Learning to Breathe by Priscilla Warner

Author:Priscilla Warner
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2011-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

23

The Soul Doctor

A good mystical rabbi is hard to find.

After my transformative experience at the mikvah, I wanted to know more about Jewish mystical practices. Chanie suggested I talk with her brother, Rabbi Simon Jacobson, saying, “Simon is the brilliant one in the family. He’s the one you have to meet.”

That’s how I came to be pacing a block in the East Village of Manhattan, over and over again, looking for the address Rabbi Jacobson had emailed me when he’d agreed to meet me that night, a few weeks after my mikvah. But all I saw was an abandoned brick synagogue, totally dark inside, its wrought iron gate locked with a padlock.

Finally I spotted a man in a long black overcoat, with a dark, bushy beard, rushing toward me, head down. Rabbi Jacobson introduced himself, apologizing for running late. I followed him as he unlocked the padlock, opened the iron gate, and then the door to the synagogue, which was not abandoned.

We walked into the sanctuary, filled with cozy, mismatched upholstered furniture. Rabbi Jacobson led me into a library, and we sat down at a long folding table.

I asked if he had any advice for me as I continued seeking peace on the other side of the ritual cleansing. “Would you like to be part of my journey?” I asked.

“I’m already part of your journey.” Rabbi Jacobson smiled. “Because God is the one who creates the choreography of our trajectories, and we’ve intersected, even before we physically met. Our souls have already converged in some ways, which is an honor.”

I was so touched that I began to cry. Quite a lot, actually. I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and apologized. Although I’d been crying for months now, I still hadn’t learned to carry tissues.

“Mystics say that tears bathe the soul,” Rabbi Jacobson said. “I see your tears as cleansing and healthy.”

“But I don’t want to cry all the time!” I said, laughing.

“You won’t,” the rabbi assured me. In a dark blue sweater and sport coat, with a yarmulke on his head, he could have been a college professor. Or a Jewish Santa, if Santa had a darker beard and was prone to soulful ruminations.

The night before, my son Max had developed food poisoning. He’d called himself an ambulance in the middle of the night and been taken to an emergency room. I’d spent the day at his apartment, making sure he was hydrated, feeding him soups and sodas. I was worried about him and said so. I was exhausted and apologized again to the rabbi for crying.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Rabbi Jacobson said. “To me, tears are a good thing. The Torah says that, when energy enters into us that our containers cannot hold, we erupt.”

“That’s exactly what it feels like,” I managed to say, while erupting.

“May you only cry at times like this,” Rabbi Jacobson said kindly. “People who cry in healthy ways are doing so because they sense a higher presence. And that’s beyond us.” He shrugged.

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