That Day the Rabbi Left Town (13 page)

“Maybe it's morning sickness,” said Miriam. “Sounds like it.”

“Morning sickness? You think she might be pregnant? Hmm, maybe that's why she's taking the course, so she can decide in which religion the child should be brought up.”

Chapter 17

Unlike the regular evening service on the other days of the week, the Friday evening service began at half past eight, after dinner, rather than at seven, and instead of the usual dozen or fifteen—or when the weather was very bad, the required minimum of ten—a couple of hundred usually attended. The service was held in the sanctuary rather than in the vestry as on the rest of the week. Rabbi Selig, in an academic robe, long silk prayer shawl, and high white yarmulke, gave a short sermon, and when the service was ended, all repaired to the vestry for coffee or tea and cake. It was more social than religious, and men came with their wives and their grown sons and daughters.

The Harris brothers, Ronnie and Ben, had come without their wives. They had dined earlier, the regular Sabbath meal of gefilte fish, soup, roast chicken, at Ronnie's house. At forty-five he was six years older than his brother Ben, and more conservative in his habits, so the Sabbath meal was more often at his house.

They had all planned to go to the Friday evening service afterward, but Ronnie's wife said she was tired and would just as soon stay home, and Ben's wife thought she ought to stay and keep her company. So the two brothers had gone by themselves. And now, a little after ten, as they made their way through the parking lot to their car, Ben remarked, “The rabbi didn't look so good tonight, sort of pale.”

“He caught a cold, I suppose. He sneezed a couple of times up there beside the Ark. What do you expect? You go running in this kind of weather, you're bound to catch cold.”

“You don't catch cold from the weather. You get it from germs, usually in a room full of people where someone is bound to have a cold and coughs or sneezes.”

“Oh yeah? So why do people get colds in winter and not in summer? And how does it look for a rabbi to be out in the street, running in short pants or those droopy sweatpants?”

“So what? That's on his own time. On the bimah he looks—”

“He looks like a cantor in the gown and with that high yarmulke.”

“It's better than the way Rabbi Small used to look up there in the wrinkled suit and the dusty shoes.”

“Rabbi Small's shoes were dusty because he always walked to the temple. He wouldn't ride on the Sabbath,” said Ronnie severely.

“Well, he could have wiped them before he came on the bimah.”

“Probably never occurred to him. See, he was a rabbi all the time, twenty-four hours a day; not just when he was giving a sermon.”

“Yeah, well, you got to admit the kids like Rabbi Selig. He plays basketball with them.”

“Well, when my kids were going to Hebrew School, they liked Rabbi Small. And do you know why? Not because he played with them, but because he talked to them as though they were adults. And they appreciated it.”

“Seems to me,” said Ben, “you were not too crazy about Small when he was here.”

“Maybe, but that was because he was a kind of cold fish. I mean, I didn't care for him personally, but I couldn't fault him as a rabbi. Now, Rabbi Selig, he's a nice, friendly kind of guy. If he were my accountant, or my doctor, or if I were doing business with him, he'd be fine, just fine. But as my rabbi … Look here, his closest friend here in Barnard's Crossing is that lawyer Lew Baumgold, who isn't a member of the temple, and who doesn't go to services even on the High Holidays. And what's more, he's married to a
shiksa
.”

“He's friendly with Lew because they jog together. And as for that
shiksa
, she teaches at Windermere. And what's more, she's pretty friendly with Rabbi Small; takes his course in Judaic Philosophy. I got that from Cy Kaplan, whose son goes there.”

“No kidding! Maybe she's planning to convert.”

“Could be. And maybe that's why Rabbi Selig is so friendly with Lew Baumgold.”

Chapter 18

They took seats around three sides of the oblong table as the rabbi wheeled his armchair from behind his desk to the fourth side of the table. “I thought we might spend the hour in an informal discussion of the subject I asked you to think about, the phrase from Isaiah that Jews are to be a light unto the nations. Anyone …”

“Well, there's Einstein and—and Freud and—and—”

“Nah, they're just individuals who happened to be Jews,” a student objected.

“And Marx, and a whole slew of others. He wouldn't've made a prophecy of individuals. He meant the whole race,” said another.

“That's right, because you find smart individuals in all races. It's ideas he meant, not the accomplishment of some one person.”

The rabbi nodded approvingly. “And these ideas would have to be ideas that all Jews held, or were generally accepted and lived by,” said the rabbi. “But they'd also have to be ideas that other nations have come to accept, or the light wouldn't be any use to them. Isn't that right?”

“Sure, a light's no use if you're blind.”

“Or blindfolded.”

“Or looking the other way.”

“So what ideas did the Jews develop that the other nations accepted?”

“Well, the idea of one God, monotheism,” a student suggested.

“Yeah, but the Christians and the Muslims, too, have monotheism,” another objected.

“But they got it from us.”

“So that shows that they saw the light.”

“And what was the advantage of monotheism?” asked the rabbi. “The assumption is that light is better than darkness, so what did the other nations gain by this bit of light?”

“Where there's more than one, they can disagree.”

“Sure, you see it in Homer, in the
Iliad
, where the gods are on different sides.”

“One god is like a referee or an umpire. So a thing is right or it's wrong. With one God you have justice.”

“Very good,” said the rabbi. “Is there anything else?”

“How about the Sabbath?”

“What about it?”

“Well, it sort of established a day of rest. For Christians it's Sunday, and for Muslims it's Friday, but didn't we establish the general principle?”

The rabbi rose from his chair and said, “Why don't I list these on the blackboard.” Then he wrote down “Monotheism.” Under it, he wrote “Sabbath.” “Anything else?” he asked.

“We don't hunt and shoot animals for pleasure, and a lot of people are beginning to feel the same way.”

“We don't even shoot them for food. They'd be
traif
.”

“There's a movement against fox hunting in England.”

“Yeah, and how about the whales?”

“All right,” the rabbi said, and wrote down “Animals.” “It's more than just not shooting them,” he added. “We avoid hurting them. We don't yoke a donkey and an ox together. We do not muzzle the ox that treads the corn. We do not take eggs from a nest if the mother bird is watching.”

“Labor,” someone called out.

“What about labor?”

“You've got to pay labor the prevailing wage, and they can organize in a union.”

“And they have to be paid in cash; no company store.”

“How about literacy? Don't we equate the degree of civilization with the degree of literacy? And we've been a hundred percent literate for a couple of thousand years.”

“Cleanliness; washing your hands before eating. I read somewhere that in the Middle Ages dirt was a mark of holiness.”

“Enjoyment; we're supposed to enjoy ourselves.”

When the bell rang, signaling the end of the hour, they did not rush out as they normally would, but got up from their seats slowly, still continuing to discuss among themselves the subject matter of the class. Sarah McBride lingered on, and when they had all left, she asked in response to the rabbi's inquiring look, “How do you go about converting?”

“The discussion in class—”

She shook her head. “I've been thinking about it for some time.”

“We don't proselytize, in part because it used to be forbidden and in part because it wasn't necessary; the righteous Gentile had the same standing with us as the observant Jew.”

“I wasn't thinking of myself,” she said. “But if I have a child, I figure it will be a lot easier to bring up if both parents have the same religion.”

The rabbi nodded. “I see. Well, with us conversion is primarily adoption, adoption into the tribe. It isn't just changing your mind about what you believe. See, we made a compact with God, a real contract binding Him and us. So the convert has to be one of us; not merely someone who thinks the way we do. It involves a change of name, for one thing. Usually Abraham for a man and Sarah for a woman.” He smiled. “But your name is Sarah, so you're already halfway there.”

“That's all there is to it? A change of name?”

“Oh no. There are conversion classes, which involve a course of study, for about six months, I think. Then there is an examination, and finally circumcision for the man and a kind of ritual bath for the woman.”

“Would this course that I'm taking with you be the equivalent of the conversion class?”

The rabbi shook his head. “No, conversion classes are quite different; they deal with the actual practice, the observance of the commandments, the holidays and how they are to be kept. It's quite different from what I intend for this course. When you take a conversion class, you are apt to end up knowing a lot more about the practice of the religion than your Jewish partner.”

“Then …” She spread her arms in questioning dejection.

“Unless he takes the class along with you. It's not unusual.”

“I don't get it. If he doesn't know any more about it than I do, and a lot less than I'll know after taking a six-month course—”

“I've never met your husband, but from what little you've said, I know quite a bit about him. He grew up in an observant family, I gather from what you said about his eating habits. I suspect he's a practicing Jew although not an observant one. His thinking is quite different from yours. You said you felt you had sinned when you had an evil thought and that you would list it among your sins when you went to Confession, and do penance for it. He didn't feel he had sinned unless he had actually done something wrong to a person; it would never occur to him that he could gain forgiveness through prayer or penance, but only from the person he had wronged.

“He's not afraid of hell, and he doesn't look forward to an eternity in Heaven when he dies. Faith, which is so important to you, has little meaning for him. He may or may not believe in the existence of God, but if as a result of reading some philosophical work, say, he decided he's an atheist, it wouldn't affect his behavior in the least.”

He nodded at the blackboard. “Think of some of the things that were mentioned in class; literacy, for one. If his child showed no interest in his schoolwork, it would bother him a lot. And if he dropped out of school, he would regard it as a tragedy. These are Jewish attitudes that he absorbed in the same way that he absorbed his food habits.”

“But I'd feel the same way if a child of mine dropped out of school, or couldn't read.”

“But would your great-great-grandfather have felt that way, or would he have thought that reading was a function of the local priest?”

“All right. You're saying that we got it from you. That's what you mean by Israel being a light unto the nations. Okay. Whether we got them from you, or came to them on our own, what difference does it make? Our attitudes are the same now.”

“No, no, no,” said the rabbi, shaking his head. “They're quite different. You pray, which means to beg, to entreat. We
daven
. The origin of the word is obscure, but it consists of giving thanks for blessings we receive. It's simplistic, but where you say, ‘Give us this day our daily bread,' we say, ‘Blessed art thou, O Lord, who brought forth bread from the earth.' We call it praying for lack of a better word, and because outwardly it resembles what you do.

“Charity. We both consider it important. But you give out of the goodness of your heart, whereas with us it's a sort of tax that we're shamed or constrained into giving. Even when we use our traditional terms, you tend to equate them to something in your religion that is actually quite different. A synagogue is not the equivalent of a church, and a rabbi is not at all like your priest or minister. As a rabbi, I am a purely secular figure with no liturgical function whatsoever. I am a rabbi by virtue of having studied our Law, passed an examination, and been declared capable of sitting as a judge in cases brought before me. I don't bless people or things. Periodically the Kohanim, the descendants of Aaron, who frequently have names like Cohen or Kahn or Katz or Kagan, bless the congregation.”

“And my Lew knows all this stuff because his folks kept a kosher house?”

“I'm sure he's aware of the difference in the way he's asked for a contribution to the Red Cross from the way he's approached to contribute to the UJA. And having been in a synagogue, I'm sure he realizes that the rabbi has no liturgical function. If he's ever been in a church, then he must have noticed the difference between your praying and our
daven
ing. Yes, I'm sure he's aware of much of what I told you.”

“Then maybe I ought to talk to him about this conversion class. Maybe I could get him to go with me. You see, I'm going to have a baby.”

“Oh, congratulations. When do you expect—”

“To give birth? Sometime in May or early June.”

Curiously, as the rabbi made his way home, the thought uppermost in his mind was that he could tell Miriam that she had guessed right.