Rabbi Bachman says, "Get to church."

Bringing peace does not only involve donation of money to help end hunger and poverty. Nor does it only involve working on large-scale social issues. Sometimes it makes a world of difference to make a difference in just one soul.

I'm sure Rabbi Bachman has a lot of anecdotes from his life as a clergyman in New York City. This one is touching and I'm sure that Zeke will get around to visiting Church soon. Sometimes all it takes is a little reminder from a rabbi:

For the second time in a month, I couldn’t get the keys to work in our car. Apparently, some kind of computerized and magnetized process, encoded inside the keys to match a reading inside the ignition, was not working. It wasn’t in sync. The first time around, I had to pay the dealer around $95 to cut new keys and re-program the ignition, causing me more of a headache than anything else. Mainly it had to do with a security feature I wasn’t ever quite aware of until it broke down and made me realize I never would have requested it in the first place.

But the second time, I was even more annoyed. It had happened last week, just as I finished a visit with a family to plan a funeral. The day was bitter cold; the death, even worse. And I was sad and drained. To walk outside only to discover that the car didn’t work was somehow a fitting end to the day. Rather than take a cab, it seemed right to brace the unsympathetic winds and walk the distance, thinking of the weight of responsibility of the days ahead.

I had to borrow a car to head to the burial the next day, a minor inconvenience, and plotted all week long to get back to the car in order to arrange for it to be towed so I could get myself some new keys, yet again.

That moment finally came last night. Again, the cold was all around; rain clouds had begun to gather; and I was feeling generally annoyed. AAA arrived–keeping me posted with calls at five minute intervals (great customer service, I’ll add here) and then the driver pulled up. He was a young man, in a Yankees hat, and together he and I set to pushing my car out of the spot it was in so we could hook it up to the tow. “Stay low, brother, stay low,” he offered as we pushed car back and then out of its spot.

When we were finally read to roll, he said, “So you’re clergy–I noticed the sign in the window.”

“Yeah,” I said. “A rabbi.”

“A rabbi? Well alright. Doing the Lord’s work.”

And then the following fifteen minutes consisted of a streetside confession–less rabbi, more priest.

I learned about the Church he attends (when he’s not driving so much) the foods he eats (when he’s not thinking so much) and the women he chases (when he’s not praying so much). He seemed genuinely Lost in a Flood. And the wind was blowing, and the rain was getting ready to fall, and there was an urgency to his words–as if in saying them he was seeking a healing long overdue.

But he kept doubting his ability to overcome. He wouldn’t listen to my pleas for patience, for being kind to himself, for heading back to Church on Sunday no matter what. I held his hand as he reached out for me and said, “What’s your name?” (just as I remembered the famous Midrash about the Children of Israel being saved from Egypt because they remembered their Hebrew names.)

“Zeke,” he said.

“Like the Prophet Ezekiel, who dreamed of angels,” I replied. “Your name carries in its meaning the virtue of an angel. Did you know our rabbis teach us that God saved the Jewish people from Egypt because they remembered their Hebrew names?”

He stared back at me and I at him. But for the broken keys in one chariot, I never would have come face to face with Zeke in his Chariot, rigged up to tow cars on winter nights in Brooklyn.

I urged him to take Sunday off; get to church. “You have to rest, brother. It’s a commandment.”

“Saved just because of their names?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“It’s powerful to know that, rabbi,” said Zeke. “I’ll be in touch.”

With whom, I suppose, depends upon where he ends up Sunday morning.