The Promise

by Chaim Potok

Thee. If thou dost not keep Thy Covenant, then neither will I keep that Promise, and it is all over, we are through being Thy chosen people, Thy peculiar treasure.

In the years before the Second World War, the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn had been inhabited by only a few Hasidic sects. By the fifth year after the war, the neighborhood seemed dark with their presence. They had come from the sulfurous chaos of the concentration camps, remnants, one from a hamlet, two from a village, three from a town, dark, somber figures in long black coats and black hats and long beards, earlocks hanging alongside gaunt faces, eyes brooding, like balls of black flame turned inward upon private visions of the demonic.

And by the fifth year after the war, Lee Avenue, the main street of the neighborhood, was filled with their bookstores and bookbinderies, butcher shops and restaurants, beeswax candle stores, dry-cleaning stores, grocery stores and vegetable stores, appliance stores and hardware stores—

Then the newcomers moved into the street. They lived in a dimension of reality that made trees and grass and flowers irrelevant to their needs. So the street began to sag with neglect. The grassy back yards went slowly bald, the hydrangeas were left to fade and die, and the brownstones became old and worn.

It had been a small Orthodox rabbinical school and secular college during the war, the only one of its kind in the United States.

All through that winter my father was writing his book on the Talmud. He wrote during those afternoons when he did not have to teach and every evening and night, except the nights of Shabbat and festivals.

In the late spring of that year I met Rachel Gordon at a party.

But Michael did not want to go home. Why should we go home just because it was a carnival? he wanted to know. What was wrong with carnivals?

The old man shrugged apologetically. “I live and travel with the carnival. I know only the carnival. I do not know what goes on outside.

“Why did you do that?” Michael asked, staring at the old man. The old man looked at him out of narrowed eyes and said nothing.

“You’re no different from the others.” I saw Rachel put her hands to her mouth. “What is he talking about?” the old man asked loudly.

“You hate us,” Michael said. “You’re just like the others.” “What is he saying?” the old man asked. “He sounds crazy. Look at him. He looks crazy. Take him home. All of you, go home!”

“You hate us!” Michael screamed, holding the empty dice cup over his head.

“We gambled and were cheated. Don’t make it worse than it was.”

“How do you feel?” I asked. “Fragile,” she said. Her face was faintly luminous in the darkness. “And raped.”

black asphalt-paved street that was Bedford Avenue and listening to a short, intense,

thick-shouldered, black-bearded man explain a passage of Talmud. I lay very still in the darkness.

“He scares me a little,” I said when I was done. “I’ve never seen anyone so angry.” “He had reason to be angry. You are certain that old man deliberately cheated you?” “That old man was the vilest person I’ve ever met.”

“Why should I be angry? Which others?” “Some of the rabbis in your school.” He glanced at me, then looked quickly away.

“Rav Kalman is very religious. Isn’t he fanatically religious?” “He’s very religious. Yes.” “Then why does he go around using slander against people who disagree with him?” He used the Talmudic term “lashon hara” for slander.

“You’re talking about the way he attacks your father and his school. Is that what you’re talking about?”

There’s a rabbi in the Talmud who even says there’s no atonement for lashon hara. How can Rav Kalman be so religious and use lashon hara?”

“There are a lot of Orthodox students in that yeshiva.” “You don’t like Orthodox students?” “They’re vicious.”

“You’re Orthodox. What do you know about it? You can’t even see it. You have to be outside to see it.”

“Is your father religious?” “What do you mean religious?”

“Does he keep the Commandments? Does he put on tefillin every day?” “Of course he puts on tefillin. I put on tefillin. We’re pretty religious. We keep kosher and everything.”

“Do you observe the ...

“Did you take me out sailing so we could talk?” “Yes.” “Why do you want to talk?” “Why not?” “I thought you just wanted us to have a good time.”

“Aren’t you having a good time?” “I don’t like being asked questions.” “Why?” “I don’t like it, that’s all.” “All right. I won’t ask you any more questions.”

“I should have listened to Rachel last night.”

remember wanting to throw something and then I can’t remember anything until my uncle said he was calling a doctor.”

I remember thinking he was like Rav Kalman and some of the others. You trust them because they’re supposed to be decent and very religious and then they turn out to be

vicious. They have crazy ideas, especially the ones who came here after the war. They think they’re God over Judaism. They stamp on you like you’re a bug if you don’t agree with them. They’re going to poison all of us with their crazy ideas.”

“They’re vicious. I really hate them. They’re disgusting.”

Did you know Giordano Bruno was burned alive in Rome in 1600 for writing that the stars were suns?

They cheated Bruno. They killed him for the truth. But he didn’t cheat. He wrote the truth.

everything has problems. There’s nothing anywhere without problems. There’s no one without problems.

“We gambled and were cheated. You have to fight when you’re cheated. But I can’t fight.”

“Yes, Michael.” “I gambled I would enjoy sailing with you. I didn’t really know you at all until today. I gambled.” “Did you win?”

Quine’s Methods of Logic

‘Verbal fraud is worse than monetary fraud.’ ” The words came out in a rapid Sephardic Hebrew. “Is that statement familiar to you?”

“Shimon ben Yochai in Baba Metzia,” I said, giving the Talmudic source of the quote he had used.

“You are David Maker’s son, no doubt of that. You experienced both kinds of f...

The call from Danny woke me at seven thirty the next morning. His slightly nasal voice was thin and metallic over the phone. He had just been called by the treatment center. There was an emergency with one of the boys. He had to run.

He was doing his pre-doctoral fieldwork in psychology at a residential treatment center in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn

One of those people had scribbled in Hebrew across the half-title page: “This is the book of an apostate. Those who fear God are forbidden to read it.”

I began to reserve the books in the order in which they had been published. I would reserve a book and after a week or so I would be informed that it was in and I would take it out and reserve the next book.

“He asks very good questions. I don’t like his answers. But he asks some very important questions.”

There are times when those who fear God make themselves

very unpleasant as human beings.”