The Chosen

My father was in the kitchen and there was a strange brooding sadness on his face. I sat down and he looked at me, his eyes somber behind their steel-rimmed spectacles. And I told him, everything.

When I was done, he was quiet for a very long time. Then he said softly, 'A father has a right to raise his son in his own way, Reuven.'

'In that way, abba?'

'Yes. Though I do not care for it at all.'

'What kind of way is that to raise a son?'

'It is, perhaps, the only way to raise a tzaddik.'

'I'm glad I wasn't raised that way.'

'Reuven,' my father said softly, 'I did not have to raise you that way. I am not a tzaddik.'

During the Morning Service on the first Shabbat in June, Reb Saunders a

Two days later, Reb Saunders withdrew his promise to the family of the girl Da

The reaction at Hirsch College, once the news of Reb Saunders' a

That June Da

Da

He was moving into a room he had rented near Columbia, he said, and he wanted to say good-bye. His beard and earlocks were gone, and his face looked pale. But there was a light in his eyes that was almost blinding.

My father smiled at him warmly. 'Columbia is not so far,' he said. 'We will see you on Shabbat.'

Da

I asked him how his father had reacted when he had seen him without the beard and earlocks.

He smiled sadly. 'He's not happy about it. He said he almost doesn't recognize me.'

'He talked to you?'

'Yes,' Da

There was a long, gentle silence. A cool breeze moved soundlessly through the open windows of the living room.

Then my father leaned forward in his chair. 'Da

Da

'Yes,' he said. 'If I can't find another way.'

My father nodded, his eyes calm.

Later, I went down with Da

'You'll come over sometimes on a Saturday and we'll study Talmud with my father?' he asked.

'Of course,' I said.

We shook hands and I watched him walk quickly away, tall, lean, bent forward with eagerness and hungry for the future, his metal-capped shoes tapping against the sidewalk. Then he turned into Lee Avenue and was gone.