The rabbi rewarded their grateful indulgence with intimate touches, caressing one’s shoulder while pinching another’s cheek, paying special attention to the younger students—such as the ingenue in her red Lycra body stocking, who asked the holy man to please interpret her aura.
“You were in your last life a flower,” croaked old Eliezer, pressing her forehead ...

The low-ceilinged room on the other side, most likely a former dance studio, was surrounded by mirrors. In it, sitting on yoga mats before the rabbi, were a score of women, mostly in their middle years, though there were younger ones as well, some as sleek as greyhounds, a couple in the final stages of ...

There were framed testimonials from satisfied customers on the paneled walls, though Bernie wondered that the place had been open long enough to satisfy customers. The testimonials were flanked by mounted diagrams of the Sefirot, the kabbalistic Tree of Life, resembling the configurations of painted Tinker Toys. An air-brushed portrait of Rabbi ben Zephyr himself, ...

Bernie felt himself begin to shudder and grow dizzy at the sight, felt the familiar thrumming in his loins, the pressure building toward a seismic discharge. He fought helplessly against the coming release, imagining the subsequent stain he would try to conceal with an unavailing shirttail. But in the moment when his whole body was ...

You couldn’t have called it eavesdropping, since Bernie was standing by the open French doors in full view of his father and the rabbi in their parallel chairs. Still, he felt as if he were listening to things not meant for his ears. The experience revived the sense of being invisible that had plagued him ...

“Julius,” began the rabbi. “May I call you Julius?” His ingratiating air fooled no one. “I ain’t talking your zayde’s study house. I’m talking Rabbi ben Zephyr’s House of Enlightenment, where I’m dispensing on demand ecstasy.”
Mr. Karp went livid. “You mean like drugs?”
Now it was the rabbi’s turn to sigh. “Julius,” there was the patronizing ...

“Oh,” replied Mr. Karp. “I thought you might have something really ambitious in mind.” He sniggered over his witticism.
Unfazed, the rabbi went on. “A betmidrash, a study house I will establish, that they can come in it, both yehudim and goyim, and be born all over again. I got already my eye on a little ...

1999.
Bernie was beside himself with relief at the rabbi’s homecoming, though the delinquent holy man scarcely acknowledged him, brushing past the open-mouthed boy in his haste to talk with Bernie’s father. It seemed that in his three days of wandering, the old man had seen a lot of life, and returning bug-eyed and bathed in ...

“Wait a minute!” Pisgat shouted. “What’s a matter, you never heard from negotiation? Or maybe you mean to bluff a bluffer?”
Jocheved turned again, searching her mind for more leverage; she was after all doing the old fortz a favor—but just as she was about to offer that insight, another man shouldered his way through the ...

Agitated, the girl nevertheless managed to keep Max’s sober façade from cracking apart. “The daughter is indisposed,” was all she was willing to say.
“A shame,” said old Pisgat, finally too busy to pursue the subject further. He was glad at any rate of an opportunity to rid himself of an incommodious object that had taken ...