Have A Little Faith Part 3

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? G.o.d 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. G.o.d 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 pa.s.sion, 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. Wrist.w.a.tches 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 partic.i.p.ation ("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. 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. 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, Newsweek, Time, the the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post, Sat.u.r.day Evening Post, a a Peanuts Peanuts cartoon, Shakespeare, or the TV series cartoon, Shakespeare, or the TV series Matlock. 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. 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 a.s.sumed, 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 not feel you have what it takes to be a good and inspiring rabbi.'"

What did you do?

"What could I do? I left."

Now, this stunned me. There were many things you could have said about Albert Lewis. But not having what it took to inspire and lead a congregation? Unthinkable. Maybe he was too gentle for the seminary leaders. Or too shy. Whatever the reason, the failure crushed him.

He took a summer job as a camp counselor in Port Jervis, New York. One of the campers was particularly difficult. If the other kids collected in one place, this kid went someplace else. If asked to sit, he would defiantly stand.

The kid's name was Phineas, and Al spent most of the summer encouraging him, listening to his problems, smiling patiently. Al understood adolescent angst. He'd been a pudgy teen in a cloistered religious environment. He'd had few friends. He'd never really dated.

So Phineas found a kindred soul in his counselor. And by the end of camp, the kid had changed.

A few weeks later, Al got a call from Phineas's father, inviting him to dinner. It turned out the man was Max Kadus.h.i.+n, a great Jewish scholar and a major force in the Conservative movement. At the table that night, he said, "Al, I can't thank you enough. You sent back a different kid. You sent me a young man."

Al smiled.

"You have a way with people-particularly children."

Al said thank you.

"Have you ever thought about trying for the seminary?"

Al almost spit out his food.

"I did try," he said. "I didn't make it."

Max thought for a moment.

"Try again," he said.

And with Kadus.h.i.+n's help, Albert Lewis's second try went better than the first. He excelled. He was ordained.

Not long after that, he took a bus to New Jersey to interview for his first and only pulpit position, the one he still held more than fifty years later.

No angel? I asked. No burning bush?

"A bus," the Reb said, grinning.

I scribbled a note. The most inspirational man I knew only reached his potential by helping a child reach his.

As I left his office, I tucked away the yellow pad. From our meetings I now knew he believed in G.o.d, he spoke to G.o.d, he became a Man of G.o.d sort of by accident, and he was good with kids. It was a start.

We walked to the lobby. I looked around at the big building I usually saw once a year.

"It's good to come home, yes?" the Reb said.

I shrugged. It wasn't my home anymore.

Is it okay, I asked, to tell these stories, when I...you know...do the eulogy?

He stroked his chin.

"When that time comes," he said, "I think you'll know what to say."

Life of Henry

When Henry was fourteen, his father died after a long illness. Henry wore a suit to the funeral home, because Willie Covington insisted all his sons have suits, even if there was no money for anything else.

The family approached the open coffin. They stared at the body. Willie had been extremely dark-skinned, but the parlor had made him up to be an auburn shade. Henry's oldest sister began to wail. She started wiping off the makeup, screaming, "My daddy don't look like that!" Henry's baby brother tried to crawl into the coffin. His mother wept.

Henry watched quietly. He only wanted his father back.

Before G.o.d, Jesus, or any higher power, Henry had wors.h.i.+pped his dad, a former mattress maker from North Carolina who stood six foot five and had a chest full of gunshot scars, the details of which were never explained to his children. He was a tough man who chain-smoked and liked to drink, but when he came home at night, inebriated, he was often tender, and he'd call Henry over and say, "Do you love your daddy?"

"Yeah," Henry would say.

"Give your daddy a hug now. Give your daddy a kiss."

Willie was an enigma, a man with no real job who was a stickler for education, a hustler and loan shark who forbade stolen goods in his house. When Henry began smoking in the sixth grade, his father's only response was: "Don't never ask me me for a cigarette." for a cigarette."

But Willie loved his children, and he challenged them, quizzing them on school subjects, offering a dollar for easy questions, ten dollars for a math problem. Henry loved to hear him sing-especially the old spirituals, like "It's Cool Down Here by the River Jordan."

But soon his singing stopped. Willie hacked and coughed. He developed emphysema and tuberculosis of the brain. In the last year of his life, he was virtually bedridden. Henry cooked his meals and carried them to his room, even as his father coughed up blood and barely ate a thing.

One night, after Henry brought him dinner, his father looked at him sadly and rasped, "Listen, son, you ever run out of cigarettes, you can have some of mine."

A few weeks later, he was dead.

At the funeral, Henry heard a Baptist preacher say something about the soul and Jesus, but not much got through. He kept thinking his father would come back, just show up at the door one day, singing his favorite songs.

Months pa.s.sed. It didn't happen.

Finally, having lost his only hero, Henry, the hustler's son, made a decision: from now on, he would take what he wanted.

MAY.

Ritual.

Spring was nearly over, summer on its way, and the late morning sun burned hot through the kitchen window. It was our third visit. Before we began, the Reb poured me a gla.s.s of water.

"Ice?" he asked.

I'm okay, I said.

"He's okay," he sang. "No ice...it would be nice...but no ice..."

As we walked back to his office, we pa.s.sed a large photo of him as a younger man, standing on a mountain in bright sunlight. His body was tall and strong, his hair black and combed back-the way I remembered him from childhood.

Nice photo, I said.

"That was a proud moment."

Where was it?

"Mount Sinai."

Where the Ten Commandments were given?

"Exactly."

When was this?

"In the 1960s. I was traveling with a group of scholars. A Christian man and I climbed up. He took that picture."

How long did it take?

"Hours. We climbed all night and arrived at sunrise."

I glanced at his aging body. Such a trip would be impossible now. His narrow shoulders were hunched over, and the skin at his wrists was wrinkled and loose.

As he walked on to his office, I noticed a small detail in the photo. Along with his white s.h.i.+rt and a prayer shawl, the Reb was wearing the traditional tefillin, tefillin, small boxes containing Biblical verses, which observant Jews strap around their heads and their arms while reciting morning prayers. small boxes containing Biblical verses, which observant Jews strap around their heads and their arms while reciting morning prayers.

He said he climbed all night.

Which meant he had taken them up with him.