Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet (13 page)

“And each has a different way of getting there. Is that so strange? If you wanted to go to Chicago, is there only one way? It would depend on how you wanted to travel, and where you came from, wouldn’t it? Well, we all come from different traditions and different societies with different lifestyles, we dress differently, we eat differently, we live differently, so why shouldn’t we pray or meditate or make contact with God differently? In India, they sit on the ground to eat, and to show respect they get down as near to the ground as possible –” To illustrate, he suddenly crouched down beside the lectern as though about to receive a cut from the whip of a master, he sprang to his feet once again. “So it’s only natural for them to meditate in the lotus position. But it doesn’t have the same effect with us, because it’s alien to our tradition and lifestyle, we don’t touch our foreheads to the ground the way the Muslims do and we don’t kneel like the Christians, to show respect, we stand. Nor do I believe in the rocking and shaking of the Chasidim – their interpretation of ‘Love your God with all your heart and all your might’ – I think that’s alien, too.

“The main prayer in our liturgy, the Shimon Esra, the eighteen blessings, that is part of every service, is also called the Amidah, the Standing, because we always stand to say it. So to make contact, we stand in silent meditation, each one making his contact direct, without channeling through some saint the way the Christians do, or for that matter through a rebbe like the Chasidim do, we stand, in token of our manhood, in token of our superiority to the lower creatures, in token of our having been created in His image, as it is unthinkable for Him to kneel, so we must not.

“Now, while an adept can make contact, can meditate, almost anywhere, under almost any circumstances, most of us need the support of others, and that is why we pray in a group, as individuals but in a group, a minyan, a congregation often or more adult males, with no women or children to distract us, there’s nothing puritanic about it. It isn’t another example of male chauvinism. It’s as natural as life itself. You all know that children have a short attention span, after a few minutes, they begin to fidget and ask questions and want to go to the bathroom, and just as you don’t want them around when you’re computing your income tax, so you don’t want them around when you’re trying to make contact with God, and women are distracting in another way. It doesn’t mean you’re a sex maniac if you get a little warm thinking about a woman, that’s natural, that’s the way God made us, and if we weren’t that way, the race would die out, he wants us to react like that. It’s what He meant when He told us to be fruitful and multiply. But when you’re trying to make contact with Him, it gets in the way, and pretty soon, you’re thinking of it rather than of Him. Some of the very pious, especially the Chasidim, wear a girdle around the waist to separate the upper part of the body from the lower. Personally, I don’t think it’s any more help than the belt you wear to keep your pants up, the best way is not to have them around.” He smiled at them. “Now, I ask you, is it male chauvinism to admit you think so highly of women that you confess they can distract you from God Himself?

“All right, then. I want you all to rise now and cover your heads with your prayer shawls, that’s the idea, get it right over your head, that way, you shut out everything and you can be alone with your thoughts. You’re shutting out the world, you’re isolating yourself in order to make contact with God. You’re going to stand in silent meditation for half an hour. If you get tired standing, then sit down and rest for a while, but keep it up as long as you can, and don’t look at your watches. I’ll tell you when the time is up, then we’ll have our regular Friday evening service and then the delicious Sabbath meal that Mrs. Mezzik has prepared.”

Friday afternoon Rabbi Small paid his condolence visit to the Kestlers. Over the years he had performed this melancholy parochial duty many times, but he had never grown sufficiently accustomed to it to be anything but uncomfortable for the half hour or so that it usually lasted. If the deceased had been young, a child perhaps, the grief of the immediate family was apt to be overwhelming, and he always came away with the feeling that he had obtruded. On the other hand, if it were an old person, like an aged parent, the atmosphere was more subdued than sad, he knew that before his arrival, conversation had flowed easily as at any other social occasion, with perhaps an occasional joke offered, he had indeed heard the muted laughter as he approached the door which was kept ajar so that the family would not have to respond to the constant ringing of the doorbell, as soon as he entered, however, faces became sober and conversation was reduced to philosophical platitudes, as unruly school-children quiet down when the teacher appears, and he resented this dampening role in which he was cast as the professional condolence purveyor of the congregation. In his own mind, he was never at ease with it. While it was only fitting and proper to grieve over the dead, the mourning period was also intended to help the bereaved overcome their grief, and he was perhaps doing them a disservice by plunging them into it again by his very presence. Moreover, he believed that it was wrong to simulate a grief that one did not actually feel. Nevertheless, he was taken aback when he entered the Kestler house and found Joe and his wife playing cards.

“Oh, it’s you, Rabbi,” Joe Kestler said. “Come right in.” And then embarrassed, he explained. “The wife was kind of low, and I thought a couple of hands of gin would get her mind off – well, off things.”

“I understand,” the rabbi replied.

Christine Kestler seconded her husband with, “I was like all edgy. It was such a shock.”

“Still, he was a very old man, and sick.” the rabbi murmured.

“He could have gone on like that for years,” Kestler asserted, “if Cohen hadn’t fed him that pill.”

Mindful of his conversation with Lanigan, the rabbi responded sharply. “Are you suggesting that the doctor deliberately gave your father medication that would harm him?”

“I’m not suggesting anything.” said Kestler doggedly. “All I know is Cohen was sore at my old man on account he sued him about a fence he put up, maybe that’s why he didn’t take too much time to think it out, he was in and out of here in a matter of minutes. I even complained about it, didn’t I, Chris?”

“That’s right,” she nodded vehemently. “Joe was real sore about it.”

“If the diagnosis is obvious…“the rabbi suggested.

“Then it wasn’t, or my father wouldn’t have died, he was sick, but all right. You saw him, then he took that pill and in less than half an hour he was dead. You saw him take the pill. You were a witness to it.”

“I saw your wife administer a pill,” said the rabbi coldly. “I have no way of knowing what kind of pill it was.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Kestler confidently. “It was the cops in the cruising car that delivered the pills. You must have heard them drive up. In any case, they’d have a record of the time, and it was while you were here, a minute later, the wife comes up to give it to him, then when the police ambulance arrived they took the whole bottle of pills. So we got everything nailed down evidencewise.”

“But I have no way of knowing that the pill that Mrs. Kestler received from the police was the one she gave your father.”

“Are you saying she could have switched them. Rabbi? That my own wife would want to hurt her own father-in-law?” Kestler was aghast.

“I’m not saying anything except that the chain of evidence is not as complete as you seem to think, the discrepancy that I pointed out is what any lawyer would be certain to seize on, he might also think it strange, as would the court, that you would engage a doctor with whom you had quarreled.”

“I didn’t want to call Cohen. It was my father who made me. I begged him not to. But he said that suing him was just business and had nothing to do with calling for doctoring. So say he was wrong, that still don’t give Cohen the right to give him the wrong medicine.”

“And you think because he was angry with your father, he prescribed the wrong medicine?”

Kestler’s face took on a look of great cunning, he smiled. “Oh, I’m not saying he did it deliberate, that would be murder, and I’m not accusing him of murder, all I’m saying is that because he was sore at my old man, he didn’t take the time to make a careful diagnosis, so he made a mistake, that’s negligence, and that’s malpractice, and I’m going to sue him for it.”

“When you called Dr. Cohen, he immediately agreed to come over?” asked the rabbi.

Kestler’s eyes narrowed as he thought about the question, suspicious that the rabbi might be laying a trap. “Oh, I wouldn’t say he agreed right away.”

“And yet you persisted.”

“Well, it was Wednesday,” Mrs. Kestler offered.

Her husband glared at her. “The old man had confidence in him as a doctor.”

“I see. So even though it was Wednesday, his day off, ha came to see your father, and your point is that he just took a quick look at him and then handed you a prescription to –”

“He didn’t give me any prescription,” said Kestler. “He called it in when he got home.”

The rabbi showed his surprise. “When he got home? Why didn’t he call it from here or just give you a written prescription?”

“Joe thought he might have some samples,” Mrs. Kestler hastened to explain.

Joe Kestler shot her a venomous glance. “It was kind of late,” he elaborated, “and all the drugstores were closed except Aptaker’s, and I don’t go in there. So I asked him if he had any samples, and he said he’d drop them off to me if he had, and if he didn’t, he’d call in the prescription and they’d deliver it.”

The rabbi nodded as he considered. “So here’s a doctor,” he said, as though he were trying to reason it out for his own understanding, “who is called on his day off by someone who has brought suit against him, and he not only comes, but offers to drop off samples of the medication he prescribes or make arrangements for it to be delivered, and this is the man you’ve been slandering and are planning to sue?”

“He made a mistake,” said Kestler, “and my father died. So that’s malpractice. I got nothing against the doctor personally, but I got a right to sue, same as I would if my best friend rammed into me with his car.”

“It’s the insurance that pays,” his wife added.

The rabbi rose to go. “The doctor may have made a mistake,” he said, “as any man can make a mistake. Or he may have prescribed the correct medicine. If you bring the matter to court, it will be the court that will decide. But to speak evil of a man is considered a very grave sin by our law, Mr. Kestler. In our tradition, it is thought to bring on the most terrible punishments.”

Remembering the disapproving looks from her husband, Mrs. Kestler feared that she would receive a torrent of abuse as soon as the rabbi left. But Joe Kestler maintained a dour and gloomy silence as he paced up and down the room in deep thought. Finally he stopped and faced her. “You know what he was trying to say?”

“Well, Joe, I think –”

“Shut up and listen. This guy Cohen is a member of his congregation, see. So he’s got to take care of him, he knows I’m going to call him for a witness, and being a rabbi, he’s got to tell the truth. But he’s smart and can shade it which way he wants. So I think it’s time I saw a lawyer. In the meantime, I don’t want you shooting off your mouth about Doc Cohen. Understand?”

“But I never –” She saw his annoyance and said, “Oh, I won’t, Joe. I won’t say a word.”

Once again, as he had half a dozen times during the weekend, Daniel Cohen covered his head with the prayer shawl. It was Sunday morning and the last scheduled meditation of the retreat program. But the hope that he had had at the beginning that perhaps, just perhaps, there was something in it was gone, and he now felt only a kind of embarrassment that he, a doctor, a man of science, should have come here in the woods to commune with The Almighty in order to – to what? To ask for a special suspension of the universal law of cause and effect for his personal advantage?

True, when he went to the synagogue on the High Holy Days, or even to an occasional Friday evening service, it was ostensibly for the same purpose. But that was different. In actuality, it was more of an affirmation of his connection with the group in which he had been born. One did not so much pray as recite set prayers more or less by rote. It was a social obligation, one of the things that Jews expected of each other.

This was different, he had really tried. During the traditional prayer services, while his lips moved in recitation of the Hebrew prayers, his mind asked earnestly in English for help. During the meditations, he had remained standing until time was called, not once sitting down to rest or even leaning against the windowsill, and in the discussions, he had actively participated.

“Why can’t we sit down and relax for the meditation. Rabbi?”

“Because you might fall asleep, for one thing. In Transcendental Meditation, which was popularized by the Maharishi, they do sit in a comfortable position –”

“And does it work?”

“Oh, sure, as a means of beneficial relaxation, there’s a doctor from the Harvard Medical School, I believe, who’s even done some scientific experimentation with it, controls and all that sort of thing, and found that it actually reduces high blood pressure. You may have heard of it, Doctor. But that’s just a technique for relaxing; it’s not religion. Remember, we’re after a religious experience, and for that you need a state of tension, balanced tension, the Buddhists use the lotus position; in Zen they kneel. But I’m convinced that the Jewish tradition calls for standing.”

“How about this business of saying a word or a phrase over and over again?”

“The mantra?” Rabbi Mezzik nodded his handsome head. “Some find that it helps their concentration, there’s some evidence that our ancestors made use of it, at the end of the Yom Kippur service we recite Adonai Hoo Elohim– the Lord, he is God – seven times, that suggests to me that the phrase may have been used as a mantra and not just the seven times ordered in the prayerbook.”