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The Handyman
For some reason the gentiles appreciate the value of a good Jewish handyman a lot more than we do. Why, I don’t know. But that’s how it is.
I knew Steve Rosen, who died on Yom Kippur. He was my brother’s best friend, and I knew him since I was nine. He left behind an extremely sweet wife and three very young children and a devastated mother. He was just 45, a house painter by trade.
Steve didn’t die by long illness, or car accident, or even his own hand. He was only unloading folding chairs for the “break the fast” he was hosting for family and friends at his new house when he inexplicably collapsed and died.
My eloquent brother eulogized him as a steadfast friend whose loyalty knew no bounds. He described how Rosen talked him into starting his own business, and stuck by him when he immediately screwed up.
The enterprise was an industrial cleaning service and the first job was to wash all the windows on a massive building. My brother had a shpritzer of Windex, a roll of towels and no idea what he was doing.
“Rosen had to tell me how to price the job and what equipment to buy,” he said. “When I finally got through it I realized that there was one window at the very top I couldn’t reach. I didn’t think it was any big deal, but when I told the client, he said he wouldn’t pay one nickel on the job until that last window was washed.”
Naturally, my brother was beside himself — until he got Rosen on the phone. After a long, hard day of his own work, Rosen came to do my brother’s.
“He walked around the perimeter, surveyed the situation and then pulled two ladders off his van,” my brother told me. “He took the first one and shoved it into a rain gutter and then took the second and put it flush on top of the first. And then he climbed. Somehow he got to the top and wiped the stupid window without killing himself.”
My brother was probably afraid to hold the ladder for anything that high. But that was the kind of guy Rosen was. Every generation says it, but they don’t make them like him anymore.
I’m 43 and kind of gray, and not quite the man I used to be. I’ve been to Sol Levinson’s too many times. In some ways, Rosen’s funeral was sadder even than those for my own relatives.
Rosen was young, lively and very much interested in his life and future. His adoration for his wife was exceeded only by his children’s deep affection for him. His business, though simple enough, was a moneymaker, testament to his keen mind.
Who do we blame for a loss so senseless? The guilty party is obvious, or so it would seem.
One of Rosen’s sons, like all his children a student at Beth Tfiloh, wondered aloud what we all demanded to know: “Why did HaShem take him?”
That’s the question of the hour, of course, voiced by the most innocent male in the room. The answer is far from satisfying. When we are devastated by the loss of someone we personally know and love, our prayers beg us to remember God; we Jews don’t blame Him, we pray that all the nations will know Him.
He gives life and He takes it away, and we praise Him anyway when our hearts are broken, even in this era of vicissitude. We are at war. Our finances are crumbling. Our prestige is plummeting. Of course, our nation needs to know Him.
We Jews ask humanity’s hard questions, but aren’t allowed one drop of the answer. We are Abraham’s children, after all, and not Job’s. Even though it often seems like it should be the other way around.
Posted by on 11/14/08 at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)
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