Have a Little Faith: A True Story

tumbled one into another. He swayed back and forth and spoke the name repeatedly. Minutes passed. His knees began to ache.

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…”

“Call him!” the church members hollered. “Call on him!”

“Jesus-Jesus-Jesus-Jesus-Jesus-”

“It’s coming! Call him now!”

His head was pounding. His shins cramped in pain.

“JesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesus-”

“Almost! Almost!”

“Call him! Call him!”

He was sweating, choking, fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. Finally the words were so tumbled and bumbled that it didn’t sound like “Jesus” anymore, just syllables and gurgling and mumbling and groaning and saliva drooling from his mouth onto the newspaper. His voice and tongue and teeth and lips were melded into a shaking machine, gone wild with frenzy-

“JelesulsjesleuesJesuslelelajJelsusu-”

“You got it! He got it!”

And he had it. Or he thought he had it. He exhaled and he heaved and he almost choked. He took a big breath and tried to calm himself down. He wiped his chin. Someone balled up the wet newspaper and took it away.

“How do you feel now?” the pastor asked him.

“Good,” Henry panted.

“You feel good that He has given you the Holy Ghost?”

And he did. Feel good. Although he wasn’t really sure what he’d done. But the pastor smiled and asked the Lord to protect Henry and that was mostly what he wanted, a prayer of protection. It made him feel safe when he returned to his neighborhood.

Henry ingested the Holy Ghost that night. But soon he ingested other things, too. He started smoking cigarettes. He tried alcohol. He got tossed out of the sixth grade for fighting with a girl, and soon he added marijuana to his list.

One time, as a teenager, he heard his mother talking to relatives about how, of all her children, Henry was the one, he had the heart and the temperament. Her little boy was “gonna be a preacher one day.”

And Henry laughed to himself. “A preacher? Do you know how much of this stuff I’m smoking?”

The Daily Grind of Faith

The Reb’s office at work was not much different than the home version. Messy. Sprawling. Papers. Letters. Souvenirs. And a sense of humor. On the door was a list of blessings, some funny posters, even a mock parking sign that read:

YOU TAKA MY SPACE

I BREAKA YOUR FACE.

Once we sat, I cleared my throat. My question was simple. Something one would certainly need to know to construct a proper eulogy.

Why did you get into this business?

“This business?”

Religion.

“Ah.”

Did you have a calling?

“I wouldn’t say so, no.”

There wasn’t a vision? A dream? God didn’t come to you in some shape or form?

“I think you’ve been reading too many books.”

Well. The Bible.

He grinned. “I am not in that one.”

I meant no disrespect. It’s just that I had always felt that rabbis, priests, pastors, any cleric, really, lived on a plane between mortal ground and heavenly sky. God up there. Us down here. Them in between.

This was easy to believe with the Reb, at least when I was younger. In addition to his imposing presence and his brilliant reputation, there were his sermons. Delivered with passion, humor, roaring indignation or stirring whispers, the sermon, for Albert Lewis, was like the fastball for a star pitcher, like the aria for Pavarotti. It was the reason people came; we knew it-and deep down, I think he knew it. I’m sure there are congregations where they slip out before the sermon begins. Not ours. Wristwatches were glanced at and footsteps hurried when people thought they might be late for the Reb’s message.

Why? I guess because he didn’t approach the sermon in a traditional way. I would later learn that, while he was trained in a formal, academic style-start at point A, move to point B, provide analysis and supporting references-after two or three tries in front of people, he gave up. They were lost. Bored. He saw it on their faces.

So he began with the first chapter of Genesis, broke it down to the simplest of ideas and related them to everyday life. He asked questions. He took questions. And a new style was born.

Over the years, those sermons morphed into gripping performances. He spoke with the cues of a magician, moving from one crescendo to the next, mixing in a Biblical quotation, a Sinatra song, a vaudeville joke, Yiddish expressions, even calling, on occasion, for audience participation (“Can I get a volunteer?”). Anything was fair game. There was a sermon where he pulled up a stool and read Dr. Seuss’s Yertle the Turtle. There was a sermon where he sang “Those Were the Days.” There was a sermon where he brought a squash and a piece of wood, then slammed each with a knife to show that things which grow quickly are often more easily destroyed than those which take a long time.

He might quote Newsweek, Time, the Saturday Evening Post, a Peanuts cartoon, Shakespeare, or the TV series Matlock. He’d sing in English, in Hebrew, in Italian, or in a mock Irish accent; pop songs, folk songs, ancient songs. I learned more about the power of language from the Reb’s sermons than from any book I ever read. You could glance around the room and see how no one looked away; even when he was scolding them, they were riveted. Honestly, you exhaled when he finished, that’s how good he was.

Which is why, given his profession, I wondered if he’d been divinely inspired. I remembered Moses and the burning bush; Elijah and the still, small voice; Balaam and the donkey; Job and the whirlwind. To preach holy words, I assumed, one must have had some revelation.

“It doesn’t always work that way,” the Reb said.

So what drew you in?

“I wanted to be a teacher.”

A religious teacher?

“A history teacher.”

Like in normal school?

“Like in normal school.”

But you went to the seminary.

“I tried.”

You tried?

“The first time, I failed.”

You’re kidding me.

“No. The head of the seminary, Louis Finkelstein, pulled me aside and said, ‘Al, while you know much, we do