Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry Read Online Free PDF

Goralsky?” asked the rabbi.
    “Nasser should feel like this.” He smiled in self-deprecation.
    The rabbi smiled back at him. “So why don’t you take your medicine?”
    The old man shook his head slowly. “On Yom Kippur, Rabbi, I fast.”
    “But the regulation to fast doesn’t apply to medicine. It’s an exception, a special rule.”
    “About special rules, exceptions, Rabbi, I don’t know. What I do, I learned from my father, may he rest in peace. He was not a learned man, but there wasn’t another one in the village in the old country who could touch him for praying. He believed in God like in a father. He didn’t ask questions and he didn’t make exceptions. Once, when I was maybe thirteen or fourteen years old, he was in the house saying his morning prayers when some peasants pushed open the door. They had been drinking and they were looking for trouble. They shouted to my father he should give them some bromphen, brandy. My mother and I, we were frightened, and she hugged me, but my father didn’t look at them and he didn’t even skip a word in his prayer. One of them came up to him, and my mother screamed, but my father went on praying. Then the others, they must have got nervous, because they pulled their friend back, and then they left the house.”
    His son obviously had heard the story many times for he made a grimace of impatience, but his father did not notice and went on. “My father worked hard, and he always managed to feed us and clothe us. And with me, it’s the same way. I always obeyed the rules, and God always took care of me. Sometimes I worked harder and sometimes there was trouble, but looking back it was more good than bad. So what I’m told to do, I do, and this must be what God wants because He gave me a good wife who lived till she was full of years, and good sons, and in my old age He even made me rich.”
    “Do you think that the regulations – to pray, to keep the Sabbath, to fast on Yom Kippur – do you think these are good-luck charms?” the rabbi said. “God also gave you a mind to reason with and to use to protect the life He entrusted to your care.”
    The old man shrugged his shoulders.
    “In fact, if you are sick, the regulation specifically states that you must not fast. And it’s not an exception either. It’s a general principle that is basic to our religion.”
    “So who says I’m sick? A doctor says I’m sick, that makes me sick?”
    “All day he goes on like that,” said Ben admiringly. “A mind like a steel trap.” To his father he said, “Look, Papa, I asked Dr. Bloom who we should get and he tells me Dr. Hamilton Jones is the best there is. So we get Hamilton Jones. He’s not just any doctor; he’s a professor, from Harvard College.”
    “Mr. Goralsky,” said the rabbi earnestly, “man was created in God’s image. So to disregard the health of the body that was entrusted to our care, God’s image, Mr. Goralsky, this is a serious sin. It is chillul ha-Shem, an affront to the Almighty.”
    “Look, Rabbi, I’m an old man. For seventy-five years at least – seventy-five years I can give you a guarantee – I fasted on Yom Kippur. So this Yom Kippur you think I’m going to eat?”
    “But medicine is not eating, Mr. Goralsky.”
    “When I take in my mouth and I swallow, by me this is eating.”
    “You can’t beat him,” Ben Goralsky murmured in the rabbi’s ear.
    “Do you realize, Mr. Goralsky,” said the rabbi seriously, “that if, God forbid, you should die because you refused medication, it could be considered suicide.”
    The old man grinned.
    The rabbi realized that the old man was enjoying this, that he was deriving a perverse sort of pleasure from debating with a young rabbi. David Small wanted to smile, but he made one last effort and managed to sound somber and portentous. “Think, Mr. Goralsky. If I should judge you a suicide, you would not receive formal burial. There would be no eulogy over your grave. There would be no