I had an uber driver today who was a rabbi. I knew it was going to be a unique ride because when the app announced the driver it was my very first “Shmuel”. I’ve had lots of Hectors and a few Fernandos and plenty of Brandons but this was a unique name among the roster. He also drives Lyft. It took a few miles for him to reveal his other job, not Lyft, Rabbi-ing. He dressed the part – long beard, hat, keychain with an indeterminate (by this Catholic boy) Hebrew letter on it.
Why app-driving? Well, he is young and unmarried. He is not doing this to find a bride, but rather doing this until he does so. His mission seemed to be to just impart his truths and wisdom on riders and receive from them as much growth as might come in a conversation. He explained a few basics in our forty minute drive. Yes, Jews are the chosen people, as reported. Why is this? Well, their souls were carved from G-d’s throne if I understood him properly. I was in a good mood and was not challenging things. So you see when you are this close to G-d, you can confidently spread the light of his wisdom to everyone, not by conversion but rather by deeds, acts and examples.
I asked him if Bob Dylan was a rabbi. Short version of his detailed answer was “not exactly” and more like Bob was a “Good Jew” enlightening humanity, as spreading the light is basically what Jews were put on earth to do – and according to him, we ALL benefit. He seemed quite pleased to learn from me that Leonard Cohen, whom he correctly recognized as the author of “Halleluiah“, uses the slash line spelling for G-d in his printed lyrics.
I didn’t bring up touchy stuff with him because one, I am not going to be tacky in person, I do that in print enough with a purpose, there is no purpose in agitating what is basically a business transaction with a social possibility. “Why not make the most of it?” is my attitude with every driver. He was using waze but traffic was light and we took quite a simple route home from my meeting in Santa Monica.
He was an intelligent guy (I say this for those who might assume that those with convicted leaps of faith are somehow ignorant or obtuse, the very stance of that assumption being as or more obtuse than the simple faith held by many) and fretted for the world, for the future of the world, of civilization, of culture. I hold similar views but while he frets, I just kinda don’t give a fuck. When I am around young people I don’t play the dystopic doom and gloom boomer game of predicting the world ending the day my generation dies. That is pretty much my only policy of imparting “hope” to people who will be here after I’m gone. So many atheists I know have a pet cause that drives them with a religious fervor and when questioned about why they recycle or protest or donate they talk of future generations benefitting from a world they helped create. Anything that you work toward that takes place after your death is “life after death” which is also known as religion.
So instead of me mimicking religion and partaking in an “act” that somehow has a domino effect of helping a billion unborn souls live in lusher vegetation with fresher air, I say why not impart hope upon those very souls who will be breathing after my last breath. Point out that the world is a good place and that the chaos you read in the news and the tension you feel in the street is temporary yet will always be there. The day they solve the current headline crisis there will be another to take its place… and yet things will get better. And if that is a lapsed Catholic carrying the light of G-d’s wisdom to elevate all of the world, or even some of it, well then maybe I am a good Jew at heart.
I told the rabbi about the funerals of Bob and Murray and Sue. The three Jewish funerals I have been to. Each one talked about the deceased, centered on the deceased. In Catholicism a funeral is where they just have a typical mass and there happens to be a box in the aisle at the altar. Murray Schiff was a painter and I let out tears when the rabbi at Murray’s funeral said “He was not a religious Jew, he was not an observant Jew but he was a CULTURAL Jew and that might be a higher calling, none of us can say, but we can therefore say that Murray was a good Jew.” I cried in my pew there (apologies if they don’t call it a pew, if it walks like a pew and talks like a pew, this Catholic Boy will have to call it a pew). Crying for Murray and also thinking that everything my brain had been programmed with in Catholicism was basically “Fuck you if you don’t go to church on Sunday, the box at the foot of the altar during just another mass that doesn’t concern you is all you are, from dust you came and to dust you shall return”. There was no way a priest would ever acknowledge that the deceased pursuing painting instead of going to church was, at least rhetorically, a possibly better way to have spent his or her life.
But I didn’t pester the Rabbi with my reality, I wanted to know what drove him as he drove me. We’re all just working out what to do before we die and some of us have hallucinations of what happens after we die and we all live with that ticking clock and base our lives on books or recycling or telling kids they are not going to die from global warming the day the last baby boomer croaks.
Five Stars, Rabbi.