Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry (14 page)

Schwarz smiled. “I’m sorry we don’t have your approval, Rabbi, but I’m afraid we’ll have to go ahead without it. And it won’t come up before the Board. This is a matter in which the Cemetery Committee has full authority.”

“Of course, we’ll take a vote of the committee,” Marvin observed.

“Vote or no vote, I forbid it.”

“Look, Rabbi, we didn’t have to come to you in the first place. We just wanted everything aboveboard.”

“But you did come, and I forbid it.”

Schwarz shrugged his shoulders. He rose and the two men left. The rabbi stood by his desk, angry and baffled.

“What did he mean he forbids it?” asked Marvin. “Can he do something?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, call some board of rabbis –”

“Don’t be silly. Our temple is a completely autonomous body, and the rabbi is just an employee. He’s told us that often enough himself. The only thing he can do if he doesn’t like it is resign.”

“After what I just heard, that might not be such a bad idea,” said Marvin.

“You don’t like him?”

“I think we can do better,” said Marvin evenly.

“Yeah? How do you mean?”

“Well, I’m a businessman. Over the past few years I’ve had a lot of people working for me – salesmen and office help. I’ve got a rule about help. I don’t care how good they are, I don’t care how much of a world-beater a salesman is; if he can’t take orders, he goes.”

“That’s the way I feel, Marve. Say, who’s on your committee?”

“Summer Pomeranz, Bucky Lefkowitz, and Ira Dorfman. Why? Not one of them has done a damn thing, but they’re on the committee.”

“That’s three and you make four. Didn’t I appoint another so as to have an odd number?”

“You’re on it ex officio. That makes five.”

“Good. So all we need is one more for a majority. Look, Marve, why don’t you get hold of them. Tell them as much as you think they have to know and get their vote for this new road. Just in case the rabbi gets cute.”

“No sweat. They know I do all the work, and they don’t ever go against my decisions.”

“Right. When you get it nailed down, why don’t you call the rabbi and tell him you’ve taken a vote, and your committee is one hundred percent in favor of the new road.”

“That is a good idea, Mort. It will keep him from getting any fancy ideas.”

“Let me know how you make out. But act fast. I don’t want to give the rabbi a chance to block us.”

Marvin was elated when he called Schwarz Friday morning. “I just got through talking to the rabbi. I didn’t crow, but told him I thought he’d like to know that the committee vote was unanimous.”

“What did he say?”

“He didn’t say anything.”

“Dammit, Marvin, he must have said something.”

“I’m telling you he didn’t say anything. Just, ‘I see,’ or something like that. No, come to think of it, that’s all he said, ‘I see.’ “

“Was he sore?”

“I couldn’t tell, but since he didn’t say anything, I figure he knows he’s beaten. So the thing for us to do is go ahead full steam.”

“I’m not so sure, Marve. I’ve had some second thoughts on the matter.”

“How do you mean?”

“A thing like this – it could backfire on us. If he were to bring the matter before the Board Sunday –”

“And Wasserman and maybe Becker side with him and between them they’d pull over a few more – yeah, you got a point there. What do you think we ought to do?”

“What we need, Marve, is a consensus. Maybe I ought to talk to some of the members before the Board meeting. What are you doing tomorrow night?”

“Well, Mitzi suggested we take in this foreign film at the Strand –”

“Strictly a dud. Ethel and I saw it last week in town. Why don’t you come over, and I’ll contact some of the boys –”

“I get it. You’re going to show them the model.”

“Right.”

The group returned from the study to the living-room where Ethel Schwarz had prepared coffee and ice cream and delicious little French cookies. “You know, Mort,” Hal Berkowitz said, “what I can’t get through my noggin is why the rabbi, of all people, should want to do anything to keep that building of yours from going up. I mean, your chapel has class, and what’s more, it’s his –”

“That’s right,” chimed in Abner Sussman. “It’s his place of business, you might say. I was visiting my brother in Richmond Friday night and the rabbi was over. Most of the time we were talking business, and I had been telling them how I remodeled my store. After dinner we all started out for services, and when we got to the temple the rabbi says, “How do you like my store?”

“What gets me,” Berkowitz said, “our rabbi is supposed to be so traditional and the building we got now looks like anything but a synagogue. Now Mort’s scheme here makes it look like a real synagogue –”

“Seems to me you’re both missing the point,” said Nelson Bloomberg. “Here we’ve got a chance to make a giant step forward. We can make our temple a real showplace on the North Shore. I don’t claim to have any great aesthetic appreciation – although in the dress business, let me tell you, you better develop a sense of style or you’re in trouble – but to me, Mort’s is the kind of building that would get talked about. The kind of building you might expect to see pictured in some magazine. To me, it represents progress. And what’s standing in the way? A ghost. No, not even a ghost, a corpse – the dead body of this guy Hirsh who wasn’t even a member of the congregation. Here we have something that means progress for an entire community – something wholesome and alive – and the rabbi throws in a monkey wrench with a lot of ghoulish technicalities about graves and burials and death. It’s just plain gruesome, when you come right down to it.”

“Nel’s put the whole thing in a nutshell,” said Nate Shatz. “We had a pretty awkward situation here. This idea of having the driveway so everybody is satisfied, Goralsky, the widow, the temple – that’s the kind of thing the rabbi is supposed to dope out. And what happens? Marve and Mort figure it out, and the rabbi instead of being grateful says he forbids it. Either we like it or lump it. Well, I say the fat’s in the fire and we go ahead with the road. He can resign, for all I care.”

“What’s he ever done to you?” asked Jerry Feldman. “You sound angry.”

“I am. He acts as though he’s too good for the likes of us. I see him at the Board meetings and sometimes he says hello and sometimes he doesn’t. My wife gave a bridge and invited his wife, but when she got there all she would take was tea. If he’s too good to eat with us, he’s too good to rabbi for us.”

“Well, I wouldn’t condemn a man because he sticks to his principles,” said Feldman. “If a man wants to eat kosher, especially if he’s a rabbi, I see no harm in it. My mother always kept a kosher house with two sets of dishes and everything. When she’d come to my house, she wouldn’t eat with us either. At the same time – I say maybe we can do better. Personally I’d like to see a man who was a leader and looked like a leader. A man who would take hold and build this place up.”

“A lot of people come into your store, Abner, and you must have heard them talking,” said Schwarz. “How do you think people feel about him?”

Sussman rotated his hand. “Comme ci, comme ça. Some people say he keeps to himself a lot and they don’t like a rabbi to be so standoffish. Some say when they go to the temple on a Friday night they like to hear a sermon – not just a casual talk like he thought it up on his way over. But don’t think he hasn’t friends; he has. A lot of people like the way he talks – common sense and no bull. Like Jerry here, some object to the way he dresses – more like a bookkeeper making seventy-five a week. But that works for him too – brings out the motherly instincts, if you know what I mean.

“Of course, I see mostly women in my place, and they’re always complaining about something. He’s not interested in their work. Half the time when he’s supposed to go to a Sisterhood meeting, they’re not even sure he’ll show up. But you know women; if he were a big handsome guy he could do anything he liked and they’d love it. On the other hand, there’s no doubt they’ve got a lot of influence with their menfolk.”

“How about those who are strong for him?”

“Well, like I say, he’s got his friends but they’re scattered, so I wouldn’t say he has what you might call a following. I mean he’s not the kind of guy that goes out of his way to get a group behind him. And he hasn’t exactly got what you’d call a magnetic personality like some of these glad-handers. You know, my father was president of one temple and a big shot in another, so I know a little about rabbis. You take a smart rabbi, the first thing he does when he comes to a new place he sort of gets the lay of the land – who’s important and who isn’t. Then he develops a party, a clique. Everybody knows they’re the rabbi’s friends, see? Then any time the rabbi wants something, he doesn’t ask the Board of Directors himself personally. He whispers to one of his buddies who is damn important, some guy with plenty of dough who has kicked in to the building fund or who can be tapped for a big contribution when you need it. Then this guy, he talks to the other friends of the rabbi and when one of them gets up in the Board meeting and says, I think we should do thus and so, why somebody else seconds it quick as a wink and before you can say Gut Shabbes it’s passed. A rabbi like that, he runs the organization.”

“I see.”

“Now our rabbi – he don’t have any organization behind him.”

“How about Wasserman and Becker and Doc Carter?”

Sussman shook his head. “They’re not an organization. Wasserman backs him because he picked him, and Becker because he helped out his partner when he got into that trouble a couple of years ago so he feels obligated. You know how a rabbi goes about setting up an organization? He visits with them, he invites them to his house. He’s nice to their wives and he’s helpful to their kids. One I knew who used to help his friends’ kids with their school lessons when he’d come to visit – not their Hebrew school lessons but their public school lessons. Another one would play baseball with some of the kids, and this one even had a beard. Can you imagine our rabbi playing ball?”

Everyone laughed.

“All right,” said Schwarz, “so the consensus of the meeting is… “

Marvin Brown held back after the others left. “You know, Mort, if this doesn’t go through we’ll be left with egg all over our faces.”

“Marve, old boy, it’s in the bag. Nel Bloomberg gave it to us when he said the rabbi was fighting progress. That’s our new theme song – the rabbi is against progress.”

“I didn’t mean the rabbi, I was thinking of Goralsky. How much of a commitment do you have from the old man?”

“It’s pretty firm. Ben was the stumbling block, but now with this, he’s sure to be on our side.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, when he called to tell me about the cemetery, he mentioned his father’s interest in the chapel and said we wouldn’t get it if the situation wasn’t taken care of. Well, if we do clean it up, and we point out that to do it we had a regular hassle with the rabbi, will he have the nerve to say he changed his mind?”

“Maybe, but you know how these things work. Goralsky can stall. The old man can say he put it in his will – why not?” as Schwarz shook his head.

“Because, Marve old boy, I just decided this is going to be called the Hannah Goralsky Memorial Chapel. Get it? We’ll make this a memorial to his wife, Ben’s mother. So isn’t the old man going to want to see it? Isn’t he going to want to be there to lay the cornerstone, and be at the ceremony when it’s completed, and to be the first one called up for the Reading on the first service that’s held there?”

Marvin Brown began to chuckle. “You know, Mort, you’re pretty cute yourself. I think we pulled a fast one on the rabbi.”

Saturday morning at morning services the rabbi’s throat felt dry and scratchy. When he got home he was tired and had little appetite for lunch. He intended to return and spend the afternoon in the temple study, but his bones ached so he lay down on the living-room couch and dozed off. After his nap he felt better and went to the temple for the evening service, and by the time he got home he had a chill; his head felt warm.

The rush of warm air as Miriam opened the door struck him like a blow. His nose twitched and he exploded in a loud sneeze.

“Are you catching cold, David?”

“I don’t think so,” he said, but she stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the forehead. “You’re warm. You’re probably got a temperature.”

“Oh, I’m all right.” But he sneezed again. Paying no attention she marched into the bathroom and appeared a moment later shaking the thermometer with a professional snap of the wrist, inserting it over his mumbled protest.

“101.4. You’ve got a fever,” she announced. “You get undressed right now, David Small, and get into bed.”

“You’re making too much of it,” he said. “I caught cold. I’ll be fine in the morning.”

“Not if you don’t take care of yourself.” She forced water and orange juice on him and aspirin, but when she took his temperature later on in the evening it had risen to 102.

“I’m calling Dr. Sigman,” she said.

“Oh, what’s the sense. It’s just a cold, there’s nothing he can do about it. I’d rather you wouldn’t call.”

“Why not?”

“Because he won’t charge me but he’ll feel it necessary to come out anyway.”

“I can ask him if he wants to see you.” From her tone of voice he knew it was useless to argue.

“He had it himself last week,” she said when she returned to the bedroom. “He says there’s a lot of it going around. It’s a virus infection but doesn’t last long, a couple of days. Just as I said, you are to stay in bed, take aspirin and liquids, and you’re not to venture out until you’ve had a normal temperature for twenty-four hours.”

“A couple of days! But I’ve got a Board meeting tomorrow.”

“Not any longer. You’re staying in bed, at least until Monday. The Board will manage for once without the wisdom of your counsel, I’m sure.”

“But tomorrow is particularly important. I’ve just got to be there.”

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow. And don’t count on it.”