MONDAY 04 December 2023 How dare I stop writing this eulogy? How do I even stop? And yet eulogists have done so, and, hence, I, too, must finish. But how? Steve’s life defied a simple conclusion, resisting a neat, tidy wrapping up. He always discovered another deeper insight: patience, I think, was his greatest virtue. Rushing Steve achieved nothing. And perhaps again this obligation to excellence continues to guide me.
Lionel Trilling’s anthology title, The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent, may have served as my own personal mantra; certainly, it was Steve’s, too. What Steve added to that demand were: to be perceptive, to be discerning, to be levelheaded. In becoming intelligent, you needed to cultivate your humanity, which then required nourishing a sensibility: an openness to consider all viewpoints, a responsiveness to embrace all the joys and sorrows of life.
Steve’s final lesson on the moral obligation to be intelligent was one that I instinctively knew but was too lazy and perhaps too afraid to teach myself. Of course, Steve stepped in. During the many years of writing the Katyn manuscript, I sought Steve’s advice. One time I asked him, “Do you know of some especially powerful quotes on evil? I know… there’s Borowski, Levi, and Dostoevsky.” His reply was shrewd: “You don’t need it. You’re never going to find a passage that captures what you want it to say. Just say what you think about evil.” The Katyn book was my book on Katyn, no one else’s. The elaborate and demeaning aspect of the Katyn Massacre’s evil was one that I needed to define myself. No one artist or work of art was going to tell me. What was the abyss revealing to me about the nature of Katyn’s evil? Steve commissioned me to find it. In other words, what Steve taught me was patience. The right ideas do emerge from the unconscious. The right words do find me. Excellence takes time.
I know Steve isn’t utterly gone or absent because his influence remains in my life. I only need to look around my home, my family, my classrooms—everywhere—and see him. That realization is proof enough that there is no end to Steve Ressler.
During my commute to work, I stepped into an almost filled train car. Locating an empty spot, I approached it, sitting next to a man who looked like a younger and slimmer Steve. This episode wasn’t the first time I encountered someone who resembled Steve; in fact, I have seen other doppelgangers at the supermarket or on the sidewalk. This man on the train sitting next to me was dressed in black. This man had the same intense and curious eyes as Steve. Even the way he combed his hair… the sight of this man was uncanny.
This young man who resembled Steve was physically real. He existed. My unconscious didn’t conjure him up. Of course, he wasn’t Steve. Here was a man who looked like Steve, going about his day. I wasn’t losing my mind. I didn’t know how to react. Trepidation… but what was supposed to happen? Horror… but of what? Slowly the irrational caprices were buffered by curiosity. This man wasn’t Steve’s dybbuk, a Yiddish word for a troubled and vindicative spirit who is unable to find peace, requiring a rabbinic exorcism. This man’s tranquility demonstrated that there was no need for a cleansing of any spirit or body. Unconfident, I didn’t dare to speak with the man. Why not? What would I even have said? At the time, I didn’t know. Was Steve’s soul trying to tell me something by appearing to me? The man finally exited at the 5th Ave/53rd Street station—the Museum of Modern Art’s station.
The next day, a friend interpreted my encounter with the man who looked like Steve: this sighting might have been his soul looking to spend time with me, a friend. Even in death, Steve is a loyal friend. Steve is at peace.
No one knows when exactly Steve died. Today, I have decided to mark the date: 27 October 2020 as the day of his death. I have chosen 27 October because on that day the Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series. Born and raised in the Bronx, he should have been a Yankees fan. Not Steve. Before the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, the baseball team played in Brooklyn. The Dodgers were his team. Why? The answer perhaps is a potential future blog. I like to think that toward the end of his life, he found some temporary comfort in his Dodgers winning. With the date 27 October now selected, I can light a Yahrzeit memorial candle—the anniversary date of someone’s passing in the Jewish calendar—for Steve Ressler.