I was G-d’s angel

I received a phone call from 1870. This is what the caller told me:

I was G-d’’s angel.

I never dreamed.

This was supposed to be the time when I would learn whether the G-d Whom I had worshipped all my life would send me angels when I needed them.

I needed them.

O, did I need them.

I made sure of that.

Quite intentionally.

I tested myself.

Frankly, if I say so myself, people use that word “test” rather loosely (except for illness).

I tested myself: No source of food, of shelter, even of safety.

I brought it on myself.

By design.

Actually, it’’s not quite right to say that I would learn whether G-d would send me angels when I needed them.

He sends. He always sends.

Are we capable of perceiving them?

Is our definition of G-d’’s saving grace too grandiose? Do we miss the real signs?

I wanted to test myself: Could I see the real signs?

Could I discern a real message from among the maze of events —— and of false needs, fake needs —— all around me?

If I reduced life to the basics, maybe.

If I put myself in a situation where need was truly defined, maybe.

If I forced myself to throw away all superficially imposed desires and quests, maybe.

If I reduced life to the basics —— maybe.

So I did it.

I cut myself off from every anchor.

Food.

Bed.

Family.

Friends.

Synagogue.

Community.

Down. Really down. To breath. To being.

Maybe, down there and from there —— from life itself —— I could see G-d.

I could see His angels.

Know that He cared.

Know it.

Feel it.

Get it.

Truly.

This was the plan.

I asked a friend —— someone I do not know very well, you’’ll see why this is important —— to buy a plane ticket for me.

A plane ticket to nowhere.

A one way ticket.

To an unknown destination.

He could pick anywhere he wanted in the United States.

I supplied the money.

Other than that, all was in his hands.

I had to do it.

To test myself.

To see whether this religion that I had not only been studying, but teaching and propagating, my whole life, was true.

No, not that.

The religion was true.

But was I a true adherent?

Could I practice what I preach?

In my capacity as a rabbi I have been telling people to trust in G-d.

All is good.

Look up.

He sends angels.

Yes, I had been preaching it.

Did I believe it?

Really believe it?

Believe it enough to depend on those angels, and nothing else, not my salary, not my beautiful family, not my supportive community?

Could I depend on that which I told other people to depend on?

Yes, a one-way ticket.

To nowhere.

I also asked him to buy another ticket, also one way, back home — but from a different city than the one he was sending me to.

The second ticket would bring me home —— four days later.

In between I was on my own.

Alone.

That is why I asked someone I did not know very well. I did not want somebody who would cut me slack and send me off to some place where he knew I had friends, or family.

Alone —— and empty.

No money.

No credit card.

No change of clothing.

No health insurance card.

No cell phone.

No food, except for a first meal.

Nothing.

I was going to Unknown.

And from there I would need to get to Unknown in order to get home.

In between was only me, my being — and . . . maybe . . . G-d?

Or, would I die?

Would I starve?

Would a criminal get me?

Would I be picked up for vagrancy?

Where would I sleep?

Would I find shelter?

Or, perhaps, a homeless shelter?

How would I travel?

How far was the airport from. . . from where?

The city?

The park?

The street?

Where was I going?

Then, how would I get from one city to the next?

Would I go bats from loneliness?

Or . . . would I live, really live, maybe for the first time ever?

Would I find out, would I realize, would I see and feel and know and feel in my bones and in my mouth that all food does, indeed, come from G-d? That if He wants me to be fed, I will be fed, and if not, not?

That if he wants me to have shelter, I will; and if not, not?

Would He protect me?

I have uttered prayers about G-d’’s protection my entire life. Did I really believe them?

I would find out . . . maybe.

Perhaps, I would not sleep; perhaps I would learn what most of the world actually lives like.

Could I discern G-d from that place?

Would I perceive His angels?

For countless hundreds of millions of people on this earth, life is lonely, utterly lonely.

Poverty.

AIDS orphans.

Utter lack of opportunity.

Political oppression.

Could I understand how G-d speaks even to them?

As I said, a test.

A self-imposed test.

A real one, at least for four days, based on a potentially empty stomach, on potentially sleepless and indeed bedless nights, on a potentially homeless journey.

I flew to Buffalo, New York.

I had to be in Boston, Massachusetts, four days later, to get back home.

This is what the tickets said.

I landed.

It was June.

I took a backpack.

In it, as I said, was one meal.

Also, my tefilin, and a Chumash.

That was it.

Somehow, I got to the city.

I don’t remember how.

The first night, it rained.

I was in the park.

I had no rain jacket.

I forgot that I could be sent to a place where it rained.

I did not know what to do.

In the distance —— an apparition.

Something blowing from a tree.

Scary.

What was it?

I approached.

Cautiously.

Slowly.

I came closer —— it was a rain jacket.

G-d’’s angel.

His first angel.

They did not stop.

I did not beg.

Did not ask anybody for anything.

At the end of the first day, I had $22 dollars.

It was morning.

I was in front of a bank.

Exited a black man, very well dressed, very professional.

Not a beggar, he.

Nothing close to it.

He was distraught.

He came up to me and told me his story.

His wallet had been stolen. Everything. Credit cards. ID. Everything. He figured maybe a bank would spot him some cash. No dice. No deal. He was desperate.

He told me what it would cost to get to his appointment.

It cost $22, he said.

I handed it to him.

I was G-d’’s angel.

I needed G-d. He needed G-d.

I had nothing.

He had nothing.

We understood each other.

I had to get to Boston.

I had to find out about hitchhiking routes.

Or truck routes.

Something.

I ended up finding a ride with another black man, running for Congress.

He was such a class act.

Despite my best efforts, he pulled it out of me.

I did not want to tell anyone what I was doing, who I was —— the test, the whole story.

I figured that not one word I would say to any living being would be accepted with the slightest familiarity.

This was my test.

Between me and myself.

No one else.

Loneliness was part of the deal.

So I thought.

But here he was, such a class act.

Telling me his whole story.

How he started with nothing.

Built himself up.

And now, he was running for Congress.

It didn’’t matter to him that I was dressed down.

Back pack. Cap on my head. Jeans.

It didn’’t matter to him that I was white.

And not a local voter.

He picked me up.

He was engaging.

I couldn’’t help it. I opened up.

I told him about my test.

We hit it off.

Like we’’d known each other forever.

He said he’’d help me.

If it was a way to Boston I needed, he suggested that I seek a truck route, and volunteered to take me to one.

But he hadn’’t a clue about the local truck routes.

He was willing to take the time to find one for me.

G-d’s angel.

At one point, we were outside a diner.

Not a fancy place.

Just a take out.

For the lower class.

The kind of place I would never visit in my real life, and not just because it wasn’’t kosher.

I suggested we stop in, so I could ask directions.

I didn’’t see it coming.

I walk in.

There’’s a sign on the wall.

I couldn’’t believe it.

It was in Hebrew.

Here I am, on the outskirts of Buffalo, New York, a lower class neighborhood, far from anything Jewish, as far as I know.

I ask the guy behind the counter for directions.

He starts to tell me.

I can’’t follow him.

Can’’t understand him.

He’’s simply unintelligible.

I ask him to repeat.

He does.

Same lack of clarity.

I didn’t see it coming. I finally get it. I can’’t understand him because he’’s speaking English with this extremely heavy Hebrew accent.

I see it now.

The reason, or, at least, one of the reasons, for my test.

I put it together.

The Hebrew sign on the wall.

The guy speaking to me with a heavy Hebrew accent.

The non-kosher diner.

I put it together, and instead of continuing to ask for directions, I exclaim to him, in perfect Hebrew, with some force: “Betach, ata lo ochel kan —— certainly, you don’’t eat here!”

Look at this from the point of the guy behind the counter: A stranger walks in. Asks for directions. Looks down and out. Can’t understand a thing. Suddenly out of his mouth, comes not only fluent Hebrew, but a lesson from Torah, which, to boot, assumes the best: the proprietor may own the place, but certainly does not consumer its unkosher food.

““Well, uh . . . sure, never . . . I don’’t eat . . . ””

I would not leave until he promised me —— who did he think I was, anyway, Elijah the Prophet? —— that he would never consume the food he was selling.

Then I got directions, which, once we switched to Hebrew, I could understand.

I didn’’t see it coming.

I thought I was looking for G-d’’s angels.

I didn’’t know I would be one myself.

I thought a test was a test. I controlled the environment. I put myself in this. I. I. I.

Not so.

Not only does G-d send angels.

He sends you as an angel.

Exile.

Or so they called it.

It was a spiritual discipline.

Operative word: was.

No one has gone into exile, voluntarily, in 100 years.

Think of the tales of the great sages of recent times.

Books of tales abound.

You won’t find a single one about exile.

“Diminution of the generations,” they call it: We’re not what we used to be.

Even the best of us, the highest, are not what they used to be.

They used to go into exile: two of the disciples of Rabbi Israel Salanter, named Rabbis Isaac Blazer and Naftali Amsterdam.

They left home and hearth.

Wandered.

Never slept in the same place, the same night.

Walked from village to village.

Depended on strangers for food.

The point was to see whether they could come to a complete, total, understanding that everything comes from G-d.

Not from human effort.

There’’s a famous story:

Once, on a Friday night, Rabbi Blazer ended up with a Shabbos invitation to the home of one of his students.

The parents treated the beggar like . . . a beggar.

The son sees this and is horrified.

The son was actually in the school where Rabbi Blazer taught.

His rebbe. His teacher. The towering scholar and saint, the eminent Rabbi Isaac Blazer —— treated like a beggar! Impossible!

The son runs to his father . . .

Rabbi Blazer, seeing that his cover is about to be blown, and deeply disturbed at the prospect of seeing his self-imposed test go up in smoke, sends a withering glance and a quiet, discreet command to the son: Silence!

The son, not understanding, utterly baffled, is, nonetheless, silent.

His famous rebbe said so.

The son doesn’t get it. Doesn’’t understand.

But he obeys.

Rabbi Blazer rescues his test.

In 1870.

When my friend, whose journey in search of G-d’s angels is described above, called me, I felt like it was a call from 1870.

Exile: a spiritual discipline of the past.

So I thought.

My friend is not a kook. He is one of the most respected rabbis and counselors in the United States.

He needed to reach higher.

Consciously or not, he reached back to 1870.

Skipped backwards over generations.

Did he fail? Did he succeed?

To me, it makes no difference.

He aspired.

He sought to stretch his service of G-d beyond what even the greats of this year and of the past 135 years have aspired to.

His aspiration was an inspiration.

We can rise higher.

Not, perhaps, as high my friend sought, but we can rise higher.

Can stretch ourselves, spiritually.

Stretch hard.

Each in our own way.

This is the challenge —— and the gift —— of Rosh Hashanah.