The Ascent of Eli Israel

by Jonathan Papernick, Dara Horn

  “That feels good,” the rebbe said, after a moment.

  “You should come to my office,” the doctor said. “For a complete adjustment, to prevent it from being hurt again.”

  “But I feel fine,” the rebbe said, kicking up his slippered feet, humming a joyous-sounding nigun under his breath. “The just among Gentiles are priests of God. Thank you, thank you,” he said, “I am so grateful. How can I pay you?”

  “You will find a way,” the doctor said, removing his glasses to clean them with a handkerchief.

  “But a physician who takes no fee is worth no fee.”

  “I am no physician,” the doctor replied.

  But the rebbe was so happy, he sang, “I feel so good, I feel so good,” and called out for Sarah. “Wife, come look! I feel strong as an ox! Thank you, thank you,” he said again to the doctor, who just stood silently, looking about the room.

  “You have some very curious objects here,” the doctor said, motioning to the rebbe’s Galician spice box on the dressing table.

  Sarah rushed in, still holding a wooden spoon in her hand. “Israel, I’ve never seen you so happy,” she cried.

  “I have found my youth again.”

  The doctor shook the rebbe’s hand, and before walking out of the room, tapped him lightly on the back with his index finger. “Until next time,” he said.

  Within a few hours, not long after the sirens began wailing throughout the city to announce the sabbath, the rebbe was on his back again, moaning in pain. He had tried to pull himself into his Shabbat finery but fell back onto his bed, where he lay all of Saturday and Sunday. The clanging church bells of the Holy Sepulcher were like mosquitoes in his ears that day in bed, as he lay in the dark with one pillow arching his neck and another covering his face.

  Several acres of the Jerusalem forest had caught fire in the dry heat, and the smell of smoke woke the rebbe early Monday morning. Dr. John J. McGraw knocked on the rebbe’s door soon afterward. At first, Sarah would not let him pass, and raised her voice when he offered to adjust her and fix her dowager’s hump. But finally she relented when the rebbe called, “Let him come.”

  The stubborn rebbe had piled two pillows onto a chair and sat on them, where he hunched over a small table covered with an open copy of the Talmud. The rebbe looked up and squinted at the doctor. The doctor was dressed in a white shirt with beige pants and looked like nobody the rebbe had ever known. He was thin and plain-looking, like a slice of his wife’s challah waiting to be buttered.

  “You?” the rebbe said. “I waited for you yesterday. But I couldn’t wait,” he said, pointing to the pillows beneath him.

  “How do you feel?” the doctor said, stepping forward. And for a moment his glasses caught the overhead light and a glare flashed into the rebbe’s eyes.

  “I feel like I’m sitting on a cloud,” the rebbe said. “Filled with fire.”

  The doctor stepped closer, reached into the rebbe’s beard, and placed two fingers beneath the rebbe’s chin, raising it. “Do you read like that all the time?”

  “Yes, yes,” the rebbe said. “I am in very close study.”

  “Stand up,” the doctor said. “You should never read like that.”

  He led the rebbe to the center of the room. “Does it hurt to walk?”

  “Only when I walk.”

  He placed the rebbe’s arms across his chest as he had the first time, and pressed himself close enough that the rebbe noticed that the minty smell had been replaced by cinnamon. The doctor pulled in and thrust forward, and again there was a pop, pop. But this time, the rebbe did not scream out. He simply said, “Baruch Hashem, Praise God.”

  “And now we must walk.”

  Out in the streets of the shabbiest section of the Mea Shearim quarter, the rebbe walked beside Dr. John J. McGraw. He shuffled his feet at first and then took baby steps, before his feet stuck to the ground not a block from where he lived. A pink stretchy substance clung to the bottom of the rebbe’s shoe. “That’s mine,” the doctor said apologetically, pulling the gum off the rebbe’s shoe with a handkerchief. “I spit it out on my way over.”

  Before long, the rebbe strode like a young man at the side of the doctor. They passed gray stone walls plastered with Yiddish-language posters, walked beneath caged-in balconies where children cried from above, stepped over potholes in the road. They passed bearded men in striped caftans, a woman with a scarf on her head carrying grocery bags, a couple of young yeshiva students bent almost double from the weight of their books, and then a red-bearded Bratzlaver whom the rebbe knew from prayers at the Wall.

  “They all do not see me,” the rebbe said. “You would think the sun had gone out.”

  They walked as far as the Street of Prophets, and then turned around, walking back toward the sky blackened with smoke. When they reached a small synagogue not far from the rebbe’s home, where the sound of prayers floated out the open windows and into the street, the rebbe stopped to catch his breath.

  “My back feels okay. But my lungs, they’re bursting.”

  The doctor peered into the window and began to laugh. “Like pecking chickens,” he said under his breath. The rebbe joined him at the window. He had prayed there many times before and saw men bobbing and swaying as if their prayers were taking them very far away. Others sat hunched over large leather-bound books searching for hidden wisdom. The rebbe felt a pain in his heart.

  “The Torah says, ‘If you forsake me for a single day, I will forsake you for two days,’ ” the rebbe said. “It has now been six days.”

  The doctor wiped his brow with a handkerchief. “Look at them,” he said, arching his neck to get a better view. Praying men moved like rusty engines and lifted piles of books as if they would collapse under their weight. The doctor turned to the rebbe. “They only need one book. I imagine they feel as much pain as you.”

  “But I feel pain not praying,” the rebbe said.

  “I will help you fix that,” the doctor said, touching him lightly on the back. “But you mustn’t shrug your shoulders like that.”

  The next morning when Dr. John J. McGraw arrived to treat the Dokszycer rebbe, Sarah told him to wait.

  “The rebbe is not feeling well,” she said. “His back is sore again.”

  Overhearing his wife in the hallway, the rebbe called, “Let him come.”

  The rebbe stood gingerly beside his bed wrapping the leather straps of his tefillin around his left arm.

  “I don’t mean to interrupt,” the doctor said, as he entered the rebbe’s room. “But what are you doing?”

  The rebbe placed the second box of the tefillin onto his forehead and said, “I am putting on my tefillin. And then I am going to pray.”

  “How is your back today?”

  “It hurts,” the rebbe said, tightening the straps.

  The doctor stepped forward and touched the rebbe’s arm where the leather straps were wound tightly against his skin. He walked around behind the rebbe and tapped him between the shoulder blades. “Can you touch your toes?”

  “I am trying to pray.”

  “I can see the tension in your shoulders,” the doctor said. “Prayer should not mean pain.”

  The rebbe smelled cinnamon and felt a sickness in his stomach. “Don’t you know there is pain in everything?”

  “There doesn’t have to be. Those straps are too tight. Look how your body is being pulled to the left, while you lean to the right. The vein in your neck is like a rope,” the doctor said, starting to unwind the straps from the rebbe’s arm. His nose was so small it looked like it belonged to a young child. “And when you bend over you must remember to bend your knees.”

  “Bend my knees?”

  “Become flexible, and then pray. Like supple reeds on the banks of the Jordan.”

  He had finished unwrapping the straps of the tefillin from the rebbe’s head and laid the two boxes on the cluttered table beside them.

  “But I must say the blessing,” the rebbe said. “It is a mit
zvah.”

  Dr. John J. McGraw hesitated and said, “Finish quickly then.”

  After the rebbe completed his prayers the doctor adjusted him, making tiny pops in his back and neck.

  “Good,” the doctor said. “When you are ready I will bring you to my office for a thorough adjustment.”

  “What will happen then?” the rebbe asked.

  “Prayer,” the doctor said. “Painless prayer.”

  The doctor showed the rebbe how to stretch his back simply by lying face down on the floor and pushing up with his hands. The rebbe hesitated at first, saying he felt like an animal, but relented when he felt the warm stretch in the muscles of his back. He learned to stretch his calves, neck, and pectorals, and wondered how he could not have known to do something so simple.

  Afterward they walked under a hot June sun, through the cluttered streets of Mea Shearim, past the Street of Prophets as far as the British Council Library and the Ethiopian church.

  The next morning, the rebbe rose early, wound himself in the leather straps of his tefillin, and muttered the prayers under his breath. As he lay on the floor stretching his back the rebbe wondered if the pinching pain he felt was guilt.

  “Good. You’ve already stretched,” the doctor said when he arrived. “We are going to walk a little bit farther today,” he added, smiling.

  It was already a blazing hot Wednesday morning, as the doctor and the rebbe stepped out of the dingy apartment and into the street. From the doorway Sarah waved a cup and called after the rebbe as he walked away, “Israel, drink some water first! The hamsiin has arrived.” A dry wind had blown in out of the desert and carried with it a stifling heat that made the asphalt soft beneath their feet. The perfect blue sky was marred intermittently by thin wisps of smoke that rose into the sky like floating Hebrew letters. The sun was already high enough in the sky to bleach all of the stone buildings a harsh, luminous white. There was not a shadow in sight.

  The streets of Mea Shearim bustled as usual, as bearded, hat-wearing men dressed in customary black hurried back and forth on their way to or from prayer. Their wives in kerchiefs and long dresses, some pregnant, some not, dragged strollers piled high with children and bags from the market.

  The rebbe smiled at a pair of passing men whose noses were buried in prayer books. “Isn’t it wonderful,” the rebbe said. “Jews everywhere.”

  “It is wonderful,” the doctor said, suddenly beaming.

  “Tell me,” the rebbe said. “How does a Gentile find himself living in Jerusalem.”

  “I came to be here for the millennium.”

  “The millennium?” the rebbe said, confused.

  “The year two thousand,” the doctor said, ushering the rebbe out of one of the neighborhood’s many gates.

  “Oh-ho,” the rebbe said, laughing. “Two thousand years since . . . It is funny, it must be ten years since I have seen your calendar. For us, for Jews, it is the year fifty-seven sixty.”

  “And your Messiah has still not arrived.”

  “Today,” the rebbe said. “I am absolutely sure he will arrive today. I have been absolutely sure of that every day for the last sixty-three years. If not today, then tomorrow, which when it arrives,” the rebbe said in a singsong manner, “will be today.”

  “Tell me, what will happen when your Messiah comes?”

  “Of course, the Temple will be rebuilt. And we will have a King of Israel at last, and the entire world will be full of the knowledge of the Lord,” the rebbe said nonchalantly. “And yours?”

  “Exactly the same,” the doctor said. “It is written that the Lord Jesus Christ will return to a hill east of Jerusalem and redeem the world.”

  “And how will you know it is him?” the rebbe said.

  “I will look at his hands and at his side, and see if the scars are there. And if there are scars — ”

  “Enough,” the rebbe said, laughing. “Enough of this. Let’s turn around. I’m tired of walking today.”

  They stopped just short of the walls of the Old City, near Damascus Gate, where the doctor offered him a sip of his water. The rebbe was sweating in streams, and gulped down most of the bottle. The sun was still directly above their heads, and felt to the rebbe as if a thousand-pound weight were on his shoulders. They began slowly walking back up the sloping hill.

  “Do you know there is a way to walk all around Jerusalem without walking up a hill?” the rebbe said.

  “And have you found that way?”

  “No.”

  “Take off your coat and hat. It is too hot for you to wear wool on a day like this.”

  “But I always wear this,” the rebbe said, refusing to remove his heavy wool coat. “I have worn it for hundreds of years.”

  The next morning, Sarah waited until the rebbe had finished his prayers.

  “Israel,” she said. “Nobody has seen Yitzchak for days. Do you know where he is?”

  The rebbe was in a foul mood as he unwound the tefillin from his aching arm. Aside from his back still aching, now the muscles of his legs were sore. “What, am I Yitzchak’s keeper? Do I know where he is every minute of the day? He is a young man, so he is out praying. Maybe he went to Shchem, maybe he went to Hevron. His cousin is living there.”

  “But nobody has seen him,” Sarah said. “Nobody knows where he is. We must find him. Last week a yeshiva boy from Sanhedria was found stabbed in the street.”

  “All right, all right, wife, I will call Schmuelik, I will call Reuven, I’ll call everybody. We will turn the world over, if that’s what you want.”

  And that was when the doctor walked in, looking red and childlike, burned from the sun. The rebbe wanted to say, “Now you know why we wear the coats?”

  “Your door was open,” the doctor said. “Are you ready to go?”

  “I’m not going anywhere today. Now besides my back hurting and my neck hurting and my arms hurting, my legs are hurting, and precious Yitzchak is missing and we must find him, because if we don’t find him, my wife will never let me sleep.”

  “You shouldn’t wave your arms like that,” the doctor said, with his arms still at his sides. “It will throw your whole body out of alignment. We must continue to strengthen your back. You are doing so well. In a few more days, your back will be as strong as a tree, and the adjustments will hold.”

  “Ach, the forest is burning,” the rebbe said. “Today my business is Yitzchak. Surely you can wait until tomorrow to make me better. If you want, you can make the popping in my back.”

  “It’s important that we continue to build your strength. We have come so far.”

  The rebbe asked Sarah to leave the room, turned his back to the doctor, and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “The rebbe is asking you to pop him quickly,” the rebbe sang, “and tomorrow you will return to walk with him. But right now, he must find Yitzchak.”

  The doctor pressed himself close to the rebbe, took his crossed arms in his hands and thrust in with supernatural force. The rebbe screamed out in pain, and felt like he was being broken to pieces. He actually called out for his mother, and then fell to the floor. “What have you done to me?”

  “Tomorrow, we will walk,” the doctor said, and lifted the rebbe up. He placed a hot hand between his shoulder blades, pushed in slightly, and left the stunned rebbe alone in his room.

  The Dokszycers searched synagogues and study halls from Pisgat Ze’ev to Efrat but did not find Yitzchak nor any sign of him that day. But the rebbe said not to worry, there are not many places Yitzchak could go.

  Friday morning the doctor arrived as promised. The rebbe had not slept at all the night before. He had tossed and turned in his bed thinking of Yitzchak and the doctor and Sarah, who had yelled at him while he stretched on the floor, telling him to get up, he looked like a snake. She was angry that he would not spend another day searching for Yitzchak, who would have to spend Shabbat among strangers.

  The rebbe appeared wearing a plain white shirt, buttoned to the top, and a
pair of black suspenders. On his head he wore only a large black silken kippah pulled low over his brow covering his hairline. His heavy wool coat and large-brimmed black hat lay on top of the rebbe’s bed like a sick or dying man.

  “We are walking farther today?” the rebbe asked.

  “If you are ready,” the doctor said.

  “Look,” the rebbe said, pointing to a bottle hooked to his belt. “Water.”

  The doctor adjusted the rebbe’s back, repeating, “Good, good,” as he worked.

  “Hurry back,” Sarah called after the doctor and the rebbe, but they didn’t hear, lost as they were in discussion.

  “So you are saying that Jesus was the son of God and is the Messiah?” the rebbe said rhetorically as he mopped his forehead with a handkerchief.

  The doctor nodded his head.

  “So the Messiah has come?” the rebbe said.

  “Yes.”

  They walked in silence for a few moments through the buzzing quarter of Mea Shearim, where men hurried off to pray before the sabbath and the women frantically rushed about buying food for their Shabbat tables.

  “No,” the rebbe said. “The Messiah has not come. Because if He had, the world would be a very different place. So your Messiah has not come. So you wait.”

  They arrived a while later at Damascus Gate. Even the cool-blooded doctor was sweating now, as they stepped down toward the massive entrance to the Old City. Young Arab men joked and pulled their kaffiyehs around their faces against the gray smoke that still swam through the city. Women sat on the ground along the entryway, selling fruits and vegetables on outspread headscarves. An Israeli soldier sat languidly in an opening above the entrance and picked his teeth with a telephone card. They entered the ornamented stone gate and were immediately swallowed up by pressing crowds and the tinny sounds of Arabic music. The air smelled to the rebbe like barbecued meat. It was the Muslim sabbath and thousands of men dressed in kaffiyehs inched their way toward the Dome of the Rock to pray to the mighty Allah. This was the way the rebbe always walked to the Western Wall, but had never been that way on a Friday morning. Bearded kaffiyeh-wearing men pressed forward, their ragged caftans flapping as they walked. An old man waved his arms, shouting loudly in Arabic. The rebbe looked over at the doctor and saw his milk-dish of a face contorted with fear. The rebbe, too, felt unease in the pit of his belly and reached out to take the doctor’s hand in his, so as not to lose him.