The Promise (21 page)

His eyes shone behind their steel-rimmed spectacles.

“I couldn’t find any mistakes,” I said.

He had found one typographical error, he said. But it was insignificant and did not affect the meaning of his words.

“It’s a beautiful book, abba,” I said again. “Especially the introduction.”

“We will see what others have to say,” he murmured.

“You’re not worried about critics?”

“A writer always worries about critics,” he said. He looked up at the clock on the shelf over the refrigerator. “It is almost time for Ma’ariv. You are going out tonight, Reuven?”

“Yes.”

“I have a Zionist meeting I must attend. You will be home late?”

“No. I want to be wide awake tomorrow.”

“You will see Rachel there too?”

“I don’t know. We have to ask Danny about Rachel.”

He looked at me.

“That’s right,” I said.

“Danny and Rachel?” he asked, his eyes very wide.

“Danny Saunders and Rachel Gordon. Saunders and Gordon. Sodium and water. I don’t know which is the sodium and which is the water. But it’s sodium and water, all right.”

“Danny and Rachel,” he said again.

“Let’s finish up and make Havdalah,” I said.

A block away from the Hirsch Yeshiva, across the street, stood a Catholic church. At precisely eleven o’clock every Sunday morning the bells of that church would toll. They tolled every hour on the hour every Sunday morning, and we assumed they were tolling to announce the Mass. But we especially noted the eleven-o’clock tolling because it was then that Rav Kalman entered the class. He always came into the class together with the tolling of the bells.

That Sunday morning the bells tolled and the door opened and Rav Kalman entered the classroom, carrying his Talmud and the books of commentaries under his arms. The Talmud and the other volumes had old, worn brown or black bindings, and so the book with the blue dust jacket was easy to see. I watched him put the Talmud on the desk, then place the books of the commentaries neatly one on top of the other to the right of the Talmud, and the book with the blue dust jacket to the left of the Talmud, face down on the desk. He opened the Talmud, turned to the page we were on, and stood there, surveying the class. I sat in my seat, frozen, staring at my father’s book.

He lit a cigarette and called on a student to read. Outside, Bedford Avenue was silent, deserted, its black surface glistening in the bright winter sunlight. I saw Rav Kalman glance at me. I looked down at my Talmud and tried to concentrate on the words. Rav Kalman stood behind his desk, smoking and listening to the student. Half an hour before the end of the shiur he sat down and put his hands against the sides of his face, elbows on the desk, and sat very still. He said almost nothing during that entire two-hour period.

A minute before the end of the period, he looked up and told
the student to stop reading. Then he said quietly to me, “I want to speak with you, Malter,” and he dismissed the class.

I remained in my seat and he remained behind his desk and the students went quickly out and we were alone.

He closed his Talmud and I closed mine. He sat behind his desk, smoking and looking down at his closed Talmud. Sunlight came through the windows onto his tall black skullcap and pale features and dark beard and dark clothes and starched white shirt. The almost milk-white fingers of his right hand drummed soundlessly on the Talmud, the two misshapen fingers moving up and down together as if operated by a single set of muscles and tendons. His eyes were dark and narrow.

“I do not know what to do with you, Malter,” he said. He was silent a moment. “I have never experienced such a problem.” He was silent again. Then he said, “Tell me, Malter. This is the book you were working on in the Zechariah Frankel Seminary?”

I heard myself say, “Yes.”

“Tell me again what you did for the book.”

I told him I had checked my father’s footnotes and had gone over the many variant readings he had cited in the book to make certain the quotations were accurate.

“You are familiar with all the manuscripts your father brings in the book?”

“Yes.”

“And you are familiar with all the works by other scholars your father quotes?”

“Yes.”

“You have studied these works?”

“I know about them. I haven’t studied them carefully.”

“You study Gemora with your father?”

“Yes.”

“And the Gemora you prepare for the shiur, you also study that Gemora with your father?”

“No. I prepare by myself.”

“But sometimes when there is a problem with the Gemora you discuss it with your father, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And sometimes he solves the problem by changing the words?”

“Sometimes.”

“You know this method of studying Gemora?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me, Malter, why do you never use this method in my shiur?”

I stared at him.

“Because Gemora is not studied this way in a yeshiva? That is the reason?”

“Yes.”

He nodded slowly and was silent a moment, his fingers drumming soundlessly on the Talmud. “I have read your father’s book, Malter. I discovered I knew enough English to be able to read it. It was easier for me to read than the works of Gordon. But I did not understand the Greek words your father uses. Tell me, Malter, you understand Greek?”

“A little,” I said.

“You understand the Greek in your father’s book?”

“Yes.”

“Then I will ask you to explain some things to me. There are explanations based upon Greek words, and I would like to understand what your father is saying. Come, bring a chair over here, Malter, and sit beside me. You will teach me what your father is saying.”

I moved a chair next to him behind the desk and sat down. I felt the blood beating in my head but I sat very quietly and watched him open my father’s book to one of the very technical scholarly essays that dealt with a passage of Talmud that contained a number of Greek words written in Hebrew letters.

“That is a very difficult inyan, Malter. I have never clearly understood that inyan. Your father writes at the end of this chapter
that the inyan is very clear to him. Explain it to me, Malter. How does your father make clear the inyan?”

The article only cited the difficult passage. But I knew by heart the entire Talmudic discussion in which that passage was located. I reviewed the discussion that led up to the passage. He listened intently. I reviewed some of the remarks of the commentaries on various points in the discussion. Then I read the passage with the Greek words and showed him how the commentaries had struggled with it because they had not known Greek. They had simply not known what to do with the words. Then I explained the meaning of the Greek words and showed him how simple the passage was once the Greek was understood.

He stared down at the book in silence, his fingers tapping soundlessly on the Talmud, the two misshapen fingers moving together up and down.

“You are saying to me that your father understands the Gemora better than the Rishonim?”

“Rishonim” is the Hebrew term for the earliest and greatest of the medieval commentators on the Talmud.

I hesitated for a moment. “He understands it differently,” I said.

He gazed at me narrowly. “If an understanding of the passage is based on a knowledge of Greek and if the Rishonim did not know Greek, then your father understands the Gemora better than the Rishonim.”

I did not respond to that. In a yeshiva you never said that a contemporary scholar could understand Talmud better than the Rishonim.

There was an uncomfortable silence. I looked away from him and down at his fingers drumming soundlessly on the Talmud.

“Let me ask you something else, Malter. In this chapter your father explains an inyan by changing the words of the Gemora. Explain to me why it is necessary to change the words in order to understand the inyan.”

It was a fairly simple passage and it seemed quite clear to me
that an easily identifiable scribal error had been made at one point by someone who had been copying the text. I explained it to him.

“How can you change the words of the Gemora? Just like that you change the words of the Gemora? By what authority does your father change words?”

“A lot of the commentaries changed words. The Vilna Gaon was always changing words he thought were wrong.” Rabbi Elijah of Vilna, who is known as the Vilna Gaon, was the greatest Talmudist of the eighteenth century. “There’s nothing new about changing words in the Talmud,” I said.

Rav Kalman raised his eyebrows. “The Vilna Gaon? You are comparing your father to the Vilna Gaon?”

I had expected that question. No one in the present could possibly be compared in depth of learning to the great ones of the past. So the works of the commentators of the past had to be accepted as valid for the present; and the liberties these commentators had taken with the text could not be practiced today because no one equaled them in knowledge. You could never say that a great contemporary Bible scholar had a better knowledge of the Bible than, say, Rashi, who was one of the greatest medieval commentators on the Bible; nor could you say that a modern scholar of the Talmud knew more than the accepted classical commentators on the Talmud. I knew that attitude, and so I said nothing to Rav Kalman’s remark.

We spent the next few minutes going over some additional passages in my father’s book. I was beginning to feel quite uncomfortable. This was the first time I had ever used this method of study at Hirsch, and it felt strange and awkward, and I kept glancing at the door and worrying about someone suddenly coming into the room and seeing us studying my father’s book.

We sat there almost an hour. Then Rav Kalman closed the book face down on the desk. He stroked his beard and gazed at me intently, then lit a cigarette and dropped the match carefully into the ashtray.

“I see you know this method very well, Malter. Your father has
taught you well.” He inhaled deeply on the cigarette. Smoke curled from his mouth and nostrils as he spoke. “I also see you enjoy this method of study. That is very clear to me. Tell me, Malter, do you believe the written Torah is from heaven?” He was asking me if I believed the Pentateuch had been revealed by God to Moses at Sinai.

I hesitated a moment. Then I said, “Yes.”

He had noticed my hesitation. I saw by the sudden stiffening of his shoulders that he had noticed it. “You believe that every word in the Torah was revealed by God blessed by He to Moses at Sinai?”

“I believe the Torah was revealed,” I said carefully. My own understanding of the revelation was based on enough sources within the tradition for me to be able to answer that question affirmatively even though I knew mine could not be the same kind of understanding as Rav Kalman’s.

“Do you believe the oral Torah was also given to Moses at Sinai?” He was asking me whether I believed the various discussions of the Talmud had also been revealed by God to Moses at Sinai. He was putting me through a theological loyalty test.

“No,” I said.

“No? Then what is the Gemora?”

“It was created by great men who based their traditions and arguments on the Chumash.” “Chumash” is the Hebrew word for the Pentateuch.

“You believe this?”

“Yes.”

“That is why you use this method?”

“Yes.”

“And your father believes this too?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me, Malter, your father is an observer of the Commandments?”

“Yes,” I said emphatically.

He nodded. “So have I heard,” he said. He stroked his beard
and shook his head. “I am afraid I really do not know what to do with you, Malter.” He shook his head again. “I have never had such a problem. Tell me, Malter, do you know who you are? Who are you?”

I looked at him in bewilderment.

“The holy Rav Yisroel Salanter used to say, ‘Know yourself.’ ” He was talking about the nineteenth-century European rabbi who was the founder of the musar movement. “A person must know who he is. A person must understand himself, improve himself, learn his weaknesses in order to overcome them. It is hard for a person to understand his own weaknesses. I know. Do you know yourself, Malter? Where do you stand? Do you stand with true Yiddishkeit, or do you stand perhaps a little bit on the path of Gordon? Where do you stand, Malter?”

I did not say anything.

“I must know where you stand before I can give you smicha. Can you tell me?”

I was quiet.

“You cannot tell me anything?”

Still I was quiet.

“Know yourself, Malter. A man who does not know himself is lost. I know this. From bitter experience I know this. You do not have to tell me now, Malter. But you will have to tell me before I give you smicha. I will not give you smicha unless I have an answer from you. The Hasidim are not the only ones who guard the spark. I too have an obligation.” It was a moment before I understood the significance of that remark. “I cannot give smicha to someone who does not stand with true Yiddishkeit, no matter how great a Gemora student he is. Do you understand me?”

I nodded.

“I would like to give you smicha, Malter. But I will not give it to you before I know where you stand.” He stared darkly at my father’s book and was quiet for a moment. “Your father is a great scholar. It is a pity he uses such a method. He endangers Yiddishkeit with his method.” He looked at me sadly. “We will talk again
another time, Malter. Do you have any questions you wish to ask me?”

I shook my head.

“No questions. All right. You may go now.”

I got to my feet, picked up my Talmud, and started from the room. My legs were trembling.

“Malter.”

I turned to look at him. He was seated behind the desk. He seemed strangely small and a little forlorn.

“Speak to me anytime you wish,” he said stiffly. “I am not so difficult to speak to as it sometimes appears.”

I nodded and left him at his desk and closed the door softly behind me and leaned heavily against it to steady my legs. The corridor was deserted. The building seemed empty. It was a moment before I remembered my visit with Michael. I looked at my wristwatch. It was a little after two o’clock. I got my coat and hat and came out of the building into the bright sunlight. The sky was a deep, clear, cloudless blue.