He was smiling broadly and warmly now, his eyes wrinkling at the comers, the hard lines of his face almost gone. And then he offered me his hand, his entire hand this time, not only the fingers, and I took it, and he held my hand a long time. I almost had the feeling he wanted to embrace me. Then our hands separated, and he went slowly up the aisle, his hands clasped behind his back, tall, a little stooped and, I thought, a little majestic. His young son trailed behind him, holding on to the caftan.

Danny and I remained alone in the synagogue. It occurred to me suddenly that not a single word had passed between him and his father all evening, except for the Talmud contest.

'I'll walk you part of the way home,' Danny offered, and we went out of the brownstone and down the stone stairway to the street. I could hear the caps of his shoes clearly against the stone of the stairway, and then against the cement pavement of the sidewalk.

It was night now, and cool, and a breeze blew against the sycamores and moved softly through the leaves. We walked in silence until Lee Avenue, then turned left. I was walking quickly, and Danny kept pace with my steps.

Walking along Lee Avenue, Danny said quietly, 'I know what you're thinking. You think he's a tyrant.'

I shook my head. 'I don't know what to think. One minute he's a tyrant, the next minute he's kind and gentle. I don't know what to think.'

'He's got a lot on his mind,' Danny said. 'He's a pretty complicated person.'

'Do you always go through that routine at the table?'

'Oh, sure. I don't mind it. I even enjoy it a little.'

'I've never seen anything like it in my life.'

'It's a family tradition,' Danny explained. 'My father's father used to do it with him. It goes all the way back.'

'It would scare me sick.'

'It's not that bad. The bad part is waiting until he makes the mistake. After that it's all right. But the mistakes aren't really very hard to find. He makes ones that he knows I can find. It's a kind of game almost.'

'Some game!'

'The second mistake tonight caught me off guard. But he made that one for you, really. That was very good, the way you caught it. He knew I wouldn't catch it. He just wanted to catch me, so he could tell me I wasn't listening. He was right. I wasn't listening. But I wouldn't have caught it even if I had listened. I'm no good in math. I've got a photographic memory for everything except math. You can't memorize math. You have to have a certain kind of head for it.'

'I hate to tell you what I think about that game,' I said, a little heatedly. 'What happens if you miss the mistake?'

'I haven't missed in years.'

'What happens when you do miss?'

He was silent a moment. 'It's uncomfortable for a while,' he said quietly. 'But he makes a joke or something, and we go into a Talmud discussion.'

'What a game!'I said. 'In front of all those people!'

'They love it,' Danny said. 'They're very proud to see us like that. They love to hear the Talmud discussed like that. Did you see their faces?'

'I saw them,' I said. 'How could I not see them? Does your father always use gematriya when he talks?'

'Not always. Very rarely, as a matter of fact. The people love it and always hope for it. But he does it rarely. I think he did it tonight only because you were there.'

'He's good at it, I'll say that much.'

'He wasn't too good tonight. Some of it was a little forced. He was fantastic a few months ago. He did it with Talmudic laws then. He was really great.'

'I thought it wasn't bad tonight: 'Well, it wasn't too good. He hasn't been feeling too well. He's worried about my brother.'

'What's wrong with your brother?'

'I don't know. They don't talk about it. Something about his blood. He's been sick for a few years now: 'I'm sorry to hear that, Danny.'

'He'll be all right. There's a pretty big doctor taking care of him now. He'll be all right.' His voice had the same strange quality it had had when he had talked about his brother on our way over to the synagogue earlier in the day – hope, wistfulness, almost an eagerness for something to take place. I thought Danny must love his little brother very much, though I didn't remember his saying a word to him all the time they had been together. 'Anyway,' Danny said, 'these contests, as you call them, are going to end as soon as I start studying with Rav Gershenson: 'Who?'

'Rav Gershenson. He's a great scholar. He's at Hirsch College. He teaches Talmud there. My father says that when I'm old enough to study with Rav Gershenson, I'll be old enough; for him not to worry whether I can catch him at mistakes or not. Then we'll just have the Talmud discussions. I'll like that.'

I was restraining my delight with considerable difficulty. The Samson Raphael Hirsch Seminary and College was the only yeshiva in the United States that offered a secular college education. It was located on Bedford Avenue, a few blocks from Eastern Parkway. My father had told me once that it had been built in the early twenties by a group of Orthodox Jews who wanted their sons to have both a Jewish and a secular education. Its college faculty was supposed to be excellent, and its rabbinic faculty consisted of some of the greatest Talmudists in the United States. A rabbinic ordination from its Talmud faculty was looked upon as the highest of Orthodox Jewish honors. It had been a foregone conclusion on my father's part and on mine that I would go on to there after high school for my bachelor's degree. When I told Danny that, his face burst into a smile.

'Well, that's wonderful!' he said. 'I'm happy to hear that.

That's really wonderful!'

'So we'll be going to the same college,' I said. 'Will you be going for a B. A.?'

'Sure. You have to. They don't let you study just Talmud in that college. I'll be majoring in psychology.'

We had come to the comer of the synagogue in which my father and I prayed. Danny stopped.

'I have to go back: he said. 'I've got schoolwork to do.'

'I'll call you at your house tomorrow afternoon.'

'I'll probably be in the library tomorrow afternoon, doing some reading in psychology. Why don't you come over there?'

'I won't be able to read anything.'

'That's right.' Danny smiled. 'I forgot. You didn't duck.'

'I'll come over anyway. I'll sit and think while you read.'

'Wonderful. I'd like to watch you sit and think.'

'Mitnagdim can think too, you know.' I said.

Danny laughed. 'I'll see you tomorrow.

'Right,' I said, and watched him walk away, tall and lean in his black caftan and black hat.

I hurried home and came into the apartment just as my father was beginning to dial the phone. He put the phone down and looked at me.

'Do you know what time it is?' he asked.

'Is it very late?' I glanced at my watch. It was almost ten thirty. 'I'm sorry, abba. I couldn't just walk out.'

'You were at Reb Saunders' synagogue all this time?'

'Yes.'

'Next time you are out so late you will call, yes? I was ready to telephone Reb Saunders to find out what happened. Come into the kitchen and sit down. What are you looking so excited about? Sit down. I'll make some tea. Did you eat? What happened that you were away so long?'

I sat at the kitchen table and slowly told my father everything that had taken place in Reb Saunders' synagogue. He sipped his tea and listened quietly. I saw him grimace when I began to go over the gematriyot. My father did not particularly care for gematriya. He had once referred to it as nonsense numerology and had said that anything could be proved that way, all that had to be done was to shift letters around adroitly so as to make the values come out any way you wanted. So he sat there, sipping his tea and grimacing, as I reviewed Reb Saunders' gematriyot. When I started to tell him what had happened afterward, the grimace left his face, and he listened intently, nodding his head from time to time and sipping his tea. And when I got to the part where Reb Saunders had asked me about the wrong gematriya, his face took on a look of astonishment, and he put the glass down on the table. Then I told him what Reb Saunders had said to me after Havdalah and what Danny and I had talked about on the way home, and he smiled proudly and nodded to indicate his happiness.