The Promise

  “Rav Kalman?”

  He looked at me and blinked his eyes wearily. “Yes,” he said. “Rav Kalman. And others.”

  “Which others?”

  “There will be others,” he said sadly. “Rav Kalman has great influence. There will certainly be others.”

  “Two years,” I said. “Why couldn’t he have missed us by two years?”

  “What are you saying, Reuven?”

  “Why couldn’t he have come to America two years later?”

  “You would like him to have suffered two more years somewhere in China merely to have avoided causing us a problem? That is a terrible thing to say, Reuven.”

  I finished my milk and said nothing.

  “Besides, there would have been someone else. The times are different. The climate is different. Everything is different. There would have been another Rav Kalman.”

  “Not for my Chullin teacher.”

  “Perhaps. But it is childish to think of what might have been.”

  “You said China. Was he really in China?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I have discovered a great deal about Rav Kalman.”

  “From your colleague?”

  He smiled faintly and nodded. “He is a great Talmud scholar and a fierce follower of the musar movement. He might have become another Rav Israel Salanter or Rav Nathan Finkel had Hitler not destroyed European Jewry. He is one of the great men in Orthodoxy today. That is why your yeshiva brought him over. They wanted to bring him over sooner, but he had established a yeshiva in Shanghai and would not leave earlier. If his signature is on your smicha it will be a great smicha, Reuven. You will have a right to be very proud of that smicha.”

  “I’m not going to be proud of a smicha I have to lie for.”

  “No,” he said soberly. “I do not expect that you will lie in order to receive smicha. You will have to make a choice.”

  “What choice? There is no choice. I realized tonight while you were out that I have no choice at all. He’s not asking me to make a choice. He’s telling me to take a stand. I’m either with him or against him. All or nothing. I’m disgusted with the whole business. I don’t want smicha if the price I have to pay for it is to stop thinking. He can keep his smicha.”

  “You will not receive smicha? What will you do, Reuven?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll sit out the Chullin class until June, and then take a doctorate in philosophy. You always wanted me to teach in a university. Maybe I’ll teach in a university. I don’t know.”

  “You have to make a decision now, Reuven?”

  “No.”

  “Then wait. Wait until you will have to make it.”

  “I’ll have to make it by March or April.”

  “Then wait until March or April.”

  “I’m sick of it,” I said. “I’ve had it up to here now with Rav Kalman. I’m not going to change the way I study Talmud just because Rav Kalman has his head buried in a ghetto.”

  “Do not talk that way, Reuven. It is disrespectful.”

  “I’m sorry, abba. I’m angry.”

  “Yes. I can see that. You will be a lot angrier before this is over. It is when you are angry that you must watch how you talk.”

  “I’ll bet he asks me tomorrow to explain more of the book to him.”

  “If he does,” my father said, “I expect you to answer him with respect.”

  But I was wrong. Rav Kalman did not ask me to remain after class the next day. Nor did he call on me to read. And the same was true of the day after. I sat in the class and listened and from time to time I noticed him glancing at me, but he left me alone.

  Early Friday afternoon I brought a copy of my father’s book over to Danny. It was a cold, bleak day. The streets teemed with caftan-garbed Hasidim rushing about in preparation for Shabbat. I turned up Danny’s block, which was almost a precise duplicate of mine, but looked older, more worn, the brownstones unkempt, the stone banisters on the outside stairways chipped and smudged with dirt, and many of the front lawns paved over with cement. This block had always looked less neat and clean than mine, but mine had begun rapidly to resemble it in the past two years.

  I came up the worn stone steps to Danny’s house and went through the front double door and the small foyer into the hallway. At the right of the hallway was the door that led to Reb Saunders’s synagogue. The door was open and I stopped for a moment and peered inside. Nothing about the synagogue had changed. It looked transplanted from another age, its individual stands, its old chairs and tables, its podium and Ark, the cushioned chair alongside the Ark where Reb Saunders sat, the separate screened-off section for women, the exposed light bulbs hanging from the ceiling, the walls that needed paint—so much of my life had once been tied to the things I had experienced inside that synagogue and all of it seemed strange to me now, quaint, almost exotic, as if it were a movie set or something I were watching an author describe in a historical novel. I turned away from the door and went to the foot of the stairs and called Danny’s name. I heard my voice echo through the empty hallway and up the staircase and through the house. Then I heard footsteps and I looked up and I saw a beardless caftaned figure come to the head of the stairs, a young caftaned figure, a boy of about fifteen, with dark hair and a sculptured face and dark eyes, and I looked up at him and in the shadows of the stairway he looked to be Danny and I felt a shock go through me and I put a hand on the banister. But it was not Danny; it was his brother Levi. I leaned against the banister and felt my heart beating.

  “Hello,” Levi said in English. “Danny says to come up to his room.” He had a gentle voice and pale features and he smiled at me as I came toward him up the stairs.

  “How are you, Levi?”

  “Thank God. Thank God.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Thank God, all right”

  “Is your father upstairs too?”

  “In his study. How are you, Reuven?”

  “I’ve had better days and worse days.”

  “I can imagine,” he said, changing to Yiddish. “Nu, have a good Shabbos.”

  “Shabbat shalom,” I said. I was almost to the third floor when it occurred to me to ask myself what he had meant by “I can imagine.”

  Danny was in his room at the far end of the apartment hall on the third floor. The door was open. I poked my head inside and saw him seated at his desk over an open Talmud.

  “Your Mitnaged friend is here with his heathen literature,” I said.

  He looked up and smiled, a little grimly I thought, and told me to come in.

  I gave him my father’s book. He thanked me for it and put it on his desk. Then he closed the Talmud he had been studying from and told me to sit down. I sat on the bed. There were bookcases against the walls and a worn rug on the floor. Outside in the back yard the naked branches of an ailanthus moved against the gray sky.

  “Levi doesn’t look too well,” I said.

  Danny said nothing.

  “You’ve cleaned up the room.”

  He smiled. “How are you?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure any more.”

  “You’re having a bad time.”

  “How can you tell, doctor?”

  “Rachel sends you her regards.”

  “How is Rachel?”

  “Fine.”

  “How is the great doctor?”

  “Tired.”

  “Of course.”

  “Michael has been talking all week about your visit.”

  “Is that good?”

  “It would be better if he talked about himself.”

  “Shall I stop seeing him?”

  “No. Are you going to the Gordons?”

  “Yes.”

  “The cherem doesn’t bother you?”

  “Does it bother you?”

  “No.”

  “It doesn’t bother me either.”

  “It doesn’t really apply to me.”

  “You mean
pickuach nefesh.”

  “Yes.”

  In the Jewish tradition, a religious law must be violated if it is even vaguely suspected of endangering a human life. “Pickuach nefesh” is the technical legal term for saving a life.

  “How is Michael?” I asked.

  “I don’t think Michael is going to talk. I can’t get to him.”

  “It’s been less than two weeks, Danny.”

  “I know how long it’s been. But I can already feel it. He talks to me more than he’s ever talked to anyone. But I can’t get to him with talk. There’s a thick shell around him and I can’t get through it.”

  “A shell,” I said.

  “I can’t get through.”

  “You want to get through to his spark of a soul? You sound like your father. I’m surrounded by you people.”

  He looked at me sadly.

  “Between Rav Kalman in class and Hasidim on the streets I’m beginning to feel I could use some therapy myself.”

  “You don’t need therapy.”

  “What do I need, doctor?”

  “You don’t need therapy.”

  “I need a vacation from Rav Kalman, that’s what I need. You want to hear about his latest little game?”

  “I know about it.”

  I looked at him.

  “I read it.”

  “You read what?”

  “It’s in the paper.”

  “What’s in the paper?”

  He stared at me. “I thought—” He stopped. “You haven’t seen it?”

  “Seen what? What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t you get that paper Rav Kalman writes for?”

  “No.”

  He reached up to a shelf over his desk, pushed some papers aside, and handed me the newspaper. It was a rather shabby weekly publication but it was reputed to have considerable influence upon those in positions of power in Orthodoxy. You could see it on the newsstands in Brooklyn, its masthead thick and black: The Jewish Guardian. It was of tabloid size, poorly printed and edited, its English often embarrassingly clumsy. Its readership comprised the very Orthodox, especially those who had come to America from the concentration camps. It had been in existence for about two years. I had read through one of its issues about a year ago and had found it smug, self-righteous, faintly hysterical, and generally dull. Then last week I had brought a copy to Michael, the copy containing the attack against his father. Now I was reading about my father.

  Rav Kalman’s article was set in two wide columns on page three, and was headlined: NEW BOOK A THREAT TO TORAH JUDAISM. Beneath the headline, in italics, were these words: This is the first of a two-part article on THE MAKING OF THE TALMUD: STUDIES IN SOURCE CRITICISM by David Malter. The author of these articles is the world-renowned Talmud scholar Rav Jacob Kalman, of the Samson Raphael Hirsch Yeshiva.

  I read the article very quickly. My face was hot and my hands were trembling and when I was done reading it I gave it back to Danny and he put it on his desk.

  “He didn’t waste any time,” I said, feeling the anger and the shame deep inside me.

  Danny said nothing.

  “The advance copies just came out last week. He didn’t even wait for the official publication date. He must have worked around the clock to write that.”

  Danny was quiet.

  “At least he doesn’t call my father a pagan.”

  “It’s an honest article,” Danny said.

  I looked at him sharply.

  “You have to admit it’s honest. He knows what he’s talking about. He studied the book. It’s an honest difference of opinion.”

  “Sure he studied the book. You know who he studied it with?”

  “Who?”

  “Me.”

  He stared.

  “That’s right. Me. Explain this to me, Malter. I want to understand better what your father is saying. Me. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. After class. Me. What kind of person does that? He used me against my own father. I wonder who he used when he was reading Abraham Gordon’s book. My God, I feel like I’m living in the Middle Ages. I need some fresh air.” I got to my feet and went to the window. It was open. “Why is it so hot in here?” I sat down. “I feel like I’m suffocating.”

  “It isn’t hot at all,” Danny said quietly.

  “It’s hot. Don’t tell me it isn’t hot.”

  “All right.”

  “Can I take that paper with me? I’ll want to show it to my father.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s stifling in here. I wish it were the summer. I wish I could get in some swimming. Maybe I’ll go to one of those indoor pools in a Y and get in some swimming. I wish I could do some sailing. Have you ever gone sailing? No, of course you haven’t. In a good wind a Sailfish goes like a motorboat. But you have to watch the center board. It gets warped and you have trouble with it in shallow water sometimes. You have to watch that center board, Danny.”

  “Take it easy,” I heard Danny say as if from a distant part of the house.

  I was quiet. I sat there quietly and took a deep breath. My head felt foggy. I took another deep breath. The fog was gone.

  “I’m all right,” I said, and got to my feet. “I had better get home.”

  “Please go in and see my father,” Danny said. “He wants to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m fine. I’m—splendid.”

  I wished him Shabbat shalom and started down the hall to his father’s study. I saw the newspaper in my hand and stuffed it quickly into a pocket. I was about to knock on the door to the study when I remembered something and turned and went quickly back to Danny’s room. His door was closed. I opened it without knocking and came inside. He was at his desk, studying Talmud. He was bent low over the Talmud, swaying slowly back and forth, and the thumb and forefinger of his right hand caressed his cheek and played with an imaginary earlock. I stood just inside the room and watched him and felt the room swaying in rhythmic accompaniment to the motions of his body, the floor moving slowly back and forth, and I closed my eyes. The swaying ceased. I opened my eyes. Danny was looking at me.

  “What is all this about the Kotzker Rebbe?” My voice sounded strangely loud. “What is this with Byrd and Zimmerman and the Kotzker Rebbe and solitude?” Easy, I thought. Why are you shouting? You don’t have to shout.

  Danny looked as if he had been struck a blow. A look of enormous astonishment spread across his face. He opened his mouth and closed it immediately. He sat there, staring at me, and seemed incapable of responding.

  “Is that all it is? A project for class? Solitude?” Stop shouting, I told myself again. It’s none of your business anyway what it’s all about … The hell it’s none of my business. But stop shouting. “Well?” I said. “Well?”

  “How do you know about the Kotzker?” I heard him ask in a tight voice.

  I told him.

  “It’s got to do with an idea I’m working on,” Danny said very quietly.

  “What idea?” My voice still sounded very loud.

  Danny said nothing. But the lines of his face had hardened with annoyance.

  “For class?” I said loudly. “A class project. Is that all it is? I know how your mind works. You don’t suddenly start pouncing on a bunch of books dealing with one subject just out of curiosity. What are you doing? Is it for class?”

  “No,” he said.

  “I know. It’s none of my business. But what are you doing?”

  He was silent.

  “It has Something to do with Michael. You’re dreaming up something for Michael. What are you doing?”

  “Take it easy, Reuven.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “You don’t want to talk about it. Just like that. You don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I can’t talk about it.”

  “I got you involved in this whole thing.
Don’t you owe it to me to tell me?”

  “No. I can’t talk about it to anyone yet.”

  “All right. Don’t talk about it. All right. More silence. That’s what I love about you Hasidim. You either don’t talk at all or you talk too much. Sneaky Kalman and silent Saunders. Everything is falling apart. Don’t you see it falling apart? Can’t you hear it falling apart?”

  “I hear you shouting,” Danny said softly. “That’s what I hear.”

  I stared at him. He was looking at me and blinking his eyes rapidly.

  “Have fun,” I said bitterly. “Enjoy your solitude. Give my love to the Kotzker and Admiral Byrd. Let me know when you’re ready to talk about it.”

  I went out of the room and closed the door and went quickly down the hall and out of the apartment to the stairway. Halfway down the third-floor stairs I remembered that Reb Saunders wanted to see me. I went back up and knocked on the door to his study and heard him say in Yiddish, “Come in.”

  He was seated behind his desk over an old Hebrew book. The room was cluttered with books; it was always cluttered with books. I wished he would open a window. The musty odor of old books was suffocating. He shook my hand and waved me into a chair. He looked old and weary. He closed the book and moved it aside. He asked me how my father was feeling. Then he asked me how I was feeling. Then he told me he had read Rav Kalman’s article about my father’s book. He did not say whether he approved or disapproved of the article; he merely said he had read it. But his voice was thick with sadness as he talked. Then he was silent for a while and his hands trembled faintly on the desk. I noticed there was a slight tremor to his head now too. He sighed softly and began to play with an earlock, curling it around the bony forefinger of his right hand.

  “A telephone is a mighty thing,” he said softly in Yiddish. “A mighty thing. An invisible messenger.”

  I stared at him.

  “A wire. Two instruments. And human beings who are far apart are suddenly close together. We have been given a world full of wonders by the Master of the Universe. People whose lives are separated come together because of a wire. Is it not a mighty thing, Reuven?”