Wednesday the Rabbi got wet

CHAPTER TWO

Since it was Akiva Rokeach's first conference with the rebbe. Baruch, the gabbe, felt he should instruct him on how he was to behave. "You understand, Akiva, that with the rebbe one doesn't argue," he said severely. "Reb Mendel is a zaddik, that is to say a holy man, like a saint." Baruch was a small, stout man, balding, with grizzled hair pushed back from a high forehead where a prominent blue vein pulsated noticeably when he was angry, he held the last half-inch of an unfiltered cigarette between nicotine-stained thumb and forefinger, took a final puff, and then regretfully dropped it in an ashtray where it continued to smolder, he was a nervous, irritable man, but as the gabbe, or secretary and general factotum to the rebbe, he was important. Only through him could one get in to see the rebbe. "Even when the rebbe seems to make a mistake," he continued, "as when you think he has misquoted during his discourse on the Law, you do not point it out or contradict him. Instead, you should ponder the reason why Reb Mendel deliberately misquoted." He paused to light another cigarette. "Most of all, when he renders a verdict, you accept it without protest."

"I understand," said Akiva Rokeach humbly.

The vein in the gabbe's forehead throbbed at the interruption. "For he has the Insight, you understand, and it is not to be expected that his thought will be like yours."

This time Akiva merely inclined his head in acquiescence, although he had been associated with the group for more than half a year, it would be the first time he would be seeing Reb Mendel in his study alone, and he did not want to jeopardize the opportunity by irritating the gabbe.

Baruch looked at the young man standing before him in frank disapproval— of his long hair, of his unruly blond beard, of his patched blue jeans stuffed into heavy boots. "You have a kvitl?" he demanded sourly, and when Akiva did not seem to understand, he translated impatiently, "A request, a written request. You don't expect the rebbe to wait while you explain, do you?"

"Oh, oh yes. I have it here." "And apidyon?"

Akiva drew out a five-dollar bill from his wallet and presented it, a token in advance of his gratitude to the rebbe for the privilege of talking with him in private. Baruch glanced at it and made a notation in his book.

"Wait here and I will see if the rebbe can see you now." He knocked on the door of the study, waited a moment and then entered, closing the door carefully behind him, he returned shortly and motioned the young man to enter.

Akiva had never been so close to Reb Mendel before, at Ihefarbrengen, the festive gatherings, as the newest member of the group, he had to remain on the fringe, and when the zaddik expounded Torah and philosophy after the third meal on the Sabbath, he had been at the extreme foot of the communal table, separated from him by almost the length of the hall.

Now Reb Mendel sat tall in his thronelike chair behind a large carved walnut desk, he was thirty? forty? forty-five? It was hard to tell, the large spade beard was beginning to gray, but the hand that occasionally stroked it was that of a young man.

"Ah, our young Viking," Reb Mendel murmured, and nodded to a chair beside the desk.

"I beg your pardon, Rebbe, I didn't hear—"

Reb Mendel smiled. "Nothing, a little private joke. You wish to live here for a week?"

"I have a week's vacation." said Akiva. "I thought I could best spend it here in prayer and meditation."

With only a flick of his eyes, the rebbe glanced at the card Baruch had placed on his desk. "You have been with us only seven months," he said. "You do not have the training or the background yet which would make it worthwhile. You have had no previous religious education, not even the little that most Jewish boys get in preparing for their Bar Mitzvah."

Akiva inclined his head. "My parents are not religious. My father is an agnostic and I was brought up in agnosticism. I was not sent to the religious school like the other boys in the neighborhood and we did not belong to the temple."

"Your parents live here in Philadelphia?"

"No. I come from Massachusetts, from a small town north of Boston called Barnard's Crossing."

"And when did you last see them?"

Akiva colored. "Well, I haven't seen them for some time, but I talk with them on the phone every now and then, especially with my mother."

"With your father you quarreled." It was not a question; it was stated flatly as though he knew. "Tell me about it."

"My father has a drugstore, and when I graduated from pharmacy college and passed my licensing exam, I went to work for him, we never really got along."

"But that was not why you left— and never returned."

Akiva nodded readily, even eagerly, to show he had no intention of keeping anything back. "There was this place I used to go to, it was a kind of nightclub, they had a back room where there was gambling—*

"And girls?"

"Yes, they had girls, too, well, I was a little short on my bill there one night, and I gave them an IOU for fifty dollars, then somebody, not the proprietor— he claimed he bought it from the proprietor— came to see me at the store, only it had been hiked to a hundred and fifty."

"You asked your father for the money?"

"Well, no, he wouldn't have understood, he's very like square, he would have gone to the police."

"So you took the money out of the cash register?" the rebbe suggested.

Akiva nodded without embarrassment, that was what was so wonderful about the group. One could be completely honest with them. "It was no sweat. You see, I opened in the morning and I closed at night, so I totaled. Mostly I'd take the figures at night, but if I was in a hurry I'd leave them for the morning. But one morning I overslept, and my father opened. Of course I was planning to replace the money in a couple of weeks."

"But your father caught on before you had a chance to." "That's right, there was an awful row and I split." "Where'd you go?"

"I just wandered around the country. I was in California for a while, and then I worked my way back to Philly."

"Why here?"

"Because I'd gone to the College of Pharmacy here, so I knew the city."

"And what did you do while you wandered around the country? And how long has it been since you left home?"

"About three years. Most of the time I worked. I'd take a job in a drugstore— pharmacy jobs weren't hard to get— and I'd work for a while and then I'd move on to another place."

"Because you were not at ease with yourself," said Reb Mendel flatly.

"No. I—" He remembered that one must not contradict the rebbe. "Yes. But I also wanted to try out different lifestyles. I was into yoga for a while, and Zen." He took courage. "I understand you, too..."

Reb Mendel smiled, a broad sunny smile that showed even white teeth, and for a moment he seemed very young, no older than Akiva. "While doing my doctorate in anthropology, I lived among the American Indians for a while, studying their religion. Later, I spent some time in India, studying Eastern thought and Transcendental Meditation. But ultimately one must find the equivalents in one's own culture. One must go home. I did, and so must you, Akiva."

"But if I stav here, if only for the rest of the week—"

Reb Mendel shook his head. "You do not know enough to profit from it. I am informed that in the time you have been with us, you have learned to read your prayers in Hebrew.., haltingly. But of course you don't understand what you're reading. When we talk here, we talk in English to be sure, but also in Yiddish and occasionally Hebrew, neither of which you understand. You would be wasting your time. You have a few davs left of your vacation, so I tell you to use them to go home."

The young man made no effort to conceal his disappointment, and Reb Mendel's expression softened. "Don't you see," he said kindly, "the quarrel with your father impedes your spiritual progress. So long as you have something in your past which disturbs and interferes with your concentration, you will never know the tranquillity that is necessary for the ecstasy we strive for."

"It wasn't only that," Akiva pleaded. "We never really got along, he had old-fashioned ideas— even about running the store. Lots of stuff he wouldn't carry because he'd say it wasn't in keeping with the dignity of a pharmacy. Even the way you filled prescriptions, it had to be just so. Like where every pharmacy in town used plastic tubes for putting up pills, he still used glass bottles because he said the tubes weren't air-tight, although there are only a few pills like nitroglycerin that deteriorate in the air."

"And this was a hardship?"

"No, but it's old-fashioned, the bottles cost more and instead of just sliding the label in like you do with tubes, you got to paste them on. I'm just giving that as an example. Like we used to stay open later than the other stores in town because he felt it was the responsibility of a pharmacy to the community. Sometimes, doctors would call up in the middle of the night and I might have to go to the store to compound the medicine and maybe even deliver it."

"And over this you quarreled? It was a good deed, a mitzvah. You were helping a sick person."

"We didn't fight over that. I'm just trying to give you an idea of how he felt about the store." He smiled wanly. "That's how I happened to oversleep that morning. If it was a mitzvah, I sure didn't get any reward for it."

"One doesn't perform a mitzvah in the hope of reward. If one does, then it is no longer a mitzvah but a business transaction that you are trying to make with The Almighty, and one does not always recognize the reward when it comes." He thoughtfully stroked his beard.

"Yeah, I suppose," Akiva agreed moodily, staring down at his hands, then he looked up and tried once again. "He didn't pay me what he'd have to pay a regular pharmacist, and I worked longer hours, that was because I was his son, he'd say, 'The store is yours. In a few years I'll step aside and you'll take over the way I did from my father.' Like it was a family tradition," he added bitterly, "like a bank or a railroad or some big corporation. But it was only a small neighborhood drugstore, and if it was mine, how come he raised such a stink when I took some of what was mine?"

"This family tradition, you have no feeling for?"

The young man shook his head. "To me it's just a job. If I go home, he'll start in about carrying on the tradition and I'll just fight with him again."

Reb Mendel nodded his head slowly as he considered. Finally, he spoke, in tones that would brook no further argument. "This disagreement with your father, it bothers you. It is not something you can forget, and for that reason it is a psychological and spiritual infection that must be cured or it will spread and bring about your spiritual decay. Go home, Akiva. Go home."