Rebecca Goldstein - 36 Arguments for the Existence of God

“Prime numbers,” the boy repeated, carefully. And then he smiled at Roz. The look of bliss was baffling, moving. Why did he look as if she’d just given him the present he’d secretly wished for as he blew out the candles on his last birthday cake, if Hasidic children engaged in such practices?

“Yes, prime numbers. And they’re exactly as you said. You can’t divide them up into groups that have equal numbers, except of course groups with one thing in them.”

“Groups with one thing in them!” he repeated, smiling. “And as many groups as were in the first big group.”

“That’s right. You said it just right.” She smiled back at the boy.

“Do you know what I call prime numbers?” he asked her, the only one of the males in the room who didn’t seem to hold it against her that she was a woman who spoke. “I call them maloychim . Special maloychim.”

“Angels,” the Rebbe translated. “The heavenly hosts.”

“And I call you an angel!” Roz said.

The child stared at her as if she’d just announced that she thought he could fly. That’s probably what he did think that she’d announced. And then he laughed out loud in a high soprano. The kid’s amusement amused her so much that she couldn’t resist. Klapper bristled, but the Valdener Rebbe tolerated the tainted noise of a woman’s laughter with surprising sangfroid. Unlike his Hasidim, he was often exposed to the outside world, meeting with politicians, agency heads, social workers, medical specialists, and building contractors. The Rebbe had to know how to talk to a variety of people whose assistance his community required. He had developed a level of worldliness to save his Hasidim from having to deal with the world.

“So, tateleh , can you tell our visitors any more of your special maloychim?” he asked his son, lightly glancing the back of his hand over the child’s cheek.

“I’ll start with one. And then there’s two, and then three, and then five.”

“That’s good!” Roz said, enjoying both the look of pride on the Rebbe’s face and the look of exasperation on Klapper’s. She’d edged around the side of the room, still hugging the wall, just so that she could get an angle on Klapper’s face and still keep the child and his dad in her sights.

“After five, there’s seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine, thirty-one, thirty-seven, forty-one, forty-three, forty-seven, fifty-three, fifty-nine, sixty-one, sixty-seven, seventy-one, seventy-three, seventy-nine…”

“Exactly how long does this go on?” Klapper broke in testily.

Lord knew, he had the patience of a Job, but it was beginning to wear thin. He hadn’t risked his life by driving down from Boston with that wild Rastafarian so that he could listen to an infant perform like a circus seal.

Meanwhile, the Valdener Rebbe was chiming in with “I told you the boy knew to count!” and Cass and Roz were exchanging looks of incredulity.

“Who taught him this?” Cass asked.

“Who taught him? The angels! Min ha-shamoyim -from the heavens. This is nothing. He likes to play with numbers. For him they’re toys, and we let him play. He can learn a page of Torah or Talmud like lamdin -like scholars-three, four, five times his age. The way he learns now, at six years old, most men will never catch up.”

Meanwhile, the child had settled on Klapper, staring at him wide-eyed. The visiting rav had asked an important question, and he was waiting to hear the answer. He thought that he knew the answer, a wonderful answer, but he would have liked to hear it spoken by this rav. He whispered his own rendition of the question softly, so softly that no one caught it.

“Have you ever had him tested?” Roz asked. “His IQ must be off the charts.”

“We don’t need to test. For the other special children, those who need the government’s help, for them we have testers coming. We take care. But for a child like this? Why do we need to test? All our children are special, one way or the other.”

“Tata?”

“Yes, tateleh.”

“Tata, I know someone who isn’t special.”

“Is it possible?”

“Yes and no.”

“Why yes and no?”

“If he’s the only one who isn’t special, so then he’s special for not being special.”

“So he’s special. Everybody is special, one way or another, and this one, too.”

“But no, Tata.” The Rebbe’s son squirmed off of his father’s lap and turned around to face him, gesturing with his two hands in the motions of explanation. “He can’t be special anymore if he’s special for not being special. If he’s not special, then he’s special, and if he’s special, then he’s not special. Du siest , Tata?”

“You see,” the Rebbe said, in either translation or demonstration, “this is the way the child is. There are children who are born as if knowing. He can go on like this all day long.”

“No doubt,” Klapper remarked dryly.

But Roz was relishing the spectacle and was determined to keep it going. The Rebbe’s son was astounding, as everyone in the room was aware, with the exception of the child and Jonas Elijah Klapper.

“So the number of your sisters is a prime number. What if you add one to the number? Is it still a prime number?”

The boy walked around the desk and came over to where Roz was standing against the wall. He looked at her tenderly, a little sorrowfully, as if he worried that she might be one of those special people who needed his tata’s government funds.

“One, two, three. Three maloychim , holding hands. But after three, they can’t hold hands. Because, if one number can’t make two groups, then the number after it, that one can make two groups. Back and forth they go. Do you see?” he asked her gently, and he took her hand as if to help lead her.

“Now I do. You explained it very well to me.”

He smiled at her. She felt strangely grateful to the tot for singling her out in this room of males who were all conspiring to pretend she wasn’t there. Even Cass was keeping his eyes resolutely away from Roz.

“But the number of my sisters and me is still special. Sometimes you take a number a certain number of times. You repeat it the number of times of itself. So take two two times over and you get four. Or you take three three times and you get…”

“Nine!” Klapper shouted out the answer, actually raising his hand as if he were back in P.S. 2.

“Good!” the child commended the visitor, making Roz start to laugh, though she hastily tried to make it sound like a cough. “So those numbers, like four and nine and sixteen and twenty-five and thirty-six, they’re also special.”

“Are they angels, too?” Cass asked, smiling.

“Yes, also,” he answered, so seriously that Cass felt a pang for the patronizing tone he’d taken. “There are different kinds of angels.”

“Indeed,” said Klapper. “The malach , translated as the ‘messenger’ or the ‘angel,’ is only one variety of numina. Psalms 82 and Job 1 refer to an entire adat el , or divine assembly. There are Irinim, who are Watchers or High Angels; Sarim, or Princes; Seraphim, or Fiery Ones; Chayyot, or Holy Creatures; and Ofanim, or Wheels. The collective terms for the full array of heavenly beings, those who straddle the sphere between the human and the ultimate divine principle, include Tzeva, translated as ‘Host’; B’nei Ha-Elohim, or B’nei Elim, or Sons of God; and Kedoshim, or Holy Ones. And of course there is some, albeit limited, migration between the sphere of Adam and the Kedoshim.”

The person who seemed most intrigued by Klapper’s words, in addition to Klapper himself, was the little boy. He was staring at his father’s guest with a smile.