The Righteous One

by Neil Perry Gordon

  “I used to run a small sports book. It was mostly a hobby. That’s how I got to know Myron. Of course I had to give it up when I decided to run for the city council seat for the Bronx 15th Congressional District. I had thought Myron was just a small-time bookie, but when I was elected I learned about how far-reaching his criminal organization really was.”

  Moshe felt himself blush slightly that he didn’t know who Councilman Arnold Lieberman was. But then again, he didn’t pay attention to local politics.

  Arnold continued, “I also learned that the brains behind the organization was Myron’s father, Solomon. They’re involved with massive real estate deals, a sports book, and have several politicians in their pockets. When I became councilman, Myron even approached me right in this office,” he said sounding exasperated.

  “What’s so unusual? Sounds like typical gangster behavior that I read about nearly every day in the News,” Moshe said.

  “You’re right, if that was all it was—except a few weeks ago I was sharing a story with Rabbi Shapira about Myron, and his father Solomon. The rabbi asked me if I was speaking about Solomon Blass, the old man, which indeed I was.

  “The rabbi said that he had seen him at several Kabbalah lectures recently asking questions about Kabbalah’s supposed dark side. He thinks there is something sinister with the man. When I told him about Solomon’s history, he had gone as far as calling him rasha,” Arnold said.

  Moshe squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. Memories flooded his mind about his abduction as a teenager by the hands of the renowned palmist Dora Meltzer. She was accused of being rasha, which Moshe learned was some sort of evil counterpart to the tzaddik.

  From what he remembered about his encounter with the palmist, she thought she could, through some magical ceremony, steal Moshe’s connection to Hashem. Of course, she never had the chance to do so because of the last-minute rescue by his parents.

  “So what does this have to do with me?” Moshe asked.

  “The rasha must be stopped, and it can’t be done without you.”

  “What do you mean?” Moshe asked flipping his palms upwards.

  “According to Rabbi Shapira, only tzaddik can stop rasha.”

  Moshe shook his head and closed his eyes. When he opened them he leaned forward and waved his right hand and said, “I don’t know what you are saying to me.”

  “Moshe, if Solomon Blass is indeed rasha, then you need to stop him, and only a tzaddik can do this. He and his son have already done irreparable harm to the Bronx.”

  “I think you’re talking to the wrong man, Arnold,” he said looking at his watch. “And I really need to get back to the shop.”

  “Of course, I understand. But why don’t we get to know each other and at least become friends?”

  “Sure, that sounds fine,” Moshe said, anxious to end the conversation.

  “Great,” Arnold said, slapping his palms together. “Please come for dinner at my home and bring your wife. That’s a good way for us to get acquainted since we are neighbors,” Arnold said, pointing out through the window.

  Chapter 3

  Kabbalistic wisdom had helped Solomon to master ways of coping with the stresses of life by considering them blessings. The concept behind this practice was that all blessings emanate from the Creator and since the Creator is an endless source of goodness, even life’s most challenging moments can be understood as a path to evolving one’s eternal soul.

  He understood that man’s most basic needs were what the Kabbalists labeled as Desire and the sole object of this need was nothing more than one’s pursuit for happiness. The achievement of this is accomplished by lifting the Curtain of Darkness that we live behind in order to discover the Light. Once we are connected to this Light, we no longer have fears that cripple us psychologically.

  But in order to connect to the Light, we must learn how to face the Opposition, the source of life’s challenges. The uninitiated at first cringe at this term. However in order to achieve authentic spiritual growth, the Opposition must not be feared, instead it must be accepted as a blessing from the Creator.

  After years of practice, Solomon was able to master these lessons and put them into practice. But after some time, he wanted to go deeper and reach a higher spiritual level. That was when he twisted the righteous intent of the mystics.

  He discovered, through his life experiences, that it was true that the universe was built on the idea of balance. Where there was the light, there must also be darkness. Where there was the meek and fearful, there must also be the strong and the fearless, and where there was the Obedient, there must also be the Opposition.

  Supporting his efforts to build upon his connection to the Opposition, for as long as he could remember, Solomon had an ability to see future events in his dreams.

  He remembered the first time he knew he was dreaming. He was speaking to his father who died a few weeks before, in the fire of the Great Synagogue of Warsaw.

  “Papa, you and Mama died in the fire,” Solomon said.

  “I’ve come to tell you that I will always be here for you, in your dreams,” his father said.

  “Am I dreaming now?”

  “You must learn how to be awake in your dreams, son.”

  These words from his father fueled his awareness of being awake in his dreams. He soon learned that once he knew he was awake, he could actually do what he wanted.

  At first he used the knowledge for amusement. Flying was a favorite activity. He would stretch his arms out like a bird and soar high above the earth. He also discovered the joy of having sex in his dreams, which resulted in changing his bed linens often.

  Then the guides started to appear. He had no ideas where they came from, but they had an agenda. The first visitor came the night before he was to board a steamship and sail to America, from the Port of Hamburg.

  While he was standing in a long line waiting to board, with his small valise in his hand, he felt someone tap him on his shoulder. He turned around, and saw a small man wearing round spectacles, and a long black coat.

  “Don’t get on,” the stranger said.

  Solomon said, “I’m going to America.”

  “The ship won’t make it. It will collide with another ship and sink. All these people will drown.”

  Solomon looked up and down the long line of men, women and children. “Shouldn’t we warn them?”

  But the visitor was gone, and Solomon realized he was dreaming.

  The next morning when he awoke he walked down to the dock and saw hundreds of people lining up to board the ship. He decided not to board that day and bought a ticket for the next voyage to America. When he arrived in New York a month later, he read in the newspaper about the tragic sinking of the SS Berlin. All two hundred and eighty passengers and crew perished at sea.

  Over the years, his dreams continued to provide useful information on outcomes of events that he could exploit. The easiest ones were knowing the results of sports scores. He would go to bookies and make bets even when the odds seemed crazy. But he would win, every time. Soon the bookies stop taking his bets, so Solomon started his own sports betting business.

  He knew about land deal opportunities and political outcomes that made him a rich man. Of all of the moves he made, the most dramatic was dreaming about the sudden, and accidental death of his wife Ruth.

  Solomon met Ruth at a social gathering at a friend’s home a few years after he arrived in America. Ruth emigrated from Russia a year earlier and was still struggling with finding her place in the New World. Solomon was not only attracted to her stunning beauty, but also to her vulnerability. He wanted a woman to depend upon him, and Ruth became that woman. They married a few months later, and the following year, Myron was born.

  The dream occurred six months before Myron’s eighth birthday.

  He was sitting across from a beautiful woman who was holding on tightly to his right wrist, while running her finger gently across his open palm.

  “I can see a
terrible car accident involving your wife. She won’t survive.”

  Solomon tried to pull his hand away, but she wouldn’t release her grip.

  “Your ability of foresight is a gift, Solomon. You should honor the giver,” said the palm reader.

  “Who is the giver?” Solomon asked.

  “The giver is the rasha,” she said.

  The next day, Solomon purchased a $1,000,000 life insurance policy on Ruth, naming him as the sole beneficiary. Six months later, a car skidded on the ice and slammed into Ruth as she was walking on the sidewalk, killing her instantly.

  For many years Solomon stumbled upon his prophetic dreams like a child finding a nugget on a treasure hunt. He was pleased to discover an occasional gem but was unable to consistently capitalize upon it. But that all changed when he met Rabbi Henryk Appel and was enlightened how to exponentially wield his dreams into greater power and treasure through the understanding and manipulation of Kabbalah’s dark side.

  It was ten years earlier in the neighborhood diner and he had taken a seat on one of the red vinyl upholstered barstools. Sitting next to him was a man dressed like a rabbi, who was fishing out bits of potatoes from his soup. Solomon asked, “Tell me, Rabbi, why do you eat alone?”

  The rabbi put down his spoon in his bowl of soup, shrugged and said, “I always eat alone.”

  “You have no family?”

  The rabbi exhaled and said, “No, just me.”

  Solomon stood up, walked over to an empty booth, and said, “Come, Rabbi, sit with me.”

  The rabbi stood, took his bowl of soup, and joined him.

  “My name is Solomon Blass,” he said, reaching across the table between them.

  “Henryk Appel,” the rabbi said, and shook Solomon’s hand.

  The two men sat for hours. The rabbi told Solomon his story.

  He had been a Rabbinical student from the ancient city of Safed, the birthplace of Kabbalah. “But I wasn’t in good standing with the faculty because of my fascination with Kabbalah’s dark side,” the rabbi confessed quietly, and looked around the diner making sure he wasn’t overheard.

  Solomon stopped sipping at his coffee as his interest was piqued.

  “I barely finished my first year when I was asked to leave the seminary.”

  With nothing keeping him in Israel, he decided to seek his calling in America. He arrived with only a valise in hand. A friend from Israel told him of someone at a well-known seminary in Manhattan.

  “Go see Rabbi Joel Rabinowitz, he’s on the faculty. Maybe he can find you a position,” his friend advised.

  Upon his arrival in New York, he went to see this man at the Rabbinical Seminary, where he did land a part-time teaching job. But that soon changed to full-time, when his course, Embracing the rasha, became one of the seminary’s most popular.

  The faculty was not pleased with the content of his course, but since he was bringing in desperately needed funds to the struggling school they allowed the course to be offered.

  Rabbi Appel pontificated that it was the rasha that created the natural balance to the tzaddik, and that one could not exist without the other.

  “It has been said that the rasha is the evil counterpart to the tzaddik. So if the tzaddik is the extended hand of Hashem, then what is the rasha?” he would ask his students on the first day of class.

  After a few feeble attempts by the students to answer, he said, “The rasha is the hand that slaps the tzaddik’s away. Is it not the meek that seek out the soft comforts of the tzaddik? If you want to be strong, independent leaders, and ultimately better rabbis, you must understand and embrace the rasha.”

  To the seminary’s disdain, many young men connected to this toxic message.

  “It is the rasha that is the honest one, because he acts out of his true nature, while the tzaddik creates this façade of a false ideal of accepting what the Opposition offers us as a blessing and a way to live one’s life. Does it make sense to live a life as the Obedient follower, accepting life’s challenges as the way things are supposed to be, or do we fight back? Perhaps another way to interpret this wisdom is to say that yes, we can accept life’s tests as a blessing from the Creator, but it is how we react to these tests that will determine how we grow and ultimately enhance our soul.”

  Eventually, as the seminary grew and became financially stable, the faculty gathered its collective nerve and dismissed Henryk Appel. This was the second time he was fired by those who disagreed with his message of romanticizing Kabbalah’s dark side.

  That meeting was the beginning of a long and complex relationship between Solomon and the rabbi. That first day in the diner, when Solomon told the rabbi he was an eager student of Kabbalah and that he was looking for a teacher, he offered Henryk an opportunity to be his private rabbi.

  “You should know that I’m not really a rabbi. I was thrown out before I was ordained.”

  “Sounds like you escaped before your passion was extinguished. You will teach me all there is to know about the ways of rasha. My office is upstairs in this building,” he said, pointing to the ceiling of the diner before continuing, “I’ll set you up in your own office, and don’t worry about the money, I’ll pay you more than any synagogue or seminary in the city would.”

  Chapter 4

  “Come on, Leah, we’re going to be late,” Moshe pleaded to his wife.

  “Don’t rush me,” she snapped.

  Moshe locked the front door and helped Leah down the steps. He had already pulled the car out of the narrow driveway and parked it on the street. Moshe opened the front door and helped settle his wife into her seat.

  “Be careful with my hair. I just went to the beauty parlor,” she barked at her husband.

  “Okay, Leah,” Moshe said taking a closer look at her perfectly coiffed crown of newly colored blonde hair. “It looks beautiful.”

  Even as Leah approached her sixtieth birthday, she looked several years younger. Her eyes were as blue as the first time they met, her skin just as smooth and she still sported a shapely figure.

  “Yes, I think the hairdresser did a good job this time. Not like last time. Last time I wanted to kill her, don’t you remember?” Leah said, carefully patting her stiff hair-sprayed bun.

  “I do remember, Leah,” Moshe said as he closed her door and rolled his eyes.

  With her vision continuing to deteriorate, Leah had become more dependent upon him. Leaving the house frightened her, and the prospect of taking a tumble down a flight of stairs was debilitating. Even with Moshe’s ability to calm those in pain, he apparently had no effect upon his wife who seemed to have grown numb to his touch over their forty years of marriage.

  Moshe was visited by Gray the day before at the cobbler shop with a dinner party invitation for him and Leah at Mr. Lieberman’s home in Riverdale. The last time he was in this exclusive community in the northern Bronx was when he attended the closing of the sale of his parents’ former home.

  As they pulled into the driveway of 46 Fieldstone Road, Leah shrieked, “Oh my, Moshe, is this the house?”

  Moshe glanced over to his wife and smiled at her sudden ability of good eyesight.

  “This is it,” he said, looking at the enormous stone mansion covered with crawling ivy and featuring black-iron framed windows that looked like they came from a European castle.

  Standing and welcoming them at the open front door was Arnold Lieberman.

  “Greetings, Moshe and this lovely young woman must be your daughter, Leah.”

  Leah let out a yelp. “I love this man!”

  As they entered the well-appointed home, Arnold introduced his wife Sadie.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sadie,” Moshe said.

  “This is the most beautiful home I have ever seen,” added Leah.

  “Thank you, Leah,” Sadie said.

  Arnold stepped aside and Moshe was able to see, standing alongside the staircase leading to the upper floors, a man with a long beard, dressed in a white shirt, black pant
s, and a yarmulke resting on his thinning crop of silver hair.

  “I know you haven’t seen each other since you were children, so allow me to present Rabbi Shapira.”

  Moshe couldn’t believe his eyes. It was as if the Rabbi of Krzywcza was standing before him. This was the son, but the resemblance to his father was remarkable.

  “What a surprise,” Moshe said, shaking the rabbi’s hand.

  “It’s been a while, Moshe,” said the rabbi, running a hand through his long salt, and pepper beard.

  This mannerism triggered a flood of memories that reminded Moshe of the rabbi’s father and made him smile.

  After dinner, Leah and Sadie shared stories about their grandchildren, while Arnold escorted Moshe and the rabbi out onto the back porch.

  “I’m happy that you came, Moshe,” Arnold began, as the three men took a seat on the white wicker furniture overlooking the landscaped backyard.

  “Thank you for the invitation and surprising me with your special guest,” Moshe said looking at the rabbi.

  “I don’t know if you know this, Moshe, but I was at your Bar Mitzvah,” the rabbi said, nodding.

  “Were you? I’m sorry, but I don’t remember.”

  “And no wonder, the shul was packed with every Jew in the shtetl that day, all to witness your Bar Mitzvah. That was a special day for everyone.”

  The rabbi turned to look at Arnold and continued, “It was just after the mass murder of the wounded soldiers at the synagogue. People were despondent and needed hope. It was Moshe’s presence and his ability to comfort those close to death that inspired my father to make his greatest sermon of his seventy years as a rabbi.”

  “That I do remember,” Moshe said.

  The rabbi leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees, and whispered, “Have you had any more of your um… episodes?”

  Moshe stood up and walked over to the white wood railing wrapping around the porch. He looked out onto the impeccably groomed landscape for a moment. Then he turned to look at the rabbi and Arnold waiting for a reply and said, “The last episode I had was the day my father passed.”