Tears streaming down his face, Reb Breslov, my brother, raised his voice and cried out in English, in an all-purpose Russian accent picked up from so many of his disciples rescued from heroin dens and jail cells. “On kholiday of repentance, I make long journey to ask forgiveness for sins against your people.” He named names, pounding his chest mightily with his fist with each recitation: Bogdan Khmelnytzki. Symon Petilura. Ivan Demjanjuk. “Remember Babi Yar!” he suddenly bellowed. “For sins we commit against Jewish people, let khassids waste Uman, please, trash khole place, it is okeydokey, we deserve, khave fun boys, welcome, welcome, khappy New Year!”

A righteous gentile. The establishment overseers were satisfied, they relaxed.

He pressed his forehead against the side of the holy tomb, my brother, my twin, brushed his hand over the faint remains of graffiti, Jew-hating slurs not fully wiped away, and wept, his shoulders pumping. “Tatte, Tatte,” he cried in muffled Yiddish, “I have suffered so much, I have no home, there is no place in the world for me to go. They pursue me for no reason, like a dog, they surround me all around, yet in God’s name I will cut them off, for from your commandments I have never swerved.”

As he departed the holy gravesite with no discernible provocation or incident to mar the visit, but with agonizing regret, never knowing if he would ever again see his holy father in this life, a building to his right crumbled almost silently to the ground. To his left, a tongue of flame leapt up. Word had passed to his Hasidim as they formed a train behind him, that the holy Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav had appeared to his gilgul Reb Breslov in a vision. “Shmelke, Shmelke,” Rabbi Nahman had called out to him from the depths of his tomb. “Here I am,” my brother had replied. Rabbi Nahman spoke: “Wherever I would go during my brief span on earth, I was always going to the land of Israel. The heavenly land of Israel. Follow in my footsteps, my son. India is now the earthly Israel. Go to India. Seek there and seek there, because for now, until my return, all that there is, is there.”

They processed away from the site, my brother and his Hasidim, past buildings collapsing on one side, on the other side, everything burning, directly to Sofia Park, where a helicopter awaited them on a clearing. Within minutes they were swooped up and carried away, “As if on eagle’s wings, like the chariot of Eliyahu the prophet,” Shmelke was telling me when I opened my eyes to find myself in Kolkata, in his House of Holy Healing—when finally I was ready to let it be known that I had emerged from the depths of self and had begun tentatively to take in the other. “As you know, didi, our sages teach that danger to life trumps the Sabbath. Also here in this country of my refuge, saving a life is considered the supreme dharma according to the Vedas and the teachings of the most learned Brahmins. I was in mortal danger. My cover was blown. The Israeli collaborators were on to me, also the Ukrainian perpetrators, also the Hasidim bystanders from other sects. Under those circumstances it was permissible to violate the prohibition against travel on the holiday. This was confirmed by the mystical appearance of the chopper on that pad. It was literally a sign from heaven, ignoring it would have been the gravest of sins, it was a positive commandment from the One Above that could not be refused, it was my duty to save my life and let myself be borne aloft, higher and higher.”