The Chosen

by Chaim Potok

  I was prepared for Rav Gershenson to call on me again the fourth day, and he did. There was by now only one more thought unit left in the passage, and I had decided in advance that when I was done explaining it I would quickly review the entire passage and all the commentaries, outlining the difficulties they had found in the text and showing the different ways they had explained these difficulties. Then I would go into the attempt of the late medieval commentary to reconcile the diverse explanations of the commentaries. All of that took me just under an hour, and when I was satisfied that I had done the best I could, I stopped talking. Rav Gershenson was sitting behind his desk, looking at me intently. It felt strange to me for a moment not to be hearing my own voice anymore. But I had nothing more to say.

  There was a brief silence, during which I saw one of the Hasidic students grin and lean over to whisper something into another Hasidic student’s ear. Then Rav Gershenson got to his feet and folded his arms across his chest. He was smiling a little now, and the upper part of his body was swaying slowly back and forth.

  He asked me to repeat a point I had made two days earlier, and I did. He asked me to make myself a little clearer on a passage in one of the commentaries, and I repeated the passage by heart and explained it again as best I could. He asked me to go over the difficulties I had found in the various commentaries, and I repeated them carefully. Then he asked me to show how the late medieval commentary had attempted to reconcile these difficulties, and I went over that, too.

  Again, there was a brief silence. I glanced at my watch and saw it was two-thirty. I wondered if he would start on the next passage with only half an hour left to the shiur. He usually preferred to start a new passage—or inyan, as it is called—at the beginning of a shiur, so as to give the class time to get into it. I was feeling very satisfied with the way I had explained the passage and answered his questions. I promised myself that I would tell my father all about it when I visited him in the hospital that evening.

  Then I heard Rav Gershenson ask me whether I was satisfied with the late medieval commentary’s attempt at reconciliation.

  It was a question I hadn’t expected. I had regarded the effort at reconciliation as the rock bottom of the entire discussion on the passage and had never thought that Rav Gershenson would question it. For a long moment, I felt myself wallowing in that dreaded silence that always followed a question of his that a student couldn’t answer, and I waited for the drumming of his fingers to begin. But his arms remained folded across his chest, and he stood there, swaying slowly back and forth, and looking at me intently.

  “Nu,” he said again, “there are no questions about what he says?”

  I waited for Danny’s hand to go up, but it didn’t. I glanced at him and saw his mouth had fallen slightly open. The question had caught him by surprise, too.

  Rav Gershenson stroked his pointed beard with his right hand, then asked me for the third time if I was satisfied with what the commentary said.

  I heard myself tell him that I wasn’t.

  “Ah,” he said, smiling faintly. “Good. And why not?”

  “Because it’s pilpul,” I heard myself say.

  There was a stir from the class. I saw Danny stiffen in his seat, throw me a quick, almost fearful glance, then look away.

  I was suddenly a little frightened at the disparaging way I had uttered the word pilpul. The tone of disapproval in my voice hung in the air of the classroom like a threat.

  Rav Gershenson slowly stroked his pointed gray beard. “So,” he said softly, “it is pilpul. I see you do not like pilpul. . . . Nu, the great Vilna Gaon also did not like pilpul.” He was talking about Rabbi Elijah of Vilna, the eighteenth-century opponent of Hasidism. “Tell me, Reuven”—that was the first time he had ever called me by my first name—“why is it pilpul? What is wrong with his explanation?”

  I answered that it was strained, that it attributed nuances to the various conflicting commentaries that were not there, and that, therefore, it really was not a reconciliation at all.

  He nodded his head slowly. “Nu,” he said, not speaking only to me but to the entire class now, “it is a very difficult inyan. And the commentaries”—he used the term “Rishonim,” which indicates the early medieval Talmudic commentators—“do not help us.” Then he looked at me. “Tell me, Reuven,” he said quietly, “how do you explain the inyan?”

  I sat there and stared at him in stunned silence. If the commentators hadn’t been able to explain it, how could I? But he didn’t let the silence continue this time. Instead, he repeated his question, his voice soft, gentle. “You cannot explain it, Reuven?”

  “No,” I heard myself say.

  “So,” Rav Gershenson said. “You cannot explain it. You are sure you cannot explain it?”

  For a moment I was almost tempted to tell him the text was wrong and to give him the text I had reconstructed. But I didn’t. I was afraid. I remembered Danny telling me that Rav Gershenson knew all about the critical method of studying Talmud, and hated it. So I kept silent.

  Rav Gershenson turned to the class. “Can anyone explain the inyan?” he asked quietly.

  He was answered by silence.

  He sighed loudly. “Nu,” he said, “no one can explain it. . . . The truth is, I cannot explain it myself. It is a difficult inyan. A very difficult inyan.” He was silent for/a moment, then he shook his head and smiled. “A teacher can also sometimes not know,” he said softly.

  That was the first time in my life I had ever heard a rabbi admit that he didn’t understand a passage of Talmud.

  We sat there in an uncomfortable silence. Rav Gershenson stared down at the open Talmud on his desk. Then he closed it slowly and dismissed the class.

  As I was gathering up my books, I heard him call my name. Danny heard him, too, and looked at him. “I want to talk with you a minute,” Rav Gershenson said. I went up to his desk.

  Standing near him, I could see how wrinkled his face and brow were. The skin on his hands looked dry, parchmentlike, and his lips formed a thin line beneath the heavy tangle of gray beard. His eyes were brown and gentle, and deep wrinkles spread from their outside corners like tiny furrows.

  He waited until all the students were out of the classroom. Then he asked me quietly, “You studied the inyan by yourself, Reuven?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Your father did not help you?”

  “My father is in the hospital.”

  He looked shocked.

  “He’s better now. He had a heart attack.”

  “I did not know,” he said softly. “I am sorry to hear that,” He paused for a moment, looking at me intently. “So,” he said. “You studied the inyan alone.”

  I nodded.

  “Tell me, Reuven,” he said gently, “do you study Talmud with your father?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Your father is a great scholar,” he said quietly, almost wistfully. “A very great scholar.” His brown eyes seemed misty. “Reuven, tell me, how would your father have answered my question?”

  I stared at him and didn’t know what to say.

  He smiled faintly, apologetically. “You do not know how your father would have explained the inyan?”

  The class was gone, we were alone, and somehow I felt an intimacy between us that made it not too difficult for me to say what I then said. I didn’t say it without feeling a little frightened, though. “I think I know what he would have said.”

  “Nu,” Rav Gershenson prodded me gently. “What?”

  “I think he would have said the text is wrong.”

  I saw him blink his eyes a few times, his face expressionless. “Explain what you mean,” he said quietly.

  I explained how I had reconstructed the text, then quoted the reconstructed text from memory, showing him how it fitted perfectly to the explanation offered by the simplest of all the commentaries. I ended by saying I felt certain that was the text of the Talmud manuscript the commentator had had before him when h
e had written his commentary.

  Rav Gershenson was silent for a long moment, his face impassive. Then he said slowly, “You did this by yourself, Reuven?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your father is a good teacher,” he told me quietly. “You are blessed to have such a father.”

  His voice was soft, reverent.

  “Reuven?”

  “Yes?”

  “I must ask you never to use such a method of explanation in my class.” He was speaking gently, almost apologetically. “I am myself not opposed to such a method. But I must ask you never to use it in my class. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I will call on you often now,” he said, smiling warmly. “Now that you understand, I will call on you very often. I have been waiting all year to see how good a teacher your father is. He is a great teacher and a great scholar. It is a joy to listen to you. But you must not use this method in my class. You understand?”

  “Yes,” I said again.

  And he dismissed me with a quiet smile and a gentle nod of his head.

  That evening after my last class, I went to the school library and looked for Rav Gershenson’s name in the Hebrew and English catalogues. His name wasn’t listed anywhere. It was then that I understood why my father was not teaching in this school.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  MY FATHER RETURNED from the hospital in the middle of March. He was weak and gaunt, confined to his bed and almost completely incapable of any kind of physical activity. Manya cared for him as though he were a child, and Dr. Grossman visited him twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, until the end of April, when the visits were reduced to once a week. He was satisfied with my father’s progress, he kept telling me. There was nothing to worry about anymore, except to make sure that he had complete rest. During the first four weeks my father was home a night nurse came in every evening, stayed awake through the night in my father’s room, then left in the morning. Talking tired him quickly; even listening seemed to tire him. We weren’t able to spend too much time together the first six weeks he was home. But it was wonderful to have him there, to know he was back in his room again and out of the hospital, and to know that the dark silence was finally gone from the apartment.

  I had told him about my experience with Rav Gershenson while he had still been in the hospital. He had listened quietly, nodded, and had said that he was very proud of me. He hadn’t said anything at all about Rav Gershenson, I was being called on regularly now in the Talmud class, and there were no silences when I read and explained a passage.

  I saw Danny all the time in school, but the silence between us continued, I had finally come to accept it. We had begun to communicate with our eyes, with nods of our heads, with gestures of our hands. But we did not speak to each other. I had no idea how he was getting along in psychology, or how his family was. But I heard no bad news, so I assumed things were more or less all right.

  The grim faces of the teachers and students in school reflected the newspaper headlines that told of Arab riots and attacks against the Jews of Palestine, Jewish defense measures, many of which were being hampered by the British, and continued Irgun activities. The Arabs were attacking Jewish settlements in the Upper Galilee, the Negev and around Jerusalem, and were incessantly harassing supply convoys. Arabs were killing Jews, Jews were killing Arabs, and the British, caught uncomfortably in the middle, seemed unable and at times even unwilling to stop the rising tide of slaughter.

  The Zionist youth groups in the school became increasingly active, and on one occasion some of the members of my group were asked to cut our afternoon classes and go down to a warehouse in Brooklyn to help load uniforms, helmets, and canteens onto huge ten-ton trucks that were waiting outside. We were told that the supplies would soon be on a ship heading for Palestine and would be used by the Haganah. We worked long and hard, and somehow loading those trucks made me feel intimately bound up with the news bulletins that I kept hearing on the radio and seeing in the papers.

  In April, Tiberias, Haifa, and Safed were occupied by the Haganah, and the Irgun, with the help of the Haganah, captured Jaffa.

  My father was a good deal stronger now and had begun walking around a bit inside the house. We were able to talk at length, and we talked of little else but Palestine. He told me that before his heart attack he had been asked to go as a delegate to the Zionist General Council that was to meet in Palestine during the coming summer. “Now I will be glad if I can go to the cottage this summer,” he said, and there was a wry smile on his lips.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked him.

  “I did not want to upset you. But I could not keep it to myself any longer. So I am telling you now.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me when they asked you?”

  “They asked me the night I had the attack,” he said.

  We never talked about it again. But if I was around, I always knew when he thought about it. His eyes would become dreamy, and he would sigh and shake his head. He had worked so hard for a Jewish state, and that very work now kept him from seeing it. I wondered often during the coming months what meaning he could possibly give to that. I didn’t know, and I didn’t ask him.

  We wept quite openly that Friday in the second week of May when Israel was born. And on my way to the synagogue the next morning, I saw the newspaper headlines announcing the birth of the Jewish state. They also announced that the Arab armies had begun their threatened invasion.

  The next few weeks were black and ugly. The Etzion area in the Hebron Mountains fell, the Jordanian Army attacked Jerusalem, the Iraqi Army, invaded the Jordan Valley, the Egyptian Army invaded the Negev, and the battle for Latrun, the decisive point along the road to Jerusalem, turned into a bloodbath. My father became grim and silent, and I began to worry again about his health.

  In early June, a rumor swept through the school that a recent graduate had been killed in the fighting around Jerusalem. The rumor ran wild for a few days, and was finally confirmed. 1 hadn’t known him at all, he had been graduated before I had entered, but apparently most of the present members of the senior class remembered him well. He had been a brilliant mathematics student, and very popular. He had gone to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to get his doctorate, had joined the Haganah and been killed trying to get a convoy through to Jerusalem. We were stunned. We had never thought the war would come so close.

  On a day in the second week of June, the same week the United Nations truce went into effect and the fighting in Israel ceased, the entire school attended an assembly in memory of the student. Everyone was there, every rabbi, student, and college teacher. One of his Talmud teachers described his devoutness and dedication to Judaism, his mathematics professor talked about his brilliance as a student, and one of the members of the senior class told of the way he had always spoken of going to Israel. Then we all stood as a prayer was chanted and the Kaddish was said.

  Reb Saunders’ anti-Zionist league died that day as far as the students in Hirsch College were concerned. It remained alive outside the school, but I never again saw an anti-Zionist leaflet inside the school building.

  The final examinations were not too much of a problem to me that semester, and I made all A’s. July came and brought sweltering heat, and the happy announcement from Dr. Grossman that my father was now well enough to be able to go to the cottage in August and resume teaching in September. But he was to rest in the cottage, not work. Yes, he could write—since when was writing work? My father laughed at that, the first time he had laughed in months.

  In September, my father resumed his teaching, and I entered my third year of college. Since symbolic logic was part of philosophy, I had chosen philosophy as my major subject, and I was finding it very exciting. The weeks passed quickly. My father was doing nothing but teaching for the first few months; then, with the approval of Dr. Grossman, he went back to some of his Zionist activities and to teaching an adult class one night a week.

  The war in Isra
el continued sporadically, especially in the Negev. But the initiative had passed to the Israelis, and the tension was gone from it by now.

  Reb Saunders’ anti-Zionist league seemed to have gone out of existence. I heard nothing about it, even in my own neighborhood. And one day in the late spring of that year, while I was eating lunch, Danny came over to my table, smiled hesitantly, sat down, and asked me to give him a hand with his experimental psychology; he was having difficulty setting up a graph for a formula involving variables.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I FELT A LITTLE SHIVER hearing his voice.

  “Welcome back to the land of the living,” I said, staring up at him and feeling my heart turn over. It had been over two years now that we hadn’t talked to each other.

  He smiled faintly and rubbed his beard, which was quite thick. He was wearing his usual dark suit, tieless shirt, fringes, and skullcap. His earlocks hung down along the sides of his sculptured face, and his eyes were bright and very blue.

  “The ban has been lifted,” he said simply.

  “It feels good to be kosher again,” I told him, not without some bitterness in my voice.

  He blinked his eyes and tried another smile. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

  “I’m sorry, too. I needed you around for a while. Especially when my father was sick.”

  He nodded, and his eyes were sad.

  “How do you do it?” I asked.

  He blinked again. “Do what?”

  “How do you take the silence?”

  He didn’t say anything. But his face tightened.

  “I hated it,” I told him. “How do you take it?”

  He pulled nervously at an earlock, his eyes dark and brooding.

  “I think I would lose my mind,” I said.