of all human suffering and keen to the words of the lord. The account traces the existence of the "Lamed-Vov" through the male offspring of the Levy family, the oldest member being the Jewish Rabbi Martyr who was said to create the circumstances of mass martyrdom that inspired God to create the dynasty. The work begins in the twelfth century with each of the chosen living and dying their destined martyrs death and travels down in time through the successive eccentric generations to the generation of the WWII Holocaust ending with the intimate and extensive life of Ernie a Jew who lives through the bloody Ghetto and dies in the Auschwitz gas chambers and is said to be the Last of the Just.
Each generation brings with it a new Lamed-Vov, like it or not and each generation's Lamed-Vov tells the story of the tortured history of the Jewish people. True of the Hebrew tradition of storytelling this book weaves the incredible through the lives of people who in many respects are simply ordinary, yet touched by the divine. The early "Lamed-Vov" each retain the character of individuals and traveling forward through time Schwarz-Bart offers more and more information about each just as history offers more and more information about every subsequent era in recorded human existence.
Some accept their identity and legacy, but most do so only very reluctantly, trying desperately to live an ordinary life of anonymity, hiding from and traveling away from their destiny, just as with each generation springs new hope that theirs or the next will be safer and more peaceful than the last. One Just Man denied his destiny even to the point of feigning insanity: "He was relegated to the permanently to the ranks...
Chaim finally embraced his identity and was given the position of Rabbi in Zemyock, but he never fully abandoned his humanity, nor did he do as his followers believed he should. He did untold good but only in his own way. Others like Brother Beast are eccentric beyond the pale, true to the ironic humor that is in the Jewish tradition said to embody God.
Nothing helped; neither veiled menaces nor the promise pf all earthly wealth could bring him to modify a single one of his cherished habits. Every morning after swigging his bowl of rude soup, the new Just man swung a spade to his shoulder, whistled for his dogs, and marched to a parcel of land granted him by Polish peasant. (32)
Each character retained his complexity without complete regard for the wishes or beliefs of his followers but with an uncanny sense of humility and God's will.
It is interesting that through the generations each Lamed-Vov becomes more questioned than the one before as if the more information each successive generation of society has about the real humanity of the man the less they believe he is 'chosen.' The doubt begins with Chaim who defies the historical precedence by having more than one child and worse than that more than one boy child. Beginning here the doubt of each next successor is more questioned than the last. So much so that the humanity of the Just Man is stretched to the point of doubting the existence of God. Benjamin (Ernie's father) questions God and expresses the destiny of the overwhelming responsibility of holding the manifestation of the heart of all human suffering within on man:
Bit by bit he arrived…
