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My father had told me he didn’t mind their beliefs. What annoyed him was their fanatic sense of righteousness, their absolute certainty that they and they alone had God’s ear, and every other Jew was wrong, totally wrong, a sinner, a hypocrite, an apikoros, and doomed, therefore, to burn in hell.
“No one knows he is fortunate until he becomes unfortunate,” my father said quietly. “That is the way the world is.”
he said that man was created by God, and Jews had a mission in life.” “What mission is that?” “To obey God.” “Don’t you believe that?” He looked slowly away from the window. I saw his deep blue eyes stare at me, then blink a few times. “Sure I believe it,” he said quietly. His shoulders were bowed. “Sometimes I’m not sure I know what God wants, though.”
He asked me if I had the patience to sit and listen quietly, and I nodded.
He taught them that the purpose of man is to make his life holy—every
“It all started with a silly baseball game,” I said. “I can’t believe it.” “Reuven, as you grow older you will discover that the most important things that will happen to you will often come as a result of silly things, as you call them—‘ordinary things’ is a better expression. That is the way the world is.”
He’s a kind of messenger of God, a bridge between his followers and God.” “I don’t understand it. It almost sounds like Catholicism.” “That’s the way it is,” Danny said, “whether you understand it or not.”
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!”
‘If thou hast learnt much Torah, ascribe not any merit to thyself, for thereunto wast thou created’?
“You think a friend is an easy thing to be? If you are truly his friend, you will discover otherwise. We will see.
“It is a little cruel, Reuven. But that is the way the world is. If a person has a contribution to make, he must make it in public. If learning is not made public, it is a waste.
Great men are always difficult to understand. He carries the burden of many people on his shoulders. I do not care for his Hasidism very much, but it is not a simple task to be a leader of people.
“We’re so complicated inside,” he went on quietly.
“Because Danny would have continued to read anyway on his own. At least this way he has some direction from an adult.
My father believes in silence. When I was ten or eleven years old, I complained to him about something, and he told me to close my mouth and look into my soul. He told me to stop running to him every time I had a problem. I should look into my own soul for the answer, he said. We just don’t talk, Reuven.”
Can you study Talmud without the commentaries? Imagine Talmud without Rashi. How far would you get?” I agreed with him that I wouldn’t get very far at all. He had been going at it all wrong, he said, his eyes bright with excitement. He had wanted to read Freud. That had been his mistake. Freud had to be studied, not read. He had to be studied like a page of Talmud. And he had to be studied with a commentary.
I always talked to my father. I was lucky, he said. I didn’t know how really lucky I was, he added, a little bitterly.
It was senseless, as—I held my breath, feeling myself shiver with fear—as Billy’s blindness was senseless. That was it. It was as senseless, as empty of meaning, as Billy’s blindness. I lay there and thought of Roosevelt being dead and Billy being blind,
I couldn’t begin to imagine six million of my people murdered. I lay in my bed and asked myself what sense it made. It didn’t make any sense at all.
“Reb Saunders said it was God’s will,” he echoed softly. I nodded. “You are satisfied with that answer, Reuven?” “No.” He blinked his eyes again, and when he spoke his voice was soft, the bitterness gone. “I am not satisfied with it, either, Reuven. We cannot wait for God. If there is an answer, we must make it ourselves.”
not a thing was done. Everyone was sympathetic, but no one was sympathetic enough.
“Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye?” He paused again, his eyes misty now, then went on. “I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that
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Once I asked my father why they had remained friends, their views about almost everything of importance were so different. He replied by expressing dismay at my question. Honest differences of opinion should never be permitted to destroy a friendship, he told me.
The slaughter of six million Jews would have meaning only on the day a Jewish state was established.
I hated the silence between us and thought it unimaginable that Danny and his father never really talked. Silence was ugly, it was black, it leered, it was cancerous, it was death. I hated it, and I hated Reb Saunders for forcing it upon me and his son. I never knew myself capable of the kind of hatred I felt toward Reb Saunders all through that semester.
whenever I began to talk to him of my feelings toward Reb Saunders he invariably countered by defending him and by asserting that the faith of Jews like Reb Saunders had kept us alive through two thousand years of violent persecution. He disagreed with Reb Saunders, yes, but he would countenance no slander against his name or his position. Ideas should be fought with ideas, my father said, not with blind passion.
I wished he would at least say or do something, nod his head, smile, even catch me at a mistake—anything but that awful silence.
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.
Let my Daniel become a psychologist. I have no more fear now. All his life he will be a tzaddik. He will be a tzaddik for the world. And the world needs a tzaddik.”
