Have a Little Faith - Mitch Albom [27]
A few weeks later, wearing that same suit, he and his father took a trolley car to a relative’s house, a well-to-do attorney. His father carried a cake that his mother had baked.
At the house, a teenage cousin came running up, took one look at Albert, and burst out laughing. “Al, that’s my old suit!” he squealed. “Hey, guys! Look! Al’s wearing my old suit!”
Albert was mortified. For the rest of the visit, he sat red-faced in humiliation. On the trolley ride home, he fought tears as he glared at his father, who had traded the cake for a suitcase full of clothes, an exchange the son now understood as rich relatives giving to poor ones.
Finally, when they got home, he couldn’t hold it in any longer. “I don’t understand,” Albert burst out to his father. “You’re a religious man. Your cousin isn’t. You pray every day. He doesn’t. They have everything they want. And we have nothing!’”
His father nodded, then answered in Yiddish, in a slight singsong voice.
God and the decision he renders is correct.
God doesn’t punish anyone out of the blue.
God knows what he is doing.
That was the last they spoke of it.
And the last time Albert Lewis judged life by what he owned.
Now, seventy-six years later, what he owned meant so little, it was a source of comedy. He dressed like a rummage sale. He mixed plaid shirts and loud socks with pants from Haband, a low-cost clothing line that featured items like polyester jeans and eleven-pocket vests. The Reb loved those things, the more pockets the better. He would stash notes, pens, tiny flashlights, five-dollar bills, clippings, pencils.
He was like a kid when it came to possessions; price tags meant nothing, small enjoyment meant everything. High tech? He liked a clock radio playing classical music. Fancy restaurants? His culinary pleasures were graham crackers and peanut butter cookies. His idea of a great meal was pouring cereal into his oatmeal, adding a cup of raisins, and stirring it all up. He adored food shopping, but only for bargains—a leftover habit from his Depression days—and his supermarket journeys were something of legend. He would push a cart through the aisles for hours, judiciously choosing the correct merchandise. Then, at the cash register, he would dole out coupon after coupon, joking with the cashiers, proudly adding up the savings.
For years, his wife had to pick up his paychecks, or else he’d never bother. His starting salary at the temple was just a few thousand dollars a year, and after five decades of service, his compensation was embarrassing compared to other clerics. He never pushed for more. He thought it unseemly. He didn’t even own a car for the first few years of his service; a neighbor named Eddie Adelman would drive him into Philadelphia and drop him off at a subway so that he could take a class at Dropsie College.
The Reb seemed to embody a magnetic repulsion between faith and wealth. If congregants tried to give him things for free, he suggested they contribute to charity instead. He hated to fund-raise, because he never felt a clergyman should ask people for money. He once said in a sermon that the only time he ever wished he was a millionaire was when he thought about how many families he could save from financial sorrow.
What he liked was old things. Old coins. Old paintings. Even his personal prayer book was old and fraying, stuffed with clippings and held together with rubber bands.
“I have what I need,” he said, surveying his messy shelves. “Why bother chasing more?”
You’re like that Biblical quote, I said. What profits a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul?
“That’s Jesus.”
Oops, sorry, I said.
“Don’t apologize,” he said, smiling. “It’s still good.”
Church
As the Detroit traffic whizzed by outside, I walked through an oversized sanctuary with Pastor Henry Covington of the I Am My Brother’s Keeper Ministry. It was