14/9/98

Dear Jonny ...

    He was just a beggar.
    When he died, he was just one less beggar on the streets of Jerusalem. When he was pulled lifeless out of the excavation pit, a psychotic mental patient who may have leapt to his death, society shrugged: who cares?
    "Dear Jonny," his mourning father wrote, in a letter his son would never read, "I can not tell you how proud I am of you, my firstborn and very loving son. I know that you are no longer fighting the horrible demons that have been tormenting you for the past 10 years."
    Just some street bum. Who cares?
    Two hundred people attended a memorial service for him in New York. Hundreds more laid him to rest on the Mount of Olives, where the only beggars are live ones. Innumerable Jerusalemites he touched with his extraordinary generosity, love, holiness, humor, still revere him a year after his death at the age of 40.
    He was known as Yehonotan, or Yoni. He was known where Jerusalemites milled, where he could scrounge their loose change.
    "You were a star in an honored Jewish profession by collecting money for the poorest of the Orthodox community for 10 hours a day at the Jerusalem Central Bus Station, and then distributed it all without ever keeping a shekel for yourself. Always with a smile, and the most penetrating, sincere laugh that even Philip Roth commemorated in one of his novels when you had your chance meeting at the Western Wall."
    He once stripped naked at the Wall, overwhelmed by the devil within him. And there are dark recriminations of a devil without, a rabbi who mesmerized, manipulated and abused him for 10 years, reportedly keeping the money Yoni collected. There was taped testimony from Yoni himself, and hushed talk among his closer friends. They eventually tried to extricate Yoni from his malevolent mentor, but it was a sorry mismatch: a bunch of loopy, maladjusted sociopaths, up against the religious establishment. They claimed victory, though, when the rabbi was forbidden from seeing Yoni. 
    "I can't tell you how much I will miss the pleasure of having you on my arm, walking the streets of Jerusalem, having every shopkeeper, Jew or Arab, tell me how blessed I am to have a son as generous as you."
    He was a startling character from the time he came to Israel in 1986. He liked hugging his fellow man -- Jew and Arab -- kissing, blessing, touching strangers. He was mad, yes, mad about people. They shrank from him, because such unabashed, unrestrained love for humanity is, well, nutty.
    We are more comfortable with hatred than with Jonny's kind of love.
    He devoted his life to charity. He was a writer, a philosopher. He loved theater, literature, sports. Curiously, he is remembered as both a stand-up comedian, and a holy man. He breathed the spirit of Judaism, but like a fire-breathing dragon; infectiously he won over the wide-eyed young yeshiva bochers, as well as the wizened shopkeepers where he pled his trade.
    Schizophrenic, manic-depressive, seized by an auto-messianic complex, he could easily have been ignored as a lunatic, but he engendered wonderment: odd, yet awed.
    "So, Jonny, 12 years after your graduation from Edison High in New Jersey, where you were class president, lunchroom comedian and tennis star -- before those neurotransmitters in your brain went berserk in your freshman year at NYU -- you were once again vibrant, hopeful.
    "Your goodness and love were incredible, but most of all, my son, your spirit and good humor were indomitable.
    "Thank you for being my greatest role model."
    Doomed to the agonies of his incurable madness, Yoni spread joy vastly. Through his scraggly beard a crackling humor shone. He radiated an almost-biblical aura of goodness -- and greatness. The only thing he kept to himself were the screaming demons.
    I saw him once or twice; we all have, anyone who's been through the bus station, the Old City, downtown. He was just a beggar.
    "Thank you, Jonny, for teaching me tolerance towards all people, Orthodox Jews, Arabs ... you were kind to all of them. I have learned to accept human frailties. You have made me a more religious man without formal religion.
    "Today I will announce on the West Side of New York that I am establishing the Jonathan Morris Arts and Theater Foundation for Peace, in your hometowns of Jerusalem and New York, so that Jews, Palestinians, Jordanians, Syrians and Egyptians will work and perform together. And hopefully, when they work out their anger, hate and love on stage, an understanding will grow to move the political leaders to follow the Jonny Morris credo of tolerance, humility, love and faith."
    Jonny helped the needy until he because the neediest of all. He was institutionalized at the Kfar Shaul Psychiatric Hospital.
    At dawn, one day last summer, he slipped out of his open ward. The voices started up again, so it seems, commanding Jonny to destroy himself. The voices, the demons, were more omnipotent than God.
    "Love you, see you soon. I want to discuss with you where to put your plaque, so that I can visit you often and get your opinion on matters."
    We forget that beggars have daddies too.