The Righteous One

by Neil Perry Gordon

  “That was over fifteen years ago, Moshe,” the rabbi said.

  Moshe nodded.

  “You have had no premonitions since that day your father died?”

  Moshe just shook his head.

  “What about your touch? Your ability to comfort others in times of grief.”

  “There’s a glimmer of that from time to time, but that too has mostly withered,” Moshe said, shrugging.

  Arnold glanced over to the rabbi, who was nervously running his fingers through his long beard and asked, “Rabbi, what do we do?”

  “Are you asking how to revive a tzaddik?”

  Arnold nodded vigorously.

  “This is beyond my knowledge,” the rabbi said.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen, for saying this, but I like my life the way it is, being just a cobbler,” Moshe said.

  “But you’re not just a cobbler, Moshe, you’re also tzaddik, and unless you can regain your connection with Hashem, many people will suffer,” the rabbi warned.

  “This sounds crazy.”

  “You remember what I told you about Solomon Blass?” Arnold said.

  “That he is rasha,” Moshe said.

  Both the rabbi and Arnold nodded.

  “Do you know that I’ve had experiences with rasha before?” Moshe said.

  Arnold turned to look at the rabbi, then both gawked at Moshe.

  “It was when I was fifteen years old. Her name was Dora Meltzer, a palmist.”

  “A palm reader?” Arnold said, sounding amused.

  “Father first met her on the steamship when he immigrated to America. She was offering readings to the passengers. She told him that his son, meaning me, had special abilities. Years later, when the rest of our family arrived in America she found me and kidnapped me.” Moshe paused, smiled a bit, leaned in and looked around to make sure no one else could overhear and then whispered, “She was my first, you know…” he said with a sly smile and an upward shifting of his eyebrows.

  Arnold’s jaw hung loosely, enjoying the sudden scandalous story.

  “Father said she was rasha. She drugged me and brought into this synagogue on the Lower East Side. There were these signs of the zodiac painted on the ceiling that I could see from where I was laid down upon the bimah.” Moshe used his hands to demonstrate his prone position.

  “She was going to perform a ceremony with a rabbi who she believed was versed in the dark arts of Kabbalah. She wanted to drain the tzaddik out of me and transfer it into her somehow. But at the last minute, I was rescued by my parents. I don’t know what happened to Dora. I believe she went to prison for a few years.”

  “That’s an incredible story, Moshe,” Arnold said.

  Moshe shook his head and said, “If you ask me, I think it’s all farfetched nonsense. A long time ago I may have had something, but now it’s gone. All of it is just memories that have faded away, until you appeared. This idea that some rasha is enriching himself by having the ability to see into the future is ridiculous.”

  “It’s not so ridiculous, Moshe, and I can prove it. How would Myron know the outcome of a vote before the City Council even voted on it?”

  “What do you mean?” Moshe asked.

  “Just last month Myron and Solomon bought an old abandoned apartment building in the South Bronx for a song. A few days later the council voted on claiming the building under eminent domain for the new expressway. They ended up doubling his money in just a few weeks,” Arnold explained.

  “And please explain why this is such a danger?” Moshe asked.

  Arnold rubbed his chin. “The issue is not an unfair advantage of profiting off their knowledge of future events. It’s how they can gain leverage over the entire political system in the city. It is one thing knowing of events before they occur, but what happens when you combine that with a skillful ability of wielding power? Imagine how the voters will react to a politician who can accurately predict future events? Then try to consider if Solomon and Myron were able to trade their knowledge with a Mayor or a Governor in exchange for financial opportunities and power?”

  Moshe looked at Arnold and then at the rabbi and said, “I’m sorry, but I still don’t understand what this has to do with me.”

  “We need to match the power of the rasha, and the rabbi says that is only possible with a tzaddik,” Arnold said.

  “Well, like I said, my abilities are gone and there is nothing I can do about it, even if I wanted to.”

  Rabbi Shapira rose from the rattan chair and stood next to Moshe. He placed his left hand on Moshe’s shoulder and while stroking his long beard he said, “There are only thirty-six tzaddikim in the world at any given time. Finding you, Moshe, was a stroke of luck. As tzaddik you are called upon to fight the rasha when needed. This is the will of Hashem.”

  “What does anyone know of the will of Hashem?” Moshe said, lifting his arms into the air.

  The rabbi kept a hand on Moshe’s shoulder and looked at him and said, “There have been times in history where tzaddik have been called upon for such a task.”

  Moshe flipped his palms upwards, as a gesture to challenge the rabbi and said, “Okay, tell me.”

  The rabbi continued stroking his beard while he thought for a moment. Then he began, “It can be said that Moses was tzaddik and the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses was rasha.”

  Moshe laughed. “Now come on, Rabbi, I am no Moses.”

  “Of course not,” the rabbi said and held up his hands, acknowledging the poor example. He pointed a finger into the air and said, “I did hear a story about a woman who lived in the Warsaw Ghetto during the war. She was able to ease the pain of her fellow Jews just before they passed. Just like you, Moshe.”

  “Can a woman be tzaddik?” Moshe asked.

  “Of course, why not?” the rabbi said with a smile and a tilt of his head.

  Moshe shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck, nervous that his options of refusing were dwindling the more the rabbi spoke. But he knew that he did indeed have a gift, though it had been a while since there was a need to call upon it.

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” Moshe said, and paused. “But just say I agree. How would I go about restoring my abilities?”

  The rabbi looked at Arnold, then back to Moshe, smiled and said, “You and I would need to travel to the ancient city of Safed in northern Israel, the birthplace of Kabbalah.”

  Chapter 5

  Rabbi Henryk Appel told Myron that turning ninety years old held an important significance according to Kabballah. “All Jewish men achieving this milestone become the hand of Hashem. But for the ones with the gift such as your father, his powers become enhanced.”

  Maybe this explains the increased accuracy of Solomon’s prophetic dreams, Myron considered. As long as Myron could remember, his father had had an uncanny ability to foresee events. When Myron asked how he knew of things before they happened, his father said, “I see it in my dreams.”

  When Myron turned eighteen, his father sat him down and shared his biography. Solomon was born in 1870 in Warsaw, Poland. At the time when he was turning eleven, the Jews were being falsely accused of the assassination of the Russian Tsar, Alexander II. This triggered a large-scale wave of riots against the Jews, which became known as the Pogroms. In Warsaw, a riot ensued and twelve Jews were killed, many more were injured and several women were raped. Among the dead were both of Solomon’s parents. Solomon told Myron that he had dreamed of his parents’ murder two days before it occurred.

  This left Solomon, at the age of eight, an orphan. Fortunately, his father’s brother, Uncle Hersch, was able to take him in. Uncle Hersch was a carpenter who worked on the Great Synagogue of Warsaw. Once the construction was completed in 1878, the administrators asked him to stay on and help manage the new facility. As part of his compensation he was given a place to live in a small cottage located on the grounds of the largest synagogue in the world.

  For ten years, from the age of eight until eighteen, Solomon lived in the cottage with hi
s uncle and attended the synagogue’s school for the youths in the surrounding Jewish community. These young boys were privileged to learn from some of the greatest teachers in the city.

  But what interested Solomon the most were not the formal classroom courses. Instead, he loved the afternoon public conversations, as they were called. These were where the best minds of the synagogue spoke of the mysterious and mystical side of Judaism, known as Kabbalah. Solomon was fascinated with the hidden messages behind the words of the Torah.

  He latched on to and became friends with Jan Baran, a rabbinical student and the son of a prominent rabbi who shared Solomon’s enthusiasm for the mystical messages of the sacred texts.

  Through Jan’s influential father, the boys were invited to attend private lectures at important rabbis’ homes where the topics discussed were too controversial for the public conversations. This was where he first learned about the thirty-six tzaddikim and their balancing dark force, the rasha. When the rabbis spoke of it, they did so only in whispers, so as not to attract evil, and thus Solomon and Jan grew up knowing and fearing its dangers.

  Solomon wondered if his prophetic dreams meant that he had a spiritual connection to the Creator.

  Jan asked, “Have you had more prophetic dreams since your parents’ murder?”

  “I’ve had more, but they were not very exciting. But that changed when I was thirteen, when I had a dream that I was at the circus. The tent was huge, hundreds of people filled the stands. Show horses and dogs were in the center-ring performing amusing tricks. People were pointing and laughing and I too was enjoying the show. Suddenly I found myself inside a nearby horse stable watching a stableman smoking a cigarette. He took one long drag and flicked the glowing butt on to the straw-covered wooden floor which instantly caught fire and quickly spread. I then found myself watching from afar as the tent exploded into flames. I could hear the people inside screaming and the animals screeching in pain as they burned alive.” Solomon paused to take a breath.

  “Did this actually happen?” Jan asked.

  Solomon nodded. “Indeed it did, a few days later. Two hundred and sixty-eight people were burned to death, eighty people were injured and over one hundred were missing or couldn’t be identified. They were probably burned to ashes.”

  “That’s incredible. Have you had more dreams since?” Jan said.

  Solomon nodded. “Just last week I dreamt about the death of the Grand Rabbi Sirkis. Not only did I dream of his death, Jan, I saw him standing at the bimah during early morning service, and falling to the ground, clutching his chest with the congregation surrounding him. Exactly as it occurred.”

  Jan slapped his hands together and said, “Solomon, you do have a gift. Perhaps you are tzaddik?”

  “That’s crazy,” Solomon said, but thought that he would want to learn more about it. He talked Jan into visiting with a rabbi known to have the ability to recognize tzaddik. “Maybe he can tell me if I’m one,” Solomon said.

  The streets of Warsaw were covered with a fresh snowfall as Solomon and Jan took off on foot one early winter morning to meet Rabbi Saks. The word was that Rabbi Saks could instantly identify tzaddik after a short conversation.

  The boys entered the apartment building and walked up the winding staircase to the fifth floor. They found apartment E and knocked on the blue painted door. The door creaked open, and standing before them was an elderly man dressed in a white shirt and black pants.

  “What do you boys want?” the rabbi barked.

  “Excuse me, are you Rabbi Saks?” asked Jan.

  “I am, and who are you two?”

  “I want to know if I’m tzaddik,” Solomon blurted out.

  He stared at Solomon and said, “Do you know how many boys like you knock on my door with the same question? Why should I…” the rabbi paused, rubbed his red-rimmed eyes, took a closer look at Solomon, then raised one eyebrow slightly. Finally, he nodded and said, “All right boys, come in.”

  Solomon looked at Jan hopefully as they entered.

  The apartment had a stale, crusty odor that hung like a storm cloud, and was packed with hundreds of volumes of books piled in stacks of various heights.

  “Sit down,” the rabbi said pointing to two wooden stools.

  Solomon and Jan sat next to a small table on which sat a dinner plate with an uneaten piece of a cold potato that a few cockroaches were now feasting upon. He picked up the plate, scattering the pests, and tossed it into the sink with other unwashed dishes.

  “Why do you think you’re tzaddik?” the rabbi asked.

  Solomon sat upright and told the rabbi about several instances where he saw the future in his dreams, including his most recent one about the death of the Grand Rabbi Sirkis.

  “That is most interesting,” the rabbi said.

  “Do you think he is tzaddik?” asked Jan.

  The rabbi stroked his beard and studied Solomon for a moment, then he said, “I’ve never heard of tzaddik of having such a skill, but I have read cases of rasha exhibiting this ability. Perhaps you are rasha?”

  Solomon felt like he had been hit in the face. He whispered, “Are you saying that I’m rasha?”

  The rabbi gently patted Solomon’s hands and said, “Of course not. But you should pay attention and make sure you stay on the righteous path and not get distracted by the dark side.”

  Solomon looked at Jan, then back at the rabbi and said, “Thank you, Rabbi.”

  “Go now, but stay in touch and let me know if you have any more of these dreams,” the rabbi said, and escorted the boys back out through the blue front door of his apartment.

  Chapter 6

  Later that night, after offering his farewells to his dinner guests, Arnold sat down at his desk. He was encouraged by Rabbi Shapira’s idea of traveling to Safed with Moshe, but the rabbi’s last comment worried him.

  “There is no other way to restore Moshe’s connection to Hashem, unless we go to Safed. But you should know, Arnold, that only tzaddik can help Moshe.”

  Arnold threw his hands in the air and said, “It took me ten years to find Moshe and that was by chance because I met you. How would you be able to find another tzaddik?”

  The rabbi smiled, stroked his beard and said, “I know many rabbis in Safed and with their help, and Hashem’s, we will.”

  This did little to relieve Arnold’s anxiety. Myron and his father Solomon needed to be stopped. Just this past year they had the uncanny knowledge of being in the right place at the right time, again. How had they known to buy land in Locust Point six months before the City of New York announced its plan to build the Throgs Neck Bridge? All five properties they bought flipped for huge gains since they needed to be demolished as a public right-of-way for the new bridge.

  But the most disturbing rumor Arnold heard was that Myron shorted the stock of Trans World Airlines before its flight 266 collided in mid-air with United Airlines flight 826. The TWA plane was inbound to LaGuardia Airport and crashed in a field in Staten Island, while the United aircraft crashed in Brooklyn, narrowly missing a school. All 134 people aboard both planes died, along with six people on the ground, while Myron collected another huge payday.

  The first time Arnold met Myron was at an Irish pub on Webster Avenue one early fall evening. This place was known for taking bets on games and where Myron Blass held court in a booth at the back of the establishment.

  An occasional drinker, Arnold never ventured much into bars and certainly never into an Irish pub. But earlier that day a friend told him of this guy who was taking bets on the 1958 World Series between the New York Yankees and the Milwaukee Braves. As a big Yankee fan, Arnold wanted to place a bet. He was instructed to go to the pub, take a seat at the bar and ask the bartender if he could speak with Myron.

  As he was waiting for the okay to approach the booth in the back, a man sitting next to Arnold struck up a conversation while he was watching a football game on the television set perched on a high shelf over the bar.

  “I g
ather you’re here to see Myron?” said a crusty looking older man with a week’s worth of unshaven stubble, growing over pinkish discolored skin.

  Arnold turned to him and nodded.

  “Placing a bet on the Yanks?” he asked.

  “I am. How did you know?”

  “Game seven is tonight. Not too hard to figure,” he chuckled.

  “I suppose you’re right.” Arnold smiled.

  The man leaned in. Arnold could smell cigars and scotch on his breath. “The only way to play this game is to take the bets, not make them,” he said, sliding his glass down to the bartender for a refill.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do what he does,” the man said, tilting his head to the back of the bar where Myron was sitting. “That’s the way to make real money.”

  “How do you do that?” Arnold asked.

  “When you get your moment with Myron, tell him you want to start making a book and run it through him. If he agrees, he’ll set you up in exchange for a piece of the action,” the man said.

  “That was how it started. I only wanted to do the sports book thing as a hobby. But only when I got elected did I learn the full extent of what Myron and his father were really up to,” Arnold told Rabbi Shapira as they drank coffee one afternoon at the Fordham Diner.

  “Are you sure about these predictions?” the rabbi asked.

  “I’m sure. People talk about them,” he said and then whispered, “That’s how he knew about the bridge construction project, and the planes colliding.”

  The rabbi placed his hand on his cheek and said, “Arnold, how do you think he is able to make these predictions?”

  Arnold shook his head. “I don’t have a clue. Maybe it has something to do with this connection to the dark side of Kabbalah?”

  “Perhaps my suspicions were right, and he is rasha.”