by Chaim Potok
He swayed back and forth in the leather chair, his eyes closed, his left hand in the crook of his right elbow, the fingers of his right hand stroking his black beard, and I could see everyone at the tables lean forward, eyes staring, mouths slightly open, some of the older men cupping their hands behind their ears to catch his words. He began in a low voice, the words coming out slowly in a singsong kind of chant.
“The great and holy Rabban Gamaliel,” he said, “taught us the following: ‘Do His will as if it were thy will, that He may do thy will as if it were His will. Nullify thy will before His will that He may nullify the will of others before thy will.’ What does this mean? It means that if we do as the Master of the Universe wishes, then He will do as we wish. A question immediately presents itself. What does it mean to say that the Master of the Universe will do what we wish? He is after all the Master of the Universe, the Creator of heaven and earth, the King of kings. And what are we? Do we not say every day, ‘Are not all the mighty as naught before Thee, the men of renown as though they had not been, the wise as if without knowledge, and the men of understanding as if without discernment’? What are we that the Master of the Universe should do our will?”
Reb Saunders paused, and I saw two of the old men who were sitting at our table look at each other and nod. He swayed back and forth in his leather chair, his fingers stroking his beard, and continued to speak in a quiet, singsong voice.
“AH men come into the world in the same way. We are born in pain, for it is written, ‘In pain shall ye bring forth children.’ We are born naked and without strength. Like dust are we born. Like dust can the child be blown about, like dust is his life, like dust is his strength. And like dust do many remain all their lives, until they are put away in dust, in a place of worms and maggots. Will the Master of the Universe obey the will of a man whose life is dust? What is the great and holy Rabban Gamaliel teaching us?” His voice was beginning to rise now. “What is he telling us? What does it mean to say the Master of the Universe will do our will? The will of men who remain dust? Impossible! The will of what men, then? We must say, the will of men who do not remain dust. But how can we raise ourselves above dust? Listen, listen to me, for this is a mighty thing the rabbis teach us.”
He paused again, and I saw Danny glance at him, then stare down again at his paper plate.
“Rabbi Halafta son of Dosa teaches us, ‘When ten people sit together and occupy themselves with the Torah, the Presence of God abides among them, as it is said, “God standeth in the congregation of the godly.” And whence can it be shown that the same applies to five? Because it is said, “He had founded his band upon the earth.” And whence can it be shown that the same applies to three? Because it is said, “He judgeth among the judges.” And whence can it be shown that the same applies to two? Because it is said, “Then they that feared the Lord spake one with the other, and the Lord gave heed and heard.” And whence can it be shown that the same applies even to one? Because it is said, “In every place where I cause my name to be remembered I will come unto thee and I will bless thee.” ’ Listen, listen to this great teaching. A congregation is ten. It is nothing new that the holy Presence resides among ten. A band is five. It is also nothing new that the holy Presence resides among five. Judges are three. If the holy Presence did not reside among judges there would be no justice in the world. So this, too, is not new. That the Presence can reside even among two is also not impossible to understand. But that the Presence can reside in one! In one! Even in one! That already is a mighty thing. Even in one! If one man studies Torah, the Presence is with him. If one man studies Torah, the Master of the Universe is already in the world. A mighty thing! And to bring the Master of the World into the world is also to raise oneself up from the dust. Torah raises us from the dust! Torah gives us strength! Torah clothes us! Torah brings the Presence!”
The singsong chant had died away. He was talking in a straight, loud voice that rang through the terrible silence in the synagogue.
“But to study Torah is not such a simple thing. Torah is a task for all day and all night. It is a task filled with danger. Does not Rabbi Meir teach us, ‘He who is walking by the way and studying, and breaks off his study and says, “How fine is that tree, how fine is that field,” him the Scripture regards as if he had forfeited his life’?”
I saw Danny glance quickly at his father, then lower his eyes. His body sagged a little, a smile played on his lips, and I thought I even heard him sigh quietly.
“He had forfeited his life! His life! So great is the study of Torah. And now, listen, listen to this word. Whose task is it to study Torah? Of whom does the Master of the Universe demand ‘Ye shall meditate over it day and night’? Of the world? No! What does the world know of Torah? The world is Esav! The world is Amalek! The world is Cossacks! The world is Hitler, may his name and memory be erased! Of whom, then? Of the people of Israel! We are commanded to study His Torah! We are commanded to sit in the light of the Presence! It is for this that we were created! Does not the great and holy Rabbi Yochanan son of Zakkai teach us, ‘If thou hast learnt much Torah, ascribe not any merit to thyself, for thereunto wast thou created’? Not the world, but the people of Israel! The people of Israel must study His Torah!”
His voice stormed the silence. I found myself holding my breath, my heart thumping in my ears. I could not take my eyes off his face, which was alive now, or his eyes, which were open and filled with dark fire. He struck the table with his hand, and I felt myself go cold with fright. Danny was watching him now, too, and his little brother stared at him as though in a trance, his mouth open, his eyes glazed.
“The world kills us! The world flays our skin from our bodies and throws us to the flames! The world laughs at Torah! And if it does not kill us, it tempts us! It misleads us! It contaminates us! It asks us to join in its ugliness, its impurities, its abominations! The world is Amalek! It is not the world that is commanded to study Torah, but the people of Israel! Listen, listen to this mighty teaching.” His voice was suddenly lower, quieter, intimate. “It is written, This world is like a vestibule before the world-to-come; prepare thyself in the vestibule, that thou mayest enter into the hall.’ The meaning is clear: The vestibule is this world, and the hall is the world-to-come. Listen. In gematriya, the words ‘this world’ come out one hundred sixty-three, and the words ‘the world-to-come’ come out one hundred fifty-four. The difference between ‘this world’ and ‘the world-to-come’ comes out to nine. Nine is half of eighteen. Eighteen is chai, life. In this world there is only half of chai. We are only half alive in this world! Only half alive!”
A whisper went through the crowd at the tables, and I could see heads nod and lips smile. They had been waiting for this apparently, the gematriya, and they strained forward to listen. One of my teachers in school had told me about gematriya. Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet is also a number, so that every Hebrew word has a numerical value. The words for “this world” in Hebrew is “olam hazeh,” and by adding the numerical value of each letter, the total numerical value of the word becomes one hundred and sixty-three. I had heard others do this before, and I enjoyed listening because sometimes they were quite clever and ingenious. 1 was beginning to feel relaxed again, and I listened carefully.
“Hear me now. Listen. How can we make our lives full? How can we fill our lives so that we are eighteen, chai, and not nine, not half chai? Rabbi Joshua son of Levi teaches us, ‘Whoever does not labor in the Torah is said to be under the divine censure.’ He is a nozuf, a person whom the Master of the Universe hates! A righteous man, a tzaddik, studies Torah, for it is written, ‘For his delight is in the Torah of God, and over His Torah doth he meditate day and night.’ In gematriya, ‘nozuf’ comes out one hundred forty-three, and ‘tzaddik’ comes out two hundred and four. What is the difference between ‘nozuf and ‘tzaddik’? Sixty-one. To whom does a tzaddik dedicate his life? To the Master of the Universe! La-el, to God! The word, ‘La-el’ in gematriya is sixty-one! It is a l
ife dedicated to God that makes the difference between the nozuf and the tzaddik!”
Another murmur of approval went through the crowd. Reb Saunders was very good at gematriya, I thought. I was really enjoying myself now.
“And now listen to me further. In gematriya, the letter of the word ‘traklin,’ hall, the hall that refers to the world-to-come, comes out three hundred ninety-nine, and ‘prozdor,’ the vestibule, the vestibule that is this world, comes out five hundred thirteen. Take ‘prozdor’ from ‘traklin,’ and we have one hundred fourteen. Now listen to me. A righteous man, we said, is two hundred four. A righteous man lives by Torah. Torah is mayim, water; the great and holy rabbis always compare Torah to water. The word ‘mayim’ in gematriya is ninety. Take ‘mayim’ from ‘tzaddik’ and we also have one hundred fourteen. From this we learn that the righteous man who removes himself from Torah also removes himself from the world-to-come!”
The whisper of delight was loud this time, and men nodded their heads and smiled. Some of them were even poking each other with their elbows to indicate their pleasure. That one had really been clever. I started to go over it again in my mind.
“We see that without Torah there is only half a life. We see that without Torah we are dust. We see that without Torah we are abominations.” He was saying this quietly, almost as if it were a litany. His eyes were still open, and he was looking directly at Danny now. “When we study Torah, then the Master of the Universe listens. Then he hears our words. Then He will fulfill our wishes. For the Master of the Universe promises strength to those who*preoccupy themselves in Torah, as it is written, ‘So ye may be strong,’ and He promises length of days, as it is written. ‘So that your days may be lengthened.’ May Torah be a fountain of waters to all who drink from it, and may it bring to us the Messiah speedily and in our day. Amen!”
A chorus of loud and scattered amens answered.
I sat in my seat and saw Reb Saunders looking at Danny, then at me. I felt completely at ease, and I somewhat brazenly smiled and nodded, as if to indicate that I had enjoyed his words, or at least the gematriya part of his words. I didn’t agree at all with his notions of the world as being contaminated. Albert Einstein is part of the world, I told myself. President Roosevelt is part of the world. The millions of soldiers fighting Hitler are part of the world.
I thought that the meal was ended now and we would start the Evening Service, and I almost began to get out of my seat when I realized that another silence had settled upon the men at the tables. I sat still and looked around. They seemed all to be staring at Danny. He was sitting quietly, smiling a little, his fingers playing with the edge of his paper plate.
Reb Saunders sat back in his leather chair and folded his arms across his chest. The little boy was poking at the tomato again and glancing at Danny from the tops of his dark eyes. He twirled a side curl around one of his fingers, and I saw his tongue dart out of his mouth, run over his lips, then dart back in. I wondered what was going on.
Reb Saunders sighed loudly and nodded at Danny, “Nu, Daniel, you have something to say?” His voice was quiet, almost gentle. I saw Danny nod his head.
“Nu, what is it?”
“It is written in the name of Rabbi Yaakov, not Rabbi Meir,” Danny said quietly, in Yiddish.
A whimper of approval came from the crowd. I glanced around quickly. Everyone sat staring at Danny.
Reb Saunders almost smiled. He nodded, and the long black beard went back and forth against his chest. Then I saw the thick black eyebrows arch upward and the lids go about halfway down across the eyes. He leaned forward slightly, his arms still folded across his chest.
“And nothing more?” he asked very quietly.
Danny shook his head—a little hesitantly, I thought.
“So,” Reb Saunders said, sitting back in the leather chair, “there is nothing more.”
I looked at the two of them, wondering what was happening. What was this about Rabbi Yaakov and Rabbi Meir?
“The words were said by Rabbi Yaakov, not by Rabbi Meir,” Danny repeated. “Rabbi Yaakov, not Rabbi Meir, said, ‘He who is walking by the way and studying, and breaks off his study and—’ ”
“Good,” Reb Saunders broke in quietly. “The words were said by Rav Yaakov. Good. You saw it. Very good. And where is it found?”
“In Pirkei Avos,” Danny said. He was giving the Talmudic source for the quote. Many of the quotes Reb Saunders had used had been from Pirkei Avos—or Avot, as my father had taught me to pronounce it, with the Sephardic rather than the Ashkenazic rendering of the Hebrew letter “tof.” I had recognized the quotes easily. Pirkei Avot is a collection of Rabbinic maxims, and a chapter of it is studied by many Jews every Shabbat between Passover and the Jewish New Year.
“Nu,” Reb Saunders said, smiling, “how should you not know that? Of course. Good. Very good. Now, tell me—”
As I sat there listening to what then took place between Danny and his father, I slowly realized what I was witnessing. In many Jewish homes, especially homes where there are yeshiva students and where the father is learned, there is a tradition which takes place on Shabbat afternoon: The father quizzes the son on what he has learned in school during the past week. I was witnessing a kind of public quiz, but a strange, almost bizarre quiz, more a contest than a quiz, because Reb Saunders was not confining his questions only to what Danny had learned during the week but was ranging over most of the major tractates of the Talmud and Danny was obviously required to provide the answers. Reb Saunders asked where else there was a statement about one who interrupts his studies, and Danny coolly, quietly answered. He asked what a certain medieval commentator had remarked about that statement, and Danny answered. He chose a minute aspect of the answer and asked who had dealt with it in an altogether different way, and Danny answered. He asked whether Danny agreed with this interpretation, and Danny said he did not, he agreed with another medieval commentator, who had given another interpretation. His father asked how could the commentator have offered such an interpretation when in another passage in the Talmud he had said exactly the opposite, and Danny, very quietly, calmly, his fingers still playing with the rim of the paper plate, found a difference between the contradictory statements by quoting two other sources where one of the statements appeared in a somewhat different context, thereby nullifying the contradiction. One of the two sources Danny had quoted contained a Biblical verse, and his father asked him who else had based a law upon this verse. Danny repeated a short passage from the tractate Sanhedrin, and then his father quoted another passage from Yoma which contradicted the passage in Sanhedrin, and Danny answered with a passage from Gittin which dissolved the contradiction. His father questioned the validity of his interpretation of the passage in Gittin by citing a commentary on the passage that disagreed with his interpretation, and Danny said it was difficult to understand this commentary—he did not say the commentary was wrong, he said it was difficult to understand it—because a parallel passage in Nedarim clearly confirmed his own interpretation.
This went on and on, until I lost track of the thread that held it all together and sat and listened in amazement to the feat of memory I was witnessing. Both Danny and his father spoke quietly, his father nodding his approval each time Danny responded. Danny’s brother sat staring at them with his mouth open, finally lost interest, and began to eat some of the food that was still on his plate. Once he started picking his nose, but stopped immediately. The men around the tables were watching as if in ecstasy, their faces glowing with pride. This was almost like the pilpul my father had told me about, except that it wasn’t really pilpul, they weren’t twisting the texts out of shape, they seemed more interested in b’kiut, in straight forward knowledge and simple explanations of the Talmudic passages and commentaries they were discussing. It went on like that for a long time. Then Reb Saunders sat back and was silent.
The contest, or quiz, had apparently ended, and Reb Saunders was smiling at his son. He said, very quietly, “Good
. Very good. There is no contradiction. But tell me, you have nothing more to say about what I said earlier?”
Danny was suddenly sitting very straight.
“Nothing more?” Reb Saunders asked again. “You have nothing more to say?”
Danny shook his head, hesitantly.
“Absolutely nothing more to say?” Reb Saunders insisted, his voice flat, cold, distant. He was no longer smiling.
I saw Danny’s body go rigid again, as it had done before his father began to speak. The ease and certainty he had worn during the Talmud quiz had disappeared.
“So,” Reb Saunders said. “There is nothing more. Nu, what should I say?”
“I did not hear—”
“You did not hear, you did not hear. You heard the first mistake, and you stopped listening. Of course you did not hear. How could you hear when you were not listening?” He said it quietly and without anger.
Danny’s face was rigid. The crowd sat silent. I looked at Danny. For a long moment he sat very still—and then I saw his lips part, move, curve slowly upward, and freeze into a grin. I felt the skin on the back of my neck begin to crawl, and I almost cried out. I stared at him, then looked quickly away.
Reb Saunders sat looking at his son. Then he turned his eyes upon me. I felt his eyes looking at me. There was a long, dark silence, during which Danny sat very still, staring fixedly at his plate and grinning. Reb Saunders began to play with the earlock along the right side of his face. He caressed it with the fingers of his right hand, wound it around the index finger, released it, then caressed it again, all the time looking at me. Finally, he sighed loudly, shook his head, and put his hands on the table.
“Nu,” he said, “it is possible I am not right. After all, my son is not a mathematician. He has a good head on him, but it is not a head for mathematics. But we have a mathematician with us. The son of David Malter is with us. He is a mathematician.” He was looking straight at me, and I felt my heart pound and the blood drain from my face. “Reuven,” Reb Saunders was saying, looking straight at me, “you have nothing to say?”
