“Because he’s practically accused all of us of having broken the Jewish law on this matter and said he was going to call all of us—‘individually and collectively,’ he said—to a Din whatyamacallit. Okay, so he’s on one side, and we’re on the other. He’s the accuser, and we’re like the defense. Well, common sense would dictate that you don’t have the accuser present at a meeting of the defense.”
“Now, Paul—”
“I think there’s some merit in what Mr. Goodman says,” said the rabbi. “I think I should absent myself from the meeting. I have made my position clear, and it is up to you to decide what you’re going to do about it. I don’t mind waiting a week.”
“Just a minute. There’s no meeting next week,” said Goodman.
“Why not?”
“The Sisterhood Fair.”
“Oh yeah. So it will be the week after. All right with you, Rabbi?”
“If I can wait a week, I guess I can wait two,” said the rabbi.
39
Edie Kaplan could never understand what her friends found to marvel at in her housekeeping. She kept a kosher kitchen with two sets of dishes, one for meat and the other for dairy products, because for her it was the normal way. Her father had been a sexton in a large synagogue in Boston, and a sexton is expected to be a pious man, strictly observant of the regulations. He not only had to supervise the maintenance of the building, but he also had to make the necessary arrangements for each of the services, lead the daily prayers, read the Scroll and even spell the cantor on occasion.
Edie was raised in a household where the idea of eating meat and dairy products from the same set of dishes was as unthinkable as eating from the floor. As for eating both at the same meal, she found the thought positively repulsive. Just reading a recipe which called for the use of butter or milk in preparing a meat dish gave her a queazy feeling in the pit of her stomach.
She knew, of course, that other people ate things like pork and lobster, but for her they were as alien and outlandish as snails or snakemeat or fried termites, which some people also ate. Nor did she think her eating habits constituted a sacrifice that she was making for religious reasons, as Catholics eat fish on Friday. Intellectually, she knew that the foods she ate were permitted and the foods she did not eat were considered taboo according to her religion, but in point of fact, hers was a pure gut reaction. She could not have swallowed one of the forbidden foods, and if forced to, she would have retched. When the Kaplans dined out with friends, she always ordered fish, and if one of the company ordered meat and then more particularly buttered a roll to eat it with, she would tend to wince and look away.
“But isn’t it awfully complicated, Edie, having two sets of everything? Don’t you get them mixed up?”
She would shrug and say, “When we were in Israel we saw the Bedouins sitting on the ground, all of them eating from a common dish, and just with their hands. Eating at a table, each person using a separate dish and a knife and fork must have seemed complicated to them.”
Edie had married Chester while he was still a student at law school, and for several years they had lived with her folks. It was not uncongenial, but her husband chafed at the necessity. After passing the bar, some of his friends had taken jobs with the city as assistant district attorneys, with insurance companies, with large law firms. Instead, Chester had elected to go into private practice, but clients were not forthcoming.
Edie had faith in him, however, and so did his father-in-law, who would say, “Don’t worry, Chester. Have faith in God, and everything will be all right.”
“You mean He’ll send me clients?” Kaplan gibed.
“I’m sure ambulances He won’t chase for you, Chester,” his father-in-law said, “and crimes He won’t arrange so you can defend the criminals. But if you pray, you’ll be satisfied. When I was a young man, I wanted to be a rabbi and I studied for it, but one thing or another prevented. But I didn’t lose faith so I got what I really wanted.”
“But you became a sexton, not a rabbi.”
“True. But what did I really want? At first, I wanted to be a rabbi because of the honor. Later, when I was older and more mature, I wanted to be a rabbi because I thought I would like the life; to study, to advise and influence people in the right way, to teach. So this is just exactly what I do now. I have time to study, I teach a group of men Talmud and most of the time I’m the voice of the congregation when I lead the prayers in the daily services. And I’ve outlasted three rabbis at the synagogue. Every one of them was so busy with meetings and committees and preparing little speeches that he never had time for study or even to always come to the daily minyan. In the old country, of course, it was different—different for the rabbi and different for the sexton. But we are not in the old country. We are here. And here I am doing what I really wanted to do.”
“So why doesn’t it happen to me? I go with you to the minyan every morning and every evening and—”
“But one must pray,” his father-in-law said.
“So what do I do? Read the newspapers?” Chester asked.
“Like most people, you say the words. It must be in your mind.”
In the course of time, things began to improve for Edie’s husband. Clients came, in part from contacts he had made in the synagogue, and Edie and Chester were finally able to move into their own apartment. Secretly, he was convinced that it was his faith that was responsible for his success. He did not publicize it, however, because faith was out of fashion, and his contemporaries would have regarded him as odd. As it was, they tended to explain his regular attendance at the synagogue as a mild eccentricity, or as something he did to please his father-in-law or even because it was a good way of getting clients.
When Leah was born, they decided that a city apartment was no place to bring up children and moved to Barnard’s Crossing. Chester became a member of an Orthodox synagogue in nearby Lynn and attended the daily minyan regularly. The Sabbath, however, presented something of a problem. The synagogue was a good five miles from his house, too far to walk, and riding was taboo. He discussed the problem with Edie. “I could go to a hotel Friday afternoon and—”
She shook her head. “Then you’d miss the Sabbath meal at home. According to my father, that’s more important than going to shul. You have to use common sense. Like once, the electricity went off in the synagogue just before the Friday evening services. For some reason the janitor wasn’t around. My father knew what to do. It was a fuse that had blown. But to change it meant working on the Sabbath. He thought of going into the street in the hope of seeing a passing Gentile and asking him to fix it, but then he worried that something might happen. He’s always been a little afraid of electricity. On the other hand, what would happen when the people arrived and found the synagogue in darkness? So even though it was work and forbidden on the Sabbath, he changed the fuse himself.”
“But I can’t just ride up to the synagogue on Saturday.”
“So park a block away and walk from there,” Edie advised.
When Jacob Wasserman started an organization for building a temple in Barnard’s Crossing, Chester Kaplan joined as a matter of course, but manifested little interest since it was going to be a Conservative synagogue. However, when their daughter Leah was old enough to attend the religious school, he decided to send her to the one attached to the Barnard’s Crossing temple rather than make elaborate arrangements to drive her to the school connected with the Lynn synagogue. As a result, he became more involved with the local temple and correspondingly less with the synagogue in Lynn. While there were things that he missed, there were also compensations. As a highly observant and religiously knowledgeable Jew, Chester belonged to a small elite group in the local temple while in the Lynn synagogue he was only one of many. As a result, he was accorded a special respect.
Shortly after Leah was divorced, her father began the Wednesday At Homes and the retreats in New Hampshire. Edie was not enthusiastic about either, but she did not push her views, vag
uely sensing that Chester’s new interest had something to do with the divorce, that it was a reaction to the bad luck that had been visited on their daughter, a special religious exercise for having fallen from grace.
Edie was pleased when her husband was elected president of the temple, but only mildly, having grown up in a household where the president of the synagogue was frequently viewed as the enemy or, at the very least, the opposition. When he began to develop plans for a permanent retreat, she showed little interest.
“But how about the effect on the members of the congregation?” Chester said. “It will give them a chance to work at their religion, to make it more meaningful.”
“Funny, I never thought of it as work,” Edie replied. “There are rules, and everything is spelled out. You always know what to do. So where’s the work?”
When she learned that the rabbi was opposed to the retreat, Edie was disturbed, but her husband was so enthusiastic about the project that she did not argue with him. However, when after the meeting she heard him on the phone explaining to Safferstein that there was nothing to worry about, that the rabbi was the only opposition and that he had no doubt that the move to reconsider would be defeated, she could not remain silent.
“It’s not good, Chet,” she said. “My father had dealings with lots of rabbis over the years. Some he liked and some he didn’t like so much. With some he discussed and with some he argued, because he was a learned man and he knew the Talmud as well as any of them did. But when he asked a rabbi a point of law, he accepted his decision. You don’t fight with a rabbi, Chet. When you call him in on a decision, you accept his judgment.”
“But I didn’t call him in on this. He’s forcing himself into the issue.”
“Same thing, Chet. If you ask him, you accept what he says. And if he feels that it’s a matter that pertains to him, you also have to accept his decision. No good will come from this, Chet, believe me.”
40
Except for his brief visits to the hospital to see his father, Akiva spent every free minute with Leah. Not only would he drop by at night after closing, but on those mornings when it was McLane’s turn to open, he would run over after breakfast to have coffee with her. Occasionally, when his hours at the store permitted, he would pick her up and drive into Boston for lunch at a kosher restaurant. He never phoned in advance but merely arrived at her house. He always assumed she would be there and would want to see him.
“Why don’t you phone first?” she asked plaintively. “Suppose somebody is visiting me?”
“Like yesterday morning?”
“You were here yesterday? My mother—”
He grinned. “Sure, I was here. But I saw a car in the driveway and drove on.”
“But why couldn’t you—”
Akiva put his hands on hers. “Do you mind, Leah? Does it bother you? Because it does something nice for me. It makes me feel that I’m home.”
“You mean here in this house?”
“No, I mean where you are, wherever you happen to be.”
Rose Aptaker wondered, of course, but after her experience the last time he came home, she was careful not to question him. He might resent it as an invasion of his privacy.
She did question him, however, when she saw him reciting his prayers in the morning. “Don’t you go to the minyan in the temple anymore?”
“Well, in the morning I’d rather have the extra sleep and in the evening I’m usually at the store.” His real reason was that Leah’s father was sure to be there, and he was embarrassed at seeing the father while he was intimate with the daughter.
Akiva did not discuss the future with Leah, what his plans were or her place in them. But after the first week, he said with disarming casualness, “I told my mother about us.”
“Oh? And what did she say?”
“She wanted to know if you were a nice girl, what she would call a nice girl.”
“And what did you say?”
He grinned. “I told her you were a slut who had got her hooks into me and was pressing me to marry her and that I couldn’t see any way out.”
“M-hm. Did you tell her about Jackie?” Leah asked.
“I did. She was naturally ecstatic at this proof of your fertility—”
“Seriously,” she pleaded.
Akiva sobered immediately. “All right, seriously then. My mother didn’t actually throw a fit, probably because she’s so involved with my father right now, but she was—er—”
“Upset? Disappointed?”
“All of that and then some,” Akiva said.
“Because of Jackie?”
“And your being divorced didn’t help any. You’ve got to understand, Leah, that—”
“Oh, I understand,” she said bitterly. “My mother would react the same way if the situation were reversed.”
“Well, she’ll get over it,” Akiva said philosophically.
“Will she?”
“Of course she will. She’ll have to.”
“Maybe if you had waited,” Leah suggested. “It’s been such a short time.”
“You wait until you’re sure. I’m sure now. Aren’t you?”
“Yes, but … are you going to tell your father?” she asked.
“My mother will probably tell him,” he said, smiling faintly. “She was on her way to the hospital when I sprang it on her. Maybe the old man will take it better.”
41
It was Marcus Aptaker’s first day out of bed. It was demonstrable progress, and he was naturally euphoric.
“Oh, you’re sitting up, Marcus,” Rose greeted him. “Did the doctor say you could?”
“For meals and a little while afterward,” he said with smug satisfaction. “Tomorrow for a little longer, and in a couple of days I’ll be allowed to walk around the bed. I could be out of here in a week, but of course I’ll be confined to the house for a while.”
“That’s nice, Marcus.”
Her reaction seemed to lack the warmth and enthusiasm he expected. In fact, as he studied her, she appeared unusually subdued. “Is something wrong?” he asked.
“Wrong? Of course not.”
“Tell me, Rose. What’s happened? Did something happen at the store?”
“That’s all you ever think of is the store.”
“Then there is something wrong. Arnold?”
She could not contain herself any longer. “Oh Marcus, he’s seeing a girl,” she announced tragically.
“So?”
“But it’s serious. He wants to set married.”
“Well, that’s normal. He’s twenty-eight. It’s time he got married. Maybe the responsibility will settle him.”
“Oh, it will settle him all right,” she said bitterly. “She has a child, a five-year-old boy.”
“A widow?” he asked cautiously.
“Worse, Marcus. Divorced!”
“I see. An older woman maybe?”
“No,” she admitted. “She must be Arnold’s age. She went to high school with him.”
“So she’s from Barnard’s Crossing. Do we know her?” he asked.
She delivered the clincher. “She’s Kaplan’s daughter.”
“Kaplan?”
“The president of the temple who wrote you the letter.”
“Then at least we know she’s from a good family,” he said reasonably. “I don’t know him personally, but the chances arc they wouldn’t make a man president of a synagogue if he weren’t a decent person.”
“It doesn’t bother you? Here you’re in the hospital because of him, and it doesn’t bother you that your son wants to marry his daughter?”
“You’d like me to be bothered, Rose?” he asked quizzically. “He wrote the letter because the board of directors voted it. I’m sure it was nothing personal. How could it be when he doesn’t even know me?”
“And that the girl is divorced and has a son?” she persisted.
He shook his head sadly. “It’s not like it used to be, Rose. Nowadays, it doesn’t me
an anything. Half the marriages end in divorce. Your own sister’s daughter got divorced, and she has two kids.”
“But she’s a nice girl and her husband was impossible.”
“So maybe this girl is a nice girl, and maybe her husband was impossible.”
“If she were a nice girl, she wouldn’t agree to marry him after just a week.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “That’s the way young people are these days. Once they make up their minds, they go ahead. Who knows? Maybe it’s better that way. Your niece went around for over a year before she even announced her engagement. And then after the two kids, she decided he was impossible. So you can make a mistake even if you wait.”
“But—”
“When Arnold comes here tonight, I’ll talk to him,” her husband said. “I’ll ask him about the girl, about her child, what his plans are. If I like what I hear, I’ll try to help him.”
“What do you mean you’ll help him?”
“If he’s serious, if he wants to settle down, I’ll work out some arrangement for him to take over the store.”
42
Chief Lanigan’s problem of how to meet with Ross McLane was settled by a rookie patrolman, the newest recruit to the force. It was the young officer’s first day in uniform, and he was burning with zeal for law and order, when he spotted McLane’s car parked outside the drugstore and issued a parking ticket. McLane came rampaging into the police station later that afternoon and shook the ticket under Chief Lanigan’s nose. “Now look here, Chief, I always put my car in the parking lot, but some salesman took my usual place, and when he pulled out I was busy in the store and I didn’t have a chance to move it.”
Lanigan took the ticket, noted the officer’s name on the bottom and smiled. “Come on in, and we’ll talk about it.” He turned and led the way to his office. When they were seated, the chief explained, “It’s a new man, and naturally he’s conscientious. Actually, we haven’t issued a ticket in that area for months. Normally, we don’t except during the summer months when traffic is heavy there and cars go scooting by at high speed.”
Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet Page 19
