The Chosen

I pointed out to my father that Da

My father nodded his agreement. 'But he will come to me to discuss what he reads,' he said. 'At least there will be a balance. I will give him other books to read, and he will see that Freud is not God in psychology. Freud yet. At fifteen.' And he shook his head gloomily.

Da

I stood at the foot of the inside stairway and called up, 'Hello! Anybody home?' After a moment, Da

He introduced me to his mother and sister. His sister 'was almost as tall as I, with dark, vivacious eyes and a face almost exactly like Da

We left them and started up the stairway to the third floor.

Da

I asked him how his brother was feeling.

'All right, I guess,' he told me. 'He's asleep now.'

Da

We stood outside his father's study, and Da

Reb Saunders sat behind a massive, black wood, glass-topped desk, wearing a black caftan and a tall, round, black skullcap. He was sitting in a straight-backed red leather chair with intricately carved wooden arms. A single light bulb glowed white beneath its ceiling fixture. The study, with its additional room, seemed enormous. A thick red carpet covered its floor, and its walls were lined with glass-enclosed wooden bookcases jammed tight with books. There were books everywhere – on the two wooden chairs near the desk, on the desk itself, on the wooden file cabinet that stood near the door, on cardboard boxes piled in a comer, on the small wooden stepladder, on the black leather easy chair that stood in another comer, even on the window seat. Many of the books were bound in black, red, and brown leather. One book had been bound in white, and it stood out prominently on a shelf among the black-bound books around it. Da

Reb Saunders told us to clear the books off the two chairs near the desk. The desk stood in almost the exact spot where my father had his desk. Da

Reb. Saunders wanted to know about my eye. I told him it wam't bothering me at all and that I was supposed to see the doctor this Monday morning. He understood I was not permitted to read. I nodded. 'So you will listen,' he told me, playing with an earlock. 'You are a good mathematician. Now we will see what you know about more important things.' He said it with a smile on his lips, and I did not feel it as a challenge. I knew I could not match him and Da

Reb Saunders had a text ofPirkei Avot open in front of him.

He began to read from it, stopping at the end of each passage. Da