In Jerusalem. This time it was sudden and unexpected. Ben-Gurion was out of office. And on that bright Jerusalem morning, I jumped into my little green Fiat station wagon which had belonged to the affable and all-together admirable Rabbi Jack Spiro who sold it to me to keep it in the Reform student-rabbi family.
I was heading for the Hadassah Hospital to visit my friend “Turk.” He was studying for an Orthodox Smicha as I was studying for my Reform Smicha. We had played ball together at Yeshiva high and rediscovered our friendship at this time. He had gotten hurt. I forget how. And he called so that I would visit and to tell me that he was recuperating.
By that time, I was learning how to get around by car in Jerusalem and eventually I got to know the city, played basketball on the Jerusalem Yimca team and like so many others developed an appetite for good falafel, humus and shwarma.
During my drive to the hospital, I became uncertain of the way and I pulled off to the side of the road slowly and came to a stop to ask for directions. I listened to the directions, called to me from across the road by a pedestrian, repeated them and was about to get underway again when a large heavyset figure in a white billowing shirt, unkempt and disheveled, appeared to jump forward in front of my vehicle and then jumped back out of the way. He appeared wild and furious, looked unruly, perhaps frantic or unhinged I thought, maybe crazed or demented? Not normal. It turned out he was a Hadassah hospital physician and head of one of the medical departments. But I didn’t learn that until later. And I never did learn his name.
When I arrived at the hospital, I parked and took an elevator on up to Turk’s room. We talked for about 10 minutes and then I strolled over to the window and looked out. There, down below, a small crowd had gathered around my little green Fiat station wagon. It was an agitated gathering.
In the center of the mini-throng: the wild man and a couple of cops. There was a lot going on: a jangle of gesticulations, harsh sounds, voices raised…
Uh, oh I say to Turk…something about my car, I’ll be back up.
Coming out of the Hadassah hospital, I slowed my pace and approached with what I hoped was a dignified pace and clearly with an aura of innocence of any wrong doing such as parking where I must not. The truth is, I didn’t know what to think. But it was not about parking.
“He’s the one…Zeh Haish.” Hoo hagorame, he, he caused the accident. Turning to me fully, “You are the one.” This is the fellow. Did he mean me I thought, like The Prophet Nathan confronting a wicked King David? The wild man doctor-head-of-the-department-of- whatever-rushing-to-the-hospital exclaimed as I continue to walk forward toward my car.
And now along comes David Ben-Gurion.
He came to visit Paula, someone said, “Paula,” not Mrs. Ben Gurion, or Paula Ben Gurion, just Paula. She was a patient there at the time.
Bolting towards him like a groupie, from the midst of my accusers, the cops, the witnesses and the curious bystanders, I think of no one and nothing else but the magic of Ben-Gurion walking with a friend, no bodyguard, no entourage, no retainers, unhurriedly, strolling along in the direction of the hospital entrance. Presently, I’m by his side: “I promised you at Hebrew Union College with Nelson Glueck that I’d come and so I’m here.” He smiled. I’m sure he didn’t quite know what I was talking about – an American kid to be sure – and yet his instinct was to stretch out his arm to me, reaching up around my shoulder with his left hand – I can still feel it, his touch, his friendly embrace, to this day.
He pulled me forward with a little nudge and said come with me, sweeping me along back toward the hospital main gate. The man walking at Ben-Gurion’s side with an avuncular smile on his face remained silent. We go up on the elevator together. He wishes to know what I’m doing, what I’m studying, the professors I like and then he says Shalom, good that you’ve come and smiles stepping out of the elevator. I remain behind and begin my descent to the first floor and back to my breathless throng of admirers.
Ah, but with a huge difference. No babble, no sound, no one jumping around, no one agitated, no one pointing. No one even moving! The chevra standing around are looking at me – their look reading “uh?” Someone says there’s been an accident. The good doctor’s car, it seems, plowed into the rear of the car in front of his. Drove right into it. The driver of the car rear-ended is pointing to the damage and nodding at the agitated doctor. The doctor, his left hand clutching a small briefcase and a fistful of paper documents in the same hand, glared at me and nodded at the cops.
I say, please, “na latet lee lehavin, let me understand. Back on the road I slowed my car and stopped. I now am accused by this man of causing an accident. The car behind mine slowed and so did the car behind that one and then the car driven by this man,” I nod toward the doctor in the white shirt, “in the fourth car drove into the rear of the third car? I paused for full affect, “Perhaps,” I said looking at him, “you shouldn’t be driving so fast” – my voice registering a gentle respectful question mark at the end of the word “fast.” I wanted to crack a smile and say for effect, “let’s ask my friend BG, he’ll be back down b’rega, shortly,” but I thought better of it. I didn’t say another word.
Abruptly, the doctor turned and walked off towards the hospital. Everyone else is looking at his departing billowing shirt. The two cops had not said a word the entire time. Now they looked at each other, looked at me and stepped away, looked at me again, and started off in the direction of their police car. Not much of an incident after all.
But in the olam habah I’d like to tell David Ben-Gurion how an impressionable, young rabbinic student came to alter his path of life at that first I-Thou interaction in the old chapel of HUC-JIR. Although he hardly needs my endorsement to gain entre to gan eden, still I’d like to so inform him of his impact on a young rabbinical student’s life and then in turn on to his family. I’d like to credit him for my kibbutz years, my serving in the Israeli reserves after my American Army chaplaincy service, raising my three daughters in Netanya through their school years, their own Israeli military service, raising their children in Israel and my having lived so much of my adult life in different parts of the country. All this in some part – hard to measure just how much, but much – due to that handshake in the chapel. I also am thankful to him for his deux ex machina appearance getting me out of a lot of trouble with the cops. You might be thinking that it’s not what you have done but who you know that counts. Or who others think you “know.” No, that’s not the message really. It’s about promises.
On the Grand Scale of History, David Ben-Gurion brought about the fulfillment of his people’s promise and lived to fulfill the promise he made to his people. As for me, on no scale at all, except to me and my loved ones, I’ll always be thankful that I kept the promise I made to him at the old HUC- JIR Yeshivah chapel.