New York City Noir

by Tim McLoughlin

  Reb Yidel rang up my copy but remained unusually silent.

  Know what this is all about? I asked casually, as if my interest were entirely benign.

  He shrugged, a careful man with a business and family to protect, and an example to me, who was also a business and family man, who could also benefit from caution. But it was precisely such caution that the perpetrators counted on to help them get away with their crime. They knew that few, if any, among us would risk antagonizing a powerful congregation with fat fingers that reached everywhere.

  Any truths? I pressed on.

  Who knows? he shrugged. I was pretty sure he knew, and waited.

  There’s a kernel of truth in every lie, he quoted.

  And who is credited with writing the pamphlet? I asked as harmlessly as I could manage.

  It is believed to be the work of Reb Shloimele, Szebed’s school administrator, Reb Yidel answered neutrally.

  The same Reb Shloimele who is also brother-in-law to the Dobrover? I asked, knowing the answer.

  Reb Yidel nodded, but declined to say more. I slapped a five-dollar bill down on the counter and left without waiting for the change. Here finally was a detail to ponder, a motivation to unravel.

  * * *

  At my desk I thumbed through the cheaply printed pamphlet. There were accusations of corruption in the Dobrover kosher seal. Discrepancies were cited. A box of nonkosher gelatin, pure pig treife, was discovered in the kitchen at Reismann’s bakery. The egg powder used in Horowitz-Margareten matzohs came in unmarked industrial-size boxes. And the pizzafalafel stores in Borough Park, also known to be under the Dobrover seal, were inspected no more than once a month. How much could go wrong in the twenty-nine days between inspections? the writer asked rhetorically, then concluded that for a kosher seal, Dobrov’s stamp stank of non-kosher.

  I turned to the next chapter. So far, this was the kind of gossip you hear and dismiss regularly. What wouldn’t Szebed do to annex Dobrov’s lucrative kosher-seal business?

  The next chapter attacked the Dobrover’s intimate way with his disciples, their secretive, late-night gatherings and celebrations, accused him of messianic aspirations, and ended with the warning that the dangerous makings of the next false messiah were right here in our midst. This too I’d heard previously and considered hearsay. Besides, the days of messianic upheaval and dangers, dependent as they were on seventeenth-century superstitions and ignorance, were long past. We were living in a world in which every yekel and shmekel could read the news, had Internet access. The information super-highway, to use the words of a smart but foolish president, has arrived in our little community in Williamsburg too.

  These allegations were followed by an interview with a former disciple in which a discerning reader would quickly recognize that the words had been placed in the mouth of the unwary young man. There were incriminating quotes from a Dobrover son and daughter, who, the pamphleteer pointed out as further evidence of criminality, had turned against their own father. The final chapter featured the court arguments that led to excommunication. From this, a facile argument for divorce followed, since the wife of an excommunicated man would suffer unnecessarily from her husband’s exclusion.

  I closed the book in wonder. In the standard course, such a series of events—going from initial suspicions to allegations to accusations to excommunication by the court—would span a lifetime. For all of it to have gone off in a couple of years and without much of a hitch, a well-planned program must have been in place. But who had planned so well, who had known the ins and outs of Dobrov, and who had so much private access to family members? I needed to find the children, talk to the sons, the eldest daughter too. Did they understand that they’d been used—abused, rather?

  * * *

  At 5, when Hasidim gather in the synagogues for the afternoon service, I turned the lock on my office door and walked to the Szebed synagogue, congregation of the murdered man’s cousin and rival for the Grand Rabbinic throne. Inside I noted the recent interior renovations to the brownstone. Exterior work was still in progress. And was it jubilation I sensed in certain members of the congregation, jubilation at the Dobrover’s death?

  I took a place at the back of the room, where I would have a good view of all who came and went. During the service, I noticed an earnest young man dressed in the style of a Litvak, an outsider, his face thin and pale, an unhappy face. What was he doing here mid-week? It happened now and then that someone’s Litvak relative visited for a Sabbath and attended services in a Hasidic shtibel, but this was mid-week, when young men were at yeshiva; furthermore, this wasn’t any shtibel, it was Szebed.

  After the service, a birth was announced, the name pro-claimed: Udel, daughter of Sarah. Wine, plum brandy, egg kichel, and herring were brought in, and I watched as the cup of wine was passed from relative to relative. The young man appeared to be one of them, because he too received the cup. I eyed him as he went through the motion of sipping and passed it on. Not an outsider. Definitely related. Probably a brother to the young wife, though why would a Szebeder marry into a Litvak family? I wondered.

  I went up to the table, poured myself a thimble of brandy in friendly gesture, and casually asked another family man beside me, And who is the young man?

  Why, Dobrov’s youngest son, brother-in-law of the new father, the man said.

  Oh, I said, I didn’t recognize him now that he’s grown up—the usual nonsense adults speak, mere filler. Beneath the filler, I was beside myself. A Dobrov son dressed in the short coat and hat of a Litvak, peyos tucked behind his ears. His father and grandfathers must be churning in their graves. And where were the signs of mourning, the ripped lapel on the jacket, the loose flap on the shirt under it? There was none of that. And during the service no prayer for the soul of the deceased had been recited either. Clearly, the son wasn’t mourning the father, not openly anyway.

  I mingled among the men, made my way up to the young man as smoothly as I could manage, put my hand out to wish him a mazel tov. He extended a limp, unwilling hand, responded with the merest nod. His eyes, however, scanned my face, didn’t seem to find what they wanted, and moved on. An unhappy soul, I thought, a very disturbed young man. I attempted to squeeze some reassurance into the pale thin hand, clapped it with my other hand before letting go, then taking a roundabout path made my way to the door, slipped out unnoticed, I hoped, and walked up and down the block, with an eye on the comings and goings at this house, a brownstone whose upper floors served as the Szebeder residence. The new mother, I guessed, was staying here with her newborn, and I wanted to see and know what might be going on among the women.

  It was over half an hour before my stakeout was rewarded. The door opened, the Dobrover widow came to the door buttoned up in her long black fur and carrying her purse. Attending the widow to the door was her daughter, the young mother, and behind her, the Szebeder rebbetzin. Without warning, the daughter threw her arms around her mother and sobbed noisily. I’m quite certain there were wet trails on the mother’s cheeks too. They remained this way, the daughter clinging to her mother, for some moments, then the mother disentangled herself and walked down the wide brownstone stairs.

  Here finally were signs of mourning. I was quite certain this is what the tears were for, since giving birth is not normally, that is if the child emerges healthy, an occasion for ears.

  Not knowing what else to do, I followed the older woman at a distance. As widow of the Dobrover, she should be mourning, sitting out the seven days of shiva. Instead, here she was, walking in the streets, leading me to an address I didn’t know, not the residence of Dobrov, and it was then I remembered the divorce. Having divorced the Dobrover she couldn’t mourn him. Imagine her feelings. I wondered at the torment every member of this family must be experiencing. The death of a husband and father one had disowned in life on what were surely false accusations; this was a tragedy.

  * * *

  It was a deep blue evening with a moon and stars brighter than the s
treet lights, and the shadows of men on their way home grew long and lean. I wrapped my silk muffler tight against the wind. At home it would be past the children’s dinner hour, they would be in bed by now, and I turned in that direction, up Ross toward Marcy Avenue, to tuck them in for the night, reflecting on the vulnerability of a wife and children, the ease with which an entire family can be destroyed.

  I was in time to read several pages about the current favorite, the miracle-performing BeSHT and his disciples, and remained bedside long enough to see willpower lose out to fatigue. One by one, from the youngest to my eldest, who to prove her superiority to her younger siblings made a valiant effort every night to be the last one to fall asleep, their eyes closed.

  In the kitchen my wife was washing up, putting things away. I joined her at the sink with a dishtowel, and told her about following the rebbetzin to a strange address.

  Don’t you know anything? my fine rebbetzin asked rhetorically. The poor woman remarried about a year ago, to a widower about fifteen years older than her. People say she was led by the nose for a long walk, to the end of the block and back again. By a scheming brother-in-law who convinced the world, the wife, and the children of the Dobrover’s sins.

  And what happened to the younger children? I asked.

  Taken in by the brother-in-law, Reb Shloimele. The younger daughter, barely seventeen, was palmed off to her first cousin, Reb Shloimele’s son, a bum, rumor has it, who would have had difficulty finding a father willing to hand over his daughter. The younger son, still a cheder boy at the time, was raised in Reb Shloimele’s home, and at the age of thirteen, sent off to a Litvak yeshiva, with the intention, it was said, to further hurt the father.

  That explained the strangeness of a Dobrov son in Litvak garb. And again Reb Shloimele made himself felt in this sordid story. I shook my head. So much evil under the noses of the most pious men, and in their names. I felt an obligation to bring this murder to light, to clear the innocent and accuse the guilty, but how to go about it? And whom to name? This brother-in-law was a mover and shaker, a makher in Yiddish, but he couldn’t have acted alone. There were powerful men behind him but I couldn’t accuse all of Szebed. And who would risk the congregation’s ire, help point the finger, and haul the shameless sinners into Jewish court? None of the rabbis appointed to our house of judgment would risk political suicide. Since I couldn’t expect assistance on the inside, I would have to go outside.

  I attended my evening study session, then started walking toward home, but found myself instead on Keap Street again, in front of the Szebed residence, looking for something, I wasn’t sure what. The door opened, I stepped into a nearby doorway and watched the young Dobrover son in his short coat and hat emerge alone, hurry down the stairs, and turn right on Lee. I followed at a distance, curious, wondering where he would go. He led me to 446 Ross, to the Dobrover home, dark and shuttered, and stood at the foot of the stairs looking up. Would he go up the stairs and enter his old home, which the angel of death had invaded? He didn’t. After long minutes, he turned away and walked back. What struck me as exceptionally cruel was his inability to mourn publicly, a ritual intended as an aid to grief and recovery. Standing in the way of mourning were the laws of excommunication. An excommunicated man, considered dead, was denied living mourners; there would be no one to say kaddish for the Dobrover’s soul. His enemies had succeeded in cutting him off both in life and in death.

  It was my turn to walk the streets and think.

  The perpetrators had used public opinion to help make their case to the judges. I too would have to take my case to the public. And since I couldn’t afford print—even the cheapest pamphlet costs a goodly sum—I would have to use the poor man’s version: the Internet.

  At my desk the next morning I found a chat room with organized religion as its topic, soon steered the conversation to religious politics, and posted my story as an example of corruption, proclaiming the Dobrover’s innocence. I didn’t have to wait long for the important questions to come up, the who and why of every whodunit, and I pointed my finger to the brother-in-law as prime perp, offered as explanation the oldest motivation, envy, the reason Cain raised his hand against his brother Abel. I was convinced and was able to convince others that without the green worm of jealousy, the Dobrover rebbe and his family would have remained untouched.

  * * *

  Consider this brother-in-law: a promising yeshiva boy who in maturity proved to be a minor scholar with an impatient mind incapable of complex argument. Marrying the sister of the Dobrover rebbetzin, herself a woman of fine rabbinical stock, was his undoing. He would have sat at the table, listened to the deeply scholarly talk, and squirmed in ignorance. The first years of his marriage, he sat pressing the yeshiva bench unwillingly, because the husband of the Dobrover’s rebbetzin’s sister had to be a scholar, then seized the first opportunity that came his way and became the director of the newly founded Szebeder boys’ school. The position fulfilled his need to move about and accomplish things, but at the Sabbath table the sense of his own inferiority would have deepened. And without scholarship to occupy his mind, he became a plotting busybody. The rivalry between the two congregations presented him with an opportunity. Knowing he would never be a significant player in Dobrov, he determined to curry favor at Szebed. Indeed, his reward for interfering in the life and marriage of Dobrov was proof enough of his motivation: He had recently been appointed administrative overseer of the entire Szebed congregation, not a scholarly position, but respectable enough to protect him from his detractors. In taking him on, in other words, I was taking on the whole of Szebed. The anonymity of the Internet, I hoped—I hadn’t used my name—would protect me.

  And that’s where I miscalculated. I didn’t count on the Internet’s long and wide reach, nor its speed. Religious corruption, whether among priests or rabbis, has a captive audience in America. Well-meaning, sympathy-riddled letters came pouring in, as if I was the one who had suffered the heavy hand of the court. The chat room conversations went on for hours and days, and when I was too exhausted, continued without me, spilled over into new chat rooms. I spent hours online, returned to my office after services and dinner, and remained until midnight typing.

  Who were the people chatting? A mixed group—the word crowd would be more correct—it turned out. There were both knowing and unknowing participants, meaning Hasidic and not. Also a good number who asked questions that revealed they knew nothing at all about Judaism. Within days, a reporter from the Village Voice asked for an interview, then a staff writer writing for the New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town.” I agreed to give the interviews as long as I remained anonymous. I didn’t meet them in person.

  Is it necessary to say that I wasn’t making my wife happy? She argued that I would remain anonymous only to outsiders. Anyone on the inside who wanted to know who was behind this would soon figure it out. Once known, my name would be mud, and our lives would be shattered. And of course she had a point. Good women are often prescient.

  First an anonymous threat to cease and desist or suffer consequences was posted in what I was by now thinking of as my chat room, named Hasidic Noir by a participant, a wise-guy. I was accused of lying. Where were the mourners? this faceless voice asked. No one had performed keria (the ripping of the lapels), no one was sitting shiva (seven days of mourning), and no one had recited the mourner’s kaddish (the prayer for the soul of the dead). He concluded with a declaration that there was no Dobrover rebbe or Dobrover congregation, that I was a careerist who had fabricated a murder for the sake of publicity.

  Clearly this was coming from an insider with knowledge of the vocabulary and customs, someone who knew that excommunication rendered a man nonexistent to the community, hence his argument that there was no Dobrover rebbe.

  The chat room became a divisive hive, with people taking sides, demanding to know what the words meant, who was the liar in this story, how to find out. One cynical participant raised the irrelevant question of my, not the
murderer’s, motivation. If the brother-in-law is jealous Cain, he asked, who is this snitch, and what’s he going for? The next morning the Village Voice published the interview, and late that evening, when my wife and I were already in bed, there was a knock at the door.

  I drew on my flannel dressing gown, removed the Glock I keep in the locked drawer of our night table, and instructed my wife to remain in bed. I opened the door, loaded gun in hand, pointing. These men should know what there is to know. Three Szebeder bums stood red-faced, mouths open, breathing hard. They must have used the stairs. If you didn’t know better, you’d think they’d been imbibing. But I knew that if there’d been any excess, it had been verbal not alcoholic. To achieve a tough’s appearance they’d had to talk themselves into a frenzy.

  The barrel end of the gun quickly quieted them, as it often does those who want to live. The middle one in the group produced a letter. I opened it in front of them, keeping the gun aimed, keeping them fearful and rooted in place. At a glance, the letter appeared to be a court summons. The Jewish court, made up of the same rabbis who’d helped bury the Dobrover, was now calling me in.

  I congratulated myself on achieving something of a goal. Two weeks ago these men wouldn’t have given me the time of day. Now they were all ears. But if I didn’t want to lose all that was precious to me—my wife, my children, and my livelihood—I would have to plan well. I would tell my story, but I would tell it publicly.