Mitch Albom - Have a Little Faith - A True Story

Less than eight months from our first visit, he was dead.

I wanted Albert Lewis-who was born the same year as Morrie-to last longer. There were so many things I never got to ask my old professor. So many times I told myself, “If I only had a few more minutes…”

I looked forward to my encounters with the Reb-me sitting in the big green chair, him searching hopelessly for a letter on his desk. Some visits, I would fly straight from Detroit to Philadelphia. But mostly I came on Sunday mornings, taking a train from New York City after filming a TV show there. I arrived during church hours, so I guess this was our own little church time, if you can refer to two Jewish men talking religion as church.

My friends reacted with curiosity or disbelief.

“You go to his house like he’s a normal person?”

“Aren’t you intimidated?”

“Does he make you pray while you’re there?”

“You actually talk about his eulogy? Isn’t that morbid?”

I guess, looking back, it wasn’t the most normal thing. And after a while, I could have stopped. I certainly had enough material for an homage.

But I felt a need to keep visiting, to ensure that my words would still reflect who he was. And, okay. There was more. He had stirred up something in me that had been dormant for a long time. He was always celebrating what he called “our beautiful faith.” When others said such things, I felt uneasy, not wanting to be lumped in with any group that closely. But seeing him so-what’s the word?-joyous, I guess, at his age, was appealing. Maybe the faith didn’t mean that much to me, but it did to him, you could see how it put him at peace. I didn’t know many people at peace.

So I kept coming. We talked. We laughed. We read through his old sermons and discussed their relevance. I found I could share almost anything with Reb. He had a way of looking you in the eye and making you feel the world had stopped and you were all that was in it.

Maybe this was his gift to the job.

Or maybe it was the job’s gift to him.

Anyhow, he did a lot more listening these days. With his retirement from the senior rabbi position, the meetings and paperwork had decreased. Unlike when he first arrived, the temple ran quite well on its own now.

The truth is, he could have retired to someplace warm- Florida, Arizona. But that was never for him. He attended a retirees’ convention in Miami once and was perplexed at how many former colleagues he discovered living there.

“Why did you leave your congregations?” he asked.

They said it hurt not to be up on the pulpit or the new clerics didn’t like them hanging around.

The Reb-who often said “ego” was the biggest threat to a clergyman-held no such envy for where he’d once been. Upon retirement, he voluntarily moved out of his large office and into a smaller one. And one Sabbath morning, he left his favorite chair on the dais and took a seat beside his wife in the back row of the sanctuary. The congregation was stunned.

But like John Adams returning to the farm after the presidency, the Reb simply faded back in among the people.

From a Sermon by the Reb, 1958

“A little girl came home from school with a drawing she’d made in class. She danced into the kitchen, where her mother was preparing dinner.

“‘Mom, guess what?’ she squealed, waving the drawing.

“Her mother never looked up.

“‘What? she said, tending to the pots.

“‘Guess what?’ the child repeated, waving the drawing.

“‘What?’ the mother said, tending to the plates.

“‘Mom, you’re not listening.’

“‘Sweetie, yes I am.’

“‘Mom,’ the child said, ‘you’re not listening with your eyes.’”

Life of Henry

His first stop behind bars was Rikers Island, in the East River near the runways at LaGuardia Airport. It was painfully close to home, just a few miles, and it only reminded him how his stupidity had put him on the wrong side of these walls.

During his time at Rikers, Henry saw things he wished he’d never seen. He saw inmates assault and abuse other inmates, throwing blankets over the victims’ heads so they couldn’t see their attackers. One day, a guy who’d had an argument with Henry entered the room and punched Henry in the face. Two weeks later, the same man tried to stab Henry with a sharpened fork.

All this time, Henry wanted to scream his innocence, but what good would it do? Everybody screamed innocence. After a month or so, Henry was sent upstate to Elmira Correctional, a maximum security prison. He rarely ate. He barely slept. He smoked endless cigarettes. One hot night he woke up sweating, and rose to get himself a cold drink. Then the sleep faded and he saw the steel door. He dropped onto his bed and wept.

Henry asked God that night why he hadn’t died as a baby. A light flickered and caught his eye and his gaze fell on a Bible. He opened it to a page from the Book of Job, where Job curses the day of his birth.

It was the first time he ever felt the Lord talking to him.

But he didn’t listen.

Having finished the honeydew, the Reb and I moved to his office, where the boxes, papers, letters, and files were still in a state of chaos. Had he felt better, we might have gone for a walk, because he liked to walk around his neighborhood, although he admitted not knowing his neighbors so well these days.

“When I was growing up in the Bronx,” the Reb said, “everyone knew everyone. Our apartment building was like family. We watched out for one another.

“I remember once, as a boy, I was so hungry, and there was a fruit and vegetable truck parked by our building. I tried to bump against it, so an apple would fall into my hands. That way it wouldn’t feel like stealing.

“Suddenly, I heard a voice from above yelling at me in Yiddish, ‘Albert, it is forbidden!’ I jumped. I thought it was God.”

Who was it? I asked.

“A lady who lived upstairs.”

I laughed. Not quite God.

“No. But, Mitch, we were part of each other’s lives. If someone was about to slip, someone else could catch him.

“That’s the critical idea behind a congregation. We call it a Kehillah Kedoshah -a sacred community. We’re losing that now. The suburbs have changed things. Everyone has a car. Everyone has a million things scheduled. How can you look out for your neighbor? You’re lucky to get a family to sit down for a meal together.”

He shook his head. The Reb was generally a move-with-the-times guy. But I could tell he didn’t like this form of progress at all.

Still, even in retirement, the Reb had a way of stitching together his own sacred community. Day after day, he would peer through his glasses at a scribbled address book and punch telephone numbers. His home phone, a gift from his grandchildren, had giant black-and-white digits, so he could dial more easily.

“Hellooo,” he’d begin, “this is Albert Lewis calling for…”

He kept track of people’s milestones-an anniversary, a retirement-and called. He kept track of who was sick or ailing-and called. He listened patiently as people went on and on about their joys or worries.

He took particular care to call his oldest congregants, because, he said, “It makes them still feel a part of things.”

I wondered if he wasn’t talking about himself.

By contrast, I spoke to a hundred people a week, but most of the communication was through e-mail or text. I was never without a BlackBerry. My conversations could be a few words. “Call tomorrow.” Or “C U There.” I kept things short.

The Reb didn’t do short. He didn’t do e-mail. “In an e-mail, how can I tell if something is wrong?” he said. “They can write anything. I want to see them. If not, I want to hear them. If I can’t see them or hear them, how can I help them?”