In Bernard Malamud’s The Magic Barrel, God can only be found through humanity. While seeking connection with others, we discover God and the meaning of love.
love your neighbor as you love yourself.
The Golden Rule is key to connecting with those around us and with God himself. I suggest that we actually do love our neighbor as we love ourself. That is, people who love themselves well are better able to love others well. And those who do not love themselves well love others and God no better.
learning to love ourself well.
The key to loving ourself well is radical self-acceptance. As we acknowledge, embrace and show compassion for those parts of ourself that we feel are unacceptable – we learn the greatest love of all – self love.
As we learn to connect with ourself we learn to connect with humanity and God with the same love and compassion and understanding and patience.
The Magic Barrel
The protagonist in Bernard Malamud’s The Magic Barrel, Leo Finkle rabbinical student, is about to graduate from Yeshivah University. Advised that it would be easier to get a congregation if he were married he seeks out Pinye Saltzman, matchmaker to help him find a wife.
The matchmaker finds him a number of prospects, but none of them meet his standards. Leo is so not deep.
…“I came to God not because I love Him, but because I did not.”
He agrees to meet Lily Hirshorn, school teacher, “When,” she asked, “did you become enamored of God?”
“I am not,” he said gravely, “a talented religious person.” and in seeking words to go on, found himself possessed by shame and fear. “I think…that I came to God not because I love Him, but because I did not.”
The narrator continues…”[Leo] did not love God so well as he might, because he had not loved man….his whole life stood starkly revealed and he saw himself as he was—unloved and loveless.”
Leo finally realizes that the path towards God is through human connection – a love life. He now understands that we find God in our interactions with others. The way we do anything is the way we do everything. If we don’t connect with others, we don’t connect with God.
” …I want to be in love with the one I marry.”
In the process of considering and interviewing these women he realizes that his heart is not really in an arranged marriage. Leo says, “I now admit the necessity of premarital love. That is, I want to be in love with the one I marry.” He is a romantic.
Leo tells Salzman that he no longer wishes to use his services. Salzman leaves an envelope of pictures for him when he goes.
One night, he looks at the pictures Salzman left… and is struck with love for one of them. “It gave him the impression of youth—spring flowers—a sense of having been used to the bone, wasted; this came from the eyes…”
Salzman reveals that the girl is actually his daughter Stella, who he has disowned. He refuses to let Leo see her. Leo persists and Salzman finally relents.
Leo doesn’t think he needs love early on—he’s just looking for a bigger congregation—but as the story progresses, he realizes just how lonely he is and how much he needs Stella to make him happy.
He “then concluded to convert her to goodness, himself to God.”
Leo tries to sleep, but can’t. He “then concluded to convert her to goodness, himself to God. The idea alternately nauseated and exalted him.”
Leo ran forward with flowers out-thrust.
Leo finally meets Stella one spring night waiting under a street lamp. He appeared carrying a small bouquet of violets and rosebuds. Stella stood by the lamp post, smoking. She wore white with red shoes. She waited uneasily and shyly. From afar he saw that her eyes—clearly her father’s—were filled with desperate innocence. He pictured, in her, his own redemption. Violins and lit candles revolved in the sky. Leo ran forward with flowers out-thrust.
God puts people in our life creating opportunities for us to grow in love. John Welwood in his book Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships says it like this:
“Pure, unconditional love [of God] shines through when people put themselves—their own demands and agendas—aside and completely open to one another. Absolute love is not something that we have to—or that we even can—concoct or fabricate. It is what comes through us naturally when we fully open up—to another person, to ourselves, or to life. In relation to another, it manifests as selfless caring. In relation to ourselves, it shows up as inner confidence and self-acceptance that warms us from within. And in relation to life, it manifests as a sense of well-being, appreciation, and joie de ivre.”
Does he find the love of his life in the elusive Stella? good question! You’ll have to read to find out. As the story ends, we see Leo has clearly grown as a person. He demonstrates a growing commitment to a life of love.
Our companion piece is entitled What Is Love? by Rabbi Shais Taub.” The rabbi reflects on the two scenarios that cause us to contemplate the question “What is love?” Either we wonder, “Am I loved?” or we ask, “Do I love?”
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