Have a Little Faith: A True Story

was never without a BlackBerry. My conversations could be a few words. “Call tomorrow.” Or “C U There.” I kept things short.

The Reb didn’t do short. He didn’t do e-mail. “In an e-mail, how can I tell if something is wrong?” he said. “They can write anything. I want to see them. If not, I want to hear them. If I can’t see them or hear them, how can I help them?”

He exhaled.

“Of course, in the old days…,” he said.

Then suddenly, he was singing:

“In the olllld days…I would go door to dooor…”

I remember, as a child, when the Reb came to someone’s house on our street. I remember pulling the curtain and looking out the window, maybe seeing his car parked out front. Of course, it was a different time. Doctors made house calls. Milkmen delivered to your stoop. No one had a security system.

The Reb would come to comfort a grieving family. He’d come if a child ran away or if someone got laid off. How nice would that be today if when a job was lost, a Man of God sat at the dinner table and encouraged you?

Instead, the idea seems almost archaic, if not invasive. No one wants to violate your “space.”

Do you ever make house calls anymore? I asked.

“Only if asked,” the Reb replied.

Do you ever get a call from someone who isn’t a member of your congregation?

“Certainly. In fact, two weeks ago, I got a call from the hospital. The person said, ‘A dying woman has requested a rabbi.’ So I went.

“When I got there, I saw a man sitting in a chair beside a woman who was gasping for breath. “Who are you?” he said. ‘Why are you here?’

“‘ I got a call,’ I said. ‘They told me someone is dying and wants to speak to me.’

“He got angry. ‘Take a look at her,’ he said. ‘Can she talk? I didn’t call you. Who called you?’

“I had no answer. So I let him rant. After a while, when he cooled down, he asked, ‘Are you married?’ I said yes. He said, ‘Do you love your wife?’ ‘Yes’, I said. ‘Would you want to see her die?’ ‘Not so long as there was hope for her to live,’ I said.

“We spoke for about an hour. At the end I said, ‘Do you mind if I recite a prayer for your wife?’ He said he would appreciate that. So I did.”

And then? I asked.

“And then I left.”

I shook my head. He spent an hour talking to a stranger? I tried to remember the last time I’d done that. Or if I’d ever done that.

Did you ever find out who called you? I asked.

“Well, not officially. But, on my way out, I saw a nurse who I remembered from other visits. She was a devout Christian. When I saw her, our eyes met, and even though she didn’t say anything, I knew it was her.”

Wait. A Christian woman called for a Jewish rabbi?

“She saw a man suffering. She didn’t want him to be alone.”

She had a lot of guts.

“Yes,” he said. “And a lot of love.”

A Little More History

Albert Lewis may have reached the point where a Christian nurse would call him for help, but traversing religious prejudices had not always been so smooth. Remember when Moses referred to himself as a “stranger in a strange land”? That phrase could have hung over the door when the Reb arrived in Haddon Heights, New Jersey, in 1948.

Back then, the borough was a railroad suburb, with trains running west to Philadelphia and east to the Atlantic Ocean. There were eight churches in town and just one synagogue-if you could call it that-a converted three-story Victorian house, with a Catholic church down one street and an Episcopalian church down another. While the churches had spires and brick facades, the Reb’s “temple” had a porch, a kitchen on the ground floor, bedrooms turned to classrooms, and old movie theater seats that had been installed for sanctuary use. A winding staircase ran up the middle.

The original “congregation” was maybe three dozen families, some of whom drove forty minutes to get there. They had sent a letter to the seminary desperately seeking a rabbi; if none was available, they would have to close down, because it was a struggle to continue operating. Initially, some neighborhood Christians had signed a petition to keep the synagogue from forming. The idea of a Jewish “community” was alien and threatening to them.

Once Al accepted the job, he set out to correct that. He joined the local ministerium. He reached out to clerics of all faiths. He tried to dispel any bad assumptions or prejudices by visiting schools and churches.

Some visits were easier than others.

One time, he was sitting in a church classroom, explaining his religion to the students. A boy raised his hand with a question.

“Where are your horns?”

The Reb was stunned.

“Where are your horns? Don’t all Jews have horns?”

The Reb sighed and invited the boy to the front of the room. He removed the skullcap (kippah) that he wore on his head and asked the boy to run his hands through his hair.

“Do you feel any horns?”

The boy rubbed.

“Keep looking. Do you?”

The boy finally stopped.

“No,” he said, quietly.

“Ah.”

The boy sat down.

“Now where was I?” the Reb said.

Another time, the Reb invited an Episcopalian priest to address his congregation. The two men had become friendly, and the Reb thought it a good idea if clergymen were welcome in each other’s sanctuaries.

It was a Friday night service. After prayers were sung, the priest was introduced. He stepped to the pulpit. The congregation quieted.

“It’s a pleasure for me to be here,” he said, “and I thank the rabbi for inviting me…”

Suddenly, tears began to well in his eyes. He spoke about how good a man Albert Lewis was. Then he blurted out, in a gush of emotion, “That is why, please, you must help me get your rabbi to accept Jesus Christ as his savior.”

Dead silence.

“He’s a lovely person,” the priest lamented, “and I don’t want him to go to hell…”

More dead silence.

“Please, have him accept Jesus. Please…”

Few attendees ever forgot that service.

And then there was the time when a member of the Reb’s congregation, a German immigrant named Gunther Dreyfus, came racing in during a High Holiday service and pulled the Reb aside.

Gunther’s face was ashen. His voice was shaking.