I give thanks to You living and everlasting Ruler for You have restored my soul with mercy. Great is Your faithfulness.

-Modei Ani, Seder haYom, 16th century, Moshe ben Machir

Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
-Emily Dickenson

Every morning, Eli would wake up and thank G-d for restoring his soul. But one bright spring morning, he woke up dead. Not metaphorically dead. For real, soul departing the body dead.

He was a “mitzvah man” who felt joy in following the commandments. He loved being Jewish, and he loved giving back to his community. The synagogue is having services and is short on making a minyan? Eli would show up to make the prayer quorum. Someone is sick and feeling lonely? Eli was the first person to arrive on their doorstep with a bag of tasty, steaming hot goodies from Costco to feed their bodies and spirits.

It was Shabbat, so he got dressed for services at his synagogue. He bobby pinned his kippah to his balding, grey head, grabbed his tallis bag, and walked down the street to the shul. It was too early for many cars to be on the road yet. Eli tried to pick out the various birds singing. The soft coos of the doves. The raucous chatter of the crows. The musical strutting of the bright red male cardinals.

As he crossed the parking lot, he caught a glimpse of the shul library through a window. The sight of a young mom reading to her curly haired toddler in “Tamar’s Corner” in the library made Eli smile. The mom reminded him of his daughter, Esther, and the little girl looked about the same age as his granddaughter, Ruth. Although to be fair, Eli wasn’t great at guessing kids’ ages. However, his wife, Tamar, excelled at this game. Her warm brown eyes would twinkle as she’d remind him, “Don’t look at the size of the baby. Look at what the baby is doing.”

The sight of the library got him thinking about the time since Tamar passed away. After he’d gotten through his initial period of mourning, the rabbi had suggested that Eli use his handyman skills to renovate the shabby library. Over several months, Eli transformed it into a warm and inviting place.

The physicality of demolition helped him get out the anger he felt at losing his beloved. Ripping out the dingy carpet, he thought about how she had an official date of death, but that he’d really lost her several years before when she got sick and lost her memory. Eventually, Tamar had stopped walking, talking, and laughing. The last years of her life, she had only been a shell of herself. She didn’t even respond to him whispering in her ear, “I’m here, baby” when he’d make his regular visits to see her at the nursing home.

Taking out the rickety bookshelves with a sledgehammer, he thought about the other thing that gnawed at him: he would always remember her. But as time went on, fewer and fewer people would remember Tamar for her kindness and gentleness. Little Ruthie would grow up with no memories of her Bubbie. And with him getting to be quite old, would his granddaughter retain any memories of him either?

He installed gleaming hardwood flooring and put up new shelving for all the books. And then he made a cozy corner painted the color of purple irises, Tamar’s favorite flower. He stocked it with kids’ books and a rocking chair to honor his wife who had loved reading to Ruthie and Esther.

Snapping out of his reverie, he walked up the stairs to the entrance and spotted the security guard, standing outside the doors.

“Good morning!” he said. “Can you unlock the door and let me in, please?”

The security guard stared straight ahead like he wasn’t even there.

Eli was taken aback by this. He was pretty sure that the security guard had heard him. But it felt too awkward to ask again so he just slipped through the door behind another couple that the guard let inside.

In a corner of the sanctuary lobby, he put his cell phone on vibrate and unzipped his blue velvet tallis bag with golden embroidery. The smooth satin felt silky under his fingers as he pulled his prayer shawl out. He was about to say the blessing and drape it over his shoulders when he noticed that the tzitzit, the tallis’s fringes, were missing. Like they’d been snipped off with a pair of sharp scissors. What could have happened to them?

He entered the sanctuary and took a seat. Beams of light shone through the stained-glass windows behind the bimah. There weren’t many people in the sanctuary yet, but feeling the vibrations of the softly chanted ancient Hebrew liturgy filled Eli’s chest with a sense of belonging and peace.

They were singing, “L’dor v’dor”— from generation to generation. Eli thought about his heritage’s golden chain of transmission. He’d learned about Torah and mitzvot from his parents who’d learned it from their parents and so on and so forth for all the generations going back to Mount Sinai.

He and Tamar had loved celebrating Shabbat with Esther’s family. Ruthie would just beam as Tamar lit the Shabbat candles in their gleaming silver candlesticks every Friday. But his daughter was a thoroughly modern woman with a demanding career. With their busy, hectic lives, would she and Kris, her husband, take the time and effort to pass down Judaism to their children?

Eli’s thoughts were interrupted as the Rabbi came on the bimah. Stroking his beard with a worried look, he said, “I sure hope that another adult shows up! We’re currently at 9!”

Eli looked around and started counting the adults in the sanctuary. There were exactly 10. Confused, he said, “Rabbi, I just arrived. We’ve got a minyan!”

But the Rabbi kept leading the service, without skipping a beat.

Eli fumed on the inside. What am I, chopped liver? Why hadn’t the Rabbi acknowledged him? First, the security guard and now this? For Pete’s sake, there had been an elderly congregant sleeping in his seat last week, snoring loudly. And the Rabbi counted him in the minyan! This treatment made Eli feel diminished as a man.

Eli neatly folded his mangled tallis, put it back in its bag, and got up and left. The sun was a bright burning ball, high in the sky as he walked home. He saw the steep hill leading down to the dark woods behind his house. How many times had Ruthie bombed down that hill, shrieking with laughter, on the balance bike that he’d gotten her? Thinking of his favorite, chubby-cheeked, sweet-smelling girl who was also strong and athletic like her grandpa, her Zayde, lifted Eli’s spirit.

Several years ago, when Esther was pregnant, Kris, had proposed naming their daughter “Eliana” to honor Eli. Esther explained to him that while this was a well-intentioned gesture, Ashkenazi Jews don’t name their children after living people. What if you give a baby the same name as an old person, and the old person gets very sick? Maybe the Angel of Death will get confused and take the healthy baby away instead of the dying elderly relative!

Eli always chuckled at the implication that the Angel of Death must not be the sharpest knife in the drawer!

Eventually, Esther and Kris settled on the name, Ruth, and now no one could imagine their sweet little girl with any other name. Now, they were expecting a second baby this summer. A boy. This impending joyous event, b’sha’ah tovah —in good time— gave Eli something to look forward to during his grief.

Of course, having a boy brought up the whole issue of the bris. Esther and Kris were fine with the circumcision procedure itself. But they were not enthusiastic about “hosting all their friends and family in their house for a ceremony involving minor surgery while being 8 days post-partum.”

Eli felt very strongly about the importance of this mitzvah. Brit milah was the covenant that would place his grandson in the chain of tradition passed down from generation to generation. But he kept his mouth shut and didn’t give his grown daughter unsolicited advice.

Eli was almost back home when he heard a loud rumbling like approaching thunder. Suddenly, a black Mustang roared around the corner. With squealing brakes, it stopped right in front of Eli. The Mustang had a vanity license plate that read “Chad.” A pimply faced, scrawny young man dressed all in black down to a black cowboy hat and cowboy boots stepped out of the car. He carried a massive sword in a scabbard on his hip. “Hello Eli,” he said in a surprisingly high voice. “Your ride is here.”

Now Eli was not one to get into a car with a stranger, and certainly not on Shabbat. But then Chad locked eyes with Eli and said, “you know that you’re not obligated in mitzvot anymore, right?”

The realization hit him like a ton of bricks.

The people at the shul acting like they didn’t even see him.

His tallis was missing tzitzis like someone from the chevra kaddisha, the burial society, had cut them off.

This stranger in black, who had an otherworldly presence about him.

He knew then that he’d left the land of the living.

Eli stared at Chad. “Do I know you? I can’t put my finger on it, but you look familiar to me.”

He suddenly realized where he’d last seen this mysterious man. It was the last day that Tamar resembled anything like a person. He was visiting her at the nursing home. After a while, he excused himself to talk to her nurses. He was returning to her room when he spotted a strange figure out of the corner of his eye— a slim young man dressed all in black, with a cowboy hat pulled down over his eyes. From that day until her body finally gave up, Tamar never walked again. Never spoke. Never smiled. Never laughed.

Eli’s vision filled with white hot rage. He may have been an old man, but he still had tough ropey muscles and knew how to use them. He strode over to Chad, grabbed him by the collar, and lifted him off the ground.

“You’re the sonofabitch that hurt Tamar!” he growled. “How could you have been so cruel to her? How could you have done that to her family? To me?”

Chad was paralyzed with fear and barely got the words out, “It was an accident! Tamar was one of my first assignments, and I was following our standard protocol: Take the soul first, then the body. Her soul was so sweet and tender. I just gave it a gentle tug, and it slipped right into my hands. I had no idea that her body would be so tough. She didn’t even weigh 95 pounds soaking wet! I held my sword over her head and released a drop of poison onto her lips, just like we’re supposed to. Nothing happened. I’ve taken down big strong men with one drop, but that poison didn’t touch her. I tried another drop. Usually 2 will do it, easily. No dice. Then I started to panic. I heard you walking down the hall, and I knew that I had to get out of there. And it’s not like I could put her soul back at that point. So, I took her soul and left her body. I never meant to hurt her or your family. I’m so ashamed.”

Despite hearing Chad’s obvious remorse, Eli was still too angry to speak for several minutes. He couldn’t stand how Tamar had lost her dignity from Chad’s incompetence. And he decided right then that his last good deed in this world would be making sure that no one else suffered like she did.

Eli let go of Chad who promptly fell backwards onto his tush. “I know that you didn’t mean any harm. You just weren’t very good at your job.”

Then he turned towards the Mustang, “Let’s go.”

Chad popped up onto his feet with a sigh of relief. He opened the Mustang’s passenger door. Eli peered into the car’s dark interior. The passenger seat was covered with empty bottles of 5-Hour Energy and Takis bags. “Sorry for the mess!” Chad said as he started throwing all the debris in the back seat.

Eli got into the passenger seat, and they drove off. The car made herky jerky, sputtering movements as Chad awkwardly worked the Mustang’s clutch. At first, they drove by familiar landmarks: the stately brick university where Eli completed his undergrad studies, the modest Hillel House where he married Tamar, the university’s medical center where Esther was born. The marks of suburban life got fewer and fewer as the sun dipped lower and lower in the horizon until they entered the open vistas of the countryside. Finally, Chad pulled the Mustang to the side of a lonely road and stopped the car.

Eli watched Chad get out of the car. He had the sense that Chad had done this drive before. “This is where the road ends,” Chad said. “We’ll need to walk the rest of the way.”

They started trudging down a rocky, dirt path together. The birds had stopping singing, so the air was silent except for the crunching of gravel under their feet. After a while, Eli looked at Chad and said, “That sword that you use to take people away is scaring me. Please let me hold it.”

And Chad replied, “I don’t usually trust humans to hold my sword. But since you’re a righteous man who runs to do mitzvot, I will.”

Chad handed Eli the gleaming, heavy sword which he hefted with ease. After what seemed like an interminable time walking, they came upon a high stone wall.

Eli said, “This must be the Gates of Paradise. Lift me up so I can see it before I go.”

Chad dutifully stuck out his clasped hands, which Eli put his foot on to hoist himself while still grasping the sword onto the top of the high wall. The old man gazed into Paradise, but everything inside the stone walls was shrouded in a thick grey mist.

Chad’s face fell when he realized that Eli had no intention of returning his sword. “Give me my sword back!” he screamed. “I need it to do my job!

Eli held onto the sword tightly as he saw the sun setting. Normally, his wrist would have been throbbing at this point, but all his aches and pains of old age had disappeared. “No, Chad, the sword is mine now,” he said quietly, like a parent talking to a small child throwing a fit. “I’ve seen the harm you did with it. You can’t be trusted to use it wisely.”

Chad stretched his hands up towards Eli and tried to grab him by his ankles. But the wall was too high for him to reach the old man. His voice shifted into whining, “Don’t you understand, Eli? Everyone who is born will one day die. You are already dead; now it’s time for the next chapter!”

Eli said nothing and kept staring into the distance. Time seemed to no longer exist in its normal pace. As the moments passed, they may as well have been days, weeks, or even months.

Then Eli felt his phone buzzing in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw that Tamar had texted him: Hello, my love. I’ve missed you so. I’m at the bris of Kris and Esther’s baby! They’re naming him “Elijah” for you! They’ve even set a chair out for Zayde. Come join us!

Eli felt his whole body light up with the glow of nachas, the love and pride in his daughter and her family, carrying on this mitzvah. This new baby would be part of the golden chain that he and Tamar had helped forge for future generations.

This realization filled him with a sense of peace. He knew that the impact he and his wife made on their daughter and grandchildren would be their legacy, their immortality, despite all the messiness and hurt and pain that life entailed.

With a sigh of resignation, Eli handed the sword back to Chad. “I expect you to be more careful with this from now on, ok?” he sternly intoned.

With trembling hands, Chad carefully sheathed it. Then he pulled his hat down over his eyes and nodded solemnly.

Eli texted Tamar back: I’ll be there soon, darling. I love you.

Then Eli balled up all his courage and leapt into the misty darkness, into whatever was coming next.

 

Author’s note

This story was inspired, in part, by the tale of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi’s encounter with the Angel of Death (Babylonian Talmud, Ketubot 77).

 

A native Texan, Suzanne Kurtzer Minton lives in Durham, North Carolina with her husband, David, son, and daughter. She works in the pharmaceutical industry and enjoys gardening and weight lifting in her free time. This is her first short story.