Holy Schlimazel

Sometimes I wish I could write the way that Vincent Van Gogh paints.

The following rough sketch proves that I can't.

Reb Asher must be in his eighties. He treks to shul for minyan twice a day from the Jewish Senior Life apartment complex, shuffling slowly with his quad cane, pausing to catch his breath. 

He is short, bald, oval; a golf ball on top of an ostrich egg. The amorphous look is accentuated by loose-fitting gym clothes in bold mismatched colors: a pair of gray sweatpants, a blood-orange hoodie over a dark blue shirt, topped by a loud red baseball cap.

The overall effect is that of a wheezing rubber dog toy.

Whether he is on or off the so-called spectrum will be left to the experts. (The word is that he was "gifted" child.) It's not hard to imagine a daily medication regiment that includes, among a dozen other prescriptions, psychiatric pills. Certainly his inner filters need repair.

"Asher says out loud what the rest of us keep to ourselves," someone said.

But is it fair to call him a schlimazel?

Is it fair because someone "steals" the tissue box from the table where he sits; because the coffee splashes over the lip of his styrofoam cup, staining the white table cloth; because his tallis slips from his shoulders, three times in one morning; because his smart phone picks the exact worst time to play its Broadway-musical ringtone? 

Do these faux pas really warrant brushing off The Joys of Yiddish to describe him?

Once, in the middle of Kaddish, when the congregation joins the leader in praising God's great name (Y'hei Sh'meih rabbah), Reb Asher jumped the gun and started his praise early. This has happened to most of us (especially when Kaddish is sung rather than said), but then again, most of us, pink-cheeked and apologetic, catch it right away.

But, eyes blissfully closed, Reb Asher was in another world, a slower, shuffling, shapeless world, his words hanging gently, like stars in the night, blessedly removed from the distant noise below.

Amen. Let His great Name be blessed for ever and ever. It was as if a prayer from one of the prophets was floating above our mechanical chants, a poor man's poem, lifted by angels' wings.

I lowered my head, humbled by what seemed a sacred moment, not wanting to pollute it, resisting eye contact, refusing knowing looks, knowing winks, knowing smiles, because in the end, we don't know; we simply don't know. 

In that moment, Yiddish aside, Reb Asher sure seemed like a holy Jew.