Free The Ascent of Eli Israel by Dara Horn Jonathan Papernick

help you fix that,” the doctor said, touching him lightly on the back. “But you mustn’t shrug your shoulders like that.”
    The next morning when Dr. John J. McGraw arrived to treat the Dokszycer rebbe, Sarah told him to wait.
    â€œThe rebbe is not feeling well,” she said. “His back is sore again.”
    Overhearing his wife in the hallway, the rebbe called, “Let him come.”
    The rebbe stood gingerly beside his bed wrapping the leather straps of his tefillin around his left arm.
    â€œI don’t mean to interrupt,” the doctor said, as he entered the rebbe’s room. “But what are you doing?”
    The rebbe placed the second box of the tefillin onto his forehead and said, “I am putting on my tefillin. And then I am going to pray.”
    â€œHow is your back today?”
    â€œIt hurts,” the rebbe said, tightening the straps.
    The doctor stepped forward and touched the rebbe’s arm where the leather straps were wound tightly against his skin. He walked around behind the rebbe and tapped him between the shoulder blades. “Can you touch your toes?”
    â€œI am trying to pray.”
    â€œI can see the tension in your shoulders,” the doctor said. “Prayer should not mean pain.”
    The rebbe smelled cinnamon and felt a sickness in his stomach. “Don’t you know there is pain in everything?”
    â€œThere doesn’t have to be. Those straps are too tight. Look how your body is being pulled to the left, while you lean to the right. The vein in your neck is like a rope,” the doctor said, starting to unwind the straps from the rebbe’s arm. His nose was so small it looked like it belonged to a young child. “And when you bend over you must remember to bend your knees.”
    â€œBend my knees?”
    â€œBecome flexible, and then pray. Like supple reeds on the banks of the Jordan.”
    He had finished unwrapping the straps of the tefillin from the rebbe’s head and laid the two boxes on the cluttered table beside them.
    â€œBut I must say the blessing,” the rebbe said. “It is a mitzvah.”
    Dr. John J. McGraw hesitated and said, “Finish quickly then.”
    After the rebbe completed his prayers the doctor adjusted him, making tiny pops in his back and neck.
    â€œGood,” the doctor said. “When you are ready I will bring you to my office for a thorough adjustment.”
    â€œWhat will happen then?” the rebbe asked.
    â€œPrayer,” the doctor said. “Painless prayer.”
    The doctor showed the rebbe how to stretch his back simply by lying face down on the floor and pushing up with his hands. The rebbe hesitated at first, saying he felt like an animal, but relented when he felt the warm stretch in the muscles of his back. He learned to stretch his calves, neck, and pectorals, and wondered how he could not have known to do something so simple.
    Afterward they walked under a hot June sun, through the cluttered streets of Mea Shearim, past the Street of Prophets as far as the British Council Library and the Ethiopian church.
    The next morning, the rebbe rose early, wound himself in the leather straps of his tefillin, and muttered the prayers under his breath. As he lay on the floor stretching his back the rebbe wondered if the pinching pain he felt was guilt.
    â€œGood. You’ve already stretched,” the doctor said when he arrived. “We are going to walk a little bit farther today,” he added, smiling.
    It was already a blazing hot Wednesday morning, as the doctor and the rebbe stepped out of the dingy apartment and into the street. From the doorway Sarah waved a cup and called after the rebbe as he walked away, “Israel, drink some water first! The hamsiin has arrived.” A dry wind had blown in out of the desert and carried with it a stifling heat that made the asphalt soft beneath their feet. The perfect blue sky was marred intermittently