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rendered his decision. I saw this as an act of great impudence, and it annoyed me, the little boy, terribly. I hoped that Father would say, I am the rabbi on this street, not you. But once again Father revealed not the slightest sign that he was annoyed. On the contrary, he amicably nodded his head to everything the rabbi said. When the woman left and bade them goodbye, only Father answered. Evidently it was beneath the rabbi’s dignity to respond to an ordinary housewife.
    Later, I looked up the mistake my father had caught. I showed Father that it was he who was right, not the rabbi. Father said, “Even the greatest people can make mistakes.”
    â€œFather, is he really such a genius?” I asked.
    â€œHe’s a great scholar.”
    â€œAren’t there greater scholars?”
    â€œCan Torah scholarship be measured? Everyone understands the Torah according to his ability. Sometimes one encounters a problem which a great scholar cannot answer while a simple Jew can. Everyone has a share in the Torah.”
    One time the rabbi came and seemed to be terribly angry. He had written a letter of approbation for a scholarly treatise and the author had not given him, the rabbi, the title that he thought he deserved. The author had called him “the gaon,”
that is, the genius, but had omitted the word “famous.” On another letter of approbation the term “famous” had indeed been included. The rabbi maintained that all this concerned him as much as last year’s snow. That little nothing of a scholar couldn’t make him famous or not famous, the rabbi told Father. But it was the impudence, he said, that infuriated him. The rabbi made muck and mire of that scholar. He called him a boor, a thickhead, an ass, a donkey, a fool, a moron, an ox, and other similar names. He continued complaining: “He is as fit to be an author as I am to be a woodchopper. He should be an aleph-beys teacher, not a scholar. He’s a simpleton, a common lout, a zero. Of people like him it is said: That which is wisdom isn’t his writing and that which is his writing isn’t wisdom. In short, he has taken everything from others. There isn’t a thing in his book that’s his own original work. The trouble is that he can’t even properly steal from others. For that, one has to have a head on one’s shoulders, but he has a clump of cabbage, not a head. And even that head of cabbage is all stem …”
    Father was silent. His face was red. I later looked up that letter of approbation which this same rabbi had given to that scholar. He had written: “In his work the author uproots mountains. He is a library full of books. He has descended into the very depths of the Talmud and has come up with a pearl.” This flowery language did not at all jibe with his abusive language. He was enraged that the author had not called him “famous.”
    That day the rabbi spoke longer than usual. Even I could see that this rabbi was capable of murder for that shortened honorific he had been given. Everything in him stormed and seethed. He smoked one cigar after another and the apartment
filled with noxious wisps of smoke. He vented his rage at Father. Now not only did he explain each Talmud passage he mentioned but he even began explaining Biblical verses. Father sat there shrunken. It was absolutely impossible to respond, because the rabbi spewed such a thick barrage of words one couldn’t even insert a “but.” After the rabbi left, Father at once went to the Hasidic shtibl. It seemed to me he wanted to clear his head in the street a bit.
    Another time the rabbi came to visit us after Father had published his own book, one with a letter of approbation from that same rabbi. When Father showed him the book, the rabbi glanced quickly at the honorific title that Father had given him, then at once began speaking about his own affairs. He did not congratulate Father, nor