The Promise (44 page)

The smicha examinations marked the conclusion of my academic year and I no longer had to attend Talmud classes. I spent my time writing my Master’s thesis. The decision as to whether or not a student had passed his examinations always came in the mail two or three days after the last examination. Four days passed and nothing came in the mail. On the afternoon of the third day, Friday, Danny called to tell me that Michael had come out of his trancelike state and had asked to see me, and then had gone immediately back into his silence. No, Danny did not want me to visit Michael yet. He wanted Michael to talk to him, not to me. He wished me a good Shabbos and hung up.

That night, after the Shabbat meal, my father told me that he had decided to accept the offer of the Zechariah Frankel Seminary to join its faculty as a professor of Talmud. He would leave the school he had helped create.

I was not surprised—but again there was the feeling of old worlds crumbling to pieces.

“I would have preferred to remain with my yeshiva,” he said quietly. “But it would mean spending the rest of my life fighting. I do not know how many years I have left, Reuven, but I do not want to spend them fighting. I am too tired now for fighting. This past year of fighting has been too much …” He blinked wearily. “Fighting is for those who are young and have strength. The young who wish to change the world should stay and fight. I do not have that strength … You are disappointed in me, Reuven?”

I was proud of him, I said. A professorship in the Frankel Seminary was something to be proud of.

“I would have enjoyed teaching in the Hirsch graduate school,” he said. “I would have enjoyed that very much. Still, it is a great privilege to be able to teach in the Frankel Seminary.”

He had made his decision. But it would be a long time before he would reconcile himself to the fact that he was abandoning a school and a world he loved. He was moody and silent all the rest of that Shabbat and kept wandering through the rooms of the apartment and sighing softly to himself.

On Sunday morning I called the office of the Dean and was informed that the matter of my smicha was still under discussion. Was it true that my father had accepted a position at the Frankel Seminary? the Dean asked. Yes, it was true. He hung up.

That afternoon Danny called and asked me to stay near the phone as much as possible. Michael and he had talked for almost five minutes that morning, and Danny wanted me to be immediately available in case I was needed. I asked him what he could possibly need me for. Just be available, he said. I told him I would stay near the phone.

It was a dismal day, wet with rain and gray with fog. Outside the window of my room I could see the ailanthus in the back yard, dripping rain, its buds beginning to open, tiny green shoots appearing on its branches.

A few minutes before supper that night the phone rang. I answered and heard Rav Kalman’s voice and sat down on the chair next to the telephone stand. He wanted to see me in his classroom after the shiur tomorrow, he said. I was trembling. All of me was shaking and trembling and cold. He must have heard the trembling in my voice because he said quickly that I should not worry, they were giving me smicha, but he wanted to see me tomorrow. I felt my heart surging and the blood beating inside my head and I told him I would be there at exactly three o’clock and hung up the phone and let out a whoop of joy that brought Manya racing from the kitchen in a fright and my father rushing from his study, his eyes wide, and I told him and we embraced and I do not remember too much of what else happened that night, except that I think the three of us did a dance in the hall and that I called Danny to tell him the news and he was very happy and asked me again to stay near the phone as much as possible. I went to sleep wondering why Rav Kalman wanted to see me.

I was there at exactly three o’clock. The room was already empty and I saw none of my classmates in the corridor. He had apparently dismissed the class early.

He rose to his feet as I entered the room and waited behind his desk while I moved toward him through the classroom. Then he offered me his hand. His palm was cool and hard, and I could feel the misshapen fingers, and I remember wondering for the briefest of seconds how many German soldiers he had killed with that hand. It was the strangest thought to associate with a scholar of the Talmud, and I did not know why it had suddenly occurred to me.

He told me to sit down. Then he asked me about Michael.

I said that Michael seemed to be improving slightly.

“Yes?” he said, as if he were clutching at the news. “Are you permitted to tell me what is happening?”

I told him as much as Danny had told me. He nodded.

“You broke the cherem for a good reason,” he said. “I am glad.” He was evaluating Michael’s situation from the point of view of his understanding of Jewish law. He had satisfied himself that his granting me permission to see Abraham Gordon had been a wise decision.

“Tell me, Reuven, you have seen Gordon lately?”

“No.”

“You will see him again?”

“Yes.”

“Even though his son is better?”

“Yes.”

“You are a good friend to Gordon now?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “I disapprove,” he said. “But I can no longer stop you.”

I said nothing.

“Your father will teach in the Frankel Seminary?” he asked then.

I nodded.

“I did not want to give you smicha,” he said quietly. “My teacher would not have given you smicha, Reuven. He would not even have let you take the examinations. But he did not see—he did not live through—” He broke off and passed his hand across his eyes and was silent for a moment. “I did not want to drive you away from the yeshiva. I did not know what to do … The others … they prevailed upon me …” He stopped and gazed at me. “It is different hearing and seeing your fathers method than merely reading about it … A voice … It needs a voice to give it life … You understand me, Reuven?”

“Yes.”

“I still do not approve of it. I will fight you when you teach it … But it is different when one hears it …”

I said nothing.

“Once I had students who spoke with such love about Torah that I would hear the Song of Songs in their voices.” He spoke
softly, his eyes half closed. “I have not heard the Song of Songs now for—for—” He blinked. “I did not hear the Song of Songs in America until I heard your voice at the examinations. Not your words, but your voice. I did not like the words. But the voice … Do you understand what I mean, Reuven?”

“Yes.”

“ ‘My sons have conquered me,’ ” he said softly, quoting in Hebrew. Then he said, “Do you know why it is different when one hears it?” He did not intend for me to answer. He went on himself. “Your father’s method is ice when one sees it on the printed page. It is impossible to print one’s love for Torah. But one can hear it in a voice. Still it is a dangerous method. And I will fight you if I learn you are using it too much in your classes.”

I was in something of a daze and was not quite listening to everything he said, so I did not fully grasp the meaning of his last words.

“I will be able to keep my eyes on you here,” he said. “I could not have influenced your father. But you I can influence. Why should I give you to Gordon when I can keep you here? I have lost too many students. Too many … I will take a chance on you, Reuven. I have given you my smicha and will keep my eyes on you to watch how you teach. We will have many fights. But they will be for the sake of Torah.” He saw me staring at him and seemed surprised. “You have spoken to the Dean?” he asked sharply.

“No.”

“He has not asked to speak to you?”

“No.”

“He is a better scholar than he is an administrator. Go speak to the Dean.”

I got shakily to my feet.

“Reuven,” he said.

I looked at him.

“You will use your method on the Prophets and the Writings?”

I did not say anything.

“You will give approval to those who use such a method on the Prophets and Writings?”

Still I said nothing.

“Do not ever dare to do that. I will fight you in print if you do that. I will fight you the way I fought your father. Now go speak to the great administrator.”

I went to the Dean’s office and was informed by him that I was a troublemaker. He had better things to do with his time than run back and forth trying to make peace between Rav Kalman and Rav Gershenson, he said. He did not go into details about that fight, but I gathered from him that Rav Gershenson had gone to the president of the school and there had been a long and angry meeting and Rav Kalman had finally agreed to give me smicha on the condition that I never be permitted to teach Talmud in the yeshiva. The president had agreed—and then had suggested that the graduate school might want to make use of my Talmudic abilities. He understood Rav Kalman’s refusal to let me teach in the rabbinical school of the yeshiva where smicha was given, but the graduate school … That had precipitated another quarrel, but in the end Rav Kalman had yielded. He could hardly threaten to resign over my appointment to the new department of rabbinics when he himself had just agreed to give me smicha. I did not have to give them my decision right away, the Dean said. “Go home and think about it. Source criticism in a smicha examination! Go home and call me later in the week.” He was angry but he shook my hand.

My father smiled with pride and delight when I told him. “You should accept it, Reuven. It is a great honor. I wish—” He stopped. “You should accept it,” he said.

“Malter versus Kalman. I feel like I’m back where I started. Constant battles with Rav Kalman.”

“No, Reuven. You will be fighting him from within. That is the only effective way to fight a man like Rav Kalman. Will you accept it?”

“Yes,” I said.

He looked at me, his eyes wet. “Rabbi Malter,” he said. “Rabbi Malter.”

Manya called us in to supper.

I took a long walk later that evening through the dark streets of Williamsburg. The streets were filled with Hasidim, and I walked among them, listening to their Yiddish and watching their gestures, and thinking of the boy who had called my father a goyische Talmudist. It was a cool, clear evening, and I could see stars in the sky and I thought about Michael and then forgot Michael as I peered through the front windows of some of the shops that were still open and watched the buying and the selling and still felt out of it all, only remotely connected to it by a shared history. I read the Yiddish signs on the storefronts and listened as three elderly Hasidim passed by talking in awed tones about their rebbe. I did not understand them and they did not understand me, and our quarrels would continue. But I was part of the chain of the tradition now, as much a guardian of the sacred Promise as Rav Kalman and the Hasidim were, and it would be a different kind of fight from now on. I had won the right to make my own beginning. And I thought I might try to learn something from the way Rav Kalman and the Hasidim had managed to survive and rebuild their world. What gave them the strength to mold smoke and ashes into a new world? I could use some of that strength for the things I wanted to do with my own life.

I walked a long time through the cool April night, and when I returned to the apartment I found a message near the phone. It was in my father’s handwriting. Abraham Gordon had called. Would I please call back?

“Congratulations,” I heard him say into the phone. “Rabbi Malter.”

I thanked him.

“Ruth and I want to know when we’ll see you again.” His voice sounded dull with fatigue.

I told him I could come over the following evening.

“Michael asked for you again today,” he said. “He spoke to Daniel for about half an hour.”

Had they seen him? I asked.

“No,” he said. “Daniel won’t let us near him.”

I came over the next night and we talked and they were both genuinely pleased that I had passed the examinations.

“This young rabbi won’t smash at me the way the Rav Kalmans do,” Abraham Gordon said to his wife. He was trying hard to sound cheerful, but his face was drawn and he seemed very fatigued. He sat with his huge body slumped back on the couch, his feet on the coffee table. Ruth Gordon sat next to him, smoking quietly. “We have an ally in the enemy camp, Ruth.”

She smiled wanly. She was making no attempt to maintain her pose of regal coolness tonight. She looked like a badly frightened mother.

I asked him about the book.

He had stopped working on it, he said. He couldn’t concentrate on it any more. He couldn’t concentrate on anything any more.

Ruth Gordon asked me if I would like a cup of coffee and I said yes, I would, and she went out.

“She’s not even urging me to finish the book,” Abraham Gordon murmured, staring after his wife. “Neither of us has any stomach for that book.” He looked at me. “It will be very good to have your father at the seminary,” he said. “You at the yeshiva and your father at the seminary. Strange,” he said softly. “Usually it’s the other way around.”

Ruth Gordon came back with the coffee and we talked a while longer. There was no particular purpose to their having asked to see me. They seemed simply to want me around, to talk to me, to someone, anyone, and I was, or had been, the closest one to Michael—and so they wanted to be near me.