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Meet Mr. Wolfstone
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Chaim Potok spoke for nearly one hour to a morning chapel group, including members of
the public, in the Royal Brougham Pavillion at Seattle Pacific Univeristy on a cold,
gray morning. Even before he assumed the podium, Chaim Potok was sittting, waving
and smiling at the 700 faithful during his introduction by the President of the
University. His audience was mostly students who had gathered to sing a Christian hymn and
who came to hear this master of
the religious novel from Philadelphia, PA
Chaim is strikingly handsome with a full
beard, and he projects a voice that is clear, cogent, and compelling. His words are
carefully crafted, and his ideas are like beacons for moral navigation through life.
He speaks of each person's experience -- born into a small, particularistic world --
and the core to core confrontation of values when he (or she) moves beyond the boundries of that
small, particularistic world.
But in the end, he reassures us that we take with
us the values we have acquired in our early years of growth and maturation (framed
figuratively by the master as gaining "a foothold"). Chaim Potok explains the Hassidic
tradition from which he emerged with its emphasis on scholarship (and more particularly
the study of the Talmud), and without saying so explicitly, he makes it clear that his
great novel, The Chosen, was undoubtedly autobiographical.
As one listens to the master,
The Chosen comes to life. Although Chaim Potok may not fully appreciate, himself, the
influence of his intellect and his very personal thoughts, his words clothe and adorn the skeleton of
his great novel with flesh and blood as he lectures and gesticulates -- while the
audience follows each gesture with rapt attention.
"The world needs a
righteous man," and you know that you have met him when Chaim Potok lectures. You
know that he is the prototypical Jew in The New World who makes good men and
women better!
As I left the Royal Brougham Pavillion,
I knew that the brief span of my life on
this earth is, when measured in the context of eternity, a mere and momentary tingling
sensation in the bowels of the Universe. But I also knew that my life had been enriched
by this great man of learning.
~ by Gary L. Wolfstone
The Chosen
Selected Passages Reb Saunders
"The world kills us! The world flays our skin from our bodies and throws us to the flames! The world laughs at Torah! And if it does not kill us, it tempts us! It misleads us! It contaminates us! It asks us to join in its ugliness, its impurities, its abominations! The world is Amalek! It is not the world that is commanded to study Torah, but the people of Israel! Listen, listen to this mighty teaching." His voice was suddenly lower, quieter, intimate. "It is written, 'This world is like a vestibule before the world-to-come; prepare thyself in the vestibule, that thou mayest enter into the hall.' The meaning is clear: The vestibule is this world, and the hall is the world-to-come. Listen. In gematriya, the words 'this world' come out one hundred sixty-three, and the words 'the world-to-come' come out one hundred fifty-four. The difference between 'this world' and 'the world-to-come' comes out to nine. Nine is half of eighteen. Eighteen is chai, life. In this world there is only half of chai. We are only half alive in this world! Only half alive!"Reuven's father
"You are no longer a child, Reuven, . . .It is almost possible to see the way your mind is growing. And your heart, too. . . .So listen to what I am going to tell you. . . .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 is there 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? . . .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 the 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 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?"
Reuven's father
"Reuven, the silence between Danny and Reb Saunders. It is continuing?"
"Yes."
His face was sad. "A father can bring up a child any way he wishes, "he said softly. "What a price to pay for a soul."
And
"The tzaddik sits in absolute silence, saying nothing, and all his followers listen attentively,". . . (Danny Saunders) "There's more truth to than you realize."
Reuven's father
"I cannot explain it. It do not understand it completely myself. But what I know of it, I dislike. It was practiced in Europe by some few Hasidic families." Then his voice went hard. "There are better ways to teach a child compassion."
Reb Saunders
"My father himself never talked to me, except when we studied together. He taught me with silence. He taught me to look into myself, to find my own strength, to walk around inside myself in company with my soul. . . . One learns of the pain of others by suffering one's own pain, he would say, by turning inside oneself, by finding one's own soul. And it is important to know of pain, he said. It destroys our self-pride, our arrogance, our indifference toward others. It makes us aware of how frail and tiny we are and of how much we must depend upon the Master of the Universe. . . .
"Reuven, I did not want my Daniel to become like my brother, may he rest in peace. Better I should have had no son at all than to have a brilliant son who had no soul. . . . And I had to make certain his soul would be the soul of a tzaddik no matter what he did with his life."
Chaim Potok
Chaim Potok
1411 Fourth Avenue Bldg.
Seattle, WA. 98101
U.S.A.
