Why I read Asher Lev jealously.

he writes a revolution every time

a revolution from something that may not be wrong, a revolution against something that may be right.

but regardless must be revolted against

because it is sure, so sure, of its own rightness

and how, how, can humanity bear that insufferable rightness

that intrinsic selfcontained orientation that declares all other compasses worse than obselete, it declares them nonsensical, irrelevant, nonexistent

they cannot and so build hate against it, sneak small weaknesses out under the curtain of our eyelids and then when free from the blaring glaring rightness of it all build the weaknesses into tragic flaws

into bitter breaking antiques of old answers held together by that most dirty of all religious words

fanaticism

the dirt of that word shocks the modern word, the blaise, unshockable world looks away in shame from this, unspeakable

the crime of the fanatic, the prosolyte, the believer without an advocate

because he simply believes that his rightness will prevail

and so we dirty it. we throw cynicism and charm at it, we pollute it with clever denigrations and attempt with wit to throw it enough in the filth that we may look at it

and in the midst of it there is a blazing confusion from the believer, that irreproachable inapproachable fanatic,

a confusion all the more irritating because it is mixed with a sort of distant pity pointed at us with our dirty hands

and there he stands with his glory of correct belief above us watching us with our sneering terrified faces trying to pull him down

and he wonders what we think, why we think that the fraility of man means anything against this immovable force that will noe be corrected, that will not be reproved, that will not even deign to be proved. but only is. and will be.

and so he stands and he falls and is covered in the mud, the soles of our filthy shoes, the gritty ink of our trashy newspapers commenting obliquely on the quaint traditions of these fools, these antique fools, amusing only as long as they are weak

and we become tired and wander away, unfulfilled

because though the man is broken and tattered and torn

that blazing truth sits like cement unable to be shifted

that is chaim potok