The Chosen

by Chaim Potok

True happiness Consists not in the multitude of friends, But in the worth and choice. —BEN JONSON

The test of intellectual excellence, however, had been reduced by tradition and unvoiced unanimity to a single area of study: Talmud. Virtuosity in Talmud was the achievement most sought after by every student of a yeshiva, for it was the automatic guarantee of a reputation for brilliance.

Galanter, for we had all come to like his fist-thumping sincerity. To the rabbis who taught in the Jewish parochial schools, baseball was an evil waste of time, a spawn of the potentially assimilationist English portion of the yeshiva day. But to the students of most of the parochial schools, an inter-league baseball victory had come to take on only a shade less significance than a top grade in Talmud, for it was an unquestioned mark of one’s Americanism, and to be counted a loyal American had become increasingly important to us during these last years of the war.

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. I found myself wondering again how they had learned to hit a ball like that if time for the study of Torah was so precious to them and why they had sent a rabbi along to waste his time sitting on a bench during a ball game.

I saw it was my father. I almost cried out, but I held back and waited for him to come up to my bed. I saw he was carrying a package wrapped in newspapers. He had on his dark gray, striped, double-breasted suit and his gray hat. He looked thin and worn, and his face was pale. His eyes seemed red behind his steel-rimmed spectacles, as though he hadn’t slept in a long time. He came quickly around to the left side of the bed and looked down at me and tried to smile. But the smile didn’t come through at all. “The hospital telephoned me a little while ago,” he said, sounding a little out of breath. “They told me you were awake.” I started to sit up in the bed. “No,” he said. “Lie still. They told me you were not to sit up yet.” I lay back and looked up at him. He sat down on the edge of the bed and put the package down next to him. He took off his hat and put it on top of the package. His sparse gray hair lay uncombed on his head. That was unusual for my father. I never remembered him leaving the house without first carefully combing his hair.

“I caught a cold,” he apologized. “There was a draft in the classroom yesterday. I told the janitor, but he told me he could not find anything wrong. So I caught a cold. In June yet. Only your father catches colds in June.” “You’re not taking care of yourself, abba.” “I am worried about my baseball player.” He smiled at me. “I worry all the time you will get hit by a taxi or a trolley car, and you go and get hit by a baseball.”

“I hate that Danny Saunders for this. He’s making you sick.” “Danny Saunders is making me sick? How is he making me sick?” “He deliberately aimed at me, abba. He hit me deliberately. Now you’re getting sick worrying about me.” My father looked at me in amazement. “He hit you deliberately?” “You should see how he hits. He almost killed Schwartzie. He said his team would kill us apikorsim.” “Apikorsim?” “They turned the game into a war.” “I do not understand. On the telephone Reb Saunders said his son was sorry.” “Sorry! I’ll bet he’s sorry! He’s sorry he didn’t kill me altogether!” My father gazed at me intently, his eyes narrowing. I saw the look of amazement slowly leave his face. “I do not like you to talk that way,” he said sternly. “It’s true, abba.” “Did you ask him if it was deliberate?” “No.” “How can you say something like that if you are not sure? That is a terrible thing to say.” He was controlling his anger with difficulty.

“It seemed to be deliberate.” “Things are always what they seem to be, Reuven? Since when?” I was silent. “I do not want to hear you say that agai...

He put the radio on the night table. A radio brought the world together, he said very often. Anything that brought the world together he called a blessing.

Billy’s father said something to the boy, and the boy laughed loudly. I saw my father glance at them briefly, then look back at me. Then I saw him turn his head and look at them again. He looked at them a long time. Then he turned back to me. I saw from his face that he knew Billy was blind.

“I brought you your tefillin and prayer book,” he said very quietly. His voice was husky, and it trembled. “If they tell you it is all right, you should pray with your tefillin. But only if they tell you it is all right and will not be harmful to your head or your eye.” He stopped for a moment to clear his throat. “It is a bad cold, but I will be all right. If you cannot pray with your tefillin, pray anyway. Now, I have to go.” He bent and kissed me on the forehead. As he came close to me, I saw his eyes were red and misty. “My baseball player,” he said, trying to smile. “Take care of yourself and rest. I will be back to see you tomorrow.” He turned and walked quickly away up the aisle, small and thin, but walking with a straight, strong step the way he always walked no matter how he felt. Then he was out of focus and I could no longer see him.

I lay on the pillow and closed my right eye. I found myself crying after a while, and I thought that might be bad for my eye, and I forced myself to stop. I lay still and thought about my eyes. I had always taken them for granted, the way I took for granted all the rest of my body and also my mind. My father had told me many times that health was a gift, but I never really paid much attention to the fact that I was rarely sick or almost never had to go to a doctor. I thought of Billy and Tony Savo. I tried to imagine what my life might be like if I had only one good eye, but I couldn’t. I had just never thought of my eyes befor...

“How does it feel to know you’ve made someone blind in one eye?” I asked him. I had recovered from my surprise at his presence and was feeling the anger beginning to come back. He looked at me, his sculptured face expressionless. “What do you want me to say?” His voice wasn’t angry, it was sad. “You want me to say I’m miserable? Okay, I’m miserable.” “That’s all? Only miserable? How do you sleep nights?” He looked down at his hands. “I didn’t come here to fight with you,” he said softly. “If you want to do nothing but fight, I’m going to go home.” “For my part,” I told him, “you can go to hell, and take your whole snooty bunch of Hasidim along with you!” He looked at me and sat still. He didn’t seem angry, just sad. His silence made me all the angrier, and finally I said, “What the hell are you sitting there for? I thought you said you were going home!” “I came to talk to you,” he said quietly. “Well, I don’t want to listen,” I told him. “Why don’t you go home? Go home and be sorry over my eye!” He stood up slowly. I could barely see his face because of the sunlight behind him. His shoulders seemed bowed. “I am sorry,” he said quietly. “I’ll just bet you are,” I told him. He started to say something, stopped, then turned and walked slowly away up the aisle. I lay back on the pillow, trembling a little and frightened over my own anger and hate.

My father came in a few minutes after supper, looking pale and worn. When I told him about my conversation with Danny Saunders, his eyes became angry behind the glasses. “You did a foolish thing, Reuven,” he told me sternly. “You remember what the Talmud says. If a person comes to apologize for having hurt you, you must listen and forgive him.” “I couldn’t help it, abba.” “You hate him so much you could say those things to him?” “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling miserable. He looked at me and I saw his eyes were suddenly sad. “I did not intend to scold you,” he said.

“What I tried to tell you, Reuven, is that when a person comes to talk to you, you should be patient and listen. Especially if he has hurt you in any way. Now, we will not talk anymore tonight about Reb Saunders’s son. This is an important day in the history of the world. It is the beginning of the end for Hitler and his madmen. Did you hear the announcer on the boat describing the invasion?”

I was beginning to feel a lot less excited over the war news and a lot more annoyed that I couldn’t read. In the afternoon, I listened to some of the soap operas—Life Can Be Beautiful, Stella Dallas, Mary Noble, Ma Perkins—and what I heard depressed me even more. I decided to turn off the radio and get some sleep.

“Whenever I do or see something I don’t understand, I like to think about it until I understand it.” He talked very rapidly, and I could see he was tense. “I’ve thought about it a lot, but I still don’t understand it. I want to talk to you about it. Okay?” “Sure,” I said. “Do you know what I don’t understand about that ball game? I don’t understand why I wanted to kill you.” I stared at him. “It’s really bothering me.” “Well, I should hope so,” I said. “Don’t be so cute, Malter. I’m not being melodramatic. I really wanted to kill you.” “Well, it was a pretty hot ball game,” I said. “I didn’t exactly love you myself there for a while.” “I don’t think you even know what I’m talking about,” he said. “Now, wait a minute—” “No, listen. Just listen to what I’m saying, will you? Do you remember that second curve you threw me?” “Sure.” “Do you remember I stood in front of the plate afterwards and looked at you?” “Sure.” I remembered the idiot grin vividly. “Well, that’s when I wanted to walk over to you and open your head with my bat.” I didn’t know what to say. “I don’t know why I didn’t. I wanted to.” “That was some ball game,” I said, a little awed by what he was telling me. “It had nothing to do with the ball game,” he said. “At least I don’t think it did. You weren’t the first tough team we played. And we’ve lost before, too. But you really had me going, Malter. I can’t figure it out. Anyway, I feel better telling you about it.” “Please stop calling me Malter,” I said. He loo...

“My father doesn’t write,” Danny said. “He reads a lot, but he never writes. He says that words distort what a person really feels in his heart. He doesn’t like to talk too much, either. Oh, he talks plenty when we’re studying Talmud together. But otherwise he doesn’t say much. He told me once he wishes everyone could talk in silence.”

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

“People are not always what they seem to be,” he said softly. “That is the way the world is, Reuven.”

“Reuven, listen to me. The Talmud says that a person should do two things for himself. One is to acquire a teacher. Do you remember the other?” “Choose a friend,” I said. “Yes. You know what a friend is, Reuven? A Greek philosopher said that two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul.”

“Look at that. Look at all those people. They look like ants. Sometimes I get the feeling that’s all we are—ants. Do you ever feel that way?” His voice was quiet, and there was an edge of sadness to it. “Sometimes,” I said. “I told it to my father once.” “What did he say?” “He didn’t say anything. I told you, he never talks to me except when we study. But a few days later, while we were studying, 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.” “That’s a funny thing for you to say.” “Isn’t it?” he said. He looked at me but didn’t seem to be seeing me at all. “I’ve never said that to anyone before.” He seemed to be in a strange, brooding mood. I was beginning to feel uneasy. “I read a lot,” he said. “I read about seven or eight books a week outside of my schoolwork. Have you ever read Darwin or Huxley?”

But it’s exciting being able to read all those books.”

“What kind of mathematics are you interested in?” Danny asked. “I’m really interested in logic. Mathematical logic.” He looked puzzled. “Some people call it symbolic logic,” I said. “I never even heard of it,” he confessed. “It’s really very new. A lot of it began with Russell and Whitehead and a book they wrote called Principia Mathematica.” “Bertrand Russell?” “That’s right.” “I didn’t know he was a mathematician.” “Oh, sure. He’s a great mathematician. And a logician, too.” “I’m very bad at mathematics. What’s it all about? Mathematical logic, I mean.” “Well, they try to deduce all of mathematics from simple logical principles and show that mathematics is really based on logic. It’s pretty complicated stuff. But I enjoy it.”

It was my father who finally broke the silence. He did it gently and with quiet warmth. He said, “I see you play ball as well as you read books, Danny. I hope you are not as violent with a book as you are with a baseball.”

Now it was my turn to be astonished. “You know Danny?” “In a way,” my father said, smiling broadly. “I—I had no idea,” Danny stammered. “And how could you have?” my father asked. “I never told you my name.” “You knew me all the time?” “Only after the second week. I asked the librarian. You applied for membership once, but did not take out a card.” “I was afraid to.” “I understood as much,” my father said.

I suddenly realized it was my father who all along had been suggesting books for Danny to read. My father was the man Danny had been meeting in the library! “But you never told me!” I said loudly. My father looked at me. “What did I never tell you?” “You never told me you met Danny in the library! You never told me you were giving him books to read!” My father looked from me to Danny, then back to me. “Ah,” he said, smiling. “I see you know about Danny and the library.” “I told him,” Danny said. He had begun to relax a bit, and the look of surprise was gone from his face now. “And why should I tell you?” my father asked. “A boy asks me for books to read. What is there to tell?” “But all this week, even after the accident, you never said a word!” “I did not think it was for me to tell,” my father said quietly. “A boy comes into the library, climbs to the third floor, the room with old journals, looks carefully around, finds a table behind a bookcase where almost no one can see him, and sits down to read. Some days I am there, and he comes over to me, apologizes for interrupting me in my work, and asks me if I can recommend a book for him to read. He does not know me, and I do not...

Silence is good everywhere, except in connection with Torah. —The Zohar

“Are you hungry, Reuven?” my father asked me. “I’m starved,” I said. “There is lunch on the table. We will eat together. Then you can lie on the porch and rest while I finish typing my article.” Lunch turned out to be a massive affair, with a thick soup, fresh rye bread, onion rolls, bagels, cream cheese, scrambled eggs, smoked salmon, and chocolate pudding. My father and I ate without talking while Manya hovered over us like a protective bear, and afterwards my father went into his study and I walked slowly through the apartment. I had lived in it all my life, but I never really saw it until I went through it that Friday afternoon.

Herzl, Bialik, and Chaim Weizmann

My father’s study was the same size as my room, but it had no windows. The wall alongside the door was lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Along the opposite wall were curtained French doors bounded by two large Ionic columns. What was left of that wall was also covered with bookcases, as was the wall adjoining it to the right. My father’s desk stood near the outside wall of the house, in almost the exact position where I had asked to have my own desk placed. But it was a good deal larger than mine, with dark, polished wood, deep drawers, and a large, green, leather-bordered blotter that covered almost its entire top. It was strewn with papers now, and my father was working intently over his old Underwood typewriter. The study was the darkest room in the apartment because it had no windows, and my father always worked with the desk lamp on, the yellow light bathing the desk and the floor around it. He sat there now, wearing his small, black skullcap and pecking at the typewriter with his index fingers, a thin, frail man in his fifties, with gray hair, gaunt cheeks, and spectacles. I looked at him and suddenly realized that he hadn’t coughed once since he had come to take me from the hospital. He glanced up at me for a moment, frowned, then went back to his work. He didn’t like me to disturb him while he was at his desk, and I went quietly through the study, walking on the gray rug that covered the floor, then through the French doors into the living room.

I stood in that room for a long time, watching the sunlight and listening to the sounds on the street outside. I stood there, tasting the room and the sunlight and the sounds, and thinking of the long hospital ward with its wide aisle and its two rows of beds and little Mickey bouncing a ball and trying to find someone who would play catch with him.

Was it only last Sunday that it happened, only five days ago? I felt I had crossed into another world, that little pieces of my old self had been left behind on the black asphalt floor of the school yard alongside the shattered lens of my glasses.

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

Pilpul, these discussions are called—empty, nonsensical arguments over minute points of the Talmud that have no relation at all to the world.

These fears affected all Jews. But they affected the unlearned masses worst of all. At least the scholar had his pilpul to keep him alive.

“There are many legends about his birth, but I am not interested in telling you legends. He was born about the year 1700 in Poland. His name was Israel. His parents were very poor and not learned, and they both died while he was still a child. The people of his village cared for him and sent him to school. But he did not like school, and whenever he could he would sneak away and escape to the woods where he would walk under the trees, look at the flowers, sit by a

he studied, it was the Kabbalah, the books of Jewish mysticism. The rabbis had forbidden the study of the Kabbalah, and so Israel had to study in secret. He married, finally, but almost nothing is known about his wife. She died soon afterward, and Israel, a full-grown man now, became a schoolteacher. He had a wonderful way with children, and he achieved a great reputation as a teacher. He was a kind and gentle person, honest and unaffected, and often people would come to him and ask him to settle their quarrels. He came to be regarded as a wise and holy man, and one day the father of Rabbi Abraham Gershon of the city of Brody came to him and asked him to settle a business dispute he had with another man. He was so impressed with Israel that he offered to give him his daughter Hannah in marriage. Israel agreed, but asked that the betrothal document be kept a secret for the time being. And now, an interesting event occurred. The father of Hannah died, and Israel traveled to Brody, to the house of the great Rabbi Abraham Gershon, Hannah’s brother, in order to claim his bride. He was dressed in the clothes of a peasant, torn boots and coarse garments, and you can imagine how shocked the rabbi was when he saw the betrothal agreement in Israel’s hands. His sister should marry a peasant? What shame and dishonor that would bring upon the family name! He tried to persuade his sister to reject her father’s choice, but somehow Hannah saw something in Israel which the good rabbi of Br...

Ba’al Shem Tov—the Kind or Good Master of the Name.

He mingled with the people and talked to them about God and His Torah in plain, simple language that they could easily understand. He taught them that the purpose of man is to make his life holy—every aspect of his life: eating, drinking, praying, sleeping. 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. The Ba’al Shem Tov—his followers later shortened his name and called him the Besht—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 through a sincere heart, through joy and singing and dancing. In other words, Reuven, he opposed any form of mechanical religion. There was nothing new in what he taught.

“Tea is a blessing,” he said, smiling. “Especially to a schoolteacher who must always give long answers to short questions.”

“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?” “No, abba.”

“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.

Two gray-bearded old men came over to Danny, and he got respectfully to his feet. They had had an argument over a passage of Talmud, they told him, each of them interpreting it in a different way, and they wondered who had been correct. They mentioned the passage, and Danny nodded, immediately identified the tractate and the page, then coldly and mechanically repeated the passage word for word, giving his interpretation of it, and quoting at the same time the interpretations of a number of medieval commentators like the Me’iri, the Rashba, and the Maharsha. The passage was a difficult one, he said, gesticulating with his hands as he spoke, the thumb of his right hand describing wide circles as he emphasized certain key points of interpretation, and both men had been correct; one had unknowingly adopted the interpretation of the Me’iri, the other of the Rashba. The men smiled and went away satisfied. Danny sat down.

Someone began to sing Atah Echad, one of the prayers from the Evening Service. The meal was over, and the men began to sway slowly, in unison with the melody. The singing filled the synagogue, and Reb Saunders sat back in his leather seat and sang, too, and then Danny was singing. I knew the melody and I joined in, hesitantly at first, then strongly, swaying back and forth. At the end of the song, another melody was begun, a light, fast, wordless tune, sung to the syllables cheeree bim, cheeree bam, and the swaying was a little faster now, and hands were clapped in time to the rhythm. Then tune followed tune, and I felt myself begin to relax as I continued to join the singing. I found that most of the melodies were familiar to me, especially the slow, somber ones that were meant to convey the sadness of the singers over the conclusion of the Shabbat, and the tunes I did not know I was able to follow easily, because the basic melody lines were almost all the same. After a while I was singing loudly, swaying back and forth and clapping my hands, and once I saw Reb Saunders looking at me, and his lips curved into a shadow of a smile. I smiled at Danny and he smiled back at me, and we sat there for about half an hour, singing, swaying, and clapping, and I felt light and happy and completely at ease.

Listen, listen to this great teaching. A congregation is ten. It is nothing new that the holy Presence resides among ten. A band is five. It is also nothing new that the holy Presence resides among five. Judges are three. If the holy Presence did not reside among judges there would be no justice in the world. So this, too, is not new. That the Presence can reside even among two is also not impossible to understand. But that the Presence can reside in one! In one! Even in one! That already is a mighty thing. Even in one! 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 a person has a contribution to make, he must make it in public. If learning is not made public, it is a waste.

Rabbinic literature can be studied in two different ways, in two directions, one might say. It can be studied quantitatively or qualitatively—or, as my father once put it, horizontally or vertically. The former involves covering as much material as possible, without attempting to wrest from it all its implications and intricacies; the latter involves confining oneself to one single area until it is exhaustively covered, and then going on to new material.

Something moved faintly across the edge of the field of vision of my left eye, but I ignored it and kept staring at the sunlight on the ailanthus leaves. It moved again, and I heard a faint buzzing sound. I turned my head and looked at the wooden rail of the porch. A spider had spun a web across the corner of the upper rail, and there was a housefly trapped in it now, its wings spread-eagled, glued to the strands of the web, its legs flaying the air frantically. I saw its black body arching wildly, and then it managed to get its wings free, and there was the buzzing sound again as the wings struggled to free the body to which they were attached. Then the wings were trapped again by the filmy, almost invisible strands of the web, and the black legs kicked at the air. I saw the spider, a small, gray, furry-looking spider, with long, wispy legs and black eyes, move across the web toward the fly. I rose from the chair and went over to the web. The fly’s tiny black legs flayed the air fiercely, then its wings were free again, buzzing noisily, but its body remained glued fast. I bent and blew hard against the web. It swayed, but remained intact. I blew again, harder now, and the strands seemed suddenly to melt. The fly fell on its back to the wooden floor of the porch, righted itself, then flew off, buzzing loudly. The spider tumbled from the broken web, hung by a single strand a few inches above the floor, then swiftly climbed the strand, scrambled across the top front rail of ...

“It’s true!” he shouted, crying. “Mr. Weinberg just told me! He heard it on the radio in the faculty room!” I stared at him and felt myself slide slowly back onto my desk. Mr. Weinberg taught English. He was a short, bald man, with no sense of humor, and his motto was “Believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see.” If Mr. Weinberg had told Davey Cantor that President Roosevelt was dead . . .