Tobolowsky - My Adventures with God

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ALSO BY STEPHEN TOBOLOWSKY

The Dangerous Animals Club

Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2017 by Stephen Tobolowsky

Certain names and characteristics have been changed.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition April 2017

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Book design by Ellen R. Sasahara

Jacket design by Mallory Grigg

Jacket photograph by David Carlson;

Book by Thomas Northcut/Getty Images

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-4767-6646-1

ISBN 978-1-4767-6649-2 (ebook)

For Ann

L earning Hebrew is impossible for me. I have tried for years. There appear to be no rules, or at least no rules understandable to people who dont already know Hebrew. Linguistically, its like watching roller derby for the first time. I thought my brain might be more receptive to verbs if I ate falafel while conjugating, so my wife and I went to a Middle Eastern restaurant to study.

A woman walked past us on her way to her table. She overheard us going over vocabulary. She stopped and asked, Excuse me, are you Jewish?

Yes, I said.

She pulled up a chair and sat down. She said there was a woman she knew, Hannah Molder, whom she believed was Jewish. She was ill. She might not survive the week. She was wondering if there was a special prayer that could be said for her. I told her there was. There were services at my synagogue Monday and Thursday mornings at seven thirty, and on Saturdays. During these services there is a moment when we pray for the ill.

Do you go to these services? the woman asked.

I try towhen Im not working, I said.

Are you working tomorrow?

Tomorrow? I asked.

Yes. Tomorrow is Thursday. Are you going to services?

Well, I...

If you were, perhaps you could say a prayer for Hannah Molder?

I had planned on sleeping in, but there was something in her request that inspired me to make the effort. Sure. Not a problem, I said.

The next day, I got up early and went to the synagogue. After the Torah reading, I stood up and said Hannah Molders name at the appropriate time. The rest of the service I wondered who she was and if she was getting better. I wondered if my prayer mattered.

The following Monday, I made a pot of coffee and sat down to read the paper. Then, I thought of this faceless person, Hannah Molder. I got dressed and went to services and said her name. As the weeks went by, I kept going.

That was over a year ago. I still feel the obligation to stand and say Hannah Molders name. I dont know who she is, if she is well, or if she even survived that critical week.

I understand that to some, my prayer for Hannah Molder might seem simple-minded. Superstitious. Sort of like shooting a drawing of a man and a woman and our location in the galaxy into spaceas Carl Sagan did in 1972 and 1973 on the Pioneer 10 and spacecrafts. Both operate under the same theory: Even if the heavens are empty, a prayer provides its own echo.

I prayed for Hannah Molder because I thought it mattered. Not because I knew Hannah, but because I knew God.

Whatever God is.

When you are telling a story about God you have an inherent difficulty. It is not the problem of belief. It is a problem with nouns.

We rely on nouns to get through the day. Most nouns are easy to grasp like breakfast , work , and children . Some are not as concrete, for example, love . We know what love is. We believe in it. We believe in it even though it cant be weighed or measured. We believe in it even though it cant be seen. No constant image comes to mind. When I hear the word love I will occasionally see my mothers face, or my wife Anns, or my children, Robert and William. We change our meaning of love throughout the day without giving it the slightest thought. Inconsistency isnt the downfall of love. It is its defining characteristic.

There are more elusive nouns than love. Birth and death . We only know these as witnesses. The former we experience through our children, the latter through our parents.

* * * * *

The most troubling noun of all may be God . Nothing comes to mind. Nothing. Well, maybe childhood thoughts of an old man in the clouds. Maybe any number of metaphors proposed by Hollywoodfrom HAL the computer, to Mary Poppins, to the shark in Jaws .

I admit that it has been hard to know God. I have had bouts of uncertainty. Being an actor, I have become accustomed to the condition. I have learned that doubt is like a bad hangover. Its unpleasant, but its proof that youre still alive. There is a religious precedent for mans difficulty in understanding the nature of the divine. In the book of Exodus, Moses is told he could never see Gods face. To see the actual face of God would bring death. He could only see his back. Rabbis over the centuries have defined seeing Gods back as being witness to Gods trailing radiance. As poetic as that is, trailing radiance isnt much of a handle to grasp the nature of faith.

Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica gives us something more tantalizing. His explanation of God almost seems to have been formulated with the assistance of quantum physics. He says the proof of Gods existence is in seeing the effects of the infinite on man.

All at once I am overwhelmed by thoughts of mathematics, music, dreams, space, time, and the combinations of them all in a painting by Chagall. I am moved by the fugues of Bach and the frescoes of Michelangelo, all inspired by what artists, scientists, and prophets have called God.

Aquinas found no conflict between science and religion. He said ideas that appear to be contradictory come from the same source. He examined the ways we know the earth is round. Some know by looking at the heavens, some by watching the changing horizon. Different disciplines reveal different aspects of a larger truth.