In the early afternoon, the tide was unusually high, although not yet at peak, and cars lined the shore as people came to watch the majestic fury of the surf, at various points along the sea wall, where the land jutted out into the water, the surf was apt to be especially strong, and here young teen-agers gathered to brave the elements, as a big roller broke on the rocks and then receded, they would venture out to the very edge to challenge the next big wave, racing back to avoid the spray when it broke. Sometimes they waited too long, or the force of the wave was stronger than expected, and they would be drenched. while their more cautious friends jeered from a safe vantage point.
Jonathan, the rabbi's five-year-old son, had been playing in the yard most of the afternoon. Now he came running into the house to relate that his friend next door had been taken to the nearby shore to watch the surf and that he wanted to go, too, he appealed to his mother, of course, and she suggested to her husband that he could do with a little fresh air after having spent the afternoon in his study. So the rabbi, with Jonathan's hand firmly held against his ecstatic tugging, sauntered along the shore, stopping now and then to watch as a particularly big roller marched toward them to strike and disintegrate against the rocks.
The rabbi heard his name called, and looking around, he saw Akiva Rokeach waving to him, he waited for him to come up to them. "With the help of my wife," he said, "I finally remembered, or rather figured out, who you are. You're the druggist's son, aren't you? Mr. aptaker? It's late in coming, but I want to thank you for what you did for us one night a few years back."
Akiva smiled and shrugged.
Rabbi Small continued. "You can understand that I was pretty much confined to the house for the next day or two taking care of Jonathan here, but then I went down to the store to pay for the medicine and to thank you properly. But you were gone."
Akiva grinned. "Yeah, the very next day as I remember it." "Nothing to do with what you did for us, I hope."
"Oh no. My father asked me to, he gave me good marks for that*
"I see. So I gather you left because of a disagreement with your father."
"You might call it that." Akiva began to laugh. "Gee, you're just like my rebbe. You guys are all alike, I guess. I say something, and from just one word, or maybe from the tone of my voice, he infers a whole book."
"I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to pry."
"Oh, that's all right. Rabbi, as a matter of fact. I had a hellova fight with my father and I left, and I wasn't planning to come back."
"But you have."
"Just for a couple of days, and that was because Reb Mendel— that's my rebbe— told me to." He went on to describe Reb Mendel and the chavurah.
"You do everything he tells you?"
"I try to. I had a week's vacation and I wanted to spend it at his house, he has this big ark of a house and his chasidim sometimes stay there for a few days for intensive study. But he told me to go home instead, to my parents. So I did."
"Just like that." "Uh-huh."
"Doesn't it bother you that someone is directing your life, making your decisions for you?" the rabbi asked.
"No. Because he has the Insight, he can see clearer and further than I can. It's like if a bunch of guys were wandering in the desert and they didn't know which direction to go, and one had a telescope and said he could see a village due west. Wouldn't they accept it and go in that direction?"
"I would probably ask if I might take a peek through the telescope," the rabbi said dryly.
"All right, say he didn't have a telescope, but he just had keener vision?"
"I'd want proof of it before I started walking," said the rabbi, with a smile.
"Oh, I know, you regular rabbis always sneer at the rebbe, but—"
"We regular rabbis are presumed to be merely experts in the Law," Rabbi Small interjected, "not miracle workers like a rebbe. My sermons are essentially explanations of the Law and our tradition. Nevertheless, if you had come to me as a friend and asked my advice, I, too, might have suggested this would be a good time to see your parents and make it up with them. But I would have suggested it as a friend, not directed you because I'm a rabbi, the decision would have been entirely yours."
"But suppose you knew, knew absolutely?"
"No one knows absolutely. Mr. Rokeach. Your rebbe, you say, is a psychologist. In my experience this does not necessarily confer expertise in understanding the motives of men, only some skill in designing explanations of their behavior, which mav or mav not be true and which can't be proved one way or another anyway. Your rebbe is probably a bright man and so has the insight that any intelligent man has, that's all."
"But if he's right every time?"
"No, he's not right every time. When he's right, you're likely to hear about it, and when he's wrong, you are apt to attribute it to your own failings. Just as, if some unforeseen good comes of your visit here, you will attribute it to your rebbe's ability to see into the future. If nothing much happens, you will probably believe you neglected to perform some mitzvah. If you complain to him, he may tell you to be patient, that just as a stone dropped in a pool causes ripples which radiate to the shore, so your coming here is the necessary beginning of a train of events that will ultimately redound to your advantage, and you will believe him, especially if something happens afterward that you can connect, however remotely, with your visit."
"How about the evidence of my own feelings?" demanded Akiva. "How about the calm and certainty that I felt after I joined the chavurah and Reb Mendel? Before that I couldn't make up my mind— what to do, where to go—"
"That's the penalty of having a mind," said the rabbi. "We all suffer from it in some degree, the lower animals who operate on instinct don't have the problem, the impulse to do something automatically shuts off all other circuits, the myth of the donkey who starves to death because he finds himself equidistant from two equal bales of hay applies more properly to humans than to donkeys. It's people, not animals, who want to be in two places at the same time, who want to do two things simultaneously, that's normal, but sometimes it reaches the point where it paralyzes action and decision, and the result is frustration, mental distress, sometimes complete inability to function. When you assign responsibility for a portion of your decisions to someone else, as you do to your rebbe, it's not surprising if the immediate effect is one of calm and relief. Some claim the same effect when they surrender their souls to Jesus, according to an acquaintance of mine who had been in the Jews for Jesus movement. Others invoke the Virgin Mary or a special saint, or the latest popular guru out of the East."
"But if it works—"
The rabbi shrugged. "The stress involved in struggle always ends when you surrender."
Jonathan tugged at his father's hand. "I'm hungry, Daddy. I want to go home."
"All right. Jonathan, we'll go home." To Akiva he said, "He's mv rebbe, you see. When he commands. I obev."
"Will you be going to the service tonight, Rabbi? Will I see you there?"
"I expect to, maybe you can meet our president, Mr. Kaplan. You might find him more sympathetic to your thinking."
"Kaplan? Has he a daughter Leah?"
"Yes, do you know her?"
Akiva smiled. "I— I went to school with a Leah Kaplan."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Hey, where you been. Doc?" The voice over the phone was Joe Kestler's, and he was indignant. "I must’vecalled your house a dozen times, and there was no answer."
"I take Wednesday afternoons off," said Dr. Cohen, and then was annoyed with himself for having bothered to explain.
"Well, my father is not feeling so good, he's awfully warm, like he's got a temperature, and he has to go all the time, and then when he does, he complains it like burns him, and then a few minutes later he's got to go again, he had the same thing a few months ago."