hell is God when you need?” Marv laughed. “I’m not saying those were the exact words, but you get the picture.”
I said I did.
“Sevi figures the world’s an armpit because God is sick a dog, too weak to do anything about plagues and locusts and raining toads and all the rest of it. God needs a doctor, you see. He’s wounded bad. Hell’s bells—God needs surgery already! So who’s going to be God’s physician?”
“That I don’t know,” I said. “But it reminds me of a joke.”
“So knock-knock already.”
“What’s the difference between a surgeon and God?”
“What?”
“God knows he’s not a surgeon.”
Marv laughed and said, “My brother the cardiologist, I got to tell him that one.” He actually wrote down my joke on a notepad. After which he returned to the matter of Shabbatai Sevi, a psycho-mystic evaporated in time.
“Who can heal a wounded God?” Marv asked. “Who can heal the world?” Rabbis and Jesuit priests, I have noticed, enjoy telling us things by posing riddles. “A holy man? An army of holy men? But even holy men are mortals, and aren’t mortals weaker than supernatural beings? What is man but a hemophiliac?”
“You’re saying if God is a patient, he needs a doctor stronger than he is.”
“But, can there be such a doctor?”
I said something about this being altogether too Talmudic for an ex-choirboy such as myself.
“Like I mentioned, though, Sevi had a theory—the Doctrine of Universal Sin.” Marvin picked open his own fortune cookie. He read the slip of paper inside, shrugged, dropped it to his desk for me to see. “Here’s the way he saw it: there is nobody more powerful than God, but there is something equal to His power. What would that be?”
Anybody who ever crossed the threshold of Holy Cross School knows the answer to that one, especially if they ever sat in Sister Bertice’s classroom. “Evil,” I promptly said. Whichever pole of the hereafter was now her home, I felt the late Sister B. smiling at me.
“Bingo! So, let’s say God’s ass is in a sling. What are Shabbatai Sevi and his cult supposed to do about it?”
“I don’t know. What?”
“Find a way—through the practice of evil, the only power equal to God—to perform a great tikkun olam.”
“Sevi might have had a blasphemy problem with that.”
“To be sure.”
“By the way, what’s a tikkun olam?”
“A healing of the world, for the benefit of all people. In the specific case of Sevi and his cause, it means the rectification of a shattered God.”
“I’m getting the idea here that Sevi wanted Satan to make a house call.”
“Well—like I said, the guy was pragmatic.”
“Also you said he was nuts. Is it possible to be both?”
“Maybe not. Maybe Shabbatai Sevi was only a prophet. That would explain why he died a forgotten man. We either forget our prophets or we kill them, often both.”
“What did the prophet foresee?”
“That holiness is impossible.”
“So life is what—hopeless?”
“I wouldn’t say that. What I would say is that we need to be sure of whom we can trust at the time when everything comes down on our heads. A certain kind of cop, as you Put it. A rodef shalom. That’s you, Neil.”
And how would I explain all this to Officer Caras standing next to me with his revolver and his belt utilities clattering back into place on his hips? Officer Caras waiting for a coherent answer to a reasonable question, asked in a syna-8ue where an unholy thing had happened.
“Mr. Glick?” I said, ignoring Caras, since I had no coherent answer for him—or for that matter, me. I placed my hand on Glick’s head. He was fevered, his hair felt like baby’s down. I slipped a finger under his jaw, feeling for a pulse, finding one. “I know you’re tired, Mr. Glick. But before you rest, can you help me with something?”
“Rodef shalom... Rodef shalom ...”
“Come on, Hockaday, what’s he saying?” Caras was growing impatient. So were
I said I did.
“Sevi figures the world’s an armpit because God is sick a dog, too weak to do anything about plagues and locusts and raining toads and all the rest of it. God needs a doctor, you see. He’s wounded bad. Hell’s bells—God needs surgery already! So who’s going to be God’s physician?”
“That I don’t know,” I said. “But it reminds me of a joke.”
“So knock-knock already.”
“What’s the difference between a surgeon and God?”
“What?”
“God knows he’s not a surgeon.”
Marv laughed and said, “My brother the cardiologist, I got to tell him that one.” He actually wrote down my joke on a notepad. After which he returned to the matter of Shabbatai Sevi, a psycho-mystic evaporated in time.
“Who can heal a wounded God?” Marv asked. “Who can heal the world?” Rabbis and Jesuit priests, I have noticed, enjoy telling us things by posing riddles. “A holy man? An army of holy men? But even holy men are mortals, and aren’t mortals weaker than supernatural beings? What is man but a hemophiliac?”
“You’re saying if God is a patient, he needs a doctor stronger than he is.”
“But, can there be such a doctor?”
I said something about this being altogether too Talmudic for an ex-choirboy such as myself.
“Like I mentioned, though, Sevi had a theory—the Doctrine of Universal Sin.” Marvin picked open his own fortune cookie. He read the slip of paper inside, shrugged, dropped it to his desk for me to see. “Here’s the way he saw it: there is nobody more powerful than God, but there is something equal to His power. What would that be?”
Anybody who ever crossed the threshold of Holy Cross School knows the answer to that one, especially if they ever sat in Sister Bertice’s classroom. “Evil,” I promptly said. Whichever pole of the hereafter was now her home, I felt the late Sister B. smiling at me.
“Bingo! So, let’s say God’s ass is in a sling. What are Shabbatai Sevi and his cult supposed to do about it?”
“I don’t know. What?”
“Find a way—through the practice of evil, the only power equal to God—to perform a great tikkun olam.”
“Sevi might have had a blasphemy problem with that.”
“To be sure.”
“By the way, what’s a tikkun olam?”
“A healing of the world, for the benefit of all people. In the specific case of Sevi and his cause, it means the rectification of a shattered God.”
“I’m getting the idea here that Sevi wanted Satan to make a house call.”
“Well—like I said, the guy was pragmatic.”
“Also you said he was nuts. Is it possible to be both?”
“Maybe not. Maybe Shabbatai Sevi was only a prophet. That would explain why he died a forgotten man. We either forget our prophets or we kill them, often both.”
“What did the prophet foresee?”
“That holiness is impossible.”
“So life is what—hopeless?”
“I wouldn’t say that. What I would say is that we need to be sure of whom we can trust at the time when everything comes down on our heads. A certain kind of cop, as you Put it. A rodef shalom. That’s you, Neil.”
And how would I explain all this to Officer Caras standing next to me with his revolver and his belt utilities clattering back into place on his hips? Officer Caras waiting for a coherent answer to a reasonable question, asked in a syna-8ue where an unholy thing had happened.
“Mr. Glick?” I said, ignoring Caras, since I had no coherent answer for him—or for that matter, me. I placed my hand on Glick’s head. He was fevered, his hair felt like baby’s down. I slipped a finger under his jaw, feeling for a pulse, finding one. “I know you’re tired, Mr. Glick. But before you rest, can you help me with something?”
“Rodef shalom... Rodef shalom ...”
“Come on, Hockaday, what’s he saying?” Caras was growing impatient. So were
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