'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 flow 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 fist-fight, 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 antiZionists 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, and 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 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.