The Chosen

The street floor of the building consisted of administrative offices, an auditorium, and a large synagogue, a section of which contained chairs and long tables. The entire second floor was a library, a beautiful library, with mazelike stacks that reminded me of the third floor of the library in which Da

It was a rigidly Orthodox school, with services three times a day and with European-trained rabbis, many of them in long, dark coats, all of them bearded. For the first part of the day, from nine in the morning to three in the afternoon, we studied only Talmud. From three-fifteen to six-fifteen or seven-fifteen, depending on the schedule of classes we had chosen for ourselves, we went through a normal college curriculum. On Fridays from nine to one, we attended the college; on Sundays, during that same time span, we studied Talmud.

I found that I liked this class arrangement very much; it divided my work neatly and made it easy for me to concentrate separately upon Talmud and college subjects. The length of the school day, though, was something else; I was frequently awake until one in the morning, doing homework. Once my father came into my room at ten minutes to one, found me memorizing the section on river flukes from my biology textbook, asked me if I was trying to do four years of college all at once, and told me to go to bed right away. I went to bed – half an hour later, when I had finished the memorizing.

Da

We were in the week between semesters at the time. Da

'Did you ever get to like my father and his pla

I shook my head slowly. Reb Saunders had stopped inserting deliberate errors into his Shabbat evening talks the week we had entered college, but the memory of it still rankled. I told Da

'So what makes you think sitting long enough through something you hate will get you to like it?'

I had nothing to say to that, except to urge him again to stick out the year with Professor Appleman. 'Why don't you talk to him about it?' I asked.

'About what? About Freud? The one time I mentioned a Freudian theory in class, all I got out of Appleman was that dogmatic psychoanalysis was related to psychology as magic was related to science. "Dogmatic Freudians,'" Da

'Dogmatic Freudians are generally to be regarded as akin to the medieval physicists who preceded the era of Galileo. They are interested solely in confirming highly dubious theoretical hypotheses by the logic of analogy and induction, and make no attempt at refutation or inter-subjective testing." That was my introduction to experimental psych. I've been ru

'Was who right?'

'Professor Appleman: 'Was he right about what?'

'About Freudians being dogmatic?'

'What followers of a genius aren't dogmatic, for heaven's sake?

The Freudians have plenty to be dogmatic about. Freud was a genius: 'What do they do, make tzaddik out of him?'

'Very fu

He assumed the professorial air again. '

'Gentlemen, psychology may be regarded as a science only to the degree to which its hypotheses are subjected to laboratory testing and to subsequent mathematization.' Mathematization yet! What should I tell him, that I have mathematics? I'm taking the wrong course. You should be taking that course, not me I'

'He's right, you know,' I said quietly.

'Who?'

'Appleman. If the Freudians aren't willing to try testing their theories under laboratory conditions, then they are being dogmatic.'

Da

'I don't know a thing about the Freudians,' I told him quietly. 'But I know a lot about inductive logic. If the Freudians -'

'Damn it (' Da

'Why don't you ask Appleman?' I said quietly.

'I think I will,' Da

'That's right,' I said.

There was a brief silence, during which Da

'How are your eyes these days?' I asked quietly.