“We do our best, David.”
“I will let you down.”
“You are a Maccabean warrior, David. You will bring woe to anyone who insults the Torah, will you not?”
“If someone insulted a Jew near me,” David said, “I would gut them like a fish.”
“I know.” Rabbi Kales frowned. “Can I tell you something, David? You are a better Jew than me. Because you have the rest of your life to do right if you so choose. I have sold my life. Every good deed I have done as a rabbi is counterbalanced by the tremendous woe I have left in this world. You, David, beginning today, can be the best of us. You are a good man who has done terrible things. But you did those things outside the faith. Today, I can give you the faith. And for the rest of your days, how you live as a Jew is finally your choice.”
“I’ve . . .” David began, but then stopped. Did he want to say this? “I’ve been having visions, Rabbi.”
“Of what?”
“Two things,” David said. “In one, I’m the prophet Ezekiel. Or at least I am seeing the world through his eyes. And God is telling me to repent. In the other, I see a woman I killed.”
“I see,” Rabbi Kales said. “And what does this person say?”
“She doesn’t speak. Her intent is clear enough.” He motioned over Rabbi Kales’s shoulder, where Melanie Moss was pointing at him. “She’s by your kitchen door now.”
Rabbi Kales glanced over his shoulder. “I don’t see her,” Rabbi Kales said, “but that’s not proof she is not there.”
“If I do this,” David said, “if I commit fully, do these visions stop?”
“I cannot tell you that, David,” Rabbi Kales said. “What I can tell you is that I see my wife every day. I don’t know if her spectral presence is real or a manifestation of my desires or a memory or just an old man who can see the end of life, but she comes to me and we talk and it is pleasant.”
“Can you ask her?”
“It’s not like that, David.”
“I don’t believe in God,” David said.
“Yes you do,” Rabbi Kales said. “You don’t believe in a god who watches you. You don’t believe in a god who plays a role in the outcome of football games or traffic jams. But you have shown me that you believe in something beyond yourself. God can come in whatever form you choose. He is not an old man in the sky. He is all around us. He is you and he is me and he is the memory of your father and the hope to once again see your wife and son. He is where you go when the world has lost shape.”
“No,” David said. “Where was God when those planes hit? Where was God when the camps were being built? Torah says fare well and you’ll have a long life, but that’s bullshit, Rabbi.”
Rabbi Kales groaned. “We suffer because of evils that we have produced ourselves of our free will,” he said. “Maimonides wrote that. We are good, and we are evil. But your free will, your choice to become Jewish tonight, can begin to balance that.” Rabbi Kales transferred the knife from his right hand to his left. “I need to draw blood, David, if we are to do this.”
David knew well the conversion ceremony. He’d done a dozen of them, usually right before a wedding, always with the husband changing teams. The drawing of the blood was to symbolize the circumcision since everyone was circumcised these days, but it was also the point at which conversion wasn’t just a notion, an idea, a thing you told your wife you believed and then went back to putting mayonnaise on corned beef. Your flesh was cut. Your people were my people. The act was more like some omertà shit. Gone was living by the gun and the knife. Join the company of lions rather than assume the lead among foxes.
And there it was. An honest, simple truth.
He turned his palm to Rabbi Kales.
“Then I’m ready, Rabbi,” David said.
Rabbi Kales cut him, just a nick, a bubble of blood rising up on his palm. “The Ethics of Our Fathers says, ‘Distance yourself from a bad neighbor, do not cleave to a wicked person, and do not abandon belief in retribution,’” Rabbi Kales said. “Do you believe that, David?”
“All this time,” David said.
“Retribution,” Rabbi Kales said, “is your calling, David. You are a warrior. You have always been a warrior. You have served terrible leaders. What I am giving you now is a chance to serve yourself, in the word of the Torah. Is that what you want, David? Because the tub is filling.” He smiled. “I must know only one thing about you. Your given name.”
“My name,” David said, “is Salvatore William Cupertine.”
Rabbi Kales pressed his thumb over Sal’s wound, stopped the bleeding. “Salvatore William Cupertine. There are but three things you must know in this life. Know from where you came, where you are going, and before whom you are destined to give a judgment and accounting. From where you came: from a putrid drop. Where you are going: to a place of dust, maggots, and worms. And before whom you are destined to give a judgment and accounting: before the supreme King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be he.” Rabbi Kales smiled faintly. “I know, Salvatore, that you do not yet believe in the Holy One, that you have pretended all of this time for the good of your congregation, but I also know that you have found him in the small things, that you have found him in your darkness, and that he calls to you in visions and dreams. He exists in your countenance, returned to you, Salvatore. One day, you will walk beside him in faith.”
Rabbi Kales led Sal to his bathroom, to the tub filled with water. Rabbi Kales turned the water off, tested it with his finger. “Now, Salvatore, remove your clothes and get into the tub.”
Sal did as Rabbi Kales had instructed. He knelt in the tub and then immersed himself completely, laying himself flat to cover his head, and then rose up, Rabbi Kales beginning his prayer, “Blessed are you, God, Majestic Spirit of the Universe, who makes us holy by embracing us in living waters.”
Sal dipped himself twice more and then sat up, he and Rabbi Kales praying together, “Blessed are you, Adonai, Ruler of the Universe, who has kept us alive and sustained us, and enabled us to reach this day.”
Rabbi Kales took Sal’s hands. “You have earned the Hebrew name David, if you so wish to keep it.”
Sal knew the meaning of his name. David, the second king of Israel. David, from the Hebrew dod, meaning beloved. The Star of David, the symbol of the faith. “I do,” Sal said.
Rabbi Kales said, “May the one who blessed our forefathers, Avraham, Yitsḥak, and Ya’akov, Moshe and Aharon, Yoav ben Tsruyah, and Mordekhai ben Yair, may Hashem bless this man and let his name in Yisra’el be David, with good luck and in a blessed hour; and so may it be your will, and let it be said, amen!”
“Amen,” David said.
Rabbi Kales reached around his neck and undid the necklace he’d worn every day since David first met him at the Bagel Café. It was a chain with a simple Star of David, originally gold but time had dulled it, tarnishing the shine away. He clasped it around David’s neck. “This was my father’s,” he said. “And now it is yours. Maybe one day it will be your son’s.”
“Rabbi,” David said, “I can’t take this.”
“You already have, boychick,” Rabbi Kales said. He put his hand on David’s cheek. “Tradition says you may now choose a prayer of your own. You may recite it aloud, you may recite it in your heart, but it is to be done alone, so I will leave you.”
For almost five minutes, Rabbi David Cohen sat quietly in the tub, felt the warm water wash over his body, and tried to remember the last time he felt peace.
Ten years old.
