The Rabbi

by Noah Gordon

  Michael couldn’t blame him. The new church had a roof like a poured cement derby. Its walls were of tinted glass block that sloped sharply inward, causing that portion of the building to resemble a huge ice-cream cone with the bottom tip broken off. A corridor of aluminum and glass led to a circular building that had all the spiritual appearance of an industrial powerhouse. On the roof of the round structure workmen were raising a gleaming aluminum cross.

  “How’s that?” one of the men on the roof shouted.

  A man standing near Michael tipped back his tin hat and peered upward. “Fine,” he yelled.

  Fine, Michael thought.

  Now anybody could tell it from a hot-dog stand.

  He turned away, knowing he wouldn’t be back for the same reason the priest no longer watched. It was a tastelessly conceived house of worship.

  At any rate, there was nothing else to watch; it was finished.

  So was his own research into temple architecture. He had worked out what seemed to him a reasonable verbal blueprint for a modern place of prayer. Since the former St. Jeremiah’s Church could meet with ease the undemanding requirements of Temple Isaiah, there seemed nothing to do with the accumulated data but publish it. He wrote a paper which he submitted to the journal of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and subsequently it was published there. He mailed copies of the journal to his father in Atlantic City and to Ruthie and Saul in Israel, then he packed all his notes into a cardboard carton and took them home and stored them in the tiny attic, inside the lowboy from his parents’ apartment which he and Leslie had not been able to bring themselves to sell.

  The completed project left him with more time on his hands than ever. One afternoon he came home at two-thirty to find Leslie making out the marketing list.

  “There’s mail,” she said.

  The new contract had arrived as Phil Golden had promised. He examined it and saw that it was very generous, covering a five-year span with a substantial increase in income at the beginning of each year. At the end of the five years, Michael knew, there would be a contract with life tenure.

  Leslie read it without comment when he dropped it on the table.

  “It’s as good as an annuity,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about starting a book. I have plenty of time.”

  She nodded and busied herself with the marketing list.

  He didn’t sign the contract. Instead he placed it in the top drawer of his bedroom bureau, under his tray of cuff links.

  He went back into the kitchen and sat with Leslie at the table, smoking and watching her.

  “I’ll do the shopping for you,” he said.

  “I can go. You must have things to do.”

  “I have nothing to do.”

  She glanced at him and opened her mouth as if to say something, then she changed her mind.

  “All right,” she said.

  The letter came a few days later.

  23 Park Lane

  Wyndham, Pennsylvania

  October 3, 1953

  Rabbi Michael Kind

  Temple Isaiah

  2103 Hathaway Street

  San Francisco, California

  Dear Rabbi Kind:

  The Executive Board of Temple Emeth of Wyndham has read with no small interest your provocative article in the newly established and excellent CCAR Journal.

  Temple Emeth is a sixty-one-year-old, medium-sized Reform congregation in the university community of Wyndham, twenty-three miles south of Philadelphia. Over the past several years we have hopelessly outgrown our twenty-five-year-old building. Faced with the necessity of determining what a new temple should be like, we found your article to be particularly fascinating. It has been the subject of many discussions here since its appearance.

  On April 15, 1954, Rabbi Philip Kirschner, our religious leader for the past sixteen years, begins what we expect will be a happy and full retirement in his native St. Louis, Mo. We are seeking as his replacement somebody who will be both an inspiring religious leader and a man who has given thought to what kind of place a Jewish temple should be in modern America.

  We would appreciate greatly an opportunity to discuss this with you. I will be in Los Angeles October 15-19, attending the 1953 meeting of the Modern Language Association at UCLA. If you could fly to Los Angeles at Temple Emeth’s expense during this period, we would be grateful. If this is impossible, perhaps I can come to San Francisco.

  I have notified the Placement Committee of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations of our intention of discussing our rabbinical need with you. I shall eagerly await your reply.

  Sincerely yours,

  (signed) Felix Sommers, Ph.D.

  President

  Temple Emeth

  “You’re going?” Leslie asked when he showed it to her.

  “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to fly down and meet him,” Michael said.

  On the night he returned from Los Angeles he came in quietly, expecting her to be asleep, and found her lying on the sofa watching the late late show. She made room for him and he lay down beside her and then kissed her.

  “Well?” she said.

  “It would be a thousand dollars less than I’m making now. And it would mean a one-year contract.”

  “But you can have it if you want it.”

  “There’d be the usual preliminary guest sermon. But I can have it if I want it.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

  “You have to decide yourself,” she said.

  “You know what happens to rabbis who go through a string of short-term contracts? They become footballs. Only the problem congregations will consider them, at minimum wages. Like the one in Cypress, Georgia.”

  She said nothing.

  “I’ve already told him we’d go.”

  She turned her face away suddenly, so that all he could see was the back of her head. He reached out his hand and touched her hair. “What is it?” he asked. “The thought of facing a new batch of women? The yentehs?”

  “Damn the yentehs,” she said. “There’ll always be people to whom you and I are freaks. They’re not important.” She turned swiftly and put her arms around him. “What’s important is that you’ll be doing more than collecting a fat annuity for serving as a rabbi in name only, because you’re so much better than that, don’t you understand?”

  He could feel her wet cheek on his neck and he was filled with wonder. “You’re the finest part of me,” he said. “The very best of me.” His arms were around her anyhow, to keep her from falling off the narrow couch, and now they tightened.

  She placed her fingertips over his mouth. “What’s important is that this is something you really want to do.”

  “It is,” he said, touching her.

  “I’m talking about Pennsylvania,” she said in a little while, but she turned in his arms and lifted her face greedily.

  Later in bed as he was falling asleep she touched his shoulder.

  “Did you tell him about me?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Oh.” He stared up at the soft darkness of the ceiling. “Yes, I did.”

  “That’s good. Good night, Michael.”

  “Good night,” he said.

  37

  He went alone to deliver the guest sermon and he liked what he saw as a hospitality committee drove him from the railroad station to Dr. Sommers’ home for dinner before the Sabbath service. It was a small town, deceptively sedate-looking when seen from an automobile, as are most campus towns. There were four bookstores, a green bulletin board in the town square listing nearby concerts and art shows, and everywhere there were young people. The air crackled with autumn cold and the energy of the students. On the pond in the center of the campus there was a skim of ice. The bare limbs of stately trees were stark and beautiful.

  At dinner the temple leaders plied him with questions about his id
eas concerning their proposed new building. His long weeks of solitary research provided him with much more ammunition than he could use, and their frank admiration sent him from the dinner table glowing with confidence, so that when he mounted the bema later in the evening he was primed to deliver a dazzling sermon. He spoke to them of why it was that an ancient religion could survive all the things that worked in the world to snuff it out.

  When he left Wyndham the following afternoon, he knew the pulpit was his, and when he received the call less than a week later it came as no surprise.

  In February he and Leslie and the baby flew to Wyndham for five days. They spent most of the time with real estate agents. They found the house on the fourth day, a red-and-black brick colonial with a restored gray slate roof. It was in their price range, the agent said, because most people wanted more than two bedrooms. There were other disadvantages. The ceilings were high and the rooms would be hard to clean. There was no garbage disposal or dishwasher, both of which the house in San Francisco had. The plumbing was very old and the pipes banged and made gurgling-gasping noises. But the oak floorboards were wide-cut and had been lovingly preserved. There was an old brick fireplace in the master bedroom and a marble fireplace with a fine old raised hearth in the living room. The tall, eighteen-paned front windows overlooked the campus.

  “Oh, Michael,” she said. “What a set-up. This can be our home until our family grows too large. Max could go to college from here.”

  This time he knew better than to nod, but he smiled as he wrote a check for the real estate man.

  From the very beginning his days in Wyndham were busy and full of people. Hillel and the Intercollegiate Zionist Federation of America had chapters at the university and he became chaplain to each. He made occasional trips with members of the Building Committee, inspecting new temples in other communities. Leslie registered at the graduate school as a special student of Semitic languages and they studied together twice a week with several of her fellow students. Temple Emeth was an intellectual congregation in an intellectual community, and Michael found that a considerable amount of his time was spent with similar study groups and in campus panel discussions. The cocktail parties resembled the fierce arguing sessions of old Talmudists, he found, except that most of the time these latter-day disciples argued about such prophets as Teller or Oppenheimer or Herman Kahn. The social functions of both the Brotherhood and the Sisterhood drew healthy numbers. The Kinds found themselves attending a variety of affairs; one winter night they served as chaperones on a youth-group sleighride, holding hands under the blanket as they glided over the snow and hoping that the gigglings and straw-thrashings in the blackness which surrounded them were sounds of innocent pleasure.

  The weeks fell away so swiftly that he was surprised when the temple board came to him with a new contract and he realized that a year had passed. The new document was for two years, and he signed it without hesitation. Temple Emeth was his. Each Friday night the service was well attended and his sermon stimulated brisk discussion at the oneg shabbat. When Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur rolled around he was forced to hold services in double sessions. In the middle of the second service of the last day of Yom Kippur he suddenly remembered how lonely and useless he had been in San Francisco.

  He did some marriage counseling, as little as possible. He found that he had a marriage problem of his own. The month after they moved to Pennsylvania he and Leslie decided that Max was old enough to have a brother or a sister and they stopped using birth control, confidently expecting that creation once achieved is easily duplicated. Leslie packed the diaphragm in talcum powder and hid the little box in the cedar chest with the extra blankets. Two or three times a week they made love with great expectations, and when a year had passed Michael found that he would lie awake when he had broken free of his wife, and she had curled her back against him, and, spurning afterplay, had gone to sleep. Instead of sleeping himself he would stare into the dark and see the faces of unborn children, and wonder why it was so difficult to call one of them into the world. He prayed to God for help and afterward he often walked on bare feet into his son’s room, nervously adjusting the edge of the blanket so that it lay close to the small jaw, and looked down at the skinny figure that was so defenseless in sleep, stripped of six-guns and the belief that he could overcome all manner of evil by punching it in the stomach. And he would pray again, asking for the boy’s safety and happiness.

  And thus passed many of his nights.

  People died, and he committed them to the waiting earth. He preached, he prayed; people fell in love and he legalized and sanctified their unions. The son of Professor Sidney Landau, who taught mathematics, eloped with the blonde daughter of Swede Jensen, the track coach. While Mrs. Landau took to her bed under sedation Michael went with her husband that night to meet with Mr. and Mrs. Jensen and their minister, a Lutheran named Ralph Jurgen. At the end of an uncomfortable evening Michael and Professor Landau walked together across the quiet campus.

  “A troubled mother and father,” Landau said, sighing. “Just as troubled as we are. Just as frightened.”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you talk to those young fools when they get back?”

  “You know I will.”

  “Ahh. . . . It won’t do any good. Her parents are religious people. You saw the minister.”

  “Don’t anticipate, Sidney. Wait until they get back. Give them a chance to find their way.” He paused. “I happen to be familiar with their problem.”

  “Yes, that’s right, you are,” Professor Landau said. He shook his head. “I shouldn’t be talking to you. I should be talking to your father.”

  Michael said nothing.

  Professor Landau looked at him. “Did you ever hear the old story about the grieving Jewish father who went to his rabbi and told him about his son’s elopement with a shickseh and subsequent conversion?”

  “No,” Michael said.

  “‘I had a son, Rabbi,’ the man said, ‘and he became a goy. What shall I do?’

  “And the rabbi shook his head. ‘I, too, had a son,’ he told the man. ‘And he married a shickseh and became a goy.’

  “‘So what did you do?’ the Jewish man asked the rabbi.

  “‘I went into the temple and I prayed to God,’ the rabbi said, ‘and suddenly a great voice filled the temple.’

  “‘What did the voice say, Rabbi?’ the Jewish father asked.

  “‘The voice said, I, TOO, HAD A SON....’”

  They laughed together, unhappily. When Professor Landau came to his street he seemed relieved to turn off. “Good night, Rabbi.”

  “Good night, Sidney. Call me if you need me.” Michael could hear him weeping softly as he walked away.

  And thus passed many of his days.

  38

  Michael stood on the gritty railroad-station platform and held Max’s hand and the two of them watched the 4:02 from Philadelphia come in. Max’s grip tightened as the engine thundered by.

  “Scary?” Michael asked.

  “Like big sneezes.”

  “Not scary when you’re a big boy,” Michael said, not believing it for a moment.

  “No,” the boy said, but he didn’t let go of his father’s hand.

  Leslie looked tired when she got off and walked toward them. She kissed them both, then they got into the green Tudor Ford that had replaced the blue Plymouth almost two years before. “How did it go?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Dr. Reisman is a very nice guy. He examined me and he studied the results of your tests, and he said that when you and I get together there should be an explosion of life. Then he patted me on the back and said to keep trying and I gave his girl our address so they could send you a big bill.

  “Great.”

  “Actually, he gave me some instructions. Things to do.”

  “What?”

  “We’ll have a rehearsal later,” she said, sweeping Max against her and hugging him tightly. “At least we’ve got this p
alooka, thank God. Michael,” she said, her face in her son’s hair, “let’s take a couple of days off.”

  Suddenly that was exactly what he wanted to do. “We could go to Atlantic City and see Pop.”

  “We just saw him. I’ve a better idea. We’ll hire a sitter and take off, just the two of us. Drive up into the Poconos for two or three days.”

  “When?”

  “What’s wrong with tomorrow?”

  But that evening as she bathed Max the telephone rang and Michael spoke for a few minutes with Felix Sommers, chairman of the Building Committee. The group had just come back from an inspection tour.

  “Did you see that new temple in Pittsburgh?” Michael asked him.

  “It’s a beautiful temple,” Professor Sommers said. “Not exactly what we’re looking for, but very, very fine. The rabbi knew you and said to say hello. Rabbi Levy.”

  “Joe Levy. Good man.” He paused. “Felix, how many temples does this make that we’ve inspected?”

  “Twenty-eight. My goodness.”

  “Yes. When do we stop inspecting and start applying what we’ve seen?”

  “Well, that’s what I’m calling about, Michael,” Sommers said. “We talked to the architect who did Pittsburgh. His name is Paolo Di Napoli. We think he’s great. In the precise meaning of the word. We’d like you to meet him and see his stuff.”

  “Well, fine,” Michael said. “You name the day.”

  “There’s a difficulty. He can get together with us only on two dates. Tomorrow and next Sunday.”

  “Neither day is good for me,” Michael said. “We’ll have to make it some other time.”

  “That’s the catch. He’s leaving for Europe. He’ll be gone three months.”

  “Next Sunday I have a wedding,” Michael said. “And tomorrow—” He sighed. “Make it tomorrow,” he said. They said good-by and he went in to tell Leslie that their trip was off.

  In the morning he and Felix Sommers drove into Philadelphia. They left early and stopped for breakfast on the road.