Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet (26 page)

“Hey, look who’s just come in, al Becker.”

“What do you suppose it means? He hasn’t been to a meeting in years.”

“Will you please come to order.” Kaplan banged his gavel on the table. “Come on, guys, let’s get the show on the road. Come to order.”

There were twenty-one members present, the same number as at the last meeting, but they were not the same twenty-one, the rabbi was not there, of course, and two of Kaplan’s close associates were also absent. One had gone out of town on business; the other was home, nursing a bad cold. His wife had threatened to leave him if he set foot out of doors “just to go to a board meeting.”

The secretary had a note from each of them to be polled against the motion to reconsider. It had been at Kaplan’s suggestion that the notes had been sent, and he planned to make use of these proxies if it looked as though the vote would be close.

Of the three who had not been present at the last meeting, one was a regular who had promised Kaplan his support, the other two were past presidents: Ben Gorfinkle of a few years back, who occasionally attended meetings, and Al Becker, who had succeeded Jacob Wasserman, the founder of the temple, in the presidency and who had not come to a meeting in years. Chester Kaplan welcomed him warmly, although he was puzzled by his appearance – and a little disturbed.

Kaplan rapped smartly on the table and announced. “We will now take up the rabbi’s motion to reconsider the sale of the Goralsky Block. Discussion. Mitch?”

Mitch Danziger lumbered on his feet, he was a big man, with a surprisingly gentle voice. In calling him first, the chairman felt that he was demonstrating his fairness, since Mitch was not one of his active supporters. “I’d like to make my position clear. I’m in favor of selling the block to Safferstein. In fact, I can’t imagine how anyone could be against it, because it’s a good deal. I mean if a stock is selling for sixty and a broker comes along and offers you a hundred, wouldn’t you take it? But I’m not convinced that buying land in New Hampshire is such a good deal –”

“Have you seen it?”

“No, I haven’t, but –”

“And that’s not the basis for the rabbi’s motion that’s on the floor –”

“Oh, yes it is. You remember the rabbi said –”

“But Paul Goodman it was, I think, who pointed out that –”

“But he said –”

“No, what he said was –”

“Order, order.” Kaplan rapped on the table. “Look, fellows, everyone will get a chance to speak his piece, but let’s address our remarks to the chair. Now before this whole discussion gets out of hand, let me try to narrow it down so that we can all talk on the same point. I think everyone agrees with Mitch that selling the stores is a good deal for the temple, and I’m willing to admit that some who voted for it weren’t so keen on buying the New Hampshire land. If you want, if you think that there are enough to make that a contest, then I’m willing to split the two ideas into separate motions and vote on each of them. But right now, we’re not actually concerned with either one. It’s not a question of whether we should sell the Goralsky property so much as whether we have a right to, the rabbi claims we haven’t, according to Jewish law, or at least that we have to give Aptaker his lease before we do. But I can tell you definitely that if we did, it would kill the sale. Now, there’s the other regulation in Jewish law that I brought up, namely that where there is a conflict between Jewish law and the law of the land, it is the latter that applies, the rabbi claims that it doesn’t apply in this case, all right, so where do we stand? To me, it’s a question of priorities. I’m inclined to think that if we asked another rabbi, he might rule that in this case, the rule I mentioned does apply –”

“So why don’t we ask another rabbi?” asked Paul Goodman.

“Because.” Kaplan replied, “it isn’t like appealing to a higher court, as in our system, where the ruling of the higher court automatically supersedes the ruling of the lower court, with us, all rabbis are the same. Some have bigger reputations than others, but their authority is no greater. So we could go from one rabbi to another, and one would say yes and the other no and the third yes and so on. It could go on forever, as I see it, it’s for us to decide whether the rule I suggested is completely without relevance and that the law the rabbi mentioned is binding on us because this is a synagogue. In which case, we notify Safferstein that we have to renege on our promise to sell. Of course, he could turn around and sue us for breach of contract, although I don’t think he would. Or we can decide that the rule I mentioned gives us an out, even though it’s a squeaker, and turn down the motion for reconsideration. Now that’s what I’d like you to address yourself to. Paul?”

Paul Goodman got up. “I’d like to start by saying that our president has just done a masterly job in shearing away the superficial aspects of this situation and focusing our attention on the kernel of the problem. Now one of the hardest aspects of practicing law, and I’m sure Chet will bear me out, is explaining to your client that the law is not a yes-or-no thing, he always wants to know if something is legal or not, and you have to explain that one set of precedents say it is and that other precedents suggest that it might not be, that in the final analysis the law is what the judge and jury – that’s us in this case – say it is, and what’s apt to determine their finding is the hard practicality of the situation as much as anything else. I’d like to point out, and the rabbi himself admitted it, that the rule that Chet brought up was originally adopted by the rabbis only because it was the practical thing to do under the circumstances. Oh yeah, and one other thing, as I understood it, this Din Torah thing the rabbi mentioned calls for some big-shot rabbi and two assistants, well, I don’t know how it works, since I’ve never seen one in operation, but I would imagine that they sit as a board of three and decide on the basis of the majority, well, why would you need three judges if it were an open-and-shut case?”

Henry Vogel got the floor. “As far as I’m concerned, I don’t see that Aptaker deserves all the consideration we’re showing him. I happen to know him on account the market next door is one of my clients. So when I’m in the neighborhood servicing my client, I might drop in to the Town-Line. So one day, we get to talking, and I tell him I’m a CPA. I wasn’t soliciting his business, you understand. I just happened to mention it, and he says, as if I asked him or was even interested, that he has his work done by Kavanaugh and Otis, which is a Gentile firm to begin with and this Otis is an A-number-one anti-Semite.

Now here’s the point I’m trying to make, aptaker is one of the first Jews in town. But is he a member of the temple? No, sir, he’s been approached every time we’ve had a membership drive, and each time he wasn’t interested, as a member of the Membership Committee, I know what I’m talking about, he probably figures that up there on the Salem Road where there’s no Jewish residents to speak of, where it’s practically a hundred percent Gentile, he don’t have to belong. But I’ll tell you something else, he didn’t have his kid Bar Mitzvahed, not in our temple or anyplace else. Now, I know that for a fact. So if he’s not interested in anything Jewish, why should we go out of our way to give him the benefit of a special Jewish law?”

Murray Isaacs raised the question of Aptaker’s physical condition. “We could end up with egg all over our face, here’s a guy that’s just had a heart attack. No insurance company would issue a policy to him, and we’re planning to underwrite him for ten years. Suppose we go along with the rabbi, give him his lease and stop the sale, and then after a couple of months he decides he can’t carry on and closes his store. What are we left with? I’ll tell you – a second vacant store.”

Several hands were raised, but out of courtesy to a past president. Kaplan nodded to Ben Gorfinkle. “I wasn’t here at your last meeting.” said Gorfinkle, “but I got the impression from what I heard that the rabbi felt strongly enough about this matter to make it a test of whether he stays on. If that is so, then it puts the whole business in a different perspective. Because if he feels that strongly about it, then it must be a lot more basic to Judaism than some of the previous speakers seem to suggest.”

“I think you were misinformed, Ben,” said the chairman. “The rabbi said nothing about resigning if the vote went against reconsideration. It was some idea he had about our retreats in New Hampshire, he thought the kind of services we had might not be in keeping with traditional Judaism and that if the temple went that way, he wanted no part of it. But then, neither would most of us.”

“I’d like to say something,” said Paul Goodman, and without waiting for permission from the chairman, he went on, “I don’t think the consideration of how the rabbi might react should have any effect on our deliberations here. Certainly not on the present matter. It’s up to us to decide, because we are the elected directors of the temple. If we stop to think each time we decide something whether the rabbi is going to like it or not, then we stop being the directors and he becomes the one running the temple, and if that’s what the congregation wanted, then they would have appointed him temple manager. I think we all know our minds and I move the previous question.”

Several members applauded and a few others approvingly patted the table top in front of them, the chairman chose to disregard Goodman’s remarks but responded to the motion. “Paul has moved the previous question –”

“Yeah: let’s vote.”

“Second.”

“Just a minute, Mr. Chairman.” It was the loud harsh voice of Al Becker. “I don’t get down here often, but I’d like to say a few words right now, if I may.”

“Of course, Mr. Becker.”

Becker rose and leaned forward, supporting his heavy torso by placing his two clenched fists on the table. “I came down today because Jake Wasserman asked me to, he would have come himself, but he doesn’t go out too much these days, he heard that this was going to be a meeting where the rabbi was asked not to be present and he thought somebody should be here to watch out for his interests. Now. I don’t know too much about the issue you’re discussing, but I know quite a bit about our rabbi. In the early days of the temple when Jake Wasserman was president and when I was president and for the years when I took an active part in temple activities. I never knew the rabbi to get involved in politics, he’d come to the meetings, but he took no part in the discussion unless it concerned him directly. But every now and then a matter would come up which he thought was his business and he’d take a stand and he’d stick to it come hell or high water. Jake Wasserman says he’s got a kind of built-in radar that warns him if the congregation is drifting away from our tradition, and that’s when he takes a stand, and it’s been my experience that he’s usually proved right. Now without knowing all the ins and outs of this business. I feel that if he’s taken a stand on it, then it’s because his radar tells him we’re drifting. I’d like you to think about that when you vote.”

“Thank you, Mr. Becker,” said Kaplan. “I think we’re ready to vote now.”

The secretary cleared his throat to attract the president’s attention as he nodded at the proxies lying on the table in front of him. Kaplan responded with a barely perceptible shake of the head, he felt quite confident. “We’ll vote by a show of hands, all in favor of reconsideration, all opposed.” Kaplan beamed, the vote was fifteen to five against reconsideration.

Later, as they made their wav to their cars, Dr. Muntz asked, “Are you going to stop by to tell the rabbi how the vote went?”

Kaplan halted suddenly. “Do you think I should?”

“Would you rather have him hear some garbled report through the grapevine, maybe from his wife who overhears a couple of women talking in the supermarket?”

“You’re right. But it’s not a job I relish particularly. It’ll be pretty embarrassing.”

“Would you like me to tell him, Chet?”

“Would you? Then I appoint you a committee of one. You going right now?”

“No,” said Dr. Muntz. “Why spoil his dinner? I’ll drop in on him sometime this afternoon.”

Lieutenant Jennings finished the typescript of the McLane conversation tape recording and tossed the folder on the desk. “Are you buying it, Hugh?”

“I’ve got to check it out,” said Lanigan mildly. “He could be lying –”

“Of course.”

“I mean about giving the prescription to young Aptaker to make up,” Jennings said. “And since it happened a couple of weeks ago, Aptaker wouldn’t remember and couldn’t deny it.”

Lanigan nodded. “On the other hand, you’d expect that the name Kestler on the prescription would ring a bell. But there are other things that incline me to believe McLane’s story. Begin with the fact that he voluntarily told us about the prescription. If he were guilty of having deliberately given Kestler the wrong drug, he’d keep quiet about it.”

“Unless he’s smarter than you think.”

“All right.” said Lanigan. “Then consider this: McLane gets the prescription from Cohen over the phone, so there was nothing to prevent him from changing it to penicillin, he could insist that was what he had been told over the phone, and there’d be no way for Dr. Cohen to disprove it.”

“But then he’d have to write penicillin on the label, and the chances are that Kestler would know his father couldn’t take penicillin.”

“No,” said Lanigan, “he’d use the manufacturer’s name for the drug, Vespids. Kestler wouldn’t recognize that as penicillin. But then the more you think about it, the stranger young Aptaker’s behavior appears, he comes here all the way from Philadelphia to see his folks. If he drove up, it’s a long drive, and if he flew up, it’s costly. If he was on vacation, you’d think he’d at least have a week. You’d expect he’d come up Sunday or Monday and stay through to the following Sunday.”

“How do you know he didn’t?” Jennings asked.

“Well, Eban, if we’re to believe McLane, he left the next day, and on that, we’ve got to believe McLane, because it’s something that we can check out easily enough with Marcus Aptaker or with Mrs. aptaker. But you’d think that if young Aptaker had arrived Monday, he would have gone to the store and his father would have introduced him to McLane. But no, he waits until Wednesday evening before coming in, and then the next day, he’s gone.”