The Chosen

by Chaim Potok

“No one knows he is fortunate until he becomes unfortunate,” my father said quietly. “That is the way the world is.”

A Greek philosopher said that two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul.”

“I’ve never told this to anyone before,” he said. “All the time I kept wondering who I would tell it to one day.” He was staring down at the floor. Then he looked at me and smiled. It was a sad smile, but it seemed to break the mood he was in. “If you’d’ve ducked that ball I would still be wondering,” he said, and put his hands back into his pockets.

and there was newness everywhere, a feeling that I had been away a long time in a dark place and was now returning home to sunlight.

At the moment when there seems to be no meaning in life, at that moment a person must try to find new meaning.

God is everywhere, he told them, and if it seems at times that He is hidden from us, it is only because we have not yet learned to seek Him correctly. Evil is like a hard shell. Within this shell is the spark of God, is goodness. How do we penetrate the shell? By sincere and honest prayer, by being happy, and by loving all people.

believed that no man is so sinful that he cannot be purified by love and understanding.

He also believed—and here is where he brought down upon himself the rage of the learned rabbis—that the study of Talmud was not very important, that there need not be fixed times for prayers, that God could be worshipped t...

“Now, Reuven, listen very carefully to what I am going to tell you. Reb Saunders’s son is a terribly torn and lonely boy. There is literally no one in the world he can talk to. He needs a friend. The accident with the baseball has bound him to you, and he has already sensed in you someone he can talk to without fear. I am very proud of you for that. He would never have told you about his

library visits if he believed for a moment you would not keep his words a secret trust. And I want you to let him be your friend and to let yourself be his friend. I am certain you and Reb Saunders’s son can help each other in such a friendship. I know you, and I know him. And I know what I am saying. And now, Reuven, the lecture is over, I am going to finish my tea, and we will go to bed. What a lecture it has been! Do you want some tea?”

“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.”

“I don’t understand it,” I said. “Weeks and weeks go by, one Shabbat follows another, and I’m the same, nothing has changed, and suddenly one day something happens, and everything looks different.”

I lay back on the lounge chair and stared up at the sky. It was a deep blue, with no clouds, and I felt I could almost touch it. It’s the color of Danny’s eyes, I thought. It’s as blue as Danny’s eyes.

It was a light, dreamless sleep, a kind of half-sleep that refreshes but does not shut off the world completely.

I did not want to lose that twilight sleep, with its odors and sounds and whispered flow of music.

I felt him looking at me. I felt him slowly push away the sleep, and, finally, I opened my eyes, and there was Danny, standing at the foot of the lounge chair, with his arms folded across his chest, clicking his tongue and shaking his head.

“All men come into the world in the same way. We are born in pain, for it is written, ‘In pain shall ye bring forth children.’ We are born naked and without strength. Like dust are we born. Like dust can the child be blown about, like dust is his life, like dust is his strength. And like dust do many remain all their lives, until they are put away in dust, in a place of worms and maggots. Will the Master of the Universe obey the will of a man whose life is dust? What is the great and holy Rabban Gamaliel teaching us?” His voice was beginning to rise now. “What is he telling us? What does it mean to say the Master of the Universe will do our will? The will of men who remain dust? Impossible! The will of what men, then? We must say, the will of men who do not remain dust. But how can we raise ourselves above dust? Listen, listen to me, for this is a mighty thing the rabbis teach us.”

May Torah be a fountain of waters to all who drink from it, and may it bring to us the Messiah speedily and in our day.

“I’ll call you at your house tomorrow afternoon.” “I’ll probably be in the library tomorrow afternoon, doing some reading in psychology. Why don’t you come over there?” “I won’t be able to read anything.” “That’s right.” Danny smiled. “I forgot. You didn’t duck.” “I’ll come over anyway. I’ll sit and think while you read.” “Wonderful. I’d like to watch you sit and think.” “Mitnagdim can think, too, you know,” I said. Danny laughed. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

If a person has a contribution to make, he must make it in public. If learning is not made public, it is a waste.

“My son is my most precious possession. I have nothing in the world compared to my son. I must know what he is reading. And I cannot ask him.”

“What can I do?” he asked himself softly. “I can no longer speak to my own son. The Master of the Universe gave me a brilliant son, a phenomenon. And I cannot speak to him.”

“Master of the Universe,” he almost chanted. “You gave me a brilliant son, and I have thanked you for him a million times. But you had to make him so brilliant?” I listened to his voice and felt myself go cold. There was so much pain in it, so much bewildered pain.

“But why can’t he talk to Danny about it?” “Reuven, he has already talked to Danny about it. He has talked to Danny through you.”

I found myself crying, too, and felt a gnawing emptiness, as though I had been scraped clean inside and there was nothing in me now but a terrible darkness.

“The world kills us,” he said quietly. “Ah, how the world kills us.”

“How the world drinks our blood,” Reb Saunders said.

The question hung in the air like a sigh of pain.

“Reb Saunders wanted to know how God could let something like this happen,” I told him quietly. My father looked at me, his eyes somber. “And did God answer him?” he asked. His voice had a strange quality of bitterness to it. I didn’t say anything. “Did God answer him, Reuven?” my father asked again, that same bitterness in his voice.

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.”

It will have meaning only if we give it meaning. We cannot wait for God.”

And Danny’s father was forever silent, withdrawn, his dark eyes turned inward, brooding, as if witnessing a sea of suffering he alone could see.

Everyone was sympathetic, but no one was sympathetic enough. The British let some few Jews in, and then closed their doors. America hadn’t cared enough, either. No one had cared enough. The world closed its doors, and six million Jews were slaughtered. What a world! What an insane world!

I was frightened and said tightly, “Your home hasn’t blown up recently, so I take it you haven’t told your father.” “No, I haven’t. And I’m not going to, either. Not yet.” “When will you tell him? Because I’m going to be out of town that day.” “No,” he said quietly. “I’m going to need you around that day.”

I’m trapped now, too. Do you know what it’s like to be trapped?” I shook my head slowly. “How could you possibly know?” Danny said. “It’s the most hellish, choking, constricting feeling in the world. I scream with every bone in my body to get out of it. My mind cries to get out of it. But I can’t. Not now. One day I will, though. I’ll want you around on that day, friend. I’ll need you around on that day.”

Three years ago, you were still a child. You have become a small giant since the day Danny’s ball struck your eye. You do not see it. But I see it. And it is a beautiful thing to see.

“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 tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant.

It is hard work to fill one’s life with meaning.

I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here.

“I don’t understand it, abba.” I was almost in tears. “In a million years I’ll never understand it. He let Danny read all the books I gave him, he let us be friends all these years even though he knew I was your son. Now he breaks us up over this. I just don’t understand it.”

“Reuven, what went on between you and Danny all these years was private. Who really knew?

I went to bed early that night but lay awake a long time, trying to remember all the things Danny and I had done together since the Sunday afternoon his ball had struck me in the eye.

Our eyes met frequently, but our lips exchanged nothing. I lost all direct contact with him. It was an agony to sit in the same class with him, to pass him in the hallway, to see him in a trolley, to come in and out of the school building with him—and not say a word.

I haunted the apartment, wandered the streets, barked at Manya, and thought of Danny.

Then he looked away, and a warm smile played on his lips. My anger at him melted away at the sight of that smile, and the agony of not being able to communicate with him returned.

The look on Danny’s face, though, when I saw him for the first time, helped a little. He passed me in the hallway, his face a suffering mask of pain and compassion. I thought for a moment he would speak to me, but he didn’t. Instead, he brushed against me and managed to touch my hand for a second. His touch and his eyes spoke the words that his lips couldn’t.

“You can listen to silence, Reuven. I’ve begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own. It talks to me sometimes. I feel myself alive in it. It talks. And I can hear it.”

“You have to want to listen to it, and then you can hear it. It has a strange, beautiful texture. It doesn’t always talk. Sometimes—sometimes it cries, and you can hear the pain of the world in it. It hurts to listen to it then. But you have to.”

He taught me to look into myself, to find my own strength, to walk around inside myself in company with my soul.

One learns of the pain of others by suffering one’s own pain, he would say, by turning inside oneself, by finding one’s own soul. And it is important to know of pain, he said. It destroys our self-pride, our arrogance, our indifference toward others. It makes us aware of how frail and tiny we are and of how much we must depend upon the Master of the Universe.