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different he was from my father! He came in softly, slowly removed his galoshes (which had brass monograms), put his umbrella in a corner, and the kitchen was soon filled with the smell of his cigar. He cast a sidelong glance at my mother. In the study he sat down warily, as if the chair were not sturdy enough. Father welcomed him warmly, as he did everyone, and asked Mother to bring in tea and biscuits. The rabbi took off his hat, under which sat a high yarmulke.
    â€œHow are you doing?” Father asked.
    Those were about the only words that Father managed to utter during the entire visit. The rabbi began talking and continued for several hours. He spoke only of himself and his greatness. He neither praised himself openly nor spoke ill of others, but all his remarks had only one meaning: that he, the rabbi, was the greatest scholar of their generation and that all the other rabbis were either total or half ignoramuses who didn’t understand what they were studying and merely skimmed the surface of issues. The rabbi spoke only about his books, his new interpretations, his accomplishments. His sharp eyes emitted the contempt and mockery of someone who knows everything better than everyone else but feels that the world begrudges him his success and refuses to acknowledge it out of envy.
    I stood behind Father’s chair and listened. Sometimes Father tried to say something, but the rabbi wouldn’t let him speak. He made a hand motion that seemed to say: What do you know? What could you possibly have to say about such matters? It’s enough of an honor for you that I come here and speak to you.
    The rabbi did other things that surely must have irked Father. When referring to a certain passage in the Talmud, he would
translate every single word, as though my father were just a little cheder lad. My father had by then written several scholarly commentaries and had already been a rabbi in a city. There was surely no need to translate anything for him. Often, this conceited rabbi translated passages from the Talmud for my father which even I, a little boy, understood. I blushed with embarrassment. I thought that Father would stand up and tell him to go to the devil, but I saw no sign on my father’s face that he took offense. He listened to that man’s exegesis with curiosity, as though he, my father, were a simple man for whom everything had to be spelled out. It actually seemed that Father took particular delight from the way the other man was translating everything into Yiddish.
    Once, after the rabbi cited a Talmudic passage and immediately began to explain it, Father interrupted: “I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake.”
    The rabbi turned red, then paled. “I made a mistake?”
    Father quickly began justifying himself. “Well, we ought to look at the text. Sometimes one can make a mistake.” And Father quoted the Biblical verse: “Who can understand errors? … Everyone can make a mistake.”
    I thought that the rabbi would go to the bookcase, take out a Talmud folio, and look up the passage—but he did not do this and changed the topic instead. Evidently it wasn’t appropriate for him to admit that my father could have caught him erring. He continued to sit there, speaking about himself while smoking his cigar. Every once in a while Mother brought in more tea and lemon.
    It was very awkward when women entered the study to ask a question about kashrus during his visit. The housewife had
come in to see Father, of course, but it was the other rabbi, the guest, who immediately took up the question. He turned to the woman, asking how big the soup pot was and how much milk had fallen into it. In another instance, when there was some doubt about a chicken, he waited for Father to cut open the navel where the woman had found a nail, or to inspect the guts, which were pockmarked. When Father had completed this “unsavory task,” the rabbi took over and