by Ragen, Naomi
Enter Rabbi Hershel Metzenbaum and his wife, Shira.
Rabbi Metzenbaum was in his mid-forties, a charismatic and distinguished scholar who had made a name for himself as a prominent member of the Council of American Orthodox Rabbis. He was also down-to-earth and friendly, a hands-on person who truly loved being a rabbi. Young people, particularly, were drawn to him, as he had an easy and respectful attitude toward them. He could play basketball and discuss the latest Star Wars movie. As a result, he headed numerous boards of numerous Orthodox Jewish youth groups.
As the rabbi of a small congregation in the Midwest for ten years, Metzenbaum had done wonders in gathering together unaffiliated Jews, reformed Reform Jews, and local Jewish college students from nonreligious backgrounds, not to mention the youth of his synagogue, helping to build a community dynamic that saw his synagogue grow and prosper, as new families bought houses in the vicinity simply to be able to be part of his congregation. He was adored.
The president of Ohel Aaron had heard about him from his brother, a prominent plastic surgeon in Ohio, who had attended one of Rabbi Metzenbaum’s many weekly classes. The Synagogue Search Committee, impressed, put his name at the top of their list.
Rabbi Metzenbaum was used to receiving offers from search committees looking for rabbis. Until now, he had fended them off. But at this particular moment in time, many factors contributed to his reconsidering his commitment to stay put. The salary situation in the Midwest was going nowhere. His house was really too small for his growing family, but a larger mortgage was out of the question. And the kids—all five of them—were attending private Hebrew day schools. The two who were in high school had been forced to board in New Jersey, because there was no local Orthodox high school. Even with a rabbinic discount, the tuition for his five kids was sending him to the poorhouse.
Sensing his vulnerability, the board told him the job in Swallow Lake came not only with a large beautiful house which would be his—rent and mortgage free—for as long as he was rabbi, but also with free tuition for all his children in the elite local Orthodox day school, which included an excellent high school as well. But what tempted Rabbi Metzenbaum most of all was his perception that here was a rare opportunity, the kind most rabbis look for all their lives: a young, growing community, a place full of affluent, prominent people who would form an important stop on the fund-raising tours of every major Jewish organization. As rabbi, he could easily parlay his local popularity into national prominence, which would ensure him prestigious board memberships and thus an opportunity to influence the direction of Jewish education and community life all over the country. Moreover, it was a place where, when he chose to retire, he would be called Rabbi Emeritus and showered with compliments and a comfortable pension that would leave him the rest of his days to learn Talmud and write popular works of condensed Torah wisdom for busy Jews with short attention spans.
And thus, despite his long and revered position in the community, Rabbi Metzenbaum accepted the invitation of the Swallow Lake board to fly down with his family, all expenses paid, for a long weekend to explore the position. They put him and his wife and children up at the lovely home of the synagogue president, with its private swimming pool and tennis courts. They fed him lavish meals. They introduced the children to their peers and the rebbitzin to the sisterhood.
Sizing up his hosts, Rabbi Metzenbaum prepared his maiden sermon with meticulous care. He began with two good jokes, followed by an editorial from The New York Times, worked in a few minutes’ worth of Talmud, and a few more minutes of light reminiscences of his childhood and memories of his grandparents, ending with a moral punch line, followed by another good joke. And he did it all in under twenty minutes. It was an enormous success.
He spent the Sabbath shaking hands and smiling at everyone, bending his head to listen intently to stories, compliments, jokes, and various normal and abnormal requests. He was friendly. He exuded modesty and compassion. Everybody loved him, except for those few misfits that exist in every congregation who never go along with the majority as a matter of principle; they warned that he was insincere, too religious, or not religious enough.
Shira Metzenbaum also made a favorable impression. She seemed attractive but in a dowdy religious way, which gave her a certain asexuality that relaxed the sisterhood. She smiled and was sincerely interested in the community, making an effort to learn everyone’s names. She seemed willing—no, eager—to participate in the sisterhood activities. And the kids were bright and attractive, an asset to the community.
Both the Orthodox faction and the new immigrant faction were happy, and the Search Committee made Rabbi Metzenbaum an offer he couldn’t refuse. Soon the Metzenbaums were making tearful announcements, being hugged and kissed and embraced at kiddush functions full of home-baked cakes and plastic cutlery. Far from being resentful or angry, his congregation sincerely wished their beloved rabbi and rebbitzin every happiness and success. Like proud parents seeing off a successful son, as much as they mourned for themselves, they rejoiced in his good fortune, accepting that it was the inevitable step he deserved to take to better his life.
The Metzenbaums attended a lavish going-away party, where there were many toasts, many tears, and many sincere testimonials. They sold their house, packed up their furniture and kids, and moved cross-country to begin their new life.
The rabbi poured himself into his work, getting to know all the movers and shakers, especially the members of the board: Solange and Arthur Malin, who owned a media empire; Amber and Stuart Grodin, who together had designed floppy novelty bears filled with a crunchy fragrant stuffing that became wildly collectible and dominated the aisles in every drugstore; Dr. Joseph Rolland, the world-famous heart surgeon, and his fashionable wife, Mariette; and the Borenbergs, Felice—a savvy businesswoman who had made a killing in her center aisle pushcarts at malls all over America, and Ari, her third husband and former employee.
The rabbi and his wife were a bit overwhelmed by the lavishness of the community, but the rabbi warned the rebbitzin she’d better stop sucking in her cheeks in contempt and disapproval when they showed her their game rooms, their home movie theaters, and their indoor pools with the retractable roofs. She had better remember not to remark with amazement on the self-cleaning wireless remote toilets, whose covers automatically lifted when you entered, and closed and flushed when you left. And she had better stop staring like a hick in Manhattan at the twenty-foot-high limestone fireplaces and the octagonal libraries made of Brazilian mahogany. He reminded her that they were there to focus on the community’s spiritual requirements, and that even the most materially blessed could be very poor and needy when it came to their religious lives.
He told himself that this was an important group that could be led in a direction that would cause them to cherish their heritage, and to use their power, influence, and money to benefit the Jewish people. It was a group that was asking his help to go in a new direction.
He did what had worked so well in the Midwest: he began offering weekly classes for the men and boys. Attendance was poor, at first, but grew. Surprisingly, it grew most significantly among the high school boys, who found in the rabbi’s sincere love for the Torah—particularly its ethics and morality—a spiritually viable alternative to rock music and Indian mysticism. Most of all, the rabbi was willing and able to give these youngsters what they needed most, something that their wealthy parents simply could not: time. He played basketball with them. He invited them over for little melave malka parties Saturday night. He knew what books they were reading. He was willing to counsel them on any subject and offer them help with any problem. He was willing to call their teachers and intervene on their behalf with their parents. He was tireless. And the kids loved him.
Shira Metzenbaum worked right alongside him. For if any woman since the beginning of time could be said to embody those true qualities needed to be a rabbi’s wife, his partner in leading a congregation, it was Rebbitzin Shira Metzenbaum.
&
nbsp; She not only cooked and baked and cleaned, she infused these tasks with holiness by constantly reminding herself that she was employing these womanly arts to bring misguided congregants closer to God. She was happy to have people join her on the Sabbath and on holidays; she loved a full house. There was never a Sabbath meal that did not include either board members she needed to impress, synagogue misfits she was attempting to remold, or complete strangers she was herding into her little flock. There was never a new mother to whom she did not take a casserole, investigating her mothering skills, or a sick person she failed to comfort by reading Psalms to counteract their obvious sins. There was no funeral or unveiling she didn’t attend, no shiva call she failed to make, sitting silently in the house of mourning or offering tactful words of consolation: “It’s a blessing you have other children.”
As the rabbi tended to the young men, she drew around her the young girls, giving classes in modesty, chastity, Torah, and the Prophets. Soon, the girls were having long talks with their mothers. Gone were clothes that showed too much cleavage, too much knee. Soon, the rebbitzin and her followers began demanding a mechitzah that was taller, denser, and blocked the view completely. Certain women stopped using makeup on the Sabbath, surprising the men, who had never seen their wives look that bad. They insisted on trading in their king-sized beds for twin beds, slapping their husbands’ hands away if they tried to so much as embrace them or kiss them during two weeks out of the month.
Words like ruchnius and gashmiyus, spirituality and materialism, began to pepper the speeches of teenagers, who looked around at their parents’ lavish lifestyles with new eyes and new contempt. And then a few of the teenagers to whom the rabbi had been particularly close decided to attend yeshiva programs in Israel for the summer. When the summer ended, two of them called their parents to say they’d decided to stay there and join the Israeli army instead of making use of their early admission acceptances to Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. Later that year, another one of the boys dropped out of Yale and went to live on the Lower East Side, enrolling in a yeshiva. He began wearing a black velvet skullcap, then a black hat and a long black coat. He grew long side locks and an unkempt beard. Soon, he refused to eat anything in his parents’ home because he didn’t think it was kosher enough. He adamantly refused to even consider returning to finish college, although he had only a year to go and the tuition had already been paid.
The final straw came when the daughter of Solange and Arthur Malin dropped out of Barnard and disappeared. She surfaced in Jerusalem at Michlalat Devorah, announcing she was engaged to a yeshiva student with whom she was planning to have ten kids and whom she would be working to support (presumably with her parents’ generous help) for the rest of his life so he could sit and learn. The next day, the synagogue board of Ohel Aaron convened an emergency meeting.
Voices were raised. Hands slammed down on the table. A few punches were thrown. But in the end, when a vote was taken, it was overwhelmingly decided that the rabbi and his wife had to go. Given that the rabbi’s contract had four more years to run, and the clause for early termination was going to cost the synagogue most of the funds they’d set aside to redo the catering hall so it could hold six hundred instead of only three hundred, the matter was turned over to Joshua Alterman, a Park Avenue lawyer known for defending white-collar criminals, some of whom were now his neighbors on Swallow Lake. It was Joshua who carefully reread the contract, finding the clause that hinted no penalty had to be paid if the rabbi—or his family—could be found liable for the termination. Brainwashing children into joining harmful cults, he suggested, would fit the bill nicely.
They gave Rabbi Metzenbaum two weeks’ notice.
The rabbi and rebbitzin debated hiring a lawyer, but before they could do anything the synagogue sent a van to pack up their belongings and changed the locks on their house. The children were thrown out of the day school.
The scandalous treatment of the Metzenbaums in Swallow Lake soon became a cause célebre, hotly debated among America’s Orthodox Jewish communities and beyond. Soon, long articles appeared in The Jewish Observer, denouncing the Ohel Aaron congregation as a disgrace, and their treatment of Rabbi Metzenbaum and his lovely pious wife as tantamount to murder. As the very learned author and main stringency king of Boro Park explained—naming all the Ohel Aaron board members—embarrassing someone in public is considered akin to murdering them. Midstream hosted a written debate: “The Case of Swallow Lake: Has Orthodoxy Reached Its Nadir?” Even the religion editor of The New York Times decided to put in his oar, explaining to Times readers why an Orthodox congregation would fire a dynamic leader for encouraging young people to study in a yeshiva in Israel, or marry a yeshiva student, an article that made Orthodox rabbis and congregations everywhere cringe, made Conservative congregations giggle, and was pinned up on the bulletin boards of Reform synagogues throughout the country.
Soon JORA (Jewish Orthodox Rabbis Association) and RAOR (Rabbinical Association of Orthodox Rabbis) issued a call to boycott the congregation, telling their memberships that no rabbi should accept the now-vacant post of rabbi of Ohel Aaron until the poor Metzenbaums—jobless, living in the cramped basement of her parents’ Canarsie home—received both an apology and monetary compensation. Rabbinic organizations refused to run the congregation’s want ads for a new rabbi until informed by caustic letters from the Park Avenue law firm of Deal, Deal, Alterman and Goodstein that they were opening themselves up to lawsuits. While they immediately backed down and ran the ads, the word was out that Swallow Lake was a congregation to which no self-respecting rabbi should agree to go.
And that is why Congregation Ohel Aaron of Swallow Lake has been without a rabbi for two years, Chaim explained to Delilah, parking the car in front of their dusty apartment house late that Saturday night.
Delilah sat in the dark, bier eyes gleamed.
TEN
All that winter, she pleaded with him to answer the ad. “What can it hurt?”
He looked at her, amazed and appalled. “You can’t be serious. Don’t you understand? They are being blackballed! Anyone who took the job would be a pariah! It would ruin his reputation, maybe get him thrown out of the Council of Orthodox Rabbis of America altogether! I’ve already told you how it would hurt my grandfather. And just think how offended this congregation would be. Why, they’ve been so kind to us, Delilah! It would be like spitting in their faces!”
Delilah, who didn’t have much patience with other people’s emotions, being caught up so passionately most of the time with her own, looked at him coldly, her eyes narrowing. “Do you know what your problem is, Chaim? You have no ambition. You are willing to rot away here in this dive because you are afraid to spread your wings and fly.” She said this with a measure of accuracy that made her words doubly painful. “So, Ohel Aaron fired its rabbi. So what? Plenty of congregations fire rabbis! So it wasn’t justified, at least according to all the busybodies out there writing articles. But think of this: Out of all those people who want to boycott Swallow Lake, is there even one who actually belonged to that congregation? Even one that had to sit through one of Metzenbaum’s sermons or eat his wife’s cooking on a Friday night? Josh is just so narrow-minded. There are two sides to every story. Isn’t that what you always say? That we shouldn’t judge someone until we are in their shoes? Huh?”
He saw she was furious and wished he could do something about it. But applying for the job in Swallow Lake was so beyond the pale, it never seriously entered his mind. His rabbinical life would be over; he’d be attacked by his fellow rabbis. People he respected and wanted to befriend, like Josh, would shrug their shoulders when his name was mentioned. No one would accept his rabbinical decisions. They wouldn’t allow him to officiate at weddings. He would never be able to join a rabbinical court and arrange divorces. His career path would be blocked forever.
“Please, Delilah, be reasonable,” he begged her helplessly. “Besides, even if I applied, there is no reason they sho
uld consider hiring me. Rabbi Metzenbaum was a respected rabbi for ten years. He’s published books. He was elected president of all kinds of organizations. I haven’t even been an assistant rabbi for one year! We would gain nothing and lose so much. Please, my love, try to understand.”
She wanted to smash him over the head for his mild reasonableness, as the fury of thwarted hopes rose up from her bowels. In her mind, she saw the lovely house on the lake in Connecticut fade from view, replaced by used-car lots, smokestacks, and graffiti-smeared brick buildings. In the background, far off but clearly discernible, she heard the lilt of her mother’s aggravated nagging, which would now follow her through eternity, reminding her how she could have done—oh, so much better.
Tears of misery tracked her face.
He stared at her, completely at a loss. When he tried to embrace her, she impatiently elbowed him out of her way.
Spring showed up. The bedraggled trees in the Bronx streets and alleyways sent forth a few anemic leaves. There was a drive-by shooting just down the block. And before they knew it, the season changed, transforming into the unbearably hot summer.
