The Chosen

Chapter 16

I felt a little shiver hearing his voice.

'Welcome back to the land of the living,' I said, staring up at him and feeling my heart turn over. It had been over two years now that we hadn't talked to each other.

He smiled faintly and rubbed his beard, which was quite thick.

He was wearing his usual dark suit, tieless shirt, fringes, and skullcap. His earlocks hung down along the sides of his sculptured face, and his eyes were bright and very blue.

'The ban has been lifted,' he said simply.

'It feels good to be kosher again,' I told him, not without some bitterness in my voice.

He blinked his eyes and tried another smile. 'I'm sorry,' he said quietly.

'I'm sorry, too. I needed you around for a while. Especially when my father was sick.'

He nodded, and his eyes were sad.

'How do you do it?' I asked.

He blinked again. 'Do what?'

'How do you take the silence?'

He didn't say anything. But his face tightened.

'I hated it,' I told him. 'How do you take it?'

He pulled nervously at an earlock, his eyes dark and brooding.

'I think I would lose my mind,' I said.

'No you wouldn't,' he said softly. 'You'd learn to live with it.'

'Why does he do it?'

The hand pulling at the earlock dropped down to the table.

He shook his head slowly. 'I don't know. We still don't talk.'

'Except when you study Talmud or he explodes.'

He nodded soberly.

'I hate to tell you what I think of your father.'

'He's a great man,' Da

'I think it's crazy and sadistic,' I said bitterly. 'And I don't like your father at all.'

'You're entitled to your opinion,' Da

We were silent for a moment.

'You've lost weight,' I told him.

He nodded but remained silent. He sat there slumped over, looking small and uncomfortable, like a bird in pain.

'How are your eyes?' I asked.

He shrugged. 'They bother me sometimes. The doctor says it's nervous tension.'

There was another silence.

'It's good to have you back,' I said. And I gri

He smiled hesitantly, his blue eyes bright and shining.

'You and your crazy way of hitting a baseball,' I said. 'You and your father with his crazy silences and explosions.'

He smiled again, deeply now, and straightening up in the chair. 'Will you help me with this graph?' he asked.

I told him it was about time he helped himself with graphs, and then showed him what to do.

When I told my father about it that night, he nodded soberly.

He had expected it, he said. The Jewish state was not an issue anymore but a fact. How long would Reb Saunders have continued his ban over a dead issue?

'How is Da

I told him Da

'Yes.'

His face was sad. 'A father can bring up a child any way he wishes,' he said softly. 'What a price to pay for a soul.'

When I asked him what he meant, he wouldn't say anything more about it. But his eyes were dark.

So Da

A few days after we had resumed talking, Da

We were sitting in the lunchroom one day when he told me of a conversation he had had with Professor Appleman. 'He said if I ever wanted to make any kind of valuable contribution to psychology I would have to use scientific method. The Freudian approach doesn't really provide a method of accepting or rejecting hypotheses, and that's no way to acquire knowledge: 'Well, well.' I gri

'You're going to become an experimentalist?'

'I don't think so. I want to work with people, not with rats and mazes. I talked to Appleman about it. He suggested I go into clinical psychology.'

'What's that?'

'Well, it's the same as the difference between theoretical and applied physics, say. The experimental psychologist is more or less the theoretician; the clinical psychologist applies what the experimentalist learns. He gets to work with people. He examines them, tests them, diagnoses them, even treats them: 'What do you mean, treats them?'

'He does therapy.'

'You're going to become an analyst?'

'Maybe. But psychoanalysis is only one form of therapy. There are many other kinds.'

'What kinds?'

'Oh, many kinds,' he said vaguely. 'A lot of it is still very experimental: 'You're pla

'I don't know. Maybe. I really don't know too much about it yet.'

'Are you going on for a doctorate?'

'Sure. You can't move in this field without a doctorate.'

'Where are you pla

'I don't know yet. Appleman suggested Columbia. That's where he got his doctorate.'

'Does your father know yet?'

Da

'When will you tell him?'

'The day I receive my smicha.'

'Smicha' is the Hebrew term for rabbinic ordination.

'Thats next year' I said.

Da

We raced up the stairs to Ray Gershenson's class and made it just a moment before he called on someone to read and explain.

During another one of our lunchroom conversations, Da

'I always thought that logic and theology were like David and Saul,' Da

'They are. But I might help them get better acquainted.'

He shook his head. 'I can't get over your becoming a rabbi.'

'I can't get over your becoming a psychologist.'

And we looked at each other in quiet wonder.

In June, Da