“Come, I will show you how you should proceed. Around four o’clock go to the tavern. If you see a wine drinker holding a glass in his hand and dozing, inform yourself. If he is a scholar, he must have risen early to study; if he is a day laborer, he must have gone to work early; if he works the night shift, he could have been making needles. But if he is none of the above, he is a thief and you can arrest him.”

REbRS

The Tavern

I have no doubt that Rabbi Eleazar was skillful. But I find his police wisdom a bit too concise; to go to the tavern and calmly arrest those who drink there if they are neither intellectuals, day laborers, nor night-shift workers. I pondered what this could mean for a long time. Is it already an anticipation of police inquiries that take place in bars in our modern capitals? In itself, this would not be much. Well, I think all this means that Rabbi Eleazar accepts the struggle with Evil on the State’s grounds, in the Roman sense of the term, “state”, and that he accepts revolutionary action as political action. But Rabbi Eleazar shows us the source of Evil against which he will fight. This can be understood in two ways. He might have thought that those who do not work with their hands and those who do not study are the source of Evil. All the idle and useless ones. I suppose writers are included among those who study. All non-workers are Evil. Parasites are thieves, in the broader meaning of the term. Man must build the universe: the universe is built through work and study. Everything else is distraction. Distraction is Evil.

I think of yet another possible reading of our text. The two readings are linked, in any case. Rabbi Eleazar has discovered that the source of Evil is in the very institution of the tavern. The tavern, or the

café

, has become an integral and essential part of modern life, which perhaps is an “open life” especially because of this aspect! An unknown city in which we arrive and which has no

café

seems closed to us. The

café

holds open house, at street level. It is a place of casual social intercourse, without mutual responsibility. One goes in without needing to. One sits down without being tired. One drinks without being thirsty. All because one does not want to stay in one’s room. You know that all evils occur as a result of our incapacity to stay alone in our room. The

café

is not a place. It is a non-place for a non-society, for a society without solidarity, without tomorrow, without commitment, without common interests, a game society. The

café

, house of games, is the point through which game penetrates life and dissolves it. Society without yesterday or tomorrow, without responsibility, without seriousness–distraction, dissolution.

At the movies, a common theme is presented on the screen; in the theatre, a common theme is presented on stage. In the

café

, there are no themes. Here you are, each at your own little table with your cup or your glass. You relax completely to the point of not being obligated to anyone or anything; and it is because it is possible to go and relax in a

café

that one tolerates the horrors and injustices of a world without a soul. The world as a game from which everyone can pull out and exist only for himself, a place of forgetfulness–of the forgetfulness of the other–that is the

café

.

And here we come back to our first reading: not to build the world is to destroy it.

EL 1969