The Chosen by Chaim Potok
“I wonder how Reb Saunders will feel when he finds out that Danny is the friend of the son of a Zionist,” I mused. I had told my father about Reb Saunders’explosion.
My father sighed. “Reb Saunders sits and waits for the Messiah,” he said. “I am tired of waiting. Now is the time to bring the Messiah, not to wait for him.”
We finished our tea. My father returned to his study, and I went to bed. I had some terrible dreams that night, but I could remember none of them when I woke in the morning.
• • •
It was Friday, and I had nothing planned. Danny always spent his mornings studying Talmud, so I decided that rather than waste the day I would go over to the college library and see if I could find something on experimental psychology. It was a little before ten o’clock when I woke, and my father had already left to teach, so Manya served me breakfast alone, calling me a lazy sleepyhead and a few other things in Russian which I didn’t understand, and then I took the trolley over to the college.
The library had a large section devoted to psychology. I found some books on experimental psychology and leafed through them slowly, then checked the indexes and bibliographies. What I discovered made it very clear why Danny was feeling so miserable.
I had chosen the books at random, but even a quick glance at them made it apparent that they were all structured along similar lines. They dealt only with experimental data and were filled with graphs, charts, tables, photographs of devices for the measuring of auditory, visual, and tactile responses, and with mathematical translations of laboratory findings. Most of the books didn’t even cite Freud in their bibliographies. In one book, Freud was referred to only once, and the passage was far from complimentary.
I checked the indexes under “unconscious.” Some of the books didn’t even have it listed. One book had this to say:
It is impossible here to discuss the “new psychology of the unconscious,” but exaggerated as are many of the statements made as to the revolution in psychology caused by psychoanalysis there is little doubt that it has influenced psychology permanently. And it is well that the teacher should study something of it, partly because of its suggestiveness in many parts of his work, and partly to be on guard against the exaggerated statements of extremists, and the uncritical advocacy of freedom from all discipline, based upon them.
That “uncritical advocacy of freedom from all discipline” sounded a lot like Professor Appleman. Then I found something that really sounded like Professor Appleman:
Magic depends on tradition and belief. It does not welcome observation, nor does it profit by experiment. On the other hand, science is based on experience; it is open to correction by observation and experiment.
The book in which I found that passage was full of tables and graphs showing the results of experiments on, frogs, salamanders, rats, apes, and human beings. It didn’t mention Freud or the unconscious anywhere,
I felt sorry for Danny. He had spent two years studying about the mind from the point of view of Freudian analysis. Now he was studying about the mind from the point of view of physiology. I understood what he had meant when he said that experimental psychology had nothing to do with the human mind. In terms of psychoanalytic theory, it had very little to do with the human mind. But psychoanalysis aside, I thought the books were very valuable. How else could a science of psychology be built except by laboratory findings? And what else could you do in a laboratory except experiment with the physiology of animals and men? How could you experiment with their minds? How could anyone subject Freud’s concept of the unconscious to a laboratory test?
Poor Danny, I thought. Professor Appleman, with his experimental psychology, is torturing your mind. And your father, with his bizarre silence—which I still couldn’t understand, no matter how often I thought about it—is torturing your soul.
I went home, feeling sad and a little helpless. Danny would have to work out his own problem. I couldn’t help him much with psychology.
• • •
The second semester of college began the following Monday, and during lunch Danny told me he planned to speak to Professor Apple-man that afternoon. He looked tense and nervous. I suggested that he be polite but honest, and that he listen to what Appleman might have to say. I was a little nervous myself, but I told him I had done some reading in experimental psychology on Friday and that I thought it had a lot to contribute. How could you have a science without experimentation? I wanted to know. And how could anyone experiment on the unconscious, which, by definition, seemed to defy laboratory techniques of testing?
I saw Danny become tight-lipped with anger. “Thanks a lot/’ he said bitterly. “That’s just what I need now. A kick in the pants from my best friend.”
“I’m telling you how I feel,” I said.
“And I’m telling you how I feel!” he almost shouted. “Thanks a million!”
He stormed angrily out of the lunchroom, leaving me to finish the meal alone.
We usually met outside the building after our final class and went home together, but that evening he didn’t show up. I waited about half an hour, then went home alone. The next morning, as I walked up Lee Avenue, I saw him waiting for me in front of the synagogue where my father and I prayed.
“Where were you last night?” he asked.
“I waited half an hour,” I said. “What time did you get out?”
“A quarter after seven.”
“You were with him an hour?”
“We had a long talk. Listen, I’m sorry I blew up like that yesterday at lunch.”
I told him I had a pretty thick skin and, besides, what was a friend for if not to be blown up at every now and then.
We were walking toward the trolley station. It was a bitter cold morning. Danny’s earlocks lifted and fell in the stiff wind that blew through the streets.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It’s a long story,” Danny said, looking at me sideways and grinning. “We had a long talk about Freud, Freudians, psychology, psychoanalysis, and God.”
“And?”
“He’s a very fine person. He said he’s been waiting all term for me to talk to him.”
I didn’t say anything. But now I was grinning.
“Anyway, he knows Freud forwards and backwards. He told me that he wasn’t objecting to Freud’s conclusions as much as to his methodology. He said Freud’s approach was based on his own limited experiences. He generalized on the basis of a few instances, a few private patients.”
“That’s the problem of induction in a nutshell,” I said. “How do you justify jumping from a few instances to a generalization?”
“I don’t know anything about the problem of induction,” Danny said. “That’s your department. Appleman said something else, though, that made a lot of sense to me. He admitted that Freud was a genius and a cautious scientist, but he said that Freud evolved a theory of behavior based only on the study of abnormal cases. He said that experimental psychology was interested in applying the methodology of the natural sciences to discover how all human beings behaved. It doesn’t generalize about personality behavior only on the basis of a certain segment of people. That makes a lot of sense.”
“Well, well,” I said, grinning broadly.
“He also said his quarrel was mainly with the Freudians, not so much with Freud himself. He said they were happy to earn their fat fees as analysts and refused to let anyone challenge their hypotheses.”
“There’s our trolley,” I said, “Come on!”
The trolley was waiting for a light, and we made it just in time. Some of the people inside stared curiously at Danny as we went up the aisle looking for seats. I had grown accustomed to people staring at Danny, at his beard and side curls. But Danny had become increasingly self-conscious about his appearance ever since the time he had read Graetz on Hasidism. He looked straight ahead, trying to ignore the stares. We found seats in the rear of the trolley and sat down.
“So he said analy
“Well, we talked a lot about experimental psychology. He told me that it was almost impossible to study human subjects because it was too difficult to control the experiments. He said we use rats because we can vary the conditions. He repeated a lot of things he’d already said in class, but he made a lot more sense this time. At least, I think he made a lot more sense. Maybe after what he said about Freud being a genius I was just more willing to listen to him. He said he admired my knowledge of Freud but that in science no one was God, not even Einstein. He said even in religion people differed about what God was, so why shouldn’t scientists take issue with other scientists? I couldn’t argue with that. He said experimental psychology would be a healthy balance to my knowledge of Freud. Maybe. I still don’t think it has anything to do with the human mind. It’s more physiology than anything else, I think. Anyway, Appleman told me that if I had any problem with math he was willing to help me as much as he could. But his time is limited, he said, so he suggested I get a friend to help me on a regular basis.”
I didn’t say anything.
He looked at me and grinned.
“Okay,” I said. “I don’t charge very much.”
“It won’t make me love running rats through mazes,” Danny said. “But at least he’s sympathetic. He’s really a fine person.”
I smiled at him but didn’t say anything. Then I noticed the psychology textbook he was carrying. It was one of the books I had seen on Friday that didn’t mention Freud once. I asked him what he thought of it, and he said it was a grind. “If I ever get to love experimental psychology after this book I’ll assume the Messiah has come,” he said.
“Well, just call on your friendly tzaddik for help,” I told him. He looked at me queerly.
“I meant me,” I said.
He looked away and didn’t say anything. We rode the rest of the way to school in silence.
• • •
So I began coaching Danny in math. He caught on very quickly, mostly by memorizing steps and procedures. He wasn’t really interested in the why of a mathematical problem but in the how. I enjoyed coaching him and learned a lot of experimental psychology. I found it fascinating, a lot more substantial and scientific than Freud had been, and a lot more fruitful in terms of expanding testable knowledge on how human beings thought and learned.
Throughout the early weeks of February, Danny and I met in the lunchroom, sat at a table by ourselves, and discussed the difficulties he was having with his mathematical translations of psychological experiments. I showed him how to set up his graphs, how to utilize the tables in his textbook, and how to reduce experimental findings to mathematical formulas. I also kept arguing for the value of experimentation. Danny remained convinced of his original argument that experimental psychology had nothing to do with the human mind, though he began to see its value as an aid to learning theory and intelligence testing. His frustration over it went up and down like a barometer, the climate being the extent to which he was able to comprehend and resolve whatever mathematical problem preoccupied him at any given moment.
• • •
I saw very little of my father during those early weeks of February. Except for breakfast, supper, and Shabbat, he was never home. Sometime between eleven and twelve every night, he would return from wherever he had been, have a glass of tea, spend a few minutes with me in my room, then go into his study. I never knew what time he went to bed, though his tired, stooped body and his haggard face made it clear that he was sleeping very little. He had gone for his checkup, and Dr. Grossman had been satisfied with his health, though he had suggested that he get more rest. My father took a vitamin pill every morning now with his orange juice, but they didn’t seem to be doing much good. He completely ignored Dr. Grossman’s suggestion that he rest more, and every time I brought up the subject he either waved it away or talked about the violence now going on in Palestine. It was impossible to talk to him about his health. There was nothing more important to him now than the two ideas around which his life revolved: the education of American Jewry and a Jewish state in Palestine. So he continued teaching his adult classes and planning for the Madison Square Garden rally due to take place in the last week of February.
Not only had my home life been affected by Palestine but my school life as well. Every shade of Zionist thought was represented in Hirsch College, from the Revisionists, who supported the Irgun, to the Neturai Karta, the Guardians of the City, the city being Jerusalem. This latter group was composed of severely Orthodox Jews, who, like Reb Saunders, despised all efforts aimed at the establishment of a Jewish state prior to the advent of the Messiah. A recent influx of Hungarian Jews into our neighborhood had swelled their ranks, and they formed a small but highly vocal element of the school’s student population. Even the rabbinic faculty was split, most of the rabbis voicing their hope for a Jewish state, some of them opposing it, while all of the college faculty seemed to be for it. There were endless discussions during the afternoon college hours about the problem of dual loyalty—what sort of allegiance could an American Jew have toward a foreign Jewish state?—and invariably these arguments revolved around this hypothetical question: On what side would an American Jew fight should America ever declare war against a Jewish state? I always answered that the question was silly, America would never send Jews to fight against a Jewish state; during the Second World War she had sent Japanese Americans to fight the Germans, not the Japanese. But my answer never seemed to satisfy anyone. What if America did want to send Jews to fight against a Jewish state? the theorists countered. What then? The discussions were quite heated at times, but they went on only among those students and teachers who favored a Jewish state. Many of the Hasidim ignored the question completely. Despising as they did all efforts in behalf of a Jewish state, they despised as well all discussions that had to do with even its possible existence. They called such discussions bitul Torah, time taken away from the study of Torah, and looked upon all the disputants with icy disgust.
Toward the middle of February, the various factions began to firm up their ranks as the entire spectrum of Zionist youth movements moved into the school in a drive for membership, the second such drive since I had entered the college. From that time on—the recruitment drive lasted a few days—every student’s position was clearly defined by the Zionist philosophy of the group he had joined. Most of the pro-Zionist students, myself included, joined a religious Zionist youth group; a few joined the youth arm of the Revisionists. The anti-Zionist students remained aloof, bitter, disdainful of our Zionism.
In the lunchroom one day, one of the Hasidim accused a member of the Revisionist youth group of being worse than Hitler. Hitler had only succeeded in destroying the Jewish body, he shouted in Yiddish, but the Revisionists were trying to destroy the Jewish soul. There was almost a fistfight, and the two students were kept apart with difficulty by members of their respective sides. The incident left a bitter taste in everyone’s mouth and succeeded only in increasing the tension between the pro-Zionist and anti-Zionist students.
As I expected, Danny did not join any of the Zionist groups. Privately, he told me he wanted to join my group. But he couldn’t. Did I remember his father’s explosion over Zionism? he wanted to know. I told him I had had nightmares about that explosion. How would I like an explosion like that with every meal? Danny asked me. I didn’t think the question required an answer and told him so. Danny nodded grimly. Besides, he added, the anti-Zionists among the Hasidic students looked upon him as their leader. How would it be if he joined a Zionist group? It, would do nothing but add to the already existing bitterness. He was trapped by his beard and ear-locks, he said, and there was nothing he could do. But one day . . . He did not finish the sentence. He remained aloof, however, never participating in the quarrels between the pro-Zionist and anti-Zionist groups. And during the near fistfight in the lunchroom, his face went rigid as stone, and I saw
In the third week of February, the newspapers reported that British Foreign Minister Bevin had announced his intention to bring the Palestine issue to the United Nations in September. My father was delighted, despite the fact that the news cost him some extra nights of work rewriting the speech he was to give at the rally.
He read the speech to me the Shabbat afternoon before the rally. In it he described the two-thousand-year-old Jewish dream of a return to Zion, the Jewish blood that had been shed through the centuries, the indifference of the world to the problem of a Jewish homeland, the desperate need to arouse the world to the realization of how vital it was that such a homeland be established immediately on the soil of Palestine. Where else could the remnant of Jewry that had escaped Hitler’s ovens go? The slaughter of six million Jews would have meaning only on the day a Jewish state was established. Only then would their sacrifice begin to make some sense; only then would the songs of faith they had sung on their way to the gas chambers take on meaning; only then would Jewry again become a light to the world, as Ahad Ha’am had foreseen.
I was deeply moved by the speech, and I was very proud of my father. It was wonderful to know that he would soon be standing in front of thousands of people, reading the same words he read to me that Shabbat.
The day before the scheduled date of the Madison Square Garden rally there was a violent snowstorm, and my father walked like a ghost through our apartment, staring white-faced out the window at the swirling snow. It fell the entire day, then stopped. The city struggled to free itself of its white burden, but the streets remained choked all the next day, and my father left in the evening for the rally, wearing a look of doom, his face ashen. I couldn’t go with him because I had a logic exam the next day and had to remain home to study. I forced myself to concentrate on the logic problems, but somehow they seemed inconsequential to me. I kept seeing my father standing at the rostrum in front of a vast, empty hall, speaking to seats made vacant by the snow. I dreaded the moment I would hear his key in the lock of our apartment door.