Mitzvah Man

12

It’s one thing to wear a Mitzvah Man tee shirt and write a check to Uri Eisen, another to build a foundation. What is it he’s building? He hears cries for help, but aren’t those cries in his own head? Whom will he help? How will he help them? And why? Is he trying to blur away his own suffering by changing its terms, coping instead with the pain of others? Would that be a bad thing? But isn’t it true that when he shops at Whole Foods or the farmers’ market, when he walks through Harvard Square or runs along the river, he feels the pain of others like a song he hears faintly? Listen up, he’s told. He’s listening. Even at the dojo. Some of the men and women in training are completely there. But others are straining; you can imagine the original pain that’s led them here, as he knows the humiliation and rage that led him into training more than twenty years ago. Whom will he help? He can imagine a guy who’s got a dead-end job at McDonald’s or a Wal-Mart, someone with a family to support, and maybe he can help the guy get a G.E.D. and pay his tuition at a community college or at UMass-Boston. Now that he thinks it through, he’s going to need a lot of money, much, much more than he can take from his own pocket. In fact, if he wants to make a real foundation, he’ll need to develop serious capital. A couple of calls to his lawyer, Arthur Fischberg, and the paperwork gets set up. Getting non-profit tax status|12| from the IRS and the Commonwealth, he knows, will take some time. Then, when the foundation grows—if the foundation grows—he’ll require a board to oversee it and someone to attend to funds coming in, funds going out. But for now what Adam requires is money. He remembers the strange (admit it) exciting roll he was on the last time. Days of success, playing the lines on a graph, knowing he was in God’s hands. Then that feeling seemed to evaporate. And now? Is he in God’s hands now? Lisa goes off to play for the morning in the trio her teacher helped her find six months ago, all early teens, a boy on viola, girl as cellist. Then, after practice, the violist’s mother has agreed to drive them up to Plum Island. Lisa carries a swimsuit. He knows she’s a little embarrassed showing her gawky, skinny beauty in a bathing suit. She’s embarrassed at how little her breasts still are, how narrow her hips. But this morning at breakfast she didn’t once hold her knuckles against her mouth. She went off grinning, the bathing suit in a backpack. So Adam’s relieved about her, happy she’s okay. He’s alone for the day; he sits down in his study with a cup of coffee and goes on-line. Shira used to hate to see him day-trade, though she never said so. He understood; he understands. While what you do reflects real production and sale, to stare at numbers on a screen, the dance of a graph, seems disconnected from anything in the real world—rice, corn, cotton , tin, men in a field, in a mine. Yet he says, If it be Your will that I make a foundation to perform the mitzvot of tzedek (justice, righteousness ) and chesed (loving kindness), guide me today. He logs on. For an hour, he just watches. He feels clumsy, self-conscious. At one moment he thinks he’ll make a move, then holds back. He watches until he’s nothing but eyes; whatever’s happening is outside his ken. He finds his breathing deepen and slow, becomes aware of the blood humming in his ears. There’s no dropping away of his stomach this time as if he were in a plane hitting clear-air turbulence. It feels gentler this time, as if he’s hovering, sitting still in his chair but hovering just above himself. Now he buys. Buys again. Jots down notes on the legal tablet, though| 143 Mitzvah Man the trading program keeps a record for him. When he was a serious tennis player, there were days...