The Last Angry Men Menachem

Cottle, Tom

MENACHEM TOM COTTLE By the time he reached his 35th birthday, Menachem Kanter was a profoundly unhappy man. "So, what do I do?," Menachem confronted me one day. "I'm willing to listen to other...

...When you're in this situation, which is really not that different from what the Jews face in Israel, it makes you into a child...
...But they aren't children...
...Then all of a sudden, for no reason, we stopped observing that holiday, then another and another and another...
...So I made pledges, all sorts of promises, you know, how in the new year I'm going to be different, better...
...If Israel does this it's no good, if they do that it's no good...
...They remember, or they read...
...A kid has a mother, then something happens and the kid doesn't have his mother any more...
...You live off the country, off the state, you haven't done a damn thing for yourself in the over 30 years you've been here, three decades, man, you're a failure...
...they've been fighting just as hard as you, lots of them harder maybe, and they're still at it.' 'Let 'em.' That's what he says...
...what life is all about, the good and the bad...
...You pretend you're like Rabbi Weissenbrod but you're less like him than / am, and God only knows I'm nothing...
...But pretty soon that story's going to change...
...I could even recommend books, but I wouldn't dare...
...I see the top, I see the kids waiting to come down, but I can't make it...
...How many people have remarked on the likeness of our faces, our bodies too...
...That's fine...
...I don't want to talk any more about it, get people's advice, or pity, or anything...
...You sort of stay on top of yourself, if you know what I mean...
...they could offer their own...
...All right, it's in the past now...
...Honest to God...
...I've lost my strength, and I'm being erased...
...Life's not easy for him...
...You want a book, you draw out money...
...He's not bothering you, he doesn't even speak until you start asking him a bunch of questions...
...He's going to pass right by that soldier and he's going to see him and tell himself, let the poor old buzzard die...
...Okay...
...Hey, putz, can you do what you want poor old Yankel at the end of his life to do, look in a mirror and admit what you are...
...I think everybody knows, sees him for what he is...
...You can't be a philosopher so you philosophize with everybody from the garbage man to my wife to Sam Fischman...
...That's all you are...
...If words came out of his mouth, fine...
...So he's lonely and unhappy, big deal...
...That's me...
...He said sure, why not...
...Menachem was on the verge of laughing...
...It's like all these years I've lived with the knowledge, but it wasn't ever a fact...
...The guy's really wonderful...
...You read about a guy like that, so busy feeling sorry for himself, how can you have any respect for him...
...I'll back it right down the line...
...Nothing changes, but maybe you feel a little bit better about yourself...
...There's nothing to remember...
...It's too high, and I'm not big enough...
...Oh, no...
...No one spoke to me from heaven...
...Next war, ten billion to one against them, they win again, only this time they do it in fewer days...
...How I feared for him in these minutes, and how helpless I felt...
...And no amount of sermonizing and praying will get it back for you...
...They've had it...
...Not even the kid who put it there can find it anymore...
...You can see what real people are made of...
...Or ask it this way: Why the hell do I have to be so upset about things that happened decades ago...
...You know one of the reasons I hate Yankel's books...
...I don't go to Yankel any more...
...He has to pretend he's somebody else...
...And cowards...
...The war will still be going on, and the soldier who quits is still going to be sitting there, waiting to die because he's running out of food and he doesn't care, but the guy who comes up to him and asks him all those questions and yells at him, he's not going to be there any more...
...They could be brothers," Rose said that night at your place...
...It's like, it's always been there...
...They're real men...
...I always had my own room, and toys, just about anything I wanted...
...Yankel Kanter's problem is that he turned every person who came in contact with him into a child...
...He did all he could...
...They fought for their independence three times already, more times maybe...
...I never went hungry...
...There were four of them with him, you know...
...Maybe he's tricked a few people, but I doubt it...
...Nonetheless, Menachem had few people with whom he could talk, and those who would take a drink with him soon found his one preoccupying thought tedious...
...Love...
...That's the word I want...
...if he sat alone with his thoughts, that was fine...
...How often you think he goes to see my father...
...When the old men don't like the rabbi, it means he's too smart, or too political, or too involved with things they don't think belong in the temple...
...I'm tired.' 'But you know what will happen to you if you stay here like this?' 'The war will be won or the war will be lost.' 'And you don't care?' 'Not any more...
...I don't need to tell you how bad I feel seeing you this way...
...All he said is what he said...
...Where...
...I don't hear voices yet...
...Jews always can find something in common," she said...
...Maybe he'll give you a better book to read...
...If at his age he can't give love, simple love to his relatives—and I'm like his own son, aren't I?—then I'd say he's as big a failure as I am, and all his books turn out to be a waste, a real waste...
...I could give you a whole big lesson...
...try...
...He never told me directly, but he thinks my ups and downs mean I'm mentally ill...
...You want a suit, you draw out money...
...No mention of come to temple more often...
...Menachem was grinning, like he had just caused real mischief...
...A lousy synagogue like Bet Shalom, it can't have any money in the treasury and here's this fabulous guy who's got all the time in the world to talk to me...
...I could use one, but where do I get the scratch...
...Rabbi Weissenbrod is so much smarter, so much better, and half Yankel's age...
...For a while it works...
...He can't go to the mirror and look at the face he sees and say out loud, loud enough for God to hear, 'Yankel Kanter, you're an old poor Jew...
...There's everything to forget, nothing to remember...
...I'm not going to make it...
...And still I feel I'm going to slide back even further...
...Yankel knows it...
...I've had it too...
...Somebody must have written all of this somewhere...
...So, where's the trouble...
...So the temple committee arranged for a new man and th^y brought in this young guy, Weissen-brod...
...Go pester Weissenbrod...
...When I told him once that I would try to help with the financing-, he backed off quickly and reminded me that he wanted no handouts...
...We'll get something to eat maybe, or some ice cream...
...That's what it's come to...
...It's only partly my mother dying, it's really the way my father raised me...
...My father, he's uneasy about being a grandfather because he can't understand where the grandmother is...
...I'm tired...
...He told me to shape up or ship out...
...No one's doing it to me...
...Despite his sadness, and the contents of the stories he was relating, Menachem's way had changed slightly...
...The job and the money and I even think I can forget the past...
...So, who does that leave me...
...You notice it...
...It's 40 years ago, Tom...
...You go up to a soldier...
...He'd wonder about it the rest of his life, but he wouldn't have me around bitching and moaning and groaning...
...It can only go downhill, if my life hasn't already reached the bottom...
...The men who had steady jobs and were making good money felt badly for him, but how often did they have to hear the same complaints...
...Yankel...
...Right...
...Two hours I sat with the man, a guy my age, a little older maybe...
...You know what I feel...
...He's not complaining, he's just sitting there, so let him sit and think and die in peace...
...Anyway he's got his Sam Fischmans and Abe Rosens and Brenda Ashes and all those other people to sit at his feet and make him think he's the main Rabbi of Kiev...
...It wasn't an orphanage...
...They're all heroes, all of them...
...everywhere I go I only meet successful people...
...Go ahead, climb the slide...
...You know that, everybody knows that...
...Of course, no one spoke to me...
...I can't make it up the slide, Tom...
...Okay...
...You give me a job and there's no more coming down, just going up...
...I was brave for a while, I did my time, four decades isn't just a few minutes, it's a damn long time to put all your strength behind something and come up empty-handed...
...No one wants them there...
...My father set a damn good example for me...
...All the Jews for Israel, right...
...What can be in the future...
...But it's my fault...
...They said that for years about divorce, too...
...He kept wiping his eyes and his cheeks but a moment later the tears were there again...
...Come on...
...Rose thinks she can be my mother, Fanny Boehm is scared to death to even see me because she thinks I'll want her as my mother...
...People aren't meant to have lives like this...
...The guy comes from tremendous wealth...
...No mail, not a hello from nobody, you get depressed...
...I'm quitting.' 'But everybody else is tired too...
...It used to be crowded most of the time, now you can go there and you're lucky if there's ten people for a minyan...
...More power to them...
...You can do that...
...You know he's wonderful because the old men hate him, right...
...Everybody's in the army, everybody's for the cause...
...He'll take you in...
...I stressed my understanding of his need for better jobs and the difficulty of living in the circumstances he did, but I also told him if he wanted to speak to someone about his troubles he had that right...
...Maybe he's smoking a cigarette, but he's sitting there, you know, all by himself...
...Look at what's going on in Israel...
...That's me...
...You know how kids will write with chalk on the sidewalk, and how maybe it will stay there for several days, or maybe if they're lucky a couple of weeks...
...I'm willing to listen to other people's opinions...
...You got a brother, Tom...
...My God's a sailor, merchant marines, better...
...And you know why he is a phony...
...Nobody, nobody's more behind that country than I am...
...Of course I'm the soldier sitting there smoking...
...But turn everybody else into children...
...You're a fraud.' If once, just once, that man could say that to himself, he'd go up a hundred notches in the world, for himself as well...
...They're saying—and they aren't cowards—'I'm quitting...
...His manner was void of energy...
...But you live like this, they never let you grow up...
...No mention of God...
...What, he's such a happy man, sitting alone day and night with a million books, no shelves for them even, and making everybody read something from his library that's going to help them understand themselves better...
...On the whole eastern seaboard probably...
...We have no resources...
...Everybody thought it was special...
...I got you, Thomas, you listen, but you're too busy trying to push psychiatrists down my throat...
...A few real feelings come through the curtains before the psychology starts all over again...
...So, I just don't see that anybody can really give me a good lecture on why I should stay alive...
...Of course I would say nothing to him, but if my mind would not stop during such a scene, then when would it...
...Forty years old and look at me...
...So, where you been keeping yourself...
...Because I'm one of those books...
...Or politically powerful...
...You never saw my father act like that...
...You know how many unhappy people stayed together for the sake of their children when they and their children would have been better off by a long shot if the parents had gotten a divorce...
...A billion to one odds against them, Israel wins...
...How can you make a child into a child...
...That's what we are...
...Go there this minute, you'll see poor children...
...Talk about what it's like to be a poor Jew...
...Yankel and my father never got out of the past...
...Why this experience now, so real, and at the same time artificial...
...You want to make me a man, give me a job at twenty, twenty-five thousand dollars a year, you won't hear me complain again, you won't even see me...
...All right, so you want to know what he told me...
...A man loses his children, he thinks he's too old to start again with different children from a different wife...
...They took his few things and now he comes to America pretending he's somebody completely different...
...I know it, and he knows it too...
...He was still wiping away the tears...
...I fought, I fought tough, day and night, now I'm quitting...
...It's no surprise to anyone that he doesn't have any real friends...
...His handkerchief was soaked with moisture, but he never stopped talking...
...you've built up no life...
...So he would have made me a kid, what's the problem...
...How stupid, and impertinent, even in thought, that such ideas should come to me...
...You have to!' 'I don't want to...
...I'm an unhappy man...
...They come with their good clothes and the hundred dollar shoes, but they aren't children...
...You think people like that...
...I liked him, and I admired him...
...Is that possible...
...Brown eyes, brothers, Jews...
...If nobody's written it yet," he said, nodding his head exactly as Yankel would have, "then you will...
...Every day somebody else says they're committed to drive that country into the sea...
...Yankel and I, we did it...
...So sue me...
...Menachem, a voice within me said, looks like a person who just got the news ttiW his mother had died...
...Oi, you really want to know...
...You feel sad, or guilty or in pain, you draw out psychology...
...Climb up the slide, putznik, you'll see how the other half lives, the other 99 percent...
...This one he has philosophy books for, that one he has religious books for...
...Anyway, Marshall Weissenbrod, he and I had a talk...
...And I don't think about all the dead people in my life when I'm at the bottom of the slide...
...I can feel it...
...These people are grandparents themselves, not children...
...Big banana split, like a couple of kids...
...Everything...
...He would see someone only when he could afford to go on his own...
...He sang beautifully, spoke Hebrew with a rotten accent but that was all right because he really knew his stuff...
...You're not a man, and you're certainly not a rabbi...
...He's the one who wants to be a child...
...So, I took his advice, the advice he gave by not giving it, and I started going to temple, once, twice, three times a week...
...So I'm thinking, hey, maybe I'm wrong, maybe religion's the answer...
...My not having a mother has its effects on him too...
...I can be realistic about all this...
...I even thought, what a shmuck I was not to become a rabbi, which was a lie to myself because I never wanted to be a rabbi...
...Do I write about it, do I write about us, where you come from, where I come from, about how we are so similar, so different...
...If a man like Rabbi Weissenbrod can be so encouraging, respectful is really what he was, then I don't need to look elsewhere...
...Look what I've built for myself...
...Some people are braver than me...
...You don't have the guts to climb up the slide, slide down the slide or get the hell out of the playground altogether...
...They don't want to be children...
...It's like this is heaven and he's one of the angels, except with Yankel, he probably thinks he's God Himself...
...How can it be worse than it already is...
...He was crying, like the little boy he was trying to convince me that he was and he wasn't, at the same time...
...Yankel is a phony...
...Or are you ashamed to be seen as exactly what you are...
...Somewhere in that library collection of his, somebody must have written a story of a life that could be mine...
...Okay, he didn't do all that great...
...But after Weissenbrod, I started going again, and for maybe six months I felt good...
...It wasn't as if Morris was having an affair, though perhaps it seemed this way to Morris...
...You know the way they do it, with a big running start and up the slide while the little kids are waiting to come down...
...You know what I used to think when I was David's age and I used to sit in temple...
...I talked to God, God talked to me...
...No more...
...Oi, but poor Manny could have used you 15 years ago...
...Israel is losing a lot of people, and you know who they're losing...
...People over there are quitting...
...I can talk to guys who have it just as bad as you do, but they're a helluva lot nicer...
...Mail comes, a bill, you get depressed...
...Can you understand that...
...We have it bad because we're Jews, and because we are not financially powerful...
...They're still Jews, which means they'll find something that will hold them together...
...It's like I'm cursed...
...Believe me, he was young...
...He went to law school and studied to become a rabbi...
...I have felt this fraternal feeling all the years I've known you...
...If I got responsibilities here, and family here, well, that's too bad...
...Menachem assumed he preferred to be with Fanny, which was all right, although after all these years the secretive quality of their friendship had become absurd...
...It's like the slide leads you right down into all the garbage of your life...
...You know Temple Bet Shalom on Greeley Place, the small one...
...I remembered all about my bar mitzvah, and the wedding ceremony, some of the blessings...
...He had stopped visiting his uncle, Yankel, he saw his father, Morris, only infrequently...
...They may be in their sixties and seventies and eighties, but they're unwanted children...
...Rich Jews know the same feeling we do...
...The guy questioning the soldier, telling him what to do...
...I went up to him one day after services and I asked him, can we talk...
...A lot of it came back from when I was a boy...
...You got it, baby...
...I even celebrated with them in the temple for Simchas Torah...
...The hell it would...
...Now, that's only the first part of the story...
...If I go to Yankel, I want talk, friendship, love...
...Stuff like that...
...And those men who were in similar financial positions, or even worse off, hardly needed to hear soulful laments from someone else...
...I did my share, I put in my time, I fought, now I'm getting out...
...Anything can set you off...
...Yankel used to go...
...Okay...
...Because Yankel Kanter can't do what I can do...
...You do your best...
...Let's get out of here...
...Anyway, last year, the old rabbi, a tremendous bore, he died...
...I'm still a sonto my father who's alive and my mother who isn't, but I am very tired, my friend, and I doubt if there's a person on this earth who can give me a good reason for why I shouldn't punch out one of these days very soon...
...They forget, or they don't live with their feelings like we do, but they can recall them...
...Rich kids, I thought, learn Hebrew and study the Torah so they'll be well-rounded when they become doctors and lawyers and businessmen...
...I used to think poor kids grow up to be rabbis...
...I'll be the kid who climbs up the slide...
...I can't live with myself anymore...
...I feel shame, and ashamed...
...I never heard it...
...It has its effects on all of us...
...He's got his pack and his gun, his shovel, the whole schmear on the ground next to him...
...He did the best he could...
...It wasn't the happiest house in the United States, but it wasn't the end...
...He usually told Menachem he was too tired to go out, especially in the inclement weather...
...I make my wife unhappy, I make my kid angry, I got nothing to say to Rose or my father and who the hell ever sees this mystery lady of his...
...No, I told myself, I am what I am, I'll be what I'll be...
...Me, I'm his research on mental illness...
...This can't be real...
...I'm bad off but voices I don't hear, unless it's my mother-in-law giving lectures in the kitchen to my wife over coffee and those horrible danish she finds from the only treif bakery in the state...
...Still, with all the distress, my relentless psychological notions never stopped crowding my mind...
...We'll get ice cream...
...And I'm going to get out of the present too, and pretty soon the future too...
...Who cares about either of us...
...He asked me all about myself and I asked him all about himself...
...What'd he say, Manny...
...The drinker says he won't drink, the gambler says he won't gamble, the guy like me who's so concerned that he isn't anyone, he decides he'll have to live with that...
...I had religious training which I cared about...
...Go pester your Uncle Yankel...
...That's only 'cause they live close...
...I listened to Menachem as often as I could, and watched, as the months passed, his growing depression and inability to handle the fundamental problems of his life...
...The very people they don't want to lose: young people...
...Relevant...
...I'm being erased...
...He sat on the bench, his body erect...
...But these two, they could pass for real brothers...
...And I'll tell you I never thought I wanted to be a rabbi...
...Nu, mazel tov, you got one now...
...I want you to know Manny, I feel ashamed...
...So he's got damn good reason to be angry...
...He can't be happy with Fanny Boehm, he can't be happy without her...
...He hasn't shaved...
...Now, miles away, miles from where he's sitting, is his company...
...I'm closing the book on you, putz...
...The richest one and the poorest one, they get together, even if they don't speak the same language, or Hebrew or Yiddish...
...You're a Jewish coward bastard quitter...
...They do it to all of us...
...I've done my share, I've fought in the wars, I've killed or seen people get killed, now I'm tired!' They're leaving too, war heroes, hard workers, good people...
...If that's what he wants to do, then it's nobody's business to try to change his mind about it...
...You look to your wife, you look to your son, you look to your relatives, your friends, memories, ideals, anything...
...It was very nice...
...We survived...
...If she'd been hit by a bus, I could hold the same grudge against the bus driver...
...I know you hate hearing me talk like this, but I can't make it...
...like I say, I'm willing to listen...
...All right, story's over...
...But I'm also the other guy who goes up to him and asks him all these questions and tells him he's a coward...
...What are you, putz...
...That's what it is to me...
...How long does it have to be one of the things that erases me, maybe...
...He's a putz, a mentally-ill putz...
...Let 'em...
...All right, so for six months it got better...
...We're dependent, we're dirty, we're smelly, we're like children people don't want, never did want...
...I bourche too much...
...Does it balance itself off, ever...
...I'm going to be 40 years old in two years, my friend...
...I'm punching out!' And out they go...
...What's the point of it...
...But everything he does he does honestly...
...his attitude toward himself was one of indifference...
...Like, maybe she has been alive all these years and I suddenly got a message that she's dead...
...He doesn't lecture me, or anybody for that matter...
...He knew what he was, what he could do with his brains and his hands, and he did it...
...Maybe you know, when David was small we used to have a sukkah...
...He's still wearing his helmet...
...Oh, they disagree, but they want Israel just to be...
...Because he's the child, unable to accept A few real feelings come through the curtains before the psychology starts all over again...
...So what...
...Once a month, and they live half a mile from one another...
...Although Morris had a standing invitation to eat Friday night dinners with Menachem and Linda, he rarely came...
...Every person in the temple...
...You know that word, 'bourche...
...I don't know...
...Okay, the Nazis were bastards, the worst sons of bitches that ever walked the earth, but how long do you hold a grudge, especially against people you've never seen...
...Like someone came and told me my mother just died...
...You look down at this guy and you frown at him and you disapprove of him and you tell him, you're a goddamn coward, a chicken shit bastard coward...
...Menachem didn't budge...
...Or, look at it another way...
...His brother wasn't that way, and he had it bad too...
...You can't be a teacher so you read books...
...I said to Menachem, "Come, on Manny...
...Maybe because he couldn't ever be a grandparent he resents that they are...
...Half, and he gave no advice, asked me to read no books, didn't say a word about temple, God, nothing...
...I'm still that guy too, believe me...
...If he suddenly went dumb and couldn't speak again for the rest of his life, that was also fine...
...He's no liar, Yankel, he knows what's going on, I wouldn't look him in the eyes now if they paid me...
...Physically sick, mentally sick...
...So shoot me or let me smoke my cigarette in peace...
...A psychologist and a cab driver, but brothers...
...Do it for your kid...
...We didn't starve...
...Bang, bang, boom, boom, they're fighting the great war miles from where this guy is...
...You didn't want to know, maybe, that your own kind could live so different than you...
...They look around and they say, 'Who the hell needs this...
...More likely, I'll psychologize that event too...
...It runs in the family...
...Anyway, I listened to this Weissenbrod man, and he was good...
...What do you mean—you don't want to...
...Decades ago, my friend...
...Why ever have I come to know you, or Yankel or Morris, or the others, those you scorn and belittle but love in the same way as I? Why have our lives come together...
...It's against the law.' 'So they'll try me and shoot me.' 'You're a coward.' There, there's the big punch line...
...That's the little bit of life I have left...
...What, he's got Sam and Abe...
...Marshall Weissenbrod...
...That's the way he thinks he's helping them...
...He was, on this one day, anyway, and in this one chat, becoming happier...
...Hello, Mendel, how come you're not fighting no more?' 'Don't want to.' 'You don't want to...
...So who's he got...
...Rabbi Weissenbrod said the same thing...
...Because it didn't happen in a minute or an hour exactly...
...He says it himself, when I'm not there, of course, that he gets the short end of the stick because of what happened to me before he was even born...
...That's what people always say...
...No about what, just sure, why not...
...And if I go back further, is that a guarantee that I go up again...
...A long time ago I did, but not any more...
...Brilliant...
...I got a good enough education...
...You got it bad, putz, but you make it bad...
...Plenty of rich Jews still come by BetShalom, not only during the holidays either...
...Now there's a great age to be when you've made absolutely no life for yourself...
...What do I tell you, Menachem...
...It seemed that even talking was an effort...
...But right now I feel that the moment of it actually came and went...
...We are poor Jewish people, true...
...Then with the rain or the snow or people walking on it, it all disappears...
...All of this he told his wife, Linda, his son, David and me...
...Come on, I'll treat you for a change, and for 15 minutes we can pretend that all men are created equal...
...I think the best thing I could do for both of them would be knock myself off...
...Can I go back even further...
...That's our temple...
...It's just been there all this time, but I can't remember anything...
...Don't be that way, Manny, don't think that way, Manny...
...But David, he knows that I hold a little resentment about the fact that he has a mother and I don't...
...That's one of the reasons I don't see him anymore, if you want to know the truth...
...Some poor kid...
...You got nothing in your life...
...But he had the real events happen to him...
...Go home, putz, cry over your mother and father, disappear, don't pester me...
...And if I bought a house for us tomorrow you think that would shut her up...
...The young,-the old, the kids, everybody...
...What have I done but make trouble for people, or sadness for people...
...Maybe Yankel's right about me...
...I've read enough about you to know I don't want to read anymore...
...No, Yankel has to be different...
...Sitting together on a park bench drinking cola, Menachem would say, almost without any perceivable emotion, "You tell me what I should stay alive for...
...Rose, you know how she feels...
...At the news of my own mother's death...
...They killed my mother, which is something we assume, so that's it...
...If people listened, that was fine...
...Maybe I should have gone to see him more often...
...I began reading again, doing a little praying...
...You hear a story, or you see grief and hurt in another man, a man who could be your brother, and the words and theories are right there at the tip of your tongue...
...Just like that...
...If I want a book, I'll go to the library, thank you...
...There's no difference, not on the personal level...
...She's still getting even with poor Zick for not giving her a great life, and on top of that dying on her when he was so young...
...I understand...
...You can think he's brilliant and nice, I think he's cruel...
...It's hard being anything when you're poor, but a lot of people do it...
...Someone's got a bunch of surprises for me when I turn 40, or 50, or how 'bout 60...
...Poor kid...
...Down from the top of the slide, and all you think about is how poor you are, and how lousy the Jews have it, and how you hate the rich, like the Haymans, who were actually good to me when I was a kid, and good to my father...
...And if you can't find the strength and you've honestly made the best effort you can, then you can't find the strength...
...Look, Linda, a couple of brothers...
...I mean it...
...So I will be in a book somewhere, and people can read it and say, what a poor slobbering fool...
...Okay, I understand it...
...I mean it...
...All right, but he treats me like a man...
...You make me sick...
...You think about your job, and your house, and the trouble your kid's getting into at school, with fights, and his grades aren't so good and the neighborhood is changing...
...Then, boom, like a kid going down a slide, down you go, right back to where you were...
...He looked at me, his eyes red from crying, his hands shaking slightly, but a small smile starting to form...
...All right...
...A child has problems at home, he's sent to psychiatrists, later he reads psychiaYou don't have the guts to climb up the slide, slide down the slide or get the hell out of the playground altogether...
...Somebody came up to him and said: "They're dead.' He heard somebody say it...
...Do it for the kid...
...But the poor kids, they'll become rabbis...
...He knows where he is, and where they are, and exactly where he's supposed to be, but he's not there...
...Four decades...
...A poor Jewish putz...
...You know, the spirit is like the body, sometimes it has to go to sleep, and sometimes it just dies...
...Don't read medical journals you don't understand because you're not a doctor and sit there with all this information about people in your head, like you really knew about them and all their problems...
...he never won any father of the year awards...
...He said I complain too much, I mope too much...
...Menachem's voice had grown loud, but he showed no concern that people walking in the park might have seen or heard him...
...it's just being done...
...You want to tell people what you think of them, then tell them...
...There's no end to it with her, you know...
...Everything that goes on around you, you think about, even the weather...
...The level of his energy was rising, and his eyes were wider...
...They're not becoming anti-Israel, they're just tired...
...It's not real...
...She'd get remarried in no time, and David, he'd be furious and bewildered for a while, but he'd get over it...
...I feel sorry for myself, what I've said about other people, what I've done, what I should have done...
...He is one already...
...If you're out of energy, you look for it wherever you can...
...The rich one from the suburbs, the poor one from the city...
...Not only me, all of them...
...Not any more.' 'But you can't stay here...
...Ido...
...We all understand that...
...Things like that...
...With the little bit of strength I have, I ask myself those questions every day, and tell myself I'm a nice old-fashioned coward...
...You were afraid to come by here earlier...
...Both his parents are lawyers, and two of his grandparents were lawyers...
...He doesn't say anything lousy to you, he just sticks a book written by somebody none of us has ever heard of in your hand and he says, go read it, you'll understand your life better...
...I didn't think he was so young when it happened, but have / ever learned...
...It's like saying, how can you make things worse for a poor Jew...
...I'm still a Jew, I'm still pro-Israel, but I want out...
...I don't blame you...
...Eventually he turns all problems into psychology, like putting money in a bank...
...People like Sam Fischman and that Asher woman who he sees once in a while, or even my mother-in-law...
...Afraid...
...You can't be a rabbi so you preach junk to all those pitiful old people you make sure keep hanging around you...
...You'll see how it doesn't have to be all bad...
...I don't try to imagine my mother, or think about poor Zick Orlovsky ? Everything feeds into it, you know what I mean...
...She'd be back in a week talking better clothes, better jobs, better this, bigger that...
...Yankel for years has been reading books on schizophrenia because he wants to understand me...
...The guy's just sitting there on a road...
...He was sitting straighter, and seemed more eager to get his story told...
...Weissenbrod knows it, we all know it...
...I don't want you in my life...
...You want another example...
...A bum...
...You just get tired...
...You think my father's proud of what I am...
...I'm still a Jew, I'm still a husband, I'm still a father...
...It was true that several times I had urged Menachem to consult a psychiatrist...
...Holidays people go, but mostly it's for the old people...
...Inside yourself, outside yourself...
...He lost his own children so everyone else has to be a child...
...Is that what Yankel feels...
...I don't know, maybe he still keeps kosher...
...How long do I suffer over it...
...It works...
...I'm out of it...
...I'll tell you something I can see with him and me...
...I'm a Jew, that's all good...
...You can't see any part of it...
...So why does Yankel do it...
...You're concerned that Manny Kanter is mentally ill and that his son is going to be mentally ill too, or maybe already is, then tell Manny Kanter what you think...

Vol. 7 • May 1982 • No. 5


 
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