As far as I knew, I had no rabbis in my family tree, but back in Lithuania, my great-grandfather had been a tzadik, a righteous man who went to morning worship every day, a layman who had devoted himself to study while his wife ran their leather-tanning business. He’d probably have been pleased that at least one of his descendants was coming back into the flock.
Would he still look for answers in the Torah? I came from generations and generations of people of the book, who had looked to those ancient words for guidance on how to live their lives. And here I was, in the twenty-first century, doing the same thing by attending the sessions with Rabbi Goldberg.
Had we learned so little since those dark days of World War II? People were still suffering and dying all around the world. But the solution couldn’t be to bring them all here. My head began to ache at the complexity of it all. Perhaps Professor Del Presto could help a group of interested people make sense of it all. That was the point of Friar Lake, after all.
Around four o’clock Lili texted me that she had another marathon phone call scheduled with her brother that evening, and it might be a good idea if I went out, as she was likely to be in a bad mood when it ended.
I called her and let her know I’d made plans with Rick. “We’re meeting at the Drunken Hessian to talk about a body.”
“Not another one. Steve, don’t you find it disturbing how dead bodies keep dropping in your path? After all, these are real people, with families and friends, and their lives get cut short.”
“I know. And I’m starting to feel like this is almost a calling, to help those people have justice. But in this case, Rochester and I didn’t have anything to do with this one. We just happened to be at Talmud study when the body was discovered. It was Rabbi Goldberg’s brother – you know, the homeless man who showed up at the blessing of the animals on Sunday.”
“The poor man,” she said, and I wasn’t sure if she meant the rabbi or his brother. “Was it natural causes? Oh, wait, nobody around you dies of natural causes.”
“Then are you sure you want me to meet your mother?”
“Don’t get me started. When you speak to the rabbi next, be sure to send him my condolences.”
When I hung up the phone, I looked at Rochester, who had brought a pebble in from our lunchtime walk and was sniffing it. That reminded me of Joel Goldberg and his worry stone. I took the pebble away from Rochester so he wouldn’t break a tooth on it, and turned back to my computer.
From the SEPTA website, I checked the bus schedule for the night before. The latest bus Joel could have taken would have gotten him to Shomrei Torah shortly after eleven PM. Of course, it was possible that Joel had gotten there earlier, but according to Rabbi Goldberg the cantor had closed up the building at seven that evening. Unless Joel had arrived while she was tutoring, and hidden on the property, it was likely he’d gotten there after she had already left.
For a moment I considered her as a suspect. But I had seen her when I’d attended services, and she was a petite woman, not tall enough to have cracked Joel Goldberg over the head. She hadn’t been at the blessing of the animals, and I had no reason to suspect that she even knew of Joel’s existence. Even so, I sent a quick email to Rick with what I’d discovered.
Because Rick had asked about the rabbi, I Googled him and discovered that he was thirty years old and held an MA in Hebrew Letters and Literature from Hebrew Union College, the yeshiva for Reform rabbis. He had worked as a hospital chaplain in Seattle for two years after graduating, which tied in with his interest in Jewish healing.
Then he had been hired as assistant rabbi by an inner-city temple in Milwaukee coping with a declining membership. Soon after he left, the congregation had combined with another in the suburbs along Lake Michigan.
I wondered if his departure from the pulpit there had as much to do with demographics as with his brother’s outburst, but I couldn’t be sure.
The rabbi regularly blogged a version of his sermon, and maintained the temple’s website himself. He also tweeted tidbits of Jewish history and culture and posted photos of the temple’s sukkah and holiday celebrations on Instagram. In addition to the Talmud study group, he hosted a monthly Jewish-themed movie night, and took the youth group on field trips to places of Jewish interest like New York’s Lower East Side and The National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia.
Quite impressive for a young rabbi, especially a single one without a wife to help him. But then, maybe his bachelorhood was the reason why he had so much time for the temple. I’d scaled back my outside activities once I had Lili in my life.
Or was his single status a result of his difficult family background? I imagined it would be tough enough to find a woman willing to take on the unpaid job of being a rebbetzin, a rabbi’s wife, without the additional burden of a mentally ill sibling.
I shut down my computer and stood up. The rabbi’s situation made my problems with Lili and her mother seem small by comparison. But at least I had some information to share with Rick that evening.
9 – Tough Day
After I took Rochester home, fed and walked him, and kissed Lili goodbye in the midst of her phone call with her brother, I drove into the center of Stewart’s Crossing. The Drunken Hessian has been at the corner of Main and Ferry Streets, right by the town’s only traffic light, since Revolutionary times. For Rick and me, it was more important as a part of our youth, when the drinking age in Pennsylvania was twenty-one but sometimes you could get a sympathetic bartender at the Hessian to slip you a beer on the sly.
Rick was already in a booth in the back with a pitcher of beer and two glasses. I slid in across from him and poured a beer for myself. “Tough day?”
He nodded. “Any day that begins with a dead body qualifies.”
He lifted his glass I touched mine to his in a toast. “To both of us staying alive another day,” I said.
He sipped his beer, then put it down. “So what were you doing at the synagogue this morning? I didn’t think you were that religious.”
I explained about going to Shomrei Torah as a kid and then returning for Yahrzeit prayers, and then the blessing of the animals on Sunday. “The rabbi invited me to join his study group, and when he said I could bring Rochester that clinched it for me.”
“What do you know about him?” Rick asked.
I passed on what I had learned about the rabbi’s background, as well as Joel’s outburst in Milwaukee, and the congregation’s refusal to continue his contract. But I added that the temple had closed down soon, so it was hard to be certain.
“Do you think the rabbi had a motive to kill his brother?” Rick asked.
“Is Rabbi Goldberg a suspect?” I asked.
“I’m not eliminating anybody. The rabbi lives alone, and nobody can verify his whereabouts last night. He was pretty shaken up, and that could be grief—or guilt. Maybe he was worried that Joel would screw up this job for him. Sounds like he’s been working pretty hard to hold onto it.”
“He wouldn’t be the first to commit fratricide,” I said. “That goes all the way back to Cain and Abel. He seems like a nice guy, and he was definitely broken up by his brother’s death.” I took another sip of beer. “You know what killed Joel?”
“Preliminary report from the coroner is that he suffered a heavy blow to his head with a blunt object. Not much to go on.”
“I assume you didn’t find any suspicious blunt objects around the body?”
“Nope. I had the evidence techs comb the area but they didn’t come up with much. The guy had a couple of bucks in his pocket and a bus ticket stub, and that’s about it.”
“And that photograph in his shoe. The rabbi showed me the copy you left with him. You think it’s a clue to something?”
“No idea. The guy was schizophrenic, right? So it could mean anything or nothing.”
“Time of death?” I asked.
“Sometime late last night. Coroner will get a more precise time to me tomorrow.”
“You got my email, right? If we eliminate the cantor as suspect, and assume that she wouldn’t have locked up and left the property if Joel was hanging around, then we can time his arrival at the temple between seven and the time of the last bus, around eleven PM.”
The waitress came over and we ordered cheeseburgers and fries. “I spoke to her this morning,” he said. “She confirmed what the rabbi said, that she’d locked up at seven. The boy’s mom dropped him off at six, and they spent an hour in the sanctuary going over the prayers. When the mom came back at seven, the three of them walked out together. She didn’t see anyone around the property, but she admitted that all she did was lock the front door and set the alarm.”
He sipped at his beer. “I called the mom, and she confirmed the story. She said she and her son walked out with the cantor, and that theirs were the last cars in the parking lot.”
“You had a busy day.”
He nodded. “I also interviewed the receptionist and Walter Johnson, the property manager. Johnson didn’t know anything about the rabbi having a brother, but the receptionist said she overheard the synagogue president complaining to the rabbi about what happened on Sunday. That was the first she heard of the brother.”
“They’re the only staff?”
Rick nodded. “You said the rabbi asked you to figure out where his brother had been in Trenton.” He poured another round for both of us. “How are you going to that?”
“On Sunday, Joel was pretty agitated, and it sounded like he had some kind of problem he wanted to talk to his brother about. I asked the rabbi, and he said he didn’t know. His computer was on when he got back, and from the search history he realized that Joel had spent some time on the computer looking up the names and addresses of members of the congregation’s board of directors.”
“Interesting.” He pulled out his small spiral-bound notebook and wrote something down. “Any idea why?”
“The rabbi thought perhaps he disappeared without saying anything more was because he was upset at the way a couple of the members tried to strong arm him off the property on Sunday. Maybe he wanted to know their names.”
The waitress brought our cheeseburgers, and I resolved to give Rochester an extra-long walk that night to work off a few of those calories.
“I wonder why Joel Goldberg came to the temple last night,” I said, after a couple of minutes. “Did he know that his brother wouldn’t be there? Maybe he intended to vandalize the place? Leave some message for the men who tried to kick him out on Sunday?”
“You don’t need a reason to do things when your brain doesn’t work right.”
“Did you ask the rabbi what kind of drugs his brother was supposed to be taking?”
He opened his notebook again and flipped back a couple of pages. “Thorazine, which lots of doctors prescribe to treat symptoms like hallucinations and delusions. But if he was homeless, then there was a solid chance he’d didn’t have a way to refill his prescriptions and he went off his meds. I asked the coroner to run screens for common anti-psychotic drugs.”
“The rabbi he said he didn’t know that his brother was in the area,” I said. “So what brought him here unannounced?”
“That’s a big question,” Rick said. “I pulled up Joel’s police record. Last arrest was for vagrancy in Trenton, three weeks ago.”
“So he’s been in the area at least that long. But no contact with his brother. Where was he picked up?”
“Why does that matter?”
“Dunno. Just curious.”
“I think it was somewhere on Market Street. Mill Hill neighborhood?”
“My mother lived near there for a while when she was a child,” I said. “Once as we were passing she pointed out this house with two red doors. Her father broke his leg when she was in elementary school, and they had to live somewhere on the first floor so he didn’t have to climb steps.”
“Is there a point to that stroll down memory lane?”
“Just that it was a Jewish neighborhood, back in the day. Maybe Joel was drawn there for some reason.”
“More likely because there’s a homeless shelter not far away,” Rick said. “And that Mill Hill neighborhood is getting gentrified, bit by bit. Government workers buying houses there and renovating them.”
“Panhandling targets?”
He nodded. “And there’s still some crime of opportunity there. I have a friend who works over in Trenton. We get together and compare notes now and then.”
We finished up, and Rick insisted on paying the tab. “Thanks for the conversation. I don’t like to talk about this stuff with Tamsen. She has enough on her plate already.”
I thought Rick was probably sheltering Tamsen too much, but didn’t say anything. She had survived her soldier husband’s death in Iraq, created a successful business, and raised her son by herself. She was strong enough, and smart enough, for Rick to confide in her. And this wasn’t as upsetting a case as some he’d handled; Joel was a stranger, and the crime hadn’t been overly gruesome. I wondered if he’d be able to open up more once they were committed and living together.
When I got home, Lili was pacing around the living room, which I assumed meant that the conversation with her brother had gone about as well as she expected. Fedi and Sara were reaching the end of their rope in dealing with Senora Weinstock and decisions would have to be made soon.
I went upstairs and climbed into bed with a book. Rochester followed me, sprawled sideways with one foot resting on my leg. Lili joined us a half hour later.
“Do you think our parents are ever happy with us?” she asked, as she sat on the bed beside me.
“You’re asking me? The convicted felon? That was something my father bragged about, for sure.”
“But he loved you. I can feel it in the stories you tell.”
“He did, and my mother, too. I was very lucky that way. I only wish they were still here. They’d love you, and my dad would get a kick out of playing with Rochester.”
“You miss them,” Lili said.
“Of course. Not on a daily basis, you know, but when I hear something they said coming out of my mouth, or something triggers a memory. You miss your dad, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes. He used to call me mi nena bonita, my pretty girl. He spoiled me, and my mother was the same way with Fedi. The sun shone on her little papito.”
“And now your dad is gone, and you’re stuck with your mom, knowing you weren’t her favorite.”
“It’s not like that,” Lili protested, though it was clear to me it was just like that. “She had different aspirations for each of us. She wanted me to get married, settle down and have babies. And that wasn’t in the cards for me.”
She sighed. “She’s my mother. I love her. And she’s always been huge on the subject of taking care of your parents. None of my grandparents wanted to leave Cuba, but after my mother’s father died, my mother forced my abuela to come to Kansas City and live with us. She hated it, and she died only a few years later, but my mother always bragged that she had done what was right.”
It sounded like a move Mary would have made, forcing an elderly woman to bend to her will. Lili was the opposite – she would do whatever made her mother happy. And that attitude was why I loved her.
We spent the rest of the evening lying beside each other, both of us reading but comforted by the proximity. Rochester repositioned himself at the end of the bed, keeping an eye on both of us.
Eventually we readied for bed, and as I turned out the lights, I said, “Tomorrow night I want to go to services at Shomrei Torah. I think the rabbi could use someone to talk about his brother with.”
“I’ve been thinking about him, too, and how sad he must be about the loss of his brother,” Lili said. “I liked the way he spoke at the blessing of the animals. And I could use a little spirituality myself. I think I’ll join you.”
We curled into each other. I may not have had much family left, I thought, but I had Lili and Rochester, and they were all I nee
ded.
10 – Days of Awe
I spent most of the day Thursday with an Eastern faculty member who wanted to rent Friar Lake on behalf of an organization he was involved with, the National Council of Professors of Religion and Religious Thought. Felton Backus was in his fifties, with a mane of white hair and a matching beard. He could have doubled for Moses in one of those paintings of the parting of the Red Sea – just give him a staff he could raise up to summon God.
“We’re organizing a retreat we’re calling Religious Study and the New World Economy,” he said. “And as you can imagine, the economy doesn’t look favorably on small academic groups without a lot of money. I’m hoping we can get some kind of staff discount on the facilities.”
“Let’s figure out what you need and then I’ll see what I can do on the price.” Rochester accompanied us as I showed him around the property. “Religion is certainly a hot topic today,” I said as we walked. “So much prejudice everywhere.”
“It’s one of the things we study in Introduction to World Religions,” he said. “How people pervert religious doctrine to serve their own needs.”
“I’m teaching a course in the English department on Jewish-American literature this term.” I told him about the section in the Cahan book about David Levinsky’s study of the Torah. “That’s the only truly religions element in what we’ve read so far, though. Most of the material we’ve read has more to do with assimilation.”
“You can’t ignore the connection, though,” he said. “One of the complaints people have about Muslims these days is the visible way they connect with their religion, through the use of the head scarf or the burka. The argument is that they need to assimilate and adopt American customs. And that feeling often leads to cruelty and crime.”
I remembered Joel Goldberg, and his assertion that the criminals of the Holocaust were still among us. Would we ever learn to get along with each other?
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