As they drove in the darkness, their little girl struggled terribly. Her airways swelled and tightened in her chest. Her lips were turning blue. Nothing like this had ever happened before. The Reb pressed the accelerator.

They rushed into the emergency room of Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden, New Jersey. The doctors hurried the child into a room. Then came the wait. They stood alone. What could they do? What can anyone do?

In the silent hallway, Albert and Sarah prayed for their child to live.

Hours later, she was dead.

It was a severe asthma attack, the first and last of Rinah’s life. Today, most likely, she would have survived. With an inhaler, with instructions, it might not even have been a major incident.

But today is not yesterday, and the Reb could do nothing but listen to the worst imaginable words-We couldn’t save her-told to him by a doctor he had never met before that night. How could this happen? She had been perfectly normal earlier in the day, a playful child, her whole life before her. We couldn’t save her? Where is the logic, the order of life?

The next few days were a blur. There was a funeral, a small coffin. At the grave site, the Reb said Kaddish, a prayer he had led for so many others, a prayer which never mentions death, yet is recited on the anniversary of a death every year thereafter.

“May God’s great name be glorified and sanctified

throughout the world which He has created…”

A small shovel of dirt was tossed on the grave.

Rinah was buried.

The Reb was thirty-six years old.

“I cursed God,” he’d admitted when we’d spoken about it. “I asked Him over and over, ‘Why her? What did this little girl do? She was four years old. She didn’t hurt a soul.’”

Did you get an answer?

“I still have no answer.”

Did that make you angry?

“For a while, furious.”

Did you feel guilty cursing God-you, of all people?

“No,” he said. “Because even in doing so, I was recognizing there was a greater power than me.”

He paused.

“And that is how I began to heal.”

The night the Reb returned to the pulpit, the temple was packed. Some came out of condolence. Some, no doubt, out of curiosity. But privately, most wondered the same thing: “Now that it’s happened to you, what do you have to say?”

The Reb knew this. It was partly why he came back so quickly, the first Friday after the mandatory thirty days of mourning.

And when he rose to his lectern, and when the congregation quieted, he spoke the only way he knew how-from the heart. He admitted that, yes, he had been angry at the Lord. That he’d howled in anguish, that he’d screamed for an answer. That there was nothing in being a Man of God that insulated him from the tears and misery of never being able to hold his little girl again.

And yet, he noted, the very rituals of mourning that he cursed having to do-the prayers, the torn clothing, not shaving, covering the mirrors-had helped him keep a grip on who he was, when he might have otherwise washed away.

“That which I have had to say to others, I must say now to myself,” he admitted, and in so doing, his faith was being tested with the truest test there is: to drink his own elixir, to heal his own broken heart.

He told them how the words of the Kaddish made him think, “I am part of something here; one day my children will say this very prayer for me just as I am saying it for my daughter.”

His faith soothed him, and while it could not save little Rinah from death, it could make her death more bearable, by reminding him that we are all frail parts of something powerful. His family, he said, had been blessed to have the child on earth, even for a few short years. He would see her again one day. He believed that. And it gave him comfort.

When he finished, nearly everyone was crying.

“Years later,” he told me, “whenever I would go to someone’s home who had lost a family member-a young one, particularly-I would try to be of comfort by remembering what comforted me. Sometimes we would sit quietly. Just sit and maybe hold a hand. Let them talk. Let them cry. And after a while, I could see they felt better.

“And when I’d get outside, I would go like this-”

He touched a finger to his tongue and pointed skyward.

“Chalk one up for you, Rinah,” he said, smiling. Now, in the back of his house, I was holding the Reb’s hand, as he had done for others. I tried to smile. He blinked from behind his glasses.

All right, I said. I’ll come back and see you soon.

He half-nodded.

“You…okay…yeah…,” he whispered.

There was little else to do. He was no longer able to speak a full sentence. And with each of my poor attempts at conversation, I felt I was only frustrating him more. He seemed to sense what was happening, and I feared the look on my face would reveal the crushing loss I felt. How was this fair? This wise and eloquent man, who a few weeks earlier had been discoursing on divinity, was now stripped of his most precious faculty; he could no longer teach, he could no longer string together beautiful sentences from that beautiful mind.

He could no longer sing.

He could only squeeze my fingers and move his mouth open and closed.

On the plane ride home, I wrote down some sentences. The eulogy, I feared, was finally coming due.

From a Sermon by the Reb

“If you ask me, and you should, why this wonderful, beautiful child-who had so much to give-had to die, I can’t give you a rational answer. I don’t know.

“But in a commentary to the Bible, tradition tells us that Adam, our first man, was supposed to have lived longer than any man, a thousand years. He didn’t. Our sages, in quest of an answer, related the following:

“Adam begged God to let him see into the future. So the Lord said, ‘Come with me.’ He took him through the celestial chambers, where the souls that were to be born awaited their turn. Each soul was a flame. Adam saw some flames burn purely, some barely flicker.

“Then he saw a beautiful flame, clear, strong, golden orange, and healing. Adam said, ‘Oh Lord, that will be a great human being. When shall it be born?’

“The Lord replied, ‘I’m sorry, Adam, but that soul, as beautiful as it is, is destined not to be born. It has been preordained that it will commit sin and tarnish itself. I have chosen to spare it the indignity of being besmirched.’

“Adam pleaded, ‘But Lord, man must have someone to teach and guide him. Please, do not deprive my children.’

“The Lord gently answered, ‘The decision has been made. I have no years left to allocate to him.’

“Then Adam boldly said, ‘Lord, what if I am willing to bestow on that soul some of the years of my life?’

“And God answered Adam, saying, ‘If that is your wish, that I will grant.’

“Adam, we are told, died not at 1,000, but at 930 years. And eons later, there was a child born in the town of Bethlehem. He became a ruler over Israel and a sweet singer of songs. After leading his people and inspiring them, he died. And the Bible concludes: ‘Behold, David the King was buried after having lived for 70 years.’

“My friends, when sometimes we are asked why does someone perish, someone so young in age, I can only fall back on the wisdom of our tradition. It is true that David did not live long for his day. But while he lived, David taught, inspired, and left us a great spiritual legacy, including the Book of Psalms. One of those Psalms, the twenty-third, is read sometimes at funerals.

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:

He leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul…

“Is it not better to have known Rinah, my daughter, for four years, than not to have known her at all?”