Judaism has always fascinated me. I have always said if I couldn't be a Christian, I would be a Jew. Candles, Hebrew, their Simchat Torah, when they dance with their scrolls, rituals that enlighten every day. Believing Jews love God in ways few Christians do, I think, myself included.
Anyway, in the book, Danny is a Hasidic Jew whose father is the tzaddik, the chief rabbi of this particular community. Danny's best friend, the narrator of the book, is named Reuven and is an Orthodox Jew, more liberal than the Hasids but still very thoroughly Jewish. Anyway, Danny becomes increasingly interested in Freudian psychology even as he is supposed to be training to succeed his father as tzaddik. He slowly realizes he wants to be a psychologist, not a rabbi; although Reuven wants to be a rabbi, ironically. Meanwhile Danny's father raises him in silence, not speaking to him except when they are studying Talmud together. The silence has been going on since Danny was four years old.
Danny suffers terribly as a result of what would now be considered child abuse. He has Reuven, but eventually because of Reuven's father's zealous leadership in the Zionist community (attempting to establish Israel as a Jewish state after the Holocaust became public knowledge), Danny's father forbids Danny from speaking to Reuven. If he does, Danny will be removed from the prestigious school and homeschooled instead. Danny's Hasidic peers see him, like his father, as godlike, a prophet and not a peer. He is left terribly alone.
Ultimately he decides to go to graduate school to become a clinical psychologist, using Freudian psychoanalysis to help heal people, going against the long-standing tradition of the community that the oldest son should become the next tzaddik. Danny lives in terror of his father finding out. Eventually Danny's father invites Reuven over for Passover, and the three sit down. Speaking to Danny through Reuven, Danny's father says he has raised him in silence because his brilliant mind and boundless ego kept Danny from loving. He had to suffer in silence to know pain and be able to carry other's pain.
Danny's father cries out, "A heart I need for a son, a soul I need for a son, compassion I want from my son, righteousness, mercy, strength to suffer and carry pain, that I want from my son, not a mind without a soul!"
He concludes by saying the silence has done its work, that Danny shall be tzaddik and carry the sufferings of the world as a psychologist, and the silence is broken and they talk again.
I have read that holy book more times than I can count, and every time it haunts me.
Aren't we all Danny? Doesn't our Father God withdraw from us all in silence at times to teach us how to suffer and carry the pain of others, to "walk around inside yourself in company with your soul," as the novel says?
The great Soren Kierkegaard wrote in his journal, "To love God and to be loved by God is to suffer." (He always had a flair for melancholy drama, I think.)
But isn't it so, on some levels, anyway? The promise is that we emerge from the scourge of the infinitely loving silence of God to comfort each other, to heal, to minister, to be priests (for we are all, who believe in Christ, priests of God), tzaddiks.
Danny says slowly, thoughtfully, "You can listen to silence, Reuven. I've begun to realize you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and dimension all its own. It talks to me sometimes. I feel myself alive in it. It talks. And I can hear it."
What a terrible paradox-- the silence speaks, the absent God is near, the dark nights enlighten us beyond measure.
Danny's father weeps uncontrollably throughout the book. He often can't finish his breakfast, he prays long prayers, swaying, tears dripping from his gray beard...
Perhaps if we are silent enough we can hear the tears of God.
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