Thursday the Rabbi Walked Out (7 page)

Segal shrugged. “I don’t practice it, but I’ve never denied it.”

Mimi said. “His brother changed his name to Sears and wanted Ben to, but Ben wouldn’t consider it.”

“That’s fine.” said Maltzman. “but in a small town like Barnard’s Crossing, people want to know where you stand. If you want to be respected and accepted, you got to be part of the group they associate you with, and here, that means joining the temple. You got to show that you’re willing to stand up and be counted.”

“But I’m not the least bit religious.” Segal protested.

“So what? Most of our members aren’t, we only get about a hundred at a Friday evening service. I always go because I’m president of the congregation. Joining the temple is not a matter of religion, so much as a way of showing you feel you belong.”

“But it’s different with me.” said Segal. “I honestly don’t think I have a right to be a member of a synagogue. You see. I was never Bar Mitzvah. My folks were terribly poor when I was a kid, and they just couldn’t afford it at the time.”

“Oh Ben, dear, you never told me.” Mimi was all sympathy. “But about Bar Mitzvah. I imagine you can have it anytime. Can’t he, Mr. Maltzman? Seems to me I saw something on TV about a seventy-year-old man in California who just had one. His folks couldn’t afford it either when he was a youngster.”

“Say, I remember that.” said Maltzman. “And in the Hadassah Journal there was a story about a whole bunch of men, a club, or from the same synagogue, mature men, who went to Israel and had a group Bar Mitzvah at the Wall. Look here. Mr. Segal, if you’re interested. I’ll see the rabbi and arrange it.” Then it came to him – the gimmick. “Tell you what. I’ll put it up to the board, and if they see things my way; we’ll have the temple sponsor it.”

“Well, it seems to me there’s quite a ceremony, isn’t there? I mean, it’s not just the party. I seem to remember kids my age who had to study up for it. Special prayers they had to learn by heart and –”

“Nothing to it. Mr. Segal,” said Maltzman earnestly. “You’re called up to the Reading of the Torah and you pronounce a blessing, the Bar Mitzvah kids chant it in Hebrew. But you don’t have to chant it. Or if you were willing, I could arrange for the cantor to teach you, and even if you don’t know how to read Hebrew, we have it transliterated in English. Or you could even say it in English, then after the portion is read, you say another blessing, and we could work that the same way: and that’s it. Of course, normally the Bar Mitzvah boy chants the portion from the Prophets, too, hell, some of them run the whole Reading service. Kind of showing off, you see. But it’s not necessary. Believe me, the whole thing’s a pipe.”

“Is yours the only synagogue in town, Mr. Maltzman?” asked Mimi.

“That’s right, Mrs. Segal, and all Jews in the community belong, all that have been living here for some time. Of course, there are some families that are new, and maybe not a hundred percent sure they’re going to remain on account of their jobs, but those who’ve settled here, practically all of them belong. You say the word, and I’ll make arrangements with the rabbi and all.”

Ben Segal looked doubtfully at his wife, and when she nodded brightly, he said, “All right. Count me in.”

“Swell,” said Maltzman. “And I’ll get to work on that lot on the Point right away.”

In the dining room of the Agathon Yacht Club, one could order a cocktail, but only with dinner, and while you could linger over coffee and a brandy afterward, the house committee did not like you to linger too long. During the sailing season, the dining room was busy and there were apt to be people waiting for a table. In the off-season, the waiters resented having to wait overlong to clean up.

There was the lounge, of course, but it was on the formal side – a room of long windows curtained and velvet draped, of rugs and carpets, of sofas and armchairs in satin and brocade, of highly polished mahogany tables, with silk-shaded lamps. It was where you met your guests and chatted for a few minutes, just long enough for them to be impressed, before ushering them into the dining room, or down to the dock to your boat. Mostly women sat there and had tea or coffee brought to them.

For serious drinking, or for the long pointless conversations that killed an evening, there was the bar, and it was masculine territory. It was not forbidden to women, but by tacit agreement they never went there. It was a bare room with glaring ceiling lights that cast pools of light on the bare gray battleship linoleum that covered the floor, the furniture consisted of half a dozen round cigarette-scarred wooden tables, each surrounded by several captain’s chairs, against the wall was a small bar, little more than a high counter, behind which were shelves of bottles, a small refrigerator and a sink.

The decor, or lack of it, was a holdover from Prohibition days, the feeling then had been that while it was not necessary that drinking be surreptitious, it would be brazen to do it in luxurious comfort, with repeal, and periodically since, there were suggestions that the room should be refurnished, something on the order of leather armchairs and knotty pine paneling and sporting or sailing prints, but the members who used it most resisted stoutly, perhaps through fear that if it were spruced up and redecorated, women might be attracted to it.

There were no waiters, only the barman. If it was not busy, he might in response to a nod bring over a refill, but usually you got your drink at the bar and carried it over to a table. Thursday was usually an off night at the bar, which is why Jordon chose it for his weekly visit, he did not like crowded bars, full of the boisterous din of well-lubricated good fellowship, he preferred the company of his old cronies, people he was used to, with whom ha could talk sensibly, even seriously and philosophically; or sit with them in pleasant silence if the mood so moved them.

Although others would probably drift in later, only one table was now occupied, and as he waited for his drink to be poured. Jordon noted with satisfaction that of the four men seated around it, two were Thursday night regulars, there was old Dr. Springhurst, the retired rector of St, Andrew’s Episcopal, silver-haired and distinguished-looking in his Roman collar and gray flannel suit, as an avowed atheist, Jordon got a special pleasure in arguing religion with him, the other was Albert Megrim, a stockbroker and one of the selectmen of the town, with whom he liked to talk politics. Megrim was a stoutish man, with a round face surmounted by thin hair precisely parted in the middle, he always wore a dark conservative business suit and a white shirt with a bow tie, even on hot summer nights.

The other two at the table. Jordon knew only casually. Jason Walters, a corporation lawyer, was a tall, craggy man, who went in for vigorous sports and made a fetish of keeping fit. Jordon noted that he was wearing a sweat suit and sneakers and was probably going to top off the evening with a fast game of squash, the fourth man, by far the youngest of the group, not yet forty; was Don Burkhardt, a partner in a firm called Creative Engineers Incorporated, which went in for such diverse things as designing office furniture and layout, work-flow analysis and even preparing the graphics for the annual reports of corporations. Him. Jordon eyed with distaste as he waited at the bar for his drink to be poured, he did not like his carefully tailored Eisenhower jacket and jeans of carefully faded blue, he did not like his blond Afro hairstyle, a halo of curls framing his narrow face, and most of all, he did not like what he regarded as his radical ideas, by which he meant that Burkhardt made no secret of voting Democrat, and considered himself a liberal Democrat at that.

As they saw Jordon approach carrying his drink, the four men shifted a little to make room for him to insinuate another chair.

“How are you keeping. Ellsworth?” Dr. Springhurst greeted him.

“Tolerable, Padre, tolerable.”

“Gore is down at the pistol range, I suppose,” remarked Albert Megrim.

“No, I came myself this time.” said Jordon. “Larry is busy preparing for his Peter Archer silver exhibition. Why?”

“We were wondering about this new member he proposed. Is he a yachtsman? Has he got a boat?”

“Whatsat? New member? I’m on the committee and I don’t know anything about any new member.”

“His name has been posted. Ellsworth.” said Jason Walters. “Name of Segal.”

“It’s Ben Segal of Chicago.” said Megrim, “the one who’s taking over the Rohrbough Corporation.”

“Segal? Jew?” demanded Jordon.

Megrim smiled sardonically. “You can’t always tell these days, he’s not what I’d call a Jew. Ellsworth. I mean, he’s a financier, there was a long write-up on him in Business Week, aman like that is not a Jew.”

“I know exactly what you mean.” said Walters. “There’s a private bank in New York that our firm has had dealings with for years, trust funds and what not, well, one day I had occasion to call their president, and I was told ha wasn’t in. So I asked to be switched to the head of their trust division, and he wasn’t in. So, kind of jokingly; I asked what was going on, was it some kind of holiday in New York? And the switchboard operator tells me it was Yon – Yom –”

“Yom Kippur,” Don Burkhardt supplied.

“That’s right, Yom Kippur. It’s their very special holy day.” He turned to the younger man. “How did you know?”

“Because my partner is a Jew, and a lot of my friends are.”

“Oh! Well, anyway, the point I was trying to make is that all the years I had been dealing with them, it never struck me that they were Jewish, the whole firm is, at least all the top brass. What do you think of that?” He shook his head in wonder.

“You guys make me sick.” said Burkhardt, pushing away from the table as if to give physical demonstration of his disgust. “You talk like a bunch of Ku Klux red-necks.”

“You mean me?” Jason Walters was indignant. “Don’t you try to make me out a bigot. I’ll have you know our family physician is Dr. Goldstein here in town and we think the world of him.”

“If you mean me. Don.” Megrim drawled, “it’s hogwash. My last year in college. I roomed with a Jew, he lives out in Detroit now, and whenever I get there on business, he’s the first one I call, we go to dinner and then maybe a show and afterward we might go to a bar and just talk. Why, there are things I tell him that I wouldn’t tell my own brother, or my wife, either, for that matter, he’s probably closer to me than –”

“And I might point out,” Jason Walters went on loftily, “that a couple of years ago, instead of going to Bermuda or Palm Beach for our winter vacation the way we usually do. Grace and I went to the Holy Land, and I told everybody what a terrific job they were doing. Of course, they’ve got to do something about the Palestinian refugees, but on balance they’ve done wonders, and I said so every chance I got.”

“You’ve got to understand, Don,” said Albert Megrim soothingly, “that this is a social club. It’s a place where you come to meet people. Naturally, you prefer your own kind because you’re more comfortable with them.”

“That’s right.” said Walters earnestly. “Look, my daughters go to the dances here, well, naturally; I want them to meet their own kind of people, that doesn’t mean I’m prejudiced.”

“Sure,” said Burkhardt scornfully, “everybody denies being anti-Semitic, but –”

“I don’t,” said Ellsworth Jordon.

“You don’t?” The young man stared at him. “You mean you are anti-Semitic?”

“Certainly, all of us are, and you are, too, Burkhardt. You’re ashamed to admit it because you have a lot of crackpot liberal ideas about how only the ignorant are prejudiced. But you are just the same. Having one as a business partner, or as a family physician whom you think the world of, or as a best friend proves nothing. Or, rather, to a Jew it proves you are anti-Semitic, that’s a kind of inside joke among them, anytime anyone says his best friends are Jews, they know it’s an anti-Semite talking.” He smiled broadly. “I know, because at one time some of my best friends were Jewish.”

“But you just said –” Don Burkhardt was nonplussed.

“Oh, I can admit it because I know why we’re anti-Semitic.”

“You do? Why?”

“Because they make us feel uncomfortable.”

“Why should they make you feel uncomfortable?”

“Because they’re better than we are.” said Jordon simply.

They stared at him.

“Hogwash! How do you mean, better?” demanded Megrim.

“Morally; ethically;” said Jordon. “I guess they’re just more civilized than we are, that’s what makes us feel uncomfortable, and that’s why we dislike them.” He laughed aloud. “And the joke is that the buggers don’t have any idea why they’re disliked, not a clue, they just don’t understand the psychology of it, they point out that they’re good and loyal citizens with a low divorce rate and a low crime rate, that they’re sober and industrious and ambitious, they’re active in all kinds of worthwhile movements and reforms and are usually on the side of the underdog. But that doesn’t get you liked, you know. Quite the contrary, they were the first to help the Blacks, for instance, and the result is that they are the ones the Blacks resent most.”

“Yeah, but they helped the Blacks because they’re both minority peoples,” Megrim pointed out. “But you take in Israel, where they are in the majority –”

“They’re making the same mistake.” said Jordon promptly.

“They set up a two-bit country on a two by four piece of land, and the first thing they do is to take in all their kinfolk from all the Arab countries, the old and the sick, and not a dime among the lot of them, and they feed them when they themselves haven’t got a pot to pee in, and there were almost as many of these refugees as the total population of the country at the time.”

Jordon took a sip of his drink and continued, “On the other hand, the entire Arab world, about eighty million of them with Lord knows how many millions of square miles of territory, could not find room for a couple of thousand of their own kinfolk and left them in refugee camps to rot, and everybody like Jason Walters here says the Israelis have got to do something about their Palestinian refugees, the Israelis, mind you, not the Arabs.”

“Yeah, they take care of their own.” said Megrim. “Everybody knows that. But today –”