The Chosen Read online

  “Nothing happened for a long time, because the Cossacks, like the Polish peasants, were afraid of the Polish nobles. But in the year 1648, a man named Bogdan Chmielnicki became the leader of the Cossacks, and he led an uprising against Poland. The Jews became the victims of the Polish peasants, who hated them, and of the Cossacks, who also hated them. The revolution lasted ten years, and in that time something like seven hundred Jewish communities were destroyed and about one hundred thousand Jews were slain. When the horror was over, the great Jewish community of Poland had been almost completely destroyed.”

  My father paused for a long moment. The window curtains moved softly in the cool night breeze. When he spoke again, his voice was low, tense, subdued.

  “Reuven, what could our people say to God during the Chmielnicki uprising? They could not thank Him for the slaughter going on before their eyes, and they would not deny His existence. So many of them began to believe the Messiah was coming. Remember, Reuven, that those Jews who believe in the Messiah believe also that just before the Messiah comes there will be an era of great disaster. At the moment when there seems to be no meaning in life, at that moment a person must try to find new meaning. And so thousands upon thousands of Jews in both eastern and western Europe began to look upon the Chmielnicki disaster as the prelude to the coming of the Messiah. They prayed and fasted and did penance—all in an effort to hasten his coming. And he came. His name was Shabbtai Zvi. He revealed himself about the same time as the massacres began. More than half the Jewish world became his followers. Years later, when it turned out that he was a fraud, you can imagine what the effect was. The Chmielnicki uprising was a physical disaster; the false Messiah was a spiritual disaster.

  “We are like other people, Reuven. We do not survive disaster merely by appealing to invisible powers. We are as easily degraded as any other people. That is what happened to Polish Jewry. By the eighteenth century, it had become a degraded people. Jewish scholarship was dead. In its place came empty discussions about matters that had no practical connection with the desperate needs of the masses of Jews. Pilpul, these discussions are called—empty, nonsensical arguments over minute points of the Talmud that have no relation at all to the world. Jewish scholars became interested in showing other Jewish scholars how much they knew, how many texts they could manipulate. They were not in the least bit interested in teaching the masses of Jews, in communicating their knowledge and uplifting the people. And so there grew up a great wall between the scholars and the people. It was also a time of terrible superstition. Our people believed that there were demons and ghosts everywhere that tortured the Jew, wracked his body, and’ terrorized his soul. These fears affected all Jews. But they affected the unlearned masses worst of all. At least the scholar had his pilpul to keep him alive.

  “Now, Reuven, if everywhere around you there are forces that wish to harm you, what is it that you can do to help yourself? Of course, you try to destroy those forces. But the masses of Jews did not believe they had the power to do this. Only very skillful people possessed such power, they felt. And so there came upon the scene Jews who claimed to be experts in the chasing away of demons and spirits. Such men were looked upon as saints, and they became very popular in Poland. They claimed that their power came from their ability to manipulate the various letters that spelled out the mystical names of God. That is why they were called Ba’ale Shem—Masters of the Name. To drive away evil spirits they wrote magical amulets, prescribed medicines, performed wild dances, wearing the tallit and tefillin over white robes; they used black candles, sounded the shofar, recited psalms, screamed, pleaded, threatened—anything to drive the evil spirits out of a person who, for example, might be ill, or away from a mother who was about to have a child. To such a level had our people sunk in Poland by the eighteenth century. And here, Reuven, is where my answer to your questions about Reb Saunders’ son really begins.”

  My father paused for a moment and finished his tea. Then he looked at me and smiled. “Are you tired yet, Reuven?”

  “No, abba.”

  “I am not sounding too much like a schoolteacher?”

  “I don’t mind it when you sound like a schoolteacher,” I said.

  “It is not a lecture,” he said. “I will not ask you questions afterward.”

  “I want you to go on,” I said.

  He nodded and smiled again. “I will want some more tea,” he said. “But a little later. Now let me tell you about a man who was born in that century, and I think you will begin to have your answer.

  “There are many legends about his birth, but I am not interested in telling you legends. He was born about the year 1700 in Poland. His name was Israel. His parents were very poor and not learned, and they both died while he was still a child. The people of his village cared for him and sent him to school. But he did not like school, and whenever he could he would sneak away and escape to the woods where he would walk under the trees, look at the flowers, sit by a brook, listen to the songs of the birds and to the noise of the wind in the leaves. As often as his teachers brought him back, so often did he run away to these woods, and after a while they gave up and left him alone. When he was thirteen, he became an assistant to a schoolmaster, but instead of helping the master teach the little children, he often took them also to the woods where they would sing or stand in silence, listening to the birds in the trees. When he grew older, he became the beadle of the village synagogue. All day long he would sit around, listening to the learned discussions that went on inside the synagogue walls, and at night, when everyone else slept, he would take the holy books in his hands and study them carefully. But it was not the Talmud that he studied, it was the Kabbalah, the books of Jewish mysticism. The rabbis had forbidden the study of the Kabbalah, and so Israel had to study in secret. He married, finally, but almost nothing is known about his wife. She died soon afterward, and Israel, a full-grown man now, became a schoolteacher. He had a wonderful way with children, and he achieved a great reputation as a teacher. He was a kind and gentle person, honest and unaffected, and often people would come to him and ask him to settle their quarrels. He came to be regarded as a wise and holy man, and one day the father of Rabbi Abraham Gershon of the city of Brody came to him and asked him to settle a business dispute he had with another man. He was so impressed with Israel that he offered to give him his daughter Hannah in marriage. Israel agreed, but asked that the betrothal document be kept a secret for the time being. And now, an interesting event occurred. The father of Hannah died, and Israel traveled to Brody, to the house of the great Rabbi Abraham Gershon, Hannah’s brother, in order to claim his bride. He was dressed in the clothes of a peasant, torn boots and coarse garments, and you can imagine how shocked the rabbi was when he saw the betrothal agreement in Israel’s hands. His sister should marry a peasant? What shame and dishonor that would bring upon the family name! He tried to persuade his sister to reject her father’s choice, but somehow Hannah saw something in Israel which the good rabbi of Brody did not, and she refused. After their marriage, Rabbi Abraham Gershon tried to improve his brother-in-law’s education. He began by teaching him Talmud, but Israel seemed very uninterested in Talmud. He made him his coachman, but Israel was a failure at that, too. Finally, the rabbi gave up and ordered his sister and brother-in-law to leave Brody so as not to dishonor his good name, and they left.

  “And now, Reuven, you will begin to have the answer to your question. I am sorry I am taking so long.”

  “Please go on, abba.”

  “All right. Israel and his wife left Brody and settled in the Carpathian Mountains in a village near Brody. They were very poor, but very happy. Israel earned a living by selling the lime which they dug in the mountains. The Carpathian Mountains are beautiful, and Israel built a little house and spent many days there alone, praying, dreaming, and singing to the great hills. Very often he would remain alone throughout the entire week, and return to his wife Hannah only for Shabbat. She must have suffered terribly because o
f their poverty, but she believed in him and was very devoted.

  “Reuven, it was in these mountains that Israel gave birth to Hasidism. He was there many years, thinking, meditating, singing his strange songs, listening to the birds, learning from peasant women how to heal sickness with grasses and herbs, to write amulets, to drive out evil spirits. The people of the village loved him, and soon his reputation as a holy man began to spread throughout all of Poland. Legends began to grow about him. He was not yet forty, and already there were legends about him. You can imagine what kind of person he must have been.

  “His brother-in-law, Rabbi Abraham Gershon, finally regretted his cruelty and asked Israel and Hannah to return to Brody. He acquired a tavern for them to operate, but it was Hannah who really managed it while Israel wandered about in the woods and meadows outside of Brody, meditating. Finally, he began to travel, and he became a Ba’al Shem. He was kind and saintly and godly, and he seemed to want to help people not for the money they paid him but for the love he had for them. And so they came to call him the Ba’al Shem Tov—the Kind or Good Master of the Name. He mingled with the people and talked to them about God and His Torah in plain, simple language that they could easily understand. He taught them that the purpose of man is to make his life holy—every aspect of his life: eating, drinking, praying, sleeping. God is everywhere, he told them, and if it seems at times that He is hidden from us, it is only because we have not yet learned to seek Him correctly. Evil is like a hard shell. Within this shell is the spark of God, is goodness. How do we penetrate the shell? By sincere and honest prayer, by being happy, and by loving all people. The Ba’al Shem Tov—his followers later shortened his name and called him the Besht—believed that no man is so sinful that he cannot be purified by love and understanding. He also believed—and here is where he brought down upon himself the rage of the learned rabbis—that the study of Talmud was not very important, that there need not be fixed times for prayers, that God could be worshiped through a sincere heart, through joy and singing and dancing. In other words, Reuven, he opposed any form of mechanical religion. There was nothing new in what he taught. You will find it all in the Bible, Talmud, and Kabbalah. But he gave it a special emphasis and taught it at a key time to people who were hungry for this kind of teaching. And these people listened and loved him. Many great rabbis came to mock him and went away converted to his way of thinking. When he died, his followers opened their own synagogues. Before the end of that century, about half of eastern European Jewry consisted of Hasidim, as his followers were called, pious ones. So great was the need of the masses for a new way to approach God.

  “There was another man born in that century, Rabbi Elijah of Vilna, a great Talmudist, a genius, and a strong opponent of Hasidism. But even his opposition could not stop Hasidism from growing. It flourished and became a great movement in Jewish life. For a long time there was terrible bitterness between the Mitnagdim, the opponents of Hasidism, and the followers of the Besht. For example, if the son of a Hasid married the daughter of a Mitnaged, both fathers would say Kaddish after their children, considering them to be dead and buried. So great was the bitterness.

  “The Hasidim had great leaders—tzaddikim, they were called, righteous ones. Each Hasidic community had its own tzaddik, and his people would go to him with all their problems, and he would give them advice. They followed these leaders blindly. The Hasidim believed that the tzaddik was a superhuman link between themselves and God. Every act of his and every word he spoke was holy. Even the food he touched became holy. For example, they would grab the food scraps he left on his plate and eat them, because the food had become holy through his touch, and they wanted some of this holiness inside themselves. For a while, the tzaddikim were kind and gentle souls, like the Besht himself. But in the next century the movement began to degenerate. Many of the positions of tzaddik became inherited posts, going automatically from father to son, even if the son was not a great leader. Many tzaddikim lived like Oriental monarchs. Some of them were out-and-out frauds, and they exploited their people terribly. Others were very sincere, and a few were even great scholars of the Talmud. In some Hasidic sects, the study of the Talmud became as important as it had been before the time of the Besht. Secular literature was forbidden, and the Hasidim lived shut off from the rest of the world. Anything that was not Jewish and Hasidic was forbidden. Their lives became frozen. The clothes they wear today, for example, are the same Polish-style clothes they wore hundreds of years ago. Their customs and beliefs are also the same as they were hundreds of years ago. But not all of the Hasidic communities are identical, Reuven. The Hasidim of Russia, Germany, Poland, and Hungary are different one from the other. Not very different, but they are different. There are even Hasidic groups that believe their leaders should take upon themselves the sufferings of the Jewish people. You are surprised? But it is true. They believe that their sufferings would be unendurable if their leaders did not somehow absorb these sufferings into themselves. A strange belief, but a very important one, as far as they are concerned.

  “Reuven, Reb Saunders is a great Talmudist and a great tzaddik. He has a reputation for brilliance and compassion. It is said that he believes the soul is as important as the mind, if not more so. He inherited his position from his father. When he dies, the position will go automatically to Danny.”

  My father stopped, looked at me with a smile, and said, “You are not asleep yet, Reuven?”

  “No, abba.”

  “You are a very patient student. I think I am going to have another glass of tea. My throat is a little dry.”

  I took his glass, poured into it some strong-brewed tea from the teapot, filled it with water from the kettle, then brought it back to him. He put a cube of sugar between his teeth and sipped slowly from the glass, letting the tea soak through the sugar. Then he put the glass down.

  “Tea is a blessing,” he said, smiling. “Especially to a schoolteacher who must always give long answers to short questions.”

  I smiled back at him and waited patiently.

  “All right,” my father said. “I see you want me to continue. Now I am going to tell you another story, also a true story, about a Jewish boy who lived in Poland in the second half of the eighteenth century. As I tell you the story, think of Reb Saunders’ son, and you will have your answer.

  “This boy, Reuven, was brilliant, literally a genius. His name was Solomon, and later in life he changed his long Polish name to Maimon. When he was young, he found that the Talmud could not satisfy his hunger for knowledge. His mind would not let him rest. He wanted to know what was happening in the outside world. German was by then a great scientific and cultural language, and he decided to teach himself to read German. But even after he learned German he was not satisfied, because the reading of secular books was forbidden. Finally, at the age of twenty-five, he abandoned his wife and child and after many hardships came to Berlin where he joined a group of philosophers, read Aristotle, Maimonides, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, and Kant, and began to write philosophical books. It is astonishing how he was able to gobble up complicated philosophical treatises with such ease. He had a great mind, but it never left him in peace. He wandered from city to city, never finding roots anywhere, never satisfied, and finally died at forty-seven on the estate of a kind-hearted Christian who had befriended him.

  “Reuven, Reb Saunders’ son has a mind like Solomon Maimon’s, perhaps even a greater mind. And Reb Saunders’ son does not live in Poland. America is free. There are no walls here to hold back the Jews. Is it so strange, then, that he is breaking his father’s rules and reading forbidden books? He cannot help himself. It is unbelievable what he has read these past few months. You are a brilliant student. I tell you that now very proudly. But he is a phenomenon. Once in a generation is a mind like that born.

  “Now, Reuven, listen very carefully to what I am going to tell you. Reb Saunders’ son is a terribly torn and lonely boy. There is literally no one in the world he can talk to, He need
s a friend. The accident with the baseball has bound him to you, and he has already sensed in you someone he can talk to without fear. I am very proud of you for that. He would never have told you about his library visits if he believed for a moment you would not keep his words a secret trust. And I want you to let him be your friend and to let yourself be his friend. I am certain you and Reb Saunders’ son can help each other in such a friendship. I know you, and I know him. And I know what I am saying. And now, Reuven, the lecture is over, I am going to finish my tea, and we will go to bed. What a lecture it has been! Do you want some tea?”

  “No, abba.”

  We sat in silence, while my father sipped from his glass.

  “You are very quiet,” he said finally.

  “It all started with a silly baseball game,” I said. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Reuven, as you grow older you will discover that the most important things that will happen to you will often come as a result of silly things, as you call them—‘ordinary things’ is a better expression. That is the way the world is.”

  I shook my head. “I just can’t believe it,” I said again. “This whole week has been like something from another world. The hospital, the people I met there, Mr. Savo, little Mickey, Billy—all because of a ball game.”

  My father sipped his tea and looked at me over the rim of the glass. He said nothing, but he was watching me intently.

  “I don’t understand it,” I said. “Weeks and weeks go by, one Shabbat follows another, and I’m the same, nothing has changed, and suddenly one day something happens, and everything looks different.”

  “Different? What do you mean, different?”

  I told him how I had felt that afternoon when I had come home from the hospital. He listened quietly, all the while sipping his tea. When I finished, I saw him smile. He put down the glass, sighed, and said, “Reuven, it is a tragedy your mother is not alive to—” He stopped, his voice breaking. He was quiet for a moment. Then he looked at the clock on the shelf over the refrigerator. “It is very late,” he said. “We will talk some more tomorrow.”