The Rabbi was our synagogue’s spiritual leader for a decade or more. Since it was my childhood, it seemed like forever. For me, Rabbi Weiss will always be The Rabbi.
When my family arrived in the newly-minted post WWII lower-middle class community, the Jewish center consisted of Rabbi Weiss working from a desk in the back of a real estate office, with Hebrew School classes in members’ basements. There was a building fund for the future synagogue, which at the time was Rabbi Weiss’ impossible dream.
The rabbi was fired a few years after the shul was built. Suddenly, it seems, the governing board replaced Rabbi Weiss with a younger guy, who wore a United States Air Force Reserve uniform to his very first public appearance at the Jewish Community Center of Bayside Hills. My mother disapproved. She felt it was flamboyant, not fitting for a Rabbi. “They got rid of Rabbi Weiss” my mother said, “because they want Billy Graham!”
Rabbi Weiss may not have been Billy Graham, but to this day I am still chewing over one of his sermons. I do not recall at all the Rabbi’s sermon at my Bar Mitzvah, but the sermon a week later when Alan Silver was the Bar Mitzvah Boy stays with me forever.
Here is what the Rabbi said:
“Alan, when G-d told Noah that he was going to flood this evil world and ordered him to build an Ark, Noah did what G-d told him. But when G-d told Abraham that he was going to destroy two evil cities, Abraham argued with G-d.
“‘Will you destroy the cities if you can find 100 just men in them?’
“‘No, said G-d. For the sake of 100 just men among them, I will spare these evil people.’
“‘Then will you save the two cities if they have 99 just men, because you are everywhere, Oh Lord, so you will be the hundredth.’
“G-d agreed to Abraham’s terms, but after checking He returned to say that he could not find 99 just men.
“So Abraham got G-d to agree to save the cities for the sake of even 10 just men, and then 9 since G-d would be the tenth. But to no avail, G-d could not find even 9 just men in Sodom and Gomorra. The cities and all their people were destroyed as Abraham and his brother Lot left with their families and servants. G-d ordered them to look only forward, but not back upon the destruction of those cities, but Lot’s wife turned around to look anyway, and she turned into a pillar of salt.” (I wondered if you could see how she looks as a pillar of salt if you were to go there today).
Now the part that really got me was Rabbi Weiss’ conclusion:
“Do not be like Noah, Alan,” said the Rabbi, “Be like Abraham. Argue with G-d!”
What? Don’t obey G-d? I had always understood that Noah was a righteous man. But the Rabbi’s admonition was not to be righteous and obey G-d, but to argue with Him!
That day — at the age of 13, one week after I had officially become a man — began my lifelong struggle to grapple with religion.
