now that thousands of congregants will eulogize you today, in their car rides home, over the dinner table. A eulogy is no more than a summation of memories, and we will never forget you, because we cannot forget you, because we will miss you every day. To imagine a world without you in it is to imagine a world with a little less God in it, and yet, because God is not a diminishing resource, I cannot believe that.
Instead, I have to believe that you have melted back into His glory, your soul is like a returned favor, you are a star in his sky and a warm feeling in our hearts. We believe that you are with your forefathers, with your daughter, with your past, and at peace.
May God keep you; may he sing to you, and you to him.
Where do we look for you now, Reb?
We look where you have been trying-good, sweet Man of God-to get us to look all along.
We look up.
…The Things We Leave Behind
Emptiness is not tangible, but after the Reb died, I swear I could touch it, especially on Sundays when I used to make that train trip from New York. Over time, I filled that slot closer to home, with visits to Pastor Henry and the church on Trumbull. I got to know members of his congregation. I enjoyed his sermons. And although I was comfortable, more than ever, with my own faith, Henry laughingly dubbed me “the first official Jewish member of the congregation.” I came to the homeless nights and wrote more stories about them. People were moved. Some sent money-five dollars, ten dollars. One man drove an hour down a Michigan highway, walked in, looked around, seemed to choke up, then handed over a check for a thousand dollars and left.
Henry opened a bank account for repairs. Volunteers came down to serve food. One Sunday, a large suburban church, the Northville Christian Assembly, invited Henry out to the suburbs to speak. I went to watch him. He wore a long black robe and a wireless microphone. The scripture he chose was flashed up on two giant video screens as he read along. The lighting was perfect, the ceiling solid and dry, the sound was concert quality-there was even a huge grand piano on the stage-and the audience was almost entirely white and middle-class. But Henry was Henry, and before long, he was moving around, exhorting the crowd to earn interest on their talents, as Jesus had once urged in a parable. He told them not to be afraid of coming to his church in Detroit, to use their talents there. “If you’re looking for the miracles God can do with a life,” he said, “you’re looking at one.”
When he finished, everyone stood and clapped. Henry stepped back and humbly lowered his head.
I thought about his dilapidated church downtown. And I realized that, in some ways, we all have a hole in our roof, a gap through which tears fall and bad events blow like harsh wind. We feel vulnerable; we worry about what storm will strike next.
But seeing Henry that day, being cheered by all those new faces, I believe, as the Reb once told me, that, with a little faith, people can fix things, and they truly can change, because at that moment, you could not believe otherwise.
And so, although it is cold as I write this, with snow packed atop the blue tarp on the church roof, when the weather thaws-and it always thaws-we are going to fix that hole. One day, I tell Henry. We will fix that hole. We will shake the generosity tree and raise the funds and replace the roof. We will do it because it needs to be done. We will do it because it’s the right thing to do.
And we will do it because of a little girl from the congregation who was born prematurely, weighing only a few pounds-the doctors said she probably wouldn’t make it-but her parents prayed and she pulled through and she is now a ball of energy with a grin that could lure the cookies out of the jar. She is at the church almost every night. She skips between the tables for the homeless and lets them rub her head playfully. She doesn’t have a lot of toys and she isn’t scheduled for countless after-school activities, but she most certainly has a community, a loving home-and a family.
Her father is a one-legged man named Cass, and her mother is a former addict named Marlene. They were married in the I Am My Brother’s Keeper church; Pastor Henry Covington did the service.
And a year later, along came their precious little girl, who now runs around as if in God’s private playground.
Her name, fittingly, is “Miracle.”
The human spirit is a thing to behold.
I often wonder why the Reb asked me for a eulogy. I wonder if it was more for me than for him. The fact is, he trumped it moments later.
Just before the cantor began the final prayer, the Reb’s grandson, Ron, popped a cassette tape into a player on the pulpit. And over the same speakers where Albert Lewis’s voice used to ring out in wisdom, it rang out once more.
“Dear friends, this is the voice of your past rabbi speaking…”
He had recorded a message to be played upon his death. He had told no one-except Teela, his shopping companion and health care worker, who delivered the tape to his family. It was brief. But in it, the Reb answered the two questions he had most been asked in his life of faith.
One was whether he believed in God. He said he did.
The other was whether there is life after death. On this he said, “My answer here, too, is yes, there is something. But friends, I’m sorry. Now that I know, I can’t even tell you.”
The whole place broke up laughing.
I didn’t forget about the file on God. I went and retrieved it months later, on my own. I took it off the shelf. When I held it, I actually trembled, because for eight years I’d seen the word “God” written on the label, and after a while you imagine some holy wind is going to swoosh out.
I looked around the empty office. My stomach ached. I wished the Reb was with me. I yanked it open.
And he was.
Because there, inside the file, were hundreds of articles, clippings, and notes for sermons, all about God, with arrows and questions and scribbling in the Reb’s handwriting. And it hit me, finally, that this was the whole point of my time with the Reb and Henry: not the conclusion, but the search, the study, the journey to belief. You can’t fit the Lord in a box. But you can gather stories, tradition, wisdom, and in time, you needn’t lower the shelf; God is already nearer to thee.
Have you ever known a man of faith? Did you run the other way? If so, stop running. Maybe sit for a minute. For a glass of ice water. For a plate of corn bread. You may find there is something beautiful to learn, and it doesn’t bite you and it doesn’t weaken you, it only proves a divine spark lies inside each of us, and that spark may one day save the world.
Back in the sanctuary, the Reb concluded his taped message by saying, “Please love one another, talk to one another, don’t let trivialities dissolve friendships…”
Then he sang a simple tune, which translated to:
The congregation, one last time, joined in.
You could say it was the loudest prayer of his career.
