Author’s note: The privacy and confidentiality of individuals found in this narrative were safeguarded, by modifying identifying details.
It didn’t dawn on me during the first week of the shutdown, or even during the second or third week. The pandemic had shuttered our schools and synagogues for more than a month, before I recalled my earlier conversation with Hank.
Hank is a bright, sensitive young man. He is also located somewhere on the autism spectrum. He lives mostly at a group residence, but spends weekends at home with his parents and siblings. Despite his diagnosis, Hank manages to be playful and affectionate, particularly with those who are at the center of his world.
Life, though, is not always easy for Hank. He struggles mightily to accept views that differ from his own. This leads to discomfort in a number of settings, one of which is work.
Hank was hired to clear the clutter of a local school’s study hall. On his first day on the job, he noticed a sign instructing students to re-shelve their books. Unfortunately, most of the students ignore that sign and leave their books out. This creates more work for Hank, and keeps him busy for most of the day.
When Hank reminds students to put their books away, they just smile at him. He has even asked school administration to enforce their rules, but they just patiently explain to him that they are unwilling to hold the students accountable; they have more serious infractions to deal with.
Hank has shared with me just how angry and full of rage he often feels. He reports how he is sometimes ready to yell at students, scold school officials, and/or quit his job, although he has never done any of these things.
Beneath his anger is the sense, accurate or not, that others do not take his role at school seriously. This offends him deeply.
Perhaps deeper down, Hank is confronting a sense of powerlessness. His immediate focus is a job in which he can’t affect policy change. But this is not the full story. Hank’s lack of power includes the realization that he likely will not marry, bear children and/or have the means to support a family.
About eight months ago, Hank confided that other people must listen to him, because he is special. I asked him what he meant by that, and Hank haltingly explained that he is somehow closer to G-d than most people are. He added that he experiences dreams that are akin to prophecy. I then asked Hank to elaborate on those dreams.
So, Hank shared a vivid image of the school at which he works, being empty of students, empty of teachers and deserted. “It’s empty because of me and because of my pain,” he emphasized. Hank noted that he had these dreams multiple times each week. I tried to reason with him: “Even if you would reference your dreams to the administrators, they probably still would not listen. After all,” I puckishly pointed out, “they too might have dreams.”
Hank shrugged me off, and insisted that he is unique. In a way, I shrugged off Hank and his dreams. I interpreted them as the longings of a young man who just wanted to leave his imprint on a community where he experiences indifference. Hank’s dreams were, at most, grist for the therapeutic mill.
Fast forward to May 2020. Our community was littered with empty synagogues and schools. I recalled Hank’s dreams of a building without students or faculty; a school abandoned, and the similarities were eerie. Was it merely coincidence?
Decades earlier, my Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Yechiel Perr, illustrated, to us the power of heartfelt prayer. He cited an enigmatic passage from Tractate Yoma: The Kohen Gadol, on Yom Kippur, upon emerging from the Holy of Holies would briefly pray to G-d that He not heed the prayers of the traveler.
What is the unique, yet problematic, traveler’s prayer that the Kohen Gadol is obliged to counter? Rabbi Perr explained that Israel is a land that is dependent on rainfall. The precious drops of rain, seeping into the ground, generate fertility, prosperity, and plenty. The Kohen Gadol’s (and our) concern is that a traveler who finds himself traveling during the rainy season may ask G-d to halt the rain, and, perhaps, G-d would listen, thus depriving the land of much needed rainfall.
Rabbi Perr asked us, “How could it be that an entire nation of people needs rain, longs for rain, prays for rain and that the wishes of a solitary traveler would bear more weight?”
I still remember his answer, which is that those who pray for rain are thinking about the future, about crops that are not yet expected to arrive for several months. The planters are praying for and anticipating a benefit that is still far off in the future.
Meanwhile, the traveler’s need is immediate. He is on the road right now, and he is still miles away from his destination. The rain is currently soaking through his clothes, and he is chilled to the bone. So he Krechtzes (moans) – “Oooyyyyyy!” His pain is immediate, and it comes from the depths of his heart. G-d could conceivably heed a single, visceral Krechtz more so than all the prayers of all the planters and harvesters combined.
The power of immediate pain and suffering is so great, Rabbi Perr concludes, that we must rely on someone no less important than the Kohen Gadol, on a day no less significant than Yom Kippur, near a location no less hallowed than the Holy of Holies, to beseech G-d that he not heed the pained traveler’s prayer. Rather we ask him to heed ours.
When I think of Hank and his dreams, the scientific part of me still tells me that Hank is fantasizing about power that’s beyond his grasp, and that he is engaging in magical thinking. The other part of me, though, that absorbed my Rosh Yeshiva’s discourses, hears the echo, the moan of the traveler caught in the rain. It tells me that the experience of an individual who suffers is hard to measure, hard to contain, and hard to withstand. His prayers and visions have heft. At the end of the day, I don’t know which is the truer approach.
May G-d bring us relief from the pandemic. May G-d lighten Hank’s load, as he faces his oftentimes harsh realities. May we all learn not to discount the pain of an individual.
Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash