Okay, Mister Gonna-be-a-Rabbi man. I’m not gonna get into no contest about who ate more pork, did more drugs, went to more concerts, who used to be more cool, so today he really does know better, just to prove that what I’m doing now is holy, holy, holy. You got the words pouring through your mind from some Holy Yid who was hooked up to God’s light, but that doesn’t mean that if I listen to you, I’m gonna feel any better about feeling worse. I’m out on the edge on my own, and I’m leaning way out with no net to search for the last little crumbs of my soul that might have gotten left behind. Are you gonna help me, or are you just using me to inflate your soul/ego so that you can float on home to Kansas to get a fat job and a nice suit? There’s only enough room under your hat for you, and I can’t wear polyester pants ‘cause they get messed up when I roll around in the mud. I don’t need a fashion change or a cookbook or a list of restaurants that make me better than the next guy. I’M OUT HERE ON THE EDGE FIGHTING FOR MY LIFE, AND YOU’RE TELLING ME WHICH BRAND OF CHICKEN TO BUY!!!!!
I need the real stuff. The only problem is that I keep blowing it. Maybe that’s the only way I can get anywhere that isn’t here, is by heading down another wrong path. Maybe I don’t want to be right. I don’t want to be the paragon of Jewish manhood. I don’t want to be the man. I don’t want baal tshuva groupies hanging on my every holy word. I need truth, and I need it to be real, and I need it now. That means that yesterday is yesterday, and that means that I need to be hanging out over the edge, and I need a buddy who is hanging way out over the edge, too. The problem with being out on the edge, with searching when I know that I don’t know, is that sometimes I blow it. If I never blow it, then I wasn’t really at the edge. I don’t want to have what someone else wants. I want to know what I need to get closer. So get out of my face unless you’re willing to take the chances and hold my hand when one of us felt something real that maybe hurt, maybe felt good, but definitely came from the heart.
I don’t need you because you’re too damn right all the time. I need a wise man to show me the way, but you ain’t wise. You know the right words, you know what wise sounds like, but you never took the chance that would let the words sink in. You never killed yourself for wisdom, so inside of your wise words is a nasty little child waiting to pinch me when I get the answer wrong and watch me scream. I need a holy man to stick his foot in the door and keep it open so that I still have a chance to make it one day. Holy men are the real deal, and they keep the world alive. But I ain’t no holy man and I ain’t never gonna be no holy man. I hate to break it to you, but you may have a closet full of white shirts and a nice supply of black shoe polish, you may have a shelf full of books with all the small print underlined, but you ain’t no holy man neither. You can’t be because there’s too much of you and not enough of anything else. You’re such a great man that when you walk in the room, God has gotta stand up and give you his seat. But what you could have been, what I need, is a friend. I need someone who is close enough to me, down here in all the mud and filth, so he can lend me a hand, and pull me up when the mud gets too deep. To do that, he’s gotta be down there deep in the mud, standing right beside me. He doesn’t mind my smell, and I don’t mind his. We’re gonna drag each other through until both of us make it, until we can jump into the mikveh together and play like little children at the water hole. And then, together, we’re gonna walk on up the mountain, light a fire, and burn our sin offerings together.
Dear Eliyahu,
You wrote this almost twenty years ago, when you were in Yeshiva. It was true when you wrote this. You were bitter and angry in a way we now regret. You came to Yeshiva to yell at God in the forest, for prayer and meditation, for predawn plunges into ice-cold natural springs. After half a lifetime of frustration in school, you loved the learning. While Bat Ayin Yeshiva was unconventional in many ways, it was built on the bass note of traditional Orthodox Jewish institutions, and, in an unspoken agenda, the better students were expected to return to the US to pursue careers as professional Jews. We are natural anarchists and prefer not to lead or teach. We prefer to marvel at how each individual has a unique life and reveals God in their own way. As the saying goes, ‘Many ships cross the ocean, but they cannot lead or follow because they don’t leave trails.’
And having barely managed to escape exile in the USA, going back out into the darkness was not an option.
The men in the Yeshiva were amazing. You truly believed they could change the world and bring Geula. You were already old and weary, and thought that while they were young and shiny with the potential to change the world, they were settling for a career in institutional religion.
You were wrong. Just like you, they were confused and lost in life, seeking a way home. The worst thing the Western educational system has done is reward successful students, teaching them that success in tests, doing their homework, is what life is all about. But a man who only succeeds is only half a man. After acing their final exams, they went out into the world, and many of the gentler souls got battered and tossed in ways their education never prepared them for. And I watched as they fixed the world by loving God through the hard times in their lives.
I feel honored to have seen that, become a witness to a part of that process. Prayers are never lost or fruitless. Sometimes, the point of the prayer is to give something to the man standing next to you who needs to hear that he is not alone. That amazing group of young men did that for me, and I thank them.
That said, you wrote this because you were troubled when a sweet young soul was rebuffed in his search for his path back to Hashem, a path not aligned with what we saw as “the way.” He limped away, battered and hurting, but I am happy to say, he remained true to his inner voice. I am pleased to say that he is still a friend.
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