The street floor of the building consisted of administrative offices, an auditorium, and a large synagogue, a section of which contained chairs and long tables. The entire second floor was a library, a beautiful library, with mazelike stacks that reminded me of the third floor of the library in which Danny and I had spent so much time together. It had bright fluorescent lights -that didn't flicker or change color, I noticed immediately the first time I walked in - and a trained, professional library staff. It also contained a large reading room, with long tables, chairs, a superb collection of reference books, and an oil painting of Samson Raphael Hirsch which was prominently displayed on a white wall - Hirsch had been a well-known Orthodox rabbi in Germany during the last century and had fought intelligently through his writings and preachings against the Jewish Reform movement of his day. The third and fourth floors had white-painted, modern classrooms and large, well-equipped chemistry, physics and biology laboratories. There were also classrooms on the fifth floor, as well as a psychology laboratory, which contained rats, mazes, screens, and a variety of instruments for the measuring of auditory and visual responses. The sixth floor consisted of dormitory rooms for the out-of-town students.
It was a rigidly Orthodox school, with services three times a day and with European-trained rabbis, many of them in long, dark coats, all of them bearded. For the first part of the day, from nine in the morning to three in the afternoon, we studied only Talmud. From three-fifteen to six-fifteen or seven-fifteen, depending on the schedule of classes we had chosen for ourselves, we went through a normal college curriculum. On Fridays from nine to one, we attended the college; on Sundays, during that same time span, we studied Talmud.
I found that I liked this class arrangement very much; it divided my work neatly and made it easy for me to concentrate separately upon Talmud and college subjects. The length of the school day, though, was something else; I was frequently awake until one in the morning, doing homework. Once my father came into my room at ten minutes to one, found me memorizing the section on river flukes from my biology textbook, asked me if I was trying to do four years of college all at once, and told me to
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go to bed right away. I went to bed - half an hour later, when I had finished the memorizing.
Danny's gloom and frustration grew worse day by day, despite the fact that the students in his Talmud class looked upon him with open-mouthed awe. He had been placed in Rav Gershenson's class, the highest in the school, and I had been placed one class below. He was the talk of the Talmud Department by the end of two weeks and the accepted referee of all Talmudic arguments, among the students. He was also learning a great deal from Rav Gershenson, who, as Danny put it, loved to spend at least three days on every two lines he taught. He had quickly become the leader of the few Hasidic students in the school, the ones who walked around wearing dark suits, tieless shirts, beards, fringes, and earlocks. About half of my high school class had entered the college, and I became friendly enough with many of the other non-Hasidic students. I didn't mix much with the Hasidim, but the extent to which they revered Danny was obvious to everyone. They clung to him as though he were the reincarnation of the Besht, as though he were their student tzaddik, so to speak. But none of this made him too happy; none of it was able to offset his frustration over Professor Appleman, who, by the time the first semester ended, had him so thoroughly upset that he began to talk about majoring in some other subject. He just couldn't see himself spending four years running rats through mazes and checking human responses to blinking lights and buzzing sounds, he told me. He had received a B for his semester's work in psychology because he had messed up some math equations on the final examination. He was disgusted. What did experimental psychology have to do with the^human mind? he wanted to ' know.
We were in the week between semesters at the time. Danny was sitting on my bed and I was at my desk, wishing I could help him, he looked so thoroughly sad. But I don't know a thing about experimental psychology, so there was little I could offer by way of help, except to urge him to stick out the year, something might come of it, he might even get to like the subject.
'Did you ever get to like my father and his planned mistakes V he asked testily.
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I shook my head slowly. Reb Saunders had stopped inserting deliberate errors into his Shabbat evening talks the week we had entered college, but the memory of it still rankled. I told Danny that I had disliked the mistake business and had never really got used to it, despite my having witnessed it many times.
'So what makes you think sitting long enough through something you hate will get you to like it?'
I had nothing to say to that, except to urge him again to stick out the year with Professor Appleman. 'Why don't you talk to him about it ?' I asked.
'About what ? About Freud ? The one time I mentioned a Freudian theory in class, all I got out of Appleman was that dogmatic psychoanalysis was related to psychology as magic was related to science. "Dogmatic Freudians,'" Danny was imitating Professor Appleman - or so I assumed; I didn't know Professor Apple-man, but Danny's voice had taken on a somewhat professorial quality - ' "Dogmatic Freudians are generally to be regarded as akin to the medieval physicists who preceded the era of Galileo. They are interested solely in confirming highly dubious theoretical hypotheses by the logic of analogy and induction, and make no attempt at refutation or inter-subjective testing." That was my introduction to experimental psych. I've been running rats through mazes ever since.'
'Was he right?' I asked.
'Was who right?'
'Professor Appleman.'
'Was he right about what?'
'About Freudians being dogmatic?*
'What followers of a genius aren't dogmatic, for heaven's sake? The Freudians have plenty to be dogmatic about. Freud was a genius.'
'What do they do, make tzaddik out of him ?'
'Very funny,' Danny said bitterly. 'I'm getting a lot of sympathy from you tonight.'
'I think you ought to have a heart-to-heart talk with Apple-man.'
'And tell him what? That Freud was a genius? That I hate experimental psychology? You know what he once said in class?'
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He assumed the professorial air again. '"Gentlemen, psychology may be regarded as a science only to the degree to which its hypotheses are subjected to laboratory testing and to subsequent mathe-matization.' Mathematization yet! What should I tell him, that I have mathematics? I'm taking the wrong course. You should be taking that course, not me!'
'He's right, you know,' I said quietly.
'Who?'
'Appleman. If the Freudians aren't willing to try testing their theories under laboratory conditions, then they are being dogmatic'
Danny looked at me, his face rigid. 'What makes you so wise about Freudians all of a sudden ?' he asked angrily.
'I don't know a thing about the Freudians/ I told him quietly. 'But I know a lot about inductive logic. If the Freudians -'
'Damn it!' Danny exploded. 'I never even mentioned the followers of Freud in class! I was talking about Freud himself! Freud was a scientist- Psychoanalysis is a scientific tool for exploring the mind. What do rats have to do with the human mind ?'
'Why don't you ask Appleman ?' I said quietly.
'I think I will,' Danny said. 'I think I'll do just that. Why not? What have I got to lose? It can't make me any more miserable than I am now.'
'That's right,' I said.
There was a brief silence, during which Danny sat on my bed and stared gloomily down at the floor.
'How are your eyes these days ?' I asked quietly.
He sat back on the bed, leaning against the wall. 'They still bother me. These glasses don't help^much.'
'Have you seen a doctor ?' -
He shrugged. 'He said the glasses should do it. I just have to get used to them. I don't know. Anyway, I'll talk to Appleman next week. The worst that could happen is I drop the course.' He shook his head grimly. 'What a miserable business. Two years of reading Freud, and I have to end up by doing experimental psychology.'
'You never know,' I said. 'Experimental psychology might come in handy some day.'
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'Oh, sure. AH I need to do is get to love mathematics and rafs. Are you coming over this Saturday ?' 'I'm studying with my father Shabbat afternoon,' I told him. 'Every Saturday afternoon?' 'Yes.'
'My father asked me last week if you were still my friend. He hasn't seen you in two months.' 'I'm studying Talmud with my father/1 said. 'You review?'
'No. He's teaching me scientific method.'
Danny looked at me in surprise, then grinned, 'You're planning to try scientific method on Rav Schwarz ?'
'No,' T said. Rav Schwarz was my Talmud teacher. He was an old man with a long, gray beard who wore a black coat and was constantly smoking cigarettes. He was a great Talmudist, but he had been trained in a European yeshiva, and I didn't think he would take kindly to the scientific method of studying Talmud. I had once suggested a textual emendation in class, and he had given me a queer look. I didn't think he even understood what I had said.
'Well, good luck with your scientific method,' Danny told me, getting to his feet. 'Just don't try it on Rav Gershenson. He knows all about it and hates it. When will my father get to see you?'
'I don't know,'I said.
'I've got to go home. What's your father doing in there?' The sound of my father's typewriter had been clearly heard throughout the time we had been talking.
'He's finishing another article.'
'Tell him my father sends his regards.'
'Thanks. Are you and your father talking to each other these days?'
Danny hesitated a moment before answering. 'Not really. Only now and then. It's not really talking.' I didn't say anything.
'I think I had really better go home.' Danny said. 'It's late. I'll meet you in front of your shul Sunday morning.' 'Okay.'
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I walked him to the door, then stood there listening to the tapping of his metal-capped shoes on the hallway floor. He went out the double door and was gone.
I came back to my room and found my father standing in the doorway that led to his study. He had a bad cold and was wearing a woolen sweater and a scarf around his throat. This was his third cold in five months. It was also the first time in weeks that he had been home at night, He had become involved in Zionist activities and was always attending meetings where he spoke about the importance of Palestine as a Jewish homeland and raised money for the Jewish National Fund. He was also teaching an adult studies course in the history of political Zionism at our synagogue on Monday nights and another adult course in the history of American Jewry at his yeshiva on Wednesday nights. He rarely got home before eleven. I would always hear his tired steps in the hallway as he came in the door. He would have a glass of tea, come into my room and chat with me for a few minutes, telling me where he had been and what he had done that night, then he would remind me I didn't have to do four years of college all at once, I should go to bed soon, and he would go into his study to prepare for the classes he would be teaching the next day. He had begun taking his teaching with almost ominous seriousness these past months. He had always prepared for his classes, but there was a kind of heaviness to the way he went about preparing now, writing everything down, rehearsing his notes aloud - as if he were trying to make certain that nothing of significance would remain unsaid, as if he felt the future hung on every idea he taught. I never knew when he went to sleep; no matter what time I got to bed he was still in hlsFstudy. He had never regained the weight he had lost during the weeks he had spent in the hospital after his heart attack, and he was always tired, his face pale and gaunt, his eyes watery.
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
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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 ?'
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'Yes.'
'You're not taking care of yourself, 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
"3
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 I new bursts of Zionist activity and to loud, excited justification of the way he was driving himself in his fund-raising and speech-making 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
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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 a t 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.*
'You frightened me,' I heard myself say.
'I am sorry.'
'Will you please go for that checkup?' 'Yes,' my father said.
'You really frightened me, talking that way. Are you sure you're all right?' 'I have a bad cold,' my father said. 'But I am fine otherwise.' 'You'll go for that checkup?'
'I will call Dr Grossman tomorrow and make an appointment for next week. All right ?' 'Yes.'
'Fine. My young logician is satisfied. Good. Let us talk of happier things. I did not tell you that I saw Jack Rose yesterday.
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He gave me a thousand-dollar cheque for the Jewish National Fund.'
'Another thousand dollars?' Jack Rose and my father had been boyhood friends in Russia and had come to America on the same boat. He was now a wealthy furrier and a thoroughly non-observant Jew. Yet, six months ago, he had given my father a thousand-dollar contribution to our synagogue.
'It is strange what is happening,' my father said. 'And it is exciting. Jack is on the Building Committee of his synagogue. Yes, he joined a synagogue. Not for himself, he told me. For his grandchildren. He is helping them put up a new building so his grandchildren can go to a modern synagogue and have a good Jewish education, It is beginning to happen everywhere in America. ATeligious renaissance, some call it.*
'I can't see Jack Rose in a synagogue,' I said. On the few occasions when he had been over to our apartment, I had found his open disregard for Jewish tradition distasteful. He was a short man, with round, pink features, always immaculately dressed, always smoking long, expensive cigars. Once I asked my father why they had remained friends, their views about almost everything of importance were so different. He replied by expressing dismay at my question. Honest differences of opinion should never be permitted to destroy a friendship, he told me. 'Haven't you learned that yet, Reuven?' Now I was tempted to tell my father that Jack Rose was probably using his money to salve a bad conscience. But I didn't. Instead, I said, a little scornfully, 'I don't envy his rabbi.'
My father shook his head soberly. 'Why not? You should envy him, Reuven. American Jews have begun to return to the synagogue.'
'God help us if synagogues fill up with Jack Roses.' 'They will fill up with Jack Roses, and it will be the task of rabbis to educate them. It will be your task if you become a rabbi.' Hooked at him.
'If you become a rabbi,' my father said, smiling at me warmly. 'When I become a rabbi, you mean.'
My father nodded, still smiling. 'You would have been a fine university professor,' he said. 'I would have liked you to become
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a university professor. But I think you have already decided. Am I right?' 'Yes,' I said.
'Even with a synagogue full of Jack Roses ?' 'Even with a synagogue full of Jack Roses,' I said. 'God help me.'
'America needs rabbis,' my father said.
'Well, it's better than being a boxer,' I told him,
My father looked puzzled.
'A bad joke,' I said,
'Will you have some tea with me?'
I said I would.
'Come. Let us have some tea and continue to talk about happy things.'
So we drank tea and talked some more. My father told me about the Zionist activities he was engaged in, the speeches he was making, the funds he was raising. He said that in a year or two the crisis in Palestine would come to a head. There would be terrible bloodshed, he predicted, unless the British would give over the problem to the United Nations. Many American Jews were not yet aware of what was going on, he said. The English papers did not tell the entire story, A Jew had to read the Yiddish press now if he wished to know everything that was happening in Palestine. American Jews had to be awakened to the problem of a Jewish state. His Zionist group was planning a mass rally in Madison Square Garden, he told me. The publicity would be going out this week, and there would be a large ad soon in the New York Times, announcing the rally. It was scheduled for late February,
'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,
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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
2l8
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 Appleman that afterno»R. 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 ?
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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 1' he almost shouted. 'Thanks a million I'
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 V
'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
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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 analysts don't let anyone challenge their hypotheses,' I said. 'What happened then?'
'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
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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
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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 fist-fight, and the two stud-
ents 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 earlocks, 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 fist-fight in the lunchroom, his face went rigid as stone, amd I saw him look with hatred at the Hasidic student who had started the quarrel. But he said nothing, and after the disputants had been half carried, half dragged, from the lunchroom he returned immediately to the math problem we had been discussing.
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 thtCShabbat 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
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