Chaim Potok - The Chosen

We were in the week between semesters at the time. Danny was sitting on my bed and I was at my desk, wishing I could help him, he looked so thoroughly sad. But I don't know a thing about experimental psychology, so there was little I could offer by way of help, except to urge him to stick out the year, something might come of it, he might even get to like the subject.

'Did you ever get to like my father and his planned mistakes?' he asked testily.

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 Danny that I had disliked the mistake business and had never really got used to it, despite my having witnessed it many times.

'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,'" Danny was imitating Professor Appleman – or so I assumed; I didn't know Professor Appleman, but Danny's voice had taken on a somewhat professorial quality – '

'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 running rats through mazes ever since: 'Was he right?' I asked.

'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 funny,' Danny said bitterly. 'I'm getting a lot of sympathy from you tonight: 'I think you ought to have a heart-to-heart talk with Appleman: 'And tell him what? That Freud was a genius? That I hate experimental psychology? You know what he once said in class?'

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.'

Danny looked at me, his face rigid. 'What makes you so wise about Freudians all of a sudden?' he asked angrily.

'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 (' Danny exploded. 'I never even mentioned the followers of Freud in class! I was talking about Freud himself! Freud was a scientist. Psychoanalysis is a scientific tool for exploring the mind. What do rats have to do with the human mind?'

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

'I think I will,' Danny said. 'I think I'll do just that. Why not? What have I got to lose? It can't make me any more miserable than I am now.'

'That's right,' I said.

There was a brief silence, during which Danny sat on my bed and stared gloomily down at the floor.

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

He sat back on the bed, leaning against the wall. 'They still bother me. These glasses don't help much.'

'Have you seen a doctor?'

He shrugged. 'He said the glasses should do it. I just have to get used to them. I don't know. Anyway, I'll talk to Appleman next week. The worst that could happen is I drop the Course.' He shook his head grimly. 'What a miserable business. Two years of reading Freud, and I have to end up by doing experimental psychology.'

'You never know,' I said. 'Experimental psychology might come in handy some day.'

'Oh, sure. All I need to do is get to love mathematics and rats. Are you coming over this Saturday?'

'I'm studying with my father Shabbat afternoon,' I told him.

'Every Saturday afternoon?'

'Yes.'

'My father asked me last week if you were still my friend. He hasn't seen you in two months.'

'I'm studying Talmud with my father,' I said.

'You review?'

'No. He's teaching me scientific method.'

Danny looked at me in surprise, then grinned. 'You're planning to try scientific method on Rav Schwarz?'

'No,' I said. Rav Schwarz was my Talmud teacher. He was an old man with a long, gray beard who wore a black coat and was constantly smoking cigarettes. He was a great Talmudist, but he had been trained in a European yeshiva, and I didn't think he would take kindly to the scientific method of studying Talmud. I had once suggested a textual emendation in class, and he had given me a queer look. I didn't think he even understood what I had said.

'Well, good luck with your scientific method,' Danny told me, getting to his feet. 'Just don't try it on Rav Gershenson. He knows all about it and hates it. When will my father get to see you?'

'I don't know,' I said.

'I've got to go home. What's your father doing in there?' The sound of my father's typewriter had been clearly heard throughout the time we had been talking.

'He's finishing another article.'

'Tell him my father sends his regards.'

'Thanks. Are you and your father talking to each other these days?'

Danny hesitated a moment before answering. 'Not really.

Only now and then. It's not really talking.'

I didn't say anything.

'I think I had really better go home,' Danny said. 'It's late.

I'll meet you in front of your shul Sunday morning.'

'Okay.'

I walked him to the door, then stood there listening to the tapping of his metal-capped shoes on the hallway floor. He went out the double door and was gone.

I came back to my room and found my father standing in the doorway that led to his study. He had a bad cold and was wearing a woolen sweater and a scarf around his throat. This was his third cold in five months. It was also the first time in weeks that he had been home at night. He had become involved in Zionist activities and was always attending meetings where he spoke about the importance of Palestine as a Jewish homeland and raised money for the Jewish National Fund. He was also teaching an adult studies course in the history of political Zionism at our synagogue on Monday nights and another adult course in the history of American Jewry at his yeshiva on Wednesday nights. He rarely got home before eleven. I would always hear his tired steps in the hallway as he came in the door. He would have a glass of tea, come into my room and chat with me for a few minutes, telling me where he had been and what he had done that night, then he would remind me I didn't have to do four years of college all at once, I should go to bed soon, and he would go into his study to prepare for the classes he would be teaching the next day. He had begun taking his teaching with almost ominous seriousness these past months. He had always prepared for his classes, but there was a kind of heaviness to the way he went about preparing now, writing everything down, rehearsing his notes aloud – as if he were trying to make certain that nothing of significance would remain unsaid, as if he felt the future hung on every idea he taught. I never knew when he went to sleep; no matter what time I got to bed he was still in his study. He had never regained the weight he had lost during the weeks he had spent in the hospital after his heart attack, and he was always tired, his face pale and gaunt, his eyes watery.