The Promise

by Chaim Potok

night Rachel and I swam together off the dock. It was a warm night and the sky was black and jeweled with stars. We swam in the bright light of the outdoor spots that illumined the stairway

of Talmud, in the manuscript room of the

he was opening his window these days. He smiled. Yes, he said. He was opening the window now. Bravo, I said. We would make a Western gentleman out

in one of the great yeshivoth in Vilna before the Second World War and had spent two years in a German concentration camp in northern Poland. But during the first few months after his arrival at Hirsch the corridors and the cafeteria

father went around the desk and sat down in his chair. The desk was large, with dark polished wood, deep drawers, and a green, leather-bordered blotter that covered almost its entire top. The blotter

into the hall and saw my father come into the apartment.

as if he was coming down with another of his colds. He went into his study and closed the door. I came back into my room and sat at my desk and did some more logic problems. The newspaper lay on top of a pile of books on my desk. I read the article again, then put the newspaper into a drawer. I sat there, working on the logic problems.

himself in some way. Yes, Danny said in response to a question from Joseph

there was the cold sun or the gray skies and only an

else about my father’s book. After his second attack there were days when the synagogue where we prepared for our Talmud classes

beard jutting outward almost level with the floor, and I

Gordon’s questions and none of his answers. Later, we came out of the study and sat in the living room in front of a fire and saw the dry snow against the

continued to look dazed. Then Danny was done. He sat down. I saw Reb Saunders bend over to him and whisper something in his ear. Danny’s face broke into a joyous smile and he nodded at his father. Levi was saying something to him. He seemed to be talking loudly

stiff, humorless rigidity, an unbending quality of mind that placed everything it came into contact with into immediate and fixed categories of approval or disapproval where I knew they would remain forever. And his criterion of judgment was a rather harsh and inflexible version of Eastern European Orthodox Jewish law, which he

to hurt them. I was—afraid. God, I’m afraid. I don’t want to—hurt

Sometimes a person who feels helpless seeks power by manipulating the pain-giver into giving more pain.

“What a chance we take when we raise children,”

I agree that religion is often a weapon and i get what Danny was saying and wht Kalmun let him use thag argument but not the narrator.