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“It’s good to believe in something,” he said, looking at the meat, “if only I could believe. Morality is too questionable. I have a strong idea of what’s not right, but not what is right. So I do whatever I want.” He cracked an open-toothed smile, his blue eyes pale and clear and honest, then tore apart another piece of schnitzel.
Within a few weeks, Kessler and Sputz would select a building for a temporary Chabad house and then return to New York. Chabad would send another set of young men to relieve them, while the search for a permanent team of husband-and-wife emissaries continued. Levi would find little to do at Nariman House and return to Israel, to spend time with his family. Their brief, mad labor would be complete.
The door opened and in came Menachem, his high-stepping grace like fresh air in the stale hotel room. He was followed by a smiling Mendy and, at last, the long-awaited Rabbi Yosef Kantor, direct from Bangkok, where he’s been the emissary since 1993.
Kantor’s outreach in Thailand has flourished. Every Friday he hosts a sabbath dinner at his home, on the third floor of a synagogue. His life is not so different from what Gavriel Holtzberg’s might have been in ten years. His hair is going gray, but the redness of his beard is intact. He’s tall and slightly pear-shaped, and he smiled pleasantly, like we’d known each for other a long time.
The religious men had to pray the afternoon prayers, so Levi quickly excused himself. As I got up to leave, Kantor asked if I would pray, too, but I told him I wasn’t much for prayer. I asked him if there’s any explanation, theologically, for what happened to the Holtzbergs, and the hundred and sixty-three others. Mendel and Menachem were milling about behind him, putting on their suit jackets and hats to present themselves respectably to the Lord. Kantor’s eyes were sparkling, and he looked at ease, leaning on a dresser.
He told me a story. “The Rebbe once said, if a medieval peasant walked into an operating theater where the surgeons were doing open-heart surgery, and he saw what goes on there, he’d think they were cannibals. They’re dressed in white, and they have a knife, and they’re cutting the guy open, and there’s blood everywhere. But in reality they’re doing the greatest act of mercy: saving a life. Now, the difference between the wisdom of God and the knowledge that you and I have is a far greater gulf than the one between the doctors and the peasant. Ultimately, there is no answer. It’s just a big question mark.” I left the hotel room as the three began to pray.