Faith in Knowledge

EVER SINCE Adam and Eve took a bite out of forbidden knowledge, there has always been a strong tension between religion and education. Scholars of the European Renaissance confronted this split when they tore down the rigid ecclesiastical dogma of their day, scientists witnessed its revival during the 18th century Enlightenment, and amid fundamentalist revivals, humanists of the 20th century still feel it today. Parents may push their children to get good grades and go to church on Sunday, but any disciple of the Divinity School can tell you that the connection between religious and secular education is, at best, tenuous.

Occasionally, however, some make a noble effort to link these two strands of thought. Such is the case of Joseph Brill, the protagonist of Cynthia Ozick's latest novel. The Cannibal Galaxy. In large part, the success of the novel hinges on Ozick's ability to underscore the sense of anguish within her characters by sophisticated understatement. While Brill experiences travesties of monumental impact, he internalizes much of his anguish, ironically heightening its impact on the reader. More important, Brill's determination to carry out what he regards as his mission in the face of these obstacles endows him with a necessary depth of character. The resulting intensity of the novel surfaces in language so rich with imagery and metaphor that parts of it read like verse:

The invaders had made a bonfire, enjoyed it for a time, then doused it. A puddle still trickled from the center of the pyre: a transparent spiral of vapor curled out of its flank. The dead books reeked of ruin, flame, animal hides, a fetid steaminess. In the streets creatures like centaurs scuttled and scrabbled, flinging their rods, sticks, rocks, poles, Metamorphosis and shock.

Yet Ozick is careful never to allow the prose-poetry pattern to weaken the fabric of the novel. A device that might have seemed sloppy or contrived in the hands of a less skilled novelist, this language effectively heightens the sensual flavor of Ozick's work.

Brill's determination to unite religious and secular knowledge, a goal spawned during his unusually eventful childhood in France, is the guiding theme of the novel. Brill is the archetypal child prodigy, spending more time learning Taahnit from his rabbi and making telescopic observations than running in the street playing stickball. The young Brill's diligence naturally leads him to--among other places--the Sorbonne, where, like the prototypical Harvard student, he learns to "think big," Perhaps too big for his own good.

The glimpses that Ozick gives us of the motivated and intellectually curious Brill though are carefully balanced by equally strong--and painful--images of the young man as an outcast, both as an alienated intellectual and a Jew in a strongly anti-Semitic country. The homosexual advances of a close avant garde friend, combined with the prejudice and hostility he repeatedly encounters, heighten his sense of disillusionment.

He thought beyond the planet; he thought of the stars. His parents were pleased when they understood Joseph was going to study "the most universal thing of all"-- they assumed he meant medicine, healing, reversing injury and pain. But he meant just the opposite: remoteness. He was sick of human adventure. He felt an unknowable warmth and feared it. It had betrayed him and named him Dreyfus.

Understandably, Brill's anger crystallizes into bitterness when Nazi soldiers seize and kill his family. Even among the nuns who shelter him while orphaned, Brill senses fear and resentment.

Yet Brill's brief stay with the nuns--and subsequent months of hiding in the hayloft of a barn--reinforce rather than erode his convictions and faith in the human mind. Brill determines to bear witness to the atrocities of the Nazi's in an individual way: by fusing the tenets of his childhood rabbi with the teachings of his university.

THIS DESIRE to unite his "two minds" and escape the horror of his past leads Brill to America. There, with the aid of a rich benefactress, he founds a primary school devoted to "the fusion of scholarly Europe and burnished Jerusalem...astronomers and God-praises uniting in a majestic dream of peace." However, his impatience and frustration with the mediocrity of both students and teachers soon causes his sense of alienation to resurface. Not until Hester Lilt, a renowned academic, enrolls her daughter Beulah in the school does Brill begin to show a genuine interest in the progress of his pupils.

Brill's fascination with Beulah--in truth a fascination with her mother--reveals his true nature. Although Brill thinks he and Hester are bonded by a mutual appreciation for scholarly achievement, he eventually discovers how truly different they are. Brill's fixation with himself and his own aspirations not only denigrate the quality of his supposedly noble goals, but also leave him feeling painfully along. Consequently, it is unclear how much of Brill's fascination with Hester is intellectual and how much stems from his desire to be loved. By contrast, Hester's willingness to sacrifice her goals in the name of higher things--namely the love of her daughter--differentiates her from Brill. By the novel's end. Hester reveals Brill for what he truly is: a self-important, elitist, intellectual snob.

UNFORTUNATELY, the bitterness Brill subconsciously inherits from his childhood remains with him as a dominant--if not guiding--force. It is this undercurrent of anger--against the Nazis who slaughtered his family, his students who are hindered by mediocrity and, most important, at his own failure to excel--that gives the novel its emotional force. By bottling up the tension throughout the novel, Ozick heightens the impact of the climax, and makes Brill's epiphany about himself and the nature of his goals all the more painful.

But Brill's ultimate failure to unite successfully knowledge and religion does not imply that the two are utterly irreconcilable. In fact, because the intellectual Hester stands by her daughter when Brill beseeches her to abandon hope, she illustrates the hope of fusing both strands. Based on solely Brill's behavior, it is possible to interpret Ozick's ultimate stance as anti-intellectual. Yet closer inspection reveals The Cannibal Galaxy as a plea for knowledge tempered by Christian love, to pursue knowledge and ambition without ever losing sight of one's family, one's past, and one's beliefs.