Have a Little Faith - Mitch Albom [3]
My high school years—once more, at my parents’ insistence—were spent mostly in a private academy, where half the day was secular learning and the other half was religious. Along with algebra and European history, I studied Exodus, Deuteronomy, Kings, Proverbs, all in their original language. I wrote papers on arks and manna, Kabbalah, the walls of Jericho. I was even taught an ancient form of Aramaic so I could translate Talmudic commentaries, and I analyzed twelfth-century scholars like Rashi and Maimonides.
When college came, I attended Brandeis University, with a largely Jewish student body. To help pay my tuition, I ran youth groups at a temple outside of Boston.
In other words, by the time I graduated and went out into the world, I was as well versed in my religion as any secular man I knew.
And then?
And then I pretty much walked away from it.
It wasn’t revolt. It wasn’t some tragic loss of faith. It was, if I’m being honest, apathy. A lack of need. My career as a sportswriter was blossoming; work dominated my days. Saturday mornings were spent traveling to college football games, Sunday mornings to professional ones. I attended no services. Who had time? I was fine. I was healthy. I was making money. I was climbing the ladder. I didn’t need to ask God for much, and I figured, as long as I wasn’t hurting anyone, God wasn’t asking much of me either. We had forged a sort of “you go your way, I’ll go mine” arrangement, at least in my mind. I followed no religious rituals. I dated girls from many faiths. I married a beautiful, dark-haired woman whose family was half-Lebanese. Every December, I bought her Christmas presents. Our friends made jokes. A Jewish kid married a Christian Arab. Good luck.
Over time, I honed a cynical edge toward overt religion. People who seemed too wild-eyed with the Holy Spirit scared me. And the pious hypocrisy I witnessed in politics and sports—congressmen going from mistresses to church services, football coaches breaking the rules, then kneeling for a team prayer—only made things worse. Besides, Jews in America, like devout Christians, Muslims, or sari-wearing Hindus, often bite their tongues, because there’s this nervous sense that somebody out there doesn’t like you.
So I bit mine.
In fact, the only spark I kept aglow from all those years of religious exposure was the connection to my childhood temple in New Jersey. For some reason, I never joined another. I don’t know why. It made no sense. I lived in Michigan—six hundred miles away.
I could have found a closer place to pray.
Instead, I clung to my old seat, and every autumn, I flew home and stood next to my father and mother during the High Holiday services. Maybe I was too stubborn to change. Maybe it wasn’t important enough to bother. But as an unexpected consequence, a certain pattern went quietly unbroken:
I had one clergyman—and only one clergyman—from the day I was born.
Albert Lewis.
And he had one congregation.
We were both lifers.
And that, I figured, was all we had in common.
Life of Henry
At the same time I was growing up in the suburbs, a boy about my age was being raised in Brooklyn. One day, he, too, would grapple with his faith. But his path was different.
As a child, he slept with rats.
Henry Covington was the second-youngest of seven kids born to his parents, Willie and Wilma Covington. They had a tiny, cramped apartment on Warren Street. Four brothers slept in one room; three sisters slept in another.
The rats occupied the kitchen.
At night, the family left a pot of rice on the counter, so the rats would jump in and stay out of the bedrooms. During the day, Henry’s oldest brother kept the rodents at bay with a BB gun. Henry grew up terrified of the creatures, his sleep uneasy, fearful