Once upon a time, when I was younger and less wise, I spent a shabbos at a campus Chabad house in Manhattan. The rabbi seemed like a pretty cool guy, definitely on the wacky end of the spectrum, which is good I suppose. Anyway, I’m doing what any good Chabad bocher would do at the shabbos meal Friday night, shmoozing with tons of college kids, being charming, and representing Judaism.
This one guy ends up across from me sometime near the soup course and he’s super intense, super curious about Judaism. Over the course of the meal, I basically tell him my whole life story, plus a whole Purim maamar about randomness, rationality, G-d’s love of the Jewish people, etc. He seems very interested, which is unusual and has ME very interested. He says the maamar is beautiful, which I think is beautiful.
It’s one of those conversations where the whole room is a murmuring blur, through the courses, through bentsching. It’s me and him, a back and forth. We retire to the sitting room, where for the first time he tells me that he was once in Yeshiva.
“But the Yeshiva really disappointed me.” Interesting.
“Yeah, all the Rabbis there preached humility but were really egotistical.” INTERESTING.
“I just wanted a focus on G-d, but all they were interested in was Talmud.” AHHHHHHHHHH!
“You know,” I told him, the voice of suave confidence, “you should really try a Chabad yeshiva some time. Chassidus is all about G-d.” At this point we have been speaking for about two hours, and I feel like I’m in one of those stories that only happens to other people where you wrap tefillin on the guy and now he lives in Jerusalem with a long white beard and twelve beautiful children.
Then he says, “I don’t really believe in Judaism.”
We speak for another hour. I do the apologetics thing which I would never do nowadays. He keeps shaking his head. It’s not like he has counterarguments. I can tell his mind is simply made up. But why? Was his yeshiva experience really that bad?
At long last, when I am tired and spent and my initial enthusiasm for this guy is waning, he looks around conspiratorially and says, “Have you ever heard of psychadelic mushrooms?”
So it turns out that the one guy I ever met that I thought I might be able to turn on to chassidus once realized on a mushroom trip that G-d does not exist but that Moses and Jesus were both tuned in to the eternal brotherhood of mankind, and that’s why he would never be religious.
Beaten by mushrooms.
I collapse sadly into my bed.
Epilogue
The next morning, the Rebbetzin, who is quite wonderful, a very nice person, comes up to me and says, “Wow! What did you say to him? He has never stayed here longer than half an hour before. You must have really had a good impact on him.”
fml