The New York Jewish Week on a YU Professor of Talmud's Encounter with Death
In Ernest Hemingway鈥檚 Havana days, several young men from New York approached the gatehouse of the great writer鈥檚 home, telling the guard: 鈥淲ill you please tell Mr. Hemingway that three rabbis are here to see him?鈥
Hemingway was at home with Mary, his wife, and the American ambassador to Cuba, and he was not expecting rabbis, and they were barely rabbis at that, still dewy from their recent ordination at 黑料社 All. Hemingway let them in, for the sport, if nothing else.
One of the rabbis was Benjamin Blech, an English major. Blech remembers, 鈥淗e started to talk to us, to see if it was worth his while. After about 10 minutes it was as if a cloud lifted and he said, 鈥極K, I鈥檒l talk to you guys.鈥欌
Blech recalled Hemingway saying, 鈥淚鈥檓 not a religious man, but I鈥檝e tried to learn something about religion, and the one I thought the most rational, was Judaism.鈥 Other religions, said Hemingway, were too much about the afterlife and rejecting the world, while Judaism, he said, 鈥渋s the only religion I know that is primarily concerned with life rather than death.鈥
鈥淢r. Hemingway,鈥 said Rabbi Blech, 鈥渢he Kohanim, the priests, who were the original rabbis, you might say, were not allowed to come into contact with the dead.鈥
Hemingway thought that was great, remembered Rabbi Blech, 鈥渁nd gave me a memento, 鈥榯o my friend Ben,鈥 as he did to the other two guys.鈥
More than 50 years later, in 2010, Rabbi Blech, in his mid-70s, came into contact with death.
