MOHANDAS GANDHI
AUGUST
Why War?
The summer moved quickly. The war in Iraq dominated the headlines, as did a battle to put the Ten Commandments in front of an Alabama courthouse. I found myself phoning the Reb in between visits. His voice was always upbeat.
“Is this Detroit calling?” he might begin.
Or: “Rabbi hotline, how can I help you?”
It made me ashamed of the way I sometimes answered the phone (a rushed “Hello?” 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 shirt 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 God gives us, and how can you just let a piece of God’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 God against destroying the cities. He says, Can you at least spare them if there are fifty good people there? God 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 warfare, against violence and destruction, because these are not normal ways of living.”
But so many people wage wars in God’s name.
“Mitch,” the Reb said, “God 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, the
se people were the enemy.
His voice grew angry.
“Enemy schmenemy,” he said. “This was a 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.’
“The owner is desperate for help, so he hires the man.
“Several weeks pass, 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 God 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 passed.
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 butt. Anyone could have stepped on that cigarette butt. 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 God 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.
And the next day, he guzzled another—all in an attempt to numb himself through a self-imposed detox. It was three days before he could put a morsel of food in his mouth. Three days before he could even lift up out of bed.
Three days.
And then he opened his eyes.
SEPTEMBER
Happiness
The Reb opened his eyes.
He was in the hospital.
It was not the first time. Although he often hid his ailments from me, I learned that in recent months, staying upright had become a problem. He had slipped on the pavement and cut open his forehead. He had slipped in the house and banged his neck and cheek. Now he had fallen getting up from his chair and slammed his rib cage against a desk. It was either syncope, a temporary loss of consciousness, or small strokes, transient attacks that left him dizzy and disoriented.
Either way, it was not good.
Now I expected the worst. A hospital. The portal to the end. I had called and asked if it was all right to visit, and Sarah kindly said I could come.
I braced myself at the front entrance. I am haunted by hospital visits and their familiar, depressing cues. The antiseptic smell. The low drone of TV sets. The drawn curtains. The occasional moaning from another bed. I had been to too many hospitals for too many people.
For the first time in a while, I thought about our agreement.
Will you do my eulogy?
I entered the Reb’s room.
“Ah,” he smiled, looking up from the bed, “a visitor from afar…”
I stopped thinking about it.
We hugged—or, I should say, I hugged his shoulders and he touched my head—and we both agreed that this was a first, a hospital conversation. His robe fell open slightly and I caught a glance at his bare chest, soft, loose flesh with a few silver hairs. I felt a rush of shame and looked away.
A nurse breezed in.
“How are you doing today?” she asked.
“I’m dooooing,” the Reb lilted. “I’m dooooing…”
She laughed. “He sings all the time, this one.”
Yes, he does, I said.
It amazed me how consistently the Reb could summon his good nature. To sing to the nurses. To kid around with the physicians. The previous day, while waiting in a wheelchair in the hallway, he was asked by a hospital worker for a blessing. So the Reb put his hands on the man’s head and gave him one.
He refused to wallow in self-pity. In fact, the worse things got for him, the more intent he seemed on making sure no one around him was saddened by it.
As we sat in the room, a commercial for an antidepressant drug flashed across the TV screen. It showed people looking forlorn, alone on a bench or staring out a window.
“I keep feeling something bad is going to happen…,” the TV voice said.
Then, after showing the pill and some graphics, those same people appeared again, looking happier.
The Reb and I watched in silence. After it ended, he asked, “Do you think those pills work?”
Not like that, I said.
“No,” he agreed. “Not like that.”
Happiness in a tablet. This is our world. Prozac. Paxil. Xanax. Billions are spent to advertise such drugs. And billions more are spent purchasing them. You don’t even need a specific trauma; just “general depression” or “anxiety,” as if sadness were as treatable as the common cold.
I knew depression was real, and in many cases required medical attention. I also knew we overused the word. Much of what we called “depression” was really dissatisfaction, a result of setting a bar impossibly high or expecting treasures that we weren’t willing to work for. I knew people whose unbearable source of misery was their weight, their baldness, their lack of advancement in a workplace, or their inability to find the perfect mate, even if they themselves did not behave like one. To these people, unhappiness was a condition, an intolerable state of affairs. If pills could help, pills were taken.
But pills were not going to change the fundamental problem in the construction. Wanting what you can’t have. Looking for self-worth in the mirror. Layering work on top of work and still wondering why you weren’t satisfied—before working some more.
I knew. I had done all that. There was a stretch where I could not have worked more hours in the day without eliminating sleep altogether. I piled on accomplishments. I made money. I earned accolades. And the longer I went at it, the emptier I began to feel, like pumping air faster and faster into a torn tire.
The time I spent with Morrie, my old professor, had tapped my brakes on much of that. After watching him die, and seeing what mattered to him at the end, I cut back. I limited my schedule.
But I still kept my hands on my own wheel. I didn’t turn things over to fate or faith. I recoiled from people who put their daily affairs in divine hands, saying, ?
??If God wants it, it will happen.” I kept silent when people said all that mattered was their personal relationship with Jesus. Such surrender seemed silly to me. I felt like I knew better. But privately, I couldn’t say I felt any happier than they did.
So I noted how, for all the milligrams of medication he required, the Reb never popped a pill for his peace of mind. He loved to smile. He avoided anger. He was never haunted by “Why am I here?” He knew why he was here, he said: to give to others, to celebrate God, and to enjoy and honor the world he was put in. His morning prayers began with “Thank you, Lord, for returning my soul to me.”
When you start that way, the rest of the day is a bonus.
Can I ask you something?
“Yes,” he said.
What makes a man happy?
“Well…” He rolled his eyes around the hospital room. “This may not be the best setting for that question.”
Yeah, you’re right.
“On the other hand…” He took a deep breath. “On the other hand, here in this building, we must face the real issues. Some people will get better. Some will not. So it may be a good place to define what that word means.”
Happiness?
“That’s right. The things society tells us we must have to be happy—a new this or that, a bigger house, a better job. I know the falsity of it. I have counseled many people who have all these things, and I can tell you they are not happy because of them.
“The number of marriages that have disintegrated when they had all the stuff in the world. The families who fought and argued all the time, when they had money and health. Having more does not keep you from wanting more. And if you always want more—to be richer, more beautiful, more well known—you are missing the bigger picture, and I can tell you from experience, happiness will never come.”
You’re not going to tell me to stop and smell the roses, are you?
He chuckled. “Roses would smell better than this place.”