Have a Little Faith - Mitch Albom [59]
After rabbi-ing through six different decades, you finally stepped down from the pulpit, and instead of moving to Florida, as many do, you simply took a seat in the back row of this sanctuary. It was a humble act, but you could no more move to the back row than the soul could move to the back of the body.
This is your house, Reb. You are in the rafters, the floorboards, the walls, the lights. You are in every echo through every hallway. We hear you now. I hear you still.
How can I—how can any of us—let you go? You are woven through us, from birth to death. You educated us, married us, comforted us. You stood at our mileposts, our weddings, our funerals. You gave us courage when tragedy struck, and when we howled at God, you stirred the embers of our faith and reminded us, as a respected man once said, that the only whole heart is a broken heart.
Look at all the broken hearts here today. Look at all the faces in this sanctuary. My whole life, I had one rabbi. Your whole life, you had one congregation. How do we say good-bye to you without saying good-bye to apiece of ourselves?
Where do we look for you now?
Remember, Reb, when you told me about your childhood neighborhood in the Bronx, such a crowded, tight-knit community that when you nudged a cart, hoping an apple would fall off, a neighbor five floors up yelled out the window, “Albert, that’s forbidden.” You lived with the wagging finger of God on every fire escape.
Well, you were our finger, wagging out the window. How much good have you done simply by the bad we have not? Many of us here have moved away, taken new addresses, new jobs, new climates, but in our minds, we kept the same old rabbi. We could look out our windows and still see your face, still hear your voice on the wind.
But where do we look for you now?
In our last visits, you spoke often about dying, about what comes next. You would cock your head and sing, “Nu, Lord above, if you want to take me, maybe take me without too much paaaain.”
By the way, Reb, about the singing. What gives? Walt Whitman sang the body electric. Billie Holiday sang the blues. You sang…everything. You could sing the phone book. I would call and say how are you feeling, and you’d answer, “The old gray rabbi, ain’t what he used to be…”
I teased you about it, but I loved it, I think we all loved it, and it comes as no surprise that you were singing to a nurse last week, preparing for a bath, when the final blow took you from us. I like to think the Lord so enjoyed hearing one of his children joyous—joyous enough to sing in a hospital—that he chose that moment, you in mid-hum, to bring you to him.
So now you are with God. That I believe. You told me your biggest wish, after you died, would be that somehow you could speak to us here, inform us that you had landed, safe and sound. Even in your demise, you were looking for one more sermon.
But you knew there is a maddening yet majestic reason you cannot speak to us today, because if you could, we might not need faith. And faith is what you were all about. You were the salesman that you cited so often in a Yiddish proverb, coming back each day, knocking on the door, offering your wares with a smile, until one day, the customer gets so fed up with your persistence, he spits in your face. And you take out a handkerchief, you wipe the spit away, and you smile again and say, “It must be raining.”
There are handkerchiefs here today, Reb, but it is not because of rain. It’s because some of us can’t bear to let you go. Some of us want to apologize for all the times we said, through our actions, “Go away,” for all the times we spit in the face of our faith.
I didn’t want to eulogize you. I was afraid. I felt a congregant could never eulogize his leader. But I realize now that thousands of congregants will eulogize you today, in their car rides home, over