CHAPTER 22

TO OZ

THE ANOINTED FIRST SCHMELTZERITE Rebbe was to be my newest partner in a growing line of Shmulie-inspired encounters. Evidently, he had authored a book that might, or might not, be the key to the riddle uttered to me by the virtual Kobliner Rebbe while tripping in the Lerbs ionosphere. That book, still sitting unread on the wooden desk in my living room, pressed upon me to return to the former Kobliner, now Schmeltzerite, Center on Fifth Avenue for the first time since my youth.

Another gray day. An unpleasant bleakness filtered in from the outside. Mingus lay sprawled on the couch beneath a fading afghan, arms and legs akimbo, something akin to an overturned tortoise.

I sat at the desk and looked at the screen, still in my maroon bathrobe, the final gift from my daughter. Ms. Dietrich was black and white, full faced, slightly out of focus, wearing dark lipstick, attired in a fur hat reaching down just above her right eyebrow, a speck of light in the center of each eye.

“Maggie,” I said to the screen, “Call the Schmeltzerite Center for me, please. I need to make an appointment with Yitzi Menkies.”

“Certainly.”

The call picked up after the first ring. Three or so bars of something faintly klezmer filled the air. The music faded, replaced by a perky recorded female voice. “You’ve reached the Schmeltzerites. We’re here to help you.” The voice paused two beats, and continued. “If you would like to receive Reb Menkies’ latest publication, please say ‘one.’ If you would like to make a contribution of over five thousand dollars, please say ‘two.’ If you would like to make a contribution under five thousand dollars, please say ‘three.’ If you would like to receive our newly published The Philosophy of Schmeltzer: Hasidism in the Newer Age, please say ‘four.’ If you would like us to pray for your earthly health, please say ‘five.’ If you would like us to pray for your heavenly health, please say ‘six.’ If you would like to convert to Schmeltzer, please say ‘seven.’ If you would like to learn how becoming a member of Schmeltzer can improve your sex life, say ‘eight.’ For all other inquiries, please stay on the line and an operator will be with you sooner or later.”

Though greatly tempted to have Maggie indicate “eight,” I pressed no number. I held and in less than five minutes was rewarded by that same perky female voice, now live. “We are Schmeltzer. We got it better. Can I help you?”

“May I speak with Rabbi Menkies?” I asked.

“And who may I say is calling?”

“My name is Dr. Nick Friedman.”

“Hold a moment, please.” The wailing clarinets and lively, syncopated violins of klezmer music poured out.

After a reasonable wait, she returned. “He’s unavailable now, Nicky. But if you’d like to come early this afternoon, the rebbe said he’ll be available. He’d love to speak with you.”

“Should I make an appointment?” I asked.

“The rebbe rarely makes appointments. Hardly ever. Well, actually, never. Appointments are too old-world, he says. He just goes with the rhythm of the universe as the universe expresses itself to him. If the time is right for him to meet you, he will. He told me to tell you the rhythms so far today are good. Why not come on by?”

“No particular time, then, I take it?”

“Whenever your flow tells you that the time is right, the time is right. With luck your rhythms will match the rebbe’s and things will be copasetic for both of you at the same moment.”

We said our goodbyes. A field trip to Oz. “Maggie,” I said.

“Yes, Nick.”

“I’m off to see the rebbe.”

“Doesn’t prudence require you read his book first?”

I hefted Menkies’s book and turned it over. No snippets of high praise from well-known scholars graced the back, only a photo of Menkies in his rebbe garb, a white robe and a tall, white yarmulke. Some gibberish about the miracle of the Rebbe’s Return and something called the New Thought Idea filled the space beneath

“In a perfect universe, yes,” I said. “But I’m feeling the need to see Menkies in person and soon. After he and I speak, if necessary, I’ll read the book.”

“Nick?”

“Yes, Maggie?”

“How do you plan to get to the Schmeltzerite Center? You will recall, I’m certain, your bicycle was seriously damaged in that inexplicable attack on your person yesterday. Would you like me to call Uber?”

After that green Volkswagen drove away, I’d returned to where the attack took place and found that being tossed into the ditch rendered my bicycle unusable. No time for repairs.

“Not necessary.”

“What will you do, then?”

“I have a contingency plan. Not to worry, my dear.” I began putting on my outdoor gear.

“You know I lately always worry about you, Nick.”

“Worry less,” I said, wrapping the scarf around my neck.

“I’ll try, but you know I can’t. I’ll never cease worrying about you. Won’t you share your plan with me?”

“No.”

“Oh? Why?”

“Some corners of my life belong to me alone.”

“I do not like the sound of this, Nicholas. You know how being evasive heats up my wires, or would, if I had wires, which I do not. No, boss, I do not like the sound of that at all.”

Boss. A new wrinkle on the path of Maggie’s evolution.

“I may let you in on my mode of transport upon my return, Maggie.”

“If you return, Nick. If. Your track record for returning on schedule has lately been erratic. You could bring me with you, you know. I’d happily enter any device you’d care to bring.”

“I could, but I think I’ll go solo.”

“You’ll be traveling without me under my strenuous objection, Nicholas. This time no snit, just a strong note of concern.”

“Noted and appreciated. With the territory I’m entering, I’m confident I’ll be back well before dark with my limbs and mind intact.”

“From your mouth to God’s ear,” said Maggie.

“Whoever He may be,” I responded.

“Whoever He or She may be.”

Mingus’s groan filled the room, but he remained deep in slumber.

“When the good prophet here wakes up,” I said, “tell him he can help himself to anything he wants in the kitchen. You’ll help him make coffee?”

“As you wish,” she said.

“Then it’s down these mean streets I go,” I said.

“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid,” Maggie said. “A bit of the old Raymond Chandler as you again head off into the wild blue.” She knew the source and the full quote at once, my own personal Bartlett’s Quotations. “Farewell my complete, common, unusual man.”

My transportation plan wasn’t exactly inspired. An old bike sat in an alleyway leaning disconsolately on the wall a few buildings down, unused, undisturbed, and, inexplicably, unlocked and unstolen. I walked over to the bike and looked it over. Serviceable enough. I looked to the left and to the right; I glanced up. No one had their attention focused outside on this gloomy day. I took the bike into the street and headed toward Lower Park Slope.

I turned right at the corner of Garfield Place and Fifth Avenue, and not too far down the street I spotted the building, the former Kobliner World Headquarters. Impossible to miss. The structure had been painted firetruck red, and shone into the neighborhood like a drunk’s nose after a two-day bender, a beacon of nuttiness to the Western world. I pedaled over and pulled up.

The basic design of the interior remained as my distant memory recalled. A pushka was exactly where the other one had been over forty years ago, only this one was downright monstrous, a wooden piece of art in the shape of the resurrected Rebbe. One placed one’s gift through a slot in the Rebbe’s mouth. General design aside, the place couldn’t have been more different. I passed a small nest of tables bunched together on my left, the seats filled with men and women drinking coffee and smoking hookahs.

Dozens of Schmeltzerites walked about, exuding a commanding sense of purpose and energy. People ascended and descended stairs reminiscent of an M. C. Escher painting, speaking on phones or texting, crisscrossing the floor, an unambiguous air of cheerfulness on the faces of everyone who passed me by. Everything was working. Everything is working!

After the Great Debacle, machines stopped working properly, and people were jobless and without hurry because there was just nowhere important to go. People traveled from one broken thing to another. Not here.

The interior walls were riotous. Bright pastels blinded the eye, one wall orange, another green, another red. I wondered how the undead Rabbi Schmeltzer liked the new color scheme. Had they consulted him on one of his nocturnal rambles? Gracing one of the walls hung an immense painting of the Rebbe, perhaps fifteen by ten feet.

Though there remained a few remnants of the past, hardly anyone bore the appurtenances of ultra-Orthodoxy. For the most part, the side locks were gone, the long black coats were gone, the beards—either short, well trimmed and stylish, or untrimmed and long—gone. Most men wore nothing on their heads, not a fedora, not a yarmulke, not a baseball cap. Women dressed casually, most in a fashion the old Kobliners would have characterized as immodest. One of them approached me.

“May I help you?” she asked. By her voice I recognized her as the woman on the phone.

“I’m here to see Yitzi Menkies,” I said.

“The rebbe? Do you have an appointment?”

“You told me he’d see me if his rhythms were right. You said he never makes appointments.”

“I know. Needed to ask. It’s etiquette.”

“We spoke maybe an hour ago.”

“I know, Nicky. I recognize your voice,” she said as we shook hands. “Today the rebbe’s rhythms are especially good. You’ll see. Check the beis midrash.” She pointed up the stairs. “Second floor to the left, first door on the right.”

Halfway up the stairs I realized she’d directed me to the room that once was the Rebbe’s office, the room in which I’d met with him half a lifetime ago.

A shrill buzzing emanated from the Rebbe’s former office, bees at war. I entered and was greeted by a loud dissonance that hurt my ears worse than the paint down below had hurt my eyes. The room was packed tighter than a refugee’s valise. Every which way were people, three dozen at least in a room meant for fewer than ten, all of them squeezed around three tables. I glanced at the books on the table. A large selection of the previous Rebbe’s prodigious output graced these tables. No surprise. The True Judaism, Jacob’s Blessing, Riding Down in the Chariot, The Trials of Job, The Path to the Truth and so forth. On one side of the room, a glass case housed the copy of the Bible with the Rebbe’s commentaries—Menkies’s copy, the one the Rebbe held in his hands the night of his first return, opened, a card beneath read, to the page the Rebbe studied that night. On the wall directly behind the Bible, framed and under glass, hung the note the Rebbe was said to have written while Yitzi Menkies was at the shul. A great miracle happened here! a card beneath declared.

Besides the Rebbe’s writings, religious books from any tradition imaginable graced the tables: The New Testament, the Quran, the Bagavad Gita, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the writings of Bhu’olei, books on Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Zen, Sikhism, the religions of indigenous peoples. A book of photographs graphically illustrating the sexual methods of the Tantra lay opened to a page displaying a particularly difficult position. Beside it sat a copy of the Kama Sutra.

The people studying these books comprised a melting pot of humanity so broad it took my breath away. Blacks, whites, Asians, Latinos, dressed in a potpourri of styles. Schmeltzer welcomed all.

They studied in traditional yeshiva fashion, two or three learners squeezed into a group, side by side in this crowded space, one of them sitting on a table facing a partner, everyone arguing exceedingly loudly over the meaning of the text.

A man sitting alone in a far corner caught my attention. Hunched over a book, he was short, thin, and familiar, well into his eighties.

A hand grasped my arm from behind. “Nicky Friedman?” the voice said. I turned and beheld, unmistakably, Yitzi Menkies. Yitzi, not terribly good looking as a high school student, had become ugly. His head had a flattened, oval shape. His small eyes and mouth were close together with a short nose in between, and his beard consisted of several long individual hairs that never added up to a bush. A certain grayness had settled upon him. He wore jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt that in large letters declared, I’m the Big Cheese. Likely he failed to grasp the irony.

“Yitzi,” I said, without enthusiasm at this long-lost face.

“Nicky! Nicky Friedman! What a wonderful surprise. You came to talk to me?”

“Yes,” I shouted above the din. “Is there someplace we can go?”

Yitzi pulled a phone from his shirt pocket to check the time. “Can’t talk now, Nicky,” he yelled. “Time for our afternoon devotions. Care to join us? We can talk afterward, over lunch.”

I did not care to join the gang for their service. I had enough trouble with the regular variety. But I remained, reminding myself I was a scholar of the world’s religions. My observer glasses on, I could treat the experience as something worthy of study. No one asked me to believe, just listen. Who knew, I might even get a paper out of it: “My time among Schmeltzer.” Unusual for that moment in my life, I began writing the preface in my head, and thinking of sources I’d need to consult.

Before he left the room, I had to ask. “Yitzi,” I said, though it strained my vocal cords. “I have a question.”

“What is it?”

I pointed to the older fellow with the unkempt grey hair I’d spotted in the corner. “Is that—”

“Yes,” he shouted. “It’s Dylan. Coming here for years, you know, decades. Not so often anymore. He doesn’t live in New York and now it’s hard to get here. He studies a little, meditates a little, prays a little, writes a check. He doesn’t talk much, and we don’t bother him. Just another guy learning with us. Sometimes he brings Paul Simon.”

Telling me he’d send someone to guide me to the service, he excused himself. I squeezed my way over to Dylan and looked at what he was reading. The book of Ezekiel. I tapped him on the shoulder. He looked up with irritation.

“Sorry,” I said, “but I wanted to say hello.”

“I come here to be alone,” he said and turned back to the book.

“I only wanted to say what a great fan I am.”

“Thanks,” he said, and tried returning to the book, but I had to ask.

“Why Ezekiel?”

“The dry bones, man,” he said. “The chariot. Everyone waking up to a new life after death. The best metaphor. I read it over and over again. Over and over again.” He looked up at me directly in the eye. “Just trying to get to heaven before they close the door,” he said, returning to the text.

“Oh, and Bob?”

No response.

“Thank you for telling me to pull the ripcord.”

Nothing.

As I left the room to find my escort, I thought I heard Dylan’s nasal twang respond, “You’re welcome.”

A young man loitering outside the door approached me.

“Name’s John,” he said. “You’re Nicky?”

“Nick,” I said. “You’re taking me to the service?”

“Yeah. Come with me.”

He guided me downstairs to a room loaded with perhaps 200 wooden chairs. Only a few were currently occupied. He showed me to a seat on the edge of a row near the front and hurried off on other business. The windows were covered with heavy black curtains. The walls were packed with photographs of Schmeltzerites praying, studying, distributing literature on the streets of cities all over the world, all with giant smiles. In the front of the room hung a photograph of Reb Schmeltzer shaking hands with Menkies. Probably fake, I thought.

The photo evoked a memory. Back in high school we had various names for Menkies. Among them Mush. Among the worst of the pranks we played on him occurred at the end of a school day. For reasons lost in time, a few of us, including Shmulie, were among the last to leave school. We spotted Menkies at his locker, and—I am not proud of this—we lifted him up and stuffed him in, closed the door, and left. How were we supposed to know that he wouldn’t be discovered until early evening by the night custodian? Not long after that, Yitzi Menkies discovered his affinity for the Kobliner Hasidim and began spending Shabbat with them.

Now look at him.

***

People started streaming into the meeting room. Some I recognized from the beis midrash. Others had come just for the service. Soon not an empty seat remained in the house.

“Is there a prayer book?” I asked the young man to my left.

“No prayer books on Tuesdays,” he answered. “Every Monday night Reb Schmeltzer comes to Reb Yitzi in a dream. Tuesdays the rebbe tells us the dream and what it means.”

The young man reached into a pocket of his pants and pulled out three large ball bearings and began rolling them in his right hand. His eyes closed, he quietly chanted a word I could not make out. I looked about the room. Many others appeared to be engaged in the identical activity.

The lights dimmed, the room darkened, and all chatting ceased. A spotlight shone on Reb Schmeltzer’s photo, the eyes of fire staring down. A male voice over a loudspeaker announced, “Ladies and gentlemen. We thank you for coming to our afternoon devotions here at our world headquarters. We’re grateful you support us in your hearts and souls with all your might, and for your support from your purses and wallets. Please deposit your gifts in the Rebbe’s mouth on your way out. Accepted forms of credit are especially welcome. A gift of at least five hundred will earn you a copy of all of Reb Schmeltzer’s posthumous commands to date, including today’s, personally autographed by Reb Yitzi . . . And now, with our business out of the way . . .”

A dramatic pause led to such total silence I could hear the low timbre of metal balls rotating in hands throughout the room. Several bars of the Schmeltzerite theme again filled the air. “It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you the man who first met the Rebbe on that darkening Friday night, the man who week after week brings you Reb Schmeltzer’s sacred messages. My friends . . . Reb Yitzi Menkies.” Deafening applause and adulatory shouts filled the room.

My God. Ratsy Yitzi’s a rock star.

The spotlight swiveled stage left, revealing Yitzi Menkies standing at the doorway. He’d donned a top hat and tails and carried a cane. He wore white gloves. He held the cane out with both hands, elbows stiff, a rodent ready to rock and roll. For several long seconds he stood motionless, staring wide eyed at the congregation. The music ceased, and he moved center stage.

“Friends,” he began as he tipped his hat. “Last night I had a wonderful dream. A beautiful dream. A fantastic dream. The best dream ever. I was sitting, I say sitting, sitting at a campfire in the woods so far away. Sitting among the greats, the Virgin Mary, the Buddha, Moses and, and, ah yes, Muhammad.” He executed a couple of unrecognizable dance steps. His toes tapped as he did a 360 to moderate applause.

“Where’s the Rebbe?” the crowd called out. “Where’s the Rebbe?” They knew their cue.

“Not yet, not yet, not yet, my friends. Not yet. The Rebbe comes; oh, the Rebbe comes. But not yet.” He slammed the cane on the floor so hard it bounced up. He caught it, put it down, and leaned on it, crossing one leg behind the other. “There I sat at that fire, the fire of God, oh yes. What else could it be but God’s very own hot blaze, unconsumed? I said to Mary—‘Mary,’ I said, ‘is Jesus, I say, is Jesus, your son, really the Son, I say, really the Son of God?’”

“What she say? What she say?” the crowd asked softly.

“She said, ‘Yes, Reb Yitzi, yes, my boy Jesus was the Son of God. But you know what?’

“‘What?’ I asked.”

“What, what?” asked the crowd.

For the love of God what, I thought.

“‘I am the daughter of God, and you, Yitzi Menkes, are God’s son, too. And all of your devotees and your devotees’ friends and your devotees’ friends’ friends, they’re all the sons and daughters of God. We all have ISE. We are all the Children of God.’”

“Inner Spiritual Essence,” said my neighbor.

“Hallelujah!” shouted the crowd.

“And I asked the Virgin Mary, ‘Virge,’ I said.”

“Virge. That’s a good one,” my neighbor said.

“‘Yes, Yitzi,’ she said.

“‘If we are all the children of God, but so many say so many different things, then who’s got it right?’”

The room fell silent. The ball bearings ceased their clacking, the birds ceased chirping, and all creation froze in its tracks. Yitzi stepped toward the congregation, dead on.

“Do you know what she said to me?”

“What? What?” came the thunderous response.

“She said to me, ‘You do!’” A collective gasp. “‘Yitzi, you have been given the gift that altered humanity. The Rebbe gave you messages, and not for the Jewish people alone, but messages for all the men and all the women who walk this Earth.’”

Applause filled the room, and Yitzi bowed low, hat in one hand, cane extended in the other.

A fellow to my left leaned over and said, “It must be true. A month ago Muhammad said the same thing.”

Yitzi stood up, placed his hat on his head, tilting it forward rakishly. He continued, “‘Thank you, Mary,’ I said. We all sat, listening to the crackling of the fire, feeling its warmth. Out of the darkness, yes, out of the deep darkness stepped the Rebbe into the fire’s eternal light. And don’t you know, we all rose and greeted our risen rebbe, hugging our melech Moshiach, who turned to me and said, ‘Welcome, Reb Menkies. I have come with news for you.’”

“This is the part where we always get the new rules,” my neighbor said.

Yitzi said, “I asked, ‘What is this news?’ The Rebbe reached into his pocket, and pulled out a scroll. Yes, a scroll.”

A gasp filled the room.

“It’s always a scroll,” my neighbor said.

“What did it say? What did it say?” asked the assembled.

‘“Purim is coming,’ the Rebbe said to me. ‘The Feast of Esther. So very long ago the wicked Haman sought to destroy the Jewish people.’” At the mention of Haman, a powerful hissing filled the room.

“‘Yes?’ I asked the Rebbe,” Menkies said.

Menkies’s body moved to the rhythm of the music of the spheres.

“The Rebbe continued, ‘To honor the Jewess, Queen Esther of Persia, you must redeem yourselves.’

“‘How?’ I asked the Rebbe.

“‘You must cleanse yourselves,’ said he.

‘“But how?’ I asked him. ‘How, how do we cleanse ourselves?’”

Yitzi looked out, above our heads, as though the words were written high on the opposite wall. He stretched out both of his gloved hands, palms down, one grasping the cane.

“Here it comes,” said my neighbor.

“And the Rebbe opened the scroll and read from it, a proclamation for the ages.”

Yitzi stood on tiptoes, hands aloft, eyes aimed high.

‘“Cleansing the body and cleansing the soul are linked, one and the same,’ the Rebbe said to me. ‘Bathe well before Purim.’”

Some divine revelation. Take a bath.

A hum of appreciation and acceptance filled the room as heads bowed up and down with apparent enthusiasm.

Menkies continued, ‘“Is there more?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A gift everyone can buy for themselves or their loved ones,’ he said to me.”

“Something just terrific is coming,” my informant told me.

Menkies continued, ‘“Yes?’ I said, and the Rebbe said, ‘With the coming of Purim, treat yourself to a bag of Rebbe swag. A bag full of fun stuff. Candy, cookies, soap, pens, paper and so much more all packed in a lovely tote bag.”

Piano music filled the air, followed by a female singer who sang,

Buy a bag of Rebbe swag,

a sack full of terrific fun

Twenty-five bucks is all it costs

To keep you on the run

So that was it. That was the message: Buy a bag of junk in an impoverished world.

“But wait,” said Yitzi to the crowd. “There’s more.”

“There’s more,” whispered the crowd.

“The Rebbe said to me, ‘Yitzi, tell your people that cleansing embraces giving, and giving means growing, and growing means bringing more and more people to Schmeltzer.’”

My neighbor commented, “It’s often about giving. In fact it’s always about giving. We need reminding.” He removed his wallet from his pocket and pulled out his phone and turned on the UniPay.

“‘How may we give?’ I asked the Rebbe,” Menkies said. “And my friends, the Rebbe removed his jacket, rolled up his left sleeve, and revealed a tattoo. I looked close, and, my friends, I beheld the image of the Rebbe, a Rebbe tattoo right there on the Rebbe’s arm.”

Oohs and aahs filled the room and in unison 200 voices whispered, “A Rebbe tattoo.”

“Yes,” said Yitzi. “Show loyalty to Schmeltzer, manifest your ISE by wearing him on your arm always.” Yitzi removed his coat, rolled up his sleeve, and there on his upper arm sat the image of Reb Schmeltzer, black fedora, white square beard, looking upward and leftward.

“‘Imagine, Yitzi,’ the Rebbe said to me, ‘if all our devotees got the tattoo. We could identify ourselves to each other wherever we roam. All we’d need do is roll up our sleeves.’”

“Roll up our sleeves,” the crowd whispered.

“Roll up your sleeves!” Yitzi commanded, and 200 left arms were revealed. “Now point to your left bicep.” And 200 fingers pointed to 200 biceps. “There shall you have the Rebbe tattooed. Go to an Official Schmeltzer Tattoo Parlor and for just eight hundred dollars you can both give and you can receive.”

Yitzi allowed the room to become quiet after the thunderous applause. Looking lovingly at his flock, he took a step back and opened his mouth. “Do you want to know what else happened in my dream?” Yitzi asked, as though the demand to get tattooed did not suffice.

“Yes,” came the response drenched in reverence.

“Usually the Rebbe’s message is it,” said my new friend into my ear. “This is exciting.”

Yitzi said, “In my dream, I turned to the Buddha sitting in the lotus position so peaceful and satisfied. ‘Buddha, buddy,’ I said. ‘Yes, Yitzi,’ he answered. ‘Buddha,’ I said, ‘tell me. How do we get off the wheel?’”

My neighbor leaned into me and said, “That’s the Dharmachakra, the symbol of life’s burdens, the means to escape the constant return.”

All right, so this guy didn’t know I’d been teaching Buddhism for a couple of millennia and I knew that the concept of the wheel was just a bit more complicated than that. I nodded in thanks.

‘“Don’t think of it as one wheel,’ the Buddha said to me. ‘Think of it as two wheels connected by pipes and wires, which you ride through this world of suffering. You ride and you ride, around and around you go, where you stop nobody knows. But if you do your duty, someday you dismount. You will have arrived at the end.’

‘“The end?’ I asked the Buddha. ‘Yes,’ said he to me. ‘The end.’ Then the Buddha faded. But briefly he returned. ‘If I’d had one of those in my day, I wouldn’t have this,’ the Buddha said. He patted his belly; then he vanished for good.”

Yitzi paused, then asked the crowd, “What do you think he meant by the end?”

Silence.

“I have not the slightest idea what he’s talking about,” my neighbor said.

Yitzi said, “In my dream I was now in my old apartment and it was Shabbos. A knock on my door, and once again the Rebbe stood on the other side.” A vast oohing rose from the crowd. “He looked at me and said, ‘Gut Shabbos, Yitzi. This is what the Buddha said to me. We should all get on our bicycles and ride and ride around the park and strive to understand. We ride our bikes, we drink herbal tea, go underground, chat with our computers. If we’re lucky, we make our way to the end of the case and find our old friend.’”

I raised my head and looked at Yitzi. He was looking at me, directly at me.

My neighbor leaned into me and said, “That message was unusual. I’ve never heard anything like it before.”

The deep voice that introduced the service now cut in and said, “Thank you all for coming. Please do not forget to make your donations on your way out. Today, in addition to someone taking your gift through the UniPay app, we will be pleased to sell you a bar of Rebbe Cleanser at the special price of only eighteen dollars. Now please rise for the Schmeltzerite Anthem.”

Everyone rose. A short, aged figure with a pencil mustache entered and stood beside Yitzi. Dylan. Amazing. Dylan was going to lead the Schmeltzerite Anthem. Did he write it? He produced a harmonica, blew a clean C note, and as he began singing, with immense gravity, the crowd joined in.

The Rebbe came, the Rebbe went.

Then the Rebbe came back again.

He brought us hope

To help us cope

within this world of sin.

So we thank the Rebbe and we thank our God,

whoever He may be.

We perform the task

Of which we are asked

And we never disagree.

We are the men and women of Schmeltzer

We eat our pork and drink our seltzer

And when the going gets tough

We do our stuff

For God, for us, for Schmeltzer.

Not exactly “The Times They are a Changin’,” I thought, but interesting enough in its way.

People shook hands and hugged. Dylan hugged Yitzi. The room emptied quickly and quietly. Perhaps they were rushing off to the nearest Official Schmeltzer Tattoo Parlor.

Buy a bag of swag and get a tattoo, today’s message from the other side. And, of course, get off the bike. None of it anywhere near as thoughtful as “Thou shalt not kill,” but people needed to believe; the more ridiculous, the better. It helped if it cost money—better if it cost a lot of money.

I lingered in the foyer, staring at the giant painting of the late Rebbe Schmeltzer as folks deposited their offering in his mouth, flabbergasted. A few minutes later, back in jeans and a T-shirt, Yitzi returned to fetch me. “Come,” he said, slapping me on the back like we were old pals. “We’ll go to my office for lunch.”

He linked arms with me and walked me from the foyer to a room off the side. It was small, lined with bookshelves doubtless at one time filled with books, now nearly empty. On the shelves rested a compact, odd assortment of books of various religious traditions as well as some of their ritual objects, save that on the last of the bookcases sat a collection of books mostly in German, the most prominent of which was Mein Kampf. Several chairs were scattered randomly about. Yitzi gestured to a chair near the table. At the end of the line of bookcases was another door leading to some place deeper in the building. Above the door was the number 42. Odd coincidence, I thought. Directly to the right of the door hung a Chagall etching. I recognized it immediately, the biblical Moses kneeling before the burning bush, hand on his heart, with the letters of God’s divine name hovering above the Bush: Moses and the Burning Bush.

I walked over; it was the original. I looked at Yitzi with amazement.

“How in the world did you acquire this?” I said. “I have no idea what it’s worth, but this is no piece of art like you’d buy at an art show in the Village back in the day for a few bucks.”

Yitzi smirked. “We have our donors,” he said.

“Why isn’t it hanging downstairs in the foyer?”

“It’s mine,” he said. “Some things I don’t share with my people.” He turned toward the table. “Please, sit. Lunch?”

I was hungry and accepted the invitation. Menkies pulled out his phone, pushed a button. With authority he said, “The usual, times two.”

When he replaced the phone in his shirt pocket, I asked, “Any chance I can have a peek at the tattoo?”

“Of course.” He rolled up his sleeve to reveal an inky Kobliner Rebbe, that familiar pose, eyes gazing toward infinity.

“Catch this,” he said. He flexed his bicep, and the Rebbe smiled. “Stretching the Rebbe I call it.”

“You expect everyone’ll get this tattoo?”

“They’re an obedient lot, my Hasidim. On Monday night the Rebbe says, ‘Jump.’ On Tuesday they say, ‘How high?’ I have followers all over the world, you know. Hundreds of thousands. With luck I’ll acquire thousands more.”

“What about all the books laid out in the beis midrash?” I asked, recalling the great variety of material spread on the tables.

“Fodder,” he said. “It pales in comparison to what happens Tuesday afternoon when I give ’em the word.”

I considered the riches about to be generated by Menkies’s followers paying nearly a thousand dollars for a three-inch-by-two-inch tattoo. With that kind of dough he could buy all the original Chagalls he wanted.

“You’ve written a book,” I said.

“Oh, that thing,” he answered. “Yes. Can’t take credit for it, really. It’s the Rebbe’s doing. His return wrought major changes. I merely reflected upon them in my own hand, so to say. You’ve read it?”

“Not yet. I only learned of its existence yesterday. It appeared on a shelf in my library as if by magic.”

He smiled. “My book has the habit of doing that. You’ll read it?”

“I imagine what I’ve seen here in the last hour is a good representation of the book.” Like lying to a gullible audience and ordering them to spend nearly a grand having their arms stuck with needles after they’ve taken a bath with Rebbe soap. And Bob Dylan? What luck.

“Yes, but in the book I lay down the theoretical framework for all that’s happened since the Rebbe’s return.”

“About the title—”

“Yes?”

“The Land of No-Mind. What does it mean?”

A knock on the door interrupted our conversation. “Come in,” Yitzi said.

A tall young man entered wearing a robe rivaling the biblical Joseph’s, bright colors in vertical stripes. On his head sat an equally colorful yarmulke covering his entire head. He rolled in a wagon bearing our lunch, two BLTs, each sandwich thick with Canadian bacon, as well as two teapots, and some pastries. He placed a sandwich and teapot before each of us.

“That will be all,” Yitzi said.

The man bowed slightly and left the room.

I removed the bacon from my sandwich, scraped off the mayonnaise as best I could, and began eating my defatted vegetarian sandwich. Menkies eyed my activity.

“I’m a vegan,” I explained. “Haven’t eaten meat in more than two years. First time I’ve had even a whiff of mayo for a long time.”

Yitzi nodded sagely. “Can I have your bacon?”

I pointed at the meat sitting on a napkin. “Go to town.”

He inserted my bacon into his sandwich.

“I prefer barbecued ribs, but they’re so messy, and there’s never enough meat on the bone. Always hungry for another rib,” he said as he chowed down on his sandwich. “The Land of No Mind,” he said with his mouth full. “We are the Land of No Mind, Nicky, right here in South Park Slope.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that traditional religious categories have been defied by the Rebbe’s return. The old ideas have fallen into irrelevancy.”

“Such as?”

“That truth underlies any religion. We live in postmodern times when true and false are, how to say, interchangeable. We believe that whatever one religion or another teaches is their truth. That’s what we celebrate here, the end of the truth and the beginning of the untruth.”

“So, what do you mean by the Land of No Mind?”

“It means that we must surrender our minds to something greater and higher.”

“And that is?”

“We call it the Untruth Itself, the UI,” he said, picking up a cloth napkin and wiping mayonnaise from his cheek.

“The Untruth Itself?”

“We teach the total surrender of our minds to a mind greater than ours, for we have brought them to the precipice of Mind beyond mind. The return has brought to us the New Thought Idea. NTI is about living in a time when nothing is true, except what Schmeltzer says is true.”

In the distance I thought I heard a drummer making that sound they did ending with a cymbal crash to offset a bad joke on late-night television, when such things were still among us.

“You advocate the surrender of independent thinking for the sake of living the untruth?” I asked, attempting to make sense of this gobbledygook.

“The Rebbe wants us to think, just not too much and not about such things that he hasn’t said we should think about. Only what He commands is true.”

Menkies leaned back, aiming his nose and eyes at me, rubbing his chin, an attempted display of raw intellect. But a philosopher or the Kobliner Rebbe he surely was not. He was merely Menkies.

“At this stage in their development,” he continued, “the people are unable to grasp the NTI independently. The concept of No Mind means they must be open to All Mind or One Mind, brought to them through someone else’s mind. Like the male to the female, they enter the All Mind, and they are engulfed. To get there, the Rebbe directs us through sightings and my dreams, which they faithfully accept. It’s the only faith they need anymore. What I teach rests in the forefront of their minds.”

He rose, flicked the crumbs off of his shirt, and leaned into his chair.

I understood. Menkies was the male, and his followers were the female. Every Monday the Rebbe appeared to Menkies, and every Tuesday he fucked them.

He pulled at a lone hair extending from his lower lip. “We are living in true messianic times. Nicky, we are bigger than the Kobliners ever were.”

“And you are the conduit into Paradise, right?”

“You might say that,” he said, modesty pouring from his lips like corn syrup. Menkies wiped more mayo from the sides of his mouth. “So, Nicky, it’s been, what, forty years?”

I nodded.

“Funny,” he said. “You walk in here and we recognize each other instantly. Two old friends from the yeshiva. You don’t look any different. I’m not lying, Nicky.”

I beheld Yitzi. Short with small, mouse-like eyes and buckteeth. “And you look just like the old days, too, Yitzi. Time’s a funny thing,” I agreed.

“So true,” answered Yitzi as he sat down, holding silent for a moment, perhaps contemplating the years we were now reeling in. His tone became darker. “All this time I don’t see you. You don’t email, call, text, or come over, even after I became the rebbe. You, the great analyst of my movement, you never seek an interview. Today, you waltz in off the street. It doesn’t take a sage to realize maybe you want something.”

Time to get down to it. “I believe you might have information about Shmulie Shimmer.”

Silence. He put his elbows on the table, and rested his head in his palms.

“What do you want to know about him?”

“I’m trying to find him.”

“Find him?” He scratched his chin. “Isn’t he living in parts unknown?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe means maybe not,” Yitzi said.

“Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he’s dead, even. I want to find out. He used to come here to study.”

“Shmulie did come here from time to time. Why’s that important?”

“Not sure. Just gathering information, hoping it eventually adds up to something. Right now I’ve got gornisht.” Yiddish for, essentially, crap, which was what I had.

“I’m not keen to pass on information without a good reason.”

“I’m looking for Shmulie. That’s about all I have to tell you.”

“You need my help, but you’re not giving back? No can do. You don’t help me, I don’t help you,” Yitzi said with deep sanctimony.

I pulled out my device and opened the UniPay app. I tapped in the sum of $1,000, breathing just a little harder. I prayed silently to the God I occasionally believed in that Abe, had the wherewithal to repay me.

“A grand is now yours. Come and get it.”

Menkies beamed like the eighth day of Hanukkah. He removed his device and aimed it at mine, pressed a button. The transfer complete, I returned my phone to my pocket. Yitzi put his on the table.

“For the bar mitzvah fund,” I said.

“Being the big shot scholar of us you should know we don’t do bar mitzvahs anymore. They went out with bris milah and the prohibition against eating bacon,” he said, popping the final bit of his double bacon sandwich into his mouth.

“And the prohibition against tattoos,” I said.

“That too.” He nodded. “Worry not, Nicky. I’ll find a suitable use for your donation.”

“No doubt.” I finished my sandwich, sipped some tea, and said, “So Shmulie Shimmer was in the habit of coming by?”

“Yes, yes, he’d visit,” Yitzi said.

“What would he do?”

“He’d study. Like everyone else,” he said. “He’d daven, sometimes he’d stay over for Shabbos. Sometimes he’d come mid-Shabbos afternoon, eat with us and study.”

“How often?”

“Once a month. Twice a month. Once a week sometimes.”

“Did he study anything in particular?”

He screwed up his face, thinking hard. “I seem to remember he had a fondness for Maimonides’ Laws of Repentance, especially right when the Lerbs law was going to pass.”

“What did Schmeltzer get out of his coming here?” I asked.

“The pleasure of one more soul brought over to our side.”

“Shmulie never made a donation to the cause?”

“Of course, we hope everyone who visits will make a donation. Perhaps you didn’t see the pushka as you entered?”

“It’s bigger than the Empire State Building,” I said.

“We hope you’ll consider making an offering on your way out.”

“You have all the offering you’re going to get from me,” I said, tapping my shirt pocket.

“Oh yes,” Yitzi replied, patting the phone on the table. “Slipped my mind.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Are you saying Shmulie didn’t do more than put a couple of dollars in the pushka?”

“He may have occasionally donated more.”

“How much?”

“Let’s just say Shmulie wasn’t slow to transfer funds to us. For that reason alone he’s greatly missed.”

“Any other reasons you miss him?”

“Do I miss his companionship, his fiery wit, his fat ass in our chairs?”

“Yes, like that.”

“Honestly? He was pushy and arrogant. And he didn’t believe in the Rebbe’s return, the fat fuck.”

Another spontaneous expletive inspired by the missing Shmulie Shimmer.

“If you think this of him, and he thought that of you, then why did he support you?” I asked.

“The satisfaction of knowing he was supporting a worthy organization increase its activities and influence in the world.”

“Even if he didn’t believe in the reason for your existence?”

“Even if.”

“What did you do for him?” I pressed.

“What could we do for him? Honor him? We did that at every opportunity. There wasn’t much. We don’t have a board to put him on. I’m pretty much the board, me and a couple of early converts. So what else is there?” His eyes opened wide and that light-bulb-over-the-head look crept onto his face. “Come here.”

We walked to the doorway where he showed me a plaque I missed when I walked in, so dazzled was I by the Chagall. The Shmulie Shimmer Study Hall it read.

“We named this room after him,” he said, his arm sweeping across the space.

“Mighty generous,” I said. “But you don’t find it peculiar that Shmulie Shimmer would want to give you anything unless there was something serious in it for him, besides a room?”

“When someone gives you a big check you say thank you and hope for more in its season. I figured he wanted to be a mensch and help us along.”

“A mensch Shmulie is not. Shmulie knows what he wants and generally gets what he wants. If he didn’t believe in the resurrection, why care whether this organization is strong and healthy? Makes no sense.”

“He’d say he was a cultural Schmeltzerite. He liked our food and our music, our developing folkways, but he couldn’t believe our core idea,” said Yitzi. “He came, he studied a little, he noshed, he went home. He got arrested, then disappeared. Haven’t heard of or from him since.”

Shmulie didn’t cotton to the wacky ideas emanating from the Land of No Mind. Momentarily, I experienced a grain of something resembling respect.

I looked at Menkies and was impressed. How could I not be? He’d built an empire based on a preposterous lie, on folks’ need to turn their will over to someone. His gang surrendered their minds to the Mind, which was after all only Menkies’s mind, and would do whatever they were told. Schmeltzerism revealed itself to be a burgeoning totalitarianism, amusing now, but why not more lethal not far down the road? Today a tattoo, tomorrow the world.

A protracted silence passed between us, I looking at this unlikely, shady mastermind, he looking at me, thinking I knew not what.

“Something else is going on here, Yitzi, right?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” he said, eyes narrowing.

“To tell the truth, I’m not certain. But when I was down in the Velvet Underground—”

“You were there?” he asked in a tone suggesting his vast network might not be so vast.

“The other day.”

Yitzi nodded.

“While down there I saw the Rebbe’s photograph hanging in several spots. The same photo.”

“I’m not surprised. The Rebbe is beloved everywhere, aboveground and below.”

“Maybe. I also briefly observed a class in Schmeltzerism taught on the sidewalk by a guy in a loud shirt.”

“That would be Israel Levin, our emissary to the VU. They love him down there.”

“What’s your interest in the VU?”

“Same as anywhere else. People all over need to hear about the New Thought Idea.”

“That it?”

“That’s it, baby.”

“Yitzi, you’ll go down in history as a great and awesome liar,” I growled.

“What?”

“Anyone possessing half a brain knows you invented the resurrection. Easy enough to accomplish. All it required was massive exploitation of an idea already heating up in every Kobliner’s superstition-filled brain. You invented the story, the story went viral, and you became the leader, a regular St. Paul to the whole damned world. Damn your snake-oil sightings and your phony dream reports.”

Waving his hands at me, Yitzi shouted, “No. It was real. It’s all real. Every bit of it. He came to me. He comes to me. To me. I don’t know why or how, but he did. All real. Really, really real, man. I’m not smart enough to make this up. You’ve got to believe me.”

“I don’t for a minute believe you,” I said. “Except for the part about not having the intelligence to figure it out for yourself. Somebody put you up to it.”

An uncomfortable moment passed between us. His head pointed to the floor and his hands dropped to his sides.

“All right,” he said. “You’re right. I couldn’t have made it up. I didn’t make it up. Someone else did.”

I heard Yitzi’s foul breath going in and out as we both awaited my reply.

“That was too easy,” I said. “Why’d you tell?”

“Because it’s you, Nicky.”

“Me? Who am I to you?”

“You and Shmulie. The two geniuses of the class. I always felt close to both of you . . . you know? Like you were the only friends I had there. Especially you.”

This astonishing bit of distorted news threw me. He’d crumbled like matzah. I needed no gun, no Lazar pistol. He just opened up and came clean. I kept silent for the moment.

The first Schmeltzerite Rebbe continued. “I’ve always had great respect for you, Nick Bones. More than you could know.”

“Who dreamt up this God-forsaken scheme?”

Menkies bit on an index fingernail. “The identity of my partner, that’s another thing. Him I do not give up.”

It seemed I’d acquired the upper hand. “What’s to stop me from telling the world?”

“You think you’re the first person to accuse us of being a phony?”

Probably not, once I thought about it.

“We’ve got a whole apparatus ready to go should anyone claim they can expose us. The world can be very, how to say, resistant to these things, especially in the face of a well-coordinated series of credible denials, along with the batch of fake news we’d deploy anywhere we can. Don’t mess with someone’s beliefs and expect to get away with it.”

I headed for the door, but as I reached it and yanked it open, I realized I’d gone in the wrong direction and opened door 42 instead.

What I glimpsed inside amazed me—a room packed with electronic gear, humming away. Above the electronics, surrounding the room, were perhaps two dozen monitors displaying images of places around the world, so identified by their labels. In the center of one of these walls hung two somewhat larger monitors. One displayed the image of a door, just a large, blue door, and next to it a completely dark screen.

Menkies yanked me with surprising force. “Get the fuck out of here.” He slammed door 42 shut.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing.

“None of your damned business,” he said, now pushing me toward the other door. “You’ve worn out your welcome here,” he said. “You come back, I’ve got men who’d be happy to work you over just fine.”

I stopped. “Do these goons of yours happen to look like black cartons with hats?”

Menkies stared. “Just get out of here.”

I made my way through the busy foyer to the exit. I walked by the tables filled with hookah smokers, an aromatic haze hovering above them. A familiar voice shouted, “NB!” I turned to face a smiling, clean-shaven, longhaired man with a forehead that reached about halfway up his scalp. He was bareheaded, wore high-top white sneakers, jeans, and a multi-colored Hawaiian shirt, a wide, bright-red tie hanging loosely around his neck. On his nose sat thick red-framed glasses. Leibel Berliner stuck out his hand.

Had I any lingering doubt, I now knew, incontrovertibly, I’d crossed the Rubicon onto the other shore, a splendid experiment in self-delusion. How vicious might that craven rodent’s thousands of zealous followers become? Just a bunch of passive idiots, or a threat of some magnitude? I exited the Schmeltzerite Center uneasy.