Later, we walked through the streets. We walked for hours, saying nothing, and occasionally I saw him rub his eyes and heard him sigh. We walked past our synagogue, past the shops and houses, past the library where we had sat and read, walking in silence and saying more with that silence than with a lifetime of words. Late, late that night I left Danny at his home and returned alone to the apartment.
My father was in the kitchen and there was a strange brooding sadness on his face. I sat down and he looked at me, his eyes somber behind their steel-rimmed spectacles. And I told him, everything.
When I was done, he was quiet for a very long time. Then he said softly, 'A father has a right to raise his son in his own way, Reuven.'
'In that way, abba?'
'Yes. Though I do not care for it at all.'
'What kind of way is that to raise a son?'
'It is, perhaps, the only way to raise a tzaddik.'
'I'm glad I wasn't raised that way.'
'Reuven,' my father said softly, 'I did not have to raise you that way. I am not a tzaddik.'
During the Morning Service on the first Shabbat in June, Reb Saunders announced to the congregation his son's intention to study psychology. The announcement was greeted with shocked dismay. Danny was in the synagogue at the time, and all eyes turned to stare at him in astonishment. Whereupon Reb Saunders further stated that this was his son's wish, that he, as a father, respected his son's soul and mind – in that order, according to what Danny later told me – that his son had every intention of remaining an observer of the Commandments, and that, therefore, he felt compelled to give his son his blessing. The turmoil among Reb Saunders' followers that was caused by this announcement was considerable. But no one dared to challenge Reb Saunders' tacit transference of power to his younger son. After all, the tzaddikate was inherited, and the charisma went automatically from father to son – all sons.
Two days later, Reb Saunders withdrew his promise to the family of the girl Danny was supposed to marry. There had been some fuss over that, Danny told me afterward. But it had quieted down after a while.
The reaction at Hirsch College, once the news of Reb Saunders' announcement was out, lasted all of about two or three days. The non-Hasidic talked about it for a day or so, and then forgot it. The Hasidic students sulked, scowled, glowered, and then forgot it, too. Everyone was busy with final examinations.
That June Danny and I were among the seventy-eight students who were graduated from Hirsch College, to the accompaniment of numerous speeches, applause, honorary degrees, and family congratulations. Both of us had earned our degrees summa cum laude!
Danny came over to our apartment one evening in September.
He was moving into a room he had rented near Columbia, he said, and he wanted to say good-bye. His beard and earlocks were gone, and his face looked pale. But there was a light in his eyes that was almost blinding.
My father smiled at him warmly. 'Columbia is not so far,' he said. 'We will see you on Shabbat.'
Danny nodded, his eyes glowing, luminous.
I asked him how his father had reacted when he had seen him without the beard and earlocks.
He smiled sadly. 'He's not happy about it. He said he almost doesn't recognize me.'
'He talked to you?'
'Yes,' Danny said quietly. 'We talk now.'
There was a long, gentle silence. A cool breeze moved soundlessly through the open windows of the living room.
Then my father leaned forward in his chair. 'Danny,' he said softly, 'when you have a son of your own, you will raise him in silence?'
Danny said nothing for a long time. Then his right hand rose slowly to the side of his face and with his thumb and forefinger he gently caressed an imaginary earlock.
'Yes,' he said. 'If I can't find another way.'
My father nodded, his eyes calm.
Later, I went down with Danny to the street.
'You'll come over sometimes on a Saturday and we'll study Talmud with my father?' he asked.
'Of course,' I said.
We shook hands and I watched him walk quickly away, tall, lean, bent forward with eagerness and hungry for the future, his metal-capped shoes tapping against the sidewalk. Then he turned into Lee Avenue and was gone.