"You're going to have a Sabbath meal that you'll remember for a long time. Doctor. Wait till you taste the rebbitzin's gefilte fish—just like your mother used to make."
"I chop it. I don't grind it," she admitted shyly.
Still clutching his arm, Kaplan turned him around and moved him toward the door. "Why don't you go up now and get acquainted with Matt Cham? I've got to arrange about the meeting."
Dr. Cohen mounted the steps and made his way along the balcony until he came to Room Twelve, although the door was ajar, he knocked and in response to "Yeah" from within, he entered. Save for two cots and a painted bureau, the room was bare. In the middle of the ceiling, dangling by its own electric cord, was a single fly-specked light bulb, a heavyset man with a big belly and pinkish jowls lay on a cot, he was dressed only in socks, underpants and undershirt.
"Matthew Cham? I'm Dr. Cohen. I guess I'm supposed to bunk with you."
The other man pushed himself up to a sitting position and held out his hand. "Glad to know you. Doctor." He explained his state of undress. "I always change in honor of the Sabbath. My mother made me when I was a kid." He had a guttural raspy voice, as though it needed clearing.
"You a regular medical doctor? Reason I ask, I got a nephew that's a doctor, but he isn't worth a damn if you got a bellyache, because he's a doctor of economics." He laughed heavily. "And he ain't much good on the stock market either. This is your first time here?"
"That's right."
"Then let me tell you, you're going to get a real religious experience. I've been to almost every one Chet has organized, the first time I came here I was all broken up. I'd just lost my wife, see. I guess the Man Upstairs wanted her more than He thought I needed her, and I tell you I just couldn't function. But I was glad for her sake because it was the big bug that got her." "The big—"
"CA," Cham explained. "Bad medicine. Bad, bad medicine, with what she went through for almost a year, and then the end. I just couldn't cope, then Chet decided he was going to have this retreat and he asked me if I was interested, well, you want to know the truth?"
Cohen nodded politely.
"I wasn't interested, that's the truth. I wasn't interested in anything. But I came anyway, and that first Friday night service, well, it made a difference. You know you're supposed to greet the Sabbath like it was a queen and rejoice over it like a bridegroom over his bride, that's what it says right in the prayerbook, well, I’ve been to any number of Friday night services in a lot of temples and synagogues, but this was different. In the synagogue, maybe there's one or two who really mean it, religious types like Chet or the rabbi of the congregation, but you take the rest, and they're just going through the motions. But here we mean it, that first time when we greeted the Sabbath, I got so worked up that when we turned around to face the door it was like I was expecting some highclass broad to come sashaying into the room. Right then. I knew she was still there, my Charlotte, she'd been with me all along, but I hadn't felt her presence because, because I hadn't tried."
Cohen nodded sympathetically.
"The big thing," Charn went on. "is to let yourself go, the first time I cried like a baby. I still do sometimes, but nobody notices. You're all alone and yet the whole damn world is with you, and say, Doc, when you go downstairs, pick out a seat near a window, that way you got the sill to lean on, because if you don't have something to lean on, that meditation can be a sonofabitch."
A bell rang, and Charn said, "Uh-oh, that's the signal for the first meditation. Why don't you go down now? No sense waiting for me. I might be a little late, but it makes no difference because Rabbi Mezzik begins with a little talk and I've heard it before."
The others had evidently not waited for the bell, since they were all seated when Dr. Cohen entered the assembly room and, mindful of Cham's warning, made his way to a chair near a window, he was surprised to see that they had all brought prayer shawls. Standing behind the table was Rabbi Mezzik, a theatrically handsome man with a Guards moustache and a Vandyke. Cohen thought he might be a little younger than the rebbitzin, he was resplendent in a high velvet cantorial yarmulke and a long silk prayer shawl draped over a black academic robe. Rabbi Mezzik called them to attention by rapping on the table, which served as the reading desk.
"I want everybody to put on his tallis" he said. "Those of you who didn't bring one, we've got some spares that you can use."
Dr. Cohen took one and draped it around his shoulders, but he wondered about it, since he had always thought that the prayer shawl was used only for morning services.
As if to answer his unspoken question, Rabbi Mezzik went on, "We don't usually wear the tallis except in the morning service, the reason for that is a lot of halachic tomfoolery that we don't have to go into at this time. Take my word for it, it's all right to wear it here and now. What's more, we're going to wear it every time we come together as a group, day or night, and even when we go for this walk through the woods that Chet has planned for tomorrow afternoon, you'll put it on. Because the tallis is really a cloak like the toga that the Romans used to wear.
except that ours has fringes to distinguish us from the other nations.
"Now before we start our program, I want to give you some idea of what it's all about, especially the new people. Those who've heard it before, well, it won't do them any harm to hear it again. What this program is all about is religion, and what's religion all about? Any religion? It's about God, about the effort of people, all kinds of people, since the beginning of time, to make contact with God, that's religion. What's not religion is gathering together in a special place, a synagogue or church or mosque, to say certain words in an old-fashioned archaic language, that's socializing, that's making contact with your friends and neighbors and with society. It's not a bad thing in itself, but it's not making contact with God, so it's not religion.
"Now I'll tell you something funny," Rabbi Mezzik went on. "At one time that was religion. When? Back when they first made up those prayers, when the language in which they were set was not archaic, when it was the normal way of talking. But now, it's just the preservation of tradition, also not a bad thing in itself, but not religion, because it's not making contact with God. So what happens? The need to make contact with God is there, but we're not gettina through, and what's the result? I'll tell you: our people, especially our young people, are going elsewhere in an effort to make contact, they go to Zen Buddhism, to Meher Baba, to Krishnamurti; some go to Chabad, and some try to do it with drugs, that's the result."
He paused and looked about triumphantly, as though they had been arguing the matter with him and he had just presented the clincher. "And does it work?" he asked, and he answered himself. "Of course it works— for some of them, they don't just tell you this is right and this is wrong the way the traditional religions do, they provide a method for acquiring the one and scorning the other. In other words, they don't just tell you where the place is; they tell you how to get there.
"And each has a different way of getting there. Is that so strange? If you wanted to go to Chicago, is there only one way? It would depend on how you wanted to travel, and where you came from, wouldn't it? Well, we all come from different traditions and different societies with different lifestyles, we dress differently, we eat differently, we live differently, so why shouldn't we pray or meditate or make contact with God differently? In India, they sit on the ground to eat, and to show respect they get down as near to the ground as possible—" To illustrate, he suddenly crouched down beside the lectern as though about to receive a cut from the whip of a master, he sprang to his feet once again. "So it's only natural for them to meditate in the lotus position. But it doesn't have the same effect with us, because it's alien to our tradition and lifestyle, we don't touch our foreheads to the ground the way the Muslims do and we don't kneel like the Christians, to show respect, we stand. Nor do I believe in the rocking and shaking of the Chasidim— their interpretation of'Love your God with all your heart and all your might'— I think that's alien, too.