23/8/96

The Miracle Worker

Jews come from far and wide to ask the impossible from Rabbi Maiman.

    "Next!"
    A little man with droopy eyes shuffled in. "It's my arthritis," he explained. "Night and day I'm miserable. Help me!"
    Rabbi Maiman stroked his beard. "You put on tefillin every morning?"
    "Of course."
    "You give to charity?"
    "Doesn't everybody?"
    "Then I can't understand why you have arthritis. Give more. In a year go to the Kotel. I promise you'll be cured."
    The little man began to feel better already. "Thank you," he said.
    "Next!"
    Rocheleh stepped into his office, leaving the door ajar. She sat down and lowered her eyes. She was young, irrelevantly pretty, noticeably dowdy. And sad.
    "Why so sad?" the venerable rabbi asked.
    "Everyone knows you make miracles," she blurted, "please, rebbe, make me a mother."
    He arched an eyebrow. "In this case, I'd have to say that God helps those who help themselves."
    "But can't you do anything for me?" Rocheleh begged.
    "Not even as a go-between," the rabbi answered with a fatherly smile. He asked her why she can't have children.
    She shrugged. "I don't know. It just hasn't happened yet. I pray day and night, my husband prays day and night."
    "And...?"
    She looked at him in surprise. "Well, what else can I do?"
    He stared back, squirmed and cleared his throat. "You, ah, know how babies are made?"
    "Of course. Like I said, I pray --"
    "-- Day and night; I know. That's very good, Rocheleh. From what I can tell, it'd be a miracle if you had a baby. This is what you and your husband should do: don't pray so much. When you go to bed, you should whisper Songs of Solomon to each other. The naughty ones. In nine months, you can invite me to the circumcision. Next!"
    "I need money, and fast. It would take a miracle to get so much, so that's why I've come to you, sir. Hell, I'll try anything, even eat kosher if you tell me to."
    The wise old man hadn't come across this type before. One night, when he'd become a little too drunk on Purim, he got lost going home and ended up downtown, so he knew there were people like this. But up close, right here in his office, this was a first. He was intrigued.
    "Tell me, are you a man or a woman?"
    "What?!"
    "Forgive me, but whereas I have sometimes seen a woman who needed a shave, I have never seen a man with long hair and earrings. At least, not when I was sober."
    The young man hadn't come across this type before. One night, when he was trolling for chicks, he followed a blonde into a strange neighborhood, which he'd always assumed was Arab, because nobody he knew would be caught there dead.
    "Look, I've got to hustle. Can you help me?"
    "Sure!"
    The young man didn't notice the twinkle in the rabbi's eye.  
    The rabbi dug into his pocket and pulled out a few coins. He threw them up in the air and said, "Hocus pocus."
    The young man blinked. "That's it?"
    "Yup."
    "Am I rich?"
    The rabbi was enjoying himself. "Not yet, you have to say 'om' three times while holding your breath."
    "Om, om, om."
    "Good. How much would you like? A million? Two million?"
    The young fellow was bugeyed. "Five -- uh, no, 10 million!"
    "Ten million it is," the rabbi said, and wrote him a check. "Look, I'm a little short this month, you don't mind if I postdate it?"
    "Till when?"
    "Till after the Moshiach arrives."
    "C'mon, man, that could take time, like, what'll I do until then?"
    "Pray that he does. Next!"
    Three burly men stepped in.
    "I'm Ben-Lulu, he's Dudu and he's Momo. We need a miracle. Mizrahi should break a leg before Shabbat. It's very important, we'll pay 5,000 shekels if you can do it."
    Rabbi Maiman blinked. "Who's Mizrahi?"
    Ben-Lulu couldn't believe his ears. "You don't know? Rabbi, everyone knows Mizrahi. He plays for Hapoel, fooyah on all of them and their mothers!"
    "So?"
    "Hapoel's playing Betar, and if Betar loses I'll kill myself. We'll all kill ourselves. Fifteen thousand Jerusalemites will kill themselves. See? It's very important."
    The venerable rabbi was unprepared for this one. "Do you believe in God?"
    "Sure, anytime Betar wins." 
    "Okay, I'll make you a deal: believe in God before the game. Go to shul in the morning and say a prayer for Mizrahi's good health; in the afternoon, instead of going to the game, stay home and learn a little Torah, and I promise Betar will win."
    "But -- but you can't ask us to do that! It goes against our religion."
    "You want the three points or not?"
    The three men sighed bitterly. Finally, Ben-Lulu nodded in agreement. "Yalla," he said.
    "Yalla," Dudu said.  
    "Yalla," Momo said, and then pumped his fist in the air. "Yalla Betar!" he shouted triumphantly.
    The three men left, and the miracle-making rabbi poured himself a very large whiskey.

RABBI MAIMAN sat down again and rubbed his eyes, as if to erase the memory of his last visitors. "Next!" he called, with less gusto than usual.
    In walked a tall man with a long beard.
    The miracle worker jumped out of his seat. "Rabbi Rabinovitch!"
    "Good afternoon, Reb Maiman," the guest responded gravely.
    "To what do I owe the honor?"
    "We need a miracle. A big one."   
    Rabbi Maiman leaned forward. His eyes narrowed. A lip quivered involuntarily. "What do you mean 'we'?"
    "You, me, everyone; the entire Jewish People. Every yiddishe neshama from Tbilisi, Georgia, to Atlanta, Georgia. We need a major miracle, rabbi, or we're sunk."
    "Gevalt."
    "The Jewish world looks to us, the rabbinical leadership of Israel, for spiritual inspiration, for moral guidance. But Judaism is up to its pipik in drek, so to speak -- intermarriage, skepticism, apostasy, aimlessness, assimilation, assassination even -- and frankly, Reb Maiman, it's our fault. We've abandoned religion for politics, and so lost credibility. Through narrowminded, zealous puritanism we've completely lost touch with the spirit of the law. You want an example? Kashrut. Kashrut is supposed to keep Jews apart from gentiles, not from other Jews. But would you eat in my house? Would I eat in Reb Shach's house? Would Reb Shach, God forbid, eat in Reb Shapira's house? And most of the Jews of the world see us like clowns in a circus, and say the hell with it all and then they go eat pork."
    "Feh!"
    "We don't offer wisdom anymore, or moral rationalism, or even love of yiddishkeit. We shut our faces in our books and issue edicts, rules, threats, curses. An open mind comes to us and we shut it forever: a 20th century Jew does not want to be told he has to live like a sixth century Jew."
    Rabbi Maiman gasped. "Are you suggesting we throw away five thousand years of teachings and traditions? Should we trade in the laws of Moses for something a little more post-Modern? Maybe we should get hip and get into Zen instead of Zohar, Taoism rather than Talmud, not Moshiach but maharishis. Nu, what do you think, should I get a Christmas tree this year?"
    The visitor shook his head forlornly. "I don't mean less Judaism, I mean more Jewishness. Wisdom over knowledge, compassion over passion, justice over law. It's possible to change. We've done it. Now I ask you: is it really necessary, in this era, to force a childless widow to spit in a shoe if she wants to remarry? How many secular Jews are we going to win over with that?"
    Rabbi Maimam pounded his desk. "Judaism is a package deal. We don't reason with it. We do it. And that's what makes us a light unto the nations."
    "Do we really have to preach ancient precepts of permissible murder as if they're pertinent today?"
    "But that's just theory!"
    "Aha!"
    "What you suggest is impossible," Rabbi Maiman thundered. "Enlightened Orthodoxy; it's unthinkable -- to make such changes, you'd need an assembly of 70 wise rabbis." He stared at his guest. "You know what you're asking for?"
    "Yes," Rabbi Rabinovitch said gently. "A miracle."