Before God, we are always in the wrong, W. announces. Before God, before the other human being made in the image of God. Am I in the wrong before W.? Undoubtedly. But is he in the wrong before me? W.'s responsible for me in some sense, he knows that. Terrible responsible. Sometimes, he thinks I am in some sense his own creation; I am the result of something that went wrong with him.
Adam, says the Talmud, was originally made a golem; only later did God give him human life. The latter is a power no human creator can imitate, says W., but the former – giving life to shapeless clay – lay in the power of the great Rabbis. Perhaps he conjured me up from a sense of his own failure, W. says. Perhaps I am only the way W., is in the wrong, its incessant embodiment.
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