Have A Little Faith Part 8

Or: "Rabbi hotline, how can I help you?"

It made me ashamed of the way I sometimes answered the phone (a rushed "h.e.l.lo?" as if it was a question I didn't want to ask). In all the time I knew the Reb, I don't think I ever heard him say, "Lemme call you back." I marveled at how a man who was supposed to be available for so many people could somehow be available for each one of them.

On a late August visit, the Reb's wife, Sarah, a kind and eloquent woman who'd been with him for sixty years, answered the door and led me to his office. The Reb was already seated, wearing a long-sleeved s.h.i.+rt despite the summer heat. His downy white hair was neatly combed, but I noticed that he didn't get up. He just stretched out his arms for a hug.

Are you okay? I said.

He flung his palms in opposite directions.

"Lemme put it this way. I'm not as good as I was yesterday, buuuut...I'm better than I'm gonna be tom-orrrrr-ow..."

You and singing, I said.

"Ah," he laughed. "I sing a song, you hum along..."

I sat down.

A newspaper was open on his desk. The Reb kept up with the news, as much as he could. When I asked how long he thought the Iraq war would last, he shrugged.

You've lived through a lot of wars, I said.

"Yes."

Do they ever make more sense?

"No."

This one, we agreed, was particularly troubling. Suicide bombings. Hidden explosives. It's not like the old wars, I said, with tanks coming one way, tanks coming the other.

"But, Mitch, even in this new age of horror," the Reb noted, "you can find small acts of human kindness. Something I saw a few years ago, on a trip to Israel to visit my daughter, stays with me to this day.

"I was sitting on a balcony. I heard a blast. I turned around and saw smoke coming from a shopping area. It was one of these terrible...uh...whachacalls..."

Bombs? Car bombs?

"That's it," he said. "I went from the apartment, as fast as I could, and as I arrived, a car pulled up in front of me. And a young fellow jumps out. He is wearing a yellow vest, so I follow him.

"When I get to the scene, I see the car that has been blown up. A woman was apparently doing laundry; she was one of the people killed.

"And there, in the street..." He swallowed. "There...in the street...were people picking up her body pieces. Carefully. Collecting anything. A hand. A finger."

He looked down.

"They were wearing gloves, and moving very deliberately, a piece of a leg here, skin there, even the blood. You know why? They were following religious law, which says all pieces of the body must be buried together. They were putting life over death, even in the face of this...atrocity.... because life is what G.o.d gives us, and how can you just let a piece of G.o.d's gift lie there in the street?"

I had heard of this group, called ZAKA-yellow-vested volunteers who want to ensure that the deceased are treated with dignity. They arrive at these scenes sometimes faster than the paramedics.

"I cried when I saw that," the Reb said. "I just cried. The kindness that takes. The belief. Picking up pieces of your dead. This is who we are. This beautiful faith."

We sat quietly for a minute.

Why does man kill man? I finally asked.

He touched his forefingers to his lips. Then he pushed in his chair and rolled slowly to a stack of books.

"Let me find something here..."

Albert Lewis was born during World War I. He was a seminary student during World War II. His congregation was peppered with veterans and Holocaust survivors, some who still bore tattooed numbers on their wrists.

Over the years, he watched young congregants depart for the Korean War and the Vietnam War. His son-in-law and grandchildren served in the Israeli Army. So war was never far from his mind. Nor were its consequences.

Once, on a trip to Israel after the war in 1967, he went with a group to an area on the northern border and found himself wandering through some abandoned buildings. There, in the ruins of one destroyed house, he discovered an Arabic schoolbook lying in the dirt. It was facedown, missing a cover.

He brought it home.

Now he held it on his lap. This was what he'd gone looking for. A schoolbook nearly forty years old.

"Here." He handed it over. "Look through it."

It was fraying. Its binding had shriveled. The back page, torn and curled, had a cartoon image of a schoolgirl, a cat, and a rabbit, which had been colored in with crayon. The book was obviously for young kids and the whole thing was in Arabic, so I couldn't understand a word.

Why did you keep this? I asked.

"Because I wanted to be reminded of what had happened there. The buildings were empty. The people were gone.

"I felt I had to save something."

Most religions warn against war, yet more wars have been fought over religion than perhaps anything else. Christians have killed Jews, Jews have killed Muslims, Muslims have killed Hindus, Hindus have killed Buddhists, Catholics have killed Protestants, Orthodox have killed pagans, and you could run that list backward and sideways and it would still be true. War never stops; it only pauses.

I asked the Reb if, over the years, he had changed his view about war and violence.

"Do you remember Sodom and Gomorrah?" he asked.

Yes. That one I remember.

"So you know Abraham realized those people were bad. He knew they were miserable, vicious. But what does he do? He argues with G.o.d against destroying the cities. He says, Can you at least spare them if there are fifty good people there? G.o.d says okay. Then he goes down to forty, then thirty. He knows there aren't that many. He bargains all the way down to ten before he closes the deal."

And they still fell short, I said.

"And they still fell short," the Reb confirmed. "But you see? Abraham's instinct was correct. You must first argue against against warfare, against violence and destruction, because these are not normal ways of living." warfare, against violence and destruction, because these are not normal ways of living."

But so many people wage wars in G.o.d's name.

"Mitch," the Reb said, "G.o.d does not want such killing to go on."

Then why hasn't it stopped?

He lifted his eyebrows.

"Because man does."

He was right, of course. You can sense man's drumbeat to war. Vengeance rises. Tolerance is mocked. Over the years, I was taught why our side was right. And in another country someone my age was taught the opposite.

"There's a reason I gave that book to you," the Reb said.

What's the reason?

"Open it."

I opened it.

"More."

I flipped through the pages and out fell three small black-and-white photos, faded and smudged with dirt.

One was of an older dark-haired woman, Arabic and matronly looking. One was of a mustached younger Arabic man in a suit and tie. The last photo was of two children, side by side, presumably a brother and sister.

Who are they? I asked.

"I don't know," he said, softly.

He held out his hand and I gave him the photo of the children.

"Over the years, I kept seeing these kids, the mother, her son. That's why I never threw the book away. I felt I had to keep them alive somehow.

"I thought maybe someday someone would look at the pictures, say they knew the family, and return them to the survivors. But I'm running out of time."

He handed me the photo back.

Wait, I said. I don't understand. From your religious viewpoint, these people were the enemy.

His voice grew angry.

"Enemy schmenemy," he said. "This was a family." family."

From a Sermon by the Reb, 1975 "A man seeks employment on a farm. He hands his letter of recommendation to his new employer. It reads simply, 'He sleeps in a storm.' man seeks employment on a farm. He hands his letter of recommendation to his new employer. It reads simply, 'He sleeps in a storm.'

"The owner is desperate for help, so he hires the man.

"Several weeks pa.s.s, and suddenly, in the middle of the night, a powerful storm rips through the valley.

"Awakened by the swirling rain and howling wind, the owner leaps out of bed. He calls for his new hired hand, but the man is sleeping soundly.

"So he dashes off to the barn. He sees, to his amazement, that the animals are secure with plenty of feed.

"He runs out to the field. He sees the bales of wheat have been bound and are wrapped in tarpaulins.

"He races to the silo. The doors are latched, and the grain is dry.

"And then he understands. 'He sleeps in a storm.'

"My friends, if we tend to the things that are important in life, if we are right with those we love and behave in line with our faith, our lives will not be cursed with the aching throb of unfulfilled business. Our words will always be sincere, our embraces will be tight. We will never wallow in the agony of 'I could have, I should have.' We can sleep in a storm.

"And when it's time, our good-byes will be complete."

Life of Henry Henry Covington did not sleep that night.

But he did not die, either.

The drug dealers from whom he'd stolen somehow never found him; the cars that came down his street did not fire a bullet. He hid behind those trash cans, gripping his shotgun and reciting his question over and over.

"Will you save me, Jesus?"

He was following man's sad tradition of running to G.o.d when all else fails. He had done it before, turned his face to the heavens, only to return to new trouble when the current trouble pa.s.sed.

But this time, when the sun rose, Henry Covington slid the shotgun under his bed and lay down next to his wife and child.

It was Easter Sunday.

Henry thought about his life. He had stolen and lied and waved guns in people's faces. He had blown all his money on drugs, and he had been so low at one point he had a small pebble of crack cocaine but nothing to smoke it in, so he scoured the streets until he found a cigarette b.u.t.t. Anyone could have stepped on that cigarette b.u.t.t. A dog could have urinated on it. It didn't matter. He put it in his mouth. He had to have what he had to have.

Now, on Easter morning, he suddenly had to have something else. It was hard to explain. Even his wife didn't understand it. An acquaintance came by with heroin. Henry's eyes desired it. His body craved it. But if he took it, it would kill him. He knew it. He was certain. He had promised his life to G.o.d in the darkness behind those trash cans, and here, hours later, was his first test.

He told the man to go away.

Then Henry went into the bathroom, got on his knees, and began to pray. After he finished, he guzzled a bottle of NyQuil.

The next day, he guzzled another.