Less than Human

by Philip Goldberg

 Sandro Gonzalez

Scarlet splotches stained the rabbi’s white shirt, his black pants, his hands. He wore a distant gaze as if seeking the Promised Land of milk and honey. The approaching sirens were mere murmurs in the dense fog that muffled his hearing, his thinking, as he stood on the lawn outside the Emanuel Jewish Center.

The world was spinning one way, he the other. What had happened earlier in the main sanctuary came to him scattershot.

The man entering the sanctuary… sunlight glinting off something in his hands… orange flashes and rapid pops… screams… congregants hiding… dropping to the floor… pools of blood spreading... gun smoke… the constant cry of “You must die.”

Not long after, a single shot rang out, echoing in its finality.

Only then did the rabbi spy his wife and three young daughters slowly rising to their feet from behind a bench.

Standing on the front lawn of the Jewish Center, Rabbi David Roth found his attention returning and focused now on his wife and three young daughters by his side. He gathered them between his arms, their bodies trembling—especially nine-year-old Hannah. He peered over her head at the huddled congregants, their faces etched in shock and suffering, and at the police in SWAT gear bending over the body of the killer near the building’s entrance. He wanted to release his anguish with wails, tears, and curses. Unwilling to do so, he tightened his grip on his family as the heavy muscle of lament pounded in his chest.

The days after the mass shooting were busy and filled with despair for the rabbi. He conducted ten funerals. He stood before a gathering of crumbled faces, read the mourner’s kaddish ten times amid chapels filled with ragged sobs, and talked with awareness and kindness of the deceased: Alan Kleinbaum, Deborah Kravitz, Michael Steiner, Rhonda Goldblum, Robert Friedman, Sandra Katz, Izzy Frank, Susan Schwartz, Fran Goldberg, and Morris Richman. And then he went to the gravesites and ran the services there.

Afterward, he visited the wounded and their families in hospital rooms and at their homes, offering comfort and solace.

Only then did he come home and collapse, as a blanket of exhaustion covered him, in his favorite armchair in the family room. Still, his mind toiled, contemplating what had happened and struggling to understand why hatred kept rising from the grave like some unholy ghost.

How many reasons for it had he heard? Dozens? Hundreds? None satisfied him.

The following morning Barbara, his wife, found him in the kitchen, a cup of coffee before him on a counter. “Hannah won’t go to school.” Her voice, strained.

“Again,” he exhaled the word. In the days since that morning, the girl had shown little appetite, had missed school, and had grown unkempt in her appearance.

With a troubled soul, he trudged to his youngest daughter’s room and found her in bed curled like a tightly wound ball of twine. He sat on the bed’s edge and stroked her greasy hair with a gentle hand. “No school today?” His voice was equal to his touch.

“No.” Her voice, thin.

“That a good idea?”

She looked at him with teary eyes. “What if someone comes to school and starts shooting?”

Speechless, he could only sigh heavily, knowing he could not protect her from that.

“Maybe I won’t be so lucky next time.”

What answer would erase the misery of that morning? So he left her room and found Barbara in the dining room, sitting and nursing a cup of coffee.

“And?” Her voice, edgy.

“We need to take her to someone.”

The gray-haired psychiatrist with wise eyes sat across from David and Barbara. In the doctor’s lap was a pad filled with scribbled notes. Glancing down at them and then at both parents, she said: “What Hannah suffers from is not unusual considering what she experienced that day. What she’s doing isn’t either. She’s protecting herself by going to the safest place possible, and shutting out the world.”

His heart twitched. “Like what soldiers returning from battle sometimes come back with.”

“Among others,” the psychiatrist replied. “PTSD is a common reaction to trauma.”

Barbara leaned forward, her breath heavy. “What can be done?”

“I’d like to continue seeing Hannah. I believe I can help her. Also, I am prescribing Lexapro. It should help subdue anxiety. Help her function better.”

The agony of that morning remained for hours, days, weeks. Normalcy would not enter through the doors of the house of worship, or into his own home in the leafy neighborhood of spruce and oak trees. Still, the leaves bled red, the air turned cold, and the days grew shorter.

Rabbi Roth found little escape from all this darkness in his office, sitting behind his desk and studying the wall of bookcases to his right. He went to the bookshelves, as he had done daily, removing a few volumes. At his desk, he searched again through the books of Solomon, the Book of Esther, and other ancient Hebrew texts but none could wash away the blood of that morning. Rubbing his eyes, weary from reading afterward, he again questioned why God’s Chosen People were chosen by many to be the target of hate and despicable acts. Had evil returned—or had it never left?

Another thought emerged: man was a product of evolution, not created by God; a clannish creature who hated outsiders and wanted to destroy them.

He shuddered at the thought and then pushed it back to the deepest recess of his mind. But one young voice rose suddenly in his head—his own.

“Shut up,” nine-year-old David had barked in the Albany playground.

“Jewboy,” ten-year-old Frank taunted again.

Kids encircled the two boys, and sensing blood, they egged them on.

David said: “Shut your mouth—”

“Make me, Kike.” He pushed David hard.

It wasn’t just Frank, but other kids who’d hurled anti-Semitic insults David’s way, making him feel less than the other kids who weren’t Jewish. He began hating himself for being a Jew.

“Come on, make me, Christ killer.”

But this time something snapped in him; he had taken enough. Possessed by some force beyond his control, the sudden need to fight for his faith ignited in him. He charged at Frank with a flurry of fists flying and feet kicking. One bare-knuckled punch struck Frank squarely on the bridge of his nose. Blood dribbled from his nostrils, and he grew surprised and then angry. Still, he couldn’t stop David’s onslaught. The smaller boy possessed a fierce look.

With a look of defeat in his eyes, the bigger boy backed away into a trot, as the surrounding boys and a few girls began laughing and taunting him.

David stood panting and watched the boy run off. Slowly, a satisfied smile creased his lips.

No satisfied smile appeared on the rabbi’s face now, as he rested his head on his bent arm. He understood his childhood victory had been a minor one. Little had changed.

Months had passed since the incident. To Rabbi Roth, it had felt like only yesterday the man had entered the sanctuary and left carnage behind. Still, he stood before his congregants, politicians and religious leaders of other houses of worship for the first service since that Saturday morning. His words came out as if extracted from his mouth. “We must band together. Be vigilant, not violent… though the temptation may be great.” These words, right as they were, rang hollow to him and felt like the desperate utterances of a despairing man.

After the service, after shaking many hands, the rabbi watched as a congregant approached, a Virologist named Peter Stone. “Rabbi, thank you for your words today.”

“I wish I had more than that. Since that day, I keep questioning why this evil keeps returning, descending on us like a plague.” His fingers toyed with the tzitzit on his tallit. “I considered speaking about that, but it was too raw still.”

Peter Stone nodded in acknowledgment. His eyes thoughtful. “Ebola, you’re familiar with it?”

“Of course.”

“Insidious, much like hate… hiding in the darkness until something or someone awakens it. Sadly… many die until it recedes into the darkness once more.”

The rabbi’s fingers worried his graying beard; his spirits weighed down by Stone’s words.

Still, he found the strength to thank the man for his insight.

The rabbi sat behind his desk in his study when Barbara entered. Her thin face appeared thinner, gaunt. He hadn’t gone unscathed either. Every morning, the bathroom mirror told him so: creases deepened on his brow, the skin under his troubled eyes had turned sallow.

With fatigue in his voice, he asked: “Hannah asleep?”

“For now.”

“May she have a peaceful night.”

“God willing.” She sat across from her husband in the chair where congregants sought guidance or solace from him. She exhaled slowly through her nose. “You understand, it wasn’t your fault.”

“It was my congregation.” He sounded plaintive.

“You couldn’t stop it.”

“I wasn’t able to prevent it either.”

She fiddled with the chain of her necklace, the Star of David, modeled after Marc Chagall’s famous depiction of it in ‘Exodus—Star of David.’ “No, you couldn’t. Who could?”

“God.”

The chain slipped from her fingers. “You still believe—don’t you?”

He grew lost in reflection.

She looked at his blank eyes and asked: “Well, do you?”

He blinked, regained his focus, and then said, his words measured: “Right now I have doubts… questions. Is He testing us? Like He tested the slaves of Egypt, the Sephardic Jews during the Spanish Inquisition… those who survived the Holocaust…” A deeply held pain registered in his eyes.

She squirmed in her chair. “Will we pass His test this time?”

“Only He knows.” The Rabbi placed his hands on the desk. “Barb, I keep asking myself, ‘why?’ I need to do something.”

“Do what?” She gently placed a hand on his.

“I’ve been thinking of visiting schools, talking to the kids.”

“Will that help?”

“Not sure, but I must try. I have to.”

Rabbi Roth stood on the stage before the assembled eighth-graders in the middle school auditorium. The assembly of faces, white, black, and brown, spread across his horizon. Some gazed intently at him; others appeared lost in their worlds.

“Good morning,” he said, his mouth and lips dry, a sensation he had never experienced during a sermon.

A mumbled greeting came back.

“You know who I am. You know what I witnessed. But here’s something you didn’t know. My great-grandmother Rosa survived the Holocaust.” He studied his audience. “Some of you may know what that was. Some of you may not. It was the German government’s extermination of the Jewish people and others. Now those of you who’ve heard of the Holocaust, raise your hands if you believe it happened.”

A bevy of hands shot up.

“Any question it?”

Some hands rose.

Too many, he thought, while studying faces in the auditorium’s last row. Fearing the assassin would appear behind it, he felt tightness in his chest. Was this what Hannah felt? Was it why she kept to her safe space? He inhaled as if consuming all the available air, and then exhaled as if he never wanted the breath to end. The tightness subsided. Only then did he continue: “Auschwitz mean anything to you?” Would the infamous name carry the weight of the freight trains that brought the packed masses to their deaths at that notorious concentration camp?

Some heads nodded. Still, the rabbi witnessed blank stares. “It was a Nazi Death Camp—the best, most efficient in the whole human extermination machine.” Would that shock them? “People… children your age and even younger went in expecting to take a shower, to scrub the dirt off their skin, only to be gassed to death.” Would that wake them? “Can you believe human beings did that to other human beings?” He let the last words descend on the room like a mist. “Their deaths were the result of the insanity that had gripped the world decades ago, where people were… deemed less than human by others.” He remembered his own boyhood anger at being a Jew and being judged harshly for it, and a sour taste filled his mouth. Still, he went on: “Know what? It still goes on today. The killing of my congregants was no different than the gassing of my great-grandmother’s family members.”

The rabbi took one last look at the room and saw uneasy faces locked in. Some appeared angry. Good, he thought—they should be. But others were looking down at their laps, messaging on their Smartphones, no doubt. Despondent, he summoned the same feeling he had mustered in that playground years ago and decided not to give up.

It had been that fight with Frank that helped him reclaim his faith. With the renewal, he returned to the temple, beginning a journey that shepherded him to becoming a rabbi. In his first synagogue in Schenectady, he discovered the music of the prayer, the magic of the sermon, and the pride of the community. The sanctuary became his safe space. And stayed so until what had happened that early September morning.

With this inner strength, the rabbi visited other schools, meeting halls. He experienced similar results at each talk. Despite shootings at schools, churches, clinics, malls, mosques, pipe bombs in the mail, and what had happened at his synagogue, he found too many people stuck in their worlds with little concern for the problems of others.

David awoke on the night of the last talk he gave—and would give. It had been a fitful sleep, filled with tossing and turning. He stared at the ceiling aware of his heart racing. Rising from bed, he padded on bare feet into the hallway, stopping at the cracked open door of Allison, the oldest daughter at fourteen. She slept as if nothing could disrupt her slumber. Strong-willed and tough, she would be most able of his daughters to deal with things, even something as terrible as what had occurred that morning. In many ways, she was much like her mother.

David left his sleeping oldest child and peeked in on Rebecca, the middle girl at eleven, who spread herself across the mattress with her legs occasionally jerking. The hardest to read of the three girls, she appeared to be coping with the events of that morning. He prayed this was the case.

Finally, he stopped outside Hannah’s room.

She lay in a rigid fetal position. Sensitive and emotional, the girl was the easiest to understand, but the hardest to help. Her breathing sounded steady for now, though it could turn rapid and short at any moment, her harrowing shrieks shattering the fragile peace.

He stood there as if his feet were rooted to the rug, understanding that weekly psychology sessions and medication helped only so much. His eyes welled up, and he pondered how she’d had her innocence ripped away, how all three girls had. Then he recalled Shylock’s words from The Merchant of Venice: “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” Unable to hold back the tears, he soon tasted their bitter salt and thought: Time may heal wounds, but scars form and remain.

The idea of buying a gun struck him. Not the first time he had considered it. He imagined the gun’s weight in his hand, felt its hardness, coldness, and wondered if the assailant had experienced any of that while mowing down the innocent. This chilled him and helped him come to the decision that he wouldn’t purchase any firearm—not now, at least. He exhaled his grief and turned away from the door. His steps were heavy, as he headed back to bed when a decision came to mind: there must be another way to make something positive out of what had happened.

The meeting had been the rabbi’s idea, having come to him while ruminating over a sermon for Sabbath service. He had brought the plan to his Congressman, who’d agreed with what he’d suggested and reached out to the woman.

Maybe he never expected the meeting to happen, never believed the woman would want to see him. After all, she must have her resentments.

So when word came that the woman would meet him, the rabbi grew uncertain about going through with it.

Two mornings after the woman’s agreement came, Barbara found David sitting at the kitchen table, clasping a cup of coffee between his palms. She joined him, holding her mug, a swirl of steam drifting away from its top.

He forced a smile.

She wasted no time. “You need to do this.” Her voice equaled her steadfast demeanor.

He knew it would be hard to debate her, so he stared into the cup as if the answer to go or not was there.

“You know I’m right. You need to go—to see her.” She stared at him, measuring his silence with her green eyes. “Say something… please.”

Once more he moved the cup back and forth. “What will seeing her accomplish?”

“Hopefully, healing for one… you, me, our daughters… especially Hannah… the congregation, the community… maybe even this woman.”

“Why should I care about her?” His voice, sharp, dismissive, but he knew that wouldn’t stop her.

“When you first thought of doing this, you must have cared.”

“Well… now, I’m not so sure. Maybe I set it up out of frustration… of having no better solution—”

“I’m not buying that. You set it up because it’s what you wanted to do… Don’t you see? You have it in you to forgive.”

“After everything, I don’t know.”

She leaned in closer. “I believe in my heart you do.”

“But—”

“But what? You think she’s less of a person than you.”

Her last sentence shook him. He gave a thought-heavy nod. Moments later, he expelled a tortured breath, one he’d been holding in too long.

The small house that David stood before most likely had been a quaint place once. Now it badly needed repair, as if the weight of what had happened had sagged the roof, had torn off some façade shingles and had cracked a few windowpanes.

The woman who opened the front door looked as if she was weighed down, too. Her face appeared swollen; two purple-black sacks of flesh pooled under her eyes, which lacked even a trace of brightness.

Hunched slightly forward, she led him into a small living room, space squeezed tighter by the furniture and cartons stacked four and five high. Cigarette smoke hovered from the smoldering butt in an ashtray on the narrow coffee table in the middle of the room. “Please sit,” she said, her voice raspy, weary.

The rabbi sat on the sofa. He touched the frayed fabric of its arm. Across from him, she plopped down in the oversized armchair, appearing tiny in it. He noticed the jerky movements of her hands, and the chipped red nail polish.

“Can I get ya something? Coffee?”

Nothing here would be Kosher, so he politely declined. Silent moments passed between them—tense and awkward. A clock ticked from somewhere in the house, loud and persistent. The rabbi’s silence couldn’t continue. “Thank you for seeing me.” It was the best he could muster.

His words stirred her. She tilted her head toward him. “I needed to see you.” A sputtering, wet-sounding breath followed.

“Well, we’re here… together.”

“Yes, we are.” She placed two fingers before her lips as if miming smoking a cigarette but quickly stopped. “Ya know, he was… er… troubled… always.”

The rabbi could not think of how to respond.

“I did try… especially after my husband left. Oh, I tried. But the boy was hard as concrete.” Unbridled suffering poured into her glassy eyes. “Never expected him to…” She rubbed her raw reddened hands. “Do ya have children?”

“Three daughters.”

“Ya do the best you can… right?”

“You do.”

“I tried. Believe me, I tried. But… the boy… he got lost on that internet. Got some crazy ideas. Started saying stupid things. Just thought he was piping off as my ex had. Never thought in a million years…”

Ignorance is bliss, he thought.

She knitted her eyebrows tightly. “Should’ve taken him to see somebody. Should’ve. I’m so sorry for… That’s why I wanted to see ya. Tell you that I’m sorry for ya pain… for everything. So… so… sorry…” These last words choked in her throat. Raw sobs followed. She shoved her balled fist in her mouth, trying to silence the weeping, to end it.

But he knew tears were hard to stop, just like bleeding. He thought of Hannah, of the dead lying on the floor and slumped in their seats in the synagogue. Only then did he realize he was holding his breath and released it. The feeling returned, which had guided him in the playground, followed back to his faith, and in some way had led him to this moment, sitting across from the collapsed woman and her tears. So he let it take him once more and stepped to her, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“Please forgive me.”

Sadness poured through him. But he knew true forgiveness was solely for Him to judge. Still, he said: “I’ll pray for you.”

Behind the steering wheel, Rabbi Roth glanced at the worn-down house in the waning, slanting light of the winter’s afternoon. He tapped the wheel rhythmically, listening to the sad drumbeat he was creating, feeling sympathy for the woman, but not for the son—never for the son. Still, having seen her had awakened things, which had died in him that Saturday morning: the music of the prayer, the magic of the sermon, and the joy of community.

He took one last glance at the house and drove away, his eyes focused ahead on the single lane country road. The wind, which had picked up, rattled the car’s windows. On his way home, an idea came to him, one he would never have thought up had he not come here today. He’d return to that house but not alone. His family would join him, especially Hannah. He prayed it might help her heal more by seeing that good still existed among people. This notion cheered him, as well as bringing congregants, tools, and building materials.

The rabbi knew it wasn’t going to change the world. But in his heart, he understood that it was the just thing to do, fixing up that crumbling place in memory of those who had died for being seen as less than human.

---

Philip Goldberg’s short stories have appeared in both literary and small press publications including Junto, Thrice Fiction, Straylight Literary Arts Magazine, Borrowed Solace, The Chaffin Journal, and Twisted Vine Literary Art Journal. Three of his stories have been published in best-of collections and one was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is currently finishing a novel.