the Reb, in his robe, stands waiting.
He looks down through his glasses. He motions for me to sit. The chair seems huge. I spot his prayer book, which has clippings stuffed in the pages. I feel like I am inside his private lair. He sings loudly and I sing, too-also loudly, so he won’t think I am slacking-but my bones are actually trembling. I am finished with the obligatory part of my Bar Mitzvah, but nothing is as unsettling as what is about to come: the conversation with the rabbi. You cannot study for this. It is free-form. Worst of all, you have to stand right next to him. No running from God.
When the prayer finishes, I rise. I barely reach above the lectern, and some congregants have to shift to see me.
“So, how are you feeling, young man?” the Reb says. “Relieved?”
Yeah, I mumble.
I hear muffled laughter from the crowd.
“When we spoke a few weeks ago, I asked you what you thought about your parents. Do you remember?”
Sort of, I say.
More laughter.
“I asked if you felt they were perfect, or if they needed improvement. And do you remember what you said?”
I freeze.
“You said they weren’t perfect, but…”
He nods at me. Go ahead. Speak.
But they don’t need improvement? I say.
“But they don’t need improvement,” he says. “This is very insightful. Do you know why?”
No, I say.
More laughter.
“Because it means you are willing to accept people as they are. Nobody is perfect. Not even Mom and Dad. That’s okay.”
He smiles and puts two hands on my head. He recites a blessing. “May the Lord cause his countenance to shine upon you…”
So now I am blessed. The Lord shines on me.
Does that mean I get to do more stuff, or less?
Life of Henry
About the time that, religiously, I was becoming “a man,” Henry was becoming a criminal.
He began with stolen cars. He played lookout while his older brother jimmied the locks. He moved on to purse snatching, then shoplifting, particularly grocery stores; stealing pork chop trays and sausages, hiding them in his oversized pants and shirts.
School was a lost cause. When others his age were going to football games and proms, Henry was committing armed robbery. Young, old, white, black, didn’t matter. He waved a gun and demanded their cash, their wallets, their jewels.
The years passed. Over time, he made enemies on the streets. In the fall of 1976, a neighborhood rival tried to set him up in a murder investigation. The guy told the cops Henry was the killer. Later, he said it was someone else.
Still, when those cops came to question him, Henry, now nineteen years old with a sixth-grade education, figured he could turn the tables on his rival and collect a five-thousand-dollar reward in the process.
So instead of saying “I have no idea” or “I was nowhere near there,” he made up lies about who was where, who did what. He made up one lie after another. He put himself at the scene, but not as a participant. He thought he was being smart.
He couldn’t have been dumber. He wound up lying his way into an arrest-along with another guy-on a manslaughter charge. The other guy went to trial, was convicted, and got sent away for twenty-five years. Henry’s lawyer quickly recommended a plea deal. Seven years. Take it.
Henry was devastated. Seven years? For a crime he didn’t commit?
“What should I do?” he asked his mother.
“Seven is less than twenty-five,” she said.
He fought back tears. He took the deal in a courtroom. He was led away in handcuffs.
On the bus ride to prison, Henry cursed the fact that he was being punished unfairly. He didn’t do the math on the times he could have been jailed and wasn’t. He was angry and bitter. And he swore that life would owe him once he got out.
The Things We Lose…
It was now the summer of 2003, and we were in the kitchen. His wife, Sarah, had cut up a honeydew, and the Reb, wearing a white short-sleeved shirt, red socks, and sandals-these combinations no longer startled me-held out a plate.
“Eat some,” he said.
In a bit.
“You’re not hungry?”
In a bit.
“It’s good for you.”
I ate a piece.
“You
I rolled my eyes. He was clowning with me. I never thought I’d still be coming, three years after our visits began. When someone asks for a eulogy, you suspect the end is near.
But the Reb, I’d learned, was like a tough old tree; he bent with the storms but he would not snap. Over the years, he had beaten back Hodgkin’s disease, pneumonia, irregular heart rhythms, and a small stroke.
These days, to safeguard his now eighty-five-year-old body, he took a daily gulping of pills, including Dilantin for seizure control, and Vasotec and Toprol for his heart and his blood pressure. He had recently endured a bout with shingles. Not long before this visit, he had tumbled, fractured his rib cage, and spent a few days in the hospital, where his doctor implored him to use a cane everywhere-“For your own safety,” the doctor said. He rarely did, thinking the congregation might see him as weak.
But whenever I showed up, he was raring to go. And I was privately happy he fought his body’s decay. I did not like seeing him frail. He had always been this towering figure, a tall and upright Man of God.
Selfishly, that’s how I wanted him to stay.
Besides, I had witnessed the alternative. Eight years earlier, I’d watched an old and beloved professor of mine, Morrie Schwartz, slowly die of ALS. I visited him on Tuesdays in his home outside Boston. And every week, although his spirit shone, his body decayed.
Less than eight months from our first visit, he was dead.
I wanted Albert Lewis-who was born the same year as Morrie-to last longer. There were so many things I never got to ask my old professor. So many times I told myself, “If I only had a few more minutes…”
I looked forward to my encounters with the Reb-me sitting in the big green chair, him searching hopelessly for a letter on his desk. Some visits, I would fly straight from Detroit to Philadelphia. But mostly I came on Sunday mornings, taking a train from New York City after filming a TV show there. I arrived during church hours, so I guess this was our own little church time, if you can refer to two Jewish men talking religion as church.
My friends reacted with curiosity or disbelief.
