Before the weather turned cold, Henry occasionally cooked on a grill by the side of the church; chicken, shrimp, whatever he could get donated. He gave it out to whoever was hungry. He even preached sometimes on a low crumbling concrete wall across the street.
“I’ve spread as much of God’s word on that wall,” Henry said one day, “as I have inside.”
How is that?
“Because some people aren’t ready to come in. Maybe they feel guilty, on accounta what they’re up to. So I go out there, bring them a sandwich.”
Kind of like a house call?
“Yeah. Except most of ’em don’t have houses.”
Are some of them on drugs?
“Oh, yeah. But so are some folks coming in on Sundays.”
You’re kidding. During your service?
“Whoo, yeah. I’m looking right at them. You see that head whoppin’ and boppin’ and you say, ‘Umm-hmm, they had something powerful.’”
That doesn’t bother you?
“Not at all. You know what I tell them? I don’t care if you’re drunk, or you just left the drug house, I don’t care. When I’m sick, I go to the emergency room. And if the problem continues, I go again. So whatever’s ailing you, let this church be your emergency room. Until you get the healing, don’t stop coming.”
I studied Henry’s wide, soft face.
Can I ask you something? I said.
“Okay.”
What did you rob from that synagogue?
He exhaled and laughed. “Believe it or not—envelopes.”
Envelopes?
“That’s it. I was just a teenager. Some older guys had broken in before me and stolen anything valuable. All I found was a box of envelopes. I took ’em and ran out.”
Do you even remember what you did with them?
“No,” he answered. “I sure don’t.”
I looked at him, looked at his church, and wondered if one man’s life ever truly makes sense to another.
I take home a box of the Reb’s old sermons. I leaf through them. There is one from the 1950s on “The Purpose of a Synagogue” and one from the 1960s called “The Generation Gap.”
I see one entitled “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.” It is from the late 1970s. I read it. I do a double take.
It is an appeal to fix the collapsing roof.
“Our roof sheds copious tears after each rain,” the Reb wrote. He mentioned sitting in the sanctuary when a “sodden wet ceiling tile” fell and just missed him, and a wedding celebration in which two days of rain “created unwanted gravy on the chicken.” During a morning service, he had to grab a broom and puncture a buckling tile to allow the rainwater to gush through.
In the sermon, he beseeches members to give more to keep their house of worship from literally caving in.
I think about Pastor Henry and his roof hole. It is the first time I see a connection. An inner-city church. A suburban synagogue.
Then again, our congregation ultimately came up with the money. And Henry couldn’t even ask his.
NOVEMBER
Your Faith, My Faith
When I was a teenager, the Reb did a sermon that made me laugh. He read a thank-you letter from another clergyman. At the end, it was signed: “May your god—and our god—bless you.”
I laughed at the idea that two Almightys could be sent the same message. I was too young to realize the more serious shadings of that distinction.
Once I moved to the Midwest—to an area some nicknamed the “Northern Bible Belt”—the issue became weightier. I had strangers tell me “God bless you” in the grocery store. What should I say to that? I interviewed athletes who credited their “Lord and savior, Jesus Christ” for touchdowns or home runs. I worked volunteer projects with Hindus, Buddhists, Catholics. And because metro Detroit boasts the largest Arab population outside of the Middle East, Muslim issues were a regular part of life, including a debate over a local mosque broadcasting Adhan, the daily call to prayer, in a largely Polish neighborhood that already rang with church bells.
In other words, “May your god and our god bless you”—and whose god was blessing whom—had gone from funny to controversial to confrontational. I found myself keeping quiet. Almost hiding. I think many people in minority religions do this. Part of the reason I drifted from my faith was that I didn’t want to feel defensive about it. A pathetic reason, looking back, but true.
One Sunday, not long before Thanksgiving, I took the train from New York, entered the Reb’s house, greeted him with a hug, and trooped behind him to his office, his metal walker leading the way. It now had a small basket in front, which contained a few books and, for some reason, a red maraca gourd.
“I have found that if the walker looks like a shopping cart,” the Reb said, mischievously, “the congregation is more comfortable.”
His eulogy request now sat like a term paper in my mind. On some visits, I felt I had forever to finish it; on others, I felt I had days, not even weeks. Today, the Reb seemed well, his eyes clear, his voice strong, which reassured me. Once we sat, I told him about the homeless charity and even the rescue mission where I’d spent the night.
I wasn’t sure I should mention a Christian mission to a rabbi, and the moment I said it, I felt guilty, like a traitor. I remembered a story the Reb had told me once about taking his old-world grandmother to a baseball game. When everyone jumped and cheered at a home run, she stayed seated. He turned and asked why she wasn’t clapping for the big hit. And she said to him, in Yiddish, “Albert, is it good for the Jews?”
My worry was wasted. The Reb made no such value judgments. “Our faith tells us to do charitable acts and to aid the poor in our community,” he said. “That is being righteous, no matter who you help.”
Soon we had tumbled into a most fundamental debate. How can different religions coexist? If one faith believes one thing, and another believes something else, how can they both be correct? And does one religion have the right—or even the obligation—to try to convert the other?
The Reb had been living with these issues all of his professional life. “In the early 1950s,” he recalled, “our congregation’s kids used to wrap their Jewish books in brown paper before they got on the bus. Remember, to many around here, we were the first Jewish people they had ever seen.”
Did that make for some strange moments?
He chuckled. “Oh, yes. I remember one time a congregant came to me all upset, because her son, the only Jewish boy in his class, had been cast in the school’s Christmas play. And they cast him as Jesus.
“So I went to the teacher. I explained the dilemma. And she said, ‘But that’s why we chose him, Rabbi. Because Jesus was a Jew!’”
I remembered similar incidents. In elementary school, I was left out of the big, colorful Christmas productions of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” or “Jingle Bells.” Instead, I had to join the school’s few other Jewish kids onstage, as we sang the Hanukah song, “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel, I Made It Out of Clay.” We held hands and moved in a circle, imitating a spinning top. No props. No costumes. At the end of the song, we all fell down.
I swear I saw some gentile parents hiding their laughter.
Is there any winning a religious argument? Whose God is better than whose? Who got the Bible right or wrong? I preferred figures like Rajchandra, the Indian poet who influenced Gandhi by teaching that no religion was superior because they all brought people closer to God; or Gandhi himself, who would break a fast with Hindu prayers, Muslim quotations, or a Christian hymn.
Over the years, the Reb had lived his beliefs, but never tried to convert anyone to them. As a general rule, Judaism does not seek converts. In fact, the tradition is to first discourage them, emphasizing the difficulties and suffering the religion has endured.
This is not the case with all religions. Throughout history, countless millions have been slaughtered for failing to convert, to accept another god, or to denounce their own beliefs. Rabbi Akiva, the famous second-centu
ry scholar, was tortured to death by the Romans for refusing to give up his religious study. As they raked his flesh with iron combs, he whispered his final words on earth, “Hear, oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” He died with the word “one” on his lips.
That prayer—and the word “one”—were integral to the Reb’s beliefs. One, as in the singular God. One, as in the Lord’s creation, Adam.
“Ask yourself, ‘Why did God create but one man?’” the Reb said, wagging a finger. “Why, if he meant for there to be faiths bickering with each other, didn’t he create that from the start? He created trees, right? Not one tree, countless trees. Why not the same with man?
“Because we are all from that one man—and all from that one God. That’s the message.”
Then why, I asked, is the world so fractured?
“Well, you can look at it this way. Would you want the world to all look alike? No. The genius of life is its variety.
“Even in our own faith, we have questions and answers, interpretations, debates. In Christianity, in Catholicism, in other faiths, the same thing—debates, interpretations. That is the beauty. It’s like being a musician. If you found the note, and you kept hitting that note all the time, you would go nuts. It’s the blending of the different notes that makes the music.”
The music of what?
“Of believing in something bigger than yourself.”
But what if someone from another faith won’t recognize yours? Or wants you dead for it?
“That is not faith. That is hate.” He sighed. “And if you ask me, God sits up there and cries when that happens.”
He coughed, then, as if to reassure me, he smiled. He had fulltime help at the house now; his home care workers had included a tall woman from Ghana and a burly Russian man. Now, on weekdays, there was a lovely Hindu woman from Trinidad named Teela. She helped get him dressed and do some light exercises in the morning, fixed his meals, and drove him to the supermarket and synagogue. Sometimes she would play Hindi religious music over her car stereo. The Reb enjoyed it and asked for a translation. When she talked about reincarnation, per her faith, he quizzed her and apologized for not knowing more about Hinduism over the years.
How can you—a cleric—be so open-minded? I asked.
“Look. I know what I believe. It’s in my soul. But I constantly tell our people: you should be convinced of the authenticity of what you have, but you must also be humble enough to say that we don’t know everything. And since we don’t know everything, we must accept that another person may believe something else.”
He sighed.
“I’m not being original here, Mitch. Most religions teach us to love our neighbor.”
I thought about how much I admired him at that moment. How he never, even in private, even in old age, tried to bully another belief, or bad-mouth someone else’s devotion. And I realized I had been a bit of a coward on this whole faith thing. I should have been more proud, less intimidated. I shouldn’t have bitten my tongue. If the only thing wrong with Moses is that he’s not yours; if the only thing wrong with Jesus is that he’s not yours; if the only thing wrong with mosques, Lent, chanting, Mecca, Buddha, confession, or reincarnation is that they’re not yours—well, maybe the problem is you.
One more question? I asked the Reb.
He nodded.
When someone from another faith says, “God bless you,” what do you say?
“I say, ‘Thank you, and God bless you, too.’”
Really?
“Why shouldn’t I?”
I went to answer and realized I had no answer. No answer at all.
I read up on Buddhist stories and parables.
One concerns a farmer who wakes up to find that his horse has run off.
The neighbors come by and say, “Too bad. Such awful luck.”
The farmer says, “Maybe.”
The next day, the horse returns with a few other horses. The neighbors congratulate the farmer on his reversal of fortune.
“Maybe,” the farmer says.
When his son tries to ride one of the new horses, he breaks his leg, and the neighbors offer condolences.
“Maybe,” the farmer says.
And the next day, when army officials come to draft the son—and don’t take him because of his broken leg—everyone is happy.
“Maybe,” the farmer says.
I have heard stories like this before. They are beautiful in their simplicity and surrender to the universe. I wonder if I could be attached to something so detached. I don’t know. Maybe.
The Things We Find…
After leaving the Reb’s house, I stopped at the synagogue, seeking information on the original building back in the 1940s.
“That might be in our files,” a woman had told me over the phone.
I didn’t know there were files, I’d said.
“We have files on everything. We have a file on you.”
You’re kidding. Can I see it?
“You can have it if you want.”
Now I walked into the foyer. The religious school was still in session, and there were kids everywhere. The preteen girls loped with awkward self-awareness, and the boys ran the halls and grabbed their heads to keep their yarmulkes from falling off.
Nothing had changed, I thought. Usually, this would make me feel superior. I had soared away while the poor hometown kids were doing the same old thing. But this time, I don’t know why, all I felt was empty distance.
Hi, I said to a woman behind the desk. My name is—
“Come on, we know you. Here’s the file.”
I blinked. I almost forgot that my family had been part of this place for four decades.
Thanks, I said.
“Sure thing.”
I took the file on me and headed home, or to the place I called home now.
On the plane I leaned back and undid a rubber band that held the file’s contents. I reflected on my life since New Jersey. My plans as a young man—my “citizen of the world” dreams—had come true, to a degree. I had friends in different time zones. I’d had books published in foreign languages. I’d had many addresses over the years.
But you can touch everything and be connected to nothing. I knew airports better than I knew local neighborhoods. I knew more names in other area codes than I did on my block. The “community” I had joined was the community of the workplace. Friends were through work. Conversation was about work. Most of my socialization came through work.
And in recent months, those workplace pillars had been falling down. Friends were laid off. Downsized. They took buyouts. Offices closed. People who were always in one place were no longer there when you called. They sent e-mails saying they were exploring “exciting new options.” I never believed the “exciting” part.
And without the work connection, the human ties released, like magnets losing their attraction. We promised to keep up, but the promises were not kept. Some people behaved as if unemployment were contagious. Anyhow, without the commonality of work—the complaints, the gossip—how much was there to talk about?
When I dumped the contents of my personal file onto the tray table, I found report cards, old papers, even a religious school play I wrote in fourth grade on Queen Esther:
MORDECHI: Esther!
ESTHER: Yes, Uncle?
MORDECHI: Go to the castle.
ESTHER: But I have nothing to wear!
There were also copies of congratulatory letters from the Reb—some handwritten—on getting into college, on my engagement. I felt ashamed. He had tried to stay in touch with these notes. And I didn’t even remember receiving them.
I thought about my connections in life. I thought about workplace friends who were fired, or had quit due to illness. Who comforted them? Where did they go? Not to me. Not to their former bosses.
Often, it seemed, they were helped by their churches or temples. Members took up collections. They cooked meals. They gave money to pay bills. They did it with love, emp
athy, and the knowledge that it was part of the supportive undercarriage of a “sacred community,” like the ones the Reb spoke about, like the one I guess I had once belonged to, even if I didn’t realize it.
The plane landed. I collected the papers, wrapped them back in the rubber band, and felt a small grief, like a person who discovers, upon returning from a trip, that something has been left behind and there is no way now to retrieve it.
Thanksgiving
Fall surrendered quickly in Detroit, and in what seemed like minutes, the trees were bare and the color siphoned out of the city, leaving it a barren and concrete place, under milky skies and early snowfalls. We rolled up the car windows. We took out the heavy coats. Our jobless rate was soaring. People couldn’t afford their homes. Some just packed up and walked out, left their whole world behind to bankers or scavengers. It was still November. A long winter lay ahead.
On a Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I came by the I Am My Brother’s Keeper Ministry to see firsthand the homeless program it operated. I still wasn’t totally at ease with Pastor Henry. Everything about his church was different—at least to me. But what the Reb had said resonated, that you can embrace your own faith’s authenticity and still accept that others believe in something else.
Besides, that whole thing about a community—well, Detroit was my city. So I put my toe in the water. I helped Henry purchase a blue tarp for his ceiling, which stretched over the leaking section, so at least the sanctuary would not be flooded. Fixing the roof was a much bigger job, maybe eighty thousand dollars, according to a contractor.
“Whoo,” Henry had gushed, when we heard the estimate. Eighty thousand dollars was more than his church had seen in years. I felt badly for him. But that would have to come from some more committed source. A tarp—a toe in the water—was enough from me.