Chaim Potok - The Chosen

He stood now in the doorway to his study, wearing the woolen sweater, the scarf, and the round, black skullcap. His feet were in bedroom slippers and his trousers were creased from all the sitting over the typewriter. He was visibly tired, and his voice cracked a few times as he asked me what Danny had been so excited about. He had heard him through the door, he said.

I told him about Danny's misery over Professor Appleman and experimental psychology.

He listened intently, then came into my room and sat down on my bed with a sigh, 'So,' he said, 'Danny is discovering that Freud is not God.'

'I told him at least to talk it over with Professor Appleman.'

'And?'

'He'll talk to him next week.'

'Experimental psychology,' my father mused. ' I know nothing about it.'

'He said there was a lot of math in it.'

'Ah. And Danny does not like mathematics.'

'He hates it, he says. He's feeling pretty low. He feels he wasted two years reading Freud.'

My father smiled and shook his head but remained silent.

'Professor Appleman sounds a lot like Professor Flesser,' I said.

Professor Abraham Flesser was my logic teacher, an avowed empiricist and an enemy of what he called 'obscurantist Continental philosophies', which, he explained, included everything that had happened in German philosophy from Fichte to Heidegger, with the exception of Vaihinger and one or two others.

My father wanted to know what it was the two professors had in common, and I told him what Professor Appleman had said about psychology being a science only to the extent to which its hypotheses can be mathematized. 'Professor Flesser made the same remark once about biology,' I said.

'You talk about biology in a symbolic logic class?' my father asked.

'We were discussing inductive logic.'

'Ah. Of course. The point about mathematizing hypotheses was made by Kant. It is one of the programs of the Vienna Circle logical positivists.'

'Who?'

'Not now, Reuven. It is too late, and I am tired. You should go to sleep soon. Take advantage of the nights when you have no schoolwork.'

'You'll be working late tonight, abba?'

'Yes.'

'You're not taking care of yourseH, you know. Your voice sounds awful.'

He sighed again. 'It is a bad cold,' he said.

'Does Dr Grossman know you're working so hard?'

'Dr Grossman worries a little bit too much about me,' he said, smiling.

'Are you going for another checkup soon?'

'Soon,' he said. 'I am feeling fine, Reuven. You worry like Dr Grossman. Worry better about your schoolwork. I am fine.'

'How many fathers do I have?' I asked.

He didn't say anything, but he blinked his eyes a few times.

'I wish you'd take it a little easy,' I said.

'This is not a time to take things easy, Reuven. You read what is happening in Palestine.'

I nodded slowly.

'This is a time to take things easy?' my father asked, his hoarse voice rising. 'The Haganah and Irgun boys who die are taking it easy?'

He was talking about what was now going on in Palestine.

Two Englishmen, an army major and a judge, had been kidnapped recently by the Irgun, the Jewish terrorist group in Palestine, and were being held as hostages. A captured member of the Irgun, Dov Fruner, had been sentenced to hanging by the British, and the Irgun had announced instant retaliation against these hostages should the sentence be carried out. This was the latest of a growing list of terrorist activities against the British Army in Palestine. While the Irgun engaged in terror – blowing up trains, attacking police stations, cutting communication lines – the Haganah continued smuggling Jews through the British naval blockade in defiance of the British Colonial Office, which had sealed Palestine off to further Jewish immigration. Rarely did a week go by now without a new act of terror against the British. My father would read the newspaper accounts of these activities, and I could see the anguish in his eyes. He hated violence and bloodshed and had an intense distaste for the terrorist policy of the Irgun, but he hated the British non-immigration policy even more. Irgun blood was being shed for the sake of a future Jewish state, and he found it difficult to give voice to his feelings of opposition to the acts of terror that were regularly making frontpage headlines now. Invariably, the headlines spurred him on to new bursts of Zionist activity and to loud, excited justification of the way he was driving himself in his fund-raising and speechmaking efforts on behalf of a Jewish state.

I could see he was beginning to get excited now, too, so to change the subject quickly, I told him Reb Saunders had sent his regards. 'He wonders why he doesn't see me,' I said.

But my father didn't seem to have heard me. He sat on the bed, lost in thought. We were quiet for a long time. Then he stirred and said softly, 'Reuven, do you know what the rabbis tell us God said to Moses when he was about to die?'

I stared at him. 'No,' I heard myself say.

'He said to Moses, "You have toiled and labored, now you are worthy of rest.", I stared at him and didn't say anything.

'You are no longer a child, Reuven,' my father went on. 'It is almost possible to see the way your mind is growing. And your heart, too. Inductive logic, Freud, experimental psychology, mathematizing hypotheses, scientific study of the Talmud. Three years ago, you were still a child. You have become a small giant since the day Danny's ball struck your eye. You do not see it. But I see it. And it is a beautiful thing to see. So listen to what I am going to tell you.' He paused for a moment as if considering his next words carefully, then continued. 'Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value there is to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye?' He paused again his eyes misty now, then went on. 'I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning. That I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here. Do you understand what I am saying?'

I nodded, feeling myself cold with dread. That was the first time my father had ever talked to me of his death, and his words seemed to have filled the room with a gray mist that blurred my vision and stung as I breathed.

My father looked at me, then sighed quietly. 'I was a little too blunt,' he said. 'I am sorry. I did not mean to hurt you.'

I couldn't say anything.

'I will live for many more years, with God's help,' my father said, trying a smile. 'Between my son and my doctor, I will probably live to be a very old man.'

The gray mist seemed to part. I took a deep breath. I could feel cold sweat running down my back.

'Are you angry at me, Reuven?'

I shook my head.

'I did not want to sound morbid. I only wanted to tell you that I am doing things I consider very important now. If I could not do these things, my life would have no value. Merely to live, merely to exist – what sense is there to it? A fly also lives.'

I didn't say anything. The mist was gone now. I found the palms of my hands were cold with sweat.

'I am sorry,' my father said quietly. 'I can see I upset you.'