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all; he was very near-sighted.
It had not always been so. Up
to the age of ten or eleven
he had been able to do all
the things the other boys his
age could do, but at some
point he dropped out of their
games, moved less assuredly,
squinted, and leaning ever
closer to the scroll when he
read. It had not bothered him
at first, coming on so gradually
that he had barely noticed;
it was just that he often had
headaches.
Eusebius, the teacher who
took care of him and ten or
fifteen other boys in the house
of prayer (that was what the
community paid him for), told
Joseph that, in his opinion,
Uri had poor eyesight. Joseph
had protested: no one in his
family had poor eyesight, his
son included. The teacher just
shook his head. Joseph’s first-
born was his only son, his wife
had not become pregnant
again after the second girl was
born, so the teacher realized
that Joseph was in a difficult
position.
That evening his father had
interrogated him.
“Is it true that you don’t see
well?” he asked pointedly.
He walked over to the furthest
corner in the main room and
asked how many fingers he
was holding up. The main
room was not all that big, but
even so, the hand was a long
way off, and it was dim as
well. The oil lamp was barely
flickering, but it gave off a lot
of fumes, and that too was
bothersome. Uri sighed and
chose at random, “Two.” From
the silence that followed, he
could tell that he had guessed
wrong.
That was when relations