The Sound of Silence

In the last hour I've finished reading Chaim Potok's The Chosen. My five sisters have been reading it, along with our father. Two weeks ago we had an animated discussion about it on a conference call. I was supposed to have finished reading it but had barely begun. We are all to write an essay and share our thoughts. We are having another conference call tomorrow evening to discuss our essays and here I am just making a beginning.

But before sitting down to write I took a pleasant evening walk with my husband and thirteen-year-old daughter.

We live in a small "town home", but within a very short walk we enjoy the smell of hay as we pass a small corral and its resident horses. We walk a little farther and there is a property with a garden and a cinderblock barn for livestock. We cross a road and walk farther and pass a fenced area still full of sagebrush. Ummm. I love the smell. We walk past several other properties with sprawling groomed lawns and gardens and fully grown pine and fir trees. We admire the architectural and landscaping features. To the west the sun dominates the horizon. We catch golden glimpses of it between the crowded pine trees. And then there are no trees and we see fields and fields. In the distance the sun begins to nest on a mountain range that is so far off it appears to be no bigger than a berm. The last house before the road ends often smells faintly, very faintly of skunk. There is a large red barn at the end of the road. If I were a water-colorist I would want to paint this scene.

We cross the road and head north. We are walking uphill now. On our right is a slope and hollow where lots of fledgling Christmas trees are growing. There are larger trees supervising them. Up the hill can be seen an A-frame home through the screen of trees if one knows to look for it.

Our daughter is telling us about her latest idea for a novel. She is describing the characters and their antics. My husband and I are holding hands. Every so often we hear a vehicle approaching so we move to single file, hugging the edge of the road.

We are far enough along now to see a church steeple peeping over the hill to the east. We keep walking and re-cross the road. We pass a home with a dilapidated trailer home in the yard. The family used to live in it. Every day it is more torn apart. They are recycling the parts. Up ahead there is a canal. It is lined on both sides with Russian Olive trees, but this is not the season when their wonderful smell fills the air. We pass a property that has lots of derelict farm equipment scattered about. I imagine they are all still useful, it is just that they are not the latest models.

Soon we are home, checking our mailbox and heading inside. I have laid claim to the computer and now must tackle my essay about my reading.

I have just experienced a feast for my senses. My reading of The Chosen provided a feast for thought.

Potok introduced me to two fifteen-year-old Jewish boys living in Brooklyn during World War II. They meet by chance in a neighborhood baseball game. They are key players on opposing teams. Reuven's team expects to win. Danny's team intends to win. Reuven is a skilled pitcher and Danny is an aggressive hitter. As it happens, Danny hits one of Reuven's curve balls straight at him and Reuven fails to duck as Danny had anticipated he would. Reuven is wearing glasses and the ball hits him full force in the eye. A piece of lens penetrates Reuven's eye and he is taken to a hospital.

The very tool which enabled Reuven to see is now the implement of possible blindness in that eye. The loss of one eye affects ability to perceive perspective. The reader may guess at this point that Reuven has been perfectly satisfied with how he has seen his world up to this point. We may speculate that we all walk in a sort of seeing/non-seeing state. Our "worldview" is clear and uncluttered.

Perhaps, in actuality, we too suffer from lack of perspective. Perhaps we are only half-seeing, or are blind in one eye. Perhaps the lens through which we shape our world view is faulty. Are we in the same place, metaphorically, that Reuven finds himself in, sitting on a bench waiting for the game to end?

I began to suspect the author was steering me, the reader, towards opening my eyes to something.

I found the game of baseball to be a metaphor of the world at war.

I found the hospital to be another metaphor of the world. Reuven meets a former boxer, an Italian. Reuven observes a little Irish boy persuade the injured boxer to play with him. This act of charity will cost the boxer his eye. Reuven meets a non-Jewish boy who is blind due to an accident. The boy is hopeful a surgery will restore his vision. So, in this one ward of the hospital we meet persons from many nations and walks of life, all cheering for one another and hoping for restored sight. Sometimes charity brings disastrous consequences. Sometimes hope is unfulfilled. It takes courage to stay the course.

The danger for Reuven was that the scar tissue would grow over his pupil and thus rob him of his sight. During his short stay in the hospital Danny came to visit him to apologize. Reuven was angry and unforgiving at first. Then Reuven's father asked him to listen to Danny and to be his friend.

As it happens, Reuven's father has already met Danny and knows something about him. Danny comes from a very Orthodox family whose father is an important rabbi or, more accurately, a tzaddik. Reuven's father has observed that Danny is more than brilliant. Danny is an intellectual phenomenon. Reuven is brilliant in his own right, enough so that he and Danny can understand one another. In fact, both boys find themselves to be a little apart from their peers--Reuven from the watershed moment of the near loss of his eye and Danny because of who he is, what is expected of him, and how he is being raised.

These boys become good friends, despite their many differences. The author chronicles this friendship for the reader over their next four years. During this time World War II comes to an end and the chilling sobering horrifying fact that six million European Jews perished in Hitler's wake came to be known.

Reuven's father becomes politically active in the effort to form a Jewish State -- a place that Jews could call a homeland, where they could find sanctuary. Danny's father felt just as strongly that this state was not a viable solution unless it was established by the coming of the Messiah. The American Jewish community was divided into these two camps.

Throughout these years Danny's father never speaks directly to Danny.

Reuven hated silence. When Reuven's father was in the hospital due to a heart attack, Reuven found silence to be by turns empty, oppressive, and lonely. Reuven could not imagine life with a father who never chatted about the events of the day or instructed or comforted or counseled. Reuven grew to despise Danny's father for what he was doing to his friend.

In fact, Reuven comes to hate Danny's father for the silence, especially when it extends to his requiring Danny to ignore Reuven completely because of the polarity of their families regarding the State of Israel. Danny, however, respects his father and his father's wishes and trusts that there is a reason for all of this that will come to light eventually.

Here again is another metaphor. Danny's father was silent to Danny. So too was the "Master of the Universe" silent to His children. Danny's father trusted that there was something to be learned from this silence and he hoped also that Danny would learn compassion and charity through learning to listen and notice and pay attention.


Reuven's father also prompts Reuven to "listen", even if he doesn't want to.


The author guides the reader through the sense of hearing, or listening. The author also introduces the reader to light. The author takes great pains to describe light through Reuven's eyes. When Reuven's eyesight is restored, when the bandages are removed from his eyes, he experiences the sensation of being reborn. Everything is new to him. Everything is fresh. He wonders how he could have ever taken all this for granted.

The author suggests through Reuven that each of us may experience life in a numb-like trance. All is taken for granted until it is lost, or nearly lost. Loss may come in the form of war, accident, illness, disappointment, and even ignorance.

Reuven sees the light in his room, about the house, on his porch, on the plants. It is light which illuminates. It is light, or the lack thereof, which creates shadows. Light comes in many textures and angles. Reuven, as a mathematecian, would notice angles. Reuven observes a fly trapped in a web. He blows on the web. In this way the fly is released and the spider unharmed. The spider scurries on. The fly escapes.

On such small hinges does fate swing.

Reuven's friend Danny is caught in a web of expectations. Danny's fundamentalist outward religious observance--the way he dresses, his earlocks, his beard--all serve to trap Danny into a prescribed or orthadox pattern of living. Danny's professors and classes bind him to a limited menu of choices. Reuven observes Danny's frustration mount. Finally Danny asks of his friend help in springing his trap.

I began structuring this story in my mind around a pivotal turn in the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I wondered how it would have been for two young men (like Danny and Reuven) to grow up during the early years in Utah. Their people would have just fled severe persecution in the United States of America. They would have been part of carving out a place in the new State of Deseret to call their own. Their leader, the dynamic "modern Moses", Brigham Young did not want another expulsion for "the saints". In addition to the contreversial practice of polygamy, he designed an alphabet, a "United Order" economic model, and a self-contained production model where all their needs could be met through their own industry. Then, within a short span of years for the boys another leader would make the difficult decision to abadon polygamy, the alphabet, and the experimental eutopion "united order" communities in favor of gaining statehood in the very nation which had expelled them as a people. These boys would perhaps be on opposing sides of these issues. They would have to "listen" and "see" outside of their own experience and understanding.

What I kept feeling for Reuven was the need to forgive. Reuven hated Danny at first for deliberately wounding him, and possibly robbing him of his precious gift of sight. Yet hate is like scar tissue of the heart. If Reuven's eye would have developed scar tissue he would not have healed. Scar tissue of the heart robs us of the ability to feel. Sometimes hate stalks us in the guise of charity or empathy. Afterall, we hate on the behalf of another. Reuven hated Danny's father on behalf of Danny.

On a larger scale, Reuven's father's Jewish community hated Hitler for his inhuman treatment of their people. Reuven's father's community felt that the establishment of a Jewish State of Israel would validate the senseless loss of six million lives. Danny's father's community felt that for "man" to establish the State of Israel would be to denounce their God and make a mockery of the centuries of suffering the Jews endured while holding to the tenents of their faith. To this community, living their religion faithfully and dutifully and charitably was what was needed to honor their deceased kinsmen.

The establishment of Israel through the United Nations came about through terrorism and resulted in continued hatred and bloodshed. Perhaps, in the long run, Danny's father's community was right. However, the die has been cast. Man grew impatient with a silent God, took matters into their own hands, and must live with the consequences.


Forgiveness is difficult under any circumstances. It is especially difficult in the framework of righteous indignation over a sense of abandonment and rampant hostility.

Imagine a world that forgave the Jews, forgave the Germans, and forgave God. Imagine a world that created a way to provide sanctuary to any people threatened with genocide. Imagine a world that forgave each other and forgave ourselves. Yes, all were to blame. They were a stranger and we took them not in. They were hungry and we fed them not. They were thirsty and we gave them not to drink. They were naked and we clothed them not.

God does not give us the spirit of fear. (2nd Timothy 1:7) These people needed sanctuary at a time when people around the world were suffering from severe economic depression. There was real fear that there was not enough to share. There was fear that offering help would bring political retaliation. It was a time of fear.

Yet, through all this came many instances of individual charity, despite the threat of suffering, even unto death, for such acts.

Both Danny's and Reuven's fathers acted in ways that they saw best. Both Danny and Reuven learned to listen, to understand, and to see more clearly through the charity of their elders.

I myself have learned something of the power of forgiveness. In my case I came to rely upon the atonement of Jesus Christ. What a gift that is. As difficult as forgiveness is WITH the help of the Savior, I can't imagine what it would be without that promise to lean on. And yet, I trust it must be possible. Forgiveness is the only way to heal the heart. And the heart that is compassionate is the only way to life. I recently heard it said that "there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way." So too, there is no way to forgiveness, forgiveness is the way.

Let us not develop blinding scar tissue on our eyes by pre-judging another, whether it be those who lived before us or those that live beside us. Let us not develop spiritual atrophy in our hearts through hate.

I thank God for taking away my pain, through my Savior's love. I thank God for helping me to pray when I was not inclined to pray. I thank God for allowing me to live when I wanted to die. I thank God for forgiving me for wanting to die. I thank God for helping me to forgive, completely forgive and I thank God that another could forgive me. I thank God for forgiveness, through Jesus Christ and through the Gift of the Holy Ghost.

While we were on our evening walk I was thinking intermittently about what I might write once I got home. By going on a walk I was creating some thinking space for myself. I was curious what my mind would do with the experience of the book if left alone for a bit. I asked my husband if he remembered any of the lyrics to Simon & Garfunkle's popular song "The Sound of Silence". We came up with a few lines between us but admitted defeat and continued to enjoy the walk.

Once home I did an internet search, found the lyrics, and decided they didn't really apply to my thoughts about this book. Unless in the sense that Danny was fascinated by psychoanalysis and Reuven often had disturbing dreams he could not recall upon waking. The song begins, "In restless dreams I walked alone narrow streets of cobblestone..." The song implies that somewhere sense or truth can be found in the "sound of silence", which is what Danny's father hoped for his son. Words are often misunderstood, taken too seriously, or too lightly. We would not prescribe silence as a solution to self-absorbtion, and yet that is how Danny was raised.

If we are indeed children of a Heavenly Being, we too are raised in silence. Even if we believe in real-time revelation through a prophet, we are still required to listen to the spirit for answers to our personal prayers. We must hearken to that "still small voice" that is found inside for confirmation of our own witness to faith. Eventually, even our own family members pass beyond the veil of this life and we are left to a kind of silence. God's and our loved one's voices transcend the limitations of our outward senses and speak to our hearts. At any rate, that is our hope.