The Chosen

by Chaim Potok

I worked carefully and methodically, using everything my father had taught me and a lot of things I now was able to teach myself. I was able to do all of this in real depth because of Rav Gershenson’s slow-paced method of teaching. And by doing all of this, I was able to anticipate most of Rav Gershenson’s questions. I also became more and more certain of when he would call on me again.

clear. A third commentary, however, explained the text in six lines. The explanation was terse, clipped, and simple. The only thing wrong with it was that it seemed not to be based on the text it was explaining.

I would ride the trolley, walk the streets, or lie in bed—and ask myself questions. Second, in the way my father had taught me, by attempting to find or reconstruct the correct text, the text the commentator who had offered the simple explanation must have had before him. The first way was relatively simple; it was a matter of brute memorization. The second way was tortuous. I searched endlessly through all the cross-references and all the parallel passages in the

Palestinian Talmud. When I was done, I had four different versions of the text on my hands. I now had to reconstruct the text upon which the simple commentary had been based.

It was painstaking work, but I finally thought I had it down right. It had taken hours and hours of precious time, but I was satisfied I had the correct text, the only text that really made sense.

Every Talmudic passage is composed of what, for the sake of convenience, might best be called thought units. Each thought unit is a separate stage of the total discussion that makes up the passage.

The Talmud contains no punctuation marks, and it is not always a simple matter to determine where a thought unit begins and ends; occasionally, a passage will have a tight, organic flow to it which makes breaking it up into thought units difficult and somewhat arbitrary.

In most instances, however, the thought units are clearly discernible, and the decision on how to break up a passage into such units is a matter of common sense and a feel for the rhythm of the argument.

The need to break up a passage into its thought units is simple enough. One has to decide when to stop reading and start explaining, as well as when to appeal ...

Mishnah—the Mishnah is the written text of rabbinic oral law; in form and content it is for the most part terse and clipped, a vast collection of laws upon which are based almost all the rabbinic discussions which, together with the Mishnah, compose the Talmud.

Tosafists. I tried to be as clear as I could, and acted as if I myself were teaching the class rather than merely acting as a springboard for Rav Gershenson’s comments.

I then indicated that other commentaries had offered different explanations, and I cited them by heart because they were not found in the Talmud edition the class used.

When I raised my eyes to explain the thought unit I had just read, I saw that Rav Gershenson had sat down—the first time since I had come into the class that he was sitting during a shiur. He was holding his head in the palms of his hands, the elbows on the open Talmud in front of him, and listening intently.

The next day he called on me again, and I continued to read and explain. I spent two hours on seven words, and again sometime during the session he sat down, with his head in the palms of his hands.

Some of the Hasidic students in the class were giving me mixed looks of awe and jealousy, as if they couldn’t restrain their feelings of admiration over how well I was doing but at the same time were asking themselves how someone like me, a Zionist and the son of a man who wrote apikorsische articles, could possibly know Talmud so well.

He never looked at me while I read and explained, but I could see him nodding his head and smiling as I went through my explanations.

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

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 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.

“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?”

Then he looked at me. “Tell me, Reuven,” he said quietly, “how do you explain the inyan?”

“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.

“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 ended by saying I felt certain that was the text of the Talmud manuscript the commentator had had before him when he 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.”

“I will call on you often now,” he said, smiling warmly. “Now that you understand, I will call on you very often.

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.

Talking tired him quickly; even listening seemed to tire him.

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.

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.

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.

He had worked so hard for a Jewish state, and that very work now kept him from seeing it.

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.

Reb Saunders’s 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 war in Israel continued sporadically, especially in the Negev. But the initiative had passed to the Israelis, and the tension was gone from it by now.

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.

“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.”

When I told my father about it that night, he nodded soberly. He had expected it, he said. The Jewish state was not an issue anymore but a fact.

Rav Gershenson’s class became a particular joy, because the ease between Danny and myself now permitted us to engage in a constant flow of competitive discussion that virtually monopolized the hours of the shiur.

A few days after we had resumed talking, Danny told me that he had resigned himself to experimental psychology and was even beginning to enjoy it.

Professor Appleman. “He said if I ever wanted to make any kind of valuable contribution to psychology I would have to use the scientific method. The Freudian approach doesn’t really provide a method of accepting or rejecting hypotheses, and that’s no way to acquire knowledge.”

Freud never really did anything with perception, for example. Or with learning. How people see, hear, touch, smell, taste, and learn is a fascinating subject.

The experimental psychologist is more or less the theoretician; the clinical psychologist applies what the experimentalist learns. He gets to work with people. He examines them, tests them, diagnoses them, even treats them.”

“Are you going on for a doctorate?” “Sure. You can’t move in this field without a doctorate.”

“When will you tell him?” “The day I receive my smicha.” “Smicha” is the Hebrew term for rabbinic ordination. “That’s next year,” I said.

He shook his head. “I can’t get over your becoming a rabbi.” “I can’t get over your becoming a psychologist.” And we looked at each other in quiet wonder.

my father was teaching me Talmud on Shabbat afternoons.

I was beginning to find everything connected with Reb Saunders and Hasidism distasteful. We waited until the person who was with his father came out, then we went in.