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An e-mail from my rabbi, who's moved to the West Coast,
says they're "happier than pigs in shit." Something
forced about that. People with a new grandchild don't boast
that way, usually. But my rabbi's different, trying,
despite fame as a teacher, to prove something. Let's speculate
that those pastoral visits to sickbeds, those weddings, those grave-side
prayers, gave him an anchor to the unremarkable, the basic
nurturing commonness of others' lives. Out there
he's free of all that--or denied it?--and is hoping
that--if he tries writing daily--he'll capture
in a novel everything he knows. Joy. Despair.
"Some days," he says, "I feel like jumping off the Golden Gate."
Odd to hear that from a man who once said that God
turns tragedy and comedy into history, if we wait.
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