Sacred and Profane

Decker took a sip of schnapps and said nothing.

Schulman asked, “Did you have a bad day, Peter?”

“A little on the rough side.”

“Let me ask you something? What do policemen do when they have a bad day?”

Decker smiled. “They get drunk and gripe to one another.”

“This is what you do?”

“Me personally? No, not really, I’ve gotten drunk on individual occasions, but I’m not a big boozer.”

“I can see that,” Schulman said, picking up Decker’s half-full glass. “So what do you do to cope?”

“A lot of us don’t cope too well. The divorce rate among cops is very high.”

“Isn’t there someone who you can talk to?”

“A shrink?” Decker said. “Yes, we have a resident shrink, but hardly anyone uses him-or her, we’ve got a woman now-unless they’re after disability.”

“Es past nisht, nu?” Schulman said. “It just isn’t done if you’re truly a man.”

“You’ve got it,” Decker said.

“So what do you do to keep your sanity?” the old man asked again.

“I ride my horses,” Decker said. “And now I learn, also.”

“Does learning help?”

“Yes, it does. It takes up a lot of my free time so I don’t think about work as much. It preoccupies me.”

“Do you ever pray?”

“In addition to davening?”

“Yes,” Schulman said. “Do you ever feel the need to say tehillim?”

“I can’t say that I have. I’d like to think that God has a reason for everything, but I don’t really believe that. Some bad people have good luck, some good people are constantly behind the eight ball. What’s the point?”

“A hard question and I have no satisfying answer. We aren’t permitted to know the point. It would be no test of faith if we knew the point. We’d know for certain that Hashem exists. Even Moshe Rabbenu, who was permitted to understand everything else, was not allowed to know Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s system of reward and punishment.”

“Well, maybe it takes a Moses to live with such ambiguity,” said Decker. “What I see are lots of things that are unfair. Our legal system is a farce, Rabbi, confessed murderers getting off scot-free because of some technicality. If only there was divine retribution-a meteorite crashing on their heads or bolts of lightning striking them dead-then maybe I could see a purpose to all of it.”

“I have a midrash for you.” Schulman thought for a while, then said, “A quartet of great rabbis-Rabbis Akiva, Ben Zoma, Ben Azzai, and Elisha ben Abouya-went into an orchard to study the hidden recesses of the Torah. All four were very pious men, all were brilliant-tremendous Torah scholars-an absolute prerequisite for the study of Jewish mysticism.”

“Okay,” Decker said.

“Now the word the Gemara uses for orchard is pardes-a very beautiful garden. Some have taken it to mean gan eden -the Garden of Eden, Paradise.”

“The rabbis actually went to Paradise?”

“There is debate on that. What they did was utter the ineffable name of Hashem-the tetragrammaton. Rashi is of the opinion that says their utterances actually brought them into contact with the Shechinah-the Holy Presence. Other commentators say they really weren’t in heaven but the utterance of the Name made it appear to them that they were. Clear?”

Decker said yes.

“Four of our greatest rabbis in the presence of Hashem,” Schulman said. “So what happened to them?”

His voice had taken on a singsong.

“Ben Azzai died. He leaped toward the Shechinah and his soul departed from his body. Ben Zoma also approached the Shechinah, but instead of dying, his mind was torn apart. He went crazy. What’s the logical question, Peter?”

“Why did one go crazy and the other die?”

“Good. Ben Azzai had seen the Shechinah and couldn’t return to the corporeal. What happened was he had reached such a high level of spiritual understanding that his soul no longer had need of a body. Ben Zoma, on the other hand, never reached that level. His mind became saturated with knowledge that he couldn’t assimilate. When the mind can’t accommodate its input, it breaks down.

“The third rabbi, Elisha ben Abouya, the Gemara tells us, ‘cut down the shoots of the orchard.’ What do you think that means?”

“The orchard is symbolic of heaven?” Decker asked.

“A heavenly state.”

Decker thought. “He destroyed heaven.”

“Meaning?”

“He destroyed Hashem.”

“Meaning?”

Decker thought for a moment.

“You can’t destroy Hashem,” he said. “But you can reject Him.”

“Exactly,” said the old man. “When you reject something, it is destroyed in your eyes. Ben Abouya became an apikorus-a nonbeliever, an apostate. Why? Some commentaries say he’d become infatuated with Hellenistic philosophy and left the pardes with a dual gnostic concept-the idea that there are two gods in the universe. The core of Judaism revolves around the fact that there is only one Hashem.”

Decker nodded.

“Others say ben Abouya fell apart when he failed to learn the secrets of the Divine’s plan of reward and punishment. He couldn’t understand why some evil men appear to prosper when righteous men are thrown into abject misery. Ben Abouya couldn’t accommodate himself to this lacuna in his understanding of Torah. It led him to complete rejection of Judaism, to a life of immorality. From the moment of his fall from grace, Elisha ben Abouya is referred to in the Gemara as Acher-the other-a euphemism for an apostate.”

“If a great rabbi loses faith because he can’t understand God’s justice system, how am I supposed to maintain mine?” Decker asked.

“Patience. We still have Rabbi Akiva left. The Gemara tells us he entered in peace, he left in peace,” Schulman answered.

“Why was he spared?”

“The right question. Now the point of all of this. Rabbi Akiva was spared because he knew when to quit. He knew what not to ask. There are certain aspects of Hakadosh Boruch Hu that we as mortals ca

“Murder is horrible. I’m not debating that. The reason for it? It’s a question I’m not going to ask. Our lives on this planet are infinitely short when measured against the hereafter. Some lives are shorter than others. To our shallow perception this may seem an injustice. But in reality it is all the will of Hashem and we simply ca

Decker started to say something, but shook his head instead.

“You are not satisfied,” Schulman said.

“That would be little comfort to the parents of a murdered child, Rabbi,” Decker said.

“Ach, a child!” Schulman said with pain in his voice.

“A teenager. A girl my daughter’s age.”

“And you talked with the girl’s parents today?”

“Her mother.”

“What did you say to her?”

“I didn’t say much. I mostly listened.”

“Sometimes least is best.”

“What would you tell the parents of a murdered child, Rabbi?”

The Rosh Yeshiva became lost in thought, his posture stooped as if the discussion had added weight onto his shoulders. Several moments passed before he spoke. Then he whispered to himself, “Hashem natan, Hashem lakach. Yehi shem Hashem mevorach.” To Decker, he said calmly, “We borrow our children from Hashem. If God in His infinite wisdom took the life of my young child, I’d bless the fact that he was now in the hands of the perfect father.”

Decker walked into the cool night air and tried to relax. His discussion with the Rosh Yeshiva, combined with the day’s events, had flipped the on-switch, and he was overflowing with nervous energy. He jogged past the dorm building and through the postage-stamp lots of single-family dwellings, heading toward the parking lot, but stopped when he reached Rina’s house. It was a quarter to eleven but the lights were still on. Deliberating a moment, he made a sharp left, walked up to her door, and knocked softly.